So I finished the Call of Duty: Advanced Warfare single-player campaign last night after just three sittings. I was really disappointed with the length of the game. I seemed to be finishing levels in a matter of minutes and then moving onto the next.
I know these games are popular due to their multiplayer element, but I simply don't have the time or patience for that. I like the single-player element of games. Story, plot and characters make them interesting to follow and get more involved with. Let's face it, the multiplayer element of the games doesn't really change with each new game in the series.
Maybe there's a new market for games that strictly focus on the single-player element rather than the multiplayer element?
Or maybe I should simply give up on the Call of Duty series now.
The Tech Behind the Catch
It's that catch again. This time looking at the tech behind Odell's gloves.
Beckham’s are custom-made versions of the Nike Vapor Jet 3.0, which features molded fingers, a “strategic mesh,” and “MagniGrip CL” on the palms and fingers. MagniGrip CL is a sticky material made from a mix of neoprene and silicone designed to help receivers hold on to a ball.
— Odell Beckham’s Helping Hands—the Tech Behind the Catch by Nautilus
Whatever Odell was wearing on his hands, I've a feeling that his 10 inch hands are the main reason that he made the catch look so easy.
Project or Context?
Ensuring that your productivity system is correct is important if you want keep the actions flowing through it. Like deciding if a project is in fact a context.
Many of you have been reading my post on using projects in Todoist. Up to now I've always used projects in Todoist as lists. They're just placeholders for actions. What I'm starting to see now though is that some of my projects might in fact be better used as contexts.
This week I listened to Mike Vardy's Productivityist podcast and caught up with two episodes focusing on context and their application in productivity systems. It made me look more closely at my own projects in Todoist. I singled out two projects that I think are better suited to being contexts, reading and writing.
My reading project is just a list of chapters from the books I'm reading on a daily basis. Breaking books into chapters means that I can schedule different books in for different days. Reading isn't a project, it's a label to describe a particular action. My writing project is essentially a list of ideas for the blog, but writing isn't a project. Writing describes the action. Clearly something is amiss here.
A context can be defined as the circumstances that surround a particular event. In the case of David Allen's GTD framework, a context is a label that you put on your actions so that you know two things:
- What you need to get that action done
- When that action can be done
When I look at my projects I see them differently now. In the case of reading and writing, they're not projects, they are in fact contexts. They are used to describe the circumstances in which I can finish their associated actions. I read a chapter of a book first thing in the morning as it's when I'm most receptive. Writing tends to happen in the morning as well. I'm just more swithched on during this time. So not only do these contexts describe the action but also when I schedule them in the day as well.
I can't recommend enough that you continually review your productivity workflow. Finding that point where everything falls into place isn't going to happen overnight or even come boxed up and ready to go in a system like GTD. It takes time to see what works for you and what doesn't. After taking out the reading and writing projects from Todoist, I'm starting to see a change in how I view projects in Todoist. I'm still digesting Erlend Hamberg's 15 minute guide to GTD and there's a few more changes that I'm going to try with projects in Todoist, but that folks is for another day.
New Bond Film, New Car
The new Bond movie, Spectre, is out next year but that's not what I was interested in. I'm not a petrol-head, but you can't deny that the new Bond car looks great.
He's Back (Again)
Yes, another Terminator movie. Anyone else think that these movies will keep going and going with the inclusion of a time machine in the plot?
Still, looks like it will be good fun to watch, especially with Emilia Clarke as a younger badass Sarah Connor.
Fixie Friday - Kerry Hopkins Aero Track
A Recipe for Killer Apps?
While I do believe that killer apps have had their day for the foreseeable future, I can't deny that the unbundling technique can be used to create some great apps.
Ed Rex reckons there are three reasons why unbundling works. Couldn't agree more with his reason for simplicity.
When your app only needs to do one thing, it can do it really well. You can have big, clear buttons for the things people use it for — because there’s no need to clutter up the screen with all those other options you’ve got rid of. This makes your app unbelievably easy to use — and that’s what smartphone users want.
— The Formula For Creating The Next Killer App by Ed Rex
Read on for the full recipe.
Having owned a Spectrum as a kid, I would love to have one of these little beauties. I think I would be simply caving into nostalgia though if I did. Still, it would be nice to see this project succeed.
The Sinclair Spectrum Vega is as simple to use as any of the popular games consoles, but far less expensive. It plugs into a TV, so no computer monitor is necessary, and comes complete with around 1,000 games built-in. The Vega has sufficient memory to allow the user to download the many additional games we will be making available from time to time free of charge.
— Sinclair ZX Spectrum Vega by Indiegogo
It's been a while since I reviewed my bookmarklets and since Carl T. Holscher was doing his, I thought I would list mine.
- Markdown Blockquote (bookmarklet) - A recent addition to my bookmarklets collection is the markdown pull quote grabber. I've recently taken a leaf out of John Gruber's blog and started including quotes from posts that I am linking too. This was quite a convoluted task in the past. Grabbing the link and quote, pasting it in and adding the author and title. Using this bookmarklet though makes the process much more easier. In the near future I plan to modify this so that it renders a blockquote in the format that I use for my blog. Special thanks goes to @malanowski who is the author of this.
- Markdown Page (bookmarklet) - I frequently copy whole pages as reference material. Mostly articles on web development and programming. As I prefer to use Markdown documents, I needed something that converted a whole page to Markdown. This bookmarklet does exactly that.
- Markdown Link (bookmarklet) - I'm grabbing links all the time from Firefox and just about everytime I reach for this bookmarklet. I simply need to click this bookmarklet and I get a markdown version of the link to paste into my document.
- Subscribe with Feedbin (bookmarklet) - I use Feedbin as my preferred RSS reader. In a world of streaming posts and updates on all the social networks, I'm glad there's still a way of subscribing to a site's content without having to succumb to just being another follower. This bookmarklet lets me subscribe quickly to any site that contains a valid RSS feed.
- Save to Instapaper (bookmarklet) - Finally there's Instapaper's bookmarklet for saving articles to your reading list. I use Instapaper on a daily basis for queing up what I want to read later on. Click to the page you want to save, click the bookmarklet, job done.
Bookmarklets are a good way of manipulating the pages on your web browser without installing add-ons. Unless you're familiar with JavaScript though, you will have to contend yourself with finding bookmarklets that others have made. With a bit practice though you could start writing your own.