Observed.
It’s a very big lift indeed. I’m quite glad it was only me and my wife in it at the time.
Obligatory.
The same photograph I take at every wedding, birthday or other party I attend. And I'm still there :-)
It’s a very big lift indeed. I’m quite glad it was only me and my wife in it at the time.
The same photograph I take at every wedding, birthday or other party I attend. And I'm still there :-)
About a year and a half ago I confirmed my status as a pretty sad case when I published the diary page layout I’d put together for myself after being unable to find one commercially available that I liked working with.
Since the advent of the iPhone and MobileMe syncing I’ve returned to an electronic solution for diarying and task tracking (and it’s by far the best such system I’ve used), but I’ve been receiving a steady stream of emails asking for a 2009 version. Because of those requests, and because I’m continually surprised by just how popular those first downloads were (they’ve been downloaded several hundred times!), I’ve taken a couple of hours to update them for 2009.
And here’s the result. What I like is to have the week on the left-hand page, faced by a plain lined page for notes/lists/whatever.
The ‘legal’ bit: These are by me, Mark Goody, enabled by the DIY Planner Widget Kit v0.6 by Doug Johnson of DIYplanner.com, and they are released under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike license.
The ‘how’: To use them you’ll need PDF reader software, like Acrobat Reader or Mac OS X Preview. The PDFs contain an about page for reference, a generic lined page you can use for notes layed out for right-hand (odd) pages - or you can print in anything you like from elsewhere. The rest of each file contains a series of dated, week-to-page left-handed pages to face your notes/to-dos/whatever.
Select the page-range of the weekly pages and print them to your evens. Flip ‘em however your printer needs, and print your choice of odd pages. Easy.
In two sizes (A5 and half-US Letter), the files for 2009:
Plus simple right-handed notes pages (line and gridded):
And finally a zip of the original OpenOffice.org 3 Draw files, for your tinkering joy:
If you find these useful, please let me know by leaving a comment, or by email to blog AT marramgrass DOT org DOT uk. Cheers.
“Faust 2.0” from xkcd.
Ever bought a copy of Windows or Microsoft Office? Ever read the small print on the side of the box?
I’ve seen the signs that Christmas is coming. Shopping centres have tinsel everywhere, we’ve started buying gifts and Starbucks have rolled out the red cups and the “seasonal” music on repeat. Days are shorter and the deepest of winter is getting nearer.
It’s still the first half of November.
Since we got married, each year has brought a few more decorations, a bit more time and effort spent on the tree, a few more twinkling lights. I play the humbug, but the truth is that I love it. I love the carol services and the decorations and the music and trees and lights. I wish it would snow on Christmas day and I get that daft, growing excitement as Advent rolls into Christmastide.
But not yet, because it’s still the first half of November.
I won’t rail about the de-Christianising of Christmas — that’s just silly. Christians are just one group who feast in late December; the bottom of the year can’t but be a significant point in any calendar. More than that, we can’t pretend that Christmas hasn’t become a cultural event completely apart from our remembering the Incarnation, however deeply our culture has a Christian seed somewhere in its past.
(Not saying that’s not the heart of the season for me, but there’s more than me around, y’know.)
This is my question: what does it say about our need for celebration and a little joyfulness that the preparation and decoration and everything else was starting in mid-October, more than two months before Christmas day? We’re desperate for something, aren’t we?
Do we run the risk of being heartily sick of it all by December 25th? What good does a celebration do us when it’s been diluted down to nothing?
Think about it, and I’ll come back to you in a few weeks. Advent is my favourite season, after all.