Link: Joe's Goals

Well, it looks like I'll be getting a bit of blogging time, which is a good thing, because I miss it. This is all ironically because I'm working 2 extra days a week, for the next 2 weeks. I'm working with Lance because his boss is taking her vacation and they needed someone to fill in. Their office is a bit slower than my normal one, plus, I don't have my usual list of tasks I can sit and do, since I don't know where much is here. That suits me fine though, as it gives me a chance to do some research in a few areas, catch up on reading, and do a few blog posts.

Today, I'm going to tell you all about Joe's Goals. It's a web application and I just love it! It's simple and flexible and works great! There is rarely a day that goes by where I don't use this site.

Do you remember those charts in elementary school where the teacher could give you gold stars for doing things you were supposed to? Well, this is the same simple concept except that you are both teacher and student.

Basically, you are "joe" and you can set up as many or as few goals as you want. They then list the goals along with the days of the week (you can even select which days it displays on) and you can give yourself points everytime you do something on your list. So, if you're training yourself on a new habit, something I try to be continually doing, it works great for a bit of positive reinforcement. Not to mention, you can get reports and see just how successful you were. It's also great if you're trying to break bad habits since you can have positive or negative goals. You even get a daily points total at the bottom so your good stuff will hopefully outweigh your negatives and you'll end up with a positive score.

What I really love about the program though, is that you can adapt it to other things as well. For example, I read where someone was using it to track her headaches. I thought this was a great idea! I have infrequent moderate migraine attacks, but have only been able to rely on my memory to really tell how frequent they are. With this program, I can generate a report that will help me track the frequency. I also set up a few things that I think are headache triggers. Hopefully it'll help me see a relationship between the triggers and my headaches. Plus, if I have a mild headache one day, I just give it one click. If it's a rip-roaring, full-blown, crawl-into-bed kinda headache, I just click multiple times to give it a richter-scale type measurement. On a related note, I could set up a headache scale with different goals since each goal can have a different "weight" measurement attached to it. So you could set up "Level 1 Headache," "Level 2 Headache," etc. if you wanted to.

The second way I'm adapting Joe's Goals right now, is to help me track my nutritional choices. I'm trying to eat a balanced diet right now, but I never really pay attention to how much of each food group I actually get. So, each food group is a goal and each serving is a click. This way I can easily see at a glance how many servings I average and which areas I'm getting too much/too little. Plus, it might help me make different snack choices. For example, I love fruit and would skip almost all vegetables in favour of fruit. But, seeing that I've already had 2-3 servings might make me think I should probably grab a carrot instead of grapes this time around.

One of the other great features that I am under-utelizing is the log book feature. This is basically like a mini-journal where you can add notes for each day of the week. I think it would be great, but I just have so many other ways that I keep notes about things (like my palm pilot) that I don't really need it.

Stuff to Listen To

Just below the links of blogs I like to read and other sites of stuff I like to look at, I've added another section dedicated to stuff I like to listen to. Let me tell you a bit about the stuff I put in there.

First of all, there's this great music service called Pandora. It's a completely free internet music service that tailors itself to your musical preferences. You start off searching a song/artist you like. The program then plays similar music to that. You can tell it if you like/dislike each song and it'll learn your exact preferences. You can create multiple station and it even has information about the artist on there and behind the scenes stuff. For each song it plays, it'll display the CD title and artist name along with album art (if available) so you can go out and pick up stuff from new artists that you hear. It's awesome! My sister found it, and the first person she thought to share with was me and Lance. I wasn't quite so thoughtful when I found a few months before her though. So, sharing time is now.

The other thing you'll notice is that I've listed several podcasts. For those who don't know, podcasts are audio files that are created by a wide variety of people. Some do it professionally, but many are just amateur people sharing something they are passionate about. I think wikipedia probably gives a slightly better definition than I do. You can subscribe to podcasts that you enjoy and have them downloaded automatically as they are posted. I think podcasts are awesome because the listener can control what content they get. So, instead of listening to whoever in the morning on whatever radio station, you could download a couple podcasts, and listen to them on your MP3 player instead. Or, play them directly from your computer's media player.

Here are the ones that I've found so far . . .

Lipgloss and Laptops - this one is made by a couple of women who live in the Greater Vancouver area. The shows topics are pretty evident from the title. It's mainly about cosmetics, but these are also professional women who juggle career and family and have some interesting opinions on a variety of topics dealing with beauty and the cosmetics industry. I enjoy their reality checks and I like listening to them and supporting something that is local. Oh yeah, they sometimes give away free stuff too. I haven't won anything yet, but I'll keep trying!

Geek News Central - I love this guy! His name is Todd and he podcasts all the way from Hawaii. He sounds like an awesome guy, just like some of the friends I already have. He gives a run down of tech/geek/science/computer news that come up each week. He always includes a list of links to the original article and I love his perspective on things. His laugh is great too. I don't understand everything he talks about, but it's a much easier way for me to keep on top of geeky news than it would be for me to read all those articles myself.

Grammar Girl - This podcast is always short and sweet. The host will basically explain different grammar points on different topics based on questions she receives. She's very knowledgeable and good at explaining the different rules according to different style guides. I really like it because it acknowledges that grammar rules change depending on your audience and she does a good job of explaining the different points.

Those are the main ones I listen to and it'll probably stay that way until I save up for my Treo and can download them on there and commute with them.

Man, am I a big geek or what!

My Kinda Gnome!

Check out these cute little guys! They are totally my kinda gnome!

Harmony Toilet

Ok, good idea in theory, but imagine how much water is going to get wasted when your kids figure out this fun little toy. Also, when you have the flu and are only half-way through a worship session with the porcelain goddess, imagine that coming down on your head after you flush. Hmmm, I wonder if this is the toilet of the future?

Crafty Round-Up

Ok, so here's one of the long-awaited and much-anticipated 'quality' posts. I've been inspired by tonight's plans for some Christmas crafting with my crafty friends to do a round-up of some of my favourite crafting websites.

Crafty Blogs
-Bella Dia - She hasn't updated the site in a while, (which can actually be a good thing) but it looks like when she does post, the instructions are great! She photographs certain steps so you can really see what to do, which is very important for the more visual people out there. Plus, I love the feet picture!

-Bloody Crafts - This blog updates more frequently but most of it is simply pictures of what's going on over there. The blog is written by someone in Berlin and I find the ESL English rather adorable. Lots of great ideas here for crafts that are a bit non-traditional in their theme. If you really like what you see she sells her creations in a store.

-Angry Chicken - This is a more traditional blog where it's just an ordinary crafter posting about her different crafts that she produces. She has two adorable girls and involves them in some of her projects too. Plus, she makes clothes for them which are absolutely adorable. Also has a store where you can buy her creations.

-Thimble - This gal has a store front where her creations are sold too. Her blog expands a bit beyond just crafting and she tells you about her vintage apron collection and her searches for interesting fabrics. She also has a monthly subscription thing in which she makes series of buttons and you can subscribe for a certain length of time to receive each month's buttons. A cool idea if you like to collect all sorts of interesting buttons. I find her also just very interesting to read about. She is Canadian and has family in the Lower Mainland. She also is vegetarian and posts recipes sometimes which look really yummy!

Ezines

Now for some sites that are more like crafting Ezines . . .

-The AntiCraft - I've emailed my crafty friends this link before and I'm so glad that I did! One of them submitted an idea for their upcoming book and it was accepted so she's going to be published! Anyway, this magazine comes out with projects that are non-traditional in theme, but traditional in their craft. They range from easy to difficult and have some very interesting stuff to check out.

-Whipup - This site operates as a group effort with contributions from readers, ask and answer posts, plus articles submitted by crafting bloggers. They tip you off to great tutorials on other sites, or comment on a wide variety of crafting pursuits. Every month they have a themed contest that you can submit your own crafty creations to. The prizes for the contest are crafty things (of course).

-CRAFT - This project is an offshoot of the zine called MAKE and both appeal to me for similar reasons. I guess I've just always loved working with my hands. CRAFT is also available in a print edition and you can become a subscriber to either. However, there are lots of awesome ideas available with no subscription whatsoever. Lots of great ideas and they sometimes have podcasts too. I love the "goth my ride" picture on the homepage. You just have to check it out! Scroll through the main pictures to find it. Unfortunately, it looks like that particular feature is for subscribers only.

Anyway, there you have it. Enjoy! I may do another post with some more specific crafting references in the future, time-permitting of course. If you have a link that follows the same theme, feel free to leave it in the comments!

5 Links For You

Ok, so I've been meaning to do a good post for a while now. Unfortunately, I don't consider this the post I've been meaning to do. That doesn't mean it's not good, it just means that (hopefully) more good posts will be coming your way. Instead of allowing my lack of planning time for the posts I want to do stand in my way, I've decided to pause those for the time being and make other posts that can be made with less time and planning.

In the past couple of days I have stumbled across a number of great new sites. So, I thought I'd send a few your way. If you're wondering how I find these sites, I can't remember how I got to each one, but they were probably found through one of the blogs that I read. If you want a list, just head on over to my del.icio.us page and check out the stuff I have tagged with "blog."

• The Chief Happiness Officer
  A blog that seems determined to prove that not all work is bad. I really like the idea behind this blog since I firmly believe that work does not have to be a four-letter word and that it's up to all of us to take responsibility for our own happiness and to try to bring happiness to those around us. I look forward to reading more posts. (If this isn't really your cup of tea, you still MUST check out his post on 10 seeeeeriosly cool workplaces!)
  
  
• One Minute How-To
  This is a collection of podcasts which challenges people to submit one-minute instructions on pretty much anything. I haven't actually listened to any yet since I can't really justify this as a work activity and hubby is currently studying at the computer next to me (and I'm too lazy to dig out headphones and plug them in to my computer), but I'm sure there's some good stuff here. The one about letting go of things your sentimentally attached to is done by one of the organizing bloggers that I enjoy reading (and that's how I found this website).
  
  
• EasyClosets.com
  This one I also found through the above mentioned organizing blogger. However, it wasn't a post, it was an ad. It looks like a pretty cool site. You can even sketch your own closet in if it has odd dimensions. I love looking at different organizing type things so I imagine I'll be coming back to this site for inspiration as I need it. I might even order something eventually (if I ever make up my mind).
  
  
• 5ives
  If you are even remotely dabbling into the blogosphere in the realms of personal development or organization, you will undoubtably come across the name Merlin Mann sooner or later. While I do not read his 43Folders site, I've known about him and his expertise in the field of personal development for quite some time. I did not, however, know about his 5ives site until quite recently. The site has updates about every two weeks. Each post is a short and humourous list of 5 things. Quite entertaining!
  
  
• Colour Palette Generator
  Last, but not least, I have a little gimmicky tool. I'm kind of a sucker for these sorts of things. I really should go find a more appropriate tag in del.icio.us other than "Tool" to describe these kinds of sites. Basically what this site does is break down the colours in any picture that you load onto the website. The picture has to have a URL, but with all the free photo hosting places, it shouldn't be hard to get the colour palatte of any digital image. It gives you the colour number so you could use it to buy paint in a colour scheme of a particularly inspiring picture. I'm sure you could use those numbers to get the colour scheme for a website though. I think I'll be using it to pick different colours for my blog (eventually).