If you buy decent headphones they should come with a break half way down the cable. This means if you have a tiny mp3 player, and you can attach it within 50 cm of your ears, you can get away with half the cabling.

Here's a few places I've clipped my shuffle in order to manage this:

1. On a necklace under a T-shirt
2. Inside a rolled-up sleeve
3. In a top or inner pocket
4. On my collar (NB: This made me look like an idiot, but that was fine as I was cycling)
5. On the headphones themselves, if you have big over-ear ones (NB: This also makes me look like an idiot - irrespective of circumstance, but it really works.)

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Tiny tip: When folding up an A4 printout or similar that you'll want to refer to later, fold it backwards first, so the front faces outward.

That way when you come back to it you won't have to open it to see what it is.

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Hola! I went to Spain at the start of this year and, knowing no Spanish, I bought a phrease book and a dictionary to get me communicating.

However, I found that whole phrases are hard to remember and difficult to adjust to exact situations if you don't understand a word of them, and a dictionary is very time consuming to use. What I wanted was a short list of the absolute minimum vocab you need to get by, arranged so you can construct your own rudimentary sentences. Grammar, gender and spelling not required.

I couldn't find anything like that on the interwebs either so I've written my own, the absolute bare minimun guide to Spanish for travelling in Spain.

Numbers

0 - cero, uno, dos, tres, cuatro, cinco, seis, sieste, ocho, nueve, 10 - diez

Vocab

• yes - si
• no - no
• hello - hola
• goodbye - adios
• please - por favor
• thankyou - gracias
• room - habitacion
• train - tren
• bus - autobu/s
• plane - avio/n
• today - hoy
• tomorrow - man~ana
• english - inglese

Phrases

• (I don't) understand - (no) comprendo
• my name's - me llamo
• How much? - quanto?
• What time? - a que hora?
• where is? - donde es?
• I'm sorry - lo siento

Constructors

• for - para
• on/in - en
• that - aquel
• this - este
• what? - que?
• when? - cuando?

Pronunciation

• c - s (gracias = grasias)
• r - rll (tren = trllen)
• u/ - oo (autobu/s = autoboose)
• ho - o (hola = ola)
• ll - y (me llamo = me yamo)

Examples of use

• Where's the train station - donde es tren, por favor?
• Table for two at a restaurant - para dos?
• How much is this rabbit pelt? - cuanto es este (along with pointing)
• The bill please - use the international "bill please" mime

There. Now that's bound to have some obvious gaps - so have a think, and bung me your suggestions, however, remember nothing too specialist, and nothing that you can do easily with mime...

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Had a couple of nags for not posting enough here - time for a mini-post...

Something I've written about before, but it seems I just can't stop fiddling with my iTunes playlists.

My most recent addition is a "zz_filter" smart playlist (so named so as to appear out the way at the bottom alphabetically), which I use in combination with most other playlists to ensure that the following songs are not included in the final list:

1. Songs under 30 seconds long
2. Songs over 8 minutes long
3. Songs of 2 stars or less
4. Tracks from non-music genres, for example comedy and audiobook(which also includes 100 tracks used for programming my belkin fm transmitter gizmo.)

While I'm here I'd also recommend that, if you haven't done so for a year or two, you consider restoring your iPod to the factory defaults and re-syncing it. Mine was failing to sync, so I did this to fix that, but as a bonus I've found it's now docking and undocking quicker and is also quicker to navigate round the menus - it's like a new machine :-)

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I like GTD. I use my task list well, and review regularly. However occasionally I want to be reminded of a task in a very specific location, or at a very specific time.

Below are a list of examples, and the tactics I've developed to trigger a reminder.

1. leave something on the floor by the front door to be reminded when you leave the house
2. take a key off your keyring and leave it loose in your pocket/bag to be reminded when you get home or when you go to drive somewhere
3. turn the alarm clock around, or put it on the floor to be reminded when you wake up
4. take a digital photo of something odd or oddly mundane (a fork, finger, foot) to be reminded when you're in front of a computer (syncing the photos)
5. slip something extra alongside your bookmark to be reminded when you have some spare time

In summary: Think of where you'd like to be reminded and change something in that location to be out of the ordinary.

Labels: Getting Things Done, GTD, memory, reminders

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