Merlins Tower

New WordPress Theme: Revolution Theme

Posted on February 6th, 2008 by Merlin.
Categories: Announcement, Communication, Firefox, Journaling, Money, Search Engine, Web Service, Wordpress, working.

Normally I would not be writing about a New Wordpress Theme - But I felt I should mention it as I am considering purchasing this for possible use here. I really love the look and feel of this theme. It really is very clean looking, easy to navigate, brings more information to the front page, hopfully will get the reader more involved in the blog. (Yes, You - Please comment and let me know what you think) - I do write to help me understand different topics more, and I love sharing any of the information I learn about. That is why I started Merlin’s Tower. Yes, I like seeing what I created and written on the web. And Why not share any bit of information your learn with others. So, they can learn from your mistakes and highs as well.

So here is The Revolution Theme - This really would be good for most informational blogs. I really love the wordpress magazine theme. Yes, this theme does cost some money but I really think this developer deserves to be paid as this really is a great looking set of themes.

This is the Revolution News Theme: To Quote the website: “This theme is a great solution for those who want the online newspaper look similar to websites such as CNN News, US World News & World Report, etc.”

This really is a nice Wordpress News Theme: Supports Ads, Widgets, and Fully Customizable

On the Right is the Revolution Magazine Theme: “This theme is perfect for those who want to publish an online magazine. It’s built for daily posting, displaying video and is easily monetized with ads.” This really is one Classy looking Wordpress Magazine Theme. I like the look and the layout of this theme.

This is a possible choice for me to use.

Here is the Revolution Theme called Revolution Tech Theme.

The Revolution Tech Theme: “This theme is ideal for the Techcrunch fan, and who wants their site to feature a technology, focusing on the latest tech news, product reviews, etc.”

This is the theme for someone that will be starting a technology blog. A few of the blogs I frequent could use this. This is not for me but it too is a classy theme for wordpress.

The last theme that Revolution Theme has is the Revolution Sports Theme: “Here’s a great way to turn your site into a major sports news/infromation hub. Feature sports like Baseball, Football, Basketball, Hockey and more.” A friend of mine is thinking about starting a golf blog and this would be a good place to start for him. Again words are not enough to describe this theme. A very nice clean and professional looking theme for wordpress.

All of these themes really take wordpress to the next level and take it from just being another blog and transforming it into a true CMS (Content Management Solution) that gives a really beautiful look and feel to wordpress. Please support Brian Gardner and his Revolution Themes: Revolution Tech, Revolution Magazine, Revolution Sports, or Revolution News and his soon to be released Revolution Pro Theme. Again these will work with widgets and are all fully customizable.

So, People let me know what you think and visit the Revolution Theme Site and Support Brian Gardner in all of his Theme Building.

Technorati Tags: Revolution+Theme, Revolution, Wordpress, Word, Press, Tech+Theme, Magazine, Magazine+Theme, Revolution+Magazine+Theme, Wordpress+Theme, Sports, Tech, News, Magazine, Technology+Theme, Changes

1 comment.

Online Tool: Visuword - Online Visual Dictionary

Posted on February 1st, 2007 by Merlin.
Categories: Communication, Free, Freeware, GTD, Hack, Journaling, Notetaking, Office, Search Engine, Web Service.

Previously I wrote about the Visual Thesaurus and now I found another cool online word tool - VisuWord - They call it the online visual dictionary. I have to agree - I like how it interlinks the words and visually shows you which words are related and which ones are the same and which ones are opposite. This can be a fairly useful tool - Not something I will use everyday but can be quite useful to have in your arsenal of word tools. Like using a mind map but of words and their inter-relationship.

Technorati Tags: visuword, visual, word, words, dictionary, thesaurus, online, tool, online+tool, mind, map, mind+map, gtd, hack

0 comments.

Free Research Help - CrossEngine.com

Posted on January 17th, 2007 by Merlin.
Categories: Computing, Free, GTD, Hack, Search Engine, Web Service.

Today I found a real time saver when it comes to searching for information. It is called CrossEngine - Beyond Search.

To use this new search engine is pretty easy type what you are looking for in the search box and press enter - You will have then just searched for your term in google.

Ok, I will wait tell you stop saying "Yeah Whats the Big Deal" - Well here is where the WEB 2.0 / AJAX comes into play - Which is what this search engine uses.

You will notice little tabs across the top:

WEB, Images, Video, News, Blog, Shopping, Reference, Files, Tags, Social

Each of the Tabs list all of the search engines available under the search box.

Example: The Web Tab Has These listed:

Google, Yahoo, Live, Ask, AOL, Exalead, Gigablast, DMOZ, Altavista, UTN, All The Web, Snab, WotBox, Hakia, Clush and Many Many more

There are quite the selection of all the different forms of search - You can instantly at the click of a button best of the best and a few that you may not have heard of.

I really liked the image search - Google, Yahoo, PhotoBucket, Flickr, Getty and again many more.

I am also cross posting this to my other Blog Dr-T.com - Dr Tech Check it out for more technical blog entries.

Technorati Tags: AJAX, Web, 2.0, Search, Mashup, Hack, GTD, Technorati, IceRocket, Kinja, Live, Blog, Findory, Digger, Merlins, Tower

0 comments.

Price Protection - Via Price Protectr

Posted on January 10th, 2007 by Merlin.
Categories: Communication, Free, Hack, Money, Search Engine, Shopping, Web Service.

How many times have you seen the guarantee that you will get the lowest price around even if the price drops in the next 30 days you will get the money back. Well how often do you actually keep looking at the prices once you purchase the item. Well that is where Price Protectr Comes in handy. This is a free service that allows you to watch prices for the following companies:

Amazon, Backcountry.com, Best Buy, Circuit City, Costco, Future Shop, Jenson USA, Office Max, Sears, or Target. 

I know I use quite a few of these to purchase items. I think I have only once checked the price afterwards to make sure the price didn't drop and that was by accident seeing it in a weekend sales catalog. I can see this being a very useful service and time saver. To use this service it only takes a few minutes to setup the alert then all you have to do afterwards is to check your email as you normally do. (Well I hope you check it regularly ) 

Thats it a quick and easy way to verify that you got the best price and make sure you take advantage of the best price for the upcoming month or so.

Thanks Price Protectr

Technorati Tags: price, protectr, amazon, best+buy, target, office+max, costco, circuit+city, sears, money, back, free, service, guarantee

0 comments.

How I Use, Sort, and Store My Index cards

Posted on December 21st, 2006 by Merlin.
Categories: Analog, Communication, Fountain Pens, Free, GTD, Hack, Journaling, Search Engine, Tutorial.

Today I was viewing my favorite blogs and I wrote the following as a comment on Searching4Arcadia: He was talking about using 3×5 cards as a capture tool and how to organize and store them. This got me writing down How I do my system. I wanted to share this with my readers as well. 

So Here is what I wrote in that comment: ( a few things added as I could not do linking in the comments)

Greeting - Great article By the way - as usual good information. I too use 3×5 quite a bit in my daily activities. I have the leather version of the shirt pocket briefcase from Levengers but I always have on hand is the International Shirt Pocket Briefcase.

I like this version better in some instances because it has a pocket to fit my daily use fountain pen inside and protect it and a place for my drivers license and money (When I have any).

I also bought the Levenger Index Cards - I find them better quality then he dime store variety But they work just as well also.

I too had a hard time organizing them. I use a old wooden cigar box for my "Current" cards and have a longer storage box from Office Depot/Max that I use for Long Term Storage.

When I am placing my cards away I will mark the card with a Topic and Number. I then store them alphabetically in the trays by the Topic & Number. Any really important facts or info I know I might need to remember  I write it down on the index card index cards that I have stored in the front of the tray - Thus I can quickly (Well sorta) find a past topic. Plus this gives me a way to place the card back into it correct spot when the time comes. I will usually do this once every week or so as not to get too many cards out of place but they are fairly easy to put back into order no matter what.

My local Big Lots store has the plastic dividers I use in the boxes for about $1.50 I like these better then the ones from Office Depot as the are all the same color and the letter is easier to read. Actually I bought sever sets - I put my own TAGS or labels on them (I have one for each of my clients or major projects that I am working on) That way when I mark the card I can put it in that Tagged section and make it the next number. For cards that don't have a "Divider" I put them into the alphabet dividers by letter. So notes I took about a particular pipe tobacco would be under P and the number would be then next number in the P section ex. P112. And If I thought this was something important as mentioned above I would put:

Pipe Tobacco (Haddo's Delight)   - P112

This is just an example inde Taken from some objects I have in sight when I was writing this topic. Ok I was enjoying my pipe at the time.

On the index card index. I use one card for each letter in index. This helps keep my index cards in order Right now I have Several cards for each letter. Plus if I happen to have multiple topics on a card I can still find this information as well. These are easier to go thru then going though each and every card all the time. But I have to admit there are times like you mentioned that I just flip and scan though all the cards just to get some inspiration.

Depending on what I am writing and/or note taking - I will either use the index cards or my notebook. The notebook for me is more for info that I want to store long term (I use my notebook more as a common book) and want to have easy access to as when I leave to go to a job or client I have that with me in my backpack / work kit. And I alway in the front of my notebook carry a few extra index cards. That way if the info in not as important I write it on the cards. I also keep a couple with my Name and Email/phone number printed on to give notes to a client. I find this quite effective as it keeps my info with them.

One additional note not in the comment I posted was that I have a nice Card Holder that I bought from Ikea several years back that keeps my current projects close at hand.

Thanks A11en for sparking the writing bug today.

Merlin

TAGS: Index Card Storage Index+Card Notetaking GTD how to

4 comments.

Gas Prices - Where to get the best price.

Posted on September 18th, 2006 by Merlin.
Categories: Anything Else, Free, Hack, Search Engine, Web Service.

First I want to thank my friend Dan on this tip.

This money saving tip today is: The Gas Price List via MSN Auto.

And according to their page - Branson, MO is the cheapest price only costing $1.86 a gallon
But Kaunakakai, HI is the most expensive at $3.93 a gallon.

What makes this one of the best is it doesn’t rely on people to update the prices but it receives the prices via OPIS:  Here is the info about it from overview:

    These prices are provided by OPIS. OPIS is the only comprehensive source of U.S. wholesale and retail petroleum prices, tracking more than 90,000 daily retail gasoline prices. More than 100 billion gallons of fuel are purchased annually based on an OPIS Price Index.

• Retail prices are derived from actual credit card transactions collected from Fleet Vehicles.
• Each day retail gasoline prices are compiled from more than 90,000 gasoline and convenience stores across the United States.
• Because of the way fleet vehicle credit card data is reconciled, prices for a given station can trickle in over a seven day period.
• Because 80% of gasoline that is purchased is for regular unleaded, 80% of the prices you will receive are regular unleaded.
• Prices shown are actual pump prices.
• Any discounts or rebates given to fleets are taken into consideration after the fact.
• Prices include all taxes.

Thats all for this one - Sweet and easy and a nice way to find the best price within driving distance of your place. It is always nice to save a few dollars now and again.

Technorati Tags: Gas, Prices, Price, MSN, Microsoft, Search, Lowest

0 comments.

Notetaking and Organization - How I got sucked in.

Posted on August 29th, 2006 by Merlin.
Categories: Communication, Fountain Pens, GTD, Hack, Journaling, Miquelrius, Moleskine, Search Engine, Tutorial, working.

You can read and read many different blogs and forums and there are many different ways to take notes and organize yourself.

I have read them - in fact many of the blogs are in RSS reader and I take a peak at them when I have a few moments of time. - I don’t know why but I enjoy learning new hints and tips to help me organize myself better.

A few years back I discovered writing in small journals and notebooks. I started out writing in Steno Pads that we had at work. These are great for taking quick notes and organizing myself for the day when ever I would receive a phone call or work on a issue - In the notebook it went - I was going through quite a few notebooks as you can guess. I then would take the info that was relative to an issue and the rewrite it into my permanent notebook (This is after I gave up using a PDA - Great for searching out data but hard to input and harder to always sync and keep the battery fresh. Basically a pain in the rear end.) My permanent notebook was a journal I picked up the local bookstore in Downtown Pittsburgh near my bus stop. I loved the small size and the quad ruled paper that it had it in. This was my first Miquelrius Journal. I actually first saw this at the computer help desk where I saw one of the techs using one while on the phone easily looking up past issues and their resolution she made organization look so easy. I asked her about it and this I believe was the down fall of me purchasing notebooks and pens. She showed me a few of the ways she organized it and followed her lead. She always numbered each page. (Which I also read on quite a few blogs) She used alot of sticky notes to lead her to the correct area of her notebook to help her solve one of her cases. She was always faster then trying to find the info in the database that was given to them to try and do what she was doing in her notebook.

It was hard for me to start writing in the notebook journal as it was so pristine and I guess I felt intimidated looking at all those blank pages staring back at me. To make my process of writing in the journal one step closer was to number all the pages - Well not all but in the bottom right hand corner I would number ever other page. 1 - 3 - 5 - 7 - 9 - 11 ……….

Then I would draw and comment on the inside flap what I was using this journal for. (I read this somewhere and it really does help get over the new notebook jitters) I now no longer had a pristine journal but a personalized organization system. (Ok Ok the start of one)

The next step was to keep a hard copy of all the number I had in my cell phone. Since I was no longer syncing my pda or carrying it with me I needed a way to have all my numbers with me where I could find them. So, What I did was to divide my notebook up into smaller sections. First Section was for Business - Second section was for Personal Notes - and Third was General Info. The Phone number went into the third section. I took and wrote out all my phone numbers and that was the start of my notebook. After I finished writing out all my numbers I then took several high liters and highlited the names of the people I just wrote down. Pink was Personal - Blue was Business - Yellow was the important numbers. This little step helped me look over the list of over 300 numbers and spot the frequently called numbers that much easier.

Next I did a step similar to my friends - I made an index section - I marked about 10 pages in the back of the notebook to just be cross reference data / Index of what I wrote. Say I wote in my personal section all the birthdays of all my friends and family - something I don’t use on a daily basis - I wrote it down in the index - Birthdays and Anniversaries - p105 - List of Past Christmas Presents - p157 (Whew no more embarrassing buying the same gift 2 years in a row)

This was the basic startup of how I started the analog way. This did take me some time getting used to writing in my notebook and once I got used to finding the data. I believe I was faster and more organized as I didn’t mind jotting a quick note down in my journal. But turning on the PDA removing the stylus getting to the right program - creating a new note - naming it and then finally being able to use graffiti to jot the note down. Since it was that much easier I was writing and documenting more instead of trying to remember it all. I didn’t always jot the notes down into the index so I would do a weekly round up that out remembered from one of the organization meetings I got to go to. I would go through my notes and it I thought it was worth noting I wrote it down in the index and noted the page. This also allowed me to cross reference some of the info. So, if I ran out of room on a page and needed to write more I would just make a note of the page I had additional info on and highlight it. I believe this is what started me reading more about organization and note taking. I wanted to be better at it then I was. And I am pretty sure that is the same reason you read so far in this long winded entry. In the next few days I will write about my modified Cornell Note Taking system. So be sure to stop back and comment here and let me know some of the tips you are using. Or if you think you might have a better way to do something I wrote about Please let me know I love to learn some more tricks and hacks. I know these hint and hacks really did work for me  - I still use this daily in my own business working on websites and in my computer services. My clients are amazed that I am so low tech with my fountain pen and little black journal.
Thanks for Reading.
Digital Alan - Merlins Tower

Technorati Tags: analog, note taking, notebooks, journal, journals, journalling, organization, fountain pen, fountain, pen, quad, ruled, quad ruled, GTD, PDA

2 comments.

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