Monthly Archives: April 2009

Starting down the the path to the Dark Side

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It’s time I just come out and say it. I have little to no faith in Microsoft’s ability to execute with the future of Windows Mobile. Specifically, upgradeability is a problem, and without that, new hotness features like the new user interface and app store are completely irrelevant for most Windows Mobile users.

While Apple, Google, Palm and even RIM are providing easy, free and in some cases non-destructive (leaves your data in place) upgrades, virtually none of the devices currently on the market, even those with more than enough horsepower to handle it, will be upgradeable to Windows Mobile 6.5. And upgradeability from 6.5 to 7, due out next year, looks similarly bleak. In the midst of a global recession while the competition is adding value to the devices people already have, Microsoft and their partners seem to believe that their users will be willing and eager to upgrade not once but twice to new hardware inside an 18 month window.

Microsoft, of all companies, should know better. Witness their current difficulty in getting users to upgrade from Windows XP. My company, a Fortune 500 corporation, just added Firefox as an option alongside IE 6 this week. The collective “thanks, but no thanks” from the user community they got for Vista will ring hauntingly familiar when people don’t line up to buy handsets based on their new operating systems. A deep recession is the worst time to pull what is likely to be seen as a bait and switch: Buy a hot new Touch Pro today, but you’ll have to buy the Touch Pro 2 to get 6.5, and then something else next year to get 7.

Conversely, other mobile platforms are showing far more good faith with their userbase. Even owners of the original iPhone will be able to upgrade to the forthcoming 3.0 firmware this summer, although their hardware won’t support all of the features. Palm has promised over the air, non-destructive upgrades for webOS on the Pre, fitting with their “everything in the cloud” philosophy. So taking a solid look around, I decided to try something else. The Pre isn’t out yet, and the Blackberry is still fairly primitive as mobile OSes go, not much more advanced than PalmOS Garnet. Y’all see where this is going.

No, I didn’t buy an iPhone. I bought an iPod Touch last Friday. The plan is to use this for a few months to get used to the Apple mobile OS and application experience, and then make an informed decision this summer to go one of three ways:

  1. Buy a third generation iPhone, or a refurb second generation (confusingly known as the 3G; I know why it’s called that, but still awkward) if the hardware differences aren’t all that significant (kinda hoping for an iPhone HD tho, mmm nummy 720p graphics)
  2. Buy a Palm Pre and either continue to use the iPod Touch for media (thinking primarily ebooks– eReader, Stanza, Kindle– and video from iTunes) and the Pre for everything else, or just the Pre and give the iPod to my mom if the Pre has eReader support at launch
  3. Buy a Blackberry Pearl and use it strictly as a phone, messenger and tether it over Bluetooth (yay, PdaNet!) to my iPod Touch when I’m out of WiFi range

Notice that none of those possibilities mentions Windows Mobile. While I’m hanging on to my Touch Pro until one of the aforementioned three possibilities emerges, I’m already acutely aware of how clunky and awkward it is, even with TouchFlo3D, compared to more modern alternatives.

Script Frenzy fail

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I gave Script Frenzy a solid shot this year. I plotted out my movie in advance, fixed all the plot holes, had some blockbuster cinematic moments planned. I started writing the script, got about five pages into it, and realized something. I’m not a screenwriter anymore. I’m a novelist.

I used to joke that I was a screenwriter trapped in novelist’s body, a nod to my very visual, very action-oriented style of prose. And I used to really enjoy screenwriting. I read movie scripts the way other people read novels. I watched movies constantly, seeing probably close to 100 films a year and rewatching lots of favorites.

The problem is I don’t do that anymore. I see maybe 20 movies a year, probably closer to a dozen. For my leisure time, I’m usually reading a book (well, an ebook). I just don’t have time to devote a couple hours at a time to sitting in one place and watching a story from beginning to end.

I got into screenwriting in the first place because I didn’t think I had the patience for novels. I’d just finished Between Heaven and Hell and hadn’t been able to make any serious headway on the sequel. Screenplays were shorter, simpler, and more active. They capitalized on what were my strengths at the time, action and dialogue. And I had a blast learning how to write screenplays.

But that was over 10 years ago. In the intervening decade, I’ve written hundreds of thousands of words, and all in either narrative (novels) or essay (articles) style. And in the process, I’ve lost the eye of my inner screenwriter. I don’t see stories through a camera anymore. I see them from the omniscient viewpoint of a novel’s narrator.

The work I did getting the story put together isn’t going to be wasted, though. The more I wrote on the screenplay version of Titanus, the more I wanted to write it as a novel. My favorite books when I was younger were Michael Crichton’s Congo and Jurassic Park (long before either became a movie). More recently I’ve discovered writers like James Rollins (Amazonia, Subterranean) and Jeff Rovin (Fatalis, Vespers) who also managed to find that mix of science and adventure that made Crichton’s best work so good. Titanus is my shot at joining their ranks with a science-oriented thriller, and I think it will work just as well, if not better, as a novel as a movie.

If, for no other reason, that I’m a novelist now.

GTD for storytellers

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Part of the problem creative types have with David Allen’s Getting Things Done methodology is that we tend to be “big picture” type people and GTD focuses on the little things. Even if we’re methodical in setting up our GTD system, we’re never quite sure we’re focusing on the right little things. Remember, the difference between efficiency and effectiveness is that while efficiency is doing things right, effectiveness is doing the right things.

This has become more and more apparent to me recently. I’m at something of a crossroads in my life, a reboot where I have the opportunity to re-invent myself and build my life the way I want it. But what do I want? This is where I’ve always run aground with GTD. I’ll do a “core dump”, writing down all my open loops, but still have no idea if closing all of those open loops will get me to where I want to go.

So in addition to all that “in the trenches” stuff, I decided to see if I could determine what my goals (master projects) should be by doing what I do best: telling a story.

My “reboot” concept will take a little under two years, after which both myself and my parents will be financially secure and independent. So I decided to visualize a normal, typical day for myself two years in the future. If I get to where I want to be, what would that look like?

Here’s the start of that day.

The alarm on my Palm Pre goes off, waking me up. Shooing the cats off the futon, I sit up and glance around my Spartan bedroom. The walls have framed posters from favorite movies, and there’s a TV stand in the corner with my 24″ tube TV and a small DVD player. I get up, pull my Pre off the Touchstone inductive charger, pick up my clothes from the night before and walk into the living room.

The living room is also a wide open space with little in it. There’s a large cat tree in the far right corner, a futon immediately to my right, against the wall the borders the bedroom, and a large flatscreen TV mounted to the opposite wall. Under the TV is a metal strip running to the carpet, which both holds three glass shelves and conceals the cables from the shelf contents. The first shelf holds my Nintendo Wii and various controllers, the second holds my Xbox 360 and the third my combination DVD player/VCR. On the carpet at the bottom is my Wii Fit balance board.

I walk past the living room and make a right into the laundry room. Immediately to my left is the automated cat box, which doesn’t need changing yet. I drop yesterday’s clothes into the stainless steel washing machine, which also isn’t full enough to run a load yet, and ignore the boxes of CDs and other media stored in the corner.

As I walk back to the living room I go past the kitchen and look into the “dining room”. I have a L-shaped glass and steel computer desk in the corner, holding my home server/gaming PC, a multifunction inkjet and paper filing system. I then walk into the kitchen, start a batch of rice steaming and pour myself some hot tea from the timed coffee maker.

It’s hardly a riveting bestseller, but there’s a lot of useful information there. Going back over that section, I can pull out factual, declarative statements that have to be true for this vision of my future to be true.

  • I have my own apartment.
  • I have a Palm Pre and a Touchstone charger.
  • I have a futon for the bedroom.
  • I have a futon for the living room.
  • I have a large cat tree.
  • I have a flatscreen TV with a wallmount.
  • I have a wall mounted, glass shelf entertainment system.
  • I have a Nintendo Wii and a Wii Fit.
  • I have an Xbox 360.
  • I have a stainless steel washer/dryer set.
  • I have all my CDs and DVDs ripped to a home server (since the media is in storage).
  • I have a home server.
  • I have an L-shaped glass and steel computer desk.
  • I have a multifunction inkjet printer.
  • I have a paper GTD system.

Now, admittedly a lot of this is going to turn out to be shopping list. But as I go on writing about my day, it turns out I use the Wii Fit every morning for aerobics, strength training, yoga and meditation. I stream all my TV through my Xbox 360. So I go over my list of statements and see some obvious groupings, which in turn imply other goals. All the shopping list stuff goes under “My apartment is furnished to my tastes.” but that implies “I can afford to furnish my apartment to my tastes.” The bit about the paper GTD system ended up morphing to using a scanner to scan all my paper data into OneNote, where it can be managed by Outlook. The home server/media center thing eventually led to planning on buying a few 1TB USB drives to hold video content.

When I’m done with this consolidation, I have the following top-level goals for two years from now.

  • I’m as close to 100% digital as possible.
  • My living space is clean and organized.
  • I take good care of myself.
  • I have my own apartment.

Under each of these I have sub-goals (both “I drive a Honda Civic hybrid” and “I play LOTRO with my friends regularly” go under “I take good care of myself”) and each of those in turn has projects and next actions under it. But in the process of doing this little exercise, I’m convinced I have the “big rocks” covered and I’m on track to achieve the important things in my life.