Addiction challenge: some changes

No, no.. I’m not backing out! It’s actually going pretty well and my productivity is significantly higher. I just realized over the last two days that I had forgotten a couple of things when I laid out my addiction-cracking plan.

First of all, I neglected to take build time into account. Any programmer out there knows what I’m talking about: you’re working on a piece of code, make a few changes, end up changing a header file, and then you have to compile the app to test the changes. It doesn’t matter what kind of monster machine you’re working on, compile/build time is time consuming and tedious. As a result, you tend to pass that time reading articles, browsing forums, doing whatever-and of course each of those has the tendency to run over the build time and eat into your overall productivity.

The other thing I forgot was another of my internet addiction elements: Podcasts! For the uninitiated, podcasts are basically episodic media streams. A user subscribes to a podcast, and depending on the software they are using, will automatically receive the newest updates in the form of audio and video files. Now I have a couple of game related casts that I subscribe to, as well as Slashdot Review and the Happy Tree Friends podcast. While downloading them is not a problem, watching/listening to them takes time, but since I enjoy them so much I really don’t want to cut them out.

I have thought about these two ‘issues’ and have come up with additions/modifications to my final and Friday goals.

Friday goals

-In addition to being able to check RSS streams when I get to work and at lunch, I may check them while building/compiling. I may not click on links from them at these times.

-I may refresh my podcasts in the morning when I get in, to give them time to download, but I may only watch short (less than 1 minute) video casts when they complete, others must either be watched/listened to at lunch or at home (by copying them onto my PSP).

Final goals

-In addition to being able to check RSS streams when I get to work and at lunch, I may check them while building/compiling. I may not click on links from them at these times.

-I may refresh my podcasts in the morning when I get in, to give them time to download, but I may only watch/listen to them at lunch or at home (by copying them onto my PSP).

Beating the addiction

In an earlier post I bemoaned my addiction to being constantly 'connected' and to the internet in general. This addiction is really becoming a problem for me as it is chewing into my productive time at work. Now while some people might not be bothered by this, I would much prefer to actually be earning the salary my employer pays me. It also prevents me from really enjoying my online time as much as I could, because I constantly feel guilty. This addiction takes the following forms:
-Constant email monitoring
-Obsessive monitoring of XML based RSS streams
-Following the above RSS streams to further distracting websites
-Forum monitoring
-Instant Messenging
-Time consuming blog posts and Flickr uploads.

As with any addiction, I believe the first step to solving the problem is admitting that it exists. I've done that. The next step is decide what is actually acceptable (going out and having a drink with friends is fine, as opposed to working your way through an entire bottle of jack every evening).So I'm going to set some ideal goals for myself, in relation to the above.
-Check email three times a day: when I get to work, at lunch, and just
before leaving (after work hours) IF I don't have something important to get
to.
-Check RSS streams twice a day: In the mornings when I get in and at
lunchtime. Only follow related links at lunchtime (the same goes for links
emailed to me by friends and colleagues.
-Only check forums at lunchtime.
-Only IM during lunch, and after 3 in the afternoon (when I am least
productive anyway).
-Only blog at lunch Monday to Thursday, and after 4pm on Friday.

Of course, going 'cold turkey' is almost impossible unless you're locked away at Betty Ford, with no way to get at your addiction. So I'll take this week by week, setting weekly goals with the long term goal in mind. I'll report progress weekly (on a friday afternoon). I intend to achieve my 'ideals' in four weeks or less. The following are my goals for this week (ie
I have to stick to these limits until friday, when I will log my progress and establish new limits for next week):
-Check email when I arrive at work, 10am, lunch, 3pm and possibly before
going home.
-Check RSS streams when I arrive and at lunch. Links may be immediately
followed.
-Check forums when I arrive and at lunch, only post replies at lunch.
-Only IM at and after lunch.
-Only blog and Flickr at lunch Monday to Thursday, and after 4pm on Friday.

For the record I'm posting this at lunch time. Wish me luck, or better yet join me ;)

'Official' wedding photos

We finally had the photos that our 'official' wedding photographer took scanned to CD, why the heck he didn't just use digital to start with is beyond me. One of the downsides of not using a digital camera is that he didn't realise his settings and filters were wrong-hence the appearance that we had our photo's taken at midnight. I've dumped a couple of the best ones on Flickr:

More E3 goodness

And here are a few more E3 items of interest..

Will Wright on a couple of things
GameSpy's Steven Kent had the privelage of interviewing Will Wright over breakfast at E3. He has some interesting things to say, in particular a very telling comment about the Wii which indicates that it's control fidelity differs based on distance from the sensor..

PS3 no longer the slimmer option
Xbox365 is carrying a couple of user created composites comparing the PS3's form factor to that of the Xbox 360-and the mockup shown at last year's E3. It seems it has definitely given up the size advantage, being even bigger than Microsoft's console. The site seems to be extremely overloaded, so you may have to refresh a few times..

She's blonde, can you blame her?
Millionaire socialite and heiress (not to mention impromptu porn and 'reality show' star) Paris Hilton, managed to add many grey hairs to the heads of GameLoft execs when she showed up late for the launch of her new mobile game Paris Hilton's Jewel Jam and mistakenly referred to it as Diamond Quest. What do people see in this brainless anorexic ditz?

No Handheld for Microsoft
Discounting a claim in The Xbox 360 Uncloaked the recen't book by Dean Takahashi, that half of Microsoft's Xbox 360 hardware development team had shifted their focus to develop a handheld console, Microsoft's Neil Thompson instead insisted that they were focusing on mobile (ie PDA and Cellphone) gaming instead

Enough now.. I'm heading home so that's it for this post.