Some time ago, I discussed several of my procrastination hacks. One of them was to listen to techno music. There’s something about a constant beat, uplifting, yet without lyrics to break into your concentration.

Soon after that post, I received a lovely email from DJ Shaggy, who provided me with an awesome mp3 - a perfect hour of techno music that he had mixed together. Perfect for putting my nose to the grindstone. Also perfect for working out. I was touched by the gift, and have been following his site ever since.

DJ Shaggy does a Shortwave Sessions live radio show the first Saturday of every month. He posts the playlists online, and then a few days later, puts up an mp3 that you can download and listen to at your leisure. I must say, I love RSS, because I don’t have to keep pinging the site to see if the new stuff is up yet. Ain’t technology grand.

Anyway, he puts out a nice mix, and the playlist lets you figure out if there are artists that you want to pursue. (I don’t mean that in the actual pursuing sense, more the looking up sense, to find more music. You know what I mean!) If you’re into techno, either as a background music, or just for its own sake, check out his sounds.

Have you ever wished you could back up your scheduled tasks in Windows? I’ve often wished for this, given how often I end up reformatting my machine and/or reinstalling Windows. I’ve always made do with making a list of the scheduled tasks in my Scheduled Tasks folder and then recreating them on the new incarnation. I’ve even gone so far as to take screenshots of the settings, so that it was easier to recreate the tasks.

I’ve recently discovered, completely by accident, that it’s actually possible to backup your tasks. Not only that, but it’s painfully easy.

All you have to do is to copy the tasks to another folder that won’t disappear when you reformat. What? That’s it? Yup. If you poke around the Scheduled Tasks folder, you’ll find that “Copy To” and “Move To” are options in the Edit toolbar menu. Yeeesh. I wish I had known this years ago. Now, every time I create a new scheduled task, or change an old one, I make sure to copy it to a backup folder somewhere else. Easy as pie.

Every now and then, I find a web page that just begs to be shared with you. PC World has an article entitled, “A Brief History of Computers, As Seen in Old TV Ads“. The author, Harry McCracken, seems to have spent a weekend trolling through YouTube clips, finding commercials featuring home computers. He pieces them all together chronologically, with some nice colour commentary. If you like watching old TV ads, and really, who doesn’t, check it out.

By the way, my first ever computer was a Commodore 64. I’m embedding the ad for that right here, just because I can :)

Update 2006-10-19 11:16: Fixed the missing link. Thanks J.

This post has absolutely nothing to do with productivity, software, or anything remotely serious. It concerns a brief news article in the Globe and Mail that evoked such imagery that I almost broke out laughing (out loud) in my cubicle. I just have to share it :)

London - A guard dog has ripped apart a collection of rare teddy bears, including one once owned by Elvis Presley, during a rampage at a children’s museum.β€œHe just went berserk,” said Daniel Medley, general-manager of the
Wookey Hole Caves near Wells, England, where hundreds of bears were chewed up Tuesday night by the 6-year-old Doberman pinscher named Barney.

I have this image of a cute doberman running pellmell along marble floors, in a quiet, darkened, cherry-wood-lined museum, claws scrabbling for purchase on the shiny floor. He spies row after row of serious looking little bears. Smelly old bears, untouched by human hands in ages. Surely there is no reason to not play with these toys? He grabs one, shakes his head, snarling with glee, with his little stubby tail wagging maddly. One down. He grabs another one - boy this is fun. Hundreds of bears later, he’s not quite done, but he’s finally tackled by a huffing human security guard. “Bad Barney”, the human says, “Bad!”. Poor Barney.