Montblanc’s Gandhi pen (now with news of the manufacturer’s legal troubles)
Wednesday, February 24, 2010
iPad news
My prediction, registered earlier this month, is that college students are the market for the iPad. The Unofficial Apple Weblog reports today that George Fox University will offer Fall 2010 freshmen an iPad or MacBook.
To be continued.
A related post
The iPad and college students
By Michael Leddy at 11:44 AM comments: 1
The Pomodoro Technique Illustrated
Staffan Nöteberg. The Pomodoro Technique Illustrated: The Easy Way to Do More in Less Time. Forewords by Francesco Cirillo and Henrik Kniberg. Raleigh, NC: Pragmatic Bookshelf, 2009. $24.95 (paper). $16 (eBook).
Yes, I wound up a timer before beginning this sentence. And yes, as Henrik Kniberg acknowledges in his foreword, it feels a little silly having a timer tell you what to do.
I learned of Francesco Cirillo’s Pomodoro Technique late last year, in Sue Shellenbarger’s write-up of several time-management strategies. The simplicity of the Pomodoro strategy — work for twenty-five minutes (one Pomodoro), take a break for three to five minutes, take a longer break after every four Pomodori— appealed to me at once. I liked the practical emphasis on tasks and minutes, free from business-speak about life-goals. And I loved the idea of a strategy built upon the dowdiest of gadgets, a tomato-shaped kitchen timer.
The Pomodoro Technique Illustrated is a beautiful and potentially inspiring guide to practicing Pomodori. Staffan Nöteberg makes clear the many ways in which the Pomodoro Technique serves to focus attention. The practitioner chooses a limited number of tasks for the day and the most important one among them with which to begin. He or she works on one task at a time, tracking interruptions both external and internal, setting them aside for later attention (whenever possible), and stopping at regular intervals, no matter how well the work is going, for breaks and review.
Repetition is important in the Pomodoro Technique: the repeated gesture of winding up or setting a timer is meant to teach the mind that the time for work has begun. (That must be why Hemingway sharpened so many pencils — not as a way to postpone work but as a way to get started.) Granularity is important too: any task that requires many Pomodori is to be sorted out into smaller tasks. The aim, always, is to create “sustainable pace,” a way of working that lets one keep going without anxiety or loss of focus. That aim allows for considerable flexibility: Pomodori can be of any length, as long as they’re consistent. As an old song says, it all depends on you.
I’ve been working with the Pomodoro Technique, on and off, for about two months, and I’ve found two great benefits. One is that I have a much better idea of how much time tasks require. (Grading quizzes from three classes? One Pomodoro. Re-reading an installment of Bleak House? Three or four Pomodori.) Even more helpful is a drop in self-interruptions, which tend to come about when I stop working on x because I've started thinking about having to do y. The ticking orange that Elaine gave me — it really does work.
This book’s terminology, much of it drawn from software development, might seem to the non-programmer a bit overdone. I draw the line at “drum rhythm,” “buffer,” and “rope” (yes, they go together). But the jargon is offset by Nöteberg’s witty illustrations. They make The Pomodoro Technique Illustrated a uniquely charming book of time-management. Having the book around is likely to inspire its reader to put its helpful strategy into practice.
[Cover illustration by Staffan Nöteberg.]
You can read more about the Pomodoro Technique at Francesco Cirillo’s website (which offers several helpful PDFs). Thanks to Pragmatic Bookshelf for a review copy of this book. This post took four Pomodori to write.
By Michael Leddy at 6:09 AM comments: 4
Tuesday, February 23, 2010
Another college president plagiarizing
Gary W. Streit, president of Malone University in Canton, Ohio, has resigned. The Chronicle of Higher Education reports that “concerns surfaced” about Streit’s use of “unatttributed materials in some of his speeches.” Among Streit’s sources: a Wikipedia article on Janus and “a portion of Enotes.com’s summary of the Robert Frost poem ‘Birches.’”
You might try listening to this January 2010 address and doing a Google search or two as it plays. The first bit that I typed in — even your grandmother has a digital camera — led to an article on Streit’s copying and pasting. That article led me to the AP article that furnished much else in Streit’s text. A search for Mordecai became distressed that all his people would be killed brought up this account of the biblical story of Esther.
The Chronicle notes that because Streit has resigned, there will be no investigation of plagiarism.
Malone U. President Steps Down Amid Plagiarism Accusations (Chronicle of Higher Education)
Other presidential plagiarism posts
Boening, Meehan, plagiarism
“Local Norms” and “‘organic’ attribution”
What plagiarism looks like
By Michael Leddy at 7:45 AM comments: 0
Monday, February 22, 2010
Margaret Atwood’s rules for writers
Rule no. 1:
Take a pencil to write with on aeroplanes. Pens leak. But if the pencil breaks, you can’t sharpen it on the plane, because you can’t take knives with you. Therefore: take two pencils.The Guardian has further rules from five more writers.
Margaret Atwood’s rules for writers (Guardian)
By Michael Leddy at 7:43 PM comments: 2
Red marks, blue marks (J.D. Salinger)
Is there work from J.D. Salinger to come? His daughter, writing of her father’s house:
Though I’ve visited his house for more than thirty years now, I’ve never seen his closet or his bathroom. His bedroom, bath, and study are in an L off the kitchen. The door is kept locked. I’ve been invited inside maybe two or three times in my life when he wanted to show me something in his study. Once it was some new bookshelves he was thrilled with. Another time to show me a new filing system he had thought up for the material in one of his safes. A red mark meant, if I die before I finish my work, publish this “as is,” blue meant publish but edit first, and so on.
Margaret A. Salinger, Dream Catcher: A Memoir (New York: Washington Square Press, 2000), 307.
By Michael Leddy at 6:30 AM comments: 0
Saturday, February 20, 2010
Overheard
Before a concert:
“They’re old lady clothes, and I’m not an old lady yet.”
Elaine and I guessed that the speaker was at least seventy. More power to her.
Related reading
All “Overheard” posts
By Michael Leddy at 10:25 AM comments: 2
Friday, February 19, 2010
End of the U.S. sardine industry
I don’t think I’ve ever seen a can of sardines that wasn’t marked Product of Morocco (or Norway or Portugal). But now the American sardine industry is no more:
Sardine cannery closure marks the end of a U.S. industry (WCSH)
By Michael Leddy at 9:37 AM comments: 0
Thelonious Monk in Weehawken
Thelonious Monk spent his final years in Weehawken, New Jersey, living in the house of his friend Pannonica de Koenigswarter. He took an occasional walk in the neighborhood and a very occasional trip into the city. But most of the time he was lying in bed like Brian Wilson did:
His daily routine rarely varied. He would wake up, shower, don some of his finest threads only to lie back in bed to nap, stare at the ceiling, or watch TV — he developed a fondness for game shows like The Price Is Right.Kelley’s biography is an exhaustive trek through the itinerary of Monk’s life as a performing musician. At times Monk gets lost in the blur of dates, place names, and changes in personnel. But Kelley offers genuine revelations — about Monk’s family life, his familiarity with the classical piano repertoire, his interest in getting a hit (“Ruby, My Dear” was one such effort), and the craven practices of the record business.
Robin D.G. Kelley, Thelonious Monk: The Life and Times of an American Original (New York: Free Press, 2009), 443.
[“Lying in bed like Brian Wilson did”: from the Barenaked Ladies song “Brian Wilson.”]
By Michael Leddy at 8:43 AM comments: 0