Has it really been that long?

Oops. Somehow May Week happened, which means that I spent much of last week's free time in an alcoholic haze (that wasn't me. I genuinely believe that walking around Cambridge there was a cloud of evaporated Pimms hanging over the city). So it's been a while since I last checked anything out. Having done Doodle, I was filled with confidence for the next thing.

Google Calendar. In all its sparse, minimalist glory. I followed the instructions and created a few events. This was very simple and straightforward, and I liked it a lot. I chose to put two weeks in at a time, and it still looks pretty empty, but work simply doesn't revolve around meetings and events: I come in, I work, I go home again.On the other hand, if I can get my colleagues to use Google Calendar too, then we would be able to keep a diary on there of all the times we're on holiday. Now that would be useful; much simpler than writing in two different diaries, and a lot less scribbling out!

I do like the flexibility - I like to customise  my internet experience as far as humanly possible, and aside from the bland colour scheme, I was able to do a lot with setting the page up how I liked it. It's useful being able to add one-off and regular events - not to mention being able to decide whether you want weekends visible or not.

Ultimately, I think there are few flaws. One is that unless you share this with others, you might just as well keep a diary. In that context, it doesn't really do anything new that your pocket diary doesn't, except for the reminders. The other is my own problem, in that I have a personal persona on the internet, and a professional persona on the internet. It's hard to keep everything together when you have (at last count) 4 different Google accounts, since you only really want one single calendar for everything!

And there's even a way to embed the poll I'd made

Doodling

Hurrah!!! An easy "Thing" at last!!!
That's assuming it counts that I've done it already. This Doodle is one I did when organising a dinner for a group of ex-university archers. It was a triumph, not least thanks to using Doodle to work out dates people could do. I am a fan of Doodle - it doesn't do much (and perhaps, doesn't need to), but what it does, it does well.

It occurs to me that there is very little sense in organising multiple peer support group polls to arrange multiple peer support group meetings. I've added myself to someone else's Doodle poll here, but I'll be checking with the 23things organisers that what I've already done will be acceptable instead.

I'm off to explore the alternatives to Doodle now...

This is from the dinner I organised using Doodle. It was held at the Hawks Clubhouse in Cambridge.

Commenting on commenting

I've bounced around a few of the other blogs. Some are overwhelmingly advanced, and others are pretty similar to mine, and I guess it'll be interesting to see which ones start out fairly basic and become more fantastical, and which ones will remain similar throughout the exercise. I commented on a few, but really found I had nothing to say. I'll be honest - I rarely read other people's comments on subjects anymore. I've found most start out reasonably enough - "I disagree with the author for this reason," but within about 20 comments it's often descended into sniping and name-calling. Or it's gone off-topic. Or it's me - I just can't be bothered to read a few hundred comments in the hope that some will be interesting or useful, once I've read the initial article. If I'm interested, I'm more likely to check out related articles or websites than other people's comments.

iGoogle - do you?

And here it is, my iGoogle page. I found it quite hard working out what would be useful to me, so it's very much a work in progress. A lot of the things I've added are things I do not visit very often, but it was hard pinpointing things that I refer to more frequently than these. I left on a few things Google suggested, to try them out and see what use I could make of them. Ultimately, I find that most browsers use tabbing, and certainly Chrome and Firefox both allow you to save tabs. I can see that being able to log in to all the things you need at one point without having to use the same computer can be useful, but since I use the same computer at work the whole time, it remains a bit of a moot point.