he world in which/on which we live is a glorious creation and I thank my God for it every day.

However, a lot of what I read today, on Earth Day was either too over the top tree-huggy or too right wing nut job dismissive. The only thing that rang true was a little piece by a certain bike commuter in NYC.

When I thought about it, I realized I really didn’t want to do anything that was bad for the environment. Unfortunately, though, since simply washing your taint in the shower is enough to destroy the world, it seemed the only thing I could do to be environmentally friendly (or at least benign) was pick a small plot of land, never leave it, and subsist entirely on rainwater and whatever plants I could manage to grow. Even then, I’d have to figure out what to do with my waste. I supposed I’d have to compost that.

The whole thing’s worth a read.

s requested by Carol in the comments of the last post, here’s a version without the tasks box.

ecent evolution in my job has me attending what I would consider to be too freaking many meetings. And they really aren’t that bad but what has required some workflow adjustment for me is figuring out whether and how to take notes during these meetings and most importantly how to capture the tasks that will fall on me after the meeting.

Before getting into my current solution, though, let’s step back a year or so to my discovery of Doane Paper. Chad Doane is either a clever fellow who’s discovered a paper design that is perfect for a substantial portion of the folks who write/draw, or he’s in my head like some kind of Cusack in Malkovich and our brains just happen to function alike. I suspect it’s the former. Whichever; Doane Paper is ruled paper combined with graph paper and, at least for me, it just works.

So, back to the meetings. I doodle. I think it helps me concentrate. Some might disagree, but I won’t stop. And I have to capture those tasks. Long story short, I started informally dividing my Doane Paper into sections for these functions. It worked pretty well, but I had ideas for customizing it just a bit more. So, I fired up my favorite Mac app, OmniGraffle, and in literally 10 minutes had a Doane Paper Hack (Chad’s description) that I thought would work. It’s completely customized to what I want, I don’t know nor care if it works for anyone else, but if you fancy downloading a .pdf and checking it out, here it is.

Notes from the first of 4 freaking meetings yesterday (taken with my crappy iPhone camera – my apologies) below.

UPDATE: Chad Doane approves, and says he gets about one Doane Paper hack a week and this is the first he’s liked and granted “official” status.

A few weeks ago at around 2 pm, on the first Saturday of SXSW Interactive, I got to Austin. It was a brief and hastily planned trip, and I timed my arrival to coincide with the likely wake up time of my son, who had worked his usual 11pm-7am shift ending that morning. First on our agenda, a late lunch at Chuy’s. Next up, several hours sitting in a mostly empty coffee shop just talking about life and the future and music and movies and the family. For me, it was much more than a blast.

For parets, days like this are rare. For one thing, it’s not often I get this much time with just one kid. But even more delightfully for Dad, my eldest is right now uniquely equipped for this kind of encounter. Old enough and educated enough that our talks are intellectually stimulating and challenging, and just at the point where his youth and wisdom have intersected to make me a viable mining resource.

It was a great freaking day.

Ironically, at the same time we sat down with chips and salsa at Chuy’s, John Gruber and Merlin Mann opened their “duet rant” at SXSW. I had known this session (ridiculously titled HOWTO: 149 Surprising Ways to Turbocharge Your Blog With Credibility!) was coming, and were it not for the clearly more wonderful opportunity I had in place, I might have thought this one session worth the price of SXSW admission. These guys produce some of my favorite stuff. Gruber’s Daring Fireball is THE source for Mac nerdery; it’s written with a craftsman’s care and skill. Mann’s widely varied products are often genius. One example; You Look Nice Today, with Adam Lisagor and Scott Simpson, a podcast which rarely fails to burn my nostrils with spewing Diet Coke (if your sensibilities are even slightly modest, though, stay away, as there’s nothing politically correct or safe for work about the show).

Anyway, long story short, I had my cake and now I get to eat it too. The Gruber/Mann session’s available as part of the 43 Folders podcast. Check it out, ’cause it’s a doozy.

In fact, my few gentle readers, it’s sparked in me an enthusiasm to tilt this site towards a political/spiritual/ethical obsession of my own. Stay tuned.