I came across an interesting article [1] not too long ago… they did this study where they found–in a survey of 2,000 people–that most under 25s check their mobile devices an average of 32 times a day. Now I am NO under 25, but I’ve been obsessing a lot about how often I do this myself. So I have been playing around with Android’s dumpsys, and with these daily statistics, I kind of have an idea of how frequently I use my device. Continue reading “Quantifying My Phone Usage – Android Applications Usage Statistics”
Category: General
LaTeX Font-consistent Diagrams Using Dia
Ensuring that manuscripts I produce using LaTeX have a consistent font throughout the document has been a long-held obsession of mine. The majority of documents I produce typically contain block diagrams which I almost always generate using third-party tools. One of the problems, however, with integrating LaTeX documents with input files (typically JPG, PNG, EPS et al.) from these external tools is that of ending up with a final output that has inconsistent fonts. Continue reading “LaTeX Font-consistent Diagrams Using Dia”
Another Productivity Drought – Fixing Productivity Leaks
The last four weeks probably constitute the most UNPRODUCTIVE period this year thus far. It is in fact safe, at this point, to proclaim that the period makes up the longest productivity drought I have experienced in the last few years. I am not quite sure what triggered this, however, I somewhat have a sense of WHEN the problem started and most importantly, I spent the last few days thinking about potential solutions. Continue reading “Another Productivity Drought – Fixing Productivity Leaks”
Quantified Self – The Three-year Long Time Tracking Experiment
Between June 2011 and June 2013 I diligently tracked the way that I used my 24-hour cycles. I initiated this painstaking task after going through a long spell of productivity draught; I was obsessed with how exactly I spent my ‘Work -> Eat -> Sleep’ cycles. To achieve this, I used Hamster Time Tracker [1]. I recently decided to dig into this wealth of information and have spent the last couple of days analyzing it. While the data I collected is not 100% accurate, visible patterns emerge. Continue reading “Quantified Self – The Three-year Long Time Tracking Experiment”
Going Full Circle – The Four-year Long Plan
While my broader life goals still remain intact–and are likely to remain unchanged for the foreseeable future, a few months back, I made a conscious decision to accelerate my short-to-medium term plans. I decided to get back into graduate school earlier than planned. I relocated back to Cape Town in December 2013, and officially enrolled into a doctoral programme, at the University of Cape Town [1]–that was in February 2014. Continue reading “Going Full Circle – The Four-year Long Plan”