I have a complex about calendars or more specifically, Google Calendar.

Calendars are great, especially online calendars which can be shared with colleagues or loved ones.

  by  Joe Lanman 

 
I am super efficient about updating my Outlook calendar at work. I use it not only for appointments but also to schedule in time when I need to be working on something specific. This calendar is shared with colleageus so they can see where I am and schedule meetings. I do not have a print diary, instead I sync my Outlook calendar to a Google Calendar which I can access on my phone. Some of my colleagues however are wedded to print diaries and that’s fine if it works for them. But oh how I wish they would also maintain their Outlook calendars, if only so that I can better help students and staff who are trying to track them down.

So you will see that I mentioned before that I do have a Google Calendar. This is my personal calendar and I am useless at updating it. I’m not sure whether that’s because in reality there’s nothing much I need to put in it or whether because I have access to my wife’s Google Calendar, and she’s so good at updating, that I rely on that to see where I need to be and when. I am taking this thing as a prompt to help me get better at updating my Google Calendar. It’s not like it’s difficult, or that I don’t have it when I need it as it’s on my phone which I carry pretty much everywhere. It’s about getting in to a habit of entering events as they are arranged.

Sheldonian Man
Originally uploaded by ekcragg

I took this photo of one of the stone heads outside the Sheldonian Theatre and had some fun with the effects in Picnik.

This is my favourite. At first I thought it made it look like he was shouting, but then I wondered if he might be sneezing!

• Thing 7: Create a Flickr account.
• Thing 8: Edit images with Picnik.

I’ve been using Flickr for a few years now but have only recently upgraded to a Pro account which allows me extra functionality in terms of the organisation of my photos into sets and collections. It also means I have no monthly limit on my uploads. I used to upload all my photos to Facebook for my friends to see but my frustration with their uploader drove me to explore Flickr. Their desktop uploader is awesome and it’s so easy to edit photos in batches on Flickr that really once you’ve started using it there’s no going back.

This year I have taken on the 365 photos project. So far it’s going well – I think I’ve only missed one day. Through this project I’ve started using the social features of Flickr much more to comment, tag and even add notes to highlight specific details in a picture.

Since moving to a Mac at the end of last year I have been editing my photos much more. iPhoto makes is really easy to adjust the exposure and tweak colours to add an extra clarity to your photos. Today I had a play with Picnik. I will post the results separately to make use of Flickr’s excellent “Blog this” feature.