Having blogged my excitement about the public beta of DEVONthink 2, and trying to get myself re-organized for my winter break projects, I spent much of yesterday poking around in my various databases, thinking about how the data I access frequently is organized and trying to imagine better workflows. Over the last year or so, I’ve adopted a number of software packages and systems, and I figured I’d share some of what I’ve been using.

First off, of course, is DEVONthink itself, which I’ve been using to organize my reading notes, pdfs, and other bits of research data. I’ve also, as I noted, been using Bookends as my reference manager; it’s a little costy, but nowhere near so much as EndNote, and far, far friendlier.

This summer, for a whole series of reasons, I found myself getting a little paranoid about data security, and it suddenly occurred to me that not only had I not changed my primary passwords recently enough, but that I was reusing passwords in far too many places. The problem is, though, that I’m far too stupid to be able to remember as many passwords as I’d need to keep things really secure. Enter 1Password, a program that generates strong passwords and securely stores them for you. It also synchronizes beautifully with the iPhone, so that you need never be without that data.

Synchronizing data across computers, however, has been a challenge I’ve been trying to deal with for a while now. For the last several years, I’ve been using ChronoSync to synchronize data between my home machine and my USB drive, and then between my USB drive and my office machine, and so forth. Though ChronoSync is a dream, my system was still mildly awkward — heaven help me if I forget to sync before leaving one machine, or before starting to use the other. MobileMe’s Back to My Mac feature, which allows you to access any of your computers from any other, has gotten me out of a couple of jams, but it’s too slow to be ideal, and it’s not as automated as I’d like.

So yesterday I started tinkering with DropBox, which brings together cloud storage and automatic synchronization across multiple computers. I installed the application and dropped my databases in the dropbox, and then today installed the application on my office machine, which downloaded the contents of my dropbox. Any changes I make on one machine will automatically transfer to the other. (And DropBox uses SSL for all data transport and encrypts all files with AES-256, though the truly paranoid might want to create an encrypted disk image within the dropbox.)

Now to put those databases to work…

I’m finding it extremely difficult this year to make the shift out of the fall semester and into everything I need to focus on over the winter break. Probably I should cut myself some slack about this, given that I filed my last grade for the semester at 5.30 this morning. But I’ve had some time over the last few days to begin thinking about the what-next stuff, and I haven’t exactly gotten myself focused, or even aimed in the right direction.

Part of the issue is the daunting nature of what I’ve got to accomplish over the break: I really need to make some serious headway on the actual production of actual text for the book; I need to get a lot done for MediaCommons*; I need to get one entirely new class prepared and one previously taught class heavily revised; I need to finish preparing for a Mellon workshop I’m hosting in a couple of weeks.

But it’s also the plethora of small details from this semester that are still hanging over my head: a peer review, a committee report, a search. (Okay, that last one’s not at all small.) And, in fact, these two factors — the daunting nature of the big tasks, and the proliferating nature of the small ones — combine to make the possibility of focus even more distant, as the small tasks provide a too-welcome distraction from the big ones, feeling more urgent, even though not important.

Here’s hoping for the — what does it require? will? — to keep centered on the important this break, and to find ways to recalibrate that sense of urgency.

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*[7.16 am, updated to add:] Whoops! Forgot the footnote, which intended to say that MediaCommons is emerging from its persistent vegetative state. The old site (i.e., that which was current back in July) is back online, and the development of the new site is once again proceeding apace. Watch this space for more developments!

I’ve been using DEVONthink for a while now as a means of keeping my research notes organized, and so was happy (much as was Dave) to receive notice today of the public beta of version 2.0 of the software, which I’ve downloaded and begun tinkering with. It’s got a bunch of great new features — not least, tagging — and so I’m quite excited about the possibilities it presents. But that last thought makes me wonder — if you’re using DEVONthink, how do you use it? I’ve got the sneaking sense that I’m not getting anywhere near the mileage out of the software that I might.

(I’ve blogged my use of DEVONthink once before, as it turns out. And I still wish for that DEVONthink/Bookends integration…)

Today marks the first time I’ve sat in the terminal waiting two and a half hours for the sun to melt the ice off the wings of my airplane, because my Southern California airport doesn’t need de-icing equipment.

I offered to go out there with a hairdryer, but they wouldn’t take me up on it.

And, of course, by the time we landed I had nine minutes to make my connection. On which the gate agent closed the door just as I ran up, and wouldn’t reopen it.

So now I’m in Houston, waiting for the next flight, which thank god and Fiorello LaGuardia is only an hour and a half later.

The whole thing makes me super happy that I woke R. up at 4 am to make sure I got to the airport on time.

I’ve just this morning upgraded to WordPress 2.7, and the nifty new interface has inspired me to actually post something. So here’s the post announcing my new toys, and, I certainly hope, the forthcoming ability to actually say something worth saying with them.

In the interim, it’s back to the grading for me…

the view from here
Originally uploaded by KF

R. and I are off on another of our famous working vacations, a phenomenon which makes my family (and many other folks as well) think we’re positively nuts. “You’re going to Hawaii in order to sit in front of your laptop and work?” they ask.

Well, yes.

The joy of these trips has a good bit to do with the ways a change of scenery, an escape from the usual pathways and the quotidian business of house- and cat- and job-care frees up the brain to focus on a project in a new way. And the beauty of Hawaii in particular for such a venture has to do — well, partly with the beauty of the scenery, but partly with the change of time as well as of place.

I got up this morning at 4.30 am, feeling pretty well-rested and ready to go. Sat down at the computer, and very quickly produced a six-page overview of the contours of the chapter I’m beginning to write, all the while watching the light gradually come up outside. It’s now 8.30 am, and I feel as though I’ve had a successful work day already, and can either continue plowing along or can move onto something else as I like.

Day 1, accomplished already. I’m feeling pretty good about where things go from here…

The most amazing thing about conferences for me is always how energized I am during and after them, how excited I become about whatever project I’m working on and how much I look forward to getting back to work.

The worst thing about them is that I always return to a pile of mail or grading or letters of recommendation or committee meetings or reports or god knows what all else that absolutely positively must be taken care of before I can start writing again.

MSA was no exception. The conference was amazing — fantastic panels, great people, wonderful colleagues both old and new — and it left me really, really excited about my project and the connections it’s drawing. (And the amazingly flattering response after my plenary didn’t hurt. I didn’t have quite the rock-star turnout that Fred did — his talk was literally standing-room only, and for mine, the enormous room was, I think, a little less than half-full — but the feedback I got was positively overwhelming.)

But now I’m home, and have crazy amounts of teaching and administrative work that simply will not negotiate with me. So I’m hoping to force myself, starting tomorrow, back into my get-up-early-and-spend-one-half-hour-writing-before-anything-else mode, so that I can at least remember what this feels like when the paperwork cloud has cleared…

The last few weeks have been a bit of a blur, between the election, a pile of grading, a few general crises around here, and so forth, but one of the things that’s had me most preoccupied is this weekend — I’m headed to Nashville this morning for the Modernist Studies Association conference, where I’m delivering one of the conference plenaries.

Just to put that in perspective: the other plenary speaker is Fredric Jameson.

So I’ve been a little — well, preoccupied is putting it kindly. The talk I’m giving is an overview of the project, and it’s been well-received when I’ve given it before. But this will be the first time that I’m not preaching to the choir on this issue. And they tell me it’s a 700-person congregation.

If you’re there, be sure to come say hi. And if not, wish me luck.

It’ll no doubt shock everyone to hear that I’ve been starkly unproductive today. Weirdly unable to focus. Distracted. Nervous.

The good news is that I had errands to run, which allowed me to feel like I was accomplishing something, and a big stack of files to start sorting through.

And there was that voting thing. I decided to wait until after the polls had been open for an hour, hoping that the early birds would have worked through the system by that point. And I was mostly right, though there was still a 20 minute wait when I arrived, a wait easily four times longer than it’s ever been for me at this particular polling station. No problems at all once I got in; the poll workers were helpful and friendly, and the whole thing seemed to be working like it should. The line, though, was a little longer as I left than it was when I arrived.

Of course it was nowhere near as annoying as my trip to the doctor today, where I was taken into an exam room just a few minutes after my appointment time and then left sitting on a table, wearing a paper sheet, for 45 minutes before the doctor came in.

In my fantasy world, at least, the outcome of the former event might help fix the latter. So cross your fingers, folks.

Now I’m going to pretend to get some grading done, while calculating how long I have to wait before it’s reasonable to turn on the television.

While you can, you should go do a little self-googling over at Google 2001. It’s mighty amusing to see how much less of a web presence I had back then…

Note that I say “while you can” for a reason: it’s going away tomorrow. So go now.

[h/t Alex.]