Node Glue

Just got off the phone with Nick Duffill of Gyronix. He helped me get set up with a cool MindManager add-in technology called LockShare, which automagically creates plain text lock files when opening maps. Why plain text lock files, you ask? Because Groove won’t synchronize a system lock file.

My life is insane with so many projects and actions right now, and I’ve chosen to make it easier, by asking my assistant Chad to work within the same task management system as me, namely ResultsManager. Remember my Lateral Thinking post from the other day? Well, I was trying to solve the problem of how to share an entire set of maps with Chad in a way that would still deliver optimal performance on each of our laptops. So, sharing a network folder over a VPN connection to our corporate LAN is right out!

The answer was Groove and LockShare. Groove seamlessly keeps an entire set of files, maps in our case, in sync with our machines while we edit, even allowing us to work asynchronously–we don’t have to both be on-line at the same time. LockShare ensures that when I’m editing a map, Chad can’t also edit. In a sense, it’s a simple check-in/check-out system.

But unlike the “lock shared map” ResultsManager feature on the MindManger File menu, LockShare creates the sync-able lock files automatically, regardless of how the map is opened: from within MindManager, from clicking a hyperlink, from double clicking a map within Windows Explorer.

This is a big win for me!

And I must say, as I told Nick on the phone. I’m very impressed with his attention to Gyronix users. He’s active and responsive in the Yahoo Groups GTD_MindManager forum, by email on the few ocassions that I’ve traded emails, pleasant on the phone, and somehow, he manages to write the code for these amazing tools.

While I’m high-fiving Gyronix folks, I’d also like to mention that Kyle McFarlin has also been great to work with. I had the Bronze Training with him, and found it to be very beneficial. Even though I’d already felt pretty well ramped up on the ResultsManager learning by the time I met with Kyle, he helped me simplify the way I use ResultsManager, making it even easier with some helpful usage conventions, tips, and tricks.

So I’m sold on Gyronix. These are great tools, and great people to work with.

I haven’t landed any tricks on a skateboard in ages, but recently, my four year old son, Henry, has shown a great interest in skateboarding. So somewhat unusually for me, I decided to be a little spontaneous last night and went out and got skateboards for both of us so we could skate together. So here’s a photo of me getting some air time! Look closely enough at my shirt for proof that I was at Seattle Mind Camp

And here’s me and Henry with our boards.

My two year old son, Martin, got a four wheeler ride-on to keep up with me and Henry.

A fellow Seattle Mind Camper and good friend, Bryan Zug, suggested that I post the ActiveWords script here that I posted in the Mind Camp file share this weekend.

<only:Outlook><ctrl>f</ctrl>
<pause><tab:5><ctrl>a</ctrl><ctrl>c</ctrl>
<esc><pause>n<ctrl>q</ctrl><alt>e</alt>m
<pause>s<pause>a<pause>v<pause>e<pause>d
<enter><mmbb><pause><ctrl>.</ctrl><pause>
<event><alt></alt>iy</event><tab:10>
<ctrl>v</ctrl><pause><ctrl><home></ctrl>
<pause><shift><tab:5></shift>

This is an ActiveWords script that takes an outlook email and creates a ResultsManager Activity, copying the contents
of the email into the notes field of the activity.
The ResultsManager Activity is created in a static location.
The static location is an “in-tray” on a mind map I call “Bit Bucket.mmap”. I do this because it’s the easiest thing to do,
to always create the Activity in a single location, an in-tray, which reminds me that I need to move it into an appropriate
project list location when I do my weekly review (or whever I process my In-Trays). In the script below, the word <mmbb>
simply opens that Bit Bucket map file.

Because I don’t know a better way to do it, I get the subject
and date header of the email by first pretending to forward the email, which in my setup, copies the body of the original
with the subject, sender, and date.
Also, the script will make sure the email is marked “read” and moved over into my “saved” folder, out of my inbox.

As I mentioned previously, I was at Seattle Mind Camp this past weekend. I do plan to post a summary of highlights soon. But what I managed to get around to writing up first is my wishlist for MindManager. Michael Scherotter of MindJet was present at Mind Camp, and after my session on Getting Things Done, he asked me to send him thoughts/ideas about MindManager. So I sat down to write a short email, and ended up with something rather lengthy, which I’ve decided to post here as well.

So, first in bullet form, here are my thoughts:

• External Map Reference Map Part
• ActiveWords and MindManager
• Better Desktop Search Experience
• Built-in Indexing of Tagged Topics with a Quick Type Ahead Dialog that is Keyboard (and ActiveWords!) invoked
• Externally invocable URI’s

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