As you may have noticed, this year I am focusing on doing exercise more often, and I intend to run a Marathon this year. This is something I have always wanted to do, but never did due to lack of self-discipline… Now that my mother has passed away (she was killed in a car crash recently), I want to achieve this goal to remember her (she was an athlete when she was young) and as a means of self treatment as well (Forrest Gump, anyone?).

In order to track my progress, I have been using a program for Windows Mobile called Marathon. It logs GPS data fetched from the mobile device, and then it gives you a lot of information, like current and average speed, a preview of the track, distance ran, calories burned (estimated, of course). It also has a feature called Announcements, where it tells you this information on a specified interval (time or distance, take your pick). This is very nice, as I am used to listening to music while I run, and I don’t want to take the phone out of the arm band just to look at the information. You can also set a goal and it will tell you how far behind or ahead of it you are.

Once finished, you can save the activity, and share the information via the program’s website (example), tweet a summary of it, or export it (this is useful as you can import the data into Google Earth or tracking services like Runmap.net or Garmin Connect and then publish to Facebook from them).

The only issue I have found so far is that my Omnia sometimes gets very bad GPS reception and the results get a bit distorted, but I think this is something due to the device itself more than the program’s fault, though.  So far, the only solution I have found is to get a better GPS receiver (and get the heart monitored along the way).

Lastly, Marathon comes in several languages, including Spanish! (I made the translations, BTW ). If you happen to know a language that Marathon does not support, you can do the translations in exchange for a free build (yes, it’s not free, but you can periodically download the latest beta bits, so it is not a big issue).

Finally I am breaking with the inertia of not updating this place as often as I would like!

This post is mainly focused to providing tips to increasing productivity. As some of you probably already know, I am usually filled with work for the entire day and as time goes by, I am forced to crank out more stuff in less time.

When I was faced with the dilemma to increase my productivity, I started wondering if there was any way to change myself in order to be more productive. Shortly after I discovered sites like Lifehack, Lifehacker and Zen Habits that give lots of advice on how to simplify organizing efforts and also how to change oneself in order to be able to achieve the goals intended.

Some of the key tips I have encountered are:

• Get Things Done Framework
• Setting Goals
• Turn goals into Habits
• Real Productivity

Of course there are many more tips, and most of the time implementing these tips are easier said than done, it is important to practice the discipline and have lots, lots and lots of patience to achieve the desired results. Most of the time you will experience failures, but the lesson here is to learn and adjust (meditation helps). Lots of tweaks might be necessary but once you reach the desired point it is very rewarding. I have a long way reaching that point yet, here are some tips to avoid when changing habits. I really like the part of trying any habit for 30 days, as it feels as if you are just trying a new program. If you like the new program, you can continue with the habit, if not, leave it alone

Hoping this helps, I shall depart, and will try these techniques so that I can share interesting stuff more often here.

About a month ago, my girlfriend Vero was working at the veterinary, when a coworker called her saying that she had found a kitten at the entrance door of her house, and was very small and sick. This is a common occurrence here as people often cannot take care of pets and abandon them for good and here in Uruguay there are no good laws regarding animal protection. Anyways, when the kitten was brought to the veterinary the kitten was in love for Vero and hugged her, and the kitten was so cute that Vero could not resist bringing it home, so she called me and asking to adopt her…

When I came back from work, I found that it was very cute, a female Siamese kitten, but poor little thing, it was like a skeleton with feet (malnutrition), and also had something solid on its bowels and conjunctivitis. It was also quite anemic as it was full of tick and fleas. We immediately began treating her, starting with a shower to remove the bugs, medicine for the eyes and special cat food for recovery. We also named it Isis, the Egyptian goddess of magical power and healing. The day after (May 1st), it did not tolerate most of the food and it spent most of the day vomiting, until it vomited raw potatoes and rotten tuna! luckily, she started tolerating water and milk afterwards, and eventually it recovered

Having her join our place gave a lot of life to our new apartment, as it is quite playful and very affectionate. However, it is a bit of a demon to as, after all, it has only a couple of months at most, it plays with things that should not be playing and one of our curtains was damaged… oh well, nothing’s perfect

This is also a good opportunity for me for learning parenting techniques, as I never had a cat. About.com has good tips for taking care of cats.

Here are some recent pictures, as you may notice, it has grown up a bit (and doubled in weight) and it looks great now!

Regarding tools, for browsing I use Firefox with the following plugins:

• AdBlock Plus: As the name suggests, it is an advertising blocker. This will make page loads faster.
• AdBlock Filterset.G Updater: Updater for the previous plugin, this will keep the blacklists updated.
• Download Statusbar: Useful visual plugin for managing downloads in progress.
• DownThemAll!: Download Manager (similar to Getright)
• Fasterfox: For loading pages faster, tweaks the way the browser downloads pages. I don’t turbocharge it though.
• FEBE: This is for doing backups of the plugins installed, useful if you need to uninstall Firefox or create new profiles.
• Firebug: Very useful for debugging pages!
• Forecastfox Enhanced: I usually get the weather information from this plugin. The difference with the regular version is that I can choose which satellite image to show.
• FoxyProxy: Useful if you are changing the proxy configuration often.
• Greasemonkey: This plugin lets you inject Javascript code into any page you visit. I use GM so that I can use the GMail Macro scripts, so that my e-mail checking experience is faster as I use only the keyboard to do most of the actions. You can also use this for enhancing the browsing experience for other sites, or even write your own scripts. Get more scripts here.
• Image Zoom: Very useful for zooming in on images.
• PDF Download: This plugin lets you choose whether you want to download a PDF file, save it or view it online.
• ScribeFire: Blogging plugin. It is quite flexible as it supports multiple blogging platforms (Blogger, Livejournal, WordPress, etc.)
• YSlow: This tool lets you diagnose performance problems in websites.

Got any useful plugin? just write it in the comments for this post and I will have a look at it

EDIT: Done inserting the links, that was quick!

• Mapred
• GDU

The first one is for looking up addresses, and the second one is for getting from point A to point B (as the first one does not support it), by walking or by bus. Unfortunately, GDU is not very stable, so I use Mapred when the latter is down. Enjoy

So much stress had its effect on health too, I have been having sort of a bronchitis and some fever at times (and Vero too), luckily I feel a bit better today. Hopefully, things will get better!

Last week we also had Damian’s wedding, I still gotta post some pics & videos, but that will be next time I post