Why I don't subscribe to cable TV

Briefly, in two sentences: Firstly, the amount of programming I am forced to pay for as a cable subscriber is ludicrous compared to the amount of programming I actually watch. Secondly, I have the internet, which trumps the paid service due to nearly on-demand programming and the relatively low cost.

On the first point, when I cancelled my cable subscription, they asked me why and what they could do to improve. I stated simply that I don't watch about 98% of what I feel I'm paying for and that if they were to offer some kind of á la carte model I would be more likely to subscribe. I want to feel I'm paying a fair price for the amount of content I actually watch rather than have to pay for a constant flow of shit through which I must manually sift to filter out those tiny peanuts of televised gold. Besides, half of this content being streamed to my house 24 hours a day is nothing but commercials and infomercials, and I won't shed a tear doing without them.

On the second point, the internet is a wonderful thing. I mean look, the very same company which formerly provided this service is allowing me to post criticism of their TV service via their internet service. Plus, my favorite TV shows are delivered to me in a fashion even better than the relatively limited DVR option. I use a sweet little gem of a program called TVShows which automatically searches for new episodes of the shows I want to see and downloads them via a BitTorrent client of my choice. So I get home from work and bam, there are my shows waiting on my hard drive to be watched at my leisure, on my own schedule. And, unlike DVR, I can easily expand my hard drive space such that I never have to delete any recorded material if I don't want to.

But there remains a slight advantage to DVR and cable TV as it stands today, which is the fact that I don't have to watch them on a computer screen. But that is a small price to pay compared to the savings of not paying for the over-bloated TV service, and besides, I can easily purchase an adapter and run the shows to my TV if I really wanted to that badly, which I will probably do in the near future.

So, until the cable TV subscription model changes, I will be watching TV via the internet. If you feel the same, I kindly suggest canceling your cable service. If enough people do that, the cable providers will be forced to evolve. Or, they can just sue all their former customers like the RIAA has been doing. Either way, they can't have it this way forever.

The state of GTD software

I love the GTD system, and I've used several different software implementations for tracking my projects and tasks. I've used both web-based and desktop-based GTD apps, and currently my favorite by far has been OmniFocus, which OmniGroup claims to be in alpha but which in my opinion is the best implementation yet.

However, I still feel like it could be better. The current breed of GTD apps have the basics down: you can organize your tasks into projects and subprojects as well as contexts, and you can view your tasks by either project or context. Which works just great. However, when it comes to assigning dates to projects and tasks, every app I've tried falls short. There is typically a very, very rudimentary "integration" with iCal which always seems to be added as an afterthought.

Which brings me to the topic of calendar apps. I like Google Calendars quite a bit. I love that I can get a daily agenda emailed to me automatically. But the integration with my GTD software just isn't there.

The real problem for me however is that scheduling and planning projects should really be done in the same application because they are essentially trying to solve the same set of very closely related problems which so far have yet to be tied together with the "integration" features of current GTD software. What real-world object are we trying to digitize? A daily planner and organizer, wherein one might keep both to-do lists as well as calendar pages with events and reminders.

I took a look at a solution called Scrybe which has a very nice video on YouTube showing off its features. After watching the video, I couldn't wait to try it. It seemed like somebody had finally combined scheduling and task tracking beneath a single umbrella, plus a nice looking clips and notes organizer. But when I finally got my invitation and tried it out, I was nothing but disappointed. The task lists are very much lacking, and the interface itself is pre-alpha buggy. Damn.

My ideal GTD solution

My ideal GTD solution would have all the following features:

• GTD-style task management - I should be able to group my tasks into projects, subprojects, and contexts and order them how I please.


• Scheduling - Some sort of scheduling system. Perhaps I schedule by context so that my tasks can be placed onto calendar dates automatically based on how much time they will take and how long I will be in the necessary context. Of course, the schedule can be altered on the fly because not every week is exactly the same. There should definitely be an editable and printable "Today's Agenda" view.


• Collaboration - I should be able to share projects with colleagues and delegate tasks. The process of inviting new contacts into a project and subsequent invitation acceptance should be very smooth. This means integration with my current lists of contacts, from multiple sources. Shared contexts would be cool too so that I could easily see when certain team members will be in the office and what tasks they have scheduled, but simply being able to send a task to a comrade's inbox would be sweet enough.


• Issue tracking - Okay, this is a little bit specific to software development, but not entirely. Integrating issue tracking with collaborative GTD-style task management on a collaborative level would be the ultimate productivity platform for software developers as well as many other types of collaborative projects in which the unexpected kink or insight occurs, whether via a member of the team or a customer.


• Open data - APIs and XML dump ensures not only that your data is yours to keep, but allows tight integration of the platform with other components, providing an open-endedness which allows the software to do more for people than the developer ever imagined it would.
  

Tell me a GTD platform offering these features in a single package would not be sweet. If my plate wasn't already full, I'd be building it right now.

Maybe someday.

First post

I'm starting a blog again.  Since I unwittingly lost the domain to my prior blog of moderate readership, Passive Digressive, I've been using Facebook Notes solely as a place for writing my thoughts.  But, as anyone who would be interested in reading this blog will probably already know, Facebook is a "walled garden" which ensnares your data and doesn't let it out (though I must credit them for providing Notes feeds, but it's not enough for my purposes).  I wanted a place with a potential readership extending beyond my immediate social network, since the vast majority of said network is not interested in reading ruminations on Ruby, Rails, and software development and design in general.

So there you have it, welcome to Tao of Chris.  I'll be writing on a variety of topics here, ranging from the professional to the spiritual to the mundane or just plain interesting.  And, since Facebook is so eager to accept new data, these entries will be automatically imported into my Facebook Notes so that I'll still be able to tag entries for friends who might be interested in a particular post.

Ah, open-ended technology.

Expect more downstyle entry titles and exposition in the near future.