What works for me: a stock wiki + a custom 'daily reminders' script. When I need to be reminded of something, I put a note on the wiki's 'ReminderList' page, along with the date I need to be reminded. The daily reminders script is a cron job that moves 'today's' reminders to the wiki's home page. When I log in, the day's reminders are waiting for me. (The script allows recurring reminders, too). My mother appreciates that I no longer forget her birthday or anniversary.
Adding that to the ease of maintaining to-do lists in a wiki, for me it's a hands-down winner.
Wikis are customization-friendly, too. I wrote a script which checks the wiki's 'Project<foo>' pages and generates a summary page listing the status of all projects. So I always know where I'm at, even when buried under six projects.
Unbelievable world-building
on
Oryx and Crake
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· Score: 1
That's "unbelievable" not as in "I can't believe it", but rather "I don't believe it". Atwood's division of future society into insular, privileged enclaves and downtrodden, dangerous "pleeblands" (she gets a Tin Pen award for that poor neologism) is simply not believable. C'mon -- we're already well into an era when there are more ways to communicate than ever before. Yet the novel's privileged characters grow up with no contact with the other class? Please. Come back when you've got a realistic vision of social dynamics, Ms. Atwood.
The novel has some moments, I guess, but I just kept thinking questions like "has she played any computer games recently?" The ones in her novel sound straight from the future... if you're living in 1996.
As for her tin ear for neologisms -- well, read Greg Bear's Darwin's Children and compare for yourself. Mr. Bear (a science fiction writer) has a better grasp of evolving language than this so-called "literary" author.
This is one novel that had to be sold as "literary fiction", because any decent SF editor would have thrown it back for a rewrite or three.
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What works for me: a stock wiki + a custom 'daily reminders' script. When I need to be reminded of something, I put a note on the wiki's 'ReminderList' page, along with the date I need to be reminded. The daily reminders script is a cron job that moves 'today's' reminders to the wiki's home page. When I log in, the day's reminders are waiting for me. (The script allows recurring reminders, too). My mother appreciates that I no longer forget her birthday or anniversary.
Adding that to the ease of maintaining to-do lists in a wiki, for me it's a hands-down winner.
Wikis are customization-friendly, too. I wrote a script which checks the wiki's 'Project<foo>' pages and generates a summary page listing the status of all projects. So I always know where I'm at, even when buried under six projects.
That's "unbelievable" not as in "I can't believe it", but rather "I don't believe it". Atwood's division of future society into insular, privileged enclaves and downtrodden, dangerous "pleeblands" (she gets a Tin Pen award for that poor neologism) is simply not believable. C'mon -- we're already well into an era when there are more ways to communicate than ever before. Yet the novel's privileged characters grow up with no contact with the other class? Please. Come back when you've got a realistic vision of social dynamics, Ms. Atwood.
The novel has some moments, I guess, but I just kept thinking questions like "has she played any computer games recently?" The ones in her novel sound straight from the future... if you're living in 1996.
As for her tin ear for neologisms -- well, read Greg Bear's Darwin's Children and compare for yourself. Mr. Bear (a science fiction writer) has a better grasp of evolving language than this so-called "literary" author.
This is one novel that had to be sold as "literary fiction", because any decent SF editor would have thrown it back for a rewrite or three.