I Can Has Web

Jeg er student, arbeider deltid som systemutvikler, er engasjert i studentforening og har noen sideprosjekter. Utover tiden produksjonsnivået krever, så resulterer det også i uhorvelige mengder epost. Mellom 30 og 50 epost vil jeg anslå er innom innboksen min i hverdagene, et tall som går ned til rundt 10-20 i helgedagene. Før sommeren klarte jeg ikke å håndtere denne mengden, noe som gjorde at jeg i eksamensperioden fikk nok, og brukte x antall timer på å rydde opp, og etablere et system som kunne håndtere mengden (prokrastinering før eksamen er et kjent fenomen, tross alt).

Etter å ha snakket med Henrik Lied (en av fadderungene mine under IFI Fadderordning) om håndtering av epost, tenkte jeg at jeg skulle dele min tilnærming, da han syntes den virket fornuftig. Det finnes tross alt mange tilnærminger på hvordan man kan effektivisere arbeidet med epost. Det finnes også mer helhetlige systemer, som GTD. Men dette innlegget vil handle om epost og hvilke tiltak jeg har tatt i bruk og som gjør hverdagen min enklere. Jeg bruker primært tjenesten Gmail, og funksjonene som beskrives er hentet derfra.

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[This post is originally written on my norwegian blog; I thought it suitable for this blog, so I translated it and reposted it here.]

I’m a student, work part-time as a system developer, and involve myself in student activities and other side projects. Aside from the production level this requires, it amounts to a massive level of mails. I receive between 30 and 50 mails per day, a number that decrease to about 10-20 in the weekends. In the past I wasn’t able to handle this amount, and while reading for my exams for spring 2010, I found myself realizing that enough was enough. I started the tedious process to clear out mail from the inbox, and to establish a system that would enable me to handle the incoming mail (procrastination before exam is a familiar concept).

After talking to Henrik Lied (one of the new students I’ve sponsored during IFI buddy-week [no]) about mail-processing, I thought I should share my approach, as he ruled it sensible. There are, after all, many approaches out there telling how you can become more productive in your work with mail. There are also the more wide-ranging frameworks, such as GTD. But this post is about mail and the efforts I made to make my days easier. I primarily use the service Gmail, and all functions described are from that usage.

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Aside from my studies and part-time job, I’m partaking in the activities of Cybernetisk Selskab [no], a student driven association working to improve the social environment at the Department of Informatics. As a member of the board, I’m frequently involved in the different activities arranged, and one of them is the CybWebDev.

Currently we’re focused on Aurora, the codename for a system which aims to be an array of tools supporting the organizational work in CYB. This, we believe, will be especially important when Escape opens, the student driven pub that will open along with the opening of Ole Johan Dahls Hus [no], the newest addition of buildings at the University of Oslo, which will be the base of most of the educational, academic and social activities concerning the students of computer science.

In doing the preparations for this development, we’ve discussed some principles/guidelines that we wish to follow when designing/coding, and I thought I would share them with you here.

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So it has started, my new blog. I’m not a productive writer per ce, but I hope to gain some momentum to my motivation with this blog.

I will blog about design for the web, with focus on front end, such as HTML, JavaScript and CSS. But I think I’ll also write about the layers below, since I’m currently a student at IFI, UiO. During my years as a student and part-time system developer, in addition to my general interest in aspects that drive production and consumtion on the Internet, I’ve written in languages such as PHP (my first love), Java, C, Assembly (never again!), C# and Python (my lastest endeavor).

I will base my writing on my experiences as a student, a system developer at SPS (whose pages are being ported atm), and as an eager participant in CYB. In addition, I’m a big fan of the work presented at A List Apart, adactio, Signal vs. Noise, Snook.ca and HTML5Rocks Tutorials, so I’ll probably gain influence through their words. For the norwegian readers out there, I also enjoy reading the words of NRK Beta, Logica UX and Kjøkkenfesten.

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Søndag er en fin dag. En dag å la kroppen hvile, restituere seg etter de siste dagers virke. 3 dager med konsert og fest i mitt tilfelle. En utrent kropp tåler slik påkjenning mindre bra, og jeg merker at det er godt med en hviledag. Men det var verdt det!

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