In my never-ending quest for productivity-enhancing tools, I came across an application called Write or Die. The very title very much appeals to my no-nonsense approach to getting things done (both the capitalised and non-capitalised versions, for the fans of David Allen’s productivity system of the same name).

The concept is simple: give Write or Die a target number of words and a time limit, and it will, depending on how severe you have the options set, "yell" at you if you’re falling behind the target number of words per minute. You can set it to simply change the colour of the background to an increasingly angry red (surprisingly effective), or set it to pop up and nag you if you’re getting behind (I find this a bit annoying, and not in an effective way either). Or, you can let it get nasty: disabling save until your goal is reached; disabling backspace; forcing full screen or always-on-top; or, if you’re a serial procrastinator who believes in tough love, you can set it to start deleting words (the so-called “kamikaze” mode).

I generally find the progress bars at the top of the writing space (one bar shows the number of words, while the other shows the elapsed time) with the reddening background is enough to keep me typing and not allowing myself to check email/Twitter/feeds/Facebook/the real world until I’ve reached my milestone. But I can easily see that some other people would really need the more hardcore options.

There’s a free online version, but it seemed like so much fun I quite happily shelled out $10 in PayPal for the full version, which is an AIR app. It keeps stats – the number of words written, the amount of time, average words per minute and per session, etc. There’s even a game built in as well, where you can pit yourself against other Write or Die users.

I drafted this blog post in the application (I set myself for 400 words in 15 minutes, although I stopped the session and pasted it into Live Writer to finish off before I’d got to the end. One feature that would really make it great for me would be spell-check – just the red-wriggly-underline type checking like in Word and Firefox. But then again removing all distractions to you just hammering out words – especially ones that appeal to the obsessive-compulsive – is the whole point of the tool.

If you’re a geek like me and making things into games helps to motivate you, Write or Die is highly recommended.

Last year I participated in the first Ada Lovelace Day by writing a blog post about a woman in science or technology that I admired. In my case, I wrote about more than one; in fact I wrote about 5 Australian women in IT that I see kicking arse and taking names on an almost daily basis.

The day was a huge success with something like 3500 people participating. This year it’s happening again on March 24 – less than a month away.

I’d encourage anyone who blogs – even if it’s not regularly – to consider putting their name down and writing something up – it’s all about highlighting the often-overlooked contribution made by women in science and technology fields. You don’t have to be a woman to participate either – blokes are more than welcome!

Now of course, i have to decide who to write about – as last year, it’s going to be a question of whether I choose one individual to concentrate on, or showcase a number of women. There’s just so many to choose from!

Friend, colleague, and dude-who-never-comes-to-my-birthday-party-cos-hes-always-doing-something-for-his-own-birthday-on-the-same-day Myles Eftos of Madpilot Productions is running a little competition with his co-working-office-mate Alex Pooley of Brown Beagle Software. Essentially Myles is only doing offline marketing (word of mouth, print ads, telephone, real world networking etc) while Alex is only doing online marketing (social media, web, email etc) for the next month. They’ve each got $250 to spend and the one with the most jobs at the end of the month wins.

It’s interesting, because while I do both online and offline marketing in a kind of passive way, it’s word of mouth that gets us almost all of our work. If I wanted to keep expanding Clever Starfish, taking on new jobs and generally becoming a big wig, I would probably spend time and money on marketing of both kinds. But world domination is not in our current plans, we are turning away jobs at the moment and let’s be honest, it all sounds a bit like like hard work, doesn’t it?

The boys have a site to track their progress and I notice that at the moment, Alex is in the lead with two jobs to Myles’ one. The prediction on the Port80 forums was that Myles (offline) would win in the short-term but that Alex (online) would do better long term.

It’s an interesting idea. Who would you back? Maybe I should set up a betting pool…

I do get a bit tired of defending my use of Twitter and Facebook. But now, some studies are showing that the mental stimulation provided by social networks can stimulate the brain and help in problem solving.

How Twitter and Facebook Make Us More Productive

I’ve always felt that connecting with people you like (or dislike), even fleetingly as is the case with Twitter, makes our lives richer and more interesting, and that can never be a bad thing. But like with everything, you need to be in control of your time and your impulses. Now there’s a theory to back it up.

Ha, take that. It’s not time-wasting after all.

Today is Australia Day. A day that’s really only been celebrated consistently in the last 15 years or so although it was around for most of last century (thanks to Anonymum for passing along this link on the history of Australia Day, an interesting read).

Today I’ve seen a lot of people expressing their Australian pride in various ways, both in the real world and online. Normally I’d be up there among them: I am an Australian in every sense of the word (I was born here, and both of my parents are naturalised Australians, having emigrated from European countries as children).

But today, I am not waving any flags or professing pride in my country. Hell, I’m not even having a barbecue. Today is the first Australia Day where I can honestly say I am not proud of being Australian.

Let me explain why – but first, unlike some other people, I’m not even talking about the rise of this weird “yobbo” pride in the last few years, the goddamn awful Southern Cross tattoos or the “fuck off we’re full” idiots. While the attitudes that these people have is a cause for concern, I don’t think they are the problem.

No, the real problem is the current Australian government and its policies.

Censorship is not the answer

First and most heinous, it was announced late last year that the Rudd government were pushing ahead with their plans for mandatory ISP-level internet filtering, despite less than brilliant results in the official trials and a lot of outcry. A cynical person might point out that the announcement came in the pre-Christmas rush and at a time when news channels were dominated by talks of the Copenhagen climate change talks. Far be it from me to suggest that the government was trying to pull a fast one past the Australian public.

I could talk all day about each of the things that they’re doing and why it’s the stupidest idea ever, but this is not really the place for that. So I’ll quickly summarise for now:

• mandatory filtering is a massive waste of taxpayers money
• the filter is technically flawed and will not protect children from accessing refused classification material (the primary stated reason for the policy)
• the filter is technically flawed and will result in important information being denied to people who might need it, in some cases seriously so – think information about abortion, euthanasia, anorexia, sexually transmitted diseases and drug use to name a few
• the filter will slow our already ridiculously inadequate network speeds by as much as 40% in some cases
• the government’s blacklist is secret and it and the complaints system which will be put in place is open to abuse by those organisations and individuals whose agendas involve blocking access to information
• Senator Conroy has repeatedly stated that only “refused classification” materials will be blocked, and that those things include child pornography, bestiality and sexual violence. But in actual fact, by the very nature of the Australian classification system, anything that hasn’t been presented for classification is classified “RC” – so theoretically, all manner of innocuous and legal items could be blocked under the “RC” banner at the whim of the censors and most Australians will never know about it.

So what can we do about it? The bill has yet to be passed through parliament to make it law (it has yet to be introduced) so if the Coalition and the independents oppose it, it will not become law. So Australians all need to get onto their local Liberals and demand to know what’s what (as far as I am aware, the Liberal party has no official policy as yet on internet filtering).

Electronic Frontiers Australia has a list of ten things that you can do to help. One of EFA’s suggestions is to participate in the Australian Internet Blackout, which this site has done this week as well as my personal blog and our business web site. That’s the black informational overlay that you might see if you visit the actual site (rather than reading this through RSS or Facebook). If you’d like to join in it’s not too late – you just place a small piece of JavaScript on your web site and it takes care of everything. Details on the Internet Blackout site.

The thing is, that most non-geeks don’t really understand what’s going on and as a result they aren’t as concerned as they should be. So the best thing that we can do is educate our non-geek families and friends. That’s why I’m involved with a small group that will be launching a mass-media-friendly campaign shortly.

Apparently, gaming is only for children

Anyone over the age of 18 had better hand in their consoles and PC gaming rigs because according to the Australian government, games are only for children. That’s why they refuse to support an “R” rating for games, instead banning outright anything that doesn’t fit into MA15+ range.

The South Australian Attorney-General, Michael Atkinson, is blocking all attempts to introduce an R18+ rating for games (and due to the quirks of our judicial system, all state attorney-generals must agree in order for the rating to be changed), despite the average of a a gamer being above 30. What’s worse, he’s actually brazenly called adult gamers “criminals”.

That’s not all

There are other issues – for example in South Australia, a law has passed requiring special packaging and other rules for R-rated DVDs displayed for sale or rent. The covers must be black and show only the title – not other text – in small white writing. All R-rated materials must be shelved together. So classic 80’s action flicks are being treated the same way as soft porn and there are so many problems with this that my head is exploding just thinking of it. The bill was introduced by the Family First party and we can bet they’ll be trying similar tactics in other states soon.

All of these issues just show that the Australian government is out of touch with technology and trying to legislate the digital realm the same was as non-digital media.

If we don’t do something about this, we’d better find ourselves a new national anthem because the current one will not be accurate anymore.

“Australians all, let us rejoice
For we are young and free.”

Young, sure. Free, not so much.