Clearing the In-tray

Between being ill, attending FOSDEM, putting a GLLUG on, actually reviewing my review copies of books and a couple of other bits I can’t yet mention, the things requiring my attention have been not-so-slowly piling up. I’ve taken a large chunk of this weekend to clear down the multiple mail boxes, RSS feeds and saved book-marks that I was supposed to read weeks ago.

One thing I have noticed is how much more productive I am when using client-side tools I can customise. I’ve stopped using rojo.com as my RSS aggregator of choice as I can’t easily hack it to add filters, grep through the feeds etc. I’m in a similar position when reading mail. I read most of my mail using mutt (with a customised vim as the editor) and I can clear mails an order of magnitude faster than I can when reading and replying through gmail. I’m not against webapps but I need more access to them than they currently give me.