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Tomato Stuff or the Pomodoro Technique

tomatoes
Image by Myriams-Fotos from Pixabay

I use a range of techniques to getting things done. I do find one method doesn’t work for all tasks at all times.

When I have quite a substantial task to do then I often use the Pomodoro Technique or a variation of the technique.

The Pomodoro Technique was developed by Francesco Cirillo in the late 1980s. He was inspired by a tomato-shaped kitchen timer, which he used to track his study sessions during his university years. The method is named after the Italian word for tomato, “pomodoro,” in honour of this tool.

The essence of the technique is to work on the task for 25 minutes and then take a break. The key is to focus during those 25 minutes and then use the 5 minutes to relax.

Here’s a step-by-step guide to using the Pomodoro Technique: Choose a task: Select the task you want to work on.

Set the timer: Set a timer for 25 minutes.

Work intensely: Focus on the task without distractions until the timer goes off.

Take a short break: Take a 5-minute break to relax and recharge.

Repeat: Repeat steps 2-4 for a set number of pomodoros, typically four.

Take a longer break: After four pomodoros, take a longer break (15-30 minutes) before starting a new set.

In addition it makes sense during the breaks to move away from the computer, go outside, walk up and down the stairs, get a drink, or whatever. Don’t just move to another task or check email or similar.

The other key is to remove interruptions, so turn off notifications, quit Teams and Outlook, and spend the time focusing on the task at hand.

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Well that was stupid!

I messed up my Mac mini by turning off Bluetooth after having issues with the wireless keyboard.

Mac mini

I have been very pleased with my M4 Mac mini since I got it last year, for such as small (and low cost) computer it has been perfect for my needs. I have a great wireless Bluetooth keyboard and mouse  (Logitech Pebble Keys) which has worked all fine for me. I used it with both the Mac mini and my MacBook Pro.

My son had come over and borrowed it for his MacBook Air. Afterwards he turned the keyboard and mouse off (something I never do).

The following day I turned on the Mac mini and the keyboard and mouse didn’t work. I checked and saw they were tuned off, so I turned them on.

The keyboard worked fine, but the mouse had stopped working.

I was able to use my old Apple Magic Trackpad to navigate. Despite some initial troubleshooting, the Mac mini still couldn’t see the mouse.

So being unable to connect the mouse again, I decided I would do the usual IT thing and turn Bluetooth off and then back on again…

Literally as I used the Magic Trackpad to turn off Bluetooth, as I clicked, it clicked that I had done the wrong thing, as now I couldn’t use the Bluetooth Trackpad to turn Bluetooth back on…

Every solution online assumed you had a keyboard, my Bluetooth keyboard didn’t work.

I couldn’t remote in, which was the other way I thought I might be able to sort it. I had that turned off.

Having recently moved I knew I didn’t have a spare USB keyboard or mouse in storage. In the end my son came over with his USB mouse and an USB-C USB-A adapter. This worked and I turned Bluetooth back on. 

I realised that the issue was that for some (stupid) reason I had messed up my initial setup of the wireless keyboard and mouse. It can be configured to be used by three different devices, however I had set it up the Mac mini as device one for the keyboard and device three for the mouse. I had been using the keyboard with my MacBook Pro as device two. It was only when my son had come over the previous day and had borrowed the keyboard and mouse for his MacBook as device three. This would have all been okay, if I had the Mac mini as device one for the mouse, I didn’t. This is why it didn’t work for me, and why I then went down that rabbit hole of turning Bluetooth off. I won’t be doing that again. So, the keyboard and mouse was never the problem, it was all down to the user.

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Now this was quite useful

I was on a recent flight from Helsinki back to London flying on a new Finnair Airbus A321.

As well as the usual table there was this interesting ledge on the back of the seat in front of me which you could use to prop your phone (or I guess a small tablet) to watch a video during the flight.

back of an airline seat

Now I would have never guessed this was there or what its purpose was unless the person sitting on my row started using it with their phone.

You weren’t allowed to use it during take off and landing, but otherwise it was useful to have if you either had a drink, or use the table for something like a laptop. Of course, it also allows you to watch stuff without holding the phone (or if you don’t have a stand for your phone).

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GWR Battery Train

When I was recently at West Ealing I saw GWR’s battery powered electric train. It does not rely on a third rail or overhead wires.

In some ways this is a recent thing, but then again, it isn’t. The first experiments with battery trains were done nearly a hundred and forty years ago in the 1890s.

BR (British Railways) used batteries in an train from 1958 to 1966 on the 38 mile long Aberdeen to Ballater line in Scotland. 

GWR have been experimenting with a battery train on the West Ealing to Greenford line in West London.

When working in London I sometimes commute from West Ealing to central London, and I had seen the inductive charging between the rails.

On a recent visit though the GWR battery powered train was at the station. The GWR battery powered train is a converted Underground train, and has been used for testing, but doesn’t carry passengers.

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Roaming in France

Following issues with using data in Portugal a few years ago with excessive data usage on my iPhone, I did wonder if I should follow the  same process I had used in October 2023 when I went to Amsterdam, last year when I went to Europe, and when I went to Helsinki in February.

The process I would use is go into Settings -> Mobile Data and turn off virtually all the apps which could use mobile data.  I would turn off mobile data for virtually all my apps and also specifically iCloud Driveand iCloud Backup. I am pretty sure they were the culprits for my excessive data usage whilst in Portugal.

However this time I was heading to Calais and Dunkerque just for the day, though I was expecting to use my phone, I didn’t think I would go overboard on the data (even using iCloud for my photos) and I didn’t think I would exceed the 12Gb Fair Use limit.

When I arrived in France, my phone automatically connected to the correct network and I was able to use 5G (and I guess make phone calls, but I didn’t make any calls).

I did turn off data when I was on the ferry though (as recommended by DFDS) and connected to the Ferry WiFi.

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Ouch, down to 1%

I hadn’t planned on getting down to a 1% charge, but that happened to me recently.

I had done a day trip to Dunkerque and had arrived back on the ferry at Dover with a roughly 50% charge left on the car. I had used more battery power than anticipated, as I had managed to get an easier ferry to Calais, but then during the day I had to travel from Calais to Dunkerque, only a 25 mile trip, but it was an unplanned trip. I also did think I might be able to charge at one of the French supermarkets I stopped at, but didn’t see any chargers. Well, I wasn’t really looking hard, but if there was one I would have probably put some charge on the Funky Cat.

I had to drive from Dover to Weston-super-Mare, a total distance of 215 miles. The Funky Cat has a maximum (published) range of 193, though when I recently charged to 100% I had a maximum range of 176. If I started off with 100% I could have done the trip with a single stop for a charge. Now if I wasn’t worried I could have stopped off anywhere at the services, paid 85p kWh and charged up there, but I wanted to save some money.

Having arrived back quite late, I knew I could take advantage of Instavolt’s off peak rates. I couldn’t use the Tesla chargers at the Channel Tunnel as they are only for people getting on or getting off the trains on the Channel Tunnel. So I headed down the M20 to the Instavolt chargers at Ashford. These chargers are near The Ashford Cattle Market, as a result after putting the Funky Cat on charge I stayed in the car.

It cost 54p kWh which is much cheaper than their standard 85p. A couple of days before I had used an Instavolt charger at the peak rates. For roughly the same amount of money, during peak charging I got 15.33 kWh, whilst off peak I got 25.18 kWh. Quite a substantial saving.

I didn’t charge to 100% as it takes quite a long time, especially that last 20%. So knowing there was 100 miles to the Tesla chargers on the M4 westbound services at Reading, I made sure I had at least a 125 mile range. I then set off.

However there is where all best laid plans started to go amiss. I found out via Waze that the M25 was closed between junctions 9 and 10. This meant I missed the Cobham Services, but did mean that I saved some power, as I find A road driving is more energy efficient then motorway driving. I also saw that the M4 was closed, which I saw was between J10 and J11.

So I wasn’t too worried. Waze took me down the M3 and through Bracknell and Wokingham. I’ve done this route before, so wasn’t too worried and assumed that this was also avoiding where the M4 was closed. However as I approached the M4 junction with the A329(M) the slip road onto the M4 was closed. This probably meant that the M4 was closed around the services as well. Time for a plan B. I asked Ora for the nearest charging station and saw that there was a bank of Tesla chargers at Wokingham.

I arrived at the Wokingham stalls, and noted on the app they were compatible to non-Tesla chargers, and the rate at that time was 41p kWh. Great I thought, however these were the older model chargers and I have had issues with these in the past. It was going to be a similar story, despite plugging in, I couldn’t get the Funky Cat to initialise a charge with the Tesla charger. I was now getting quite low on power. So after driving through Reading, I once more asked Ora for the nearest charger, and I ended up at a Shell Garage on Basingstoke Road. I put the Funky Cat on charge which was going to cost 85p a kWh a lot more than I was expecting to pay and compared to the Tesla costs.

As I sat in the car (again) I checked the maps and I did think from what I could read that the M4 was open from J11. 

So I did a minimal charge and set off, however at the junction the slip road was closed off. I headed off through the diversion and joined the M4 at J12. I decided I would stop at one of the services on the M4, and just do a charge there.  I approached Chieveley Services, I saw I still had enough range to get to Membury Services. I had had issues before at Chieveley Services, so decided I would go to Membury.

As I approached Membury Services, my range got lower and lower, until it went to zero. My heart rate started to increase and I slowed down. I got to Membury Services and checked the car I had 1% charge left. There are a bank of Tesla chargers at Membury Services, however they don’t work with non-Tesla cars. So I had to use the Gridserve chargers.

I had to recreate my account with them to use the app, so I could get the lower rate of 79p kWh. I put on enough charge to get me home and then some.

Even so, when I got home I had 6% left of charge.

It had been a frustrating trip, but I rarely do something like this, so though annoying, the Funky Cat is still a great drive. I had to remember that it was mainly frustrating as I was trying to save money on charging and keep my driving costs down.

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Well that’s even better

So after getting just 125 miles on one recent charge, I  did another charge to 100% and the predicted range was a much better 168 miles.

I did wonder if I would get a better charge than that, so was pleased to find on my latest charge the predicted range was 176 miles.

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No I don’t want the AI features…

coffee, notebook, pen, on a table
Image by Engin Akyurt from Pixabay

Sometimes you need to check things out, as they could be costing you money for features you don’t need.

My monthly charge for my Microsoft Office subscription came through and it had risen from £5.99 to £8.49 a month.

I didn’t recall getting an email, but then realised it would have been to my outlook.com email address which I don’t really use and look at rarely.

I was a little surprised and a little annoyed. However I do use Microsoft Office a fair bit, so decided for the moment I would keep subscribing, well for the moment.

It was interesting then to note a day later I was on the Money Saving Expert website, looking at other things when I saw a link to an article.

Microsoft’s auto-adding up to £30 a year to 365 subscriptions for its AI software – but we’ve a trick to avoid it

I read the the article and I saw that the increase was due to the addition of AI functionality to the Office suite. Now this was something I had seen when using Office, but never used. It would appear that you can downgrade back to Classic and though you lose the AI functionality, the charge is the original £5.99.

Microsoft says the option to switch to a Classic plan will be offered for the next year. To make the switch:

Sign in to your Microsoft account.

Go to ‘Subscriptions’ and select ‘Manage’.

Select ‘Cancel subscription’. This will give you the option to choose a monthly or annual Classic Personal or Classic Family plan.

I did this and my plan reverted back to Classic.

I had seen the AI functionality whilst using Office, but most of the time I either wanted to turn it off, or I was ignoring it. So for me, no real loss of functionality, if anything it will improve my productivity as I won’t be distracted by it. 

You would have thought that Microsoft would remember that paper clip… Did people really appreciate that paper clip saying You appear to be writing a letter…. I certainly turned off that functionality back in the day. For me in many ways AI functionality is something akin to the paper clip. Thanks, but no thanks.

Not sure what happens next year, maybe we will all be forced to upgrade to have AI. One of the lessons here is to look at your subscriptions and emails.

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Apple’s Image Playground

One of the new features for the Mac is Apple Intelligence. I was curious about Image Playground and how that would work.

Produce fun, original images in seconds with the Image Playground experience right in your apps. Create an entirely new image based on a description, suggested concepts, and even a person from your Photos library.

Having tried it, I would say it is nothing special. Yes the images are nice, but you can tell they are AI generated. It also doesn’t do photorealistic images.

As a tool to create some fun images to share with friends, yes it’s fine, so use it for that.

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Roaming in Finland

I was flying off to Finland and would be using my iPhone out there.

Following issues with using data in Portugal a few years ago with excessive data usage on my iPhone, I followed the same process I had used in October 2023 when I went to Amsterdam and last year when I went to Europe.

When I was on the plane at Heathrow, I went into Settings -> Mobile Data and turned off virtually all the apps which could use mobile data. Took me a while as there were a fair few. I turned off mobile data for virtually all my apps and also specifically iCloud Driveand iCloud Backup. I am pretty sure they were the culprits for my excessive data usage whilst in Portugal.

As and when I needed to use apps, I either used the hotel wifi, or switched on mobile data for specific apps.

I didn’t  run out of data this visit, it was a shorter visit, just a few days. All worked fine.

I was also impressed with the mobile data speeds in Finland, which to be honest knowing their history (you know Nokia) wasn’t too surprising.