A sign of a person who doesn’t use drugs anymore: I’ve gotten organized enough to have a white board.

But, honestly, the new site isn’t going to write itself, and I need to be able to be sure that important things don’t get overlooked. There are so many moving parts to a well-designed website, and a large number of them need to be working when you put the site up or the whole thing collapses. Meanwhile, I am of course getting married in two and a half weeks (holy crap!), and there’s a bunch of last minute things and details we need to have ironed out.

So, I’ve been thinking about it for the last two days, and today I did it.? Immediately after work, Sarah and I went to Office Depot to buy a nice big white board and some colored markers. It’s looking quite nice right next to the main PC, currently cordoned off into “DFE” and “Wedding,” with items just waiting to be checked off as complete. It is my hope that with this new whiteboard I will at least be able to keep a track of all the little moving parts associated with these two major events.

With the site, I’ve found myself getting carried away by some tangent or another over and over again. My most recent escapade was a journey into the world of XML-RPC (Pinging, like you do with Technorati and Ping-o-Matic, for you bloggers), and actually reading the original white-paper on the XMLRPC.php code that php sites such as my own use to make Pings work. Mind you: many of those tangents end up being useful things ~ indeed, the XML-RPC thing will probably be employed in the behind-the-scenes code sometime in the near future ~ and I would like to be able to keep that very-much a part of how I operate.? At the same time, I would like to be able to know more or less concretely what it is I just flaked on so I can come back!

While on the subject of writing, I ran across an interesting peice at 37signals.com comparing writing literature and writing code. From there, I hit on an article called “The Alone Time Zone,” which is equally brilliant. These two peices spell out some really critical points for creativity and intellectual pursuit, generally, and even those of you who don’t code might want to give them a read.

The peice on code and literature shows how many ways there are to let inspiration become unproductive, and how important it is to allow yourself time to write, and more importantly, time to edit. In a world that moves as quickly as this one, particularly for us bloggers, it is easy to overlook this important fact.? Indeed, getting the story or the reaction to the story out first makes you more likely to be read, but getting the writing right makes you more likely to be appreciated. CNN and Headline News could probably learn a lesson or two about this, as well.

The “Alone Time Zone” points out how critical and productive alone time really is. This seems obvious, but when you see the way the author lays it out and makes a case for implementing a “communications black-out” in the office, you start to appreciate it on a different level. How much better would work at your office come out if everyone just shut the hell up for an hour? Working from home, I am finding that my productivity has skyrocketed, as indeed my fiancee has pointed out to me as well.

So, yeah.? Lots running around through my head right now, and I need a whiteboard.? Notice also that over to the right is the new Upcoming.org Events Calendar.? Check out the events and what they look like!? I think that Upcoming.org is going to do me nicely!