Welcome back! It's good to see you again. Please note that I am now publishing all new material at my hub site: In Context Blog

Since I have received a few e-mails from folks wanting to know how they can get or make their own Book of Days (like the one mentioned in this post from last week), I have been hard at work.

I have completed the PDF version of this excellent journal, and it is available at Lulu.com.

You can order a pre-printed 6″ x 9″ notebook version that is spiral bound, or a PDF download. (I do not recommend the PDF option, unless you have a new printer cartridge!)

The first volume weighs in at 246 pages, consisting of January through June, 2008-2012. The second volume is 268 pages, consisting of July through December of 2008-2012. The second volume is longer because it contains pages for the Annual Summaries.

Unfortunately, due to the massive size of the Book of Days, it could not be uploaded as one book. Click this link for The Book of Days at Lulu.com, and check it out. You can look inside for a preview of some of the pages, just click this link.

Please note: I have just ordered one for myself today, so I do not know the total manufacturing and shipping timeframe. I have reviewed the downloadable files, and everything looks fine. I will have an update when I get the package.

Update 1: The book was printed and arrived at UPS on 3 January, estimated arrival on 7 January. One week is not too bad.

Once again, thank you for your support, and have a happy new year!!

My wife and I went to Popham Beach for a walk yesterday, and I snapped a few pics. The weather forecast for today was snow, and lots of it, so we were glad to be outside. The weather was perfect, and the beach was busy with families, dogs, horseback riders and at least one person with a metal detector.

Enjoy these pics, I am going to be busy making an old-fashioned turkey dinner for the two of us.

I would like to say thank you to all of the HD BizBlog readers on behalf of my family and the HD BizBlog contributors (Mike-blog, posts and Al-blog, posts) for your support and attention this past year. We have grown to a community of 550 subscribers, exceeding my goal for the year!

I know that all of us have learned a lot about goal-setting, getting things done, and leading ourselves & others over the past year. 2008 will have new challenges and opportunities and I am looking forward to making this community larger, more vibrant, and more exciting.

One change has already occurred, changing the name of the blog to Productivity in Context. Look for more aspects of life and learning to be studied “in context” in the coming months.

I will be back tomorrow with some New Year’s resolutions, goals for 2008, and a surprise. Thank you again, and we pray that you have a safe and happy new year with the ones that you love.

Today’s guest post is by Al at 7P Productions.

For those of us who are warriors of the Information Age, we use the email and calendar applications like a sword and shield. For the apps, the usual suspects include Microsoft with MS Outlook and Google with Gmail and Google Calendar (gCal). Because I do much of my work on Linux, I cannot use MS Outlook, or any other Microsoft-based app for that matter. My primary browser is Mozilla Firefox, and Mozilla’s second-most popular application is the Thunderbird email app.

One of the reasons why Firefox is very popular is because of the vast amount of useful plugins (my favorites include AdBlock, Screen Grab, Read It Later, and PicLens). Thunderbird also has a library of useful plugins, and one that I recently tried out is Lightning. One of the commonly cited drawbacks of Thunderbird was that it had no calendar feature, but Lightning addresses this shortcoming by integrating the Mozilla Sunbird calendar app into Thunderbird.

I’ve been following the Sunbird project for a while, and although the earlier versions did not impress me, the current version (v0.7) has shown much improvements to the point that I am now a user. Having a separate email and calendar app is tedious though, but the Lightning plugin takes care of that.

I Sync, Therefore I Am
I mentioned in an earlier post that having multiple calendars over-complicated my organizing system. My PDA uses the Pocket Outlook version, and this calendar is my primary one. However, I sync up with my Google Calendar for a couple of reasons: (1) it serves as my backup/emergency online calendar, and (2) it helps to sync my Outlook to Lightning.

Although my primary calendar is my PDA’s Pocket Outlook, my primary inbox is with Thunderbird, which made trying to manage my schedule between my email inbox and my PDA calendar a bit inefficient. Having a combined email/calendar app was something Outlook had for a long time, so the Thunderbird/Lightning combo isn’t earth-shattering news to the staunch Outlook users. However, for those who are considering Thunderbird or are currently using it, Lightning is a must-have. Lightning has streamlined my email/calendar management.

The Setup
The following is how I sync my different calendars (Lifehacker has various methods to sync Google Calendar with many different calendar tools as well):

• I use the free version of SyncMyCal to sync up Outlook with Google Calendar. I am currently considering upgrading to the paid version as well.
  • Alternatively, a free open-source software (FOSS) called Remote Calendar is available that does something similar.
• Lightning is synced up to Google Calendar using the Provider plugin (thanks to this Lifehacker article for helping me find out about this add-on). Installation instructions can be found here.
  • An alternative to Provider is GCalDaemon, which works for Lightning as well as other calendar apps such as iCal.

The setup works pretty well. To demonstrate, I created an event on Google Calendar, and a separate event on Lightning. Here’s proof that syncing was successful on Lightning:

… as well on Google Calendar…

… and afterwards syncing Outlook to Google Calendar was also a success.

About the author: Al writes a blog about the 7 P’s: passion, purpose, planning, pursuit, progress, power, and peace. He also recently adopted the GTD system and frequently shares his personal experience with it here.

Fun and informative posts found by StumbleUpon:

• Innovating like crazy; Executing like crap
• How to deal with getting fired
• Cool inventions
• Hack yourself

Enjoy your weekend!