Sure, you could keep a few business cards in the expandable pocket of your ‘Skine, but how many can you really stuff down in there before the load balancing hack stops working-two, three, maybe four?

It has always seemed to me that the point of my ‘Skine, being that it is really my mobile office, was to be efficient and useful. Four business cards just isn’t enough, and I have to keep my ‘Skine at a certain thickness otherwise my ass goes numb and that ruins the rest of my day. So I came up with a way to get thirty, dual-purpose, business cards in my Moleskine and keep the damage to my butt nerves to a minimum.

I print a tiny version of my business card on Avery 8060 White Address labels. Then I cut the sheet in half, remove the white spacer, and fold the three columns. I use the software that came with the labels, you can download it from the Avery web site, to create a template and then I print off as many sheets I need for the day.

When someone asks for a card, I pull one off and stick it in their day planner. Or maybe I need to leave them a note; I scribble a note on some paper and stick it to their door with on of the business cards.

The really cool thing about this hack is that you can get Avery labels in millions of different sizes so you can make a label to fit just about any need.

It seems that a real shift in thought patterns has happened without me knowing about it—I must’ve slept through it or something. I remember when I was trying to explain to my mother how computers worked: “See mom, they are like a telephone book, an encyclopedia, and a notepad all wrapped into one.” The point is that I used to have to hunt for a metaphor with which to clarify some techno-flibberty-flobberty, but now I find myself looking for high-tech terms to describe low-tech devices.

Case in point, the Moleskine Load Balancing Hack. This is a really long way to describe a method of preventing nerve damage in your ass from sitting on an over stuffed wallet by stuffing your Moleskine in your other pocket.

Now maybe you can tell me why, when I was looking for a way to explain this really asinine (hey that was a pun) device for saving your ass (and that was alliteration), I immediately focused on the field of computing; because I don’t know.

Director
Timothy Hines reflected to the ‘Nest, "We never stopped really. After an
initial two-week hiatus, we saw the light in adapting a dead-on accurate version
of The War Of The Worlds from the original source material, thanks to the influence
and advice of people such as Charles Keller, the director of the H.G. Wells Society
and tens of thousands of fans who wrote us."

Science Fiction Crowsnest

I recently wrote this tiny little program called Magnetic Muse. It is kinda simple, all ya do is click on a word, then click on the empty form. You can move the words around on the form, delete them, you can even print your finished work.

Get it here; registration required.

Another little tool I have been using for about a year is the Elements of Style Cheat Sheet. It is meant to be printed on both side of a sheet of 8.5” x 11” paper, and it could be folded to fit into your Moleskine’s expandable pocket.

When Diane Darling’s frustrated e-mail exchange with a co-worker in
Australia was inadvertently passed on to a boss, she found herself in
the CEO’s office.

"He handed me a copy of my e-mail and said, ‘I just want to know
your thoughts on this,’ " recalls Ms. Darling, who had critiqued her
manager. "It’s something you hope happens in your 20s. Heaven help you
if you do that later in your career!"
The Christian Science Monitor