marramgrass

About a year and a half ago I confirmed my status as a pretty sad case when I published the diary page layout I’d put together for myself after being unable to find one commercially available that I liked working with.

Since the advent of the iPhone and MobileMe syncing I’ve returned to an electronic solution for diarying and task tracking (and it’s by far the best such system I’ve used), but I’ve been receiving a steady stream of emails asking for a 2009 version. Because of those requests, and because I’m continually surprised by just how popular those first downloads were (they’ve been downloaded several hundred times!), I’ve taken a couple of hours to update them for 2009.

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As I seem to be suddenly on a form-designing kick (it’s sad, oh so very sad), my wife asked me if I could throw something together that she could use to keep track of her time off from work. Her requirements were reasonably precise: days of the week, a month in a line, easily-readable dates and little boxes that had room for explanatory symbols to be marked in.

I came up with something that has satisfied her, and I’m actually finding it quite useful myself. As it stands, there is a key to be filled in with slots for annual leave, statutory holidays, days in lieu of stat. days (we both do jobs where that happens easily) and sick days, plus four dotted lines to add other things that come to mind.

So, as with the other forms I’ve done lately, these are released under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike license. The font is BlueHighway from the D*I*Y Planner Widget Kit (it is otherwise available, but that’s where I installed it from).

Here are the downloads as A4 PDF files for 2007 and 2008:

• LeaveTracker2007.pdf 20KB
• LeaveTracker2008.pdf 20KB

Here also is a zip file of the OpenOffice.org 2 Draw source files for these. These will allow you to, for example, edit the key to fit your own needs:

• LeaveTracker2007-08.zip 28KB

As before, if these are of use, I’d be grateful for a comment to let me know. Enjoy.

There’s this guy whose blog I read, his name’s David Seah. One of the things he does is make up forms to help people be more productive. The one I’ve found to be most useful is also dead simple: his Compact Calendar. I find it most useful in Bruce Marriott’s UK localization.

But I’m getting to the time when I need one for 2008, so I spent a few minutes altering it for next year. Now available, with much kudos and credit to Dave and Bruce, the 2008 UK Compact Calender, in MS Excel and PDF formats:

• CompactCalendar2008_uk_ms.pdf (48 KB)
• CompactCalendar2008_uk_ms.xls (39 KB)

Enjoy.

I apologise now for the very specific geekery of this post. You all know what I’m like.

I have trouble with diaries. I’ve tried going digital with PDAs and things a few times, but keep coming back to paper for all sorts of reasons.

My problem is that I’m really picky about it. The layout, the quality of the thing – I tend to make them fall apart. In order to find one that suits, I’ve bought three this year, and none of them is perfect.

So, having stumbled across a website called DIYplanner.com (seriously, is there anything anyone can think of that isn’t on the interweb somewhere already?), I’ve decided that if I’m going to be so awkward about it, I may as well put together my own.

And having time on my hands on account of being in the throes of a job-hunt, I went ahead…
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