Another Branchless Banking blog in Indonesia!

Another excellent blog on the subject by one of the few pioneers of branchless banking in Indonesia: Mr. Alit Asmarajaya of SinarSip. Here's the link http://branchlessbkg.blogspot.com.

Worth a visit, gave an unique perspective from the trenches of branchless banking implementation in Indonesia.

The Tools I used for my mega-writing courses

By now, I have been doing school for nearly 6 months. One semester down, another semester of classes to go, and who knows how many more time I have to spend after to complete my dissertation.

Nevertheless, despite my relatively short tenure on this—which I keep trying to downplay as a “course in writing”, the overly complicated and mildly annoying nature of the program and the sheer amount of materials being covered has started to overwhelm me. I suspect the same also true with my colleagues, each trying to stay afloat on top of their daily chores, family lives, career lives, and now inundated by the unending flood of academic journals and books.

During the semester break, I did what’s a look like the ritual, passage of lives, of every Ph. D students across the globe: trying to figure out what are the tools needed to makes live easier. Let’s face it, we’re all procrastinator by nature, and I am proud to admit that I might be the biggest one of all!

And to add to the insult, last month I started another unavoidable rite of passage of graduate students: blog writing. So now I ended up with some limited experience with some of the tools out there, and an empty blog. Naturally, the most logical solution would be trying to fill the void with whatever things occupying my mind at this hour, which happen to be the tools.

So, here it is!

Attempt #1: Donny’s current set of tools and workflow (Feb 2013)

1. Dropbox (Paid)
What a graduate student can do without a dropbox account? It is truly a heaven sent! If you happen to know people without dropbox account, more power to you (and more envy to you), as you can get a bunch of extra spaces for free. I wasn’t that lucky though, so I ended up subscribing for their extra spaces. So, make sure you have one working on your computer.

2. Mendeley (Free)

First time I heard about Mendeley was during my orientation (kudos to you mas Samuel, PPIM class of 2012 is forever indebted to you!).  Played with it for several months without much avail, but finally figured out what to do with it (which will be discussed toward the bottom of this blog.

3. DevonThink (USD 149)

I guess it will be easier to explain about this on the workflow discussion, but basically it is an very powerful “indexing” software that will help you find information.

4. Scrivener (USD 49)

After several attempts, finally decided to migrate my dissertation-writing environment to Scrivener altogether. For short documents, I, a creature of habit, is still relying at the old and trustful:

     5.  Microsoft Word (no explanation needed)

6. Skim pdf reader (interchangeable with Adobe Reader)

7. Evernote (apps) with Moleskine for Evernote (physical notepad).

In theory, the specially designed notepad will allow you to jot anything that came across your mind, and with an iOS device, these information can be easily transformed into indexed digital format. Good theory, but alas, I am lack of any iOS device at this moment. Bummer! Next semester perhaps!

8. Kindle (handy to get those hard-to-get book, which happen to be available on electronic version. My current (and my second kindle) Kindle Fire can also connect directly to dropbox as well, which is tremendously helpful). Don’t forget to get one of those styluses as well, guaranteed to make your lives easier

9. Rancillio Silvia Espresso Maker + Rancillio Rocky Grinder (my addiction to coffee grew stronger after I started with the program. What can I say, but it is comforting to know that a strong cup of freshly brewed espresso is only 2 meters away at any time). At work, I also keep a Handpresso handy in case those caffeine craving come without any warning.

10. MacBook Air, circa 2010

Bought one up when the first offered it at apple store. Who knew, after years of underutilization (itunes and safari only), now it is time to get the full amortization back! Connect it with a Dell Professional 24” monitor and you got yourself a powerful workstation. With the last week's announcement of 13" MacBook Pro with Retina display, I am starting to think it might be time to upgrade.

Most of the above tools (the apps, not the espresso machine), can be downloaded for free. What’s more important however, is how these tools are being linked into a workable “workflow”. It is not perfect, but this is currently my setting:

1. Create a “Journal to Read” folder on the desktop

2. Create another folder on the dropbox. I like to name mine using the convention “YYYY – folder name”. Hence, there’s a folder name “2013 – Journals” at my dropbox folder.

3. On the “preferences” menu of your Mendeley, go to “File Organizer”, and chose your dropbox folder as your destination folder. Don’t forget to tick the “rename document names” option

4. Next, also still in Mendeley, go to “Watched folder”, and then chose the “Journal to Read” folder on your desktop.

Trust me, this will eliminate a lot of confusions dealing with pdf files.  Basically all you have to do is grab your pdf file (maybe you got it through email, via web site, or download in proquest). Copy them all to the “Journal to Read” Folder, and when you start Mendeley, it will magically load these files, renamed it and create a copy on your dropbox.  Don’t forget to review the “need review” group whenever you open your Mendeley and adjust as needed. I found that at least you make the effort to check the Title of the documents, the authors, the journals, years, volume and number. This will make your lives much much easier later on!

In addition to automatic renaming of the files, and creating a copy on your dropbox (which later you can access from your other devices remotely), mendeley also creates an index of the documents. So instead of browsing the names of the files trying to remember which one is which, now you have the full power of Mendeley at your fingertips.

This work fine for class, especially when you are trying to match all those acronyms with specific class (you know, professors like to put acronyms for the journals they made you read). One thing to remember though is to open the pdf file OUTSIDE Mendeley. Although Mendeley does have its own pdf reader, anything you note or jot down within will not be compatible outside Mendeley. So, make a habit and open the file using Adobe Reader of Skim.

That’s it for the first part. On the next part I will try to elaborate more on my use of Devonthink (still learning) and Scrivener (also still learning). Keep on tuning!