I have had two days to get familiar with the new operating system and so far, I am loving it. I’m already finding that certain tasks can be performed much quicker.

The only extra applications I have installed so far are listed below.  If you have any recommendations, please let me know in the comments or via the contact form.

1. NetNewsWire – to keep track of my RSS feeds
2. Dropbox – synching files between each of my machines
3. 1Password – allows me to keep a secure log of all my passwords in one location
4. Burn – DVD burning software
5. Little Snitch – keeps an eye on outgoing internet connections and gives you the option to allow or deny each one
6. Google Chrome – my browser of choice on the PC (although I’ve been sticking to Safari so far on the Mac)
7. Transmission – BitTorrent client

Overcoming my fear of needles I gave blood on Thursday 26th August and I am really happy that I did so.

After donating my blood, I went and sat with the other donors around a table whilst we had our ‘recovery’ drink and biscuits.  Unfortunately for me, it was at this point that I began to feel feint.  With no control over what was happening, the next thing I remember is waking up surrounded by nurses and being told to stay led down.

Very embarrasing!!

I wasn’t the only one to have passed-out in this area.  A young girl had done the same thing, at least we could laugh at each other.

Giving blood is something that I can do, that may save somebody else’s life at some point in the future.  I will definitely do it again, me feinting in front of a group of strangers is nothing, if my blood can help somebody out.

Have you ever given blood?  If you are from the UK, you can sign up as a donor on the National Blood Service’s website blood.co.uk.

Many of the videos are just twelve minutes long and involve performing sets of four exercises in 20 second intervals.  Zuzana uses a Gymboss Interval Timer, but I have been utilising an online interval timer that is simple to set-up.

The first workout I attempted was the Fat Ass Burn Off Workout.  After three sets of each exercise, I had to stop.  Stupidly, I started this workout not long after eating my evening meal and I also had the central heating on (which made it way too warm to be working out).  I’ve noted down the number of repetitions I managed to complete during each set and I will be revisiting this workout tomorrow and will be determined to complete the six sets of all four exercises.

For me, I find this kind of workout perfect.  It is high intensity and lasts less than twenty minutes.  If I can get into a habit of performing these each day, supplemented with cycling, running and the occasional football game, I should be well on my way to getting the body I want!

Do you have a home workout regime?  Do you supplement this with sports of any kind?  Leave me a comment or let me know on Twitter.

One of the items on my Bucket List is to watch the entire 250 films listed as being the best by the users of IMDb.  I am aware that this task will be difficult, the list is ever-evolving and some of the films may be harder to find.  I would consider this goal to be achieved if at some point in the future I have all 250 crossed off the list at one point.

Track the IMDb 250 offers suggestions for films you may like, that you haven’t yet watched from the Top 250, but other people with similar film tastes have marked off their lists.  The next five films that I am going to watch have been recommended by this website and are as follows:

1. The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King (2003)
2. Gladiator (2000)
3. Terminator (1984)
4. Terminator 2: Judgement Day (1991)
5. The Godfather (1972)

Do you enjoy watching films?  What is your favourite?  My favourite film used to be The Matrix (1999).  However, since undertaking this bucket list item, it has opened my eyes to many great films that I wouldn’t have otherwise watched.  Two of my favourites are now The Departed (2006) and The Prestige (2006).

I will be posting updates to how I am progressing with this item to Twitter, so if you aren’t following me – be sure to do so.

Once I had decided on which projects to focus my attentions on, it was then a process of outlining what each one of these websites/blogs needed to do.  Splitting the development of these websites down into a variety of tasks was straightforward and then I  implemented the MoSCoW method of prioritising these items by their importance.  Each project has a definitive list of tasks and each task is allocated to a specific category.  These categories are what defines a tasks priority, I have listed these levels of priority have been listed below:

• Must – Any items labelled as MUST, are essential and will have to be completed at the earliest opportunity.  Without the MUST have items, a project cannot function.
• Should - Once any items in the MUST category are finished, I set about work on the SHOULD have’s.  These are items that are as important as the MUST’s but can be worked around or bypassed if a project needs to go live.
• Could – if having something missing from a project isn’t detrimental to it’s effectiveness, then it is called as a COULD have.  These will only be implemented if time allows after all of the MUST’s and SHOULD’s have been implemented.
• Won’t – these are tasks that have been identified but aren’t important enough to actually be implemented.

Once my task lists have been finalised for each project, I am using the Toodledo website and iPhone app to organise these tasks and list them by priority.

How do you keep organised?  Have you ever used the MoSCoW method? Do you know of a more efficient way of managing the priority of your daily work?  Let me know in the comments.

The first thing from my bucket list that I wanted to complete was to start my own retirement fund.  This fund isn’t actually anything special – I have started it with a standing order which is transferring £25 at the start of every month into a newly created online-savings account.  The standing order would currently deposit a total of £300 per year into my ‘retirement fund’.  Along with this I have a savings scheme running (that my bank calls ‘save the change‘) which rounds any of my debit card transactions up to the nearest pound and deposits the additional funds into a nominated account.  For example, if I was to purchase an item for £0.86, £1.00 would be taken from my main account.  £0.86 would be used to pay for the item and £0.14 would be automatically moved from my main account to my savings account.

At the time of writing, this savings account contains a grand sum of £63.09, which is money I would have probably otherwise spent on other things.  Over time I am hoping to be able to increase the monthly standing order to a more respectable sum in order to accelerate the growth of the deposited money.

Have you started paying into a long-term savings fund?  Do you pay money into a pension scheme? I’d like to hear what other people are doing to prepare themselves for the future.

Upon checking the blog statistics earlier today, I noticed that there were an average of 30 unique visitors per day arriving throughout the 110 published posts and the average visit length was around ten seconds.  For somebody who wanted to run a successful internet marketing blog, this is disheartening.  Because of this, I have cleared out all of the substandard posts (each and every one of them) and will start over with this blog.

This new, simplified version of Darren Singleton Dot Com is my personal outlet for a variety of topics that interest me and will allow the evolution of the content over time.  I would love to hear your thoughts on this matter either via the comments on this post, Twitter or through the contact form.