I didn't set up the presentation, and I don't use PowerPoint all that much. It's obviously not a complex issue, but I remember PowerPoint has a lot of settings in a lot of different places. Worse, the laptop is projecting to an enormous screen over my head, so I'm going to have to figure this out with 400 people watching my every click. But I figure it's something to do with the presentation settings, and I esc back into the program and start scouting for anything that looks likely. Anyone who's done much troubleshooting will appreciate this sensation, I think - you have a rough sense what you're looking for, and you hope it'll just kinda turn up. Meanwhile my boss is saying nice things about me to fill up the silence, and I get a little round of applause. But during this time I'm glancing through the menus and there's nothing jumping out at me. Hmmm. What to do.

At which point I remember I'm standing at a lectern, with a microphone, so I ask the audience. "Powerpoint people?" This gets a laugh, and an answer. It's enough of a hint that I spot the setting, which I change, then someone shouts out that I need to apply it to all the slides, which I do. Problem solved. Very relieved, I promptly get the hell off the stage.

That's not a trick you can pull very often. Live hiveminds aren't common. Still, got away with it this once.

One Day is the big romantic film of the moment, and I noticed it on Tuesday when Sainsbury's had a thousand copies on offer as part of their Valentine's Day promotions. I'm always one for such films, and I was also leaving work early due to being a walking petri dish, so I figured I might need something to cheer me up during the week. But there was a queue a mile long, so I called in to my local Tesco instead (bear with me). Tesco, oddly, weren't promoting it at all, despite having the longest, pinkest, teddybunnyest, massivecardest, frontofstoreest V-Day getup I'd ever seen, but I eventually dug out a copy from the DVD aisle and headed home to sink into 48hrs of delirium.

After some of the weirdest cold-induced breakdowns of reality I can remember - on Wednesday night I had a 4hr dream I was a rock, but in the wrong order - I wobbled back onto your planet and tried to pass the still-a-bit-Dali time with television and more television. And so yesterday I settled in for a cosy evening of Anne Hathaway + Some Guy having a bit of a time of it, but ending up happy. I reckoned thousands of people had probably done the exact same thing a few nights before. Which all seemed fine and good. And if you've read this far you probably know what's coming next.

Romantic it was. Happy it was not. Anne Hathaway is hit by a truck about 3/4 way through (no warning or foreshadowing - she didn't even cough), and the rest of the film is about grief.

Nicely handled grief, admittedly, but it wasn't the uplifting this-time-next-year-that'll-be-me fantasy I'd maybe wanted. Which is not a complaint. I enjoyed it, in the usual redefined 'enjoyment' sense of being sad for a bit and then no longer being sad.

Still though, Sainsbury's gave a lot of people a peculiar Valentine's night. I mean, the love-for-today message is actually delightful, really, but is still quite focused on the possibility of imminent death. Certainly enough to make any segues pretty awkward. You'd probably have to do the washing up, to be honest.

I'm going to give the benefit of the doubt to Tesco, though, and assume they saw all this coming and saved their customers the existential dissonance by burying the DVD at the back of the shop. Good Tesco. Bad Sainsbury's.

Anyway, someone's lent me Beaches, which I haven't seen but is apparently great, so I'm going to go cheer myself up.

He always had cool hair.

I wouldn't buy another bird - I don't like the idea of keeping them in cages any more. But in this case I was lucky, as he seemed ok with it. I've seen unhappy pet shop cockatiels pull out their feathers and sit around, still and depressed. He didn't do that. He was continually hopping around the cage, and would regularly sing and chatter to himself. When I let him out for some exercise, he'd fly to a picture frame and sit there for 4hrs. So I don't think he minded his cage too much, though I always felt a bit guilty.

He wasn't a big fan of humans. Other pets, though, became immediate BFFs. He quickly learned to emulate the guinea pig, and they'd have squeaking fits together. And over the years he developed a symbiotic relationship with the dog. He'd squawk loudly at first site of a squirrel in the garden, at which point Daisy would hurtle across the house. Once she was outside there'd be a shrieky audio commentary until the squirrel inevitably escaped. I don't think he ever really recovered from Daisy dying - I can't remember him singing since.

But, in general, humans were something to be tolerated. I suspect he often subsisted on a Batman-like desire for revenge on my Dad, who picked him up out of the cage during the first week we had him. The ignominy was permanent and catastrophic. To the day he died, he'd snarl and attack when my Dad walked past. Me, though, he liked. He'd eat out of my hand, and sometimes say my name when I entered the room. He could also say 'hello, how are you?'. Well, 'say' is a bit strong. But strangers knew what he was attempting.

I'll miss my little friend. Things are a bit less colourful now.

He always looked like your archetypal magician - I forget quite why this was, but I remember that magic somehow suited him perfectly. Plus his stage name, I'm pretty sure, was Izzard the Wizard. Everyone knew him, too - other local magicians would always smile if I mentioned Sam.

Mostly I think I'll remember his voice, and his infectious laugh as he and the other leaders competed to tell the silliest joke. Sam was always laughing.

He was the last of the three leaders, and I hadn't seen him since a funeral seven years ago (wow). I wish I'd got back in touch. His granddaughter kindly let me know the news by leaving a comment on a post I wrote at the time. Sam, Mat and Peter made a big difference in my life, and I'm sad they're gone. My condolences to Sam's family.

The central heating doesn't get much use. It runs from the main engine diesel tank, which means it seems free until the day it costs £1800 to refill. Plus it's noisy, inefficient and needs hours to make an impact, so I tend not to bother. The stove is far more powerful: it's 5kw, and will easily take the cabin from 12 degrees to 28 in ninety minutes. Which is clearly insane, but the hope is that I'll master the whole maintaining-a-reasonable-temperature thing at some point. So I use the stove most days. It feels vaguely romantic sitting next to a fire in the evenings, and it's a pleasant kind of all-encompassing warmth. It's obviously powered by coal and wood, and a local company deliver these to the marina. This has never been a problem. Until today.

So this morning I had a large load arrive: 75kg of coal, plus three 20kg bags of wood. They were delivered to the yard, which is the far end of the marina from me - about 250m away - so this evening I headed over and loaded up one of the many inexplicable-but-handy shopping trolleys that litter the place. I'd intended to make a couple of trips, but I figured what the hell - why not just pile it up? I could still move the trolley, and it would be worth a little extra effort to only have to make the trip once. So I rolled my 135kg load up to the gate that leads onto the wooden pontoons of the marina itself. There's a slope down, but this wasn't too bad: I guided the trolley from the front and things went ok. It was damned heavy, but I could manage it for a little while. I was more worried about the noise.

The marina is deathly quiet much of the time (I have no idea how this is possible in zone 2, but somehow it is), and water carries noise very well. Plus the wooden pontoons are artfully designed such that the slightest movement makes a colossal racket. But it was only 21:00, and I figured everyone could stand a few minutes of shuttling. So I slowly moved the trolley along the pontoon, and began to think about how this would soon be over. Sure, it was noisy and awkward now, but in another 15mins I'd have all it all loaded into the boat's storage hatch and I could think about lighting a fire and watching Scrubs. And then we hit an area of what I'm going to call adverse camber.

Everything veered to the right. And there was nothing I could do. Damn thing wasn't moving terribly fast, but had such momentum that I couldn't stop it. The pontoons are only maybe 250cm across, and so within moments the trolley reached the edge and collided with a boat. Mercifully empty. And mercifully made of steel, so unlikely to show scratches. Ok. This wasn't great, but at least I had some thinking time. And then a moment of horror as the boat began to shift outwards on its loosely-tied ropes, and the front-right wheel of the trolley headed towards the water.

If there hadn't been a samaritan walking past at this particular moment - not a common occurrence - I think I'd have lost the trolley and its contents in some awful flipover, en route slamming the lot into the paintwork for good measure. Thankfully the samaritan and I were able to wrestle everything back into a sensible position, at which point I emptied half of the contents onto the pontoon. Lucky.

Not my finest moment. And probably witnessed by a bunch of people, and heard by dozens more. I think I might have sworn somewhat.

But I'm typing this next to a roaring fire, so it's not all bad.

100 people or so gathered to protest her bill, which called for teenage girls to receive teaching on abstinence. Just girls, presumably because unwanted pregnancies are entirely the fault of women. Or something. She also claimed that girls learning to say no will help cut child abuse - the major problem with child abuse being a lack of clarity around consent, obviously. Anyway, it was a vile bill, anti-women, anti-sex and generally creepy, and it died in odd circumstances halfway through the rally. So yay!

I've just read this slightly odd report of the event, and found myself in the background of one of the shots (brightened slightly):

I don't think that was necessary at all.

The Batman one doesn't seem to be available any more (probably nobody wanted it) but Spider-Man and Wonder Woman are up on Amazon.

My search for other novelty slankets has been disappointingly fruitless, except for this marvel:

Close second.

Well, most of the time. The below poem made me laugh quite a lot. It starts off ever so romantic. I've no idea whether it's meant to be serious, but it does kinda fit. It's directed to "A Lady, Who Presented To The Author A Lock Of Hair Braided With His Own, And Appointed A Night In December To Meet Him In The Garden."

These locks, which fondly thus entwine,
In firmer chains our hearts confine
Than all th' unmeaning protestations
Which swell with nonsense love orations.
Our love is fix'd, I think we've proved it,
Nor time, nor place, nor art have moved it;
Then wherefore should we sigh and whine,
With groundless jealousy repine,
With silly whims and fancies frantic,
Merely to make our love romantic?
Why should you weep like Lydia Languish,
And fret with self-created anguish?
Or doom the lover you have chosen,
On winter to nights to sigh half frozen;
In leafless shades to sue for pardon,
Only because the scene's a garden?
For gardens seem, by one consent
(Since Shakespeare set the precedent,
Since Juliet first declared her passion),
To from the place of assignation.
Oh! would some modern muse inspire,
And seat her by a sea-coal fire;
Or had the bard at Christmas written,
And laid the scene of love in Britain,
He surely, in commiseration,
Had changed the place of declaration.
In Italy I've no objection,
Warm nights are proper for reflection;
But here our climate is so rigid,
That love itself is rather frigid:
Think on our chilly situation,
And curb this rage for imitation.
Then let us meet, as oft we've done,
Beneath the influence of the sun;
Or, if at midnight I must meet you,
Within your mansion let me greet you:
There we can love for hours together,
Much better, in such snowy weather,
Than placed in all th' Arcadian groves
That ever witness'd rural loves;
Then, if my passion fail to please,
Next night I'll be content to freeze;
No more I'll give a loose to laughter,
But curse my fate for ever after.

My highlights of 2011:

• Got a job at the BHA
• Completed my photography degree
• Moved to London
• Ran Questival (successfully enough that I've been asked to run 2012 - hooray!)
• Had a 2 month photo exhibition
• Performed a magic show for the first time in a decade

My big worry this time last year was the Big Looming Crisis of my degree ending with no prospects in sight. Happily, things seem to have gone ok. The first few months of the year were spent worrying about that, followed by non-stop trying to find somewhere to live, settling into the job and generally trying to get any kind of stability. After seven months I am, finally, just about settled. I live on a little boat in Rotherhithe, which suits me fine, and the job is going generally ok.

So: resolutions. Hmm. My biggest problem has been focussing too much on work. I'm usually there late, and am on call at weekends / holidays. So it's a bit relentless, and when things start to get stressful I find it hard to detach. So my resolution is to start doing other things, and since I find myself still extremely enthusiastic about dancing, I'm going to try to take that up a level. Like finding somewhere to practice in London, and getting more technical about it. I don't really know how this is going to work, but there are approximately a billion dance schools in London, so something should be doable.

Various other things that occur to me about 2011:

• I've hardly taken any photos.
• I've given up any pretence at cooking. And much of it was pretence, so this is arguably more honest.
• Apparently I have also stopped blogging, which is rubbish. I will try to be better.
• Everybody is getting engaged. Or moving in together. That kind of commitmenty thing. Everybody. A timer on the biological clock has clearly gone off, or something. It all happened fast. But hey, next summer I'm going to be maid of honour at my ex's wedding, which should be fun.

Anyway, Happy New Year!

In early autumn I happened to be reading a book about the psychology of willpower. It has the look of self-help dross, but is actually a proper pop-sci tour of the current psychogical literature on willpower and self-control. Really interesting, and it had a chapter on the effectiveness (or not) of to-do lists, and the various approaches that exist - mostly in business circles - for helping people keep control of their jobs and lives in general. And it ended up recommending a particular system, which I'll get to. But as interesting was what doesn't work, which really gelled with my experience.

First of all, it turns out daily to-do lists are a nightmare, and very few people can actually use them. The inevitable inclination is to fill them with tasks you'd like to get done. But this is always doomed. As soon as you don't get a task done, it gets bumped to the next day. Which makes that day even harder to complete. Even if you catch up, once you start completing the list the obvious thing to do is add more stuff. For most people, the to-do list becomes a depressing reminder of stuff you haven't done yet, and every day becomes a failure. Most people find that so demoralising that they stop using them. I've certainly done that.

Furthermore, they don't actually reduce stress all that much. Putting 'add monkeys section to the website' seems on the surface like something you have to do, but it's just a description. What information is needed for this monkeys section? Who has it? What kind of structure should it have? Do I need to run it by anyone else in the office first? Do I even have access to the relevant area of the website? Our brains know full well that all this is lurking in the background, so these tasks jump into our conscious thoughts when we're trying to concentrate on other things. You're trying to program a tricky bit of SQL, and you find yourself thinking 'actually, I need to email Eggbert about the scones, or the cakes will never be ready in time'. So you either find yourself jumping from task to task, never able to fully commit, or you are continually scribbling notes to yourself and can never focus - plus there's always the worry that something's been missed. And so the to-do list becomes even more demoralising. This is very familiar too.

So what does work? According to this book, our subconscious relaxes when it knows there's a plan in place. It's not enough to know what needs doing, we need to know how. And this is where it starts to recommend a particular system: David Allen's Getting Things Done.

I read the GTD book a few years ago, but never put it into practice. The system revolves around three things: your calendar, your project lists and your action lists. Your calendar contains the tasks that absolutely 100% need to be done that day. It does not contain any tasks you'd like to do - that's what the other lists are for. Project lists are like old-school to-do lists in that they describe everything you need to do, so you can keep track. But the action lists contain the next real-world step you need to take. So the project list says 'get presents for Mum's birthday', but the action list says 'search emails for the suggested present list Dad sent me'. So the action list contains only actions that you can immediately go and do.

You start your day by working through the vital stuff on your calendar, which is always very satisfying when it's done. Then you move to the action lists. A crucial part of the action list is the neutral hierarchy. Everything just sits on the same list. GTD strongly recommends against prioritising or categorising your lists, because:

a) prioritising takes a long time, and is out of date almost immediately - in most offices tasks change from hour to hour, and updating the list each time would be a waste of time.

b) you know full well what's important when you look at the list.

c) categories rarely work, as lots of projects cross boundaries, and trying to classify projects / reverse-engineer your own classifications is often frustrating. And removing frustration is a major aim of GTD.

d) who really cares about categories? Usually, work just needs doing.

You then go through the lists once a week to clear out the old stuff and add new things (you can do this as you're going along, obviously, but the weekly review is always required to make sure).

The idea of GTD is to get you organised and get out of your way. It strips out all the pointless stuff. It removes the failure of long daily to-do lists by giving you Actions to plough through, which is cool as it means you end the day having achieved stuff rather than seeing the things you haven't. And it provides much more peace of mind by providing a plan for each task that the subconscious is happy with. And this seems to be a psychologically valid approach.

All of which sounded ideal. There's plenty of slightly off-putting fanboy-esque GTD stuff online, but the psychological studies seemed to give it some actual validity. I figured that if nothing else it would help me get a handle on the workload. So I've spent the last two months trying to get everything into the system. That's the tough bit - you literally have to go through every note, email and thought to get everything onto the project/action lists. But a month ago I finally got there. And then I made my big mistake: I mentioned it to management at work.

I showed them my project list to a) give a very quick guide to what I was working on, and b) show I was getting myself organised. At which point they immediately wanted to know why it wasn't prioritised and categorised. Why isn't there a red/amber/green traffic light system so I know what's important? Although meant kindly, I could sense the slightly patronising tone as they described my apparently amateur attempt at organisation. I tried to explain that avoiding all that stuff is half the point, but despite a sympathetic ear I didn't have much luck. They now see it as a reporting tool, I guess, where it was only intended to help me organise myself. And GTD is, admittedly, not built for reporting.

So now I have to add a crapload of overhead. I'll try, obviously, but it's certainly not the smooth system I had in mind, and it's already seeming like the system itself is going to be annoying work. Which is very much not the point. So if you're reading this and GTD seems interesting, I highly recommend you keep it quiet.