This is a post I've been meaning to make for ages. It involves boozing, and amateur systems analysis, which anyone who knows me knows are two of my favourite things.

In the UK, among other countries, the culture when buying drinks is to buy a round for everyone in the group who wants a drink. Simple, but not without its drawbacks for larger groups: Rounds vary wildy in size, sometimes making people reluctant to step up to the plate, often you have to order too much to carry, and worst of all, it rewards fast drinking, because quick drinkers get to join more rounds.

So, what to do? Enter rounds of three, and it's so simple, even a rabid drunk can manage it. In one sentence:

Buy rounds for whoever wants a drink at the given time exactly as usual, except limit the round to three drinks.

This means you can carry them, noone gets stung for a big round, and people drink at their own pace - safe in the knowledge they won't get left behind.

Now I admit the truth is it's hard to persuade a group to alter learnt behaviour - however the times I've tried it with friends it's worked nicely, and given a nice rest evening to the livers of those who wanted one...

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I use lots of apps that allow me to put little status updates in them – Facebook, Twitter, IM clients and even Dinqi, my own lifetracking app. I like this idea of letting people know what I'm up to, and starting conversations with them, however I don't want to spend my life updating my status on myriad different applications. What to do?

Enter RSS, Twitterfeed and Ping.fm.

The diagram below shows how I post to a few primary sources and use a few apps to spread the love, as well as how I get notified when someone replies:

A few notes:

• If I want to post random stuff in directly I start at Ping
• I still visit Twitter and Facebook when I have a quiet moment and want to browse what folk are chatting about.
• Work and play aren't absolute – if it's not a secret then the Play route is fine for both.
• By MSN I mean MSN Messenger - there just wasn't room in the diagram.
• This isn't exactly how I have it now – Twitterfeed has only recently started supporting Ping and I haven't bothered to rejig stuff since, but I will.
• This is just how I do it. It probably won't suit you exactly as is, but is hopefully interesting anyway.

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When faced with a quiet evening with my flatmate we may well decide to watch a film. Cue: "What do you fancy?" and an hour of scanning Tiscali timidly pointing out stuff we think the other person might be okay with - All the while both secretly wanting to watch 'Hostel' or some other such crap, but presuming the other wouldn't want to see that in a million years.

Scene set.

The way we've found round this, which also works in other situations and with bigger groups, is one person chooses a shortlist, which the other then picks from.

If there's two of you, have a shortlist of 3 or 4. If there's three of you, the first picks 5, the second narrows it down to 3 and the last person chooses.

The key is that if you're picking several films you don't have to worry so much about what the other person wants - as long as you have a little variety in your shortlist (5 mexican restaurants is not a cool list) there's bound to be something they fancy on it.

Failing that there's a neat little iPhone app called iChoose - but you'll still need that shortlist...

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If you buy decent headphones they should come with a break half way down the cable. This means if you have a tiny mp3 player, and you can attach it within 50 cm of your ears, you can get away with half the cabling.

Here's a few places I've clipped my shuffle in order to manage this:

1. On a necklace under a T-shirt
2. Inside a rolled-up sleeve
3. In a top or inner pocket
4. On my collar (NB: This made me look like an idiot, but that was fine as I was cycling)
5. On the headphones themselves, if you have big over-ear ones (NB: This also makes me look like an idiot - irrespective of circumstance, but it really works.)

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Tiny tip: When folding up an A4 printout or similar that you'll want to refer to later, fold it backwards first, so the front faces outward.

That way when you come back to it you won't have to open it to see what it is.

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