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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