Archive for February, 2005
Finally back from the road again. This was my last time for a very long while, as the contract requiring me to give train in the various corners of the province ends on Monday. I’m a little sad in a way, since I do like to travel, but it’s nice to be home and not have to worry about things like how low my gas tank was reading, locating the people who were supposed to be unlocking facilities for me, and trying to find decent places to eat.
Okay, I’ll admit it: I am a very big fan of nachos. Nachos done right, that is. Crisp homestyle corn tortilla chips, lots of aged cheddar and monterey jack cheese, cumin-spiced meat, piles of fresh tomatoes, japepenos, green peppers and onions, and then there’s the homemade hot salsa and just-whipped sour cream on the side. My mouth waters just thinking about it.
But… my time on the road has taught me a very important rule of thumb. The population density is inversely proportational to the likelihood that:
- The torilla chips are stale, no-name Doritos coated with salt and MSG-laden “flavour dust”;
- The “cheese” is a watered-down Cheez Whiz knock-off that glows in the dark and smells vaguely like my Jeep’s transmission;
- The veggies (if there are any) are the remains of a salad that someone couldn’t finish last week;
- The salsa has the flavour, consistency and spice of two-year-old ketchup (but not the good Heinz stuff); and
- The meat (if there is any) is only slightly softer than road gravel, but with less taste.
Such is my insomnia that I spent a full night staring at the ceiling and trying to create a mathematical equation to describe the above rule, complete with multipliers based upon the longitudinal and latitudinal distance from the Texas-Mexican border. I actually did get some numbers down, but the light of day –and a very cold shower– made it seem rather… uh… silly. However, at the time it seemed quite an important theorem I had stumbled across, and I wondered why nobody else had yet discovered it.
February 27th, 2005
Continuing my current fascination with bare tree limbs and sky….
February 27th, 2005
If your big thing is outlining and task management, you’re Mac-centric, and you haven’t been following the About This Particular Outliner series, shame on you! The latest column is now up, and includes a nod at GTD: ATPM 11.02 - ATPO: Task Management and Outlining. While some of the software is also available for Windows and/or Linux, the emphasis is on Macs because …well… the site is called About This Particular Macintosh. Personal task management and outlining software is the one area where I feel the Windows world is very lacking, at least until the Windows version of Tinderbox comes out. There are so many imaginative and impressive applications that run on my Macs that I’m spoiled for choice, and I cannot find comparable apps that run under the “other OS.” This series, documenting all the most popular (and not so popular) outliners, is one of the most consistantly thoughtful and well-written tech series I’ve seen, filled with screenshots, explanations, and pros and cons. Definitely intended for information management junkies, it’s one of the only columns I actually look forward to reading.
You can see a list of all ATPO articles so far on the About This Particular Outliner archive page.
If any Mac/Windows users out there want to mention any Windows applications you think are comparable to ones like Tinderbox, NoteTaker or OmniOutliner, I’m all ears. Please leave ‘em in the comments. I’d love to try them.
February 23rd, 2005
It seems as though I’ve managed to fix the feeds, the issues with bookmarks to parts of the former site, and some minor problems with stylesheets. My comments need some better CSS, but that’s the only thing left. From here on in, if you notice anything awry or buggy with this site, would you be so kind as to leave a comment or send me an email? (Email address, as always, is located at the base of the menu on the right.) I haven’t had any spare time recently for testing (or writing, for that matter), so I’m sure there are a few bits not working as they should.
February 23rd, 2005
Once upon a time, I used to manage fairly large multimedia projects involving anywhere from four to a dozen people. Besides myself, there were also several other managers in various parts of the company who were faced with trying to handle projects with diverse multi-disciplinary teams filled with regular employees, temps, freelancers and employees culled from various divisions. We tried a few different types of approaches for managing these tricky projects, including:
- Gantt charts and task lists produced by Microsoft Project
- Web-based scheduling and task management software, including three types of groupware
- Paper-based forms, delivered each morning by the PM (the Project Manager, not the Prime Minister) and completed by the team at end-of-day
- Outlook+Exchange for distributed tasks and calendars
- Daily email reminders of deadlines and uncompleted tasks
- Standing over the shoulders of employees and constantly asking, “Is it done yet? Why not?”
Being the “high-tech” guy, I generally advocated and experimented with the web-based ones, while others tried various approaches almost at random, according to mood or the best-seller flavour of the day.
So which one worked the best, on average? None of the above, unfortunately. It was a decidedly low-tech PM approach, notionally borrowed from a past A/V production department, which seemed to yield the best results. This department had a huge blackboard that it used to track personnel used for its projects. People referred to it each and every day as they walked past it (it was in a “lobby” between the offices), and there was never an excuse to double-book a team member or forget a deadline. I adapted a version of it for a whiteboard, using standard planner-style methodologies. I began to refer to it as a “warboard”, which lent a certain urgency and importance to it.
How to create one? Well, put up a whiteboard in a place that each member of the team visits or passes several times a day, such as a production room, a hallway, or even a lunch room. It should be a fairly short walk from any of the offices, and front-of-mind. It should be a large board (minimum 5 feet wide): if you only have small ones, put up two or even three. Devote half the space to the “hard landscape”, a two-month block calendar with deadlines, employee in/out days, holidays, and major resource allocations (such as a boardroom or a major piece of equipment in use). The other half, devote to the projects and team members. Write down each major project, the team for each one, and the deadline. Then for each team member, write down their next two or three actions. The PM should update these lists whenever tasks are completed or set; he or she should also have a “master list” on file for project tasks –this can come from a Gantt chart– as well as a list of all reference materials and to whom they are loaned.
A few quick tips, gleaned from experience…. Using a thin- or medium-sized whiteboard marker helps save space, and you can fit a lot more on the board in a neater fashion. Use different colours for different types of projects. Keep plenty of spare markers in your desk drawer. You can create a two-month grid using a permanent marker and a yardstick, so that you only have to wipe off the whiteboard markers each month, and the grid stays. (An alternative would be to use a very large laminated calendar, but this isn’t highly visible, nor can you fit much on them.)
It works well. For the employees, there is never an excuse for not doing your job, plus having others know your tasks is a source of both motivation and ownership. For the PMs, resource allocation isn’t generally a problem, and you know that your team is aware of their responsibilities and deadlines far ahead of time. It’s decidedly low-tech, but it’s probably one of the most effective project management tools I’ve seen yet. I wouldn’t want to manage hundreds of people with it, but it’s great up to a dozen or so, especially in a fairly close-knit organisation.
Even if I’m working solo on a project, I still tend to produce a warboard. When projects accumulate and deadlines fly quickly, and I’m in danger of verving into crunch or crisis management territory, it helps to have a whiteboard –however small– within easy view and reach. I populate it with material from my planner, so the two remain in sync.
I wasn’t aware of GTD at the time, but the process of warboarding is a very snug fit indeed.
February 22nd, 2005
Working on it. It appears that the new WordPress does not like to use “index.php” in the feed name any more, which had been used in my last version. Therefore, the URLs for the feeds have changed. I’m trying to do some Apache rewrite rules to allow all the former index.php subscribers to still keep reading, but this is a little out of my territory.
In the meantime, please pop over to a million monkeys typing and resubscribe to the feeds. Sorry about that. One of the hazards of upgrading, I guess.
February 21st, 2005
I think everything is working now. There are still a few “niggly bits” causing minor issues, and I seem to be sent blank comments for moderation several times an hour (I’m guessing that these have already been killed by SpamKarma?), but it appears to have been a successful upgrade, overall.
As for WordPress 1.5, I have to say I’m loving it so far. More thoughts on this great blogging product later.
February 21st, 2005
Finally have a few minutes to upgrade my WordPress installation from 1.2.x to 1.5. I’m following the excellent upgrade instructions but I am running into a few difficulties, mainly arising from some plugins and my heavy customisation. I’ll post again when the upgrade is complete; till then, please be patient if you run across any weirdness.
February 20th, 2005
One of the reasons for my productivity kick of recent months is the need to balance an extremely hectic lifestyle. My day job is ending at the end of the month, necessitating a lot of long hours, traveling, and delivering back-to-back training sessions. (And, it seems, I will be unemployed come March 1st, with a family to feed: a genuine cause of concern.) My other job is developing a new online high school English course for the Department of Education, which I slot into almost every spare minute in the attempt to finish the contract for next month. Plus, I have a seven-month-old baby that I should really be spending more time with. Add all that up, and you can probably see why I am often overwhelmed by my schedule. Keeping track of it all, and attempting to make the most of every minute, is an ongoing and highly stressful battle.
Yesterday, I had about an hour between training sessions, and I was “around the bay” near Glovertown, on the cusp of Terra Nova National Park. There isn’t much to do in Glovertown, especially in the winter, so I was at a loss at what I might do to fill an hour. I drove into one of the many nearby bays and parked the Jeep to get out and take in a breath of fresh air. The wind had died down to a gentle breeze, and the mild weather was allowing fog to creep in from the Atlantic, smothering the nearby hills and covering the ice flows that reached into every harbour and inlet. From the side of the road, I could see the ice beginning to retreat, leaving large areas of dark, deep, open water.
An odd thing happened. As I stared at the scene, belly-breathing in the misty salt air, getting lost in the blackness of the harbour, I became aware of the tension –knotted tightly into the muscles of my back and forehead– gradually slipping away. My perennial headache released its grasp upon my brain, and an odd feeling of peace swept through me. The ice, shrinking and melting away into the depths of the sea, took on another meaning, one that I cannot fully describe.
I took the above photograph, and will put it into my planner as a reminder that life is not all schedules, deadlines, action lists and endless responsibilities. I think we all need such a reminder, although its nature will no doubt be different for each and every one of us.
February 18th, 2005
And now for something completely different….
A few years ago during the dot-com gold rush, I was shuttled across the continent for a weekend of consulting in San Diego. While the gig wasn’t anything memorable, two things were: my all-to-brief trip to the Natural History Museum there (my first face-to-face brush with dinosaurs), and a delicious never-ending supper at a little “mom and pop” Mexican restaurant on the outskirts of the city. The salsa, in particular, was so good that I brought a large mason jar back to the hotel, and I actually finished it off that night. It was symbolic of everything I love about good Mexican food: the “unprocessed” summer-fresh earthy taste, the zing of tomatoes, the heat of peppers, and its ability to induce my appetite to such a frenzy that I could eat three times my fill.
Now, most of the food I ate that night I could never reproduce with the limited ingredients available up here in Newfoundland, but the salsa in particular was something that I thought within my grasp. After all, most salsa is a combination of tomatoes, peppers, cilantro, sugar and vinegar. However, my efforts to cajole any recipes out of the waitress proved fruitless (my Spanish was certainly not up to the task), and I’ve never been able to find a recipe that captured that exact taste, despite some well-meaning help from a few friends south of the border.
Last night, o! miracle of miracles! — some slightly-withered sprigs of cilantro actually appeared in the produce department of our local supermarket, as well as some inexpensive greenhouse tomatoes. Seizing upon this rare opportunity, I gathered together some ingredients and brought them home for another attempt.
I think I nailed it this time.
The key to this recipe is super-fresh ingredients. I wasn’t lucky enough to find all of it fresh, and even had to default to a jar of pickled jalepenos, but it’s still quite delicious. Some of the ingredients were probably not in the original recipe, such as the celery, but I find that these give the salsa a little extra edge. Also, this version is tailored for ingredients more commonly used up here in the Great White North, and doesn’t really rely on “specialty” items or those with very limited distribution. Finally, a food processor is a boon in preparing this, as chopping all of this by hand might take you a little while.
The resulting salsa is pretty hot, so use less hot peppers and more tomato if you want it a little milder.
Summer-fresh Salsa
Ingredients:
- 6 large fresh ripe tomatoes (not beefsteak — those have less taste)
- 2 medium yellow onions
- 2 large celery stalks
- 1 large green bell pepper
- 1 375 ml jar of pickled jalepeno peppers, drained (or 1 1/2 cups banana/serrano peppers); or 6-8 fresh jalepeno peppers plus 1 tbsp extra vinegar
- 5 tsp (or cubes) of sugar (I use “plantation raw” golden sugar cubes, which give a slightly earthy taste)
- 2 tbsp red wine vinegar, preferably balsamic (substitute white if absolutely necessary)
- 2 large cloves garlic, chopped
- 1/2 cup fresh cilantro, chopped (this cannot be substituted with anything else, especially dry cilantro)
- 4 tbsp lime juice
- 4 tsp chili powder
Directions:
Cut the green pepper and onions into eighths, and the celery into 1/2 inch slices. Put this, the drained jalepenos, the sugar, and 1 cup water into the food processor. Pulse until chopped to the desired size. (Some people prefer salsa more chunky than others.) Scoop into large bowl.
Cut top core of tomatoes out, then section the tomato into quarters. Put four tomatoes into the food processor with the vinegar, garlic, cilantro, lime juice and 1/2 cup water. Blend well. Add the final two tomatoes and blend again, slowly, leaving a little texture to the final mix. Pour into the bowl with the other blended ingredients, add the chili powder, and stir well.
Spoon into jars, and the flavour will continue to mix overnight. This recipe will fill 3-5 medium jars and will keep for weeks, if you can stop eating it. Serve with tortilla chips, nachos, tacos, etc.
February 16th, 2005
Going through the photographs of yesterday’s snowstorm, I came to the painful realisation that I need a light meter again: it’s a pretty essential piece of gear, even for digital photography. (By the way, the following info is for photography newbies only… more advanced folks will probably laugh their way through my feeble attempts at explanation.)
A lot of the better digital cameras nowadays can take manual exposure settings, so when the situation necessitates it, you can jump into the controls and set the f/stop (the aperture, or the size of the opening that lets light into the camera), the shutter speed (how long light is allowed onto the sensor), and the ISO (the film speed, or at least the digital equivalent). Now, most cameras have an automatic setting, and they do a pretty good job of figuring out the exposure by selecting the fastest shutter for the existing light situation. Some will let you vary the shutter speed, the f/stop or the ISO, and everything else adjusts for you.
But there’s a problem with this. Most cameras set the exposure by reflective metering — that is, by the amount of light reflected back onto the sensor from the subject. There’s a bit of mathematics happening behind the scenes to find the shadows, mid-tones and highlights, and spread the tones appropriately. (This is a simplification, I know, but bear with me.) But what happens when the tones don’t cover the whole gamut from black to white, or if there’s far more of one than the other? The sensor gets confused, and the algorithms don’t work. For example, almost all of my snowstorm pictures were overwhelmingly mid-tone (50%) grey where they should have been white. Consequently, all of the photographs needed to be brought into Photoshop so I could adjust the levels and curves and make them look somewhat acceptable.
Now, a good light meter not only offers reflective metering, but also incident reading. This is the amount of light actually falling upon your subject. Thus, it’s far more reliable for scenes with snow, glare, sand and other situations that would confound a reflective meter. You simply go into the same light as your subject, hold up the meter so that the little dome or cone is facing your camera, and you can get an accurate reading. Adjust to your desired shutter speed, ISO or f/stop, and the meter will recompute the exposure and show the settings that you can manually enter in your camera.
There’s a wide variety of meters, but you needn’t pick up a new, expensive digital one –about $250-500 USD or more– unless you’re shooting professionally (in which case, you already know all this). It’s often possible to purchase used analogue meters from pawn shops and pre-owned camera stores. Just make sure that it has incident reading (some only have reflective), and you can figure out how to use it — some of them can be a little complicated. I wish I had picked up a decent little one I saw in Nova Scotia for $25 CDN when I had a chance: the one I used back in high school went missing somewhere along the line.
I find it a little odd that several of the recent photography books I own don’t even mention the light meter (or, if they do, it’s a tiny paragraph in a sidebar); surely, digital photographers ought to know how to set a proper exposure without crossing one’s fingers and hoping that the camera gets it right. Constantly reviewing the output and histograms and reshooting is certainly no substitute for a decent incident reading in the first place. As I mentioned earlier, most cameras do a decent job with figuring out exposure settings. But grab yourself a light meter, and you’ll probably find a noticable improvement in your photographs, especially in winter conditions, on the beach, or near shining glass or water.
Anyone out there recommend a good but inexpensive meter, preferably digital?
February 14th, 2005
One of the more interesting quizzes I’ve done, but then again I’m a history nut: Your Medieval Personality Type. My results were:
You are a “bilious” Choleric, with an abundance of yellow bile (believed to have originated in the kidneys). Cholerics are characterized by the element of Fire, the season of Summer, early adulthood, the color fiery red, and the characteristics of “Hot” and “Dry.” Famous Cholerics include St. John the Baptist, St. Paul, and St. Ignatius of Loyola.
If you were living in the Age of Faith, perfect career choices for you would be Crusader (leader of the Crusades, of course), the knighthood, King, mayor, head of a guild, founder of a new religious order, or housewife or father with a well-organized, well-behaved brood, each of whom you expect to excel.
Of course, most of the above “career choices” would generally necessitate being born into the upper echelons of a tight class structure (a statistical improbability), but it’s an interesting quiz nonetheless. There’s a full page on each personality type, so you can suck in a bit of medieval “psychology” when you’re finished. There are also comparisons therein to historical figures and the Bible (hey, it’s a Catholic site).
Please, no comments on the implications of “Crusader”… it’s been done.
February 14th, 2005
If you look closely at the above picture, you’ll actually see something that resembles trees and a telephone pole. This was a typical scene looking out over the hood of my Jeep for about eight hours today as I drove from the Burin Peninsula, where I had been giving some training, back to my home in Gander. It was one of the worst snowstorms I’ve ever been caught in. Most of the time, I just had to crawl along, aiming towards the “whitest” part of things, and hope that I was still on the pavement and not heading blindly towards a curve or a steep ditch.
Normally, I like long driving trips because they give me time to think, reflect, plan and relax. But this occasion, I could only peer out into the whiteness for signs of nearing the edge of the road, trying not to lose control of the vehicle, and not get too shocked when I’d suddenly plow into any of the unseen 2-foot-high drifts that periodically mark places where the wind squalls whip snow up over the road from the barrens. Almost no roads were plowed, and of the eight hours, there was only about fifteen minutes when I passed through communities: the rest was essentially just wilderness with the occasional cabin or gas station.
I got back an hour ago, and my muscles are still knotted with the built-up tension of concentrating so hard for so long, preparing for the worst at any moment.
February 13th, 2005
“Vanity publishing” tends to sucker a lot of wanna-be writers who don’t know any better. A regular publisher will take on the costs of publishing and marketing your book at their own risk, and give you an advance calculated upon their estimate of probable sales. Needless to say, it’s not easy to get a book published in this way: they have to be absolutely convinced of the quality of your work and its potential in the marketplace. Vanity publishers, on the other hand, will pass on the costs of publishing to you, and only offer a royalty as a contractual token (usually $1). Certain of these will pretend to be valid and respectable publishers, claiming that their crack editorial team will carefully adjudicate your book and pass their judgement upon its quality and suitability, but then offer contracts to publish materials that would give a Vogon Captain the shudders. The Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America conceived of a brilliant sting to shed light upon one such vanity publishing firm and what they would actually consider publishable material. From their page Atlanta Nights - The Worst Book Ever Written:
A collection of SFWA authors (and, ahem, non-authors) concocted to write a very poorly written book. Under “direction” of James D. Macdonald, each author was given minimal information from which to write a chapter (with no idea of the chapter’s location in the book, time of year, background of the characters, what the plot was, etc.), and encouraged to write poorly. It’s a truly awful book, a serious contender for Absolute Worst Book Ever Written. The result was submitted “for review” by PublishAmerica to see if “has what this book publisher is looking for.” It did. 
PublishAmerica offered a contract.
You can read the actual book (disclaimer: may cause spontaneous hemorrhage), the acceptance letter, the contract, and more. See also www.WriterBeware.org.
February 9th, 2005
Version 2.0 of the DIY Planner should be released in early to mid-March, and to that end, I’m looking for a bit of help. There are some templates I’d like to produce, but don’t know enough about the subjects to feel I can do a good job. I can use another planner system’s forms as a basis, but then I’m concerned about infringing upon their copyrights, which –in this sue-happy age– is something I really want to avoid.
- A few people have requested “fitness” or “exercise” templates. Not being a fitness buff (well, except for cycling and hiking), I have no idea of the best way to structure such a form. It has to be generic enough to allow for different exercises, reps, time durations, etc., but still allow for ease of use and adequate space (perhaps this one should be sideways?).
- Daily Finances and Expense Report. Again, I’m trying to avoid copyrighted “look and feel” issues here. Anyone have any good ideas for these, especially those that can address the limitations of other planners’ forms?
- Vehicle Service Record.
- Insurance Information.
- I’m also looking for reference cards and “cheat sheets”, all non-copyrighted, of course. Weights & Measures, Area Codes, Time Zones, First Aid, Windows Shortcuts, Mac OS X Shortcuts, common bash commands, and anything else that might be very useful to many users. I’m going to resist the urge to do anything too technical or niche here, with the possible exception of bash (because it’s something I –and many people I know– would probably use). I’ll probably put these cards into a separate PDF file within the package.
- Anything else you’d like to see?
If you’d like to help, please leave a comment or drop me an email (see my address at the bottom of the menu at the right). A few things to point out, before you do:
- Let me contact you before you go through any degree of effort. There may be somebody already volunteering to help produce the same material.
- You must be prepared to hand over any ideas to me, and not claim ownership of them in any form. (This is my “cover my legal ass-ets” disclaimer: I don’t want anybody coming back to me at a later date with a subpoena, alleging that their idea is what made me a millionaire.
) However, I will be duly noting any volunteers in the credits along with their web page links and/or email addresses, so everybody can recognise your contribution, you can feel good about helping other organisational geeks, and you can even get a little traffic to boot.
- You must state that any ideas you put forth are not copyrighted by anyone, as far as you can determine within the limits of reason. The finished templates and references will go under the Creative Commons license with the rest of the package, under the same terms and conditions (see the package’s accompanying HTML file for more details). If something is public domain (say, a diagram or a particular chart), I will note it in the credits file, so this shouldn’t pose a problem.
- If you are either artistically inclined, or are capable with an office or graphical program, please feel free to send mock-ups or layout ideas. If not, just basic text information or ideas would be fine.
- Keep in mind that any template information, mock-ups or layout ideas you pass along to me should not ressemble or make use of any copyrighted material. I can’t stress this enough. I don’t need a mega-corp hauling my derriere to some expensive U.S. kangaroo court where they’re represented by a $1000/hour lawyer and my spokesperson has all the legal knowledge of a backwoods muskrat (i.e., “me”).
Upon the release of 2.0 in 5.5″x8.5″ form, I will be following it up almost immediately with an A5 version (which is just a bit of a resize, really). It would appear that my volunteers for producing letter-size and A4 are going to be busy till at least April, so I might put out a call for other help next month unless my schedule opens up enough to produce these versions myself within a reasonable timeframe.
I just wanted to offer a big thank-you for all the feedback so far. It’s been invaluable to the production of these templates, and I’ve learned a lot about how others work effectively. Surely, this will help my own productivity in the long run.
February 9th, 2005
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