This year I intend to Blog more. For goodness sake, I couldn't possibly blog less than last year, which was an altogehter abysmal effort on my part.
My time is more scarce these days. I am writing a book (sporadically) and work harder for 'the man' now than I did at the BBC. Corporate America just demands more of my time than Jolly Old England did. There's more to do outside of work hours too. I've taken up racing sailing boats once a week during the summer. I can't imagine doing that on the Thames. The most activity I did on a boat there was lifting a pint glass to my mouth. I miss the Queen Mary and the company I kept on her.
There's less paid holidays to be had and at least an hour of extra work every day. The bigger percentage of every day is invariably spent working for the company.
The sad part is that I'm not learning as much nowadays and perhaps thats why I've felt less inclined to blog the process of my opening eyes. It takes time to learn things. Time to research. Time to watch trends. Time that I spend now actually earning my keep.
I've spent the better part of the last six months trying to hire Information Architects for my team. I can usually secure one for a while, then for some reason they all want to fly away to far flung places. In the meantime, I have to manage a team and be a senior IA practitioner too. Frankly, its gruelling at times.
So, the resolutions for this year are to call my mother more often and to get the damn workload to a point where I have time to think again. Think and write those thoughts here. Know any good IAs or Interaction Designers who need work in Seattle?
Good luck me.
Why is it that someone special can inspire you to reach for your full potential as a human, rather than just as a worker-bee when alone? I met someone whos done little but rock my world for the last five months and the stability, or perhaps safety, that was comforting prior to our meeting, is on its head.
In as many months as years in the UK, I've decided to uproot myself from an established life here; all the very dear friends; the great job and future in it; the family; the cheap spacious flat near a park; the vibrant city that has treated me so well... Why? Why leap into the virtually unknown - to the USA, knowing there may not be many others to identify with? And all to be with someone known to me for less than five months?
We went to our fourth philosophy class Wednesday, and on Tuesday I started a course of yoga. Never done yoga, or philosophy before, but have been philosophical and tried to live a 'balanced' life albeit unmotivated to expand those tendencies in any academic sense. We do a lot of breathing in yoga and plenty of being still in philosophy. Both are supposed to bring you back to the essential elements of being. "We are given all we need in this life when we're born" so, as long as breathing's going on I won't need all my friends, steady job, house etc right?
I've done all this before, so it's really not as daunting as It could be. The difference is that this time the reason for moving countries is about chasing something, rather than running from it. That feels a lot more empowering. Seattle's an interesting city, with mountains and ocean nearby. There's loads of my kind of work with interesting companies. Change is good. Growth is better.
Growing is strange because it seems to come in spurts. I think if you graphed it, it would look something like this.
Inspiration seems to come in many forms. Sometimes its an experience, something you see, or sometimes its a person. The result of inspiration feels like an increase in knowledge that is disproportionate to the amount of experience normally required to accrue it.
My inspiration for moving is the same as that for taking up philosophy and yoga classes. I reckon that's worth following if not attempting to keep a hold of.
I've had blog paralysis lately, not feeling like I know what to write about. Nothing very interesting happening professionally, or at least nothing I can write about... just yet. Besides which, the beginning 'understanding' phases of a project are high on making plans and asking questions. Not a great deal of interesting insight to write about.
Anyway, it got me thinking about what this blog is for anyway... So, I had a look around at blogs and you've got all manner of them out there. Work only blogs, personal only blogs, blogs that are just links, blogs that are just photos, blogs that are diaries, blogs that are written to four times a day, blogs that are written to less than four times a year. So what's this blog supposed to be about? I'm asking myself. What's missing from my blog experience that has me constipated? Why don't I feel like writing?
So far I've focussed my blogging on work stuff, feeling like if this thing ever gets an audience, I don't think they'd be interested in my little old life. I also have a problem with writing about myself in a self-congratulatory, or what I feel like is an egotistical way. Rarely do my entries contain my interpretations of events, but more factual stuff, links and references that I'd find interesting to look back on. So what's the ultimate goal? Why did I start blogging? Was it to try and assert some kind of territory in the 'blogsphere'? Am I a slave to a trend? Was I trying to open a channel with the new-media boffin in me? Was this designed to try and promote myself as a user experience designer? What? This conflict is has been present from the start of this blog's life and is evident in the title.
On a fundamental level the question really is: Am I writing for me or others?
The very fact that a weblog is all connected to other people and publicly accessible makes it hard explain away as an entirely private endeavour. But it is for personal use. As such it is a list of bookmarks that I can use to support my appalling memory. But its also for public use, or should I say publicity. The work insights I try to put in The Vanity Experiment are supposed to prove that I'm thinking, pushing myself to learn new things. Expressing the things I learn is a way to capture this process, but also to illustrate that I know them. Should a potential employer look on this space, maybe they'll look more favourably on me for having some idea about me or at least what I profess to know.
So there's little of me in this space. Perhaps that's what's missing from the experience? Life isn't all about work, and my life's been too full of other good things recently to have time to write about my profession. So, starting with this entry, The Vanity Experiment is going to have a little more of me in it because life's too short to be so damn professional.
Hello world!
This blog has become so badly spammed now that I have to turn off public comments because I spend the time I would've spent writing on it, weeding out the "Nice site" comments by Mr Penis Enlargement and friends. I know there's something I can do about this, but it involves thought, effort and 'playing' with code, all of which don't come naturally to me. It may be a few weeks...
Please don your hat that doesn't object to politically incorrect jokes... it is a joke after all.
An Englishman, an American and a Chinaman are in a battle situation and are being appointed the CO's of different units by the commander in chief. The chief says to the Englishman, "OK, you Brits are good at talking, so you be the diplomat and see if you can talk our way out of this..." and then he turns to the American and says "If he fails, you yank's are pretty quick on the trigger, so you head up the armed forces and blast em to hell..." and then he looks to the china man and says "Hmmm... OK I'm not sure what the Chinese do well but we need someone to keep the supplies, so you supply the ammo and stuff for whole outfit". Anyways, the battle heats up, the Englishman goes to the front line to try and negotiate and is promptly shot. So the American sends his troops in to kick some ass, but gets about through a half day when they start to run out of ammo and says "where's that darn Chinaman? He's supposed to be supplying us with bullets". He finally gets desperate when he's suffering heavy casualties and the enemy is on top of them, so goes to look for the Chinaman. He hunts high and low and can't find him anywhere. Finally he goes to the 'munitions dump to fetch the ammo himself and just as he's loading up bullets, out from behind the boxes jumps the Chinaman shouting "supplies!!"...
Sometimes you stumble accross someone's web log and you know they know people you know and you just can't work out who it is... and then you pick up on nuances of speech/type that 'sound' familiar and guess their identity.
Tonight I discovered a good mate of mine started 'blogging at the start of the year and never told me. Perhaps just because he's not into all this "ooh, I read so and so's blog who was quoting so and so's blog" stuff... I mean it does get a little incestuous and vain (hence the name of this one). But in a way that's the whole point, it's about inspiring each other, supplying one another with food for thought and suppliesing them with little gems like this.
Welcome McWebb to the world of the 'blog. You are now officially a wanker, just like the rest of us. ;)
Concrete casts new light in dull rooms
The days of dull, grey concrete could be about to end. A Hungarian architect has combined the world’s most popular building material with optical fiber from Schott to create a new type of concrete that transmits light.
This is a beautiful invention. I wonder if you'll be able to tailor it to your designs, like having more optic fibre in some places over others? The variation in density of light you could create a whole new architectural art form.
Thanks to Sri for "brightening" my day with this article... arf!
Just found this product called the eyetv 400 which is essentially a box for getting digital terrestrial TV signals into your mac. The software that comes with it enables you to do most all those things you wanted to do with a TVR except it only recieves digital terrestrial. Downside is you have to watch it on your mac, but I'm sure there's ways to plug the Mac into the television again.
It'd be good if you could decode cable and other signals on it, but it doesn't do that... yet. I wonder how long it will be before they can work out a legal loophole or negotiate a deal with the commercial media pirhanas providers. Now that'd be a coup for the consumer.
Recently I have been asked to undertake some work for someone on a freelance basis. On inspecting the brief, it struck me that perhaps there was a lot of work represented for a company that did not yet exist. The company was to be founded on the web site and stock tracking software we were to build. Without going into the details, it seemed that the business model was just not going to work. So I said so, to the chagrin of those present who'd be happy to take the opportunity to make some money.
It is the web industry's responsibility to not just do what people ask. I believe that if you suspect a client is setting themselves for a fall, you should advise them so, even if it means losing an opportunity to make good money. It is a false economic opportunity as the more clients that are burnt by dot com failures, the less people will trust the industry's potential for investment. This ultimately leads to fewer jobs for the professionals working in the industry. Greed now equals recession later. You only need to look toward the 1980s to see this lesson in a slightly different form.
So, now I'm out of pocket because they're looking for someone else who'll just do the damn job and not be difficult and ask too many questions. Nice guys do seem to finish last. I hope for the client's sake it's a success. I fear it won't be.
'Tis the season for farewells. On Friday evening we sent off Gideon who's leaving The Beeb to go work for a fashion outfit called Chunk. It was a messy, debauched and fun evening that led from pub to bar to club.
Mark McClure, who worked with us to help design Connector, also had a leaving do as he is Australia bound in a few weeks. The Easton pub is a very nice discovery. I'll be frequenting it more often.
Just got back from the USA. Am feeling jetlagged and grumpy as British Airways did a fairly average job of getting me from there to here. Stuck faffing about on the runway for 2 hours in Denver becuase they knew that a strong tailwind would save them a few hours on the journey. What with that, hardly any water service on the trip itself, mistimed inflight video (so you got to see half of a movie before it was switched off for descent) with constant announcements interrupting it and finally 'congestion' at heathrow terminal delaying us another 20 minutes... and then another 10 because the ground crew pissed off before attaching the gangway... I feel that their good reputation is ill deserved. Give me Malaysian Air any day.
Met a nice chap on the shuttle who was also headed for London. We got chatting about free wifi and where to get it in London among other things. It prompted me to do some research. Here's what I found.
News story on ZDNetUK on WarChalking
Matt Jones (founder of WarChalking)
And finally, a bunch of other good resources from Gavin.
My brother admitted to me yesterday why the fish is really sick... The story goes that he tried to scoop the fish out to clean its tank without using the usual glass dipping technique. Instead, he grabbed the fish in his hand and the little beggar slipped out and suffered a three foot drop to the hard floor. After moments of panic Andrew managed to pick the panicked fish up again, only to repeat the trauma with a second slip knocking the poor thing senseless. It's never been the same since. I fear no amount of peas will fix poor fishy now. Poor fishy.
I'm worried about my brother's fish. It's a bit wierd and lays on the surface on its side, although seemingly not by choice. It's been like that for ages apparently and still seems to have plenty of energy. Andrew, my brother, thinks it's got trapped air and needs to fart. It's all this altitude up here in Boulder I think, which has us all drinking much more water to keep fluids up. Your skin get's really dry up here too.
The vet told Andrew to feed him peas, but he wont eat peas... even when they're broken up and dangled in front of him on bits of cotton. Poor fishy.
Went for a hike up the Flatirons (part of the Rockies) with Avery (my sister) and Terry (her husband) which was awesome.
It's so beautiful up there. We got a good view of the smoke from the 'wild fires' that were ensuing a small village up there.
More Pictures here
Alice, who I was referring to here has got herself a blog. It's aptly called Wonderland. Have a read, she's a funny lass and a bloody bright cookie to boot.
Note to self. Don't try an upgrade an operating system 2 hours before you're due to leave to get on a plane. The laptop seemed to crash half way through the upgrade and had been behaving very strangely since. I decided the easiest thing to do was not to shut it down incase it wouldn't start up again. So finally after 3.5 days of conference noting like a demon, the G3 Powerbook finally crapped out and lost it's operating system. I don't know where, but it's gone la la now. I have more handwritten notes to type up from the last seminar. Will do that tomorrow and take it to the doctor.
I'm in Boulder with my Brother now, and he's got LOTS of computers so I shouldn't be stuck for an internet fix for the next week. Yay!
This is the very coolest sound-scape software I've seen in ages. By Amit Pitaru, it uses a pressure sensitive digitising tablet to make sound on a kinda rotating interface. See the demo here. WOW!
Today I am the proud owner of a new Korg SP200 digital piano! I've been playing it a bit today and it's a real joy. Having grown up with a piano in the house as a kid, I have missed having one around to just plunk away at for relaxation.
Although the piano is not my first instrument, it's definately the one that I find the easiest to communicate with. It's to do with having all that visual feedback from the keys whereas with a saxophone or guitar, you just don't get that. You can see what you're pressing and then associate this action with the result it produces – a sound.
The interface with a piano has direct mapping too – there's no dual functioned keys. One key does pretty much one thing 'affords' pressing. So, as a teaching aid, it is far superior to most any other instrument because you can visually see the structure of chords and melodies.
The downside to this is making a connection between the visual patterns learned on the keyboard and those one must learn to read musical notation on paper. These are unfortunately not the same. When there are no learned visual patterns within the interface (such as with the saxophone, because you can't see the keys when you're playing), the patterns within music notation can be more easily 'learned by route' and translated into actions made by the fingers.
Music notation isn't just any old information though... or perhaps it is... It's a whole language in itself comprising letters, numbers, punctutation, sentences, phrases and more. So learning this language is less difficult when you don't have to cope with visual feedback too... or is it? Imagine being able to see how your mouth makes sentences when you're trying to learn a language. Is there an instance where visual feedback isn't necessarily a good thing? I don't know. I fear I've flown up my own backside here.
Spent saturday night at a 30's caberet themed club night. The outfit who put it on do many nights by the same name (Lost Vagueness) and are always a great laugh. They started at Glastonbury where the irony of gadding about in ball gowns and tuxedos in a paddock can be truly appreciated.
As with all really great club nights, Lost Vagueness has started to fall victim to their own success. The intimacy is lost when there are so many people. I couldn't guess how many were there at the old Cinema in Elephant and Castle, but numbers eclipsed any event I'd been to previously. This just meant that there wern't enough roulette or blackjack tables for the numbers. It was good that the temperament of the masses that attended was amicable. There was little angst among punters, except when booze ran short and they turned off the cold water in the toilets. Cardinal sin!
The event was moved from an outdoor, 24 hour event in Sussex at the last minute due to 'harrassment' from the local police. I think the unwanted attention was because of liquor licensing, as the venue to where it was moved admitted members only. Membership had to be purchased in advance and membership was exchanged for tickets purchased for the original venue. There was some annoyance at the fact that some people seemed to have paid £10 more than others for 'membership benefits' which were available for free to all other attendees who cared to sign up.
RFID more privacy and identity issues here... Radio Frequency Identification - tag items with a radio chip the size of a pin head.
Deciding which usability test method to use. Nice overview of different usability methods
Found Gold on colour theory and international interpretations of it in design. Colour Matters, Symbolism of Color in different cultures. Also, Colorcom colour consultants.
Ok, now I'm just dead chuffed, because I managed to get this sucker installed. By all accounts, Moveable Type is 'da bomb baby' but... CHEESUS CRIES it's hard to install when you're not a server monkey.
Anyways, I did it... and I'm proud. It only took me all day! I've made my own piece of software which requires server installation too. How am I going to get my users around this headache???
