The Prince Of Swords » Books

Adventures in my MacBook Omnigraffle Riva world

The Prince — Tue, 12 Dec 2006 16:00:09 +0000

I recently trashed my MacBook by probably installing some random badness (like trying to recompile SCPlugin for MacTel use) so I decided to wipe and re-install which turned out to be a very quick and easy process (minus the transfer time for my music collection).
Now that I’m back up, I’ve been continuing my Mac metamorphosis. The only legacy app from Windows I hadn’t replaced yet was Visio, which I’ve never really liked but due to some process engineering work I’ve been doing lately, has been making it appearance on my desktop regularly. There are a couple of solutions like running Parallels or even maybe VMWare, but I’ve decided that it is time to move on and not put any Microsoft apps of the past on my shiny new Little BlacBook.
For graphing in Mac, OmniGraffle is your answer. I downloaded the trial and jumped right in. The main goal was to recreate the Riva Visio Stencils. Riva is a process diagramming method that focuses on Roles, Activities, and interactions. It comes from the book “Business Process Management: A rigorous approach” by Martin Ould. It was brought to my attention by Neil Benson at Increase Consulting in the UK. I use it to map what people do and how they could interact with a software system.
Business Process Management: A Rigorous Approach (Paperback) by Martyn A. Ould
Here is his site. There are Visio stencils you can download.
Things I like about Riva: - focused on roles and their interactions (via explicit state changes) - compact diagrams vs boxes and diamonds - it is easier for me to follow these diagrams than swimlanes since your focus bounces all over the lanes where Riva has a clear flow - case refinement is easier to extend (decisions or cases) than with typical diamonds for decisions since cases are represented in a linear path that can be added to, where adding more diamonds alters the diagram much more After I maxed out the 20 object limit in the OmniGraffle trial, I bought a Pro license and got down to polishing a first draft of my Riva Stencils. My bet was that by building a set of stencils I’d learn OmniGraffle faster since I had a clear goal in mind plus I’ll be doing some modeling this week and put the stencils to real use.
After about 10 hours of dinking with it, my first draft is complete. The main lesson I’ve learned is that Mac is Beautiful and works. As crazy as it sounds to non-Mac peoples, the quality and style of my Mac seriously does make me happier to work with it which again confirms the “Broken Windows” theory from psychology.
If these work well this week, I may release these to Graffletopia.com and share the love. Here is what I have so far:

Wired 14.07: What Kind of Genius Are You?

The Prince — Sun, 01 Oct 2006 19:35:37 +0000

Conceptualist or Experimentalist?

Wired 14.07: What Kind of Genius Are You?

I’ve come to realize that as nice and simple and seductive a binary designation can be, the real world is just messy and in shades of grey. In this case, I tend to sway towards the Experimentalist with my incessant testing and breaking of things. Those experiments do build up a knowledge base in specific lines of inquiry, but can often lead to conceptual breakthroughs in tangental areas. This goes back to my experiences reading books. First, I often don’t necessarily learn a ton of new information but I do find better ways to label or organize the ideas I’m carrying around. Second, when I read after a while I realize that my brain has gone somewhere else while my eyes go through the motions of reading. This used to frustrate me since I’d have to back track and figure out where I fell off the path. Now I know that where I went when I went off the path is more important than just reading the book because my mind has already gone off and applied something it had just learned.

I’ve added Galenson’s books to my reading list.

Speaking of genius an wanting to understand how minds work, I do recommend The Gifted Adult: A Revolutionary Guide for Liberating Everyday Genius.

My Fake Pink Sink

The Prince — Wed, 30 Aug 2006 16:00:07 +0000

I’ve been working on remodeling my master bedroom for almost a year which has been a fun and frustrating design project. Being in San Antonio there is limited access to modern and minimalist elements besides pieces that have been toned down, mass produced, and offered up at Home Depot. Although there are fabricators around, purely custom work is more expensive than I’m willing to dole out right now. The solution? I’m going to make some of it myself.
The first project is in the bathroom. I have two vanities 24″x 33″ with a 38″ gap between them. The idea is to find a tall chest of drawers (sometimes called a Gentleman’s Chest) to sit between the vanities to break up the horizontal surfaces where the sinks will be. The bathroom originally had a one-piece counter top/sinks. After Googling around for sinks for a while and looking into materials, I’ve decided to cast my own concrete counter top and sink.
I’ve picked the Kohler Purist line for the hardware to match the shower and intend on tinting the concrete to match the grout in the Travertine flooring, an Alabaster color. To start this project, I sketched some designs in a great software package called “SketchUp”. SketchUp works like I think which is in surfaces and solids. Most cad packages I’ve played with tend to deal more in lines which make mocking up a room design super tedious and I’m just not that patient or absolute. SketchUp lets you define a rectangle, then flip orientation, grab a surface, and extrude it into a 3D shape. Very easy. Very intuitive for me. My sketches came together in a few hours and I got a basic idea of what I want.
Sketching on a laptop screen is cheap and easy but runs its value when you try to visualize proportions and context. To help get a better sense of perspective, I decided to prototype the vanity top. Thinking about how to do that, I needed a material that would be easy to work with and cheap since I’d be throwing it away. At a local hobby shop, I looked at foam core board and sheets of Styrofoam but I needed to span almost three feet and carving Styrofoam is very messy and not very exact. Heading to Home Depot I found a nice solution. In the lumber area, I grabbed a piece of insulation sheeting. For about eight bucks I got a 4′x8′ sheet of 5/8″ thick pink boarding by Owens Corning.

Over the weekend, I gathered up some tools (hobby knife, tape measure, fine point Sharpie, tape, calculator) and set out to build a fake counter and sink. Since I was designing around proportions, I whipped out Phi, the golden ratio, 1.618 which is supposed to define intrinsic beauty by resonating with geometry of nature. My sink is minimal so taking the length and width of the vanity and dividing them by Phi gave me the sink dimensions. By taking these base dimensions, I then divided again until I had all other dimensions. Using cardboard from a 12-pack of Coke I cut out place holders for the faucets and handles based on the Rough-in diagrams from Kohler. After seeing the sink in its real environment, the sink looked too deep. I took another dimension, divided by Phi, and cut out a new sink wall. Much better. With the depth was set, I cut out the other three walls and the sink prototype was done.

I’m leaving this fake pink sink in place to live with it for a few days and see how the proportions in context work out. To complete the illusion if the pink throws me off, I’ll paint it with some off-white latex paint. Then all I have left to do is figure out how to actually make this sink.

OGC - IT Infrastructure Library (ITIL)

The Prince — Mon, 06 Feb 2006 19:35:34 +0000

My favorite interpretive set of best practices for IT is in the process of a refresh to Version 3 this year.

What’s really cool is they have released PDF versions of most of the “back catalog”. So in case you lost your copy of the Blue Book (Service Support), you can buy a new hardcopy and get the PDF version instantly. You have to activate your copy of Acrobat Reader, can only print once, and can’t copy/paste the content, but PDFs are searchable and fit nicely on my laptop.

OGC - IT Infrastructure Library (ITIL)

Buy ITIL Here

They have also published a slimmed down version for using ITIL pratices for Small-Scale Implementation and an official ITIL Introduction.

Everything Bad Is Good for You by Steven Johnson

The Prince — Sun, 07 Aug 2005 19:01:29 +0000

Although this title caught me immediately as a huge fan of anything counter to status quo and the institutionalization of marginalizing individuality. As a dedicated chaos engine, I thrill in the moments when the image of us having our professional, romantic, spiritual, philosophical, social, and medical lives completely under control falls flat on its ass. Sorry, but I love that.

This book provides an against the current view of the impact of the pop culture domains of video games, television shows, and movies and argues that they make us smarter. The dynamics of this effect are driven by the complexity of the plots and worlds created in these mediums, movies the least and video games the most.

In short, always read books, but add TV shows like 24, games like GTA and the Sims to increase your IQ by a point each year. Never underestimate collateral learning and refuse to be shamed for being into these things.

I see a PS3 in my future.

Amazon.com: Books: Everything Bad Is Good for You: How Today’s Popular Culture Is Actually Making Us Smarter