The Prince Of Swords

I was catching up on Bloglines again and one of the visual design sites I track pointed out this set of diagrams.

The Art of Complex Problem Solving

I read more of the site and it turns out that Mr. Clemens started this company to blend art and science to find out “what ideas look like”, something I realized I’m always trying to figure out too. Very nicely done. As you scan this, see if the artifacts have the same effect on you, where the diagrams and text are so parallel, they resonate.

Magic Cone
by I.P. Freely

Even better, here’s an instructional animation!

How does it work?

Heard about this as an alternative shot glass.

For a long time I’ve wanted some software to capture all the ideas in my brain that could then analyze, index, and generate relationships between them via a a natural language inference engine for a Me-specific ontology of purple numbered multi-faceted metadata (or NLIEMSOPNMM for short).

This isn’t it, but it is a very interesting approach for a knowledge managemet interface.

H2O Playlist: About H2O

…and the source code is pointed to from here:
H20 Philosophy

Does this sound familiar?

STSC CrossTalk - Life Cycle of a Silver Bullet - Jul 2003

Just reminds me that to fully apply a methodology or framework, you have to have a solid understanding of it plus the environment into which you will be implementing it. (Environment includes at least political, social, techinical, operational, and cultural forces.) Otherwise, the translation/integration will quickly get you into trouble and the overall sucess will be jeopordized. Sounds simple enough.

I ran into this with an eXtreme Programming experiment from a few years ago. I thought I understood XP and the team I hoped to transform. Turns out I didn’t have a solid enough grasp of either nor the skills to pull off such a radical change, so it never really caught on. But lesson learned, we’re taking a different approach and are hoping for better results. My personal change strategy is to do it often. When I look at what I do in my day job, in the last two years, I have changed about as much as you can including work environment, programming language, software tools, focus, team, and I have moved completely to Mac and everything that comes along with that.

My favorite part of change is the cascade of new insights you gain from a switch. For example, I can now compare Visio to Omnigraffle. Before there was only Visio to measure with so then I was attempting to address my issues with it when I found All Clear. Now that Omnigraffle is in the mix, I have more information and diversity to make better decisions. As I learn Omnigraffle, I have the Visio background to refer to which speeds up learning compared to not ever using a graphing tool. If my needs change, I’ll be ready to switch to another tool and able to do that even faster.

Sometimes I have really good ideas in the shower. Sometimes I think in the pool. I didn’t have a good way to capture those notes and trying to keep paper dry is doable but it usually means trying to get to a towel to dry your hands before you can grab an index card and write.

In a some book I’d read someone referenced using a diver slate which is a small rectangle that provides two erasable writing surfaces for a carbon pencil. I found a company that makes a 45 page notebook in the same style.

Solution:
Dive Rite Dive wRites Underwater Notebook

There are also companies like Rite in the Rain that makes waterproof paper in various formats (notebooks, loose leaf). Combine them with weatherproof pens like the Fisher Matte Black Bullet Space Pen and you are free to write in any condition.

I went with the diver slate for now since it is erasable and I just need it for temporary capture. A weatherproof notebook could be useful for long term writing in inclement weather or just to reduce the damage of coffee spill related incidents.

Gobby - Trac

So Dirk and I just played with this to do remote pair programming or as an option for changing proximities when coding (so we don’t have to sit side-by-side looking at the same monitor). Let’s you open multiple docs and edit simultaneously with a built-in chat. Runs across OS’s. Could be an interesting solution.

One of the web projects I’m working on uses a tabbed interface element which saves a lot of screen real estate. HTML-wise this is done by simply hiding all but one in a stack of divs depending on which “tab” you click. On the source side, you end up with a long file of nested divs. Since this project is a web app, the interface is composed of a number of other components like screen, titlebar, navigation, content, footer, etc. all created with specially styled and id’d divs. Much like working with the heavily nested tables in the old days, if you miss closing a div tag, the layout falls apart and tracking done the offending open div can be tricky.

Of course you could use an html comment to denote which div you’re closing, but I came up with something easier, very clear, and it appears to validate in Tidy with no ill effects in FireFox 1.5. I’m sure some “I only write valid XHTML” purists will correct me, but since I work for a captive audience behind the corporate firewall, I’m going to use it for now. The solution? Repeat the id attribute in the closing div tag so you know later which div it is actually closing.

For example….

<div id=”first”>
  …some content…
  …some more divs…
  …some content…
</div id=”first”>

Guess you could jam attributes in any closing tag if you wanted to, like tables if you’re still nesting them.

When I own a movie theater, here are some things I’ll do that the monster chains don’t.

Make sure the movie times are available. Since no one seems to publish the movies/times on an LED panel on their main roadside signage, you’d think they at least make the info visible from the car when you drive in front of the box office. They could broadcast an audio loop of the schedule using low power FM so I could tune into the FM channel while in their parking lot.

Why don’t they combine the concession purchasing with ticketing? Why is there this box office line, plus waiting to get into the theater, then wait for food? Bottlenecks reduce the movie experience. Combine all the functions, increase the number of stations, and get everybody to where they’re going as quickly as possible.

Bail the rows of seats. Like office space planning, the design is simply trying to jam as many people as possible into the space. Seperate the chairs and either group them by twos or make them mobile. Create larger terraced steps so people could arrange the chairs to fit their group.

Audio feeds in the bathrooms so you can at least hear what you’re missing if not going all the way by slapping LCDs over the urinals. BTW, what happened to intermissions? Seems like that could sell more concessions, make smokers happy, get the business guy off the phone during the movie, and let someone change that baby.

Cut!

Wonder when they’ll offer a naked version?

SitePal - Home

I do like the concept. I’d rather have her popup on my computer and remind me of a meeting than the dings and bleeps my Palm and desktop makes. I wouldn’t have to look the device if she told me which meeting it was.

So this morning I fill up with gas, buy a carton of smokes, and a “Works” carwash. Typical weekly ritual. It didn’t get interesting until I went through the carwash that I have used before. I creep into the wash to get the full advantage of the underbelly wash (which I kinda wish I had in my shower) and stop at the plate that activates the soapy brush monster. This is made a little more difficult because the indicator lights on the monster aren’t working so you have to guess the message on the partially obscured LED panel at the back right of the wash. I like that they put the LED panel on the right because if you put it on the left when your driver is on the left the viewing angle would be decreased. Had they extended the length of the wash building you would be able to see the panel even when the monster was in the starting position. It now partially obscures the panel which is only important when the indicator lights on the monster are inoperative.

I don’t know if something changed but this is the first time this has happened me with this wash. I creep on to the plate until the wash engages and I see the “ST” on the panel. The wash begins and I start looking for a hand towel to dust off the interior windshield and dash. While doing this for a few minutes I look out to see that the soap sprayed on part of the hood, but the monster appeared to have stopped and returned to the starting position. I can barely make out a potential “RESET” on the panel. I sit for a minute to see if the monster is resetting or if it is asking to be reset. After no action and no one showing up. I exit and head to the counter.

“Did you drive over the plate?” The cashier questions with that “you’re another dumbass” gleam in her eye. “I can’t give you a refund. We were doing that but she (pointing the manager who’s on the phone explaining to some that today has been a very emotional draining day and it is only 9am) won’t let us. You’ll have to talk to her.”

As I wait for her to get off the phone, I find myself kinda wanting to hear a little more behind the drama of her morning since we are all human and it is comforting to see everyone else has fucked up things too. She finally tells me I drove over the plate and that she has to go down to the wash building and reset it and I’d have to wait her so the cashier can print me a new code.

I know this something I can’t help but doing so I decided today I’d start writing it down.