the long view
This discussion thread on Edward Tufte's forum about designing a better Gantt chart for project management has been active for nearly seven years. That has got to be some kind of record.
not so anonymous, really
Transportation planner, father, adventure racer, connector. Unrelenting realist.
smoke and mirrors
Two attempts at a composition pushing the limits of my canon powershot - the moon sits behind steam streaming from my neighbor's chimney. Hand held, shot in shutter priority mode with a shutter speed of 3.2 seconds.
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fear and loathing
May I say, AAARRRRGGGGHHHHH!!!!!! It's finally hit me why building managers and bridge and tunnel authorities fear bicyclists and pedestrians. Not because of any actual threat, of course, but because they are small and hard to control relative to a motor vehicle. Motor vehicles require 11 feet and a smooth surface to go anywhere - there is a short list of physical dimensions for accommodating and disaccommodating vehicles. Pedestrians and cyclists (who can easily carry or hide their bicycles) are hard to control and predict.
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Tim Ferriss is on the tee vee
Okay, I'll admit it. I like Tim Ferriss, the author of The Four Hour Workweek. Tim is the James T. Kirk for our age, always figuring out how to, depending on your perspective, work, game, and/or circumvent the system. Only he tells you how he's doing it while he's doing it, always with a big grin on his face. Yes, he's a bit of a hack. But he's a transparent, honest, and fun-loving hack, focused on having a fulfilling and exciting life. You can't argue with that.
He's got a television pilot airing on the History Channel this Thursday night (11 pm eastern) called Trial by Fire, in which he's got one week to get really good at a skill that normally takes years to master. It sounds great. He asked his blog readers to help him promote it (it is a pilot, after all - a trial by fire in and of itself) so I'm happy to post the video preview below.
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hey, you motorists, I'm walking here!
A letter to the editor posted on the website of my local Gannet paper:
Hey, you motorists, I'm walking here!
I am a senior citizen and can't hold my head up when I walk, so I push a seat walker with hand brakes. I have the right of way when I'm in the crosswalk and the light is in my favor, but trucks and cars cross in front of me. I am afraid for my life! RUTHANNE MARIANO Metuchen
This is awesome for so many reasons, not the least of which is "Hey, I'm walking here!" would make a great name for a pedestrian rights blog.
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facebook for social marketing
Today a friend and colleague of mine asked for people's thoughts on how a collaborative mapping tool might work for church and community groups on Facebook. Thought I'd share my response:
I have been thinking about a similar question - how social media tools can be used in the easiest, most lightweight way possible to create communities around social causes (for example, eliminating pedestrian fatalities). I have also been a part of a couple of FB groups. The advantage of FB is the level of market penetration within certain demographics, and those demographics are expanding to older and older users. No one else has what FB has in terms of % people within a real life group that are members of FB - but that does not yet include church ladies.
The groups function has powerful features, but in my opinion it's poorly integrated with the core user experience - their feed and profile. If group members have to seek out the group page to interact, you're losing a lot of people. More group content should be pushed to the feeds. Also, the low barrier to entry for a group allows a lot of non-participating members, so it relies on a leader/community manager to keep things going.
I guess the biggest thing that is needed for reaching and involving church and community groups is the ability to send info out of the facebook app by email, and accept info by email, to allow participation by non-facebook users. Although maybe this defeats the point - why not just use an external website?
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Quantum of Solace redux - the 1959 short story
[This was previously posted elsewhere.]
As you're getting blitzed daily with advertisements for the latest James Bond movie, Quantum of Solace, you're probably thinking they must be scraping the bottom of the barrel to use a title like that. And you'd be right. It is, after all, the 22nd Bond movie.
I'd like to issue you an invitation. To read it.
I promise, there are no submachine guns. No laser watches. No car chases. In fact, there's no violence at all. Quantum of Solace is a short story first published in the May 1959 issue of Cosmopolitan and later reprinted in a collection of five short stories titled For Your Eyes Only. It tells a sad tale of infidelity and marital cruelty in the British foreign service. Something of an experiment for Ian Fleming, it's not a spy adventure at all. While not the strongest of the collection, it's definitely worth the read, and will convince you that Fleming really knew how to tell a damn good story.
Among the Bond books, I always find For Your Eyes Only the most satisfying, perhaps because the novels are so formulaic, dependent as they are on a predictable story arc that includes capture, imminent death, incredible escape, and vengeance - a formula familiar from anything from the 1960s Batman television series to the Clive Cussler Dirk Pitt adventures. The short stories are more nuanced, with paradoxically more room to explore the moral uncertainty, drudgery and ugliness of the job.
I doubt it's in libraries anymore, but you can find worthless old yellowed paperbacks for practically free in a good used bookstore. I accidentally bought two.
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