Out of town...

By the way, I'm going to be on the road most of next week... and then on vacation for several days after that... so I'm not sure when I'll post again. No later than 22 Feb, and probably sooner.

We'll see.

Digital Text, Web 2.0 and You!

I followed a link from Seth Godin's blog (actually, I started at Andy Nulman's blog), and came across this beautiful little video by a professor in Kansas. It's all about text, hypertext, web 2.0 and what it all means.

It's very non-technical and viewer-friendly. Definitely worth spending a few minutes watching it, then a bit more time thinking about it...

Future Horizons

I found fascinating website called Future Horizons, which sells, among other things, plans for building your very own hoverboard, jetpack and flying saucer

Under their "psionics" tab, they offer something called ELF Goggles (for Extremely Low Frequency). Here's how they describe it:

The unit electronically entrains your brain waves to match the frequency pattern generated within the stereo headphones while photonic stimulation is utilized with flashing lights inside the goggles to effect your optic nerve by pulsing at the same frequency pattern. This powerful combination of flashing lights and phase shifted sound causes your brainwaves to forcibly adjust to the new frequencies inducing altered states of awareness.

This unit allows you to reach deep meditative states in minutes that take Yoga masters a lifetime to achieve. Experiences include improved memory and comprehension, out-of-body feelings, spontaneous regressions, enhanced ESP and other paranormal sensations!

You can get your very own ELF Goggles, fully assembled and ready to use, for a mere $425 (or get the construction plans for $30 and build your own).

But my favorite is the Wishing Machine. Here's the description:

Imagine if you had 3 wishes. Well with this device, you have as many as you want. The equivilant of an electronic genie, it amplifies users brain waves to make your wishes literally come true! Be careful what you wish for.

As many wishes as I want? And only $390, fully assembled! That's amazing... I've gotta have it. :)

Stuff On My Cat

The internet is full of valuable, reliable information about virtually every topic imaginable. It's also full of useless, misleading and unreliable information.

But there's a whole other category of stuff you can find online - namely, photos of felines with cheese on their heads. Surf on over to Stuff On My Cat.com to see more of this groundbreaking approach to art.

Rationalization

I have a very clear memory of sitting in science class in 7th grade, listening to Mr. Manzoline (rhymes with gasoline, he used to say) talk about something called "rationalization." I think it was part of a unit on psychology or something - I don't really remember the context. I only remember the content and my reaction to it

Rationalization was described as a psychological defense mechanism, whereby someone comes up with logical (rational) explanations for behavior. The implication was that it wasn't a good thing to do.

I couldn't see why rationalization was bad. To my 12-year-old mind, rationalization seemed, well, rational. If you've got a good, logical reason for doing something, then you're all set. What I didn't understand at the time was that the rationalized reason for the behavior isn't the real reason. And I'm coming to see now how rationalization even plays a role in technical decision making.

The modern scientific management mindset is all about rationality, and it falls prey to rationalization quite easily. In Ricardo Semler's book The Seven Day Weekend, he tells the story of a highly-paid oil company exec who regularly came up with completely wrong predictions about future oil prices. How did he keep his job? Rationalization! Semler quotes him as saying "I have the right to be wrong, but only so long as I am precisely wrong.

In other words, it doesn't matter if he came up with a wildly wrong answer, as long as he's got a good rationale (rationalization) for how he got there. More generally, if we've got a good process, the results don't matter. We can rationalize away the lousy outcome by praising the method.

Old Manzo was right about rationalization. It's a pretty bad idea, and leads down some unfortunate roads. I think his next topic was "fantasizing," which he illustrated with a story of daydreaming about the rabbits he was raising, but we were all to busy laughing at the word "fantasize" to pay much attention.

Contrails

I took this shot last month (not bad for a camera phone, eh?)

Self Portrait In Parka

Just some fun with my camera phone.

100 Questions

I once did an exercise where I sat down with a notebook and wrote 100 questions (this is before I had kids). The first 20 or so were fairly obvious, but by the time I hit 80 or so, they were definitely in the "outside the box" category. The obligation to come up with 100 led to a more creative & insightful result than if the exercise had been "come up with as many questions as you can."

There's something very stimulating & productive about having a goal, even though 100 is a completely arbitrary number. It could just as well have been 113 or 97.

Same thing with blogging (or any type of writing). If the exercise is "Blog/write every day," at some point, you run out of obvious things to say. Some bloggers go the easy "here's what I had for breakfast" route, or "wow, it's cold here," or some such. I'm sure some of my previous 240 posts are in that category, despite myself.

But a committment to post something to the blog each day at least offers the potential to push us beyond the ordinary, into the realm of the surprise.

Interesting Show Format

I noticed something strange about several new tv shows I've been watching lately - despite being a diverse set of genres, they've got a remarkably similar format.

Specifically, these shows have large ensemble casts that are hardly ever in the same scene together, with multiple overlapping storylines (sometimes barely overlapping). Examples are The Class (a 30-min comedy), Heroes (a 60-min sci-fi drama), Boston Legal (a 60-min legal drama), and that housewives show I'm hesitant to admit watching. :)

Other shows like Scrubs & My Name Is Earl have large casts, but they tend to hang out together, or at the very least share the same action & sets. In Heroes, some of the characters come in and out of each other's lives, but The Class and Boston Legal are basically 3 or 4 shows rolled into one.

Of course, this isn't a new phenomenon, but I think it's interesting to see the approach being used across so many different genres and story types.

New Artwork for Boomer Sisters Book

Whoo-hoo! I just got the illustrations for the second Boomer Sisters book (The Boomer Sisters Meet Champy). I'm really excited to have them, and am getting ready now to launch a new marketing push - as soon as I add the drawings to the manuscript. I'll be contacting librarians, a publisher and the director of the ECHO Lake Aquarium & Science Center. Wish me luck!

The Amazing Lawrence Hargrave

I've got a new hero - early aviation pioneer Laurence Hargrave, of Sydney, New South Wales. What's so great about Mr. Hargrave, other than his impressive beard?

Well, for starters, he was a genius inventor who determined, among other things, “for a wing to lift and move through air efficiently, the center of pressure ought to be located at about 25% of the chord length of the wing section.” Yeah, I think it would take me a pretty long time to figure that out on my own.

But coolest of all, he refused to patent any of his inventions. He published them instead, "in order that a mutual interchange of ideas may take place with other inventors working in the same field, so as to expedite joint progress." He would have LOVED Wikipedia.

That makes him one of the original gurus of Open Source development and collaboration... and a genuinely cool guy. He was quite the Rogue too, and one of the original practioners of the "bias for action" and a FIST approach to engineering. He wrote "there is no use in the mind's conceiving an idea, if the hands are not ready to carry out the work skillfully... my constant endeavors are directed to making the machines simple and cheap." I love this guy!

Check out this drawing of one of his flying machines. It was "actuated by compressed air and propelled by beating wings." Weighing in at 4.63 lbs, it flew 343 feet in1890 (wouldn't you love to have seen that!):

Young Muslims & Sharia Law

A recent poll in the UK reports "one in three British Muslims aged between 18 and 24 said they would rather live under Sharia law than under British law."

As far as I can tell, nothing is stopping these young Muslims from following the dictates of Sharia law (just as nothing is stopping the Olin students from finishing early - see previous post). They can wear the headscarves, avoid pork, worship, fast during Ramadan, marry one wife, give to charity, etc, etc. OK, so they can't amputate the hands of theives, but is that the part of Sharia they really miss the most?

My impression is not that these young believers want to live under Sharia law so much as they want the people around them to do so. I suspect they don't want their own hands amputated if they steal something - they want it to happen to someone else.

The bottom line is not so much that they want Sharia law to be applied to themselves, because they can do that already. They actually are expressing a desire to enforce Sharia law on people who do not want it and who do not believe as they do. That's the part that bugs me...

Of course, the other possibility is that we're misunderstanding the poll results. Maybe what they mean by Sharia law is something other than the popular understanding I've described here. Maybe they're just saying they would rather live by God's laws than Man's. As a Christian, I'd be hard pressed to disagree with that sentiment... although in practice they are actually pursuing their own interpretation & understanding of God's law, and placing more trust in human being's ability to govern & judicate than the British legal/political system ever does.

Postscript from "What Is Sharia?" by Dr. Mohammad Omar Farooq:
The Shari'ah is thus nothing less than the divinely ordained way of life for man. To realise the divine will, man must follow the Shari'ah. To live in Islam is to live according to the Shari'ah. To give up the Shari'ah or any part of it knowingly, wilfully or deliberately is to give up Islam. A Muslim must therefore do his utmost to observe and to implement the whole of it, wherever and in whatever situation he finds himself. Hence the Muslim insistence, persistence, commitment and passion for it.

Olin & Finishing Early

When I was at Olin College last week, I talked about the FIST (Fast, Inexpensive, Simple, Tiny) model I developed a while back. We spent most of the time talking about the Simplicity Cycle (the S in FIST), but we also spent a fair amount of time talking about slashing development timelines (the F part).

Specifically, I explained Parkinson's Law (Work expands to fill the time allotted) and Ward's Correllary (Work is compressible). I showed diagrams and survey results which claimed that most DoD projects could actually be done in half the time. Then I asked a question:

"Could you finish your SCOPE project early if you had to?" (SCOPE is a year-long engineering project for seniors). There was some slightly uncomfortable-sounding laughter, and lots of nodding heads. The consensus was "Yes, we could finish early."

One brave student pointed out that even if they finished early, they'd probably just be given more work to do, to fill in the rest of their time. For a moment, the room was gripped by two false beliefs 1) They need permission to finish early and 2) They need to tell the professor if they finish early.

So I asked a few more questions "Could you finish your project a month early if it meant you could do what ever you want with that month? What if you finished early and just didn't tell anyone?" That got a lot of applause, and a big nod from Prof Barrett, the director of the SCOPE program. I pointed out that nobody could stop them from finishing a month ahead of schedule, then goofing off.

I wonder if any of them will do it...

Correlation & Causality

One thing that bothered me about Al Gore's movie was his assertion of a cause and effect relationship between CO2 and global temperatures. I was reading the Feb issue of Wired over lunch today, and a little article by John Hockenberry shone some light on the issue:

"Studies of ice and seabed cores reveal that temperature rise and fall is heavily correlated with changes in greenhouse-gas concentrations. But it's a chicken-and-egg problem. Are Co2 rises and falls a cause of climate change or an effect?"

Remember, correlation does not prove causality.

I'm not denying that increased levels of CO2 contribute to climate change, nor that we're pumping too much pollution into the atmosphere. I'm just objecting to the fact that the question of causality doesn't seem to be asked. It looks like we see correlation and assume causality. That's bad logic and bad science.

Micromanagement & Complexity

Is there a link between a tendency to micromanagement and a preference for complexity?

My gut says yes, but I haven't been able to craft a solid case for it yet. I'm interested in hearing your opinions, theories, experiences or experiments. Do micromanagers tend to overvalue complexity, or am I off base here?

Here's what I'm thinking so far. Since micromanagement tends to be about trusting one's self more than one's subordinates, micromangers might prefer complexity because their understanding of complex systems / technologies / processes / etc is greater than their subordinate's understanding, which reinforces the perceived need for their involvement ("Here, this is complicated and I know how to do it, so let me just do it for you...").

Other thoughts? Stories?

Simplicity & Genius

Any intelligent fool can make things bigger, more complex, and more violent. It takes a touch of genius -- and a lot of courage -- to move in the opposite direction. - EF Schumacher

Simplicity Gallery

In his Autobiography, G.K. Chesterton wrote "I once planned a massive and exhaustive sociological work, in several volumes, which was to be called The Two Barbers of Beaconsfield..."

In the same sense, I'm working (to use that phrase loosely) on turning my Simplicity Cycle research into a book. One of the things I would like to include, perhaps as an appendix (most likely swollen) to this "massive and exhaustive work, in several volumes," is a collection I'm calling The Simplicity Gallery.

That's where you come in.

I'm looking for nominations of things that have both a high degree of goodness and a low degree of complexity. I want to highlight some of the very simple, very useful/beautiful/etc tools, ideas, objects, etc that you encounter on a daily basis. Things like "a pencil and paper," or "E=MC2" or "a coffee pot."

Ideas?

In Praise Of The Harmonica

The harmonica is the perfect instrument for me... and perhaps the most perfect musical instrument ever invented. Here's why:

Unlike the piano, it is small and easy to carry around, yet capable of producing a rich and loud sound.

Unlike drums, woodwinds, piano, stringed intruments, etc... it does not require great dexterity (or ambidexterity), nor difficult techniques in order to produce pleasing sounds.

Unlike the guitar, it doesn't hurt your fingers to play the harmonica (no callouses needed).

Unlike almost every other type of instrument, it is inexpensive.

It can play a wide range of music, from jazz to blues to pop to spiritual. It can sound playful and funny or it can sound mournful and earnest. Serious musicians like Stevie Wonder and Blues Traveler do amazing things with the harmonica.

While mastery of the harmonica (like everything) takes years, amateur-level competence on the harmonica seems well within the grasp of a dabbler willing to invest just a little bit of time.

And unlike the guitar, or even the tambourine, when you're playing the harmonica, nobody expects you to sing along...

A Poem Using Just One Word (almost) *

co-LABOR-ate
COOL-aborate
co-LAB-orate
COL-lab-OR-ate
coll-AB-o-RA-te (CADABRA)
C-oll-A-bo-R-at-E

****************************

* Someone once made the off-handed comment that you cannot write a poem just by repeating the same word over and over again. Naturally, I took that as a personal challenge (“Oh yeah? Watch me!”).

Maybe he was right, since I did add a few bits here and there (the O in COOL and the CADABRA in line 5). Still, collaborate is arguably the most important word in program management, so if I had to pick one word to write a program management poem with, that’s what it would be.

Fun With College Students!

Sorry I've been blog-less for a few days... I was out at Olin College (near Boston), where I had the opportunity to share my Simplicity Cycle with 75 seniors.

What a remarkable group of students. They were a lot of fun to hang out with, and their questions were both insightful and mature. I learned a lot, and have a few new tweaks and additions to make to the Simplicity Cycle.

I'm thinking about putting it together as a little book... and at Olin, they're talking about putting it on a t-shirt. How cool is that!

New Boomer Sisters site!

Over the weekend, I spent a few minutes putting together a new website for the Boomer Sisters books. I used Google's free "Page Creator," which was fairly simple and quick, if not terribly powerful (it's still in beta). Still, it did what I needed it to do... including hosting the pages!

The site has a collection of fun links related to the books, samples of the artwork, and (of course) links to places where you can buy the books. Check it out when you get a chance...

Adventures In Pediatric Dentistry

Had a little bit of excitement last night. Just as my wife and I were about to go out (and moments before the babysitter arrived), Jenna, our soon-to-be-four-year-old daughter, did a face plant on the kitchen floor and halfway knocked out her front tooth.

Ouch.

So, we called the dentist and he agreed to meet us at his office (it was about 6:30). We called the babysitter and asked her to come a few minutes early. Then off we went to visit the dentist.

After applying some numbing gel to the gum, he gave the tooth a little wiggle and out it came. Jenna said "ow," the dentist said "done," and we were on our way home with the tooth securely held in a little pink treasure box. No tears, no problem. I was impressed.

This adventure wasn't entirely unexpected, in part because Jenna seems to have a knack for banging herself in the mouth. She also has a "special" (i.e. extra) tooth that's been growing in for a while now, pushing the recently departed front tooth to the side (and eroding the root). So, the dentist warned us a month or two ago this sort of thing might happen.

And last night, it did. I think I had a harder time than Jenna did (I don't stomach dental procedures very well - ugh - but I don't think Jenna noticed daddy's weak knees). She was very brave, very cooperative, and very, very excited about the prospect of the Tooth Fairy coming to visit.

This morning, she proudly showed me the quarter she found under her pillow. "The tooth fairy gave this to me because she loves me and thinks I'm beautiful," Jenna said.

That's so true, kiddo. That's so true...

Crazy search engine

Check out Google's latest competitor: Ms. Dewey.

Cooking with Rachael Ray

Another favorite, frequently-used Christmas present is a Rachel Ray cookbook. I've never actually seen her show, but after buying one of her cookbooks for someone else, I had to go back to the bookstore and get one for myself (using a Barnes & Noble gift certificate Santa brought me...).

I made spaghetti carbonera last night - haven't had that since I lived in Italy when I was a kid. Tonight I'm planning an Indian chicken dish (chicken tikka, I think?). I've really expanded the range of spices and ingredients I'm buying and using. It's a lot of fun exploring and experimenting with new foods, flavors, etc.

Yum-o!

Great Coffee

One of my favorite Christmas presents this year is a cool little italian-style stovetop espresso maker. It's supposedly a "3-cup" size, but I find it's just about right for one smallish serving.

The coffee it produces is dark, rich, hot and tasty. I love it.

I don't use it everyday, 'cause it does take a bit longer and as I said, it makes a smallish serving. But on the weekends in particular, it's a great way to start the morning.

Holy Cow It's Cold!

Wow. My little thermometer in the bathroom window said "-0" when I got up today.

That's right - not just zero. Negative zero.

I think that's where all motion stops, right? Winter apparently decided to make an appearance this year after all...

Culture Change & Shocks

There's a fairly well established sense that in order for leaders to help bring about meaningful innovation, organizational success, making a difference, etc... they have to start by instituting some sort of culture change.

As I began thinking about this, I came up with 3 categories of things that bring about large scale, enduring culture change:

New Blood

Time

A Shock To The System

But, New Blood is primarily a special case of Time (particularly in the case of a new generation). And both Time and New Blood are basically forms of shocks to the system. Which gets me down to one category.

So... after quite a bit of thought and conversation with lots of smart people, I've come to conclude that cultures change when there is a Shock To The System. Such as:

1) An influx of immigrants (Ellis Island, Irish Potato Famine, etc)

2) The arrival of a new generation

3) The march of time (measured in decades - see #2 above)

4) The discovery of gold, oil, etc

5) A sudden attack (9/11, Pearl Jarbor, etc)

6) A new tech breakthrough (fire, aircraft, iPod, etc)

No doubt there are other types of change-inducing Shocks, but the point isn't to create an all-inclusive list. I wrote all this to ask the following question:

What sort of shocks to the system can a leader introduce, in their attempt to create positive culture change?

I'm still thinking about that one...

Ambient Findability

Just recieved a copy of a book titled Ambient Findability, by Peter Morville.

It's all about how people find their way through an age of information overload. It looks awesome.

The tag-line is "What We Find Changes Who We Become." I think that's an interesting thought.

Can't wait to dive in!

Painting

A few years back, I taught myself how to draw. My objective was to be able to sketch a face that looks reasonably like the face I was doing the sketch from. It was a lot of fun, and I eventually got fairly decent at it... and once I hit that point, as is my habit, I set the pencils aside and moved on to other things.

I've always wanted to learn to paint - and even went so far as to buy a bunch of brushes, paints, books, etc right around the time I was doing the sketching. I dabbled with the paints for a little while, but not very much (particularly compared to the pencil sketches). Pencils were just so much easier to carry around. Eventually, all my painting stuff all got misplaced or put away and generally forgotten.

In 2007, I'm going to re-engage with the paint. Watercolors, to be precise (and I seldom am). Now that I've got an office with a door that closes, I'm planning to spend at least one lunch-break each week, playing around and seeing what sort of marks I can make on the paper. The above shot is one of my first attempts.

Blog As Memory

In the past few weeks, I've used this blog as an external memory jogger about half a dozen times. When did I read my book at the kid's school? Where was the book reviewed? Where's the link to... whatever?

It reminds me of something Eric Raymond said in The Cathedral and the Bazaar: "Any tool should be useful in the expected way, but a truly great tool lends itself to uses you never expected.”

Blogs, in my opinion, are truly great tools... and they certainly lend themselves to uses I didn't expect.

Scribd - check it out!

I was recently invited to participate in a beta test for a site called Scribd. It's a site that lets you share and find documents online, and I've uploaded both The Boomer Sisters Meet Champy and Meet The Boomer Sisters.

It would be cool if you click on those links (at least one of 'em) and give me a vote... And maybe even upload a document or two of your own!

GK Chesterton's autobiography

I'm reading the autobiography of one of my literary heroes, G.K. Chesterton. It's a witty, insightful, amazing book, and I'd like to share a few excerpts with you. Here's the first line:

Bowing down in blind credulity, as is my custom, before mere authority and the tradition of the elders, superstitiously swallowing a story I could not test at the time by experiment or private judgment, I am firmly of the opinion that I was born on the 29th of May, 1874...

Later on, talking about some stories and pictures he created with his brother when they were children, he writes:

"we never thought of doing anything with them, except enjoying them. It has sometimes struck me as not being a bad thing to do with things."

In a chapter titled "How To Be A Lunatic," he wrote a line that I will someday use as the introductory quote to my own autobiography... assuming I ever get around to writing one:

"When I look back on these things, and indeed on my life generally, the thing that strikes me most is my extraordinary luck."

This next quote made me think of my own little writing career, and the entirely unsuitable (& deliberately unsuitable) things I tend to submit for publication:

"What is really the matter, with almost every paper, is that it is much too full of things suitable for the paper."

And finally, here is a little bit of poetry he wrote, which makes me laugh every time I read it. It is actually the refrain to a longer ballad, which was inspired by a dinner party he attended, where he accidentally broke "an ordinary tumbler." The story of the broken glass quickly blossomed into a legend where the glass became "a vessel of inconceivable artistic and monetary value..." I love the fact that he wrote a ballad about a dinner party mishap.

Prince, when I took you goblet tall
And smashed it with inebriate care,
I knew not how from Rome and Gaul
You gained it; I was unaware
It stood by Charlemagne's great chair
And served St. Peter at High Mass.
I'm sorry if the thing was rare;
I like the noise of breaking glass.

Iraq Question

Can anyone tell me whose interests are served by keeping Iraq as a united country? I'm afraid the answer is the US, not the Iraqi's...

As I understand it, modern Iraq is essentially an artificial state, created in the aftermath of WWI. You don't need to pay much attention to the news to know that the Kurds, Shiites and Sunnis don't like each other very much. I wonder if they might get along better if they each had their own places.

The Kurds basically have a semi-autonomous state already. I realize Turkey might get nervous about an independent Kurdish state on their border, since Turkey currently contains what is arguably Kurdish land.

The Sunni - Shiite balance of power in the region would no doubt be changed if Iraq split into a Sunni state and a Shiite state... somebody would end up allied with Iran, no doubt. Would that be worse (for the US) than what's happening now?

Of course, the big question is how to split the oil revenues. That's the question now, and that would be the question if Iraq became 2 or 3 new countries.

It's all quite messy, to be sure, and it's hard to predict exactly what would happen if they were allowed to split up. Ultimately, it's really too bad so many people in Iraq would rather blow each other up than co-exist. Maybe it's time to send them to their own corners, to cool off a bit. They could leave the reunification option open for the future, but it seems like it might be a bit premature to do it now.

But as I said, figuring out how to share all that oil would be difficult...

More Photos

Just some more fun photos - I've been playing with my cell phone lately.

My Gaelic Storm t-shirt

A close-up self portrait in the car.

This morning's sunrise, from my driveway

Ice Circles

I saw this partially-frozen puddle in the parking lot and it sort of grabbed my attention. Does anyone have an explanation for these rings? Any theories?

I'm guessing it took a few days for the rings to develop, as the puddle froze overnight, then lost some water during the day(evaporation or ground absorption), then froze again overnight.

In any case, it's cool to look at...

Rogue Leader

I snapped this photo of a page from Wired magazine - I like that it not only says "Rogue Leader," but also "Play games."

LOAC Training

I recently completed my Law Of Armed Conflict training (it's an annual requirement). One paragraph in particular jumped out at me, and I wanted to pass it along because, as my friend Gabe would say, it's so dang awesome:

What should you do if you think you've been given an illegal order? First, ask for clarification. Maybe the order was unclear, or you didn't understand it.

If you still think the order is illegal, try to get it withdrawn.

If that doesn't work, you must disobey it.

Happy 2007 everyone!

OK, I'm back! There's so much to catch up on, so much to blog about, and so much coffee to drink (I got a lot of coffee this Christmas. A s-s-s-s-s-serious lot of c-c-c-co-ff-ff-ff-ee-ee-ee. Bzzzzzz!).

Just a few quick notes:

1. Congrat's to my great friends Chris Quaid and Michele Weslander, on their wedding. It was a beautiful ceremony and a fun party afterwards, and I'm so glad I was able to attend!
2. I am renewing my usual New Years Resolution: Don't Hit The Ground Running. That is, I plan to ease back in to my usual pace, rather than go from zero to 60 in one day (or one week). Wish me luck...
3. The Gillette Fusion is the best shave I've ever had (got some in my stocking). Now, I'm not particularly picky about razors, or even really interested in them, and I'm not a metrosexual or anything, but doggone, that's a remarkably close shave that lasts all day. Their website is interesting - not sure whether I like it or not, but it's interesting...
4. G.K. Chesterton's Autobiography is amazing (no surprise there). It's funny, insightful, easy to read, engaging, and everything you would expect a book by GKC to be. Other great reads lately: A Wrinkle In Time, The Starbucks Experience, Finding Serenity, and Beggars In Spain (sorry - you'll have to find your own links).
5. My second children's novel, The Boomer Sisters Meet Champy, is finished and in stores now. Well, it's in stores in Plattsburgh NY, where most of the action takes place. Getting it into other stores is one of my other goals for 2007.

I hope you all had a great holiday season, and I look forward to continuing this blog conversation in the months to come!

Merry Christmas!

Merry Christmas, everyone!

This is probably my last blog post of 2006. I'll be back in the swing of things on January 2nd, and I'll see you there!

I hope you all have a happy, safe, peaceful and joyful Christmas season!

(this painting is by John Howard Sanden)

Boomers #2!

The second book in the Boomer Sisters series is now complete and ready for purchase! It's titled The Boomer Sisters Meet Champy, and you can get your copy at RoguePress.

In this story, the girls are hunting for Champy, the elusive creature rumored to live in Lake Champlain. They literally get to the bottom of the lake's mysteries (and I do mean literally). Along the way, there's comedy, peril, adventure, mystery, science, gardening, and - of course - the quirky Uncle Q. There's also a computer named Pistachio, an injured loon, and a secret elevator that takes you to a secret laboratory. Who doesn't love that!

Along with being a fun mystery / adventure story, this book is also a commentary on the nature of faith and the value of mystery... but not in a heavy-handed way (I hope).

It's generally aimed at kids in the 2nd through 4th grades, but younger kids (and older!) will probably enjoy it as well.

Enjoy!

Latest AT&L - Quaid & Ward Profile

Everyone's favorite defense acquisition magazine, Defense AT&L, just posted their latest edition (Jan/Feb 07) online. This month, instead of an article by Quaid & Ward, there's a pretty cool little "Meet The Workforce" profile of us.

Fun!

An Inconvenient Truth

I watched Al Gore's An Inconvenient Truth movie last night. I thought it was really good, despite the unnecessary (& incongruous) vignette about Gore losing the 2000 election.

The film certainly simplified some of the science and some of the data, and not entirely in a good way. This oversimplification was probably necessary, of course, given the limitations of the medium and the need to present a story in only 2 hours, but climate dynamics are actually more dynamic and mysterious than the film would indicate (although Mr. Gore did use the word mysterious once, describing climate behavior, which I thought was very good).

But, despite the oversimplification, it's still a good & important movie. The data he presents was compelling. He does have a tendency to make subjective judgments ("this is high" - but compared to what?) and weak comparisons ("Earth's atmosphere is thin" - again, compared to what?), but setting aside these and some other rhetorical flourishes, it's pretty clear we are putting too much pollution into the air. We could & should pollute a lot less. Our pollution is affecting the environment in many bad ways. Those points are hard to argue with.

I would have liked to hear more about the earth's tendency to regulate & stabilize itself. For example, increased CO2 levels & increased temperatures will lead to increased plant growth. And what do plants do? They absorb CO2 from the atmosphere - so more plants equals less CO2, which should have a cooling (& stabilizing) effect. Check out Daisy World for an interesting model that describes the impact of biodiversity on environmental stabilization.

One other point: correlation does not prove causality. That is, just because two things happen at the same time, doesn't mean one caused the other. For example, monkeys eat bananas. Monkeys have tails. Therefore, eating bananas makes you grow a tail. Silly logic, right? I'm not saying Mr. Gore fell into that trap, but in the movie, he didn't fully demonstrate that he'd avoided it. He probably did avoid it - I just would have liked to hear him mention it.

There's a lot more that could be said about the movie, positively and negatively. The bottom line is that it's a good film. You should watch it.

Blogger Etiquette

I'm still sort of new to this whole blogging thing (aren't we all?). So, I'm coming to understand the still-developing etiquette about blogging, and thought I'd pass along what I've learned. Let me know if I missed anything.

1) If you're a blogger, blog. Don't post something once a month and expect people to keep checking, just in case today is the day. Post something several times a week (daily is best, of course). In other words, go big or go home.

2) If you're a reader, participate. You don't need to leave a comment on every entry of every blog you read, but please do make it a point to leave at least an occasional comment, even if it's just "Good point" (for a clever post) or "LOL" (for a funny post). Nobody likes a lurker. (def lurker: slang term for a person who reads a blog regularly but never leaves a comment").

3) If you're a blogger, reply to the comments people leave - participation works both ways. If someone leaves a comment on your blog, the polite thing to do is acknowledge that comment (Thanks to Trevor Gay for setting a great example of this).

OODA Loop!

One of John Boyd's better known contributions to the world is the Observe - Orient - Decide - Act loop, also known as the OODA Loop. It's become a pretty important concept, for both business and military strategists. I ran across an actual OODA Loop while driving on Maxwell Air Force Base, in Montgomery, Alabama.

Being the Boyd fan that I am, I naturally had to turn my car around, find a place to park, walked over with my camera phone, and snapped this picture.

Finding this street sign was, hands down, the highlight of this trip.

Peril

I'm reading a book titled "Finding Serenity," about the (now cancelled) tv show Firefly. Great show, great book. One line from the director, Joss Whedon stood out in particular:

"Take characters, give them peril..."

He didn't say to put characters in peril. He said to "give them peril." I love the idea of peril as a gift. It really is. A lack of peril makes you soft, in real life as well as in fiction. Surviving peril puts a spring in your step, and makes you proud & confident. Perils strengthens people and bonds groups together.

My girls are taking ice skating lessons. This past week, they weren't quite off the ice yet when the hockey players (who have the rink after the skaters) came on. To make a long story short, the hockey boys knocked some of the skating girls down. They got pretty close to my girls. Bethany stuck close to her little sister, to help keep her safe. Afterwards, she said she stood up as tall as she could to help protect Jenna. I'm so proud (and so is she).

Yes, I'm pretty peeved at the hockey coach & the boys. Yes, I'm going to talk with the coach (I wasn't there at the time). No, I don't want this sort of thing to happen again. But the fact is, the experience wasn't all bad...

A thing worth doing...

G.K. Chesterton observed "If a thing is worth doing, it's worth doing poorly." It's one of my favorite (and most often used) GKC quotes.

Today, I heard a new twist on that line: If a thing is not worth doing at all, it is not worth doing well.

I like that. Being good at irrelevant or pointless activities isn't something to be proud of (and yet, we so often are!).

I wonder what other observations or twists you, my faithful & well-groomed readers, might have on these quotes. How else can we finish the sentence "If a thing is / is not worth doing..."?

I await your responses...

DaNoTyMo Finished!

Whew! I've finished typing The Boomer Sisters Meet Champy. I know, I'm cutting it pretty close if I want to get it under the tree in time for Christmas. Doing the final copy editing and typo-hunting now, and plan to place my order in a few days.

I'm sure the Christmas version (for family) will have a typo or two in it... but I plan to get those all figured out before putting it in stores.

More to follow...

On The Road (again)

Sigh - I'm taking a little trip to Alabama, so my blogging will be light (if at all) for a few days. I've never been to Alabama, so I'm curious to see what it's like, but I really dislike traveling, particularly so close to Christmas.

But, at least it's a short trip.

Peace!

Movin' On Up...

Got my official assignment notification this morning... I report to the Air Force Institute of Technology on 21 Aug 07, to begin 18 months of full-time student-ness. Very exciting!

(DaNoTyMo Update - I'm into chapter 11 now, approx 15,000 words. The end is almost in sight!)

New version of Blogger

I just transitioned to the new "beta" version of this blog. The only difference most of you will notice is the ability to add tags to the posts - which should make it easier to find stuff. I don't imagine I'll go back and tag all my previous posts (maybe just the Simplicity Cycle ones), but I'll try to add tags from here on out.

Boomer Update

Book 1: I just received my first copies of the illustrated version of Meet The Boomer Sisters. It looks fantastic! They really did a great job at the printers, and I've already delivered a stack to the local toyshop. The toy store lady said my book has sold faster than any other local author's book she's seen. Cool!

Book 2: I'm nearly at 14,000 words (typed) on the second Boomer Sisters book. It's not going as fast as I'd hoped, but I'm confident I'll get it done & edited in time for Christmas (but just barely... and only because Lulu is so dang fast).

Connections...

I'm baaaaaack!

Just returned from a little roadtrip to the Boston area. Had a great time, lots of meetings with fascinating people, but no internet connectivity. All in all, quite worth while.

The first guy I met, at a company called Continuum, turned out to be a Clarkson grad, just like me. He said (among other things), that he would like to do some work with the Army's Soldier Systems Center, in Natick MA.

The second guy I met is a professor at Olin College. Guess where his wife works? Yup - Natick's Soldier Systems Center. So I'm going to introduce the two of them. And the professor used to work at Disney's Imagineering shop - so he knows Danny Hillis and Bran Ferren, the two main dudes at Applied Minds, which is the company doing the development for my Aristotle project. The professor said he's looking for better software development methodologies.

The third group I met with (the next day) mentioned a programming language called Water. It's a new language optimized for rapidly prototyping XML Web services, and apparently you can learn it in about 15 minutes. Don't know for sure if it's what Olin needs, but I'm definitely going to pass it along.

The only way all these connections could have been better would be if I'd done my meetings in reverse order, and been able to establish the connections on the spot.

It's a funny world.

Fear...

"Fear is a form of incompetence."

True? False? Discuss among yourselves - leave comments here...

Dano's Tymo Update

Dan's Novel Typing Month (Dano Tymo) update: I got into Chapter 7 this morning. Wordcount: 9246 words.

whew, are my fingers tired...

Post-Oil Era, part 2

Based on a comment my earlier posting received, I wanted to clarify that when I talk about the "post-oil era," I'm talking about the demand for oil drying up, not the supply.

We will figure out how to run our cars on something else, whether it's batteries or hydrogen or biodiesel. My prediction is that Western countries will lose interest in oil (at least as a motor fuel) long before the middle eastern wells are empty.

And if we go the electric vehicle route, I wonder what all the gas stations will do? I suppose we could just turn them all into Starbucks...

Boomers Illustrations

Thought you might like to see some of the illustrations Mandy did for the Boomers book. You can peruse the entire thing by clicking the Preview link at Rogue Press.

Major Book News!

Three exciting developments in the Dan Ward Publishing Empire:

1) I finished The Boomer Sisters Meet Champy. That's right, today is the final day of NaNoWriMo, and this morning at the breakfast table, I wrote those two magic words: The End. My second children's novel is now complete (at least the first draft). And since I did it by hand in a series of spiral notebooks, Dan's Novel Typing Month (DaNoTyMo) begins tomorrow. Not nearly as exciting, no doubt, but fun in its own way. My goal is to have it typed, edited and polished in time to upload it to Lulu and get some copies to put under the Christmas tree.

2) I finished the illustrated version of the first Boomer Sisters book, Meet The Boomer Sisters last night. It's got a new cover (shown here) and a series of amazing illustrations, compliments of the talented and generous Mandy Hoelmer.

3) The local toy shop called last night to say they were all sold out of Meet The Boomer Sisters, and could I please confirm my address so they can mail me a check, and could I please bring by some more copies soon. I told them I'd not only bring some by, but they would be the new, illustrated version. If all goes well, I might even be able to get some copies of Boomers #2 on their shelves before Christmas. We'll see...

So - exciting stuff. I wonder what's going to happen next.

In Bubble Wrap

How could I leave In Bubble Wrap off my list of Must Visit sites? I get an email from them every day, with an opportunity to win a free book. I've won three or four by now, most notably The Apple Way and More Space. I think I got my copy of Ricardo Semler's The Seven Day Weekend from them too, but I don't recall. It's WAY easy to sign up, and like I said, you have a chance to win a new cool book every day.

It's actually a pretty interesting way to publicize a book. Authors / publishers provide IBW with 20 copies of the book to be given away, and the In Bubble Guy sends an email out to loads of people... generating buzz, awareness, interest, etc.

Also, I just found out that IBW's first offer ever was for Sally Hogshead's Radical Careering. IBW is related to 800 CEO Read, which is another pretty cool site.

Bad Design Kills

A very funny, somewhat informative site about the impact bad design can have - on presentations as well as systems. I mostly like the name: Bad Design Kills. Too true!

The Middle East in the Post Oil Era

It's going to happen. Some day, sooner or later, we're going to shake free from our dependence on oil. We'll figure out how to run our cars on hydrogen, solar power, electricity, or some other sort of non-petrol fuel.

What happens to the Middle East then?

I wonder how much they're doing to prepare for that day. Maybe they're all over it, and I'm just not in the loop (it's possible). What I do see is Middle Eastern countries spending millions (billions) on gilded hotel lobbies, swimming pools in the desert, and other silly, trivial consumables. If you ask me, they should be building technical universities, learning to write software, design things, build things, etc... Otherwise, once we kick the oil habit, they're stuck (and it's going to happen, sooner than they think).

Why do I care? It's not entirely altruistic, I admit. I care because chaos in that part of the world tends to have an impact over here. And as Tom Peters said in a similar topic, I'd rather have a million well educated, employed people in India (doing "our jobs") than a million starving, angry people in India, looking at us.... Same goes for the Middle East.

There Must Be 15 Ways To Leave Your Laptop

Joel On Software is a very cool resource for anyone who wants to read intelligent, insightful, memorable articles about software design. Joel is funny, engaging and mercifully brief. His stuff always references software, but I think the design principles he addresses apply across a wide field of work.

His most recent article looks at the 15 - count 'em, 15 - ways to shut down your laptop. His point? That's about 14 ways too many. Here's an excerpt

Inevitably, you are going to think of a long list of intelligent, defensible reasons why each of these options is absolutely, positively essential. Don't bother. I know. Each additional choice makes complete sense until you find yourself explaining to your uncle that he has to choose between 15 different ways to turn off a laptop.

Naturally, this made me think of my Simplicity Cycle. Specifically, it made me think of the Region of the Complicated, and of all the rationalizations we make on our journey to that space. Every additional piece of complication can be justified and defended... but in aggregate, these little decisions lead to confusion, frustration and unhappiness.

Read his article. It's short, easy to grasp, and definitely worth the time.

NaNoWriMo Update

I finished Chapter 15 this morning. The girls were in an experimental sub, looking for Champy (the Lake Champlain monster). Things went wrong, they ended up at the bottom of the lake, the lights went out... etc, etc... but at the end of Chapter 15, they were back on the surface, safe & sound. The story is almost over...

Casualty Count Update: For those who are keeping track, pen #3 bit the dust over the weekend. I sat down and literally wrote the first two letters of a 3-letter word (I believe it was "she"), when the ink just stopped coming out.

NaNoWriMo Update!

I wrapped up Chapter 12 this morning - left the two main characters in a certain amount of peril (and it's just going to get more perilous before it's over). I estimate there are three more chapters left. I'm cruising along at better than the 1/2 a chapter a day pace I needed to finish all 15 chapters in 30 days. We'll see what sort of impact Thanksgiving has...

BTW, the illustrated version of the original Boomer Sisters book is coming out soon too, probably right around the same time as this second book is finished. So... if you've got elementary school kids on your Christmas list, I know of two books you could pick up, coming soon!

My Online Life

What did we do before the internet? Who cares. Here's a little peak at some of my favorite internet goodies - the stuff I use every day.

Gmail! It's the first browser window I open each morning. Whoever invented webmail is a genius. Whoever designed Gmail is a double genius.

Bloglines! My second stop is an RSS feed to help me keep on top of a whole set of blogs. My list includes daily updates from The Creative Generalist, Dilbert, and a few of my friend's blogs (i.e. Trevor Gay's Simplicity blog).

Tom Peters! I like to read his stuff in full-screen (& leave comments), so I don't have his blog on my Bloglines list. I just go directly to the site. Same with Hugh McLeod's Gaping Void blog.

Pandora! It's an online streaming music feed, and I've created a handful of "stations," depending on the type of music I'm in the mood for. I have it on almost all day.

Rocketboom! The coolest video blog (vlog) out there. Mostly internet / tech trends, but plenty of other cool stuff. The host Joanne Colan has a delightful british accent...

At some point, I usually check some news sites, like CNN or Drudge (though I'm less impressed with both of these sources lately).

Blogger! That's where this blog is hosted.

What's on your list of daily must-reads, must-use, or must-access?

Timing

I just discovered that if I save a draft post, then finish it a few days later, it is posted to this site under the date it was begun, not the date it was finished.

So if you scroll down a bit, you'll see a new post titled "Why I havent' been fired." I started it two days ago but didn't click "publish" until this morning, and rather than putting it on top of the stack, Blogger hid it below other bits I'd posted over the past few days.

I'm sure there's a way to adjust that (other than deleting it and re-doing it fresh)... but for now, I'll just point it out.

NaNoWriMo Casualty Count

As I wrote the first half of chapter 10 this morning, my pen ran out of ink. That's the second time I've killed a pen while writing The Boomer Sisters Meet Champy during this Novel Writing Month. I think it's some sort of personal record.

The last time this happened was on an airplane two weeks ago. I had to borrow a new pen from the flight attendant so I could write chapter 6. At least this morning I was able to grab another one right away, and didn't have to wait for the drink cart to make it all the way to the back of the plane.

I may not have an accurate word count, but my pen count is up to two now.

Integrity & Loyalty

Pfc. John J. Jodka III was sentenced to 18 months for his role in the killing of an Iraqi civilian. He was the youngest and lowest-ranking member of a squad, other members of which are facing quite severe penalties.

On the radio this morning, Jodka was described as "feeling torn between loyalty to his squad and his own integrity." In Iraq, he chose loyalty over integrity, with disaterous results. Back in the states, however, he was quoted as saying:

"I decided to plead guilty because in the end it was the right thing to do," Jodka said. "I had to weigh in myself the need for truth as opposed to the loyalty to the squad I had bonded with in Iraq."

I have long contended that loyalty is overrated, and I'm glad to see Pfc Jodka was eventually able to recognize that there are higher virtues. Loyalty is good, but it doesn't trump things like honor, integrity, justice, etc. Loyalty in service of integrity is powerful and positive, but when divorced from integrity, loyalty can be downright evil.

I hope this case gets people thinking about the real meaning and proper role of loyalty. I hope the USMC (and others) will make it clear that moral actions require us to demonstrate loyalty to truth and loyalty to justice, ahead of loyalty to individual people.

Fit Is Go!

We picked up our new car yesterday, and I'm totally loving it. It's a Honda Fit, and I'd never even heard of such a thing until about a month ago. The color is "Nighthawk Black Pearl," which makes me laugh.

It's zippy, roomy and supposedly gets great gas mileage (hard to tell - it's only been two days - but I guess I'll take their word for it).

You can do all kinds of cool things with the seats, including laying the front seats completely flat and turning it into a bed-like interior ("refresh mode").

The 7 year warranty means I'll probably have this car until I'm ready to retire from the AF. That's a strange thought.

NaNoWriMo Update

I had a GREAT time writing this morning. Lots of pieces of the story came together, scenes I hadn't expected, character & story development jumped to the next level, and the whole thing continues to surprise me... I think it's my favorite chapter yet.

I usually wrap up by 0700 and head in to work - today I didn't leave the house until 0730 (gasp!). I'm still writing it by hand in a spiral notebook, so I don't have a word count, but Chapter 9 is now 90% finished (I expect to have somewhere around 16 chapters). I probably won't get around to typing it until this paper draft is finished.

NaNoWriMo rocks!

Why I Haven't Been Fired...

While I was at Death Valley with the Association of Managers of Innovation, someone asked a wonderful question after my presentation: "Why haven't you been fired yet?" I've been thinking about that one a lot, and I'd like to share my answers - or at least, my best guess at an explanation for how I've managed to avoid getting the axe.

1) Luck. I'm genuinely lucky, and can't take much credit for many of the good things that have happened to me. I seem to have a knack for being in the right place at the right time, meeting the right people, etc. Tom Peters explains the dynamics of getting lucky much better than I can.

2) I've had some really great bosses (you know who you are). I refuse to be badly managed, and when I have a bad boss, I've managed to move on rather quickly. It's my life, so I try to make it a point to hire good bosses and fire bad ones. Which leads to number three...

3) Moving Target Theory. I don't stay in one place very long, partly because of the nature of my business, and partly by design. Moving Target Theory is my buddy Quaid's attempt to quantify and define the mechanism which has saved our butts on more than one occasion.

4) Great customers. When the chain of command is throwing daggers my way, it's helped to have customers who were willing to step in and say "This guy is helping save lives, rescue hostages, etc, etc."

5) The Rogue Program Manager's Art of War. More wisdom from my buddy Quaid, these 8-and-a-half axioms form the basis of our manual of arms for the Global War on Bureaucracy, and they help keep my biscuits out of the fire.

6) The truth is, I have been fired. Well, not really, but I once had an annual performance review significantly downgraded by a powerful dude (my boss's boss's boss's boss...). He was unhappy about the fact that a different division had recruited me away from his division. I am prouder of that review than almost any other. There's something profoundly cool about being punished for doing the right thing, and that review is a professional battle scar I carry gladly.

7) Paradoxically, I can't be fired. Sure, I can be removed from a job, passed over for promotion, kicked out of the service, court-martialed, etc... but short of putting me in jail, I will always be able to continue with my career, regardless of the specifics of my job. To paraphrase Obi Wan, firing me would only make me stronger.

Freedom & Integrity

At a recent meeting (which will remain anonymous), someone said something along the lines of "Well, that would be the smart thing to do, but we'd get in trouble for doing it..."

For the sake of argument, let's grant the validity of that negative fantasy (i.e. we'll be punished for doing something smart). Even in that unlikely case, I think we should still do the smart thing, the right thing, consequences be damned.

The funny thing is, the consensus in the room was that since "we'd get in trouble," the smart option was off the table. The group quickly moved on to the dumb options. It wasn't a question of wanting to chose one's battles carefully. It was more like a desire to avoid all battles in the first place. Nobody questioned what type of trouble, how much trouble, or even whether the trouble was real.

Frankly, it disgusted me. I expected more fearlessness & courage, more creativity & energy from that group than I saw that day. I expected more integrity. Like I said, I was disgusted.

I believe we always have the freedom to do the right thing & the smart thing. We may suffer unfair consequences for doing the right thing. People might think we're fools. But nobody can force me to violate my own convictions. We can ignore corporate pressure if we choose to do so. We can trust our own judgement, if we're willing to pay the price. The alternative is, in my humble opinion, absolutely unacceptable.

The old advice to "pick your battles carefully" has been twisted and misapplied by timid, fearful, cynical bureaucrats. They're not picking battles at all. They are simply protecting their own interests and sacrificing the interests of their customers, subordinates, supervisors and organization. I'm not saying we should fight every battle that comes along... just that we should probably stand up for Truth, Justice and the American Way more often than we do.

The truth is, you probably won't get in trouble for doing the smart thing... and even if you do, at least you've done the smart thing. That's worth something.

If you're working in an organization that punishes people for following their convictions and using their own judgement, I've got one word of advice: Run!

As Sally Hogshead pointed out in her book Radical Careering, "Being in a crap job isn't your fault. Staying in a crap job is." (Radical Truth #19)

Be Kind...

Be kind, for everyone you meet is fighting a great battle."—Philo of Alexandria

(found this on Tom Peters' blog this morning & wanted to pass it along)

Short Downward Flights

I recently acquired a copy of a book titled Progress in Flying Machines, by Octave Chanute.

As you might guess by the guy's first name, he lived a long time ago. He was born in 1832, and came to the US from Paris with his parents at the age of 6.

He published Progress in 1894. The Smithsonian Institute recommended Wilber Wright read it, as he and his brother began their pioneering work.

The US Air Force eventually named Chanute Air Force Base after good old Octave. (My dad was stationed at Chanute for a few years, when I was a kid, and I have many fond memories of that area. The base was closed in 1993).

I mention this because, aside from being a fascinating look at the history of failed attempts at manned flight, there's a very funny line, describing the aviation experiments of a French locksmith named Besnier. He designed the clever contraption pictured here, and Chanute said he "took short downward flights aided by gravity."

Short downward flights aided by gravity? I think there's another name for that: falling.

The Rules of Jazz

I heard a thing on NPR this morning about jazzman Ornette Coleman. Apparently he's quite the avant-garde musician, and a controversial figure in the jazz community. He's got a new album out called Sound Grammar, and it sounds like it's quite good.

One line from the radio piece stuck out to me - enough that I wrote it down in my notebook while barreling along the interstate:

"He was accused of arbitrarily breaking the rules of jazz."

Wow. That accusation alone makes him my new hero. I aspire to be accused of arbitrarily breaking the rules of jazz. Someday, if I manage to live up to the Pirate-y, Rogue-ish, status-quo-defying standards I'm aiming for, I hope someone says the same thing of me. To "arbitrarily break the rules of jazz" is a remarkable feat.

Someone Keeps Stealing My Letters!

RocketBoom recently mentioned this hilarious website. It's basically a virtual refridgerator door, covered with colored letters which anyone can move around.

The thing is, everyone else on the site can move around the same letters you're moving around. So you might try to spell something, only to have a critical letter swiped by someone trying to leave a message of their own.

Of course, some people write bad words :( but their letters tend to get swiped pretty quickly.

The fun isn't limited to writing your name. I saw an impromptu contest where some people were trying to move all the letters to the right side of the screen, while some other people were trying to move them all to the left side. I assume someone started with one side, and someone else (or more than one someone) started doing the opposite. That made me laugh, 'cause I knew there was no communication between them other than the movement of the letters.

I tried sorting the letters by color, and was immediately countered by people trying to keep it mixed up. You could also try finishing someone else's word, preferably turning it into something other than what they were obviously writing (i.e. if they've got "LOV" and are moving an E into place at the end, add a G to the front and turn their LOVE into GLOVE). Trust me, it's hilarious, but maybe you had to be there.

No doubt there are lots of other games & contests you can play. I just think it's interesting to watch what happens when people come to a shared space like this, with their own agendas and ideas. What would you do?

Giant Monkey Wrench Hits Fan - Outcome Uncertain!

You wouldn't think a weekend would get in the way of writing, but it managed to. We went to New York City to visit my Mother-In-Law. Had a great time - saw the Bronx Zoo, which was fantastic.

But I didn't get much writing done. Like, maybe a page. I did manage to do a little research, but research isn't writing.

And this morning, I overslept a bit. As I've probably mentioned, most of my writing occurs at 5am. So I didn't get any writing done this morning.

I'm sure I'll catch up, but yikes - I've got some real catching up to do!

Imperfectionism

Last August, I wrote an article about Imperfectionism for Rogue Project Leader. Imperfectionism is a positive, enthusiastic and productive philosophy, and I wanted to pass it along to any of you who didn't catch the original article the first time. Here's a short excerpt to get you started:

It's amazing how much you can get done in a short amount of time if you don't care whether it's perfect or not. No doubt that sentiment will amuse some readers and disturb others, but I've found it to be true.

As several of you have surely noticed, I am quite content to create things with flaws, mostly because I know I'm going to do so whether I want to or not. That is, I am content to create what I can create, and I try not to insist on that which cannot be done. My satisfaction is based on the presence of something good, not the absence of all flaws.

I just feel bad for perfectionists. They deprive themselves of so much happiness by focusing on the bad rather than rejoicing in the good.

I hope you all enjoy the Imperfectionism article, particularly my NaNoWriMo friends out there, who are elbow-deep in highly imperfect novels. Keep writing!

It's a beautiful thing, this imperfectionism.

Proximity...

It's been said that possession is nine tenths of the law. It hit me the other day that proximity is nine-tenths of leadership.

That is, if you're in a situation that calls for leadership, don't worry about whether or not it's "your job." You're there, so do something.

The other implication is that leadership is nine-tenths proximity. If you're a leader, it's important to be around...

Boomer Sisters Book Review

I recently got a copy of "Book Banter," a publication of the New York State Reading Association (thanks, Mom!). In the Summer 2006 issue, they've got a very nice review of Meet The Boomer Sisters!

I'll skip their plot summary and just get right to the good stuff:

The moral of the tale is quite clear and will be perceived even by younger readers, but the "lesson" doesn’t overwhelm the entertaining narrative. This is an interesting and well written book, by a promising new author. Meet The Boomer Sisters will be enjoyed particularly by Middle Schoolers and should make a great read-aloud for Second and Third Graders as well.

Not bad for a 30-day project, eh? Sure, I did a few minor edits and tweaks after the month was over, but they were mostly fixing a few typo's. Nothing substantial.

The point? People can produce stuff that's worth reading during NaNoWriMo. (And you can publish them in time for Christmas at Lulu.com). So, to all my fellow NaNoWriMo'ers out there - keep it up! You can TOTALLY do it! And if you're writing a kid's novel, I look forward to reading NYSRA's review of it next summer!

And to those who haven't yet joined in the NaNoWriMo insanity, there's always next year!

Good Writing

A thought for my fellow NaNoWriMo'ers...

"It has often been said, by numerous experts in the fields of writing and communication, that good writers should always endeavor to, when ever possible, omit any and all instances of words which are unnecessary, for the sake of the clarity and quality of their writing projects."

- or -

Omit unnecessary words.
-William Strunk