I am going to stop posting to Plaxo. If you are reading this blog and/or Twitter feed in Plaxo and want to continue to see updates then you will need to subscribe directly, see below. I am deleting my Plaxo account one week from today on August 6.
No offence Plaxo. It’s not you it’s me and yes, there is somebody else. Too many somebodies.
So if you are a Plaxo reader, please add me somewhere else…
While the idea of selectively sending content from different sources to different groups in Plaxo appealed initially, it just ended up sending updates to people who were already getting them elsewhere and gave me another profile to update. I just don’t need Plaxo, sorry (but best of luck n’all…).
I am also deleting my xing.com account at the same time. This doesn’t appear to affect anybody at all, which is reason enough to do it. That and because the name sounds like a Chinese word and isn’t, so it’s confusing.
Update 2010-08-06. Plaxo and Xing accounts have been deleted.
We were talking about time zones and how we remember them, I attempted to jot down how I remember them and what I remember.
Basically I just remember the ones I use regularly which is East Asia (ex. Japan), Europe, UK, Eastern USA and Western USA. The rest I can probably have a rough guess at, certainly enough to know whether I’m going to wake someone up in the middle of the night or not.
The way I remember them is as a series of time differences, Asia to Europe, Europe to UK, etc. The result is that only four time differences need to be remembered for my five important time zones but a further eighteen can be derived. Of course, you have to remember to add one during winter for everywhere except Asia.
The diagram that I jotted down looked something like this…
A visual quick reference for moving around a buffer in Emacs.
Coincidentally both in my J-O-B and for a personal project I’ve been doing a little bit of development again recently. I’m not a software developer and spent only a year at the very begining of my career being one. I’m very much the hobyist here so it’s both fun and frustrating to pick it up again.
One of the minor irritations each time is how much EMACS I’ve forgotten. I’m still in the process of reading ‘The Back of the Napkin’ but this seemed like an opportunity to put my new ‘visual thinking’ skills to the test and see if I could make some EMACS commands stick in my swiss-cheese brain.
I’ve just started reading The Back of the Napkin which is apparently about Solving Problems and Selling Ideas with Pictures, I’m interested in how this can improve my effectiveness so before I get too far with the book I thought it might be worth documenting what I have so far. Basically a personal short hand for taking notes. Not exactly a visual vocabulary for sure but it will be interesting to contrast this with where I end up after reading the book.
Like most people, this has evolved over time for taking notes in meetings, training, when reading, etc. I first noted this down when I covered it in some training I did on effective meetings a long time ago. The image below shows the key aspects of my key for note taking, mostly applicable to meetings. The key objective, of course, is to make sure I end up with a record of who, will do what, by when and also note informational items. All done in such a way that it’s easily extracted later (consistency being key here).
I was recently pointed at Prezi the new new thing in presentations and was instantly impressed by the eye-candy and then, on following their online demo stuff, even more impressed by the potential for presenting information of various kinds in a way that allows the viewer to see everything, move through logically or jump to something interesting and drill down. (h/t to@otfrom for the tip)
In an effort to understand it a little better I’ve been having a play. To speed up the process I have migrated (er, ish) a ppt I did to support a speech I made at Toastmasters introducing Getting Things Done. The original ppt is available on slideshare here. The prezi is below, follow it through step by step or go mad clicking, zooming and swooping about. Bear in mind the original ppt was done to support an actual presentation not to simply be browsed.
That’s my best, er only, effort to date. For something truly cool, check out this one (not mine)… http://prezi.com/iwthettnve9q/
Image Credit: "Google Wave en la actualidad" by Rafa.Garcés on Flickr
My first thought with Google Wave was that this was something that was great, I could immediately see a bunch of uses for it…
More feature rich chat medium
Great for working collaboratively on creating text / documents.
A half way point between email and chat for conversations that spam a couple of days (you know when you feel you’re having a conversation by email).
But I have to be honest I did think it was too much of a paradigm shift. It’s been said elsewhere, but I did think it would go the way of RSS where it was just too much of a different way of thinking for people to get it any time soon.
And then people in my contacts list started using it and I was surprised not just by how many but by whom. The people I’ve been waving with are mostly not the obvious web2.0 earlier adopters. And then I started seeing what people are doing with embedded gadgets and it’s power really started to become apparent.
Now something else has just occurred to me about Google Wave. It’s the perfect back channel. We all have people in our contact list that we send links, thoughts, questions, etc. to multiple times a day. Currently we either send emails, which is a pain a) because emails are too asynchronous, the paradigm is a letter and people feel obliged to craft a proper response and b) everyone battles with keeping on top of their inbox. Or we send links in chat which is too synchronous, the paradigm is a conversation and useful stuff is too easily lost in the chatter or we feel we’re interrupting and people are obliged respond (immediately).
Wave is the perfect semi-synchronous (i think I made that up) medium. You can drop links, thoughts, snippets, whatever into wave and your collaborators can review later. You can have multiple people per wave (teams), or multiple waves per contact (different projects). Now I think for a project team, or for a bunch of other uses, that could be really powerful.
I’ve got some invites going spare if you’ve not tried Google Wave and would like to. If I know who you are (or if I don’t and you think you can convince me you deserve one then let me know.
This is the eighth post in a series on ‘Glue Phrases’ in Czech, if you want to start from the beginning start here or you view all posts in the series here.
Language Words & Phrases
Useful Phrases How do you say … ? Jak Řekneš?
What is this ? Co to je?
I understand. (Já) rozumím.
I don’t understand. (Já) nerozumím.
Could you repeat that, please? Můžete to prosím zopakovat.
Could you say it slowly, please? Můžete to říct pomaleji prosím.
Glue Words Or. / Nebo. But. / Ale. And. / A. Also. / Taky. Of course. / Samozřejmě. Because. / Protože.
If you have any suggestions or corrections I’d love to hear from you. All credit goes to E, all mistakes are my own.
This is the seventh post in a series on ‘Glue Phrases’ in Czech, if you want to start from the beginning start here or you view all posts in the series here.
Making Plans Do you want to … ? Chceš … ?
I am … . Já jsem … .
I want to … . (Já) chci … .
I don’t want to … . (Já) nechci … .
Examples…
Do you want to go to the shop? / Chceš jít do obchodu? I am going for a run. / Jdu si zaběhat. I am going for a walk. / Jdu na procházku. I want to go for dinner. / (Já) chci večeři. I don’t want to go to the pub. / (Já) nechci jít do hospody.
If you have any suggestions or corrections I’d love to hear from you. All credit goes to E, all mistakes are my own.
This is the sixth post in a series on ‘Glue Phrases’ in Czech, if you want to start from the beginning start here or you view all posts in the series here.
Making Arrangements When will you be back? Kdy budeš (ty) zpátky?
When will we meet? Kdy se (my) potkáme?
Where will we meet? Kde se (my) potkáme?
Where are we going? Kam jdeme?
Who is going? Kdo má přijít?
Call me. Zavolej mi.
I will be back … . (Ja) budu zpátky … .
Can you call me … ? Můžeš mi zavolat?
I will call you … . (Ja) zavolám (ti) … .
Examples…
I will be back before noon. / (Ja) budu zpátky dopoledne. Can you call me in the morning? / Můžeš mi zavolat ráno. I will call you in the afternoon. / (Ja) zavolám (ti) odpoledne. I will call you in the evening. / (Ja) zavolám (ti) večer.
If you have any suggestions or corrections I’d love to hear from you. All credit goes to E, all mistakes are my own.
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