poingology

Working with Images: Taking Pictures

2009-03-20T22:22:00.020-05:00

Although there are many sources of pictures, the most obvious one is your own digital camera. Use it. I always have a camera with me. It is only sometimes used for artistic expression or even family shots. I use a camera to capture far more information in a second than I could write in fifteen minutes.

I use pictures to remember jobsite conditions, to capture a memorable detail, to record progress of a project, to snag an idea. My camera is my memory tool. My pictures are an extension of taking field notes.

My picture collection is my communication toolbox. If I want to communicate a difficult point about something I have observed, I have my picture to refresh my memory and to share with others.

Sometimes my artistic side pops out and I grab a camera to capture a particularly interesting or beautiful image. Later, these become screen savers and backgrounds to liven up my computing experience.

download 1024x768 of this pic download 1280x768 of this pic

Digital photos are cheap! No film, no developing, no piles of curling, yellowing photos. You can crop, stretch, extract, annotate and otherwise enhance them. They are a perfect medium for inexpensively collecting large volumes of visual information so that when you need them, you will have many from which to choose.

Summary: Take a LOT of pictures. Then take more.

Working with Images

2009-03-07T17:37:00.009-06:00

The saying that “one picture is worth a thousand words” has never been more true. Al Gore certainly knows it:

The internet, a relatively new form of communication, now brings graphics-intensive content into our lives at a rapid pace. Even before the internet, images were the medium of choice for the communication of a message. Think TV, magazines, newspapers and advertisements, all loaded with carefully crafted images.

The bar is officially raised. If you want to communicate effectively and compete in the world, you must use images, or you could end up like this guy.

Even if you spend hours carefully making your point in words, even if you use the best words, sentence structure, editor, etc., there will always be a group of people who will not read what you so carefully wrote.

The Power of Pictures

On the other hand, if you make your point with a picture, even the most attention-challenged among us will take a second to look. And you will have made your point. And your image may just be the key which opens the lock on the minds of your audience and invites them to read further. This is the power of pictures.
Electrify your words with images

Let’s bring the point home….

Scroll down and see the same article you have just read… except without pictures. What do you think?
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EXAMPLE: Same text but with no pictures
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Working with Pictures

The saying that “one picture is worth a thousand words” has never been more true. Al Gore knows it.

The internet, a relatively new form of communication, now brings graphics-intensive content into our lives at a rapid pace. Even before the internet, images were the medium of choice for the communication of a message. Think TV, magazines, newspapers and advertisements, all loaded with carefully crafted images.
The bar is officially raised. If you want to communicate effectively and compete in the world, you must use images, or you could end up like this guy.

Even if you spend hours carefully making your point in words, even if you use the best words, sentence structure, editor, etc., there will always be a group of people who will not read what you so carefully wrote.

The Power of Pictures

On the other hand, if you make your point with a picture, even the most attention-challenged among us will take a second to look. And you will have made your point. And your image may just be the key which opens the lock on the minds of your audience and invites them to read further. This is the power of pictures.
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END OF EXAMPLE: Same text but with no pictures
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Get the Point?

When you add images to your text, you change and enrich your reader’s experience. You open a door to someone who might not be ready to commit to the work of reading. You bring the text alive. You explain better. You teach better. The value of your communications will soar.

OK, I want to use pictures, but how?

This is what this series of articles is all about. I will show you not only how to communicate with images, but also how to think about and structure your presentations so they really tell your story.

Where will I use the pictures?

Once you get started incorporating pictures in everything you do, you will wonder how you ever survived with drab, text-only communications. Every document or presentation you create will become turbocharged with the amazing power of images.

In my life, my most common use of pictures is in business reports. In these reports I might be trying to communicate the progression of a construction job, a problem, a solution, or an answer to a technical question. Another common and less formal usage is as email attachments. I also use images on my websites.

You will find your own uses. Maybe you will liven up letters you send to far-away friends, or to sell something on Ebay, or even to meet someone on the web. Whatever the project, you will do it ten times better with an effective image to help tell your story.

What Will I Need?

You will be happy to hear that you already own much of what you need.

To create documents which can easily accommodate images, you only need Microsoft Word or Excel, or other similar programs. Copying and pasting images into these programs is easy.

To modify images prior to adding them to your documents, for the most part you will be able to use Microsoft Paint, a free part of most Windows operating systems.

To capture pictures you will need a digital camera and a cable. To capture images from the internet, you will need Lightning Navigator, an inexpensive software downloadable at www.poingo.com.

Later, as an advanced user, you may wish to purchase Adobe Photoshop with ImageReady. That’s it!

Just take a little time and follow along. Working with Images is not just about what you do, but also how you work, and ultimately how you think.

Far beyond the idea of adding images to your documents, there is a deeper, more profound level of learning offered here. Learning to use images involves learning how people process and assimilate images. You can’t do a great job of graphic communications without understanding the eyes and brains of your audience.

We will explore such questions as:

What is a proper order for the presentation of ideas?
What constitutes an idea and a grouping of ideas and what separates different ideas?
When is the right time to add an image?
How do you select the most persuasive image?

I hope you enjoy and benefit from what you learn. Stay tuned...

Five File Naming Strategies that Kill

2008-03-20T17:50:00.002-05:00

Do you have trouble finding your files? When you find them, are you confused about which is most current? When you visit work folders of co-workers, do you feel like you are in alien territory?

If you answered "yes" to any of the above, chances are great that neither you nor your organization are using a system for naming your files.

The methods you and your organization employ to name files and folders will have a critical impact on productivity. People and companies who use disciplined naming systems enjoy better inter-company communication, far less errors and much faster, easier document retrieval.

What do we communicate with file names?

With good file naming we communicate two main things: order and content.

Order should always be the first element in the filename because when this is successfully employed, it will force files within a folder to display in a natural sequence. So let’s call this first part of the filename the order prefix.

Order prefixes can be numerical such as CO01, CO02, or chronological prefixes such as 2004-06-24.

Beginning your filenames with one of these two strategies will pay big dividends as the documents start to accumulate because in both cases, the documents will display in a logical order when a folder is opened.

Order Prefixes in File Names

Some files already have a built-in order, such as COs (Change Orders) or RFIs (Requests for Information). Another example would be folders containing numbered invoices. In these types of folders we might see the prefix be something like PCO01-, PCO02-. When you view the list of files in Windows Explorer, they will be listed in order.

When using order prefixes, allocate the correct number of characters for the numbering scheme. Lets say you expect to have up to 99 Change Orders. Name the first one CO01, not CO1. Otherwise, your computer might sort PCO10 before PCO1.

Let’s say you have to re-issue CO04 a number of times and you want to retain the history of the changes. In that situation, call the first revision PCO04a, and the next PCO04b to keep the sorting order intact.

Chronological Prefixes

Notice that the example of chronological ordering above begins with the year, then the month and finally the day. With this simple method, whatever date you use, the files will sort chronologically with most recent at the bottom of the list.

When chronological ordering is most appropriate, we advocates the use of a six-digit date prefix: YYMMDD-. Example: March 19, 2008 would be 080319 followed by a hyphen. This saves characters and keystrokes, but is only appropriate when dates are no earlier than the year 2000.

A document dated 990203 (2/3/1999) would drop to the bottom of the list in a mini version of the once feared Y2K problem. If you are naming files with dates earlier than 2000, you will have to spend the two extra characters and name the year 1988 instead of 88 when using any of the chronological formats.

Conveying Content – Part 1

Once you have structured the prefix of the filename to force the ordering you desire, your next task is to convey a glimpse of the file’s content. This will save much time later when trying to find a particular document. Your folder structure may already contain much information. In the example below, the file

040602-PurchaseOrder.doc has a full path as follows:

C:\My Documents\Projects\Smith\Widgets\Cost\040602-PurchaseOrder.doc

This path already tells you much about the document. If your file will always remain in that folder, the above filename can be fine.

Ramifications of Sending Files

What happens if you wish to email the document to the accounting department as an attachment? In the above example, they would see this filename:

040602-PurchaseOrder.doc

They see the date and know it is a purchase order, but for what?

Would it help accounting to have more content in the filename? Would their process be easier if they knew more about the purchase order before opening it? The answer to both questions is obviously, yes.

But sending such a bland filename could actually be hazardous. It is not unique enough and could be erased if accounting then receives the same filename from a different worker. That could cost real dollars.

Another hazard: What if accounting modified your document and emailed it back to you? Would you easily know where to refile it? Would you file it properly? Would you know later which document was your original and which was the revised one? Expensive confusion looms on the horizon.

A simple remedy would be to add at least one additional piece of information in the file name. Instead of

040602-PurchaseOrder.doc

why not use:

040602-PO-Job-vendor.doc

Notice that "Purchase Order" is abbreviated to "PO". A few characters representing the job adds key information. Adding a few characters for the vendor makes understanding what the document is all about, a slam dunk. In our proposed example, there are only a few more keystrokes, but there is a world of more information.

Conveying Content – Part 2

Once we have learned to place ordering prefixes and locators in filenames, we then wish to add text which communicates content. One challenge of this is a limitation on the number of characters we can reasonably use. Practically speaking we should try to hold filenames to about 18-28 characters. If 12 characters are used for ordering, locators and hyphens, we now have 6-16 characters to convey meaning.

To do this, first, avoid placing spaces between words. Instead use capital letters at the beginning of each word and small letters for the balance of the word. Run them all together. This will save space, be reasonably legible, and can be accurately transmitted via FTP links (more on this later).

The next concept is to establish abbreviations commonly used in your office. Examples:

Let (Letter)
PO (Purchase Order)
Inv (Invoice)
Deliv (Delivery
Mod (Modification)

So a filename would look like this: 040921-FTWP-Let-LateDeliv

What Symbols and Characters can be used in File Names?

The following characters (although we do not recommend having a lot of different funky characters in your file names and strongly suggest for visual unity that the hyphen is predominately used), the following symbols can be used in file names without getting rejected by your computer:

Hyphen ( - )
Underline ( _ )
Comma ( , )
Semi-Colon ( ; )
Ampersand ( & )

And the follow characters can NOT be used in file names:

Front Slash ( \ )
Back Slash ( / )
Colon ( : )
Question Mark ( ? )
Asterisk ( * )
Quotation Mark ( “ )
Left Bracket ( [ )
Right Bracket ( ] )
Vertical Line ( | )

Also, avoid having spaces in your file names. In the event of attempting to FTP these files there will probably be an error.

Green Electric Salsa Jar Wins $2500 1st Place

2008-02-09T07:06:00.002-06:00

KVELL (yiddish): To beam with pride and pleasure. Parents are prone to kvell over their children's achievements.

That's what I have been doing lately.

Like most parents, I pretty much have a kvell-circuit running at all times for my great kids Yael and Matt. They are really cool, unique people.

But this event has not only amped up the kvell-machine, but is giving me a real kick and a good laugh besides.

You see, Matt, a junior at Washington University studying electrical engineering, and his friend Zach Dwiel (also from Wash U) entered a contest sponsored by Core77 Industrial Design and Greener Gadgets.

The mission: "To design a "greener gadget"; to create innovative solutions addressing the issues of energy, carbon footprint, health and toxicity, new materials, product lifecycle, and social development."

That high-sounding verbiage did not deter Matt and Zach from applying not only their considerable technical expertise and concern for the environment, but also their unremitting senses of humor to the challenge.

Their creation captured the imaginations of judges and attendeees alike, assembled in New York in February 2008 as a part of the Greener Gadgets Conference. In the words of the Core 77 site:

The design competition engaged established design firms, emerging designers, design students and design enthusiasts, and top entries were showcased live at the Greener Gadgets Conference by a distinguished panel and the audience. (There were 2 rounds of rigorous pre-judging prior to the live event.) Panelists were Valerie Casey (founder of The Designers Accord and Global Practice Head, Software Experiences at IDEO), Ryan Block (editor-in-chief of Engadget), and Jill Fehrenbacher (publisher of Inhabitat and coordinator of GreenerGadgets).

The First Place Winner: EnerJar by Matt Meshulam and Zach Dwiel

This ungainly contraption is a do-it-yourself power meter. It measures the power consumption of any appliance you can plug into a wall. Here we see it measuring the power draw of a laptop:

The judges are to be complimented for seeing the radiant beauty in that funny-looking beast. Other entries were clever and many were wonderfully rendered. But Matt and Zach's invention was real. It actually worked.

And here's the beauty: The EnerJar is made of recycled material! The jar once held salsa for a brief time before its destined trip to the landfill. The power supply came is an old cell phone charger. Have you ever seen cell phone parts reused? Imagine how many used cell phones there are out there, clogging Earth's arteries.

But in addition to this incredibly practical aspect, the EnerJar teaches you about how you are using energy in a real, tactile way. First you build it in an Earth-friendly way, then you use it to learn about yourself and your impact on our world.

To bring the philosophy full circle, Matt and Zach have created a website www.EnerJar.net where they post a schematic drawing for free. Here is what it looks like:

Please visit www.EnerJar.net and take a look around. There is a parts list, a nice explanation of the hardware and software involved, and a place to comment. You might have an idea of similar brilliance that you can post there for the involvement of similarly enlightened people. This can be the spark of a new movement. This is a worthwhile visit. These are great ideas. But then again, I am kvelling.

Greener Gadgets Design Competition Video

Greener Gadgets Design Competition Results

Sammy Zeltser's Wish

2008-01-16T21:33:00.001-06:00

This is the story of our friends Alex, Hannah Gelena and Sammy Zeltser, reprinted with permission from their excellent website www.sammyzeltserswish.org

If you are able in any way, please help.

To many friends who frequent the Zeltzers' hospitable home, introducing Sammy, the kindest and the wittiest kid, would be superfluous. Knowing that thousands of concerned people will visit this website and will want to help out both the family and the Foundation, we thought it was important that you all "meet" our hero. He is a hero for stoically dealing with and adjusting to his new debilitating condition, giving warmth and hope to distraught family, and uniting all kinds of people.
Please meet our precious Sammy, before and now.

Before

Sammy was born a perfectly healthy kid 7 years ago to a Russian immigrant parents Alex and Gelena. He is the youngest child in a family and has 2 loving sisters, Eva and Marina and a big brother, Michael

Known for his sharp tongue and a witty mind, he's always kept his teachers and parents on a tip of their toes. Sammy is an excellent reader and speller, very curious, loves swimming, playing Wii, and going to Sunday school learning Hebrew and about Jewish traditions.

He expresses himself with the skill that many adults would covet. Sam is loving and giving boy and emanates warmth to all around him. His presence is comforting to all and he acts as a concerned protector of the nature and defender of the weak.

Always happy, gentle and full of positive energy, Sam plays a peacemaker and a diplomat in a family. He is a big time hugger, loves his parents, brother, sisters and grandparents and is not shy to kiss them all and to remind how much he loves them.

Something unusual started happening to the flawless Sammy a year and a half ago. To everyone's surprise, he became forgetful and easily distracted during school. Sam's doctor diagnosed him with ADHD - attention deficit disorder and started treating him with psychotropic stimulants.

With no visible improvements in his concentration, Sam started exhibiting other disturbing behaviors - seclusion, silence, and a slowing physical activity. He continued to be on ADHD medications. After sounding an alarm from teachers and parents that his condition is worsening, Sam was taken off the drugs at which point severe neurological change was hard to miss. Desperately seeking second opinion about Sam's condition, he was brought to a new pediatrician who immediately scheduled emergency EEG, MRI and specific blood tests.

After undergoing MRI at Evanston Northwestern Hospital, Sam was rushed to Childrenss Memorial Hospital due to life-threatening deteriorating condition found in his MRI scan. It was confirmed that Sammy is suffering from a genetic disorder, adrenoleukodystrophy.

Sam's parents and the friends of the Sammy's Wish Foundation felt it was important, for two reasons, to describe what Sammy is going through as his illness is progressing and a race to save his life is on. First, if more people internalize how dangerous and crippling this disorder is, the more awareness will be spread and the more tragedies like this could be prevented. Second, it is important that all the well-wishers have an honest picture of what Sammy and his family are going through. Naturally, we hope to share good news soon!

Now

Sammy is still very loving and kind, but it is difficult for him to express it verbally. His speech is now somewhat slurred and voice very quiet. Instead of talking, he expresses himself by using his finger to draw images or letters in the air. He likes to touch-feel people to give positive energy.

He has stiffness in his legs and it is increasingly difficult for him to walk without having to lean on someone and limping. It seems that he continuously feels off-balance: he prefers to sit or lay on the floor and when he stands he either grasps for the air with his hands or has to hold on to people or subjects to stay erect. It is even difficult for him to sit in a chair for a short time - he slides down.

Sammy got burned recently on the stove, resulting in big blister which would ordinarily hurt a lot. Not a thing, he did not even react to the burn or the wound: a symptom of sensory neuropathy.

Sammy often closes his eyes tightly as if he is having a seizure and says he's had a "brain freeze" or "my brain is about to explode." He has an insatiable appetite as if the body is always hungry and does not know it just got a lot of food. He drools, his energy level is very low, he stopped reading books and even playing Wii games. He forgot the songs that he and his Grandma Lena had always been singing in her car.

He does not like to visit doctors but cooperates bravely. Seeing nurse with the needle, he cries "I do not want to give blood." Yet he is voluntarily rolling up his sleeves. He gives hugs to nurses, doctors and technicians. He is kind and a gentle hero.

Despite all the changes in his body he must be feeling, Sammy is brave and full of positive energy. He gives us hope and strength by giving us his piece of mind that is way beyond his age. This conversation took place just before midnight on New Year's Eve, 2008:

Sammy: Mommy, God is giving me directions and I have to follow them.
Mom: Ok. How do you get these directions?
Sammy: I talk to God
Mom: Where is HE? Do you hear HIM?
Sammy: Yes, He is up there [pointing to the sky]
Mom: So, how does He talk to you?
Sammy: He tells me what I need to do NEXT and I have to do it!
Mom: Wow, you are special boy and do you know how much I love you?
Sammy: Yes, I know, but no kisses for you tonight.
Mom: Why not?
Sammy: You cry too much. Sweet dreams.

The Zeltsers have agreed to take a chance and subject Sammy to bone marrow transplant, the most realistic and only option at this stage. The lab results from Children's Memorial Hospital confirmed that one family member appears to be a match for Sammy.

Beginning February, 2008, the Zeltsers will be very busy taking necessary steps to prepare Sammy for aggressive chemotherapy treatment to be followed immediately with the bone marrow transplant procedure. G-d willing, transplant is successful, we should be out of the Children's Memorial hospital and home free in the next seven to eight months.

We ask every concerned person to BELIEVE in our success and MIRACLE will happen.

If you wish to support the Zeltser Family and /or Sammy's Wish Foundation, please read How Can I Help?

"Oops... I'm off balance again... Mommy, we have to fix this..."

- Sammy Zeltser

Spherical Knowledge

2008-01-05T20:01:00.003-06:00

My son Matt, back home for winter break, is a junior at Washington University studying electrical engineering. For the first time, I heard from him a seed of discontent. Why? The school, he feels, is not preparing him for a job when he graduates.

The coursework is so theoretical that is seems to be missing an essential link, between the practical and the theoretical. How to apply this knowledge? It doesn't seem within the curriculum.

This got me thinking about my graduate school days at the Jane Addams Graduate School of Social Work, at the University of Illinois in Champaign-Urbana. I too, was disgruntled.

I remember complaining bitterly to a professor who had become a friend, that there seemed to be precious little actual practice in the art of working with people in therapeutic and service-delivering situations. I was intensely interested in "group work" the discipline of creating forward movement in groups of people, whether in a work, therapy or self-help environment. The only way to gain skills in this field is to actually do it.

My professor's answer, "This isn't a trade school. This is academia."

I guess, in the minds of those who design "higher learning," the institution provides a theoretical framework, and the work place provides the practice. If this is more universally true, I can imagine scores of disappointed college students, who dream of being prepared for and capable of performing well in their first big job, yet feel the embarrassment of unpreparedness when the big day comes.

My comment to Matt: Maybe, in a way, you are being prepared for the real world. If you feel that you need something to round out your education, you need to expend real effort and pursue it. The outside world does not cater to your every need, why should the university? If you want something, go out and get it.

I was happy to hear that he was able to structure his next semester by getting more involved in hands-on experiences, just the way I also learned to cope in social work school so many years ago. I managed to find real-life practical experiences within the academic environment, and now so was Matt.

This started me on my next academic sore spot. I remember numerous times in school where the teacher seemed to jump to point #2 without even acknowledging that a predecessor point #1 existed. I remembering this occurring to me in biology, Latin, calculus, algebra 2, and computer science. These are the ones I remember. I am sure there were more.

When I shared this feeling with Matt, he said he shared some of the same experiences. At school, theories of electrical signal propagation were cast out without a foundation or unifying principals. Ok, I get the formula, he said, but how does it all fit together?

I expressed my wish that "first things should be taught first". Whoever writes these curricula, I said, should always remember to teach the foundation first then build upon that foundation.

Matt agreed, but then took it farther, into a realm I love known as Matt's brain, where recursion and inversion are folded and unfolded playfully like an origami flower.

He said, "The subject is a set of variations on the same formula. Sometimes energy is the variable. Sometimes time is the variable. There is no start. There is no end. It is like a sphere."

"Maybe the best way to learn is to first fly around the sphere and see the big picture, then dive inside the sphere and look out from within." He cast that pearl out while casually munching on a piece of chili omelet.

After pondering that one, also chewing on an identical chili omelet, I said the only thing which seemed appropriate, given the circumstances. "Arf", I said.

Gifts and Bribes in Business

2007-12-22T14:38:00.002-06:00

The holidays are a time of gift-giving, and this occurs in the business world every bit as much as within the family nest. But when does gift-giving become bribery?

This became a topic last week at my company, where our kitchen was piled high with goodies sent in from vendors large and small.

Our consensus was that a tray of edibles was a safe gift. Nobody felt that a gift of popcorn, chocolates, nuts and fruit skewed our ability to make decisions in the best interest of the company.

However, some of us who make substantial purchases as a part of our jobs have encountered the occasional vendor who either sends boxes of steaks or lobster tails to our homes, or pointedly asks, "what would you like for yourself?"

Another approach we have heard is, "I am going on a fishing trip to Alaska, would you like me to save you a space?"

All in our company agreed that the steaks and lobsters were ok but "on the edge", and the Alaska trip was a definite no-no. For our business, a gift of up to $150.00 could be justified where a substantial business relationship exists. A thank you for current business is ok. A large gift which is more of an inducement for new business is not.

Geographical Bribery

I believe the centrality of bribery in business varies geographically. Our location, Chicago, is in the Midwestern heartland, arguably the region with most hard working, straight-laced values in the world, politics notwithstanding. As a group, we also carry with us a fear of having our picture on the front page some day, so we tend to be restrained when it comes to the inordinate greasing of palms.

Other places in the world consider bribery to be as much a part of business as the actual performance of work or the providing of services. Bribery is embedded in the speech and psychology of many countries. The Arabs call it "baksheesh", the Chinese say "guanxi", Russians call it "dat vziatku" and the Latin world uses "delitos de cohecho".

No matter what the term, the meaning is clear. Business is awarded to vendors based upon the size of their "gifts" rather than the price or value of that which they are selling. Favors are exchanged in a "black market" which is separate from the visible, official transaction.

Students of human nature and history might see a historical perspective. In feudal times, power was concentrated in the hands of few, based upon their wealth and ancestry. They organized society in a way that benefited them most. They owned the land and allowed peasants to farm it, but for a price. The price was free labor, harvested food, livestock or money. Thus the entitled one extracted tribute from the underling.

In a modern-day bribe, the powerful one is the one capable of awarding contracts or
favorable contractual terms. The underling offers the goods or service, but also gives something extra to the overlord.

It takes two parties to produce a bribery transaction. One who is willing and able to give, and one who is willing and able to take. When they enter into this deal, they each give up something, too. Both give up their integrity. The taker gives up some power to the briber, who now has "something on" the taker. The taker also assumes a big risk of discovery.

When I see buyers appear to select an unqualified vendor for contract award, I can't help but think that large gifts might have changed hands. Maybe such gifts are a great equalizer. They help the underqualified get work. Affirmative action for the capabilities-and-ethics impaired.

Why We Create

2007-12-15T13:00:00.002-06:00

Why do we create?

Creative people, whether they are writers, painters or inventors will tell you that they feel a need or drive to create. They feel satisfaction from having created.

They will also tell you that they are gratified when others appreciate their creation, but that gratification is secondary.

Civilization progresses almost solely due to the actions of creative beings, most of whom have gone unrecognized.

Most creations are driven by need. Those whose creations yielded enhanced survivability survived better and endured to create creative progeny.

Many creations are not useful or successful. But without failures, and the repeated trying of new ideas, there could be no successes.

Most people posses a kernel of some kind of creativity. After all, we are the progeny of ancestors who were creative enough to survive. But in addition to our inherent creativity, I believe that creativity can be sparked, nurtured and enhanced.

Developing Your Creativity

Start with area which is a natural fit for your experiences and interests. Creative actions start somewhere. What is in you? What idea fires up your mind?

Think about where you can take your kernel of an idea. You can think of these thought-directions as horizontal or vertical.

A vertical development takes a specific idea and develops on top of it - making the direction more specific, focused, detailed and specialized.

A horizontal development would involve a broadening of the idea to related or distant ideas, finding an unexpected yet unifying connection.

Experiential Exercises to Develop Creativity

There are creativity exercises which can really help develop new creative neural pathways.

For visual & graphical development, my favorite exercise is looking at "negative space." Sit down outside near some trees. As you gaze at the trees, try to see the spaces between the trees as the focal object. Allow the trees to recede as background. The pieces of sky you see around and among the trees will assume a life, shape and beauty you may have never seen before.

CAUTION: Can Be Psychedelic!

The Importance of Doing It

One of the most important parts of creative development is in the actual doing. Thinking is not enough. You must do physically do something with your hands. Draw, write, touch, shape, carry... do! Doing is interactive. When you do something, your action gives you information and experience in return. You must get this feedback loop going. You will be surprised at the enrichment of your creative process.

Use Writing as a Tool to Develop Creative Thinking

To develop ideas or writing, carry a small notepad (I use the memo pad feature on my phone) at all times. When you have an interesting idea, thought, conversation or experience, jot it down immediately. Make sure you write the part about how you felt or were impacted. This experience is an essence you will want to preserve.

In a variation of the negative space exercise, run a circuit in your brain called "the observer". The "observer" watches you in your daily life. He (or she) looks for humor, drama, patterns or themes.

Of course, jot down what the observer notices.

Developing creative thought and creating new things can be a real life-enhancer. The truest rewards come from within. You can create at any age, with any education and any set of capabilities. You owe it to yourself to continue to blossom. You just might invent the next Velcro!

How to Keep Track of Passwords

2007-11-10T09:11:00.001-06:00

A universal challenge for all of us in the techno-age: How to keep track of passwords?

A common solution is to use the password tracking features in our browsers. These work great until the browser gets attacked and your secrets get spilled across the Internet, or your browser gets infected and must be reinstalled.

A low-tech/high tech solution is to simply create a spreadsheet to keep track of passwords. This simple spreadsheet will have five columns: Name of the resource, URL (web address), Username, Password and Notes.

A few years ago I started to accumulate and keep track of what has grown to a surprisingly large list of passwords. With my "password tracking spreadsheet", I have sorted passwords by category and have used the tabbed worksheets for even better password tracking.

The beauty of using a spreadsheet to keep track of passwords is that you can also add notes to the spreadsheet, such as expiration dates, prices, and hints on how best to use the site.

The problem with using a spreadsheet to track passwords is the need to find and open the password file each time you need it.
This is where Lightning Navigator comes in.
It is a handy little seven buck utility which can associate any file with a three-key shortcut. The first two keys are always "control + alt", so you only need to remember one key, which you select. I selected "P" for the file where I keep track of passwords.

Lightning Navigator runs in the background awaiting your command. Need a password? Press the keys "control + alt + P" all at the same time. Immediately your spreadsheet software launches with your password tracking file loaded displayed.

I have expanded the use of my "password tracking spreadsheet" to also include other stray bits of information which seem to come up along the way. My "password tracking spreadsheet" has tabs for favorite websites where I syndicate articles, affiliate relationships, my favorite information resources, travel sites, google resources, financial sites I use, and FTP access for my web servers.

This little trick is guaranteed to keep you and your passwords on track!

Techno-Warp 4.0 - The Vicious Cycle

2007-10-10T22:35:00.001-05:00

Are You in a Techno-Warp?
Chapter 4.0
The Vicious Cycle

4.1 Richard Greenwood

In kindergarten I met a five year old boy who was to become a life-long soul mate in our mutual love of gizmos and gadgets. The great thing about Richard Greenwood was that he was adventurous. Speed and adrenalin were mothers-milk to him.

I was content to build and occasionally launch our model rockets. He wanted to ride in them. He wanted to be an astronaut and eventually became an aeronautical engineer. He has sky dived over 1000 times. When not working on jet engines and jumping out of airplanes, he scuba dives, motorcycles and flies his own airplane.

Some of his thrill seeking inevitably rubbed off on me. How could I remain unaffected when I was the one he asked to throw the small cargo parachute into the air as he, holding the cords in one hand, jumped off of my parents’ porch? Not to worry, he survived. But in his zeal to get the chute inflated quickly, he pulled down so hard on the cords that he managed to land thumb first and broke his thumb.

How could I remain a quiet, bookish gearhead when Rich somehow acquired a seemingly endless succession of go-carts, dirt bikes and motorcycles?

My parents were horrified by all of this. They viewed “motorcycle” as a swear word and thought anyone who had one was a suicidal hillbilly. This is why I had to tread lightly when, during my sophomore year of college I decided to take the plunge and get a motorcycle for myself.

4.2 My First Motorcycle

My strategy was to go slowly so my parents could become accustomed to the idea. I had the brainstorm of getting a Trike, a three-wheeled Harley, the kind used by traffic police. I knew that in my mother’s eyes, three wheels would appear much safer than two. (The opposite is true. They tip over easier because they can’t lean into turns.)

In a further strategic move, I decided to buy it in pieces and assemble it myself. Then, my parents would have plenty of time to get accustomed to the idea. How could they refuse me a motorcycle I built with my own hands?

Rich and I found just such a “basket-case” in a local paper and bought what was basically a pile of junk for $150.

Three wheelers look like a motorcycle from the seat forward, but behind the rider is a big box with wheels and fenders on each side and a lid on the top. In my new acquisition, the dismantled engine parts, front wheel, front forks and gas tanks were all piled in that box in no particular order. We borrowed a truck to get it home, rented a garage for $15 a month, and settled down to the task of assembling 300 greasy metal pieces together into a real working vehicle.

In retrospect, I cannot fathom our chutzpah. Why did we think we could do it? After all, we weren’t mechanics. Yes, we did take one semester of Auto Shop at Lane Tech. Yes, as a child my dad and I built a plastic “Visible V8 Engine” model from a kit. But this was a whole new level! We didn’t even have an instruction manual!

At nights after school in our dimly lighted garage we took turns holding parts up to the light and saying things like “I think this is from the transmission” with the other one saying “No, it looks more like it is from the carburetor”.

As the puzzle slowly came together, we would discover that we were missing key parts and would then scour the phone book for places we could find pieces for an old discontinued Harley “45 flathead" engine. We traveled to a barn near the Wisconsin border for a crankcase cover and a specialty shop on Chicago’s South Side for clutch pads.

We eventually found Ken Lively, a grizzly biker who we revered as the definitive expert in “flathead” engines. He helped with honing the cylinders and fitting the piston rings.

I learned biker lingo and could throw around terms like “hardtail”, “suicide clutch”, “chopper”, “springer front end”, “flame job”, “cams”, lifters” and much more. We talked cars, too. “hemis”, “fuel injection”, “nitro methane”, “burning rubber”, “brake torquing” and "power shifting" were our fixations.

Rich was at the center of all of this. He had a black ‘61 Ford Falcon with the rear end jacked up so high we had to avoid certain overpasses. We listened to eight-track tapes of the Doors in it, dimly recognizable over the deafness-inducing blumberings of his “glasspack” mufflers.

Rich’s never-say-die attitude kept my spirits high even when the job seemed too much to handle. He always seemed to come up with a solution, however crude, to whatever mechanical problem we encountered. He was my driving force in the odyssey of building my chariot.

Rich worked with me almost every night, then at about 2AM we would go, completely filthy, to a local all night restaurant. We drank coffee and smoked cigars, our hands blackened with grease. Sitting there in those vinyl and chrome booths we somehow managed to feel like kings, on top of our world.

So I am at a loss to explain what might have posessed me to take my first ride without Rich. One night near the end of the summer, it was well past midnight. Rich couldn’t come that night, which was pretty rare. I suddenly realized that I was done. There were no more parts to install. Everything was “hooked-up”. The fuel lines, drive chain and brake cables were the last things to go and there I was....finished.

4.3 The First Ride

I had been so absorbed in the building process for so long, that I actually lost sight of the idea of riding the contraption! I was shocked and terrified. I had never ridden a motorcycle before!

I sat on a greasy milk crate for a long time, debating with myself under the one naked light bulb in the otherwise dark and quiet garage.

“Well, you’re done.”
“Yep.”
“It’s been a lot of work.”
“Yep.”
“Looks pretty impressive, doesn’t it?”
“Oh yeah.”
“Bet it will run if you start it.”
“Yep.”
“Well, go ahead and start it.”
“Nope.”
“Go on! What’s the problem? It can’t tip over, for God’s sake! It’s got three wheels!”
“Uh-huh.”
“You can drive it. Just turn the handgrip to gun the engine. The clutch is a pedal down at your left foot You know where the brakes are. Do it!”
“But Rich isn’t here. What if something goes wrong?”
“What can go wrong? Besides, you don’t need Rich. It’s your bike, not his!”
“But I don’t really like to ride. I just like to build!”
“You’ll like it once you get used to it. Go on. At least sit on it!”
“Okay.”

With a gulp I mounted the steed. I put the key in the lock. I turned it. The headlight went on, an encouraging sign. I put my foot on the kick start pedal. With unspeakable fear I rose up, putting my weight above the pedal. I hovered there as if poised over Niagara Falls in a barrel. I pushed, hard.

Of course, nothing happened. I tried again. And again. I tweaked. I fiddled. I adjusted. I tried again. The engine occasionally sputtered, showing signs of life. A little more futzing and one more kick and
“WAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA”

The engine was screaming at the top of its exhaust manifolds! It was racing at top speed making a deafening roar in that enclosed little garage. I had forgotten to put on the muffler!

I dove for the ignition key and shut her down. Thank God I had no pre-existing coronary problems! That episode would have put me over the edge! I had to sit for a while and calm down. My body instinctively went into what would later be known as Lamaze breathing.

Then, halfheartedly I tightened the needle valve on the carb to lean out the air-fuel mixture. I loosened the stop on the throttle cable to lower the idling speed. I put the muffler on, hoping for a quiet, unobtrusive little run down the alley.

The adjustments were done quickly and once again there was nothing left to do but check the result. I opened the garage door and pointed her out. This was getting serious! I tried all the grips, pedals and levers to get accustomed to the feel. Then it was time.

I turned the key. I rose up and came down hard on the kick-start pedal. She awoke with a loud roar, blowing past the muffler like it wasn’t there. There was no turning back now. I pressed the clutch, tank-shifted into gear and slowly let the clutch out. The bike lurched forward like a shaky old stagecoach. I turned down the alley and slowly wound out the engine. We gained speed. She sounded noisy but good, the trademark power gargle of the Harley Davidson piercing the night like a sharp crowbar. We upshifted into second. We were cruising! I was riding!

Garage doors, chain link fences and garbage cans whizzed past me a bit too swiftly. The street lay dead ahead. I remembered that I was not street-legal. No plates. I wasn’t ready for the road.

4.5 Disaster Strikes

Impulsively I cut a hard right turn into a parking lot. I felt an unfamiliar rising feeling as my right wheel left the pavement with the force of the turn. I realized that the bike was going to roll over! In desperation I put out my left foot and dragged it hard on the pavement. It worked.

The bike righted itself with a thump. I felt excruciating pain in my foot. I looked down and couldn’t believe my eyes. The left wheel had rolled over my foot, then savagely wrenched it backward to a point, like a ballerina’s.

My foot was painfully lodged between the rotating wheel and the hot muffler. The monster I created was going to drag me off of the seat and grind me into the tarmac. Turbocharged with adrenalin, I managed to wrench my foot from its torture chamber.

The bike was still moving. I made a U-turn and headed back to the alley, aiming between two steel gate posts. BAM! One of my rear fenders hit the post as we careened by. The bike was wider in back than I had realized. I hung on as we screamed down the alley toward the garage. With my hands on the brake levers I made the turn into the garage. Guess what? No brakes!

We rolled over piles of old parts, crates and tool boxes. We crashed head first into the pine shelving on the back wall of the garage. The shelves shattered into a million toothpicks. I was launched over the handlebars and found myself draped on the headlight as the trike finally came to rest.

Slowly I peeled myself off the headlight and crawled out over the rubble. Primally embarassed, I closed the garage door and turned out the light. I sat quietly in the dark for a long time.

The next afternoon I limped back to the garage to survey the damage. Wally, the neighbor from across the alley, stopped by. He had always taken a personal interest in our project.

“Did you start the bike last night?”, he asked.
(Gulp) “Uh, why?” I retorted cunningly.
“Because I heard some noises and I thought it was you,” he answered.
“What did you hear?”
“There was a really loud motorcycle going up and down the alley. Then there was a loud crash. Then there was silence. I thought you killed yourself. So I threw on my clothes and ran out into the alley but there was nothing. No bike, no lights, nobody there, nothing. It was really weird. So I went upstairs and went back to bed. Was it you? Was it?”
“It was me, Wally.”

I told Wally the story, then watched his eyes get big as we looked at the destroyed shelving and a toolbox which was flattened like a piece of paper in the middle but normal at both ends. We looked at the bike. It was relatively unscathed. All Wally could say was “Wow.”

Then I called Rich and gave him the full account. All he could say was, “That’s great, man! That’s really great!”

Techno-Warp 3.0: A Victim of Medical Science

2007-09-29T07:13:00.001-05:00

Are you in a Techno-Warp?
Chapter 3.0
A Victim of Medical Science

It is a good thing that some people want to be in the medical profession. I was encouraged in that direction as a child. My parents gave me a doctor bag and my grandmother sewed me an authentic white doctor coat. I walked around somberly taking temperatures and heart rates of family members. It seemed that my path would lead me to becoming a real MD.

The deal went sour when I realized that in that profession I would be exposed to mucous, vomit, urine, blood and poop, and would be required to handle body parts of unattractive people I didn’t even know.

I get easily grossed out. Three times I have lost my "cookies" after seeing someone else lose theirs. I lost breakfast last week while dragging a smelly garbage can out to the street. I have to stop eating if someone uses a disgusting word such as “ears”, or “feet”. God forbid they should say “nose.”

I view people who spend their days wallowing in biohazards with a mixture of awe, respect and revulsion. I secretly think, “How many body orifices did you visit today? Did you wash your hands before shaking mine? I know you have to be smart to be a doctor, but if you’re so smart, why do you perform proctoscopic exams for a living?”

The complexity involved in medical science can create a teeming incubator for the techno-warp virus, a petri dish for the screwup bacteria.

For instance, it is amazing that anyone comes out of the hospital alive, even visitors. They keep sick people in there, for gosh sakes! What a smart idea: take all the local sick people, infested with a menagerie of invisible cooties, and store these people together in small, closely spaced rooms sharing the same air supply. Then, let the cooties hold a convention so that they can go to post-convention hospitality suites and pair off and create even more disgusting life forms.

I know what you’re thinking: “Let’s not go overboard. Hospitals have strict procedures for controlling the spread of infections and limiting the ability for cooties to hold conventions.” And I say to you:

1. Have you seen the procedure manual? I have. It takes five physical therapists to take it off the shelf.

2. Have you met someone who writes procedure manuals? I have. Forrest Gump was smarter and less boring.

3. Do you know anyone who knows all of the procedures? Of course not. They are unknowable. The task is too great for a human. Which brings me to my last point:

4. They have humans working at these places! Humans, known throughout the animal kingdom as most prone to independent thought. Just what you want in a place which requires procedural meticulousness. Humans! Humans who can’t remember how they tied their shoes from one time to the next: “Was it left loop over right?”

I have been blessed with wonderful health. A moment of sincere thanks here for the Creator. My exposure to the medical world is limited. Nonetheless, each time I get involved with medicine, something seems to happen.

As a high schooler I contracted a form of tonsillitis which was deemed viral, a medical term for “nobody knows how to cure it.” I spent a week in the hospital for observation. This was obviously before “managed care”. During this week I was fed a steady dosage of chewing gum laced with aspirin to relieve my throat pain, which was so considerable that I actually endured the horrendous taste of the gum.

A week after my discharge from the hospital, I discovered to my horror that my stomach was bleeding large volumes of blood due to the aspirin gum and I needed to return to the hospital for treatment for the effects of my previous treatment.

My parents adopted a risk management approach by changing hospitals. They thought it would be better to start fresh with a different place, since the first hospital was obviously negligent in informing us about the dangers of aspirin.

In the car on the way to the hospital, I was dizzy from loss of blood. The walk through the front door was a wobbly lightheaded stumble. I gratefully accepted a wheelchair in Admitting. They wheeled me into an exam room for a blood test.

The nurse drew the first vial, but neglected to remove the tourniquet while switching vials. For a guy who was down a few pints, I managed to shoot quite a stream of precious blood across the room, drenching the length of a white hospital bed in bright red. I knew then that my medical care would be at least as good as at the last place.

Tonsil problems run in the family. My daughter Yael had hers removed at age 8. Of course we used only the BEST hospital with the BEST anesthesiologist and the BEST tonsilologist (I made up that term, but this is how we talk on the North Shore).

In Pre-Op various scrub-clad professionals came out to meet Yael and demonstrate what in-tune child-friendly folks they were. One nurse came out with a pink anesthesia mask and showed it to our cranky, terrified daughter saying, “When the doctor puts this on your face, you will breathe a few times and then fall into a deep pleasant sleep. Try it, it smells like bubblegum!”

You would have had a better chance of putting the mask on a cornered wildcat. Yael ripped it away from her face and tossed it across the room. Her mom Marcy picked it up. Then the cutesy medical group wheeled her off. I think I heard them singing a Barney song on the way while Yael’s head spun like Linda Blair’s during the exorcism.

Marcy and I went to the waiting room, then she remembered that her purse was across the hospital at Admitting, so she left to retrieve it.

Five minutes later, a breathless nurse in full scrubs came running out of the stainless mechanical doors which divide the mysterious world of the “O.R.” from the rest of reality. She ran up to me, eyes wide, near panic. My heart did several Olympic-quality half-gainers.

“Do you have the mask?” She asked urgently.

“Uh, no, I think her mom has it.”

“Where is she?”

“Clear across the hospital getting her purse. I don’t think you should wait for her.”

“But what should we do? She’s got the mask!”

“Why don’t you get another mask? I asked, incapable of believing that only one such mask resided in the entire Mega-Medical-Health-Care-Center-Hospital-Pavilion.

“Get another mask?” She asked incredulously.

“Yes...Get...Another...Mask” I answered slowly, deliberately and firmly, feeling that I needed to do so in order to push thoughts of black robed Cost Control Inquisitors out of her brain and get her back on task.

She turned and scurried off, muttering “Get...another...mask” as if she was figuring out how to scale K-2 without a Sherpa.

My final story involves one of the body’s most private and sensitive areas, and it will be interesting to see if I can tell it without offending your sensitivities.

I developed hemorrhoids. A bad case. Particularly bad because I waited a few extra decades hoping for spontaneous self-cure. Instead, they worsened to the point where I had to have my trousers altered. Standing was uncomfortable. Sitting was a joke. Bicycle riding was out of the question. SAYING the word “bicycle” was out of the question. I was a raw nerve, petrified in fear of the next time nature would call, wondering in my terror if that next time would be the final time, and I would be found days later slumped over on the loo, dead from hemorrhoids.

With enormous reluctance I placed my butt in the care of a trained, degreed hemorrhoidologist who scheduled the dreaded surgery. I arrived on the appointed day, one parent under each trembling arm, donned the Surgical Pajamas of Doom, and was wheeled through mazes of hospital corridors past a Maxwell Smart succession of stainless doors. I was in Pre-Op, exactly in the same parking spot my daughter Yael was to throw her mask two years later.

The nurse gave me an injection “to relax me.” I thought that was a solid idea and began talking myself into thinking it was working. “Yeah man...this is some really good stuff, man. My whole body is lettin’ go, man. It’s real smooth, oh wow, man.”

Then the nurse in charge of clip-board-carrying came to me. In a businesslike manner she said words every hemorrhoid patient fears most:

“You are the double hernia, right?”

My stupor cleared. “What? No! I’m the hemorrhoid!”

She looked at the chart again, puzzled. ”Are you sure you’re not the double hernia?”

I didn’t know which body part to cover first.

In my panic I completely forgot that I had, until now, possessed the full blown identity of an adult, with worlds of experiences and forty six years of history. Instead, a primal survival force emerged from me, blowing away the identity I thought I had and replacing it with the only identity that really mattered.

I half-shouted “I am the hemorrhoid! I am the hemorrhoid!”

And as the injection increased its grasp on my brain function and my words slurred and echoed in my head, and as the cutesy scrub-clad Barney singers came out to wheel me into the cold, equipment-filled O.R., I didn’t know if it was the sound of my words or the sound of my thoughts repeating helplessly, echoing far in the distance,

“I am the hemorrhoid! I am the hemorrhoid! I... Am...The...Hemorrhoid! Coo Coo Ca Choo!”

Techno-Warp 2.0: The Warp is Here, Now!

2007-09-24T21:14:00.001-05:00

Are you in a Techno-Warp?
Chapter 2.0
The Warp is Here, Now!

We, folks of the 2000's, embrace new technology much more readily than we embrace most relatives. We experience technorgasms in electronics superstores. We experience power and control with each new tool-toy, oblivious to the subplot running just below the surface.

Namely, the technology controls us and has its way with us. Our new techno friends encourage our loyalty and dependency. Then, when things are going well, they go on strike or, worse, strike out at us. Their absence leaves us defenseless, like a business that can't issue paychecks without its computer. And due to the incredible power of our machines, we can now make mistakes of unparalleled magnitude, like the computer that deposits $300 million in the janitor's account.

And we, happily pushing one button after another, be it our remote, our electric car windows or our computer keys, tend to "write off" technology glitches as brief but manageable aberrations.

But look closer. How many Techno-Warps happen to you in only one week?

As for myself, last week my refrigerator broke down spoiling all of my food, my cordless phone and computer at work stopped working and are in repair, and the self-sealing tire on my car didn't self-seal causing me a city wide search to find someone who could fix the simple puncture.

(I have gained valuable secret knowledge in that search. If you send $5.00 and a self addressed stamped envelope, I will share this secret knowledge with you in my treatise entitled "Self-Sealing Tires, Self Actualization and You").

Last week I was called by telemarketers for all three major long distance carriers, each with a different mispronunciation of my name.
"Rring!"
"Hello."
(Five second pause with keyboards clattering in the background)
"May I speak with Mr. (three more seconds) Mooshloomum?"
"Close. What do you want?"
"Mr. (two seconds now, we're improving) Mushelgum, I am calling on behalf of the intergalactic monopoly of long distance carriers, ATTMCISprint. Since we really don't compete with anyone, we're calling to simply remind you to make as many long distance calls as possible. And, as a special incentive you are being charged for this call, which originates in Bahrain."
"Click."

Last week I received four solicitations for new and better credit cards, which are so improved that I can't see any difference between them and the ten or so I already carry, except for the fact that I am now...

PRE-APPROVED FOR IMMEDIATE $10,000 LINE OF CREDIT. Just fill out EASY, INSTANT, PRE-APPROVED application form.

As Chico Marx used to say, "Oh no, you notta gonna fool a me again, Firefly! I'm-a too smart to fall-a for dat-a one again!(You really need a bad Italian accent to do this line. Berlitz has a course.)

A few months ago I was thinking of starting a new business. Its confidential, but I will tell you if you don't tell anyone. I was going to corner the market on FAT. I figure it like this. With all the FAT FREE foods out there, there must be a NATIONAL FAT REPOSITORY somewhere just brimming with the stuff, and I was going to corner the market. Then, as increasing hoards of emaciated joggers begin collapsing in the streets I will pump them up with my FAT SUPPLY, and for an extra fee inflate key body parts more than others. Think reverse liposuction.

I estimated I could buy the whole lot for about $30,000, so I sent out three of those EASY, INSTANT, PRE-APPROVED application forms and awaited my startup capital.

Instead, I got three EASY, INSTANT REJECTION FORMS which cited incomprehensible reasons in credit-ese like "Too Many Credit Inquiries" , "Debits Out of Proportion With Crebits", and "Kneebone Connected to Nosebone". They each referred me to Equifax, the World Wide Deadbeat Database.

For the heck of it, I sent for my credit report. From what I could understand, and believe me that wasn't much, I had a slow payment in 1999 and otherwise pretty much singlehandedly kept the economies of my suburb and a few underdeveloped countries humming pretty well. I still don't know what the problem was. Maybe Equifax wanted the FAT REPOSITORY for itself.

By now you can see that I consider participants in Techno-Warpage to include not only the countless gizmos and gadgets we use and play with every day, but also the mega-businesses which employ so much technology that they essentially become colossal computers. Meanwhile each of us becomes a bit of information being "handled".

And yes, Matilda, we are handled by lots of computers. Think of all your accounts; your gas cards, your mortgage, the IRS, the credit agencies, your credit card companies, your bank, your insurance companies, your magazine subscriptions, your phone service and even your grocery store. Those "Preferred Cards" enable the Grocery Matrix to know your every move and purchase.

"Would you care to explain to the ladies and gentlemen of the jury exactly what you intended to do with a WHOLE POUND OF MARGERINE???"

And, with increasing connections between these computers, much of which is already in place in such environments as the Internet, let's face it: Our lives are completely, inseparably merged and surrounded with computers and technology.

The point? Well, these systems work well and deliver loads of goods and services pretty darned efficiently. The downsides? Your privacy simply does not exist. And, when the gizmos get mad, look out.

Are You in a Techno-Warp?

2007-09-15T10:37:00.001-05:00

My eyes opened. The digital display on my clock radio blinked hyphens. Power outage! My watch says I’m late!

Digital displays around the house are blinking like so many eyes in the night, watching me, irritating me. My face starts to twitch in synch with the microwave display. I start coffee. Both faucets on my kitchen sink run hot. I’m in a techno-warp!!

Thank God the shower works! I shave with my Triple Blade Articulating Head Ergonomic Razor. In my haste I give myself a precisely parallel triple cut.

The toaster chokes on my prefab waffles and sets to clattering loudly and jumping around. I hit it with a frozen leg of lamb which is not defrosting on its Miracle Quick Defrost Tray. The toaster quiets down and yields up the factory corrugated waffle product replete with factory-applied browning around the edges, smoking slightly.

The phone rings. My cordless phone beeps rudely in my ear instead of putting the call through. I forgot to charge it. I grab the conventional phone instead and speak, tethered to the wall like a dog, with waffle product rapidly cooling just out of reach.

It’s the office. “Forget to turn your cell on?” asks my perky yet sarcastic secretary. “Your best customer is going nuts looking for you. He says he called your sorry butt ten times and is now going to pay a premium to your competition just to get you.”

I find the black foldo-phone under my bed and strap it to my belt like a modern day techno-gunslinger. I switch to the vibrate setting and it immediately goes into a vibro-siezure. This causes me a brief but intense cardio-incident.

While I recover, I notice the VCR, microwave and clock radio displays blinking more brightly at me. Is it my imagination or are they getting more adamant? “Set us you idiot!! Now!!”

Maybe they are mad about my bludgeoning the toaster and are looking for revenge.

“Don’t be mad at me!” I silently plead to the three Chinese black plastic boxes with bootlegged American microchips. “It was the toaster’s fault! Not mine! My waffle product was within spec! The toaster’s next scheduled failure is at least two months from now!”

They continue to blink, enjoying my discomfort now. Machines love it when you’re down. That’s when they really get creative. And now they’re pissed! I’m a walking target, a marked man. As if it would help, I slowly and cautiously move through the house unplugging things while talking sweetly.

“Micro honey, looking good today. Hey, gotta clean up your revolving plate, it’s getting a little crumbly. You had to work so hard at dinner last night. I’ll just unplug you so you won’t get hurt when I clean you...” (Unplug) “Now, Mr. Answering Machine...”

I quickly dress and depart, being careful to avoid the elevator. I hope like hell the car hasn’t found about this.

Manage Tasks, Projects & Life with Email

2007-02-17T11:27:00.001-06:00

Data Smog: Newest Culprit in Brain Drain
By Bridget Murray
American Psychological Association Monitor

"Psychologists are beginning to study the impact that information overload is having on our lives.
Welcome to the jumble—the dizzying information glut of the late 20th century. Information has never been as easy to access—or as distracting. But what is this surge of stimuli doing to our well-being?

According to some psychologists and researchers, the “data smog” that bombards us every day may be making us ill by interfering with our sleep, sabotaging our concentration and undermining our immune systems. David Lewis, PhD, a British psychologist, calls the malady “information fatigue syndrome.”

“Our brains aren’t wired to ‘multitask’ the way our computers are,” says psychologist Larry Rosen, PhD, a human-computer dynamics expert and psychology professor at California State University–Dominguez Hills. “We’re taxing the limits of our human abilities.”

Crazy Busy: Overstretched, Overbooked, and About to Snap!
Strategies for Coping in a World Gone ADD
Edward M. Hallowell, M.D. (Ballantine Books)

CrazyBusy – the modern phenomenon of brain overload – is a national epidemic.

Are you too busy? Are you always running behind? Is your calendar loaded with more than you can possibly accomplish? Is it driving you crazy? You’re not alone. CrazyBusy–the modern phenomenon of brain overload–is a national epidemic. Without intending it or understanding how it happened, we’ve plunged ourselves into a mad rush of activity, expecting our brains to keep track of more than they comfortably or effectively can.

CrazyBusy is not just a by-product of high-speed, globalized modern life–it has become its defining feature. BlackBerries, cell phones, and e-mail 24/7. Longer work days, escalating demands, and higher expectations at home. It all adds up to a state of constant frenzy that is sapping us of creativity, humanity, mental well-being, and the ability to focus on what truly matters.

In fact, as Attention Deficit Disorder expert and bestselling author Edward M. Hallowell, M.D., argues in this groundbreaking book, brain overload has reached the point where our entire society is suffering from culturally induced Attention Deficit Disorder.

Email Overload: Exploring Personal Information Management of Email
Steve Whittaker and Candace Sidner
Lotus Development Corp.

"Email is one of the most successful computer applications yet devised. Our empirical data show however, that although email was originally designed as a communications application, it is now being used for additional functions that it was not designed for, such as task management and personal archiving. We call this email overload. We demonstrate that email overload creates problems for personal information management.

“Research has not yet addressed how people organize and manage large amounts of information”

“Email has evolved to a point where it is now used for multiple purposes: document delivery and archiving; work task delegation; and task tracking.”

“Task management requires users to ensure that information relating to current tasks is readily available. This both preserves task context and allows users to determine the progress of ongoing tasks. Task management also involves reminding oneself about when particular tasks or actions have to be executed. How do people do this in email?”

Why do these problems arise? A simple one-touch model of email might assume: incoming messages that are informational, i.e. those not requiring a response, are read, and then either deleted or filed, depending on their relevance.

Our quantitative data show the one touch model is patently incorrect.

“Why is the inbox so full? It turns out that there are two related reasons for this:

(a) the inbox operates as a task manager, where people are reminded of current tasks, and where people can keep information relevant to those tasks accessible

(b) people find it hard to file information to remove it from their inbox, both because filing into folders is difficult and there may also be few benefits to creating folders.

Redesigning email to fit its functions

There are both design and theoretical implications to these results.

Although email was originally designed for asynchronous communication, the application is actually being used for multiple functions. Email therefore needs to be redesigned to support filing and task management as well as asynchronous communication.

We have shown that the inbox is often used as a place for incomplete tasks, unfiled information and ongoing conversations. In all these cases, users preserve working information in the inbox both to keep it available and as a reminder that further actions are required.

Taskmaster: Recasting Email as Task Management
Victoria Bellerotti, Nicholas Ducheneaut, Mark Howard, Ian Smith
Palo Alto Research Center

“We identified seven specific problems that participants in our studies experience with task management in email:

1. Keeping track of lots of concurrent actions: One’s own to-dos and to-dos one expects from others.

2. Marking things as important or outstanding amongst the less important items.

3. Managing activity extending over time or keeping track of threads of activity and discussions.

4. Managing deadlines and reminders, which may be associated with particular messages or other content.

5. Collating related items (e.g., an extended thread or responses to a survey) and associated files and links.

6. Application switching and window management.

7. Most importantly, getting a task-oriented overview at a glance, rather than scrolling around and inspecting folders.

CONCLUSION

Our research shows that it is possible to significantly and positively affect email users’ experience by embedding task management resources directly in the inbox, where they are most needed. “

A simple, powerful, universal solution: The Poingo Bounceback Server

The Poingo Bounceback Server simply returns a copy of any email you send, back to you at the time interval you specify.

For example, if you send, copy, or blind copy your email to 1d@poingo.com, that email will return to you in one day (1d). It works also for weekly and monthly intervals (1w@poingo.com and 1m@poingo.com, for example). Intervals up to 1 year are supported.

Address, copy, or bcc (blind copy) your email to interval@poingo.com
Your email will bounce back to you at that interval
This example shows an interval of 10 days (10d)

Users are essentially entering their email into a virtual tickler system with only a couple of keystrokes. This enables the user to easily manage hundreds of business or personal transactions, programming each for customized follow-ups, completely within their workflow, with negligible additional work.

The Poingo Bounceback Server allows the user complete control over the customization of each follow-up program.

Users find their “bounced-back” emails in their inbox the morning of the day it was requested, allowing them to stay current with all tasks requiring action on that day, whether days, weeks or months later. When they execute the desired follow-up, they often elect to send a copy again to the Bounceback Server for continued tracking.

Daily reminders in your inbox.

This deceptively simple idea has the potential for viral growth.

We envision a time in the very near future when “tickling an email” will be as meaningful as “Googling” a topic.

“Hey, I really need to remember to call about that. I will ”tickle” it for 2 weeks from now.”

This is not a pipedream. Hundreds of fanatical users now stay on top of their game with iTickleMe Email Tickler System.

History

In early 2004, I was a classic power emailer, trying to manage millions of dollars of construction with a hodgepodge of separate applications and paper systems. The increased centrality of email to almost all business processes became increasingly apparent. I dreamed of a system that would integrate custom-interval follow-up within his email system.

Repeated searches turned up no viable solutions. I brainstormed the idea with son Matt (now an electrical engineer), then hired a developer and built the system. It has been online and working reliably since April 2004.

Fulfilling Needs

Email Overload: By providing a safe, reliable place to store future task-related emails, iTickleMe Email Tickler System allows users to remove them from cluttering their mailbox until they are needed. Users have an additional choice when a new email comes in. In addition to deleting, responding or filing, they can now “iTickleMe”.

Task Management: Most work tasks are eventually discussed in an email. When such emails are incoming, they can simply be “Poingo-ed” for future action. Or users can request action from others in an outgoing email and copy iTickleMe. Workers can also generate new emails with to-do items and send them only to the Bounceback Server for later action. This is essentially a self-addressed reminder.

High Efficiency:

Bounceback Server users can create a follow-up reminder in as little as one keystroke. How?

User enters frequently used intervals in his address book; let’s say 2w@poingo.com. If his email system auto completes the addressee, user need only type “2”, and the rest of the address will appear. You can’t get more efficient than that!

Brain Overload: The original email is the carrier for the follow-up reminder, so the original message content is 100% preserved. Seamless continuation of the project easy. No need to refer to other documents to get “up to speed”.

Open the reminder email and the original information appears. Continue where you left off. Very easy on tired, overloaded minds.

Try it free.

Email: Domination, Fatal Weaknesses and a Solution

2007-02-17T10:15:00.001-06:00

Consider the following:

· In 2003, the annual flow of e-mails worldwide was 667,585 terabytes. (UC Berkeley's School of Management, How Much Information)

· Email volume in the United States is projected to nearly double from 1.5 trillion in 2003, to 2.7 trillion in 2007 (eMarketer)

· US Workers receive an average of 56 e-mail messages per day. (The Microsoft Office Personal Productivity Challenge, March 2005)

"The Internet has gone from novelty to utility for many Americans," says Lee Rainie, Director of the Pew Internet & American Life Project. "They are beginning to take it for granted, but they can't imagine life without it."

Excerpts (with permission) from the groundbreaking “Email at Work Survey”, by the Pew Internet & American Life Project:

“Email stands out as a time saver: In this study, an overwhelming number of work emailers, 86%, report that email saves them time. “

“Almost two thirds of work emailers (63%) found email to be the most effective means for making arrangements and appointments… an instant advantage in national or global companies for keeping far-flung employees in the loop… a godsend for last-minute round-ups or heads-ups.”

“Workers have seen in email a wonderful tool and have
stretched its uses well beyond its humble beginnings, although with sometimes clumsy results. The software industry, taking cues from users, has adapted the email software to meet user needs in a more elegant manner.

The inevitable impact of this revolution will be to lighten email load, moving some correspondence out of inboxes, either onto the Web or into associated applications.”

Power Emailers

"We got a sense from our data and from our interviews that there is a small group of work emailers who are different from all the rest.
We identified a group we call “power emailers’ – those who handle the highest volumes of email (typically more than 30 and often more than 50 messages a day). The power emailers represent about 20% of all work emailers."

The Profile: Power Emailers

"Demographically, power emailers belong to the workforce elite. The majority (59%) are college educated or beyond. They are high earners; over half of them (52%) live in households that earn at least $75,000 per year, including a third (32%) of all power emailers who live in households earning at least $100,000 per year. Two thirds (66%) of power emailers work as professionals, managers, or executives.”

Trouble in Paradise
All is not completely rosy in the fast-paced world of email. Work emailers are increasingly bombarded by spam, multiple copies of conversation threads and sheer volume of emails. A sampling of the email-related pain workers are feeling:

Coping with Email Overload
David Ludlow, Network IT Week

“Statistics say that 33 per cent of email is useless, 66 per cent of companies have a spam problem, 52 per cent of users waste hours each year dealing with their email, and 29 per cent of cat owners are more likely to get junk mail. The analyst reports say it all. But how do they tell us? Through email.”

CNN: E-mails 'hurt IQ more than pot'
Email Overload Makes You Stupid

"Research from King's College London University has found "the IQ of those who tried to juggle messages and work fell by 10 points -- the equivalent to missing a whole night's sleep and more than double the 4-point fall seen after smoking marijuana."

Parsing the Problem

Email has become the universal funnel. Due to its ease and utility, that funnel has become quite filled. The problem is no longer the supply or availability of information. Now the question is… what to do with it?

Spam filters and “white lists” do an adequate job of rejecting unwanted email. Email software can identify and link conversational threads, helping to organize a cluttered inbox. Email software with text search capability allows users to find needles in a haystack of communications.

The missing link: Task Management

A simple, powerful, universal solution: The Poingo Bounceback Server

The Poingo Bounceback Server simply returns any email you send, back to you at the time interval you specify.

For example, if you send, copy, or blind copy your email to 1d@poingo.com, that email will return to you in one day (1d). It works also for weekly and monthly intervals (1w@poingo.com and 1m@poingo.com, for example). Intervals up to 1 year are supported.

Address, copy, or bcc (blind copy) your email to interval@poingo.com. Your email will bounce back to you at that interval.
This example shows an interval of 10 days (10d)

Virtual Tickler System
Users who add this additional addressee to their email are essentially entering their email into a virtual tickler system with only a couple of keystrokes. This enables the user to easily manage hundreds of business or personal transactions, programming each for customized follow-ups, completely within their workflow, with negligible additional work.

Each business transaction stream has a life of its own. A sales initiative might require a two-week follow-up with another one month later. Tracking shipments might require weekly follow-ups. Marketing tasks might require tracking daily.

The Poingo Bounceback Server allows the user complete control over the customization of each follow-up program.

Important Tasks Come to You Daily
Users find their “bounced-back” emails in their inbox the morning of the day it was requested, allowing them to stay current with all tasks requiring action at that particular time, whether days, weeks or months later. When they execute the desired follow-up, they often elect to send a copy again to the Bounceback Server for continued tracking.

Daily reminders in your inbox.

This deceptively simple idea has the potential for viral, inexpensive growth. We envision a time in the very near future when “Poingoing an email” will be as meaningful as “Googling” a topic.

“Hey, I really need to remember to call about that. I will ”Poingo” it for 2 weeks from now.”

This is not a pipedream. At Builders Architectural, a $20 million construction company located in Deerfield, IL the Bounceback Server has been in use for almost two years and has handled thousands of bouncebacks. Users are fanatical. Once they get into the habit, they rely heavily on it on a daily basis.

Fulfilling Needs

Email Overload: By providing a safe, reliable place to store future task-related emails, the Bounceback Server allows users to remove them from cluttering their mailbox until they are needed. Users have an additional choice when a new email comes in. In addition to deleting, responding or filing, they can now “Poingo”.

Task Management: Most work tasks are eventually discussed in an email. When such emails are incoming, they can simply be “Poingo-ed” for future action. Or users can request action from others in an outgoing email and copy the Bounceback Server. Workers can also generate new emails with to-do items and send them only to the Bounceback Server for later action. This is essentially a self-addressed reminder.

High Efficiency: Other task management systems involve adding tasks into a separate software application, and many keystrokes are required to create a task for follow-up. Bounceback Server users can create a follow-up reminder in as little as one keystroke.

How to create a follow-up with one keystroke? User enters frequently used intervals in his address book; let’s say 2w@poingo.com. If his email system auto completes the addressee, user need only type “2”, and the rest of the address will appear. You can’t get more efficient than that!

Brain Overload: Since the original email is the carrier for future the follow-up reminder, the original message content is 100% preserved, making seamless continuation of the project easy. The user does not need to refer to other documents to get “up to speed”. He opens the reminder email, and the original information appears. This clean functionality is very easy on tired, overloaded minds.

Try it free.

An investment group is now forming to evolve the Bounceback Server into a large-scale operation. To learn more, contact Mark at support@itickleme.com.

5 Screen Display Tweaks for Tired Eyes

2007-02-03T11:01:00.000-06:00

Shackled to computers, as many of us are, we endure hours when bright backlit images drill through our eyes. No wonder that, at day's end when we unplug from the electro-trance and gaze dully at objects in three dimensions, we wonder who we are and where we have been.

But today we will not address the loss of moorings and identity through the virtual porthole - no, not today. Today we will get down-and-dirty practical and learn ways to make our screen displays more eye-friendly and balanced.

In the great tradition of ignoring users of Mac and other OSs, part of this lesson relates only to Windows XP. Mac users probably already have this information handed to them on a platter, while we Windows sufferers need help because our routes to better display are multiple and disjointed, as you can see below.

Download pdf of this chart

Many Paths to Enlightenment

Screen display can be adjusted using these 5 tweaks:

* Environment (true for anyone)
* Your monitor settings (any operating system)
* Your browser settings (any operating system)
* Control Panel-Display (Windows XP) and
* Control Panel-Accessibility Options (Windows XP)

Tweak Your Environment

Ambient lighting conditions affect your screen-reading experience. Try to eliminate reflections on the screen, and balance the room lighting harmoniously with the screen lighting. Eyes work harder when they must continually adjust between bright and dark, as well as close and far.

Think of your lighting in three categories: computer screen, ambient lighting, and task lighting. If you spend most of your day looking at the screen, adjust the ambient lighting so that it feels slightly less than the screen brightness. If you also have a task area (most of us do), brighten that area.

Also, adjust the distance from your screen to your eyes. You might find that your screen is "in your face" or too far away.

Tweak Your Monitor

Most monitors have buttons on the front panel. Play with them and see what happens. You will see either buttons for each function, or a menu button. Press it to see menu choices. Use up/down buttons to view the choices, then a "select" button (or the menu button), to select the menu choice. Then use the up/down buttons again to adjust the menu choice.

Due to the zillions of monitors out there, I cannot offer a golden bullet for all except for this: Pay careful attention to the brightness and contrast settings. Eye strain can come from screens which are too bright or too dim. Adjust these settings until your eyes feel comfortable. Repeat this every few days until your eyes send you a thank-you note.

Tweak Your Browser

While online, you can adjust font size for easier reading. In Windows Explorer, at the top of the screen, select View/Text Size from the menu. Then select the size you want.

In Mozilla Firefox, simply hold the Control key, while pressing either the Plus (+) or Minus (-) keys. The font size will adjust accordingly.

Press Control+ in Mozilla Firefox, and the text enlarges.
Do it again and the text enlarges further.

Tweak With Control Panel-Display

The Control Panel is accessed through the Start Menu in Windows. Two selections within the Control Panel affect screen display: "Display" and "Accessibility Options".We will start with the Display option.

Select "Display" from the list.

Control Panel - Appearance Tab

Click on the "Appearance" tab. Under "Font Size", you can select the size text appears on your screen: normal, large and extra large. If you feel that you are squinting to read, select a larger font size.

Normal Font is the default.

But you might like this better.

Or even this.

Control Panel Settings Tab

Under the "Settings" tab, look at "Screen Resolution". This is the number of dots (pixels) your monitor displays on the screen, width first. A resolution of 1024 x 768 means your screen image is actually composed of 1024 dots running horizontally and 768 rows of those dots running from top to bottom. That's 786,432 dots you are seeing on your screen.

NOTE: Since your screen shows less that one million pixels, shooting high resolution photos for web display is overkill. If you shoot a 3.1 mega(million)pixel photo and display it fully on your screen, it will load and send (vial email) slower, and the screen presentation will be artificially dumbed down to what is able to be displayed. This can reduce image quality. Select a resolution on your camera appropriate for the intended use of the picture.

When you use a higher resolution, you are jamming more dots, and also more information on your screen. Often your computer will sense the video card and monitor type you are using, and will self-select a screen resolution for you. You can change this. Slide the selector left or right, click "Apply" and view the result in different applications, including your browser.

You may find that you enjoy more information on the screen, but the text is too small. If so, go back and select a larger font under the "Appearance" tab.

Changing screen settings is interactive. As you work your way through the options, you may need to tweak previous settings you made, including environmental settings such as screen distance.

Advanced settings provide more choices.

This is a variation of screen resolution adjustment. Try it, you might like it.

Tweak Accessibility Options

Get back to the Control Panel and select "Accessibility Options".

Here you can choose to set your display for high contrast. If you check the box, you will have further choices.

This screen allows you to select display schemes which will come into effect when high contrast display is selected, either as a default or in response to hotkeys.

This is an example of a high contrast display.

Tweak and prosper!

Download pdf of this article

Mark Meshulam offers
FREE keyboard shortcuts,
FREE small business articles,
FREE web master resources, and a powerful
FREE email reminder system, all at
www.poingo.com

Sister of Cranial Overblosis

2006-12-28T22:31:00.000-06:00

I received a great response to the recent Brain Overload piece from none other than my sister, Reba Meshulam. She is uniquely qualified to comment because 1)apparently her brain is about to explode, and 2)she is a renowned video producer who has an Avid and knows how to use it. Enjoy...

Markie,
Just read your article on brain overload and I couldn't agree more.

For some reason it makes me think of Jackie Kennedy. After every social engagement she sat down to hand-write a thank you note. It was personal, witty, clever and sincere. People kept them forever. One sentence followed another and they were mini works of art.
Now THAT is a lost art.

People's communication now is in code, especially the younger generation.
LOL, BRB, POS (parent over shoulder)
It's all shorthand cause we just don't have enough time to say "I'll be right back" or "That was really funny, I'm laughing out loud...you just KILL me!"
Communication is fragments of thoughts and partial words or acronyms.

Everyone is a dude and everything is "freakin" this and "freakin" that. - maybe that's just Alex

I do worry about the next generation. Will they know how to put a complete sentence together? or will it just take too damn long? Sorry mom, I don't have time for a full sentence, you'll just have to fill in the blanks - whatever!

Imagery in films...yes I'm sick of the school of flashing images and screeching, banging, primal noises to get you to want to come and be blasted out of your seat. You're right that if an image is on the screen for more than a second, it's a lifetime. But not only are they manipulating us into this constant state of edge of the seat orgasm by the diet of super short dense action shots, they are being even more manipulative than that.
They are adding blinding white flashes between these ultra short action packed shots. It's an epileptics nightmare. Music and sound effects are composed to hit each and every edit point with fear, drama and constant adrenaline rush.
I just wonder...where do we go from here. Is it the end of the world? Will everything including our brains explode like you hypothesize and we just start over again with 2 trees, 2 people and a snake in a garden.

I do want to clarify something you stated about frame rate.

"In current cinematic language, a few seconds per shot is enough to get the editor fired for sleeping at the Avid. Visual images are now measured in increments of 1/24 of a second, the smallest increment available because movies pour 24 images every second into our heads."

True, films are shot with a frame rate of 24 FPS. Editing on the avid is video editing which is 30- FPS, hence the different "look" of video vs film. When films are shot and AVId edited there is a video conversion which takes place for them to be AVID edited. A minor point.

They now are developing video cameras that shoot at 24P (24 frames -per second) to look more like film. very cool look, a little smeary with pans and motion.

I personally don't want my brain to explode. I want there to be some empty spaces like land that hasn't been developed. Prairie with goldengrasses swaying in the breeze with sun caressing the soft, hairy stalks.

THEY (whoever that is), say that we only use 10% of our brains...or is it 70% ...something like that...anyway I wonder if that number has changed over time. And those formerly unused parts of our brain...what are they doing now? Are they storage places for the flashing imagery? Can we dump the shit we've accumulated? If we don't want to have a memory of something we've seen, a movie trailer perhaps, or a terrible event in our lives, can we selectively dump it? Even mundane things, everyday things that just take up space...
If we can delete stuff from our PC's hard drive shouldn't we be able to delete stuff from our own hard drive?

I think I do this regularly cause I never remember when the chicken in the fridge was originally cooked, or how long we've had the deli meat? I'm not too hard on myself for these lapses cause I think ...well, it's not important. But if someone in my house got botulism from eating old couscous, it would become important fast.

And what about lists...they are a way to back up your brain's hard drive.
or to enable your brain to not use up unnecessary space hanging onto stuff you could write on paper and forget. I guess everything on your computer is meant to do just that. and if you think of all the stuff your computer can store...well, glory be!, life sure is complicated.

I keep going back to this. What do we need? Really need?
warm houses in the winter, cool houses in the summer, food to gather cook and eat, a place to take a shit, someone or someones to love and share life and work, sex and I can't really think of what else...maybe spirituality? maybe creative endeavors?
How much brain space does that really take? 5%, 15%??
The rest could be prairie grasses swaying in the wind, an occasional grazing cow...a rocking chair on a porch, a buzzy bee going from flower to flower.

I think I'd like that...at least for an hour.
What I'm trying to say is I miss the good old days...not the ones without indoor plumbing or hot water... the porch days. Mint juleps, slaves...no not really slaves - just kidding about that. I miss a woman showing her feminine wiles by having an ankle exposed, not her entire ass. Have you watched MTV lately? Jesus Christ! we used to call that soft porn...

Mark I'm sorry, I'm just going on and on. Can't seem to put a cork to stop the dribble of thoughts your poingo philophy has stirred up.

So I'll sign off.

Love Reb

Mark Meshulam offers
FREE keyboard shortcut software,
FREE small business articles,
FREE web master resources, and a powerful
email reminder system, all at
www.poingo.com

Brain Overload: The Threat of Cranial Overblosis

2006-11-25T10:19:00.000-06:00

It could be the evil confluence of two graph lines. One line represents "room left in brain". The other represents "data input". Result: Overblosis of the cranial cavity, otherwise known as Brain Overload.

Having lived my life as a baby boomer, the demographic group which has been the obsession of unprecedented hoardes of marketing focus groups, I already know that when I fart, so do a hundred thousand of my contemporaries.

Therefore, I know as a fact, that any minute the news will be filled with breathless (but well groomed) news anchors reporting frightening instances of spontaneous and messy brain explosions spreading across the country.

It is understandable that 50+ year old brain cells would fatigue, longing for a simple graze in the pasture. Munching in a sunny field of grass is a refreshing image, soothing to black-and-blue gray matter.

But our environment isn't cooperating. Instead of grassy fields, our psyche is jabbed, stabbed and generally invaded with gigabytes of decidedly non-grassy input, and we are not built for it.

Eisenstein's Montage

Sergei Eisenstein exhibiting Cranial Overblosis symptoms->

It started with Sergei Mikhailovich Eisenstein about 90 years ago. This visionary Russian cinematographer theorized that people could understand a succession of unrelated images and assimilate these images into a unified impression.

His well studied "Odessa steps" sequence in the 1925 film Battleship Potemkin demonstrates this then-radical psycho-perceptual phenomenon which is now found in nearly every movie, television show and especially every TV commercial currently attacking your eyes.

This frenetic moving slideshow on steroids is called the montage.

Eisenstein was kinder than our current batch of Attention-Deficit-Disorder-afflicted film editors. He gave the audience a good solid few seconds to absorb, for example, the image of the stressed-out dude in the round glasses before cutting to the image of the rifle-wielding Cossacks.

In current cinematic language, a few seconds per shot is enough to get the editor fired for sleeping at the Avid. Visual images are now measured in increments of 1/24 of a second, the smallest increment available because movies pour 24 images every second into our heads.

The Impression of Motion

On one hand, 24 frames per second gives us the impression of smooth motion. The image persists in our consciousness for enough time to blend into the next one. Thank the Lumiere brothers and Thomas Edison for creating devices which fool our minds into inferring motion from a succession of still images.

As soon as flashing images were invented, however, people began experimenting with the number of frames which are actually necessary to convey information.

Subliminal Messages

The underworld of this group postulated that one could plant subtle "subliminal" messages into the viewer's brain by flashing, for example, only one frame of a specific message within the movie.

In their hopeful minds, by displaying 1/24 of a second of "Eat Popcorn" or "Start Orgy Now", flocks of brain-controlled zombies would obediently rush either the snack counter or each other without a second thought.

Thankfully for our waistlines and our population control, these ideas turned out to be unfulfilled. This makes sense. Why would a viewer select 1 particular frame out of 175,000 in a typical movie (including previews) for obeisance?

Shell-Shocking the Audience

Now film editors tread in the conscious realm, stingily feeding us just enough frames to convey flash impressions, then moving on to flash again. Their inspiration started with Eisenstein but ended with the strobe light. What we endure at the cinema would induce an epileptic seizure in Eisenstein.

The public undoubtedly gobbles up these machine-gun images, or they wouldn't exist. Hyper-montages make visual media exciting.

But each movie force-feeds terabytes of data into our scull-restricted heads. Doesn't data require space? Even if, as neuro-psychologists tell us, gaining knowledge involves the building of neural connections within the brain, don't these neurons take up space?

More Brain Barrage

It's not just TV and the movies. We are bombarded by thousands of emails, cell phone calls and text messages. We are zetzed from resting states by pings, dings, rings and beeps all day long, every day.

No wonder we can't hold a train of thought beyond two sentences of a conversation.

No wonder we resemble rats being randomly shocked in a Skinner Box, trying to find reason and predictability among zaps of random chaos.

I don't know about you, but I'm wearing a hat in case my brain explodes.

This article is dedicated to Solomon Weingarten who shall remain nameless.

Mark Meshulam offers
keyboard shortcuts,
small business articles,
web master resources, and a powerful
email reminder system, all at
www.poingo.com

Language: The Structure of Thought

2006-11-04T05:40:00.000-06:00

I have the unique experience of having been romantically involved with (or married to) three teachers of the deaf. Not all at the same time, mind you, like some sign language convention gone primal, but stretched out over almost 20 years of my life.

I have never understood the reason for this, and probably never will. But being exposed to people who spend their lives bringing language to those who can't hear has given me the the inspiration and understanding which I will share now with you.

If I were to choose the worst sense to lose, personally I would choose the sense of vision. To me, not being able to see would be a true horror.

My teachers of the deaf tell me otherwise. They say that for a child unable to hear spoken language, actual brain development is impaired. Why? Because language is the structure of thought.

A World Without Sound

Imagine being someone who has never heard a sound. Your brain is filled with visual information, but how do you organize it?

Some things are easy. One day you see a brick wall, the next day you see a drywall wall. You eventually notice that they are similar. They separate spaces. They protect us. We can't walk through them. They look different but in many ways they are the same.

If you were never able to hear the word "wall", or any word for that matter, your mind might, or might not, develop an internal impression which would represent the general class of things you can't walk through.

Here is where a word would come in very handy. If you could hear sound, you could easily attach the two wall experiences with a common sound. That sound is a word. A single syllable can become a quick abbreviation for the commonality between a collection of full fidelity visual and tactile impressions.

Think Google. You can enter any word or phrase into the search bar, and Google will dump piles of information in your lap, all organized around a few typed characters. What then, if characters or words don't exist? How do you tell the computer what to retrieve?

Even Google Images requires a word in order to retrieve the image. No word, no information.

Words Are Symbols

Words, then, are symbols. They represent real-world things in an easy way. They help us organize our information. They allow us to create cubbyholes so we can store similar or related ideas. They help us see that some things are parts of other things rather than standing alone.

Here is a definition of knowledge, from Wikipedia:

"Knowledge is an appreciation of the possession of interconnected details which, in isolation, are of lesser value."

The stepping stone between knowing isolated details and appreciating the richness of interconnection, is words.

Most four year olds have accumulated hundreds of words which have helped them assimilate the world around them in an organized way. Every day these wildly fertile minds connect things internally through play and life, creating a mushrooming web of knowledge and understanding.

The rapidly expanding web of understanding is a multi-media experience. A visual impression connects with a tactile impression, which connects with an audio impression, which connects with a tangible result, which gets filed away with words and sounds. Take away the words and sounds, and you have a crippled filing system.

Concepts

There is a world beyond, and more complex than the organization of tangible things. This is the world of concepts. I like this definition of a concept from the University of Washington:

A concept is an abstraction or symbol that represents similarities or common characteristics in phenomena.

A phenomenon, according to Princeton University, is any state or process known through the senses....

One might infer that a word, therefore is a concept, because it is a symbol representing commonality in observed things. I say yes, in its simplest form, but there is more.

First comes the word abstraction. Again, per Princeton, an abstraction is the process of formulating general concepts by abstracting common properties of instances. Sounds circular, no?

The key in all of this, is that a more complex concepts involves creating or abstracting commonalities between states, processes or instances.

This is far beyond walls. This can describe the intricacies of everyday life, and the most intricate of all, interaction with people. Try to formulate logical deductions without words. It won't happen. Try to share complex nuances of feelings without words. Very tough.

Words in Business

Business transactions are deals built upon presumed understandings. Parties trade things in exchange for other things. Each party represents their offering to the other party using words.

Are the words that you use clear? Do they precisely express your intentions and expectations in business agreements? If not, crisp them up. Words are not only the the building blocks of knowledge, but are fundamental in trade.

Mark Meshulam offers
keyboard shortcuts,
small business articles,
web master resources, and a powerful
email reminder system, all at
www.poingo.com

Create FTP and HTTP Download Links

2006-10-17T10:30:00.001-05:00

For those of us who routinely move large files around the Internet like chess pieces, sending large files as email attachments can be a dead end game.

It is not uncommon for large email attachments to be lost in the vapors or bounced back as undeliverable as they encounter system bottlenecks during their journey.

The elegant, impressive solution is to upload the large file to a web server, then create a download link in your email.

Most recipients know what to do when they receive these emailed links. If their email is configured as HTML, they might be able to click on the link to initiate the download. If not, they copy the link (highlight the link, right click/copy), then paste it into the address bar of their browser.

You can create download links if you have the ability to upload files to a web server. A web server is a computer continuously attached to the Internet, designed to host websites. To send files to our web server, we use Wise-FTP.

1. Upload the File

                      Click to enlarge

a. Using Wise-FTP, navigate the left side of the screen (your local system) so that the file you wish to upload is highlighted.

b. Navigate the right side of the screen (the web server) so that the target folder on the web server is highlighted.

c. Click the button pointing to the right to upload.

2. Obtain the URL

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a. On the right side of your screen (the web server side)locate the file you just uploaded. Right click the file name. A drop-down menu will appear.

b. Select "Copy URL"

c. The URL (Uniform Resource Locator, or Web Address) will be loaded into your computer's clipboard memory. This can be used as a link.

3. Paste the URL, or Link into an email

                      Click to enlarge

a. Open a new email and right-click/paste the URL into the email.

b. Notice that it looks a little odd. It begins with "ftp" instead of "http". More on this later. It also contains your username and password in the link. Security breach!!!

c. FTP (File Transfer Protocol)allows downloading and uploading only if username and passwords are supplied. HTTP (Hyper Text Transfer Protocol) does not. In HTTP, the download occurs if the link contains an exact path to the file, without requiring additional validation. Generally, when you download from a website, you are using HTTP protocol.

4. Change FTP Link to HTTP Link

                      Click to enlarge

a. You can manually change the link right in your email. If you are using HTML enabled email, be careful because while editing the link, you could easily start the download by accident. To avoid this, place your cursor just after the link, then left click. The cursor will become positioned at the end of the link. Use arrow keys to get the cursor inside the link for editing.

b. First change "ftp" to "http". Place your cursor between the "f" and "t". Type "ht". The link now starts with "fhttp://...". Use the arrow keys to back up two spaces, then use the "delete" key to delete the "f". Now the link properly starts with "http://..."

c. Again using the arrow keys, delete the portion of the link after the two slashes and before the domain. In this example, this means removing "username:password@". You are almost done!

5. Check & Go

                      Click to enlarge

a. The final step is to check your link. ALWAYS CHECK YOUR LINKS! Right-click/copy the entire link, then right-click/paste it into the address bar of your browser. Hit "Enter" and the download should begin. Success!

b. To troubleshoot a problem, first be sure you did all steps correctly. If even one character is wrong, your download will not work.

Next, make sure there are NO SPACES in your filename or any of the folder names in the link. If there are, you can change the names using your FTP software (right-click on filename/rename), then generate a new link.

Beyond that, remember that Wise FTP will create a link based upon how you logged in to the FTP site. If your login occurred through a particular domain (in this case "Poingo.com"), that is the domain your link will also use. Many web servers have multiple domains pointed at them. Log in to the web server with the domain you want visible in the link.

c. Feel free to email questions to info@itickleme.com. Good luck linking!

A real honest-to-goodness link to this report.

Changing the Hearts of Terrorists

2006-09-03T08:11:00.000-05:00

It is becoming increasingly clear that the next major world conflict will arise from a clash between fundamentalist Islamists and those they deem to be infidels.

Islamist thought content is so foreign to Westerners, that our only tools are to fight violence with violence, or to attack monetarily.

While these methods are important - it is necessary to kill or capture murderers and choke off their money - these methods address the effect, but not the cause of the problem.

The problem lies in the hearts and minds of people. It lies in what has been taught or hammered into their very beings. It lies in what they experience.

Millions of hate-filled Arabs did not magically spring from the ground like daisies. They were created through focused, determined effort and vast monetary investment. They were forged under heat and pressure, like steel.

The pressure comes from poverty, repression, physical need and threatening messages repeated so often that they become brainwashed into a reality. "They have killed our people and taken our land." "They disrespect Allah and Islam." "Their culture is evil."

Unless the Western world can address the poverty, the culture and the messages, there will be no hope for thwarting an eventual explosion of hate which will span the globe.

At that point, the Western world's only option will be to kill as many people as possible, especially the leaders and teachers, then wait for the next generation to rise again.

Media is the Answer

Given the enormity of this problem, only a response of equal scale and duration will have any hope of success. We spend billions on soldiers and bombs. Why not spend billions on a television and radio programs, and the means to broadcast programming throughout the Arab world? Twenty four hours a day, seven days a week.

If necessary, satellites could be employed to transmit this programming, and satellite radios could be distributed in poorer and more remote areas.

Quality Arab language TV and radio programs should be produced to specifically address the multitude of painful messages Arabs are constantly bombarded with, in a way which is credible, entertaining, redundant and mind-broadening.

Local Arab governments and religious leaders will, of course, ban the accessing of such heresy and possibly punish people who watch and listen. Nonetheless, over time, the lure and availability of such forbidden fruit will attract a following. Messages other than doctrine will be heard.

Programs to Open Closed Minds
Here is some suggested programming:

The Teachings of Peace in the Koran
This important program would have one or more pacifistic imams who present and discuss portions of the Koran each week which support peaceful resolution of problems, and present peace as a disirable goal.

Wealth and Poverty in the Arab World
This documentary would show the history of Arab leaders, engulfed in oil money, choosing to keep their people in poverty. Episodes could be devoted to Yassir Arafat's diversion of millions from his people, and what those millions could have done if properly spent, for instance, the complete eradication of refugee camps. The program would pose the question, "Who should we be angry with?

Arab Scientists and Nobel Prizewinners
This program would make heroes of people who make positive contributions to the world, are internationally recognized, and bring honor and esteem to the Arab world.

I believe that Arabs desparately need role models who present options other than violence and suicide. Arab scholars from medicine, mathematics, physics, literature and other disciplines would be represented.

I also believe that part of the dangerous Islamist mentality portrays the West as hating and killing Arabs, and possibly even worse, disrespecting them. These programs would show experts from around the world praising Arab contributions to world science.

Architecture of Arabia
This program would show the beauty of Arab architecture and portray the painstaking hours expended by highly skilled artisans in building great edifices. Architecture and building can be portrayed as a means to not only praise Allah, but also as a way to spiritually elevate the people. Again, praise from the outside world would be shown.

Arabic Poetry
We in the Western world have been exposed to the poetic way in which Arab leaders express themselves, too often in tones of defiance. I suspect this springs from a rich vein of poetic expression within the culture. Non violent poetic expression would be emphasized.

Sexuality Across Cultures
This documentary would survey a variety of different cultures with regard to norms for separating or commingling the sexes during childhood, dating/mating rituals, methods used to attract the opposite sex, average age marriage occurs, whether marriages are of free will or arranged, average duration of marriages, numbers of children produced, etc.

This scholarly piece would avoid sensationalism which might enrage fundamentalist sensitivities, yet would provide a glimpse into an outside world which does things successfully in many different ways, allowing consideration of the idea of personal choice in family planning.

Arabs and Democracy
This Documentary would show people of Arab descent, as they live in democratic countries. How are their choices and freedoms different? Is their quality of life different? Is it difficult for such transplants to adapt to a new environment? Both positives and negatives of open societies would be presented.

Population Control and the Arab World
This survey of child-production in the Arab world would contrast Arab customs with those found in other parts of the world. The program would discuss survival strategies for families and countries, and present an option which would consider having less children, but more resources to put into the raising of that child, with positive outcomes.

Arab Against Arab
This historical piece would explore long-standing hatreds, Iran vs. Iraq, Sunni vs. Shi'ite, etc. The program would promote the idea that such struggles detract from the greatness of all Arab peoples, and there needs to be a golden moment in which Arabs drop their inter-tribe hatreds and unite for the common good. (And not against a common enemy.)

The History of Jihadist Thought
This historical study would track the origins of the idea of jihad, and examine the historical context in which it was proclaimed, and by whom. The thrust of the program would lead to an idea that declaring fatwas and jihads is a very serious business and is not to be indiscriminantly used by every demagogue who comes along. The proclamation of fatwa and jihad should be presented with whatever restrictions and limitations exist within the construct.

A Child's Future
This study would track three or more children and examine the aspects of their lives which contribute to, and also detract from, long term success. An Arab concept of success, which is other than success by martyrdom, would be encouraged.

Women of the World
A survey of the contribution of women to various societies, as leaders, as educators, as mothers, as business people, etc. A discussion of the relative strengths of the genders, oriented toward appreciating and utilizing the strengths of each in the furtherance of family and society.

Death of a Martyr
This piece would explore the notion that martyrs will be rewarded with 72 virgins in each of 72 mansions in Paradise.

It could be presented in two ways:

1. A history of glorifying death as a way for tribal leaders to encourage their people to make suicidal choices in battle. Interviews with attempted martyrs who had near-death experiences, wherein few virgins or mansions were sighted.

Or my favorite...

2. Ahmed Explodes into Paradise. In the opening sequence of each episode, this comedy would show suicide bomber Ahmed exploding and then struggling with reassembling his bloody body parts, which rain down into a nice, virgin-filled mansion. As he untangles his intestines from the chandelier and hunts for a missing foot, bitchy virgins complain about stains on the carpet.

In other episodes, the virgins, each covered head-to-toe in a chador, elude and scorn him for his shortcomings, eventually making him wish he were back home. When he finally scores with a virgin, the event is an unpleasant, bloody affair filled with hysteria. Following her deflowering, his first conquest jealously haunts him day and night. Shrieking, but fully clad cat-fights ensue showing Ahmed violence he could never have imagined. In subsequent episodes, money runs out and the virgins force Ahmed to taks a job at a convenience store to support all of them. Ahmed longs for the simplicity of the terrorist training camp and a dry pita.

Mark Meshulam offers
keyboard shortcuts,
small business articles,
web master resources, and a powerful
email reminder system, all at
www.poingo.com

A Sense of European Community

2006-08-26T09:18:00.000-05:00

Relatively speaking, the United States is a civilization baby. Only 230 years old at this writing, the U.S. is still in knee-pants compared with European cities, for example, many of which date back a thousand years or more. Compared with cities rooted in Middle Eastern antiquity, where four thousand years of history is not uncommon, the U.S. is still in diapers.

The easiest way to tell the age of a city is by the width of its streets. Ancient Jerusalem is riddled with alleyways suitable for foot traffic only. Later the Romans came along and "modernized" it by adding a classical central promenade, which could accomodate horses and carriages, as well as shops and markets.

Many European cities still retain their older area, where streets are tight and tiny Euro-cars struggle to jam their way through. These wonderful places seem carved out of brick, stone and wood, every inch ornamented.

Even in the United States, the age of the city is visible in the streets. Compare Boston or New York, jammed together in an updated version of European cacophony, with Los Angeles, which is really more of a highway than a city.

With each century of modernization, people became more physically separated from one another. We have traded speed of movement for closeness with our neighbors and with ourselves.

The quality of life in the United States is trending toward increasing separation from others, aided not only by wider streets, but also by the ability to create a whole world within our homes filled with cable TV and the Internet.

There can be benefits of this. Remember the adage, "Good fences make good neighbors?" Maybe we fight less. But maybe we give up a bit too much in the trade.

I believe that we need to rediscover some of the richness which we have lost, richness derived from closeness with people and our surroundings. We need to re-create the European concept of being together outdoors, in neighborhoods, in restaurants and in outdoor cafes.

Where are the people? Where is the conversation? Where are impassioned political debates? Where is hospitality? Where is the evening stroll in the town square?

Where are shots of Cognac over sausage and cheese? Where is fashion and design? Where are people who speak more than two languages?

Where are the feminine artistic straight men? Where are fresh hard rolls bought daily down the street with fresh vegetables and cheese? Where are really fresh tomatoes?

Where is music in public played on non-electrified instruments? Where did the accordion go? The balalaika? The bazouki? The mandolin? Castinets? Where are people spontaneously bursting into a folk dance?

Where is storytelling? Where is laughter in clubs? Where are shopkeepers who make you feel like you belong? Where is real home cooked food prepared lovingly? Where is the smell of a stew being simmered all day? Where is community?

Where are vacations long enough to restore you? Where are months by the sea? Where is non chic-chic cappuchino? Where is carving wood by hand? Where is love at first sight which lasts forever?

Where is caring for the elderly? Where is playing with children? Where is joy in simple things? Where is walking? Where is art? Where is writing? Where is dance? Where is poetry? Where is joy? Where is feeling like a king? Where is sitting on park benches? Where is sitting on the porch? Where are rich fabrics? Where are classical paintings?

Where is going to a park? Where is an old style bath house built around a mineral spring? Where is getting scrubbed with palm fronds?

Where are discussions of the exchange rate? Where is knowledge of the country next door? Where is the meaning in posessions held over generations? Where is chocolate as a delicacy? Where is dried fish and beer? Where are pickles as a staple rather than as a condiment? Where are olives? Where are toasts to your health?

Where is knowing everyone on the block?

Mark Meshulam offers
keyboard shortcuts,
small business articles,
web master resources, and a powerful
email reminder system, all at
www.poingo.com

The Wonders of Windows Explorer

2006-08-05T10:20:00.000-05:00

I frequently notice that, despite the fact that almost everyone I know uses a computer regularly - many all day long - their skills vary widely. It seems that people become proficient in the handful of applications which affect their lives, yet an incredibly useful program or function might be lurking nearby completely undiscovered and unknown.

Such is the case of Windows Explorer(tm), one of the handiest utilities you would ever want to have, built into Windows(tm) operating systems. I have seen many people who use computers heavily, yet they somehow never discovered Windows Explorer. Forgive me if you already know it. This article will be elementary for you.

Don't get a big head if you already use Windows Explorer. Next week, when I explain the Macro Subsystems Rotoflack Articulating Verbotenizer, this article's audience will be nodding knowingly while you, Mister Smarty Pants, will be scratching ruts into your scalp.

Navigation Utility
Windows Explorer is a navigation utility. It helps you visualize the contents of your computer. It helps you to move files and folders around by clicking and dragging. If you don't use it, take a few minutes now and get familiar. Using it is a fundamental skill which will benefit you forever. Access it by clicking "Start".

On the pop-up menu you might see any of the following: My Documents, My Pictures, My Computer or Windows Explorer. Click on any of these, and you will be in Windows Explorer.

Folder View - Detail View
You want to see the view in which folders are listed on both sides of the screen. If you don't see this, click the "Folders" icon near the top of the screen. Then, at the top click "View", then "Details." This will enable you to get maximum information on your screen, not wasting space on cutesy icons.

Apply Folder View and Detail View to All Screens
After this setup, you can choose to have all folder views using the same settings by selecting "Tools" along the top margin, then "Folder Options", click the " View" tab, and finally, select "Apply to All Folders". Click "Yes" and "OK" to complete the setup.

Folders on Left, Contents on Right
The general concept is that folders are shown in the left window. If you click on a folder icon or name in the left window, its contents will then be displayed in the right window. These contents may be files or folders. In the right window, name, file type, size and date of most recent modification will be shown.

Sort Lists by Clicking Top Bar
You can click on the top margin of the right window to sort the list by the criterion you click. Example: click on "Name" and the list of files and folders will sort alphabetically by name. Click a second time and the list will re-sort, but this time in reverse order. The same is true for the other titles "Size", "Type", and "Date Modified".

Expand Folders (See What's Inside)
Notice that in the left window there are little plus and minus signs to the left of folder icons. If you click the plus, folders contained in that folder will display below the one where the plus was clicked. You now will see on the left, some of the information you are also seeing on the right (folders which are contents of other folders). This is important. Don't disregard it as a gratuitous programmer's bauble. It will come in handy shortly.

Clicking on the "plus sign" is called expanding the list of folders, and you can see why. Once you expand a folder, you might see plus signs on the newly revealed list, and these can be expanded also. You could get quite a list going if you have many folders.

After clicking the plus sign it changes to a minus. Clicking the minus is the opposite of clicking the plus. It contracts, rather than expands, the folder list.

Now we get to the good stuff. You need Windows Explorer to help you manage your files and folders. One aspect of management is to break a long list of folders into categories. This will usually involve creating a new folder.

Make a New Folder
In the left window, left-click the folder under which you want to add the new folder. Be sure it is highlighted. Then, at the top, click "File", then "New", then "Folder". You will see a "New Folder" in the list in the right window. Right-click on it, then click "Rename". You can then type a new folder name for it.

Move Files and Folders
If you have a lot of files and folders, this can take concentration, but it is definitely do-able.

First, click on folders in the left window until you see the items you want to move (the source files and folders) visible in the right window. Then, using the scroll bar in the left window, scroll until you can see the folder you want to move the items into (the target folder).

If the target folder is not visible because it is inside another folder, click on the plus sign to expand that folder until you can see the target. Do NOT click on the folder name or folder icon, just the plus sign. Otherwise you will lose the view you need on the right.

Now, with source visible on the right and target visible on the left, left-click+drag source files and folders on top of the target folder. When you see the target folder highlighted, release the left mouse button. You now know how to "drag and drop" files and folders to new locations.

In the example below, we name the folder containing the file you want to move, "SourceFolder". The folder you want to move the file to will be named "TargetFolder". The file you want to move will be called, "MoveThisDocument".

Copy Files and Folders
Sometimes you want the source files and folders to remain in the original location, but also to be copied to a new location. Start the same way as above, getting source on the left and target on the right. Then right-click+copy the source items, and right-click-paste them onto the target folder. Done!

Now, when someone mentions Windows Explorer to you, your blank look can become a knowing nod.

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Receiving and Giving a Memorable Experience

2006-06-04T16:21:00.000-05:00

You stand on the shore deciding whether or not to take the plunge.

You are hot but the water at your feet seems forbiddingly cold. Going further your ankles are submerged. The cold still holds you back.

Eventually you endure a brief moment of shock. You are in the water and feeling great, refreshed. You have undergone a true paradigm shift. You are surrounded by cool water, not warm air. You swim instead of walking. Water is in your mouth, nose and eyes. You are having a rich, tip-to-toe experience.

Sleep walking through your day performing work tasks does not generally produce deeply felt experiences. It takes something special, like a plunge in the ocean.

True experiences, as long as they are positive in nature - a car crash can be an experience too - are desirable. For the experiencer, the stretching of ones boundaries can be memorable or even ultimate. In these moments we gain new realizations and are moved to our very core.

It is no coincidence that Jimi Hendrix called his group "The Experience". Jimi's miraculous music made good on the promise. Listening was not a bland, passive event. For many, it was rich and keenly felt.

Buying Experiences

People pay good money for experiences. Activities passed off as "thrill seeking" provide long lasting experiences as particiants face life threatening (real or imagined) danger. Jump from an airplane, drive a race car, scuba dive at a coral reef, bungee jump ortravel to an exotic location, and you will almost surely have purchased a memorable experience.

Planned Experiences Involve Resistance

Like the beachgoer who hesitates before plunging, we tend to pause before knowingly taking on an experience. There is fear and questioning which recognizes the importance of the event, even in advance.

Unless They Are Unexpected

In other, very special times, the experience grows and gains force like a hurricane and takes us by surprise. These "creeper" experiences have special value because they occur naturally, without much effort. They just happen. They bring refreshing change to our life.

Milestones

True experiences become milestones in our life. When you have sex for the first time, win a long-sought award, or have a baby, chances are strong that the experience will remain with you forever.

Business Experiences

When you walk into any store or visit any business by phone or website, you will have an experience which the business has planned for you. Maybe it won't be earth-moving, but it will be an experience nonetheless.

Chain stores and franchises expend large piles of money designing and researching logos, colors, interiors, signs, background music and even scripts for employees to recite, all to give you a particular experience.

Upscale stores feature sublime finishes, soothing music and well dressed, obsequious clerks, all conspiring to pull you past any resistance you may have and lull you into a revery of, "Yes, I am rich. I can afford to buy these highly priced things."

Fast food establishments, on the other hand, create an environment conveying efficiency and speed, presenting food in a lighthearted and happy way. We can then rush in, grab our burgers and gloss over any prissy nutritional resistances we may feel.

Replicating the Business Experience

Even more piles of money are then spent ensuring that all stores in the franchise or chain are uniform and consistent.

The reason large chains exist is they are successful in creating and replicating a customer experience which is appropriate for the customer demographic and the product.

If McDonalds and Nieman Marcus were to trade stores, the results would be jarring. Imagine buying a Big Mac at Nieman's jewelry counter, or a Cartier watch at McDonalds' drive-up window. There is not much chance of achieving a sales volume needed to sustain the business. The customer experience would not be conducive to sales.

What Experience Does Your Business Deliver?

Now we come to you and your business. What kind of experience does your company deliver?

How is the phone answered? What does the website look like? What is the physical environment? How speedy is your response time?

Does it all hang together?

If you were your customer, what kind of experience would you receive when doing business with your company? Would it be the kind of experience which elicits trust? Would it be enjoyable or frustrating?

Would it seem professional or a little lame? Would it be consistent from one visit to the next, or would it be spotty or quirky? Would it be a similar experience regardless of the contact person?

Observe and finely tune your customer experience and some day you may find yourself at the top of a beautifully crafted, wonderfully executed, self-replicating business machine.

Mark Meshulam offers
keyboard shortcuts,
small business articles,
web master resources, and a powerful
email reminder system, all at
www.poingo.com

Test Your Mettle at Construction Research Lab

2006-05-09T21:38:00.002-05:00

The Construction Research Laboratory is an amazing, one-of-a-kind place located in a gritty, industrial area of Miami.

Since 1975, companies like mine (Builders Architectural) have built and tested portions of buildings (usually windows and large walls of glass called curtainwalls") at this world-renowned facility.

After testing is complete, the actual building will be built "for real" almost anywhere in the world, utilizing knowledge learned here.

The process is called building and testing a "mockup", and sometimes these mockups can be 40 feet wide and 60 feet tall!

World-famous proprietor A.A. Sahknovsky - Sak to most everybody - though clearly no spring chicken, unstoppably shuttles between numerous mockups.

Sak directs his able crews in the construction, deconstruction and configuration of all manners of custom-made testing chambers, the large reinforced steel and concrete boxes upon which mockups are built.

In addition, he schedules a staggering array of testing procedures, as each project uniquely requires.

From the Palmetto Expressway just North of the 74th Avenue exit, you can see the lab off to the West. From the random outcroppings of structural steel, you immediately assumes the site to be unrepaired devastation from the most recent hurricane.

Looking closer, however, you notice that the steel has an odd appearance. Some pieces old, some new. It is more of a patchwork quilt made of conglomerated hunks of steel, wood and concrete.

The vintage steel has been used, reused, and used again. It has been cut, moved, welded, cut, drilled, sealed, cut apart, craned and bolted. It has seen searing Florida sun, torrential rainfalls, and uncountable tests.

Now about the tests...
A typical test sequence for a prominent building in Chicago would list as follows:

Air Infiltration,
Static Water Penetration,
Dynamic Water Penetration,
Uniform Load Deflection,
Retesting of Air and Water,
Structural Overload.

A brief explanation of each will be worth your while. Remember that each mockup is sealed to a reinforced steel box. This allows the lab to use big blowers to force air into or out of the chamber and apply powerful forces to the test specimen.

Air Infiltration

Lab personnel remove air from the chamber with a blower while measuring the amount of air it is removing to maintain test pressure, often 6.24 psf (pounds per square foot), the equivalent of a 50 mph wind. Using plastic film sequentially applied, the lab determines how much air is passing through each element of the mockup.

Air tests can be harbingers of results to come, so we participants tend to hold our breaths awaiting the outcome.

Static Water Penetration

The lab removes air from the chamber to achieve test pressure while dousing the mockup with hundreds of gallons of water delivered by large spray racks. Witnesses (such as myself) are inside the chamber with flashlights and scuba tanks (kidding) looking for leaks.

The test runs for 15 very long minutes. Drowning during this test is infrequent, however heat exhaustion is a distinct possibility because the chamber air conditioner often fights a losing battle against a baking Miami sun.

Dynamic Water Penetration

Same spray rack, also 15 minutes. This time the pressure comes from a very large airplane engine which roars to life with an explosion of smoke and oil, and rattles the bejeesus out of the specimen and the witnesses inside.

When this test takes place, about a third of the lab must run for cover and those of us inside the chamber have plenty of time to mentally review our estate planning.

Uniform Load Deflection

Lab personnel attach an impressive array of dial indicators on various parts of the specimen, then chamber pressure is cranked up. The indicators record the amount of deflection(bending) which occurs. Yes, glass does indeed bend, Virginia, but it also breaks. Therefore standing near the mockup during this test without a suit of armor is discouraged.

Retesting Air and Water
According to Sak, 95% of test specimens fail their first water test. According to me, diagnosing and fixing the leaks can take many frustrating days.

You might imagine the foreboding we feel when re-entering the chamber for a water test after our windows have been bent like a banana during the deflection test. We might as well cancel any return flights for the immediate future.

Structural Overload
This test is similar to the Uniform Load Deflection test, except that the pressures are increased by an additonal 50%. Any permanent bending or breakage would constitute a failure. Usually somewhere around this point in the sequence, participants have the suicide hotline on speed dial.

Test Anxiety
Surviving the testing program is only one source of test anxiety. Usually the manufacturer forgets to send something, and invariably it is the very first thing you need to install. Then you forget to bring an important tool and bravely tangle with insane, lawless Miami traffic (the original inspiration for carnival attraction "bump-em cars").

Then a storm blows through and drenches everything you were just about to caulk. Then you get a nasty sunburn on the top of your head which creates dandruff the size of corn flakes. Then you get the runs from an unfamiliar delicacy served from the "roach coach".

Then a huge Palmetto bug, (a mutant cockroach from planet Giganto) saunters confidently by, knowing full well it could whup you and your buddies. Then you look down and notice you are standing in a puddle of water crawling with questionable electrical cords.

Then welding sparks fly at your head from out of nowhere. And the noise is deafening.

An Awesome Experience

But with all the adversity, Sak's place is truly loved by almost all who enter its creaking chain-link gates. It is a last rugged outpost of American individualism and in-the-trenches know-how. The vibe is one of fun, laughter, and comeradery forged in a nihilistic caulderon of absurdity.

When we arrive, we feel a great sense of freedom and excitement. When things get tough, we wonder if we will ever escape. But for most, myself included, a stint at Sak's place will become one of the most cherished experiences of our professional careers.

Movie clip: Dynamic Water Test - Intro

Movie clip: Dynamic Water Test - Outside

Movie clip: Dynamic Water Test - Inside

Construction Research Laboratory
7600 NW 79th Avenue
Miami, FL 33166
(305)592-9222

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