Category: I Think …

The True North Strong and Free?

Amidst the hubbub that is the Olympics the Canadian Conservative government announced that it has cancelled the PromArt programme.  The programme has been seen as both a “gravy train” as well as a vital means for exposing Canadian music, art and talent to the world stage.

It’s great to hear the spokesperson for the minister of foreign affairs say things like

I don’t even want to say [their name] on the phone,” she said. “Holy F – that was one that was flagged.

Seriously?  A band’s name is so important, so key to the Canadian image, that it can help cancel an entire programme that has been an important launchpad for many Canadian talents over the years?

If the government is so keen on taking “a more disciplined approach” to managing spending, perhaps looking at the criteria used to select projects would be a better start?  But why waste the time, we don’t really have much to say as Canadians, eh, so let’s just throw that baby out with that bathwater.

Design By Committee

As a designer I think big business and committees are the way to go for design decisions.  How can you really get to the right product if you don’t talk to your stakeholders and solidly capture their needs in the product?  How many users?  Well, all of them!  Can we tweak it a little more, just add one little thing to make it more “usable”?  But let the committee make these decisions, its a recipe for success!  The designer, well, they’re too artistic and aren’t in touch with the real users.

I love the “briefing”.  50% are women, 50% are men.  We’re not targetting all drivers, just women.  Men are being targetted “secondarily”.

When Is A Rant Just Good Feedback?

I think there’s a place in everyone’s life for a good rant. Be it something you receive or deliver, there are times when rants are valuable.  Let a little steam off.  Practice throwing your weight around.  Push imaginary opponents around as you vent your frustrations.

One of the most successful business people today seems to think they’re good feedback to his employees.

When SeattlePI asked Bill Gates about this particular email last week, he chuckled. “There’s not a day that I don’t send a piece of e-mail… like that piece of e-mail. That’s my job.”

I find Bill Gates’ email interesting for a few reasons:

  • He’s right
  • He’s describing a workflow using very little system terminology – a skill that I know many business analysts find challenging
  • He’s essentially done an informal heuristic evaluation for his teams
  • His complaints have not resulted in any changes even after 5 years
  • His job allows him time to fiddle with computers like that (or did he make up the scenarios?)

Full Text: an Epic Bill Gates e-Mail Rant

Avoid Radiation (Duh!) – Challenge Your Doctor (Huh?)

A fellow McKesson employee forwarded on to me an article about how people are failing to grasp the severity of medical images today (can we blame Oprah for this one?).  Yes, having a CT scan is painless, quick, and effective – but is it necessary?  A CT scan is a massive amount of radiation being flooded through your body.  It shouldn’t be something taken lightly and if you’re recommended to take one by your doctor you should really take the time to make sure it is necessary.

But what about your kids?

As usual, the kids get the stinky end of the stick.  The article mentions that some modalities have a pediatric setting, but techs may not know about it or may not use it.  Kids are particularly susceptible to radiation damage too, as their cells are dividing and growing much more than an adults.

How serious is all this?  The article gives a few good numbers:

Exactly how much radiation is too much? Because CT scans came into vogue in the 1980s and radiation-induced cancer takes roughly 20 years to develop, long-term studies of CT scans and cancer are still under way. But scientists are already anticipating future health implications. Indeed, researchers found a population of 25,000 Japanese post-atomic-bomb survivors who were exposed to roughly the same amount of radiation as two CT scans. Based in part on those studies, the Food and Drug Administration estimates that an adult’s lifetime risk of developing radiation-induced cancer from a CT scan is roughly 1 in 2,000. Worse, the risk for children is even higher.

Compared with adults, children are more sensitive to radiation because they have longer life expectancies and because their cells divide more rapidly, making their DNA more vulnerable to damage. A child’s risk of developing a fatal cancer from one CT scan is as high as 1 in 500.

1 in 500 risk of developing a fatal cancer from one CT scan?  Those are some numbers that I think should make you think twice about needlessly obtaining radiation-based medical exams, particularly for your kids.

So who’s up for one of those fancy-shmancy radiation-free MRIs?  What?  No longitudinal studies for adverse effects at all?  Well, I’m sure the doctors wouldn’t do anything dangerous with me, right?

The Canadian Copyright Reform Bill Has Landed: Bill C-61

Here in Canuckland we’re starting to see the government work to update our copyright laws.  Just last week Bill C-61 was dropped, and boy did it make a splash.

As usual, Michael Geist is working to translate this thing into common everyday language.

If you’re at all interested in fixing this corporate-driven legislation for something that actually protects copyrights while extending logical and reasonable rights to Canadians, get involved.

Look up your Minister and write them a letter.  If you’re really pressed for time, someone has even written up a form letter that you can simply sign.  They’ll even mail it off for you.  It doesn’t get easier than this, people.

I wrote up my own letter to my M.P., as I’m taking this a little personally and wanted to make sure Mr. Hiebert knows about my specific concerns.

Spreadsheets Make Me Uneasy

Here’s some random insight into the person that is Kirk – working with spreadsheets, heck even thinking about them, makes me feel …. uneasy ….. unsettled ….. anxious.

When you open a new spreadsheet, you’re shown the first 10 columns or so and the first 40 rows – or whatever your monitor can show.  But start to work within it and you’ll notice something: you can’t run out of rows or columns.  There’s always another row you can add or see.  So how many rows are there, exactly?  Well, there’s the part that makes me anxious – it’s an infinitely large document, in two dimensions.  Go ahead, open one up and scroll to the bottom right corner of the document … YOU CAN’T!

Think about it (or put yourself in my neurotic shoes) – when you work with a spreadsheet you’re manipulating something that is infinitely large in both the x and y-axis.  When you open a spreadsheet, add a single cell of info, and save that file, you’re wrapping up infinity in that file – twice.

This just unnerves me.  It makes spreadsheets feel unnautral, unwieldy, inefficient, and dangerously brazen in their assumption that they can so easily capture infinity, twice, inside.  How dare they be so audacious, and how dare the world use them so flippantly!

P.S. I know a word processing document can have unlimited pages, but that’s only infinity in one dimension so my brain doesn’t seem too perturbed by them.  In fact it seems to relish that unlimited potential and enjoys working with it.  It’s the fact that spreadsheets do this in two dimensions that seems to be the keystone of my neurosis.

Film Editing Does Make a Difference

Have you stopped and noticed the art of film editing recently?  You know, the act of putting all those snippets of clips together into a cohesive film?  Have you ever wondered just how much of an impact editing can have on a film?  Sure there’s academy awards for it, but really – does that mean anything?

I’ve stumbled across a few enterprising videos that take films and create new trailers for them, casting them as very different films.  The quality varies, but some of them are quite good.  Here are a few I think are particularly effective:

Don’t make Jack a dull boy …

This one was scary before, but now …

Sacrilicious!

Disturbing on so many levels:

Wisdom Comes With Age, They Say

Back in the 90s I listened to a band called Pure, and in my recent attempts to digitize my collection (I’m at the S’s now, hang in there contest entrants!) I have revisited their album entitled Generation 6 Pack.

A witty enough title – I appreciate it more today than I did back then.

Therein lies a song called Denial, that, frankly, nailed a feeling back then.  A general growing mistrust of technology and popular culture (yes I know, a rare indie band theme).  Listening to it riding through Richmond’s Nature Park this morning caused me to pause: those boys had hit it on the head and, dammit, they were still right!

A decade later and could these words not be written today?

One day I went out walking
To find a butterfly
Screaming in an empty room
A man shot the sky
My heart beating faster
I think I’ll go read my book
The faster we go, the less we know
A book sure sounds good
Denial
Denial
Seems like the faster we go
The less we see
The less that we know
Denial
Passing by the drugstore
I see this girl inside
Flippin’ through a magazine
To see how she should be
I stare a little closer
No one seems to mind
That sad-happy look she’s giving up for a while
Denial
Denial
Seems like the faster we go
The less we see
The less that we know
Talk about denial
Seems like the bigger the lie
The more you try
And the less you ask why
Denial
Heading down the seawall
Going back to my home
I see a friend who’s always hurtin’
We talk for a while
Smiles are always nervous
Chances are that we’ll laugh
Spill our guts, hurry up
Time’s running fast
Denial

Now were they just precient, or has the world not really changed in a decade.  We only get 10 of these thing, max, and have we really used this one to its fullest potential?

Oh, one more thing.  This is Bike To Work Week in Vancouver.  if you’re local, consider trying it out.

An Online Shopping Lesson Learned

So back in early fall I was looking for a nice surprise gift for Alisa’s graduation. I knew she wanted a subscription to Us Magazine, so I made a quick little joke about her being able to rot her highly educated brain now that she had graduated. I made a mistake though, I subscribed using an online magazine vendor: MagazineCity. I shopped around a little and found 3 online sites that offered Us, and chose it because it was cheapest, and had no negative reviews that I could fine.

Well hello Google, come index this page, because this is one heck of a negative review!

I was told to expect a delay of 5-6 weeks after paying them before seeing the first issue. There was administrative stuff I knew, and I was sure they were bulk subscribing to Us itself to get the lower rate and so had to wait until Us got its gears in motion.

In early January (5 weeks in) I decided to throw a quick question to their customer service contact just to make sure things were on track. I received an automated email back stating that because I was an international customer and it was a weekly magazine, I should expect a longer wait time as Us was slower in their international deliveries. About 6-8 weeks.

Ouch I thought, 2 months after paying them I could expect my first issue? Maybe saving money wasn’t such a good idea here, though the subscription cost was about half what Us itself wanted. So I decided to see what would happen. I did receive an actual human response to my inquiry a few weeks later (!) stating that my subscription had been submitted very soon after I placed the order, and that I simply had to wait. The customer service rep (Heather) said that if we didn’t see anything by the end of March that I should give their service number a call. “March!” I thought, why would it take that long. That’s just silly, but I kept the email just in case.

Continue reading An Online Shopping Lesson Learned

Putting It Succinctly

I love poetry for its ability to capture ideas, thoughts, and ramblings in simple, succinct texts. This minimalist approach to language can result in great thoughts all crammed in to short little quotes, like this one attributed to poet Edward Arlington Robinson:

The world is not a prison house, but a kind of kindergarten, where millions of bewildered infants are trying to spell God with the wrong blocks.”