Aw Geez.

Posted on November 21, 2011 by micheal

Aw geez. Just heard of the death of a geeky professional lady I used to work closely with. Yes, the Big C. She kept an anonymous blog detailing all her symptoms and everything. Reading it now I just want to make a comment on her blog and then thought, nope, too late. She can’t read it. 

She went out for dinner on 12th November and died peacefully four days. She was always such a good operator, even her anonymous blog is well written and thoughtful. 

Damn.

www.anecessaryend.com

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I have a confession: I have uber-elite death-by-powerpoint skills

Posted on October 20, 2011 by micheal

Looking for ways to avoid ‘death by powerpoint’.  I’m really good at informative, boring lectures.  Maybe it’s time to lessen those skills.

Anyway in the link below there are interesting comments about best practices for presentations.  Perhaps this will help me lose those uber-elite death-by-powerpoint skills.

http://presentationtransformations.com/2011/01/14/presentation-best-practices-proper-logo-placement-helps-avoid-clutter/

Apparently it’s possible to make Powerpoint work like Prezi:

 

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Javascript and passing parameters through forms

Posted on October 9, 2011 by micheal

I am lecturing the subject INFS7210 Fundamentals of Electronic Commerce at the University of Queensland this semester (Semester 2 2011).  As part of this, everyone is learning to program using javascript and web pages.  The course is only an introduction to web page programming.  I thought I would document up one of the issues students have had to come to grips with.

The group assignment is an online business plan for a proposed e-commerce website.  In support of that business plan, the students have to create a prototype website.

For the group assignment, students need to have multiple web pages of data.  For most students that will require the pages to pass data from one page (e.g. where the user makes a selection) to another (e.g. displays the web catalogue).

For the prototype website, students do not have to create a database into which data is stored.  However, that means that students have an issue:  how do I pass data from one page to another?

The way to achieve this, usually, when using javascript and not using a database “back-end”, is to pass data as a parameter set in the URL.  This is called “Passing Parameters via Query Strings” or “Javascript Variable Passing”. 

It is best if I simply set out some resources for students to read and use in developing the web application:

http://javascript.about.com/library/blqs.htm

http://www.xul.fr/javascript/parameters.html

http://www.htmlgoodies.com/beyond/javascript/article.php/3471111

Students may also be interested in a relevant Google search:

http://www.google.com.au/#sclient=psy-ab&hl=en&site=&source=hp&q=tutorial+on+passing+data+by+html+parameters+javascript&pbx=1&oq=tutorial+on+passing+data+by+html+parameters+javascript&aq=f&aqi=&aql=&gs_sm=e&gs_upl=4783l4783l0l4834l1l1l0l0l0l0l0l0ll0l0&bav=on.2,or.r_gc.r_pw.,cf.osb&fp=111a300bc2dcdbc5&biw=1920&bih=923

The astute will note that the Google link uses a very similar technique above in the passed parameter.

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Facebook Ticker Box and Privacy Settings

Posted on September 24, 2011 by micheal

The new Facebook Ticker box on the right is an abomination unto privacy, but it is designed to only show you items you could always see on other people’s pages. So if I wrote on Random Friend from Uni’s wall, my Random Friend from School in 1987 could still see it if my uni friend has the ‘friend of friends’ or ‘everyone’ access to the wall privacy setting in place. Or has an open profile. What the Tickerbox does though is bring it right up in my “random friend from school”‘s face without having to browse my wall or all of my friends’ walls. And so it does a great service: “Privacy? Facebook cares not”.

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Sergeant Major eats Sugary Cookies

Posted on September 20, 2011 by micheal

What?

Ah.  Well.  About that title…

Back when I was a student – the first time around – I subscribed to Time magazine.  Wonderful little news magazine; I had visions of becoming a world leader, or at least someone who knew who Michael Dukakis was (well, someone has to) – instead I blog rather a bit.

I found Time magazine interesting, and engaging, and important.  Nevertheless, once I left university and could afford to buy my own beer, it became time to choose between, well, Time and time (OK, and beer).  And I let my subscription lapse.

Last week at the good old school dropoff, a fellow parent in drop-off purgatory said to me, “I know you’re a reader, you’re doing your phd so you must be.  I subscribe to Time magazine – would you like a copy?”.  Well, it was a bit hard to refuse as she had this enormous pink bag chock-full of magazines – including Marie Claire’s for my wife (I’m afraid I won’t even read Marie Claire for the articles, but L loves them). 

So going through Time magazine, two thoughts occurred to me: 

(1) It was a lot thinner and flimsier than I remembered;

(2) it was still just as engaging as ever it was.

And I soon found myself reading an article all about Sergeant Major Eats Sugar Cookies.  What’s that about?  Well, the story was about returned US veterans contributing to their communities, and one of the veterans mentioned this whole Sergeant Majors with a sweet tooth approach to planning.  Apparently it’s called an “operations order”, and it’s how the US marines plan an operation:

  • Situation:    What is the problem?
  • Mission:  What is the principal task at hand and purpose behind it?
  • Execution:  What strategy are we going to use to accomplish the task?
  • Service and Support:  What are the logistics?  How many people and resources will we need?
  • Command and Control:  What other groups (e.g. committees etc) should be involved and how will they communicate?

The Marines like to keep this all on a single page – dot points are your friend here.

Now, obviously this is designed for the army.  And I couldn’t be less an AJ if I tried – I could only run out of sight in a week if I fiddled with the calendar.  Nonetheless, I thought this was very relevant to anyone needing to communicate with a client, or write an internal memo – since many of the things we write for clients are about building new tihngs for clients and/or doing new things in our business, this is quite relevant.  You might for instance write an executive summary using this format, or indeed try to keep everything you do to this approach.  You wouldn’t need to keep these labels, and in fact you might want to just use it as a structure for emails that you send out to people.  But I think that as a way of keeping you focussed on the task at hand, and make sure everyone is singing from the same songsheet, this is an excellent tool.

I am adapting what I currently do for clients in terms of proposals (a “nice one-pager” is something just about everyone wants in business) and this structure could at least be the starting point to provide an overview.  Sure, you can have that 30-page project proposal in your back pocket – but the reality is most people don’t read the full thing, if ever.  Keep the 30-pager to support the one-page executive summary following the “Sergeant Major Eats Sugar Cookies” approach, and I think you’ll find your clients, your partners, and your subordinates thank you.  Just because we have word processors and computers that allow us to punch out multiple-page documents before breakfast doesn’t meant that we need to consider that a challenge to write more.

Anyway, if you like it I have created a template on my blog for anyone that wishes to have a template document (it’s plain-format, no logos or anything) – so you can download it directly if you wish.  Or not, it’s up to you.

Sergeant Major Eats Sugar Cookies

And thanks Andrea, for reminding me that Time magazine is a wonderful subscription to have…

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Jaguar maintenance log

Posted on July 28, 2011 by micheal

Well, we decided to buy an older classic car – a 1985 Jaguar Series III XJ6.  No, there is no rhyme or reason to such a thing.

As one would expect, this is fraught with danger.  And today the Jag has returned from its visit to Keith the auto-electrician.

My wallet is lighter, but Lucas, Prince of Darkness, is closer to being fully exorcised.

Work done (and this is actually a good list – not really long at all):

  • Fixed horn (didn’t work)
  • Fixed central locking doorlocks (worked intermittently)
  • Fixed air conditioning (didn’t work)
  • Fixed heater (didn’t work)
  • Fixed radiator coolant sensor (this is the bit that stopped me taking it out for the doctoral consortium) – (worked too soon!)
  • Checked cigarette lighter (circuit’s live, lighter’s busted)
  • Checked cruise control (contact’s good, module busted)

Just in case you were ever thinking of getting a slightly classic car…

Ah, but it looks good, so we will forgive it some sins (including appalling mileage):

Jaguar XJ6 at Mooloolaba

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Job lots: the double-edged sword of ‘e’

Posted on July 21, 2011 by micheal

Recently I purchased the Portenzo for my iPad – as documented in my last blog post. The Portenzo is a hand-made iPad case that makes your iPad look just a little bit old-school.  It’s made of leather and wood and…

Well, you get the idea.  It’s not for everyone, but those that like it, really like it. 

Now, what fascinated me with this product was the interaction of electronic word-of-mouth and ‘now-traditional’ eCommerce.  I heard about the product from the 46 user reviews on YouTube, the 5,800 blog reviews, and the Twitter feed.

Portenzo is just a small company in the US.  Before the internet, their market plan would have been to target vaguely nerdy-looking people hanging out at the University refectories.  Usually the ones with goatees.  Now, however, they get access to a much larger audience for their product.  It’s like paying for a 24/7, global advertising campaign, only without the paying-for-it part. 

The point is that the product is a good one, but of limited appeal.  The internet broadens the potential customers they can access though, and the more users that are attracted to their products, the more those users (possibly because, like myself, they are obsessively-compulsively nerd-like) announce their proud purchase on places like YouTube and on Facebook.  And so Portenzo was doing fairly swimmingly – they were taking a regular number of orders each week for their retro-uber-Gen-Y/X attractor, and they were getting good write-ups.

Then along came Steve Jobs with his new magic-powered device – the iPad2 (just like an iPad1, only not).  Suddenly many more people rushed to buy the iPad2, and to make sure they kept the magic inside that shiny aluminium frame they went out in the modern equivalent of hunter-gathering for an iPad case (it’s exactly the same, only less spears and mammoths).  Suddenly Portenzo were swamped with many online orders shipping around the globe, and their happy coffee-drinking workforce got a little stressy putting out the product (whilst striving to keep the quality up to scratch).  Shipping times crept up.  And then leapt up.  At last count, it was taking about 10.5 weeks to get your hands on on of these custom-made beauties.

Now, while Portenzo were busy building and shipping, they went ‘dark’ on their social media websites (twitter, Facebook, and so on) – people being people started thinking, ‘hey, did I just send my cash to an internet mobster?’.  And so the speculation and conjecture on those now-unmonitored websites started to reach levels not seen since the last X-Files Convention.  Suddenly, things went from being peachy-keen in the online world to being more like the latest Harry Potter film (quite a bit darker than previously, in case you hadn’t noticed).  Eventually, Portenzo got online, started to deal with the complaints and communicate with their customers (and not just the ones that were complaining; by responding to the complainers they sent a message to the waverers as to where their product might be and when they might get it).  And many people that were previously complainers came back upon receiving the cases, and apologised and talked about how great their products were.  Exhibit A, their Facebook page. 

So the online world has transformed and traumatised business.  This ‘e’ thing is no longer an ‘e’, it’s now just how we do business.  There’s opportunity there for people that grab it, but it’s a dark master that can really turn on you (kind of like the dark side of the force, but with financial statements). 

Which all turns me to developing a point out of this blog post.  In a former life, I wrestled with getting the e-commerce stuff working for an accounting firm.  But the partners were loathe to move away from tried-and-true billable hours to something risky, untested, and frankly crazy-sounding.  But it’s an untested proposition to date.  My question of relevance (and yes, I think it’s really relevant) is, if the internet can completely change the way our clients do business, how are public accounting practices changing the way we work as a result?  Any good examples out there?  Any bad ones?  Or are public accounting practices somehow immune from the effects of the internet (and if so, why is this the case?)

Looking forward to your thoughts on the matter.

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Writer’s Block and the Thesis

Posted on June 30, 2011 by micheal

Last night I was chair of my Rostrum club’s meeting (Rostrum is a public speaking club).  As I am neck-deep in writing my phd and ARC reports, writing was top of mind.

I noted that Washington Irving was a famous author – in 19th century America, and I wondered whether anyone could name one of his very famous stories? Only two people had heard of Washington Irving, and no-one actually knew what he’d written.  The answer?  ’The legend of Sleepy Hollow’ and ‘Rip Van Winkle’ are his two most famous stories.  My overall observation though was,  does the written word ensure our memory lives on?

With that happy thought, I then went on to write down some inspirational quotes on the art of writing.

  • “You must stay drunk on writing so reality cannot destroy you.” ~ Ray Bradbury
  • “The older we get, the more… you realize there’s a whole range of things that you will never do, of things and people you will never be. As life becomes more and more limiting, there is something wonderful about being able to get inside the skin of people unlike yourself.” ~ Lee Smith
  • “Write your first draft with your heart. Re-write with your head.” ~ From the movie Finding Forrester
  • “The best style is the style you don’t notice.” ~S omerset Maugham
  • “The easiest thing to do on earth is not write.” ~ William Goldman
  • “The art of writing is the art of applying the seat of the pants to the seat of the chair.” ~ Mary Heaton Vorse
  • “To write is to write is to write is to write is to write is to write is to write is to write.” ~ (Gertrude Stein)

This last one is my favourite.

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Towards the development of a theoretical model of coffee

Posted on June 10, 2011 by micheal

In developing a theory of coffee, it is necessary to consider several inalienable postulates:Micheal, you need to start writing your phd!

- Coffee contains caffeine and therefore caffeine makes you hyper.

- Being Hyper makes you do stuff.

- Doing stuff is a Good Thing.

From the perspective of this theoretical model, therefore, it can be seen that any substance that contains caffeine is “Good”.  Thus on this basis ‘instant’ coffee may also be considered ‘good’.

The theoretical model of coffee however considers a significant and observable difference between ‘good’ coffee and ‘actual’ coffee.  Actual coffee is demonstrably and theoretically equivalent to  excellence, as shown in the experiments of Bump and Grind (2002).  Actual coffee is ‘excellent’ and can be considered a rung above merely ‘good’ coffee.

Future development of the theoretical model is required in order to address the observable anomalies that can be perceived.  The prominent anomalies that remain inexplicable at this time, and thus the subject of future work, include the observable fact that some people consider both ‘International Roast’ and ‘Nescafe Blend 43′ as coffee, and thus theoretically in this model ‘good coffee’.  The authors consider that these field experiments are the exceptions that prove the rule.

(except from a forthcoming publication).

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A Practical Tip and Life Hack: How to transport AA batteries for your Keyboard and Mouse

Posted on June 8, 2011 by micheal

A short blog post to get me into writing today – a practical tip on how to be sure you always have batteries with you when you need them.

About a year ago I went Mac – mostly good, some bad, but overall a good choice.  That means that I regularly take my laptop to uni, hook it up to an external monitor, and transport around my bluetooth Apple keyboard and magic mouse.  These are both great devices.  Unbeatable in fact. However, they do chew through the battery power (kind of like my 1985 Jaguar XJ6 is with petrol – ouch!).

Now, I like to use rechargeable batteries – I saw a documentary on disposable batteries, not good. Unfortunately rechargeable batteries don’t last as long as your environment-destroying long-life high-power AA.  So that I don’t run short on batteries, I transport them around with me in a handy case:

Battery Transportation Made Easy

These Eclipse mints are quite good as mints, but they come with this awfully good tin.  Which seems too good to just throw away.  And so, need meets need results in opportunity.  They’re just the right size for transporting AA batteries – but they clunk when you walk around.  So – an old technology solution involving cotton balls:

Battery Transportation Made Easy

And bingo:

Battery Transportation Made Easy

I have two of these, as otherwise it is likely that both my keyboard and mouse will go at the same time.  I just cycle these through the battery charger as needed (I put used ones in a different spot to the fresh ones!) and I’m all good.

Bingo – a practical tip for the risk averse who occasionally think of the environment (except when they are driving their 24 litres per 100km Jag.

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