planet

The Byte Baker: Reading Lists for the Modern Web

Wed, 23 May 2012 11:00:00 -0400

I’m a really big fan of the Readability service. They recently opened up an API to third party developers. Yesterday Arc90 labs (the original creators of Readability) released a related service called Readlists. You can read the full release post, but basically it’s a dead simple curation service. You choose a set of links to web content over some topic and collect them into a reading list. Once you have such a list the service will collect and transform them into a number of different formats – you can send them to a Kindle or iPad or get a standard, DRM-free ebook that you can email, save and share.

Readlists is one of those services that seem really simple in retrospect but fulfill a very interesting (and innovative) niche. What’s more, it’s executed very well, both in terms of functionality and design. Readlists satisfy a real need – tablets are great reading devices but a lot of interesting content is spread out over multiple pages on the Web. It would be really nice if there was a straightforward, simple way to collect all that distributed content and send it to your tablet. Readlists does that very well (it’s not quite perfect since they have to email the ebooks to your iPad).

Equally importantly, the experience for curators is also well crafted. All you have to do is paste in some links and (optionally) provide a blurb for each one and you’re all set to go. You can share easily on Twitter or Facebook or just send a permalink to your friends. The permalink isn’t human-readable, but that’s fine – it means you can change the title of your reading list if you find yourself collecting different kinds of articles than what you started with. There is practically zero friction involved in collecting and sharing (given you have a Readability account). There are no customization options and in this case I think that’s a good thing – there’s less work for the curator to do and you can move on to more important things (like your next Readlist).

I’ve created a Readlist called “So you want a PhD” which is a collection of articles about graduate school. Though the creation process was dead easy, there are some concerns I have. I don’t see any analytics so I can’t tell how many people are seeing or reading my list. It also seems like Readlists can be updated indefinitely, which is great, but raises the question of how do I tell readers there is an update? One of the properties of the Web is that everything is potentially a work in progress – change and evolution are at the heart of web content. It would be great if I could opt in for some sort of notification when a list changes (possibly via RSS or email). Of course these things add more complexity to the service, but I think that these additions are worth it.

In conclusion, I think Readlists are a great idea for the modern web. Along with devices like the Kindle and iPad and services like Readability and Instapaper we’re moving to an increasingly readable, seamless web. We can discover great content on a laptop or desktop and seamlessly move to a tablet or other more comfortable reading device (or vice versa). There are still unanswered questions (such as changing lists) but I think we’re taking steps in the right direction. There will certainly be challenges as we move into a world of multiple devices in different forms but it’s good to know that the Arc90 folk are meeting the challenges head on.

Sacha Chua: Decision review: Logitech H800 wireless headset

Wed, 23 May 2012 08:00:00 -0400

This is my Logitech H800 wireless headset. I bought it so that I could try dictating to my computer using Dragon ?NaturallySpeaking 11.5. The wireless headset that came in the ?NaturallySpeaking box never quite fit on my ear. It was always falling off. The Logitech H800 fits me well, and the voice recognition software has no problems with it.

The headset turned out to be pretty handy for other things as well. Bluetooth support meant that I could pair the headset with my phone. I started listening to classical music when working on my computer. I listened to podcasts while I tidied up the kitchen, watered the garden, or went for a long walk.

The headset charges using a micro-USB cable, and can be charged while in use. This is great, because I always forgot to charge my previous headset in time for me to use it. We use micro-USBs for so many other devices, so we always have cables handy. The downside? Between listening to music over Bluetooth and using my phone’s GPS to track exercise, I need to remember to charge my phone at every opportunity I get.

The Logitech H800 headset comes with a mini receiver that’s small enough to stay plugged into a laptop all the time. Unfortunately, it’s not a Logitech unifying receiver. Now I have two of those slim-profile Logitech receivers plugged into my laptop (mouse and headset). That leaves one USB port for flash drives, charging, and other things I want to plug in. I haven’t gotten into the habit of carrying around a powered USB hub, but I’m close to it!

Decision: Better than I expected, although ?FutureShop sold the headset for quite a bit more than the Amazon US price. I picked it up at ?FutureShop because I wanted to test the fit before getting it, and it worked out fine.

Read the original or check out the comments on: Decision review: Logitech H800 wireless headset (Sacha Chua's blog)

Hacker Visions: Price discrimination on the net

Tue, 22 May 2012 11:39:05 -0400

This is awesome and scary, and I wish I understood it a bit better.

I opened Overnightprints.com in Firefox and saw that they are offering me 50 business cards for $3.96.

But I don’t usually buy things in Firefox. My internet shopping browser is usually Chromium. So I opened up the same page there and discovered that the price goes up to $4.15 when I use Chromium.

I’ve never bought anything from Overnight Prints before, although maybe I did once create an account.

This is creepy. What’s going on here? My suspicion is that my Firefox profile is me without the shopping whereas my Chromium profile is mostly the shopping. So Firefox James looks like a pauper or a skinflint, but Chromium James is a free spending whale who won’t balk at an extra 19 cents. I bet Chromium James is more fun at a bar.

This kind of price discrimination allows Overnight Prints to pick multiple points on the curve and extract consumer surplus from me. When companies talk about the great benefits of trading privacy for online convenience, this is the stuff they are talking about. This unidrectional transparency (I know nothing about them) lets them push margins 5% by quickly switching the price tags as I walk in the front door. When I notice the switcheroo in progress, though, I feel quite like they are trying to swindle me.

And nobody much cares about 5% on a set of disposable business cards, but it makes me wonder where else I am paying an extra 5 percent.

Sacha Chua: Visual metaphors: Success

Tue, 22 May 2012 08:00:00 -0400

This is part of my Visual Metaphors series. I’m drawing these to help expand my visual vocabulary for drawing sketchnotes. It’s a good way to exercise. Any suggestions?

Read the original or check out the comments on: Visual metaphors: Success (Sacha Chua's blog)

tychoish.com essays: The Editing Hole

Tue, 22 May 2012 00:00:00 -0400

I'm stuck in an editing hole, and not only am I not editing the things I need to edit, I'm not getting anything done.

I'm at a point where I have about 25 things on my personal task list, and 16 of them are editing related tasks: edit the article in this file, edit this fiction, edit this documentation, edit these would-be-blog posts, and so forth. It seems like I went on something of a six month writing bender, and while I did a little bit of editing during this period, I have clearly fallen behind.

There are a number of factors:

I've been making a point of putting editing tasks on the todo list because I want to make sure that I actually finish projects rather than just abandon them. I've not been particularly good with follow through in the past few years, so that's been a big personal improvement project.

The sad part is that my editing queue is probably 10-20 times larger, but I've got some projects on the less-actionable back burner.
I'm not a very good editor.

I'm awful at copy (or otherwise) editing my own work, and while I know that I've become better at this in the past few years. I still know that it's not perfect and so it seems sort of futile, which makes it hard to get inspired to do editing.
I find writing to be rewarding, and given the choice I will probably always choose to write new stuff. While this is clearly a learned response to the kind of work, this doesn't make the effect any less real.
I find editing to be really difficult work.

This is probably related to #2, but editing wears me out. I find it difficult to spend long periods of time editing, which makes it difficult to make any really substantial progress on the pile of editing tasks.

As a result, I take a long time to edit things, I'm most effective at editing in short bursts. I often want to break up longer editing tasks with other kinds of work just to keep a clean mind set. After a week or so of this, I have almost everything else done on the list, leaving me with a big pile of editing that looks even bigger for the lack of other things on the list.

So now, I'm trying the following:

I'm working on making editing tasks smaller, which will turn into more editing tasks, but it'll be possible to face editing tasks in units less than 10 or 20 pages.
Make more tasks for other projects.

There are two ways to get stuff done: 1) You can be really focused and work on one project at a time until it's finished, or 2) you can be working on a lot of projects in parallel and when you start to loose focus, you switch to another kind of project. The idea is that you end up getting more done because you're being productive more of the time. I subscribe to the second theory.

Here's hoping it works!

Onward and Upward!

Sacha Chua: Added new gallery views so that you can review sketchnotes easily

Mon, 21 May 2012 11:43:00 -0400

One of the reasons why I like sketchnotes is that they’re easy to flip through and review. I’ve uploaded many of my sketchnotes to Google+, and you can click on an image there to start flipping through it.

I’ve also added a gallery view here on sachachua.com. http://sachachua.com/blog/sketchnotes/ is a quick slideshow of sketchnotes, and you can click on the selectors near the top to jump to a sketch or stay on one. What do you think? Are the transitions too fast or too slow?

Read the original or check out the comments on: Added new gallery views so that you can review sketchnotes easily (Sacha Chua's blog)

Sacha Chua: Getting Started with Quantified Self

Mon, 21 May 2012 08:00:00 -0400

How can you get started with Quantified Self? Don’t worry, you don’t have to build your own system or use fancy tools. You can start with pen and paper, and use a simple spreadsheet to analyze your data.

Even if you don’t start with a clear question, sometimes tracking data helps you see patterns. When you collect data, then you can change something in your life and see if it has any effect.

Here are some ideas:

Track the time you go to bed, the time you woke up, and whether you felt tired after waking up.
Track how many glasses of water you drink a day.
Track how many steps you take each day. A pedometer makes this easier.
Track the groceries you buy in one month. How much do you spend on different categories?
Track the clothes you wear. Do you have a handful of favourites? Are there clothes you never use?

Give it a try and see what you discover!

Read the original or check out the comments on: Getting Started with Quantified Self (Sacha Chua's blog)

Sacha Chua: Planning my life

Sun, 20 May 2012 21:30:00 -0400

I often think about what I want in life. What do I want to learn? What do I want to be able to share? What do I want to try? What do I want to do?

I think about life a lot because:

I want to make better decisions: Planning my life allows me to deliberately try things instead of being limited to chance or what other people want
Looking back makes it easier to go forward: Reviewing my life helps me decide what I want to continue doing, what I want to stop doing, and what I want to start doing
Planning ahead helps: You can’t plan for everything, but a little foresight can make things a lot easier

Gaps are great for thinking about these things: biking to work, waiting in line, getting ready for bed, relaxing during a long weekend. I review my key priorities and brainstorm ideas for the next steps. I make lists in my notebook, tap ideas into my phone, type thoughts into my laptop, or think out loud (good for bike rides!).

Most of my notes are in scattered places, and that’s okay. I don’t need a perfect record of everything. I don’t need a well-organized outline. I don’t mind covering the same ground again. Every time I make a list, I learn from what I add, change, forget, or remove.

I revisit my plans regularly. Every week, I review the things I’ve accomplished, plan what I want to do the next week, and check how I feel about how I’m doing. Once in a while, I flip through my old mindmaps and notes, crossing out things I’m no longer interested in and adding new ideas.

Every so often, I sit down and flesh out the plans further, sharing them on my blog or adding them to my private notes. I think about what I want to learn, and I plan my curriculum for getting there. I think about the experiments I want to try, and I take the first step. I think about what I want, and I dig deeper to find out if I really want it or it’s something I think that I want. These plans change, and that’s good. The changes tell me more about myself.

I don’t have a firm plan for my life. I don’t have goals like “I want to be ____ by ____” or “I want to _____ by ______.” Many people have these bucket lists – things they want to do before they die. It’s easy to get carried away by these goals, though. Many people plan themselves into unhappiness by saying, “I’ll be happy when I…”. I try to not give in to the temptation to think that happiness is something external, something caused by events or reached when you get to a threshold.

I like to think that I plan out of curiosity. I’m curious about certain things, and I can make certain decisions that get me closer to understanding. For example, I’m curious about entrepreneurship and parenting. With a little planning, we can give ourselves as good a foundation as any. I can’t dictate the cards that are dealt, but I can stack the deck.

How would I like to get better at planning my life?

I’d love to learn more from other people’s lives. I read voraciously to learn about other people’s patterns, and I also ask people about their lives and their decisions. The more I learn about the different paths people have taken, the more I can explore and prepare for possible futures, and the more ideas I can pick up and play with.

I’m working on getting better at documenting and reviewing my decisions. I read a lot about decision science and decision management. I like the way that the practice of thinking through my decisions helps me understand future ones. I’m looking forward to writing about more decisions.

I’m looking forward to testing more of these plans. Many things take time. The wait is fun because I can periodically tweak my plans to try new ideas, understand things better, and get closer to what I want. Besides, there’s always the chance I’ll be surprised, and that helps me learn to think on my feet. (Many of these surprises are awesome!) Life is good.

Thanks to Soha for the nudge to write about this!

Read the original or check out the comments on: Planning my life (Sacha Chua's blog)

Sacha Chua: Weekly review: Week ending May 18, 2012

Sat, 19 May 2012 08:10:00 -0400

Busy week! Learned a lot from Jeremiah Owyang’s talk. Helped two clients. Yay!

From last week’s plans

Business
- [X] Earn: E1 Tue-Thu – training, prototyping communities
- [X] Earn: R1 Mon, Tue, Thu – not needed on Fri – backup instructions, technical interview
- [X] Connect: Have lunch with mentor
- [X] Connect: Take sketchnotes of Jeremiah Owyang talk
- [-] Build: Migrate old time data for Quantified Awesome
- [X] Build: Hire VA for data entry
- [X] Build: Review applications for ?WordPress development
- Build: Practised drawing figures
- Build: Quantified Awesome: Added library requests
- Build: Quantified Awesome: Improved clothes-tracking interface for multiple outfits

Relationships
- [X] Host study group
- Baked four pizzas
- Gardened
- Helped write a bio for my dad’s upcoming TEDxKatipunan talk
- Planned the week of meals
- Inquired about rates for cooking ($30/hour) and chores/errands ($25-35)

Life
- [X] Have massage
- [X] Get receipts typed in with line-item detail

Plans for next week

Business
- [ ] Earn: E1 Tue-Thu – training, getting ready for conference
- [ ] Earn: R1 Submit timesheet
- [ ] Connect: Sat: Help out with Ladies Learning Code workshop
- [ ] Connect: Tue: Drop by Hack Lab open house
- [ ] Connect: Thu: Take notes at ?WordPress meetup (custom post types)
- [X] Build: Upload sketchnotes to Google+
- [ ] Build: Delegate more tasks
- [ ] Build: Update my business accounts

Relationships
- [ ] Plant front garden
- [ ] Clear inbox
- [ ] Practise making pepperoni pizzas until I can make awesome ones

Life
- [ ] Start a “Stuff I Use” blog series

Time notes

Business: 55:11 (E1 23:11, R1 11:56, Quantified Awesome 1:51, drawing 6:37, connect 5:57)
Discretionary: 20:25 (gardening 2:07, writing 5:06, social 12:05)
Personal: 29:04 (biking 11:02, routines 11:51)
Sleep: 57:29 (average 8.2 hours per day)
Unpaid work: 5:46 (more cooking this week)

Read the original or check out the comments on: Weekly review: Week ending May 18, 2012 (Sacha Chua's blog)

Sacha Chua: Taking stock of the way I take notes

Fri, 18 May 2012 08:00:00 -0400

One of my friends was surprised that I use both Evernote and Microsoft ?OneNote. Many people are fervently in love with one or the other, as they’re both excellent notetaking tools. I like them both, and I also add Emacs ?OrgMode to the mix. I figured it would be a good idea to write about how I manage my notes so that I can think about ways to make it even better. Besides, other people might find it useful, or they might share a few good tips!

I take most of my text notes using the Emacs text editor. In particular, I use Org Mode because org-capture totally rocks. It’s easy for me to quickly take a timestamped note. I share most of my notes on my blog, but some stay in my private notes – post drafts, sensitive information, random tidbits. I save sensitive information to an encrypted location as needed. Every week, I review my inbox of notes, filing them under the appropriate headings in a large outline file.

Org is great for text. It can handle attachments too, but I want a more graphical way to manage the visual notes and reference pictures that I take. Evernote’s handwriting recognition gives me a way to search for words in my sketchnotes, which is awesome for digging up sketchnotes or book notes (and for wowing people; yes, the future is here). ?OneNote is better at capturing screenshots and snippets, though, so I use it to collect elements from sketches and pictures that I like. I also use ?OneNote for Latin studies because it feels the most like a paper notebook.

I share as much as possible on my blog so that I can have more ways to get to what I know. Google searches occasionally lead me back to blog posts I’ve completely forgotten about, which is pretty nifty. Besides, people often comment and share even more information, and that’s awesome.

I’m still trying to figure out better ways to get to what I’ve stored in all these places. I’ve been going back and adding more posts to this topical index. I’m thinking of reviewing the 6,000+ posts in my archive and rating them on a scale of 1-5 so that I can filter them for the highlights view of my blog. So much in the past, and that’s just ten years of writing – imagine what the archive will be like when I’ve been writing and drawing for decades. =)

I picked up this quote recently. It’s from Carl Sagan:

“Writing is perhaps the greatest of human inventions, binding together people who never knew each other, citizens of distant epochs. Books break the shackles of time. A book is proof that humans are capable of working magic.”

Carl Sagan, Cosmos

Writing, drawing, and photography are all miniature time machines. They’re amazing and fantastic, but you’ve got to have a way back into them in order to make the most of them.

How do you manage your notes?

Read the original or check out the comments on: Taking stock of the way I take notes (Sacha Chua's blog)

Sacha Chua: Drawing studies

Thu, 17 May 2012 08:00:00 -0400

Playing around with different ways to draw simple figures. =)

Investigating the effects of drawing lines from different directions. I’m right-handed.

Read the original or check out the comments on: Drawing studies (Sacha Chua's blog)

tychoish.com essays: Git Feature Requests

Thu, 17 May 2012 00:00:00 -0400

The ability to mark a branch "diverged," to prevent (or warn) on attempted merges from master (for example) into a maintenance branch.
The ability to create and track dedicated topic branches, and complementary tooling to encourage rebasing commits in these sorts of branches. We might call them "patch sets" or "sets" rather than "branches." Also, it might be useful to think about using/displaying these commits, when published, in a different way.
Represent merge commits as hyperlinks to the user, when possible. I think ?GitHub's "network graph" and similar visualizations are great for showing how commits and branches interact and relate to each other.

This would probably require some additional or modifies output from "git log".
Named stashes.
Branched stashes (perhaps this is closer to what I'm thinking about for the request regarding topic branches.)
The ability to checkout "working copies," of different points/branches currently from a single repository at the same time, using "native" git utilities.

Related, "shelf" functionality is scriptable, but this too needs to be easier and more well supported.

I think legit is a step in the right direction, but it's weird and probably makes it more difficult to understand what's happening with git conceptually as opposed to the above features which would provide more appropriate conceptual metaphors for the work that would-be-git-users need.

Sacha Chua: Responsive web, responsive life

Wed, 16 May 2012 08:00:00 -0400

A responsive site design is one that can adapt to different screen sizes and different devices. As you resize the browser window, elements move around or even disappear from the page.

I’ve been thinking about what the code for responsive life would look like. I recently accepted another contract, which means I’m pretty much working at close to capacity. Although I really like the breathing room of having a day or two free each week, it also seemed like a good opportunity to make a difference. With the reduction in my discretionary time, what do I give up, and what do I shift around?

Working a little later during the afternoons means that I can’t come home early to cook something nice for dinner. My husband’s been doing most of the cooking lately, but I don’t want him saddled with all the housework. Besides, I enjoy cooking. I can shift that to more of the weekends. By cooking and baking our meals in advance, we get to enjoy making food, and the weeks are a little bit easier. I thought about trying one of those meal delivery services, or even experimenting with a personal chef. I don’t know. I get a lot of intangible benefits from learning how to cook, especially when my husband and I are cooking together.

Some things I simply need to drop or postpone. For example, studying Latin takes me a lot of time. I struggle with the inflections. I don’t think I’ll be able to focus on it well over the next few weeks, so I’ll take it up again when the crunch time is over. I will probably have to repeat some of things I learned, but I think it will be all right.

Sometimes it’s a matter of investing in more tools and social processes. For example, I’m experimenting with dictation as a way to write while doing other things, or while relaxing my wrists. I’m thinking of restarting my experiments in outsourcing, too. It should be easy to find someone who can handle the data entry from the receipts that I’m scanning, or who can help me cross-reference my passport entry stamps with trips in my record so that when I submit my application for Canadian citizenship, all my paperwork is in order. Little things like that, particularly little things that take a lot of time — those would be great candidates for outsourcing.

There are some hobbies that I still want to hang onto. Writing and gardening are both great ways for me to relax. Drawing lets me take notes from books and presentations. I guess that’s a little like the min-width of a web site design. I don’t want my life get any smaller than that. I don’t want to work so much that I don’t have time to spend with family and friends, or my laptop and a good book. After all, this is my adventure. I can choose what I do.

So far things have been wonderful, so I just want to make sure that I monitor the balance as I try out this new arrangement. That way, I can fix things if anything starts to get out of whack.

What if I stretch life the other way? Both of these contracts will eventually wrap up, and I occasionally think about what I want to do next. I’d like to see what it’s like to spend some focused time on building things: writing a book, working on my own code, playing around with ideas. I guess the web design equivalent of this would be is building a site for people who have those humongous monitors. Just have so much more room to play with – that’s a completely different playing field.

Different kinds of work lend us different metaphors for looking at life. It might be interesting to look at life through the lens of design. How can I improve the user experience? How can I adapt to changing conditions? How can I take advantage of emerging technologies and toolkits?

We’ll see. This is going to be fun.

Read the original or check out the comments on: Responsive web, responsive life (Sacha Chua's blog)

Smarterware: Please Do Learn How to Propose Better Solutions

Tue, 15 May 2012 14:00:18 -0400

In a post entitled Please Don't Learn How to Code, software developer Jeff Atwood argues that the "everyone should learn programming" meme has gotten out of control, and that most people don't need to learn how to code.

I mostly disagree with Atwood's premise and land on Benjamin Stein's side of the argument. Coding teaches you analytical thinking skills, logic workflows, and debugging like no other activity can, and you can apply those skills to lots of situations beyond actually building production apps.

But Atwood hit one nail right on the head that I can't stress enough to people who want to make digital tools:

[Coding] puts the method before the problem. Before you go rushing out to learn to code, figure out what your problem actually is. Do you even have a problem? Can you explain it to others in a way they can understand? Have you researched the problem, and its possible solutions, deeply? Does coding solve that problem? Are you sure?

I often get email from people who "have a great idea for an app" or newcomers who want to contribute to ThinkUp but aren't programmers. These people are convinced the first thing they have to do is learn how to write code. It isn't.

The world of software development needs more people who know how to define better solutions than the ones we have now.

See, when I ask these people to describe their great app idea, they never have wireframes or mockups, and usually can only explain it in the vaguest terms. When I ask newcomers what they want to change or add to ThinkUp, they often can't tell me—they just want to be a part of the community. (Nothing wrong with that, but code isn't the only way to contribute. It's not even the primary way.)

Software development is not code. It's solving problems. Before you learn how to code, learn how to propose better solutions. You are most likely already qualified to do this.

A few years back I took a weekend-long intensive course on shooting and producing video journalism. In the first hour of the first day, our instructor said, "What makes great television? If you love watching TV, you already know."

The same principle applies here. If you love, use, and think about technology, you already have a good idea of what's possible, and what elements make up a user interface. You know when to expect a text field and when you should get a dropdown. You understand the difference between saving a file locally and saving it to the cloud. You know the apps you love the most and what about them makes them special.

This is what you need to know to start designing new solutions.

If you aspire to build an app, the first thing you should do is define the problem, your idea for the solution, your target user base. Do your research. Know all the existing solutions out there, and exactly how your spec is different and better. Choose a platform, and start mocking up screens. Get in deep. Agonize over what words appear on the button labels, what the user success, information, and error messages should read, every single thing that could go wrong in the process of using the app and how it will recover, what your one-sentence description will be when your app appears in a store somewhere. Arguably, defining great specifications is a more important part of creating digital tools than writing the code itself.

If you want to build a new app, or contribute to an existing one, you don't have to learn how to code first. But please do learn how to propose better solutions.

Sacha Chua: Org-mode and habits

Tue, 15 May 2012 08:00:00 -0400

Org Mode is a personal information manager for the Emacs text editor. People have contributed a ton of useful features to it over the years, and the development shows no sign of slowing down. One of the features I’ve been playing around with is the ability to track habits.

Org habits are recurring tasks. For example, everyday, I want to:

take my vitamins
capture a quick note about the day, and
plan the next day

Every week, I want to:

talk to my mom
check the org-mode mailing list
write a weekly review and plan the next week
clear and reorganize my belt bag
clear my inbox
write a bunch of blog posts
back up my computer

Once a month, I want to:

update the topical index for my blog
review and uninstall programs
balance my books and update my budget
review the past month and plan the next
check the library for new books

Org habits let me manage my task list without cluttering future days with tasks. The Org agenda view displays habits that are due today, indicating consistency with colour. In particular, it shows overdue days in red, so you can get the Seinfeld-esque pleasure/commitment-device of not breaking the chain.

Here’s a view from Sunday:

2 days-agenda (W19-W20):
Sunday     13 May 2012
               8:00...... ----------------
              10:00...... ----------------
              12:00...... ----------------
              14:00...... ----------------
              15:57...... now - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -
              16:00...... ----------------
              18:00...... ----------------
  organizer:  22:00...... TODO Capture a one-sentence note                                           !      
  organizer:  22:00...... TODO Plan the next day                                    ** ***** ** *****!      
  organizer:  Scheduled:  TODO Make a list of recipes I want to learn
  organizer:  Scheduled:  TODO Write a bunch of blog posts             :writing:
  organizer:  Scheduled:  TODO Set up ?WordPress as my backup system
Monday     14 May 2012 W20
  organizer:  Scheduled:  TODO Build Emacs interface so that I can have Org automatically switch my tasks

To use Org habits, customize org-modules and enable the habit module. To set something as a habit, use C-c C-x p (org-set-property) to set the STYLE property to habit. For more information, you should definitely check out the Org manual’s section on habits.

Yay Emacs and the people who contribute to it!

Read the original or check out the comments on: Org-mode and habits (Sacha Chua's blog)

Sacha Chua: Sketchnotes: Jeremiah Owyang @ Third Tuesday Toronto (#3TYYZ) on the Social Business Hierarchy of Needs

Mon, 14 May 2012 21:46:32 -0400

Click on the image for a larger version or contact me for a high-res version (2608x1600px). Feel free to share this under the Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 licence.

Lots of great research released under Creative Commons. Yay Jeremiah Owyang and Altimeter!

Quick notes for searching, more later: Social business hierarchy of needs: Foundation –> Safety –> Formation –> Enablement –> Enlightenment

If you like this, you might also like:

my notes from the previous Third Tuesday Toronto talk (Engagio)
more sketchnotes from meetups and books
the Third Tuesday Toronto meetup group
other cool sketchnotes around the Web

Enjoy!

Here’s the text from the image to make it easier to search for:

Jeremiah Owyang
Third Tuesday Toronto: May 14, 2012
Sketchnotes: Sacha Chua (@sachac): ?LivingAnAwesomeLife.com

untrained employees
advanced companies prepare internally first

~180 accounts for average enterprise
-only 25% active
Social media mostly separate from rest of site/db

Frequency of social media crises
-exposure to poor customer experience
-poor influencer relations
-violation of ethical guidelines rogue employees

Social sanitation
Reinforcing bad behavior
We’re teaching them to yell at their friends.

Constantly getting ahead of themselves.

Advanced companies
Social business hierarchy of needs

5 Englightenment
4 Enablement Empowerment scaling
3 Formation asset inventory Center of Excellence
2 Safety Team workflow Crisis prep
1 Foundation Policy
Education required
social media & communities

Holistic
Real-time
Predictive
Predict what customers are going to do
Integrate into databases, etc.
Build better products
Tap employees

self-serve hubs Chatteratti (EZE help, compensation) bit.ly/Altimeter Social

strategic internal communications tactic
Governance
Policy
Guidelines
Training
important for scaling

10.8%
Decentralized centralized

41% Hub and spoke
sometimes on their behalf

18%
Dandelion
COE empowers business units

1.4%
Holistic
Safe & consistent
(Best Buy, Zappos)
I do customer support

Team Aug. 11
1.5 social strategist 3 comm manager soc media manager 1 analyst 1.5 dev

content strategist, emerging role
-editorials, ex. journalists, comm agencies…

Education
-Executives
-Strategists/Business units
-all employees

Access
-Tools
-Everyone has access & must be trained

Listening centre
some involving business unit centres
triage
-good
-bad
-ugly

FireBell simulation of social media crisis

Most crises: Friday afternoon

Q&A: #3TYYZ
-Analysis? CRM, Omniture (Adobe), SAS, Eloqua… A number of different directions. System integrators.
-Adobe Social. Very bullish, if they can act like a small company. Paid, earned, owned media
Also watch Lithium Technologies & bazaarvoice (300% ROI for ratings). New ad units, IBM social metrics.
-Soc media correlations? Social loyalty (people are loyal to each other), gamifications.
C-suite: Novelty, fear, potential for new business models.
any data company stands to gain early in the space, lots of experimentations
-Social software: Combrian explosion. Lots of duplicate companies, VCs investing in clones
Best-in-class will probably connect with each other.
-Startup? Yes, but you can go through steps faster. Our research focuses on enterprise, but can still help.
-Soc media agencies? Ads right now. May need to restructure. Everything starts with earned.
-Disclosure? Vendors unlikely. Agencies making tech-agnostic methodologies.
-Facebook fans? Loose affinity. Facebook wants people to pay.
-Product is info? Utility, etc. Go up a level: Lifestyle, workstyle. G8, IBM.
Get clients to tell stories. See banks for examples. Orsten in.

Read the original or check out the comments on: Sketchnotes: Jeremiah Owyang @ Third Tuesday Toronto (#3TYYZ) on the Social Business Hierarchy of Needs (Sacha Chua's blog)

Sacha Chua: Pizza pizza pizza pizza

Mon, 14 May 2012 08:00:00 -0400

We’re settling into a routine of making pizza from scratch almost every week. It’s relatively quick and easy to make. I use the basic bread dough recipe from Jamie Oliver’s cookbook, "jamie’s kitchen". W- prefers it when we make a double batch of dough with just one batch worth of yeast, and let the dough rise overnight. This results in these really puffy, bread-like pizza crusts.

After the dough rises, it takes me just an hour to prepare four pizzas. I divide the dough into four parts, forming them into rectangles by stretching and rolling them out. I use practically all of the baking sheets in the house. While the pizza crusts rise again, I chop and grate the rest of the ingredients. Assembly is quick and fun, although I still tend to err on the side of loading the pizza up with too much food. Baking takes twenty minutes per batch of two pizzas, and then we have plenty of pizza to eat through the week.

We’re always looking for kid-friendly recipes that we can cook in bulk. Pizza is a great way to use up bits and pieces from the fridge: pepperoni, chicken, peppers, tomatoes, and so on. Other family go-to recipes include pasta and curry. Good to be able to make things ahead!

I moved the calendar to the fridge so that we can use it to plan the meals during the week. Another step towards even smoother everyday routines!

Read the original or check out the comments on: Pizza pizza pizza pizza (Sacha Chua's blog)

Sacha Chua: Decision review: Razor A5 Lux kick scooter

Sun, 13 May 2012 15:00:00 -0400

Technically not my decision – W- was the one who decided to get J- a kick scooter so that she can easily go to school or hang out with friends. Since J- stays with her mom during the weekends, the scooter’s fair game for trips to stores or libraries.

The Razor A5 Lux was $69.99 during a Toys R Us sale a few weeks ago. None of the stores we went to had it in stock, so W- got a raincheck. This week, we dropped by Dufferin Mall and bought the kick scooter. The box wouldn’t fit in my bike bags, so we tested the scooter and discarded the box when we were satisfied that we didn’t need to return it. Without the box, the scooter fit neatly into my bike bag.

My bike’s big and hard to lug up the stairs, so I’ve been trying out the A5 for short trips. It cuts the 750m walk from ten minutes to five, although there’s a bit more exercise involved. I don’t have the same carrying capacity that I have on my bicycle, but the scooter is a lot more convenient for short trips. Worth it, I think! We’ll see how it works out over the next couple of weeks.

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Sacha Chua: Weekly review: Week ending May 11, 2012

Sat, 12 May 2012 11:00:00 -0400

From last week’s plans

Business
- [X] Earn: E1: Mon-Thu (training, prototyping)
- [X] Connect: Go to Toronto Reference Library small business meetup and post sketchnotes
- [X] Connect: Follow up on conversations from #torontob2b
- [X] Build: Draw a visual metaphor or book summary: $100 Startup
- Earn: R1: Thu/Fri – helped MT with backups
- Build: Worked on Quantified Awesome – added outfit dropdown, duration to category lists

Relationships
- [X] Watched the Avengers with friends
- Baked brownies and shared them with neighbours
- Earned $4 in a yard sale

Life
- [X] Plant vegetables and herbs

Plans for next week

Business
- [ ] Earn: R1 Mon,Fri
- [ ] Earn: E1 Tue-Thu
- [ ] Connect: Have lunch with mentor
- [ ] Connect: Take sketchnotes of Jeremiah Owyang talk
- [ ] Build: Migrate old time data for Quantified Awesome
- [ ] Build: Hire VA for data entry
- [ ] Build: Review applications for ?WordPress development

Relationships
- [ ] Host study group

Life
- [ ] Have massage
- [ ] Get receipts typed in with line-item detail

Time notes

Business: 49:18 (E1 30:00, R1 9:37, Quantified Awesome 2:12)
Discretionary: 31:20 (gardening 6:52, writing 4:30)
Personal: 29:04 (biking 11:02, routines 11:51)
Sleep: 52:52 (average 7.6 hours per day)
Unpaid work: 4:38 (I need to help out with more chores =) )

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Sacha Chua: Quantified Awesome: Analysis of the winter/spring season for the Cooper’s Farm community-supported agriculture program

Fri, 11 May 2012 07:56:20 -0400

Click on the image to view a larger version.

I weighed everything we received from Cooper’s Farm for this season’s community-supported agriculture program so that I could compare it with Plan B Organic Farms. The numbers always surprise me when I tally things up at the end. Did we really go through that many potatoes? Wow, we actually got more onions than cabbage. Sure didn’t feel that way.

Getting vegetables bi-weekly instead of weekly definitely helped stave off the “oh no I’m swimming in vegetables” feeling. Some food was still wasted, though. Some of the beets got mold before we could do stuff with them (they came moist) and the rutabaga and turnips stumped us. But we managed to plow through most of the vegetables.

We averaged 5.5kg per delivery, which was less than what we received with Plan B Organic Farms (see my fall analysis). That was a fall share, though, so winter/spring is understandably smaller in terms of the harvest. I opted for Cooper’s Farm because I thought the delivery might come in really handy during winter, but this winter was unusually mild, so I didn’t end up with as many “thank goodness I don’t have to trudge out for vegetables in the snow” moments as I thought I might have. That’s okay.

I wish someone else was keeping track of what the corresponding Plan B Organic Farms results were! Oh well. =)

This season, we’re going to skip the CSA and buy our vegetables ourselves. I want to see what that comes out to in terms of cost and whether we still get through as many vegetables without the forced commitment of a vegetable box. We’ll see!

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Smarterware: Inclusive Tech Companies Win the Talent War

Thu, 10 May 2012 17:30:13 -0400

Originally published on CNN.com.

Startups are fighting a war for talent in Silicon Valley, and the companies that actively welcome men and women are going to win it. Smart companies don't recruit "brogrammers."

The term "brogrammer" is a joke, of course. Male software engineers don't actually pop their collars, wear sunglasses and lift weights while writing code, and share hot tubs with bikini-clad women. But the joke is funny (to some people) because it reflects a certain truth about a community that excludes great talent in favor of frat house fun.

The tech industry's testosterone level can make the thickest-skinned women consider a different career. But the rise of the "brogrammer" joke and its ensuing backlash has some benefits: it helps talented women choose worthy employers, it gives a name and faces to a problem that plagues the industry, and it publicly shames some of the most sexist offenders.

Where the Women Are

In 1999, Google's Marissa Mayer almost didn't take the job at the all-male startup because there were more women at another firm who'd made her an offer. If Mayer had just graduated from college today with offers from two equally compelling startups—one all-male and one not—it's clear which path she would choose.

If you write software for a living and you're located in Silicon Valley, you have your pick of employment options at an array of tech startups. (Yes, even in this economy.) When a recruiter's pickup line is "Wanna bro down and crush some code?"—like Klout's was—you get a sense of what that company's looking for. If you're a woman, it's not you.

That's pretty sad, but it's not all bad. As a woman and a software developer, crossing Klout off the list of places where I might work helps me narrow my options. I'd rather find out an employer glorifies young dudes before I take the position than after.

That's one small way "brogrammer" culture is actually useful. It's a red flag to women engineers, product developers, designers, project managers, marketers, business development, and PR specialists. It says, "This company is not where you want to work."

Conversely, companies who assemble inclusive teams are more likely to snag great hires of all stripes. Tech startups founded by women are few and far between, but they're highly attractive to female and male candidates who don't want to join a boys' club. Established companies with executives who are vocal about women's issues, like Facebook's Sheryl Sandberg, also have an advantage. (Sandberg's TED talk is one of my all-time favorite career advice presentations for women.)

Rehabilitation via Humiliation

The Valley's "brogrammer" problem has received a good bit of attention recently, with a focus on some of the worst public offenders. I find sexism in 2012 corporate America appalling, but I'm also an optimist. The folks perpetuating this culture are probably not overt misogynists. Most of the time, they simply don't know any better.

The path to enlightenment is sometimes paved with public shaming.

Path's Matt Van Horn "feels terrible" about sexist comments he made during a conference presentation that caused disgusted attendees get up and leave. Geeklist began a women in technology committee after mishandling the retraction of a promotional video that featured a scantily-clad female dancer.

Cynics would argue that apologies don't resolve the underlying problem. But humiliation is an effective behavior modifier. I don't think these people will make these mistakes again. The bonus: Onlookers have real-life examples of what not to do at their companies.

The tech industry has always been male-dominated. But the perception of those men has changed. Media no longer casts the billionaire geeks of Silicon Valley as awkward nerds who can't get a date. Instead, they're superheroes, the protagonist in epic movies and biographies. A new generation of young people from all walks of life aspire to be the next Mark Zuckerberg, Steve Jobs, and Bill Gates. They'll want to work for the most attractive companies—the ones who built welcoming, diverse teams.

"Brogrammer" culture is exclusionary and problematic. It celebrates frat house values, youth over experience, and men over women. In the war for hiring great talent, the companies who exacerbate this problem instead of work to solve it will lose. That's a good thing.

Sacha Chua: Sketchnote workflow

Thu, 10 May 2012 08:00:00 -0400

I like sketching notes of books and presentations. It forces me to squeeze the information onto one page, and the notes are easy to share and review.

I prefer to draw on a computer because I can use colour, erase what I’ve written, and move items around. My favourite drawing application for this is Autodesk Sketchbook Pro, which has the best pen-based controls I’ve come across so far. When I don’t have my laptop, I draw on paper and scan it in. I’ve been thinking about getting a tablet, but I’m holding off on it until I pass certain thresholds that I’ve set.

After I draw my notes and clean them up a little, I save them to a directory on my hard disk. I save a lower-resolution version to another directory, where it automatically gets imported into Evernote and synchronized with Dropbox. Evernote lets me search my handwriting, and it’s good for looking up individual items. With Dropbox, I can use Foldersync Lite to synchronize my sketchnotes folder to my phone’s SD card, where I can use Gallery to browse my sketches. The sketches are readable on my phone’s screen, and I can zoom in for details.

Windows Live Writer makes it easy to include the image in a blog post. It automatically scales the image to my preferred dimensions, and I can set it to link to a higher-resolution version of the image. After I publish it, I announce it on Twitter as well.

When I come across elements I like in other people’s sketchnotes, I take a small screenshot and I add them to a Microsoft Onenote notebook for sketchnote inspiration. I collect colour combinations, visual metaphors, title treatments, lettering examples, and so on. It’s easy to flip through the notebook and search for specific keywords.

I’m working on getting even better at sketchnotes. For me, this means:

using more colours whether I’m drawing on my computer or on paper: I can try banning black from my visual vocabulary for a while
drawing more quick icons to illustrate my notes, even if they’re literal
drawing more visual metaphors so that I can get beyond the first idea
experimenting with more layouts
collecting sketchnote elements from other artists and keeping them in a notebook for inspiration

It’s easy to get started with sketchnotes. The key things for me were:

Give yourself permission to draw badly. Stick figures? Wonky shapes? Sure!
Leave yourself plenty of whitespace so that you can come back and draw. Write on different parts of the page, not just one side.
Write less by focusing on the important concepts. Draw more during the “filler” time, or add drawings after you’ve written your notes.
Have fun!

Read the original or check out the comments on: Sketchnote workflow (Sacha Chua's blog)

Sacha Chua: Sketchnotes: The $100 Startup: Reinvent the Way You Make a Living, Do What You Love, and Create a New Future

Wed, 09 May 2012 11:38:05 -0400

Chris Guillebeau’s new book The $100 Startup was released just yesterday. Here are my notes! Click on the image to view a larger version. The book is packed with clear, practical advice and backed by concrete, diverse stories from successful microbusinesses around the world. It’s not a very deep book (don’t look here for step-by-step instructions, thorough analyses of case studies, or hand-holding through the business startup process), but it’s an enjoyable read. I’ll probably find myself referring to it a lot for inspiration and ideas. If you like this book, you’ll probably also like The Lean Startup (see my notes). Enjoy! Check out more sketchnotes or read about my ongoing experiments in business. I’d love to hear from you! Here’s the text from the image to make it easier to search for: THE $100 STARTUP Chris Guillebeau What you love to do What people will pay for passion + skill + usefulness = success benefits features Ex: happiness widgets Expand your opportunities by reusing your skills in different ares. Most people want simplicity. Don’t give them unneeded details. Some businesses are easier to start. consulting information products You don’t have to be an expert yet! Action Planning Don’t wait for perfection. Start and learn along the way. Invest time into growing your business. Learn how to offer, hustle, launch… “Franchise yourself” -partner -outsource -spin off a different biz scale up You don’t have to build a huge business. Make one that’s the right size for you. Where to find opportunities -marketplace inefficiency -new tech or opportunity -changing space -spin-off or side projects Decision-making matrix Impact Effort Profit Vision Idea Idea Market before manufacturing Test your idea Failsafe: offer refunds FAQ: objection-squasher 25 cents Make your first sale ASAP. Great confidence builder. Other useful parts: 1-page business plan 39-step launch checklist 1-page promotion plan + web resources Like this? Check out my other notes @ ?LivingAnAwesomeLife.com! -Sacha Chua Twitter: @sachac

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Sacha Chua: Maintaining a manual topical index for my blog using Emacs

Wed, 09 May 2012 08:00:00 -0400

I’ve been blogging for almost ten years. I started with notes from my university classes and snippets of open source code, and became comfortable enough to share decisions I’m puzzling through and things I’m learning about life. There’s a lot of stuff in my archive, and I want to be able to review things again.

Categories would probably make this easier, but I use categories liberally and sometimes inconsistently. I use them like tags, quick keywords that I add so that people might explore a category and bump into other posts. I probably should split it out so that I assign posts to one category and leave everything else as tags. Someday.

In the meantime, it’s easy enough to maintain a manual topical index of my blog posts, and it’s a good opportunity to review what I’ve been writing as well.

I use Emacs Org Mode to manage a large text file divided into headings. Every month, I copy a list of titles into my topical index. I hacked Org-friendly output into my ?WordPress theme – you can see April’s blog posts as an example (sachachua.com/blog/2012/04/?org=1). I manually organize the list items under different headings, splitting off new headings when I can see a pattern. Working with two windows viewing the same buffer makes it easy to move information around, and org-refile is handy too. I use a checklist structure so that Org can automatically update the number of posts under each heading (C-u M-x org-update-statistics-cookies). When I’m happy with the structure, I use org-publish-current-file to publish it using the settings I’ve configured. The files are in my public Dropbox folder, so they’re automatically published to the Web. It takes me about 10 minutes to add a month of posts to my index and publish the page.

I like seeing how much I’ve written about different topics, and it encourages me to write and organize more posts. Maybe the index might be handy for other people too!

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Sacha Chua: Sketchnotes: Red Rocket Coffee, Toronto Public Library Small Business Network meetup

Tue, 08 May 2012 21:45:36 -0400

Click on the image for a large version. Want an even better version for printing out? Contact me. Feel free to reuse or share this image under the Creative Commons Attribution license.

We heard from Pamela ?MacDonald, Liako Dertilis, and Billy Dertilis of Red Rocket Coffee at today’s Small Business Network meetup at the Toronto Reference Library. They shared hard-won lessons from building a coffee shop business that now has three locations.

The small business network meetup at the Toronto Reference Library happens on the second Tuesday of every month. You can view my sketchnotes from past meetups:

The Shy Entrepreneur (me) – April 2012
Sal Sloan of Fetching! – March 2012
Kristina Chau of notyouraverageparty – February 2012

View more sketchnotes, read my notes about business, or browse around my blog!

Here’s the text from the image to make it easier to search for:

redrocketcoffee.com
RED ROCKET COFFEE
Pamela ?MacDonald Liako Dertilis Billy Dertilis

Small Business Network Meetup
Toronto Reference Library
May 8, 2012
Notes by Sacha Chua, @sachac, ?LivingAnAwesomeLife.com

Make sure you have enough money to live for a year.

You always have to be “on”, even at the grocery store.

Be adaptable, but watch out for over-adapting. You can’t please everybody.

Book recommendations:
-Setting the table: the transforming power of hospitality in business
-The little black book of entrepreneurship

Be prepared to wear a lot of hats.

Take care of yourself. Give yourself time to recharge.

Soft opening: work out kinks

The smartest thing an entrepreneur can do is learn when to let go.

#1: Good relationships
clients suppliers neighbours…

Hire a Lawyer. Any kind of contract, any kind of lease

Organization is important!
Suppliers etc. make mistakes, bill you twice…

Reassess success.
Had to buy out partner. Have partnership agreement!

Dedicate time to schmooze.
Customers can become suppliers!
Building relationships with people who understand

Trust your instincts.
Build a team you can delegate to.

Knowing WHO to ask & WHEN
Made up recipes
Passion!

We don’t micromanage. We’re very very careful about hiring, and we let them run the show. We let the store develop its own personality.
self-employment benefits

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Smarterware: How to Tell if Your Tech Salary is Fair

Tue, 08 May 2012 12:30:15 -0400

Link: How to Tell if Your Tech Salary is Fair

Most people have no idea what the market rate or prevailing wage is for their profession and career level, much less where they fall on the pay scale.I’m tired of fluffy unvetted career advice, so I’ve sourced and linked to ten ways you can determine what other people with your job are paid.

Sacha Chua: Gardening with herbs and exercising the senses

Tue, 08 May 2012 08:00:00 -0400

W- and I spent Sunday afternoon gardening. We dug up the boxes, amended the raised beds with nine bags of sheep manure, and filled the deck planter boxes with soil. We had bought twenty bunches of seedlings the day before at this corner store that had a large variety of plants and sold them cheaper than Home Depot or Rona did. Somehow we managed to squeeze all of them in.

I love gardening with herbs. Pulling up weeds among the lavender sprigs, separating the basil seedlings, planting cilantro in the boxes – all those scents wafting through the air, sticking to my fingers. The memories of tastes: basil in pesto and salad and sauce, oregano spicing things up, rosemary sprinkled on potatoes or sausage. And then the softness of a fine tilth, still a touch sandy but better than it was when we started. Our garden doesn’t have a lot of colour, but maybe we’ll plant more flowers next year. Other people’s gardens and the Toronto parks are filled with vibrant colours. This week, the tulips are putting on a show.

Computer work is abstract, but I’ve been building other senses into my life. Drawing teaches me to look more closely, and painting (digital – less clean-up!) gives me a new appreciation for colour combinations. Touch comes from kneading dough and working the soil and cuddling the cats. My husband and I both enjoy cooking, so that takes care of taste and smell. Sound is the one sense I tend to forget. I tend to find music distracting and earphones have a high failure rate in our household (aforementioned cats), so I usually work in silence. Maybe I’ll play around with that.

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Sacha Chua: Tweaking my introduction, focusing on sketchnotes

Mon, 07 May 2012 08:00:00 -0400

One of the things I like about meetups is the opportunity to test introductions. With all the different things I enjoy doing, what do I want to focus on, and what hooks do I want to give people in order to make conversation easier?

I’ve been thinking about introductions because of conversations with Judy Gombita and Rachel Lane at last week’s #torontob2b meetup. Judy delights in introducing me as the famous Shy Connector. This makes me grin a little in embarrassment, as (a) chances are that people haven’t come across it, and I don’t like making people feel a little out of the loop because they don’t know someone who’s supposed to be famous, and (b) umm, the whole point about shyness?

After the event, I thought about what some better reactions might be. For example, I could use that opportunity to give a 15-second summary of the key points, in case they’re useful for other people. Chances are, the people I’m meeting at these events are either extroverted or have found ways to cope. For extroverts, it might be something they can share with their introverted friends (a handy excuse to reach out). For introverts, I might share a surprising tip (for example, public speaking lets you get around starting a conversation) and find out what their tips are. If I keep a copy of the presentation on my phone, that makes it even easier for people to pick it up quickly.

Rachel and I are figuring out this tricky introduction bit, too. In one of these conversations, Rachel introduced herself as just a freelancer focusing on digital strategy and copywriting. After that conversation wrapped up, I passed on the lesson that Alan Lepofsky taught me about eliminating “just” from self-descriptions. After all, “independent” isn’t a synonym for “unemployed”; it can be something awesome. So now I’m going to introduce her as Rachel, who focuses on digital strategy, and who is also into wonderful things such as making Toronto greener through Guerrilla Gardening and helping people learn through Ladies Learning Code.

While we were talking about introductions, Rachel asked me how I wanted her to introduce me. “Consultant” is too vague. “Enterprise social software adoption consulting” is a mouthful, and it’s relevant to only a tiny fraction of people. “Blogger” is too generic, although mentioning that I blog at ?LivingAnAwesomeLife.com does give people a sense of my personality.

I think that at these meetups, I’m going to focus on sketchnotes, because that’s something that will be useful for anyone attending. I can quickly show some examples on my phone (or show the event’s notes if this is post-talk conversation) and promise to send it to people. That would be a good lead-in to exchanging contact information or connecting on Twitter, and it also gives me an excuse to follow up.

I’ll try emphasizing sketchnotes next time. When introducing myself, I can:

connect with people’s challenges with information overload
explain that I sketch notes of books, presentations, and meetings so that people can quickly understand and review key ideas, and that I blog at ?LivingAnAwesomeLife.com
offer to send them my notes from the event

I’ll put together a business card focusing on sketchnotes too. Cards are good physical triggers for memory.

This is quite a different introduction for me. You know how you get a sense of where people put you in their mental classifications of people? I usually fit in the “geek” box. Although I’m sure people can figure that out as soon as they start browsing my website… =)

How do you experiment with your introduction?

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Sacha Chua: Monthly review: April 2012

Sun, 06 May 2012 21:30:00 -0400

Business: April was my second full month as an independent business owner. It’s awesome having a flexible schedule, especially as the weather warms up. Instead of laying the groundwork for another consulting engagement or other active income gig for September, I’ve been focusing on developing skills and content instead – writing, drawing, things like that. I think that will work out better for me with our plans for this year. In May, I look forward to doing consulting 3-4 days a week and using the other days to improve my system and learn more about drawing.

Drawing: I’ve been working on more visual metaphors and book reviews, and general drawing practice as well. Tracing pictures is easy, and it’s pretty fun too. In May, I’m looking forward to drawing more book reviews and meetup notes, and testing if I can review the images easily on my phone.

Life: Warmer weather is biking weather, hooray! I biked to work throughout April, except for two rainy days. I look forward to biking almost all the time in May as well. I enjoy the bike ride downtown, and it’s good exercise.

Time reviews: Did lots of things, yay!

Tracking focus: In May, I want to analyze the season’s output for the Cooper’s Farm community supported agriculture program. I also want to start tracking grocery receipts at the line-item level, which I might do with Lemon or with a virtual assistant. I’m curious about whether we can shift towards buying more vegetables this season.

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Sacha Chua: Weekly review: Week ending May 4, 2012

Sat, 05 May 2012 22:00:00 -0400

From last week’s plans

Business
- [X] Earn: E1: Mon-Thu (training, prototyping)
- [-] Connect: Attend open source meetup – skipped in favour of staying home
- [-] Build: Draw a visual metaphor
- Earn: E1: Put together one-pager for training
- Connect: Attended #torontob2b meetup and posted sketchnotes
- Connect: Met with Kathryn Everest

Relationships
- [X] Spend time walking around with W-
- [X] Hang out with J-’s friends’ parents
- [X] Get together for the Avengers (May 5)
- Helped look around for a scooter
- Helped study group

Life
- [X] Get halfway through chapter 4 of Latin Made Simple – completed the chapter, even!
- Improved my Emacs configuration

Plans for next week

Business
- [ ] Earn: E1: Mon-Thu (training, prototyping)
- [ ] Connect: Go to Toronto Reference Library small business meetup and post sketchnotes
- [ ] Connect: Follow up on conversations from #torontob2b
- [ ] Build: Draw a visual metaphor or book summary

Relationships
- [X] Watched the Avengers with friends
- Baked brownies and shared them with neighbours
- Earned $4 in a yard sale

Life
- [ ] Plant vegetables and herbs

Notes on time

Consulting: 28.7 hours
Drawing: 2.6 hours
Discretionary: 32 hours
Sleep: average of 7.9 hours per day – 6.5-7.5 hours during the week, longer on weekends

Read the original or check out the comments on: Weekly review: Week ending May 4, 2012 (Sacha Chua's blog)

Sacha Chua: Looking forward to watching the Avengers

Fri, 04 May 2012 08:00:00 -0400

I like superhero comics and movies because it’s fun imagining a superpower, seeing the kinds of appropriate challenges that could oppose it, and watching how the heroes creatively deal with the situation. Teams of superheroes are even more interesting, because the combinations of powers lead to interesting possibilities, such as Colossus and Wolverine’s Fastball Special.

Comics are also cool because they portray all sorts of dynamic situations you’re unlikely to find in real life. Like the way I’m beginning to appreciate the startling colours and juxtapositions of abstract art, I like the way comic books play with reality. I may never see someone flying through the air, but isn’t it amazing that the brain can recognize and make sense of these images?

So yes, I’m definitely looking forward to watching The Avengers.

The AMC movie chain is organizing a marathon viewing of Marvel movies for $40:

Iron Man
The Incredible Hulk
Iron Man 2
Thor in 3D
Captain America in 3D
The Avengers in 3D

Tempting, but that’s a long time to sit in a movie theatre. From my experience with movie marathons of Lord of the Rings or Star Wars at friends’ places, I know I need to get up and move. Besides, I rather like being able to watch with subtitles and do something else at the same time, such as fold laundry or draw or write.

So, W- and I have been putting together our own Avengers movie lead-up. He requested the movies from the library. We watched the Hulk last weekend, and this weekend we’ll watch the Iron Man movies. I’d recently watched Thor and Captain America in the theatres, which is fortunate as there are hundreds of holds for those videos. For my part, I’ve been requesting and reading Avengers-related comic books. Hooray, Toronto Public Library!

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Sacha Chua: Sketchnotes: #torontob2b May 3, 2012

Thu, 03 May 2012 22:24:35 -0400

Click on the images to view larger versions. I might redraw these sometime – I still have to get the hang of working with paper! =)

Building a Social Enterprise
Andrew Jenkins, Volterra

Marketing Automation
Jeffrey Yee, Eloqua

Designing Content So It Works
Carl Friesen, Global Reach Communications

Like these? Check out my other sketchnotes, visual book notes/reviews, and visual metaphors.

Here’s the text from the sketchnotes to improve people’s ability to search for it:

Building a social enterprise

Building a Social Enterprise
Andrew Jenkins, Volterra
#torontob2b May 3, 2012

Historically:
Listen
competitive intelligence
pin points
needs
cocktail party
conversations we couldn’t overhear before

Message
Engage
Individual targeting
Reputation
Culture
Indium example
content contact cash
planking example

External to Internal
Training
examples
policy
-IBM
-Coca Cola
-Dell
social media university

adoption
can’t make me
adoption count me in

How does communication flow?

Influence

Some people: I can’t wait for you, so I’m going to set things up myself…
ragues

Q&A
-Resistors: Use peers, look for the bright spot.
It took 20 years for e-mail to be ubiquitous.

Who can’t gain from greater visibility? question
Social media: 10 years
RBC: 140 years

Notes by Sacha Chua, @sachac, ?LivingAnAwesomeLife.com

Designing content so that it works

Designing content so that it works
Carl Friesen, Global Reach Communications

Website for e-book on content design showyourexpertise.com

1 2 3 4 5

stories

The Trend
Client wants customized solution
Show that you understand their world

1. Trend & historic causes
2. current situation
3. Thoughts on developments, reasons
4. Recommendations

The How-To
1.
2.
3.

Example: trustees, communication process

must be:
Relevant + Realistic
not necessarily what you do, but what clients will find helpful

Helpful!
- process with steps or
- a list of success factors

1. outcome
2. supplies/equipment
3. steps
4. avoiding pitfalls/problems

The How-to-Work-With
How to get good results from working with you

cannot be self-serving
include info on saving money
1. wild success experience
2. factors
3. advice

The Case Study
Leading-edge thought & sound implementation
Trans-Canada highway story
Wildlife protection

Not about showing how clever you are!

Must have learning points THEY can use
Must be a story
Tell with the client credibility

1. Initial situation
2. Steps
3. Problems & solutions
4. Lessons learned

The Survey
Shows that you stay in touch
must be what your audience cares about

More useful with a trend

Distribute appropriately
Level of detail
Consider limited distribution
The Opinion
informed opinion, thought leadership
at no charge

Long form
-situation
-views on good & bad aspects
-recommendations

The Review
-New product/service
-What’s different
-Discuss good/bad

The Comment

Notes by Sacha Chua, @sachac, ?LivingAnAwesomeLife.com

Marketing automation

Marketing Automation
Jeffrey Yee, Eloqua

leads small
list management
forms
scoring
analytics
events
challenge
-Too expensive
-Not fully used
-Not implemented correctly
-Did not address business needs

1. Focus
one thing! business need!
2. Identify
Look for what your top performers are already doing
3. Start small, then build for mass adoption
-Target the second-tier salespeople!
4. Wait patiently for the lift.
incremental improvement

Best practices from client side
Dun & Bradstreet
credit risk management sales & marketing supply risk management

1. Focus
Example
Retention trigger-based e-mail
one need
40.1% opens
13.4% click through
10% increase in retention rates
2. Identify before you automate
Focus group?
Study top performers
How are we achieving this today?
Can we automate and scale this?

Repurpose

Think linear, it’s easier that way

Get personal and add value
plaint text e-mail from sales, not marketing
3. Mass adoption (but start very small)
advocates get others on board

Look for the people who are close to their quotas:
Tier 2 segmenting your salespeople!

Have reps vet leads before adding to program

3rd party data
4. Wait patiently for the lift. Set expectations.
Ex results
-6 months
pipeline value *19%
# of yes 14%
average upsize 3%
ops won 25%

Budget 12+ months

Like low-hanging fruit
Scaling up what already works
Notes by Sacha Chua, @sachac, ?LivingAnAwesomeLife.com

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Sacha Chua: Optimism, happiness, and being young

Thu, 03 May 2012 08:00:00 -0400

Someone remarked that I’m clearly an optimistic person, and asked me how old I was. When I told him that I’m 28, he laughed and said that I’m optimistic because I’m young, and that he’s cynical because he’s 35 and part of Generation X (and older and wiser and more experienced, probably his unspoken continuation).

I thought I’d write about this because it’s something that comes up from time to time, as if happiness and optimism are exclusive to the young and naïve.

Oddly, I never hear it from people who are also happy and optimistic. I know someone who’s well into his eighties and who is somehow more energetic and bubbly than I am. I have role models who are wonderfully engaged with work and life. That’s what makes it easy for me to grin and let the stereotyping slide right off my back. I know something many cynical people don’t accept: that it’s possible to be delighted with life without necessarily letting myself be pushed around by it. I know that because other people have shown it’s possible.

I’m patiently waiting for the time when people won’t conflate my happiness with these other confounding factors, when silver hair and wrinkled skin throw happiness into sharper relief. Then people will tell me it’s easy to be happy with such a lucky life. That’s okay. People will always find reasons.

In the meantime, for other people who are in the same boat: Life is pretty good. Some people will tell you that you only think so because you don’t know much of it yet, but you don’t have to believe them. =)

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Sacha Chua: Visual metaphor: Danger

Wed, 02 May 2012 08:00:00 -0400

This is part of my Visual Metaphors series. Like it? Suggest other terms you’d like to see!

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The Byte Baker: Grit for Programmers

Tue, 01 May 2012 10:00:00 -0400

It turns out that the best indicator of success isn’t IQ or natural talent or how well off you were at birth. Rather it’s something called grit – the perseverance and passion for long-term goals. Grit requires a clear goal, self-confidence and a careful balance between stubborness and flexibility. For the last few months I’ve been living one of the most productive (and most challenging) times of my life. I’ve been building a system that has more parts, does more things and is much larger than just about anything I’ve built before. It’s been challenging and rewarding work and I couldn’t have done it without lots of support from great mentors. As I’ve stumbled, fallen down, hit brick walls, picked myself up and kept going I’ve been wondering – does grit apply equally to programmers and success in building good software?

Programming culture is generally synonymous with hard work and long hours — death marches, all-nighters, 80 hour work weeks, we do them all. But we’re talking about grit here, not masochism. Grit isn’t strictly equal to working obscenely hard, long hours. Part of the problem with thinking about grit in relation to programming is defining what success means for a programmer. Is your definition of success simply finding a working solution? Does it mean finding the most efficient solution? Are you successful if you cover every single edge case or is it enough to just take care of the most common ones? Is your program really better if it handles everything you could throw at it or should you handle core uses cases well and fail gracefully on the others? Part of the problem of coming up with a good solution is asking the right question. This is especially true of building software. However merely coming up with the right question requires a certain amount of grit. We need the patience to look beyond the obvious problems and solutions and ask the hard questions.

So now we’ve found the right question and defined bounds on the possible solutions. What next? How does grit help with the actual act of writing code and building stuff? Programming is not easy. It can be fun and exciting and uplifting, but sometimes it is downright hard and depressing. Sometimes we spend hours sifting through possible solutions before hitting upon the appopriate one. Sometimes we spend several intimate hours with a debugger tracking down pointer bugs before finding that one variable we forgot to initialize. Being tenacious and persistent in the face of seemingly unrelenting roadblocks is not an added benefit for a programmer – it is a bare necessity. When it comes down to the act of sitting down, writing and debugging code grit is not optional. Without it not only can we not be good programmers, we can’t even be an average ones.

But if our goal is to be a good (maybe even great) programmer, then grit will continue to help. One of the qualities of good programmers is that they get a lot of stuff done. In particular they do a lot that isn’t strictly their job. This includes fixing and extending their tools and improving core infrastructure. They do this even if they aren’t in charge of infrastructure because they realize that their code depends on what’s underneath. Grit is the difference between waiting for someone else to fix the annoying bug in the library that you depend on and diving in and fixing it ourselves. When Steve Yegge talks about the difference between “superhumanly godlike” and “smart”, grit is a part of what he’s talking about. Not that there’s anything wrong with being smart, but it might not be enough. Of course to cultivate that level of grit we need to cultivate a good deal of courage. Diving into someone else’s code and fixing it can be a daunting task but it’s one that has to be mastered.

While I’ve always liked programming it’s taken me a long time to understand the importance of grit. When you do something because you like it (mostly) it’s tempting to stay away from the parts that are painful and hard. For a long time I avoided writing large programs because I was afraid of all the complexity that was involved. I was afraid of becoming familiar with complex algorithms because I was afraid of the possibility that I’d get it wrong. I understand now that I can’t become a good programmer if I don’t push myself to do the things that I consider hard and dislike. I need to have the grit to handle large complex problems and spend the time to understand and apply advanced algorithms. The good news is that just like perseverance and discipline, grit can be trained and improved. I’m no longer as afraid to dive into unknown codebases as I was a few months ago. I now find it much easier to hold complex code paths in my head. I’m certainly far, far away from being superhuman, but I try to suck a little less every day.

Sacha Chua: Learning more about what I want to learn

Tue, 01 May 2012 08:00:00 -0400

It’s hard to get better without knowing what better is.

I want to draw better. What does better mean? For me, “better” means having a wider visual vocabulary for both individual concepts (icons? shapes?) as well as layout (graphic organizers? metaphors?). “Better” means cleaner lettering and more font or design choices. “Better” means being able to draw more things more recognizably, and to design pages so that they’re visually appealing as well as informative. “Better” means becoming more comfortable with colour and shade, and using them to emphasize what’s important. Someday, “better” might even include working with animation.

How can I learn how to draw better? Practice is a big part of it, of course. I can revise my previous sketches, and I can make new ones. I can also look at sites like Sketchnote Army for inspiration. I can collect graphic organizers and visual metaphors. For deliberate practice, I can draw lines, circles, and other shapes, and I can work on lettering.

I want to write better. “Better” means adding more vividness to my writing: picking just the right verb, noticing little details and fleshing them out, adding more specifics and more data. “Better” means pushing beyond clichés. “Better” means writing so that other people can learn more effectively – digging deeper to find things people might be curious about, organizing my notes so that other people can learn more from them.

How can I learn how to write better? Again, practice and inspiration. I can revise my posts and organize them into a coherent e-book or blog series. I can challenge myself to research and share a topic I’m curious about. I can read other people’s work and play around with their styles.

I want to connect better. “Better” means knowing more about people’s lives – it’s easy to know about mine, but I think it would be interesting to know more about people too. It boggles my mind wonderfully that I now have old friends here in Canada (by golly!). I’d like to cultivate more friends and build deeper friendships both in person and online.

What does your “better” look like?

Read the original or check out the comments on: Learning more about what I want to learn (Sacha Chua's blog)

Sacha Chua: Digital uncluttering: my backup and clean up plan

Mon, 30 Apr 2012 08:00:00 -0400

I organized my files, weeded out blurry photos, and thought about how I want to improve my workflow for input, processing, and output.

Here’s what I want from my digital filing system:

Easy year-end backups: I’d like to be able to copy a folder onto a DVD and a separate drive, secure in the knowledge that if I really needed to get back to something, I could look it up.

Offline search: I want to be able to search the data even without the physical DVD or disk, so I don’t have to guess what year something happened or pop lots of DVDs into my drive.

Face tagging: I want to quickly retrieve all pictures with a specified combination of people. It would be awesome to get statistics off that, too.

Remove duplicates: I don’t want to wade through duplicate pictures when classifying my files, so I used VisiPics to find and delete images that were identical or of lower resolution.

Review by type: I want to review all of my presentations, drawings, blog posts, or 4×6-printable favourite photos regardless of their year. I want to be able to do this offline, too.

Search by topic: I want to find all of my resources related to a topic.

Map: I want to build a map what I know and what I want to learn. This map might contain hyperlinks to more details.

Quick visual review: I’d love to be able to quickly flip through or view slideshows of my visual book summaries, sketchnotes, and photo highlights. This is a good way to trigger memory. Maybe an “On this Day” reminder, too?

Hmm, planning…

Right now, I back up my data onto a drive weekly, and I use Dropbox for network backups too. I save my sketchnotes and summaries into a folder, and I keep small versions into another folder so that I can easily review them. I use Evernote so that I can search my hand-written notes and images. I use Picasa for images and face recognition, and Bibble 5 for tags. I don’t have offline search of backup DVDs yet, but I haven’t needed it. Besides, I can always search through my blog posts and notes.

Getting there…

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Sacha Chua: From maker time to learner time

Sun, 29 Apr 2012 21:00:00 -0400

It turns out that when I have more control over my schedule, I don’t fill it with development. I haven’t been working on open source or personal projects, much less client websites or applications. This is a surprise to my 2010 self, who figured she would spend the whole day coding if she could.

I spend most of my discretionary time learning instead: drawing, writing, Latin, business, life. Maybe it’s because I’m in the fledgling stage of business and there’s so much to learn. Maybe it’s because 3-4 days of consulting a week takes up a large chunk of brainspace. Maybe it’s because development won’t get me where I want to go in this short-term search for a business that can survive unpredictable schedules and the primary care of young children.

Learning time. Yeah, that seems like the focus that fits me. If I imagine days and weeks stretching ahead of me – maybe in half a year, after this consulting engagement – I can easily see myself spending time exploring ideas and sharing my notes. I’d want to plumb this, deepen my understanding of this, before I focus on something like development.

Self-structured learning time is intimidating, but I want to see if I can get past the initial anxieties and figure out things that work. Writers have been able to do so for millennia. Things will be okay.

I’ll still build things, of course. Code is a powerful way to crystallize learning and make it easier for people to do better. It also helps me ask questions that would be hard to answer manually.

Okay. I give myself permission to focus on learning after this. I know I’ll probably feel that itch to do something that creates immediate or measurable value for people. That’s okay. I might feel insecure at some point. That’s normal. But there’s so much I want to learn, and I think I’ll be able to stay motivated even without outside drivers. Worth trying it out and sticking with it through at least the initial bumps.

This will be fun!

(Thanks to Mel Chua for the nudge!)

Read the original or check out the comments on: From maker time to learner time (Sacha Chua's blog)

The Byte Baker: Sunday Selection 2012-04-29

Sun, 29 Apr 2012 00:00:00 -0400

I know it’s not Sunday in most parts of the world, and it’s almost not Sunday anymore here, so I’m going to slip this in quickly.

Around the Web

How Geniuses Think I’m always interesting in what drives ingenuity and creativity. This doesn’t go very deep into details or give exact references, but it’s a good set of points about how creative, insightful thinking works and how we can get some of it into our own thinking.

Walking the Line Between Good and Evil Andrea Kuszewski is quickly becoming one of my favorite science writers. This article is probably one of her best. It takes a look into modern conceptions of heroes and villains, what their psyches are like, what sets them apart and (most importantly) how close they actually are to each other.

Stop working more than 40 hours a week Productivity is always an interesting battle. Is it really worth working as much as you can if you’re not getting any more done? I’d like to think that there is a peak point in the number of hours after which productivity. After that you should take a break and relax. I haven’t looked up the research to see if its true, but I do like the idea of keeping my sanity.

Sacha Chua: Weekly review: Week ending April 27, 2012

Sat, 28 Apr 2012 22:00:00 -0400

Two social events last Monday, and I was pretty much wiped out afterwards. I took it easy afterwards, and the rest of the week eventually brought me back to a good balance. =)

From last week’s plans

Business
- [X] Earn: E1: Tue-Thu (training, prototyping)
- [X] Connect: E1: Get-together on Monday
- [X] Connect: Quantified Self meeting with journalist on Monday
- [X] Connect: Catch up on post-meeting notes
- [-] Build: Draw more visual metaphors

Relationships
- [X] Bake pizza, bagels, and buns for W- and J-
- [X] Take care of chores
- Helped with math study group; the kids really need help reviewing
- Watched La Strada and Winter’s Bone with W-

Life
- [X] Latin: Finish chapter 3 exercises in Latin Made Simple
- [-] Gardening: Plant more bitter melon seeds (maybe in the greenhouse?) – still getting frost!
- Learned more about Emacs Org and the agenda mode, yay!
- Brought my ledger up to date

Plans for next week

Business
- [ ] Earn: E1: Mon-Thu (training, prototyping)
- [ ] Connect: Attend open source meetup
- [ ] Build: Draw a visual metaphor

Relationships
- [X] Spend time walking around with W-
- [ ] Hang out with J-’s friends’ parents
- [ ] Get together for the Avengers
- Helped look around for a scooter

Life
- [ ] Get halfway through chapter 4 of Latin Made Simple

Read the original or check out the comments on: Weekly review: Week ending April 27, 2012 (Sacha Chua's blog)

Oak Hazelnut Tech: Konsequent nikotinfrei durch elektrische Zigaretten

Fri, 27 Apr 2012 12:30:12 -0400

In normalen Zigaretten sind etliche Stoffe und Substanzen enthalten, die gesundheitsschädlich sind. Neben einer großen Zahl an Reizgasen sorgen auch mehr als vierzig Teerstoffe für ein erhöhtes Krebsrisiko. Den meisten Rauchern ist dieser Umstand bekannt, nur die wenigsten hören jedoch mit dem Rauchen auf. Woran liegt das? Schuld daran ist ein weiterer Inhaltsstoff der Zigarette, das Nikotin. Nikotin ist ein sehr starkes Nervengift, das von der Tabakpflanze gebildet wird, um Schädlinge abzuhalten. Dieses Gift hat eine anregende Wirkung, in höheren Dosen wirkt Nikotin lähmend. Gefährlich wird dieses Alkaloid aber vor allem durch seine anhä...

Smarterware: “Gangbang Interviews” and “Bikini Shots”: Silicon Valley’s Brogrammer Problem

Fri, 27 Apr 2012 12:00:16 -0400

Link: “Gangbang Interviews” and “Bikini Shots”: Silicon Valley’s Brogrammer Problem

"Want to bro down and crush code?" No.

planet

The Byte Baker: Reading Lists for the Modern Web

Sacha Chua: Decision review: Logitech H800 wireless headset

Hacker Visions: Price discrimination on the net

Sacha Chua: Visual metaphors: Success

tychoish.com essays: The Editing Hole

Sacha Chua: Added new gallery views so that you can review sketchnotes easily

Sacha Chua: Getting Started with Quantified Self

Sacha Chua: Planning my life

Sacha Chua: Weekly review: Week ending May 18, 2012

Table of Contents

From last week’s plans

Plans for next week

Time notes

Sacha Chua: Taking stock of the way I take notes

Sacha Chua: Drawing studies

tychoish.com essays: Git Feature Requests

Sacha Chua: Responsive web, responsive life

Smarterware: Please Do Learn How to Propose Better Solutions

Sacha Chua: Org-mode and habits

Sacha Chua: Sketchnotes: Jeremiah Owyang @ Third Tuesday Toronto (#3TYYZ) on the Social Business Hierarchy of Needs

Sacha Chua: Pizza pizza pizza pizza

Sacha Chua: Decision review: Razor A5 Lux kick scooter

Sacha Chua: Weekly review: Week ending May 11, 2012

From last week’s plans

Plans for next week

Time notes

Sacha Chua: Quantified Awesome: Analysis of the winter/spring season for the Cooper’s Farm community-supported agriculture program

Smarterware: Inclusive Tech Companies Win the Talent War

Where the Women Are

Rehabilitation via Humiliation

Sacha Chua: Sketchnote workflow

Sacha Chua: Sketchnotes: The $100 Startup: Reinvent the Way You Make a Living, Do What You Love, and Create a New Future

Sacha Chua: Maintaining a manual topical index for my blog using Emacs

Sacha Chua: Sketchnotes: Red Rocket Coffee, Toronto Public Library Small Business Network meetup

Smarterware: How to Tell if Your Tech Salary is Fair

Sacha Chua: Gardening with herbs and exercising the senses

Sacha Chua: Tweaking my introduction, focusing on sketchnotes

Sacha Chua: Monthly review: April 2012

Sacha Chua: Weekly review: Week ending May 4, 2012

Table of Contents

From last week’s plans

Plans for next week

Notes on time

Sacha Chua: Looking forward to watching the Avengers

Sacha Chua: Sketchnotes: #torontob2b May 3, 2012

Sacha Chua: Optimism, happiness, and being young

Sacha Chua: Visual metaphor: Danger

The Byte Baker: Grit for Programmers

Sacha Chua: Learning more about what I want to learn

Sacha Chua: Digital uncluttering: my backup and clean up plan

Sacha Chua: From maker time to learner time

The Byte Baker: Sunday Selection 2012-04-29

Around the Web

Sacha Chua: Weekly review: Week ending April 27, 2012

Table of Contents

From last week’s plans

Plans for next week

Oak Hazelnut Tech: Konsequent nikotinfrei durch elektrische Zigaretten

Smarterware: “Gangbang Interviews” and “Bikini Shots”: Silicon Valley’s Brogrammer Problem