Archive for August, 2005
GTD coach and Triathlon superstar,
Jason Womack
, is coming to London at the end of September / start of October. We are planning a bike ride for Saturday 1 October. Riders so far are Jason; polar explorer,
Ben Saunders
; IP lawyer and L’etape veteran,
Mark Lloyd
, and me.
We still need to beg, borrow, rent or steal a bike for Jason, and plan our route. I will post more details as I have them.
Three questions:
-
Do you want to come on the ride?
-
Can Jason borrow your spare bike? Jason measures 5′4″ and rides a frame of between 48 and 50 cm. If you take it to Hyde Park (Jason’s hotel is there) on the 1 October, that’s great, otherwise, comment here and I will work out a way to collect the bike.
-
In case no-one can offer a spare, can you recommend a bike rental place?
Sign up for the ride and offer your steeds and rental suggestions in the comments. Thank you.
August 30th, 2005
Hannah, our two year old daughter, has eczema and she is having a pretty bad flare up right now which has lasted for several days. We are using the creams prescribed by our doctor, but as they seemed to have little impact, I searched for eczema resources on Google and found two that we are using now.
First is this useful
worksheet to record what your child eats and what ointments / creams you use (pdf)
, so that you can build up a list of those things which are safe and those which trigger flare ups.
Second is
Coping with eczema: common questions
from a Great Ormond Street consultant. In particular, this suggested bathing and creaming routine is helpful (we had been bathing only once per day and applying steroid and moisturiser simultaneously - wrong!). The advice on what “apply sparingly” really means is useful, too.
Recommended daily skincare regime
- Early am
- Bath/wash containing an oily bath additive
- Application of treatment cream (usually a topical steroid)
- Mid-am
- Application of moisturiser
- Mid-day
- Application of moisturiser
- Mid-pm
- Application of moisturiser
- Evening
- Bath containing an oily additive
- Application of treatment cream (usually a topical steroid)
- 30 mins before bed
- Antihistamine medicine
How much steroid ointment should I put on the skin?
Cover the eczema (the red and pink areas of the skin) evenly with a fine film of ointment so that the surface of the skin glistens in the light. The words “use sparingly” on tubes of steroid creams or ointments worry parents and can lead to under-usage. It is important to use steroid preparations “appropriately.”
Since the suggested routine doesn’t quite tally with the worksheet linked above, I created my own worksheet which you can download in MS Word or in pdf.
It may be coincidence, but having started the skincare regime yesterday, there has been a marked improvement in Hannah’s skin. Also, we have been replacing dairy with goats’ milk and dairy free spread for more than a month, but that doesn’t seem to have had an impact, so we have reintroduced dairy yoghurt and we will be monitoring progress on our modified worksheet. If you request it in the comments, I will post periodically about how we are getting on. Also, if you have youngsters in a similar predicament, then please comment, especially if you can share something that has worked for you and your child.
You need to know I am not a medical practitioner. This is just parents talking. What works for us might not work for you. Consult your doctor if you are in doubt. Don’t sue me if this doesn’t work for you. Don’t sue me if the comments don’t work for you.
I need to work out a better disclaimer, don’t I?
Modified eczema worksheet (MS Word)
Modified eczema worksheet (pdf)
Update:
four days into this new regime and Hannah’s skin is almost completely clear. This may be coincidence, but we will be continuing with this routine from now on.
August 29th, 2005
Periodically, I get a message through Skype that someone or other I have never heard of wants to add my to his or her contact list. I refuse the connection on the basis that this unknown Skyper probably want to sell me something. Today this hit a new low. I got a Skype call, which I foolishly answered - instead of trusting my instincts and just blocking the other user. The disembodied voice of the caller checked that I could understand his English, then made a sexual suggestion.
Great, the automated phone spam on my regular telephone is bad enough, now this. It is so depressing when great technology like Skype is abused. What do these people hope to achieve?
August 28th, 2005
Was it the provocation from Louise that made me do it, or am I just an ass by nature? Let me recap:
I post that I think
CAPTCHA - a technique for stopping comment spam - is the devil’s work
, for it is not accessible to visually impaired users. Louise comments: it is spam that is the devil’s work, and I should put up - suggest practical CAPTCHA alternatives - or shut up. I respond with alternatives and Louise - rightly - calls one of those alternatives into question, for discriminating against another group of users. She says the other alternatives are too resource-hungry. She asks:
Just how many blind people are using the internet anyway? And how many spammers?
It is then that the red mist of battle takes over. I roll out my dogma cannon and FIRE!
Louise, your view seems to be “discrimination is OK in this instance, because I only discriminate against a small number of people. Being inclusive takes too much effort.”
I disagree with your view very strongly. No matter how few are disadvantaged, discrimination, in my view, is not OK.
Like I said: was it Louise made me do it, or am I just an ass?
Having slept on it, I began to get some fresh perspective on this. I live in a flat on the second floor. There are no ramps or lifts. Does that not discriminate against people in wheelchairs? I can just about get away with it, because:
-
Our flat is not a public space and no one, in a wheel chair or not, is
entitled
to enter without permission. In public spaces, there will be places a disabled person is entitled to go which are inaccessible to him or her.
- We do not own the stair well, so even if I did want to invite someone with a wheelchair to come up, I still cannot fit a lift or ramp.
- Even if we had permission to fit a lift, we couldn’t afford it
So is there a more workable principle: discrimination
in public spaces over which I have control, except when I don’t have the resources
is not OK? Am I finally letting some shades of grey dominate my previously black and white thinking? Yes, I think I am. But what about web accessibility? Are CAPTCHAs OK now?
No, they are not. We are not, after all, taking something which is already inaccessible and applying massive resources to provide access (like building a lift in a block of flats). We are talking about taking something which is accessible by nature (the web) and then deliberately denying access. Using a CAPTCHA is like ripping the lifts and ramps out of an accessible building and replacing them all with stairs, then justifying your actions by saying the ramps and lifts made it easy for thieves to come into the building.
The web is a public space. The website owner has control over his or her site. And the resources required for the various alternative anti-spam methods are, in most cases, not significantly more than those required to implement CAPTCHA, and in some cases less. CAPTCHAs, in my view, are still not OK, and I would like to see them consigned to the scrapheap.
No doubt Louise will disagree. That’s OK. If Louise has a blog and wants to take up the discussion there, I will happily link to it. Through all this, I have learnt something new about myself and about blogging, specifically about how I respond to comments. I intend to be less of an ass in future. But one thing is sure, I won’t be shutting up about web accessibility any time soon.
August 25th, 2005
Kathy Sierra at
Creating Passionate Users
posted
Build something cool in 24 hours
yesterday, based on an idea for total immersion / ultra-rapid game development from the wonderfully named game developer, Squirrel Eiserloh:
The notion is this: stick people in a house for 48 hours, with a goal to have something created at the end… participants may be collaborating (like building a game together) or working alone (musicians composing, writers writing, etc.). The key is the process - a process that forces you to supress the “inner judges” that stifle creativity, and gives you not just permission but an order to create as much as possible, as fast as possible… even if what you end up with is 97% crap.
The point is to learn something valuable from the experience… by working under the ad-hoc/jam constraints, you’re able to “improve your craft” and discover things about yourself and the work that you might never find in your traditional work environment… What could take weeks, months, or years to evolve suddenly happens in hours.
Great stuff - and just the kick in the pants I need to get one or two of my projects really moving again. It’s like a
vertical day
on steroids.
The thing is the team-working part of this reminded me of an incident that took place when I was a conference producer. I had put together a conference on manufacturing and, then as now, teams were a hot topic. The speaker I invited to talk about teams promised to be provocative and - bless him - he was (Note to all conference speakers: provocative is good).
Half way through his presentation he stops dead and says:
Let’s take a break. Together with the people at your table, design me a dog walking machine. You have five minutes from now. Go!
There were half a dozen people at each table, so we all turned to face one another and got to work. Or at least we thought we got to work. Afterwards, the speaker sketched the various machines on a board and made jokes about how
the consultants who were sponsoring the conference
had come up with an effective, but
very expensive
solution
, and we all had a laugh at the speaker’s suggested machine which included a roller skate and a large spike (sorry dog lovers).
Eventually someone asked the speaker: “Why the dog walking machines?” His reply was illuminating:
A bit of fun. And to prove a point. When I started the clock on your five minutes, how many of you got straight to work? And how many of you took a few seconds to overcome embarrassment? Then you had a round of introductions, which you should have done this morning when you first arrived, but you were too nervous, or because you had introduced yourselves this morning, but you’ve forgotten each others’ names. Then you passed round business cards. Then you didn’t say or contribute anything because you didn’t want the others to know that you
didn’t have the right answer
. Then, with probably thirty seconds to go,
one of you
sketched the first thing he could think of and showed it to the rest of you. You all thought “I could do better than that” but you all approved his design, because - uh oh - time’s up.
So please understand - working in teams is tough. You cannot just come to the door of your executive suite and pronounce to your people “I want you all to work in teams.”
We
are supposed to be at the top of our field, the best of the best. And if
we
can’t work together in a team on a simple, fun task, then how will
your people
take to being stuffed into a new way of working, for eight or more hours a day, with their livelihoods at stake?
I love the simplicity, the purity of Kathy’s idea - in fact I am inspired to jam solo on a web project this weekend - but when teams are involved, especially in a work context, things can get tricky. Some participants may be less committed to team working; some may be concerned that the boss will get credit and their good ideas will be glossed over. Some may have forceful personalities; others may have great ideas, but speak too softly to be heard. Some may even be determined to sabotage the process.
None of these things are insurmountable problems, especially not if there is good management and facilitation before, during and after the jam (think
Rosa Say
,
Lisa Haneberg
and
Johnnie Moore
for starters). But whatever you do, don’t just go to the door of your executive suite and pronounce to your people: “I want you all to build something cool in 24 hours.”
Jam sessions, then, may well be another one of those areas where
simplicity is hard work
.
August 25th, 2005
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