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Sportsmen’s Clubs: On Governance and Structures
Sportsmen’s/Conservation Clubs are typically short 3 key officer roles: Steward, Membership Director, and Events Director. The common-sense reality of such clubs demands that these responsibilities are filled, but because they aren’t defined in bylaws, the existing officers often have to juggle to make sure the work is covered. Particularly for volunteer-run groups, this is far…
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Musk’s madness with Twitter: a rationale
Musk bought a really expensive asset in Twitter that is losing horrible amounts of money (making it a net liability, actually) and he has to renovate it to be cashflow positive—the alternatives of letting it continue on its broken path or actually ending it as a company or far too expensive to be realistic.
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My toolset for digital sketching: Wacom One and Sketchbook Pro
Background Before the COVID-19 pandemic, I worked in an office with 2 wall-sized whiteboards and carried notebooks and pens with me. I diagrammed many times a week, in meetings and in private as a thinking exercise. I’ve been working this way for all of my professional life, and I have a long background in user…
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Budgeting for UX Managers
Budgeting for UX is a conflict of mental models: Ours and Accounting’s. If we start with Accounting’s model, we’re more likely to make mistakes. So, do the version that makes sense first, and then reformulate it for Accounting’s needs.
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Oblique Strategies, a creative tool, in a web version
In Oct 2022 I made a web-based derivative of Eno and Schmidt’s Oblique Strategies cards. I read about a deck of cards made by musician Brian Eno and artist Peter Schmidt in 1975, which had the purpose of spurring on creative thinking by inserting a random prompt. I imagine Eno composing music in some endless…
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Mosquitos & Eucalyptus
When I was a child, everyone around me would be slapping at mosquitos and black flies, but the bugs would never land on me. I’ve never known why, and these days I’m just as much a host to an opportunistic mosquito as anyone. Today, my wife connected the dots. It was the eucalpytus. I grew…
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How do you reason about your position on COVID-19?
Politics, executive orders, barbers, mask-shaming, freedoms, powers, and egos aside, experiences around the world have taught a few lessons on how to greatly reduce COVID-19 infections. Wear a mask when you are with people outside your household. Minimize time indoors with multiple people. Move activities outdoors when it makes sense. Wash your hands often. If…
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COVID-19, Personal Values, and Performance Continuums
Many people would sooner die than think—in fact, they do so. Bertrand Russell That quote has come grimly to mind these days. It is printed on the back of a book that I try to review annually: How to Think Straight by Anthony Flew. So, let’s think about our behaviors and our values at this…
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Frequency of Error is Important in User Interface
(I published this in 2020, but it had been sitting as a draft since 2015. I presume this error set from Microsoft may not be relevant, although the idea could be.) Late last week, right after I stopped running with scissors, I picked up a Microsoft Surface 3 tablet running Windows 10. Over the weekend…
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How to update Ford SYNC with a Mac
I have a 2013 Ford Fusion. I like the car, but SYNC, the media system (think phones, etc.), is really bad. I thought updating the software would help. Here’s how that went. Throughout this whole experience, I had to keep reminding myself of two facts to properly lower my expectations. Ford is a car company,…