Recently in Minutiae Category

What is this Twitter thing all about?

By Adam Quiney on August 31, 2009 1:07 PM | No Comments
Unless you've been living in a cave that is protected from wireless internet access, own a tin foil hat, wear that tin foil hat with the shiny side facing out, and haven't been talking to the hermit living in the cave two down from yours, you have probably heard mention of Twitter.

My friend Dave first mentioned Twitter about two years back.  On the surface, Twitter seems like a remarkably useless service.  "It's basically like having nothing but Facebook status updates, all the time, and you follow a whole bunch of people and stay updated with them via those".

This is the most common description that I've heard, and it's a reasonably accurate one.  However, one of my projects before school was to start using Twitter myself, and see what it meant to me and my own set of use cases.

The main reason I had set this as a goal to accomplish was because the more I have heard about Twitter, the less it sounded like something that I could effectively evaluate from the outside.  Sometimes you simply need to immerse yourself in something in order to get a feel for whether or not it presents a piece of technology that could benefit you.  This is often the case for technology, as it often enables you to do something you had previously not even realized would be of value to you.  Since, up until this point, I never had the capability to broadcast a message to a large number of friends instantaneously, it would be very difficult for me to objectively evaluate whether or not being able to do so would provide any tangible benefit.  How could I know for sure if I'd never had that capability in the past?

One of the things that I took away from Clay Shirky's book, Here Comes Everybody (a recommended read) was that as people tend to age, we typically lose our ability to jump on board something new, oftentimes making the determination that it is a fad and a waste of time without ever giving ourself the time to really evaluate it.  By the time it's caught on in a big way and we realize that we need to learn this thing to get by in the modern world, we are considerably far behind and have a significant amount of catching up to do.

Although it is inevitable that as we age, we lose our agility and ability to adapt as quickly as we once did, I believe that I can take steps to minimize the scale and speed at which this happens to myself.  One of the ways for me to slow this inevitability is to do things like set aside time to evaluate new pieces of technology.

An important thing to mention is that I am not suggesting the choices are binary, and that you can either adapt and start using Twitter, or not adapat and become extinct.  However, by taking the time to actually evaluate a new piece of technology like this, I can determine whether or not it is something that I will actually find use for in the future (in which case it is worth my time getting to know it now).

This project was a fairly small one.  My goals were to create a Twitter account and use it over the course of the next week.  I didn't have any stipulations as to how I used Twitter, just that I actually make use of it in some capacity - even if that meant updating about something as meaningless as eating dinner at Boston Pizza.  While some people would deem this a waste of time, I think that part of immersing myself in something like Twitter means that I don't set boundaries for how I use it.  The real point is just that I use it.  Legitimate use cases may grow out of that usage organically and serendipitously over time.  If they don't, then I'm no worse off than I began, except perhaps for the two hours of time that this project cost me (and investing two hours of time now, to determine if this is something that may have legs later on, seems like a pretty good deal to me).

So, how did things go?  Well, they went about as you would expect.  My tasks were:

  • Talk to Davin about Twitter
  • Search Lifehacker for any resources related to Twitter
  • Sign up for a Twitter account
  • Find some people to follow
  • Use Twitter (tweet) for a week
I wanted to talk to Davin about Twitter because he has been using the service for a while as part of his role as the main blogger for the GDC (The Graphic Designers of Canada, or something like that - Davin, please correct me if I got that wrong).  As he is using the service in a semi-professional capacity, I was pretty sure that he would have some good insights.

In fact, his insights were much like everything else I've tried to track down on Twitter.  He told me about how it affects him on a daily basis, but not really what it provides him in terms of real benefits or use cases.  This wasn't his fault, but it did confirm to me that I really need to try this out to determine if it's something worth my time.

For things like Twitter, I often check in with Lifehacker to see if they have put together any tutorials or posts related to the application.  Lifehacker's goals, direction and thrust align very closely with my own, and so they provide an excellent proxy through which I can glimpse hidden opportunities that may be relevant to my own process.  Lifehacker had a few decent articles, but the main benefit I took away from them was a number of people to follow once I'd signed up.

Following someone on Twitter is basically like adding them to your friendfeed in Facebook - whenever they make an update, it shows up on your main screen and you can see what they have to say.  The real point of using Twitter is to follow a number of people that will expose you to new ideas, links, etc., in line with the kind of content that you want to see.  Once I'd signed up for my account, I searched for and added as many of my friends that I could find, and a large number of people that are involved in GTD.

So the last step was just to get out there and actually use Twitter.  This isn't very complicated, and was certainly made easier by installing an application called Tweetdeck on my iPhone.  This allows me to get a complete view of all of the tweets from people that I'm following, and allows me to tweet quickly from my phone.  You can also use SMS to send and receive tweets, which operates in much the same manner.

Twitter is kind of a funny social space.  Unlike Facebook where you maintain a tight rein on who you are friends with, and what those people can see, Twitter operates on a pretty open forum kind of mentality.  Random people I had never heard of have started following me, usually because I've either re-tweeted something that someone else they follow has said (essentially just repeating what someone else has already tweeted), or because I happened to mention a topic that they are following or have a passing fancy in.

Initially I would get an e-mail letting me know that someone had started following me, and I would look them up trying to figure out who the heck these people were and why they were interested in what I had to say.  But I quickly got over that and realized that:

  • They're not really that interested in what I have to say
  • It's just part of the Twitter experience
Once you see that most people are following upwards of a thousand people, you realize that it's just the way things are done in this social sphere.

Despite the way it sounds on the surface, Twitter obviously presents a number of valuable use cases, because it's user base is quite large, and it has been put to use in some very diverse, very powerful situations.  The election protests in Iran, and the Olympic demonstrations/protests in China were both made possible in part due to Twitter's ability to enable people to communicate quickly and effectively to a large number of people in a very short amount of time.

I don't feel that a week has been long enough for me to effectively evaluate where Twitter sits in my existing set of use cases, nor whether or not it will fill a niche that exists somewhere between Google Reader and Facebook.  

Some of my goals in using social media such as Facebook and Google Reader are to publish and increase the exposure that people have to skepticism, critical thinking, and scientific attitudes about the many junk claims that exist - this goal can really be summarized as an attempt to increase the education that people have, quixotic as the goal itself may be.  I'm also obviously hoping to increase exposure and interest in the things that matter to me - I would love to see Popping and the other urban styles I'm into gain a greater foothold here on the island.  In addition to those things, I want to provide content that people find interesting and engaging, and at the very top of the pyramid, I want to establish myself as an interesting person, and an expert in the things that I choose to pursue, be they professional (law, project management, productivity coaching), or leisure (squash, dancing, etc.).

For Twitter to have continual value to me, I would anticipate that there be specific items that I would publish or comment on in Twitter, but not Facebook or Google Reader, and likewise, I would anticipate there being items that I publish in those mediums, but not on Twitter.  So far, most of what I have published on Twitter has been redundantly published on one of those other two sites, and so a distinct value exclusive to Twitter has not yet emerged.  Time will tell if there is new value that arises from this service, or if it becomes a passing fad that I leave off to do its own thing.

Next up is my second week of journals related to my experiment with biphasic sleep.  I will publish this tomorrow.  Worth noting is that this past weekend I went away to Hornby with Bay, Ben, and Ashley.  Although I had originally intended to maintain a biphasic sleeping habit, I quickly determined that this would be obnoxious to our hosts, potentially waking them up at ungodly hours, and disrupting our plans in order to allow myself 90 minute naps in the afternoon.  Stay tuned for more details.

Saiyonara

By Adam Quiney on August 14, 2009 9:23 AM | No Comments

Well, I've finished my last day at work.  As a result of the fact that I've cleaned up all of my loose ends, I'm left with very little to do today - that will no doubt be a completely different story from my life a month from now.  

The timeline for my last day was:

Last day of work:


8:00 Last day arriving at work

8:10 Pour last cup of coffee

8:30 Login and go through morning routine last time

9:30 Fill out timesheets for the last time ever

9:45 Last scrum at Refractions

10:00 Last coffee with Graham at work

1:15 Last JV lunch (while working at Refractions) downtown with Bay

3:30 Sent out goodbye e-mails to co-workers

3:45 Deleted archived e-mails from my computer

4:00 So long Refractions


While cleaning up my desk this week, I came across two of my logbooks that I had maintained when I first started.

 

I originally started maintaining a logbook when, during my first review, Paul Ramsey (the former president of Refractions, and someone for who I have a great deal of respect) mentioned that he noticed I worked better under pressure and when there was a lot on my plate.  He recognized that that he too operated in this manner as well, but that something to work on would be to track what I was working on and to try and maintain a more consistent pace.

 

The logbook was my first attempt to do this, and really, my first attempt to begin any kind of system.  About three years back, I realized that although I was now twenty-seven years old (thirty now!), with both a high-school and a university education, no one had ever taught me any kind of system for managing my tasks (really, for managing my life, both at work and at home).  Before I even made this realization though, I knew that I wanted to pursue Paul's advice.

 

The logbook was the first attempt to accomplish this.  Looking through the book is a bit nostalgic: projects that I've long since forgotten, and that have long since died.  Attempts at organization that I now recognize as convoluted and problematic.  Lists of TODO items that remain unchecked to this day (did these ever actually get done?).  Even with all of these flaws, I still recognize the value that these first attempts brought me.  They provided me with a starting point.  They set me down a path, and gave me a base from which I could start evolving my own system.  You can never go for a run if you don't take that first step, and that's exactly what this book was.

 

I scanned in some representative pages from each month, along with an appendix that I had created at the back, so that you can see how I started progressing along the path towards a full-fledged system like GTD, and get a feel for the missteps that it's okay to make as you attempt to get yourself organized (if you choose to).  Let's repeat that one more time - it's okay to make mistakes.  Take that first step!

 

January.png

February.png

The first two images are simply scans from the month of January and February.  Although the domain and context of what I was working on isn't relevant, you can see from the way I was taking notes that there was still much to be desired.


The first scan shows an action item at the bottom, but with nothing to differentiate it from the rest of my notes.  How would I know at a glance that this is something that I have to act upon, versus something that I can just use as reference for later on?  What about the state of this action item?  Did I ever actually complete this task?  Did I just neglect to complete this?  Did it simply stop being necessary?  There's no way to tell what happened here.  While I'm sure that I did in fact complete this item, you can see that it is important to create ways in your system that allow you to determine the answer to these questions quickly and at a glance.  Otherwise we're just taking up valuable mental cycles that could be devote to more valuable tasks.

Unfortunately, I only realized now that I scanned in the wrong pages from my appendix, so I no longer retain the code I used to mark up the pages.  The main colour used were blue and green.  Blue items indicated discussions I had with co-workers, while green items indicated useful information or knowledge to reference back to later.  Orange  indicated important TODO items.  Whenever I had a page where I had created one of these items, I would colour the top or bottom corner (or both if I had multiple items on a page), allowing me to quickly determine if I had something that needed to be referenced on a given page.


This system quickly got out of hand, as it is impractical to flip through pages of a book trying to find the correct coloured corner that corresponds to a piece of information I need.  There is no ability to categorize a given piece of reference information, as it sits forever on a page in the book.  I have no folder that I can put the information in, and no ability to search through the book, other than sequentially flipping through each page.  Obviously this system left a lot to be desired, but it was a starting point.


Once I started PMing projects, I moved away from a static book and to a system that was more focused on the GTD approach to managing tasks, using looseleaf paper, and folders to organize it.


That's the end of my time spent PMing.  Onwards to new challenges!

Another year, another festival

By Adam Quiney on August 2, 2009 8:59 PM | No Comments
Another August long weekend has come to pass, and in doing so, another iteration of the Victoria Electronic Music Festival has come and gone.  Two years ago, I volunteered for the first time at the festival.  The last year, I was a member of the management team that ensured that the festival was a success (I'm happy to say that it was).

This year, I made the difficult decision to step back from my previous responsibilities of the festival.  Although I really care about the electronic music scene in Victoria and really want to give back to it in any way that I can, I also care about the quality of the work that I feel I am able to deliver.  Last year, I felt like I spent a lot of time trying to deal with (and ultimately remove) the bottlenecks that I saw (pretty reasonable, given that my day job is to alleviate bottlenecks).  Unfortunately, I felt like those bottlenecks either remained, or had been replaced by new ones, this year, and so I had to make the difficult decision to bow out of my responsibilities.

Nevertheless, I wanted to participate in some capacity, and opted to volunteer again, as I had the two years ago.  Given my previous experience, Chelsie and Bruce put me in charge of managing the volunteers that had signed up for roles in audience services.  In the previous years, this had been a role that had met with a high degree of attrition.  That is to say, a large number of volunteers had simply left part way through their shifts.  Part of the blame for this can fall on the volunteers, but when people aren't being paid for their time, it is important to provide them with a sense of purpose and some direction.  Without either of those two things, they really don't have any reason to stick around.  My role this year was to provide them with a point of contact (Chelsie, the volunteer coordinator, really has her hands full as it is managing all of the volunteers for everything else, and manning the volunteer booth) and to attempt to alleviate the problems related to volunteer attrition.

The role itself was pretty adaptive, which is really the position I like to be in the most.  It means that there's plenty of room for creativity, and hey, if things start to go sideways, we can throw out the playbook and take a new direction.  For my part, I really enjoyed being in a role where I got to check in with people and say:

"Hey, are you having fun?"

"Yah!"

"Awesome!  Keep doing that!  Is there anything I need to be aware of?"

"Umm, I don't think so..am I doing a good job?"

"You're doing an awesome job, check in with me in 30 minutes!"

Given that I've been a project manager for almost five years, it's rare that I'm giving the opportunity to check in with someone and provide them with the single ultimatum that I want them to be having fun.

The volunteers that showed up were all awesome, and I would like to extend a thank you to Kim, Garrett, Chris, Stuart, and Chris.  You guys were awesome.  A special thanks to Erin, who stuck around for the entirety of my shift and was a trooper right up until the end.  If you were around on Saturday, you would have seen Erin alternating between dancing hard behind the DJ booth and cleaning up garbage and handing out flyers when I asked him too.  Overall, I was given a really awesome set of volunteers and it really made my job easier.

Volunteers are given a free pass out to both clubs on one of the two nights that VEMF runs - either Saturday or Sunday.  Since I'm currently on the ferry and on my way to Vancouver tonight (Sunday), I had wisely chosen to take my pass for Saturday's night.  However, by the end of my shift, I was completely exhausted.  Although I really wanted to head over to Tammy's and hang out with Tammy, Emmy, Lexi, Justin, and my friend from way back in the day, Amanda, I was played around with the idea for only five minutes before I realized it simply wasn't going to happen.  I guess being thirty eventually catches up with you, but don't worry kids, it's all worth it and I don't regret missing the night out at the club one bit.

I gave it some thought, trying to rationalize enough to be able to convince myself that I actually wanted to go out.  However, after playing with the idea for a few minutes, I realized that it wasn't a question of whether I could convince myself to go out (I could); It came down to whether I really wanted to.  In this case, I realized that I really just wanted to go home and sleep, and it was okay to do that.  So, home I went, and home I slept.

In terms of the festival, this year suffered from many of the same problems that I found last year did.  The music was a major issue, featuring far too much from one or two genres that really didn't make me want to get up and dance.  Now, everyone has their own preference when it comes to music, and their own styles and genres that they are going to prefer.  However, dancing is one of the things that I do, and I do it as often as I can.  When it comes to a music festival, I figured that if you're able to run ten hours of music and only make me feel the music enough to really dance for one of those hours, it's a bit of a miss in terms of audience connection.

Having said that, most of the crowd appeared to be loving what was being played, so perhaps my tastes have just matured beyond that which is mainstream for our electronic scene.  Davin was playing after hours at the Ambrosia event centre, and I know that that would certainly have struck a chord with me.  Maybe it was just the music that they chose to feature on the main stage.  In any case, it would be nice to get a little more variety on the mainstage, beyond drum and bass and driving house.  Perhaps some deeper house, or some more breaks, or maybe even some progressive.  I would really like to see the line-up for future festivals emphasize two things: diversity, and dancing.

One thing I noticed in particular this year was that volunteering definitely precludes me from enjoying the festival to the full extent.  When there's a beer garden, great weather, friends, and good music, I really want to spend most of my time enjoying those things.  Volunteering, and even more so, managing volunteers, precludes me from indulging in any of those things beyond a cursory experience.  Is it worth it?  Yes.  Definitely.  But, next year, I think I will try to make sure that I am able to get the evening of Saturday to spend with friends and to party.  Sometimes you just want to cut loose.

Still here...

By Adam Quiney on July 5, 2009 8:57 PM | 1 Comment
I'm still here, there just hasn't been much recently inspiring me to write.  In the meantime, here are some excellent dance videos to entertain yourself with:

  • Crazy Scandinavian's


These guys may look goofy, but they've definitely put some work into their isolations.  Although I think there's room for them to work on their technique, this video's giving me a few ideas for what I'll go over next drop-in class.

  • Hilty and Bosch, Featuring Co-Thkoo


This is an excellent video to see the difference between popping and locking.  Most people that don't have any experience with the different styles think that they are the same thing.  Locking is actually the older dance (and was created before hiphop, breaking, and popping), and is based more on funkiness and a limited move set.  The guys wearing black shirts are two of my favorite lockers from Japan (a country with a lot of incredible lockers). 

The guys in the white vests are performing popping.  You can tell the difference if you look closely.  The poppers movements are punctuated with sharp hits, and are generally more angular in appearance.  The lockers movements are defined by faster movements with more flair and funk.  Wrist rolls, arm rolls, knee drops, and and points are all some of the locking techniques to look out for.

One very cool thing that my friend Jesse pointed out in this video is the symmetry of the choreography.  Although the two dance styles are often quite disimilar, the choreography that these guys are doing has been put together such that one group of dancers will perform a movement, and then the next group will perform similar movements and angles, but using the techniques associated with their respective styles.

  • JRock and Pandora, Tutting


This is a very cool routine showing the technique of tutting.  You can tell just from the YouTube preview what the general idea is: assume geometric shapes with your body and arms that are reminiscent of egyptian hieroglyphics, and the way Bugs Bunny used to move when he would mimic egyptians in those corny cartoons.

This routine is especially cool because they've choreographed it to use two people.  However, this isn't a necessary aspect of tutting, and it works just as well (well, maybe not quite as striking, but still cool) with one person.

Tutting is a technique that I have only been working on for about two months, as I was always averse to trying to learn it because of the problem I had getting my wrist to make some of the angles.  While you can train your wrist by stretching it out each day, you can also eliminate the need to hit certain angles through creativity.

  • Poppin' John


An excellent video submitted by Poppin' John for Mr. Wiggles internet video contest (correct me if I'm wrong).  Poppin' John does awesome things with waves, and is always frustrating for me to watch and try to fathom how the hell he's come up with his vocabulary.

I especially like his technique of putting one hand over the back of his head, and then using that hand to push waves down and out his other arm.  Very cool.

Anyhow, that's all I've got for today.  If any of these videos or techniques interest you and you'd like to learn more, come check out one of my classes at Vibestreet Dance.  The techniques look complicated, but with practice, you can master them and trip out your friends too!  Seriously though, popping is an awesome style of dance to learn, and a ton of fun to play around with.  It's never too late to learn..

Practice Routine

By Adam Quiney on June 23, 2009 8:50 AM | No Comments
A Border Collie With Nothing to Do

I've been off of the squash courts for just shy of a month now.  I'm meeting up with Rob to do some light training for the first time in what feels like ever, so I anticipate some frustration due to seeing the skill I trained so hard this Winter to acquire slipping through my fingers.

Not playing squash has been very frustrating, as I really love the sport, and I do things because I want to improve.  Being removed from that element means that I have to watch that improvement slip away and a heap of rust develop in place of the game I'm used to having at my disposal.  It's especially hard because I trained very hard this Winter and Spring, and really felt like I'd reached a new level in my game.  Oh well - all things come to pass, and it is the fool that doesn't listen to what their body is telling them.

In order to avoid going completely bucknuts-mental, I've been spending most of my time biking, working out, and dancing, in order to stay in shape and keep myself occupied (ever seen a border collie without anything to do?  That's a pretty good analogy to the way I operate).  Additionally, for the previous three weeks, I've had access to the dance studio whenever needed, which makes the act of practicing vastly superior to my other options.

About eight years ago, near the very start of my degree, I took it upon myself to practice dancing for thirty minutes everyday.  Even before that, Graham and I would practice whenever the whim struck us.  Lately, I've had more motivation than ever before to get down and actually put in some serious practice time, but as soon as I started, I noticed that my practices felt very unstructured.  I would skim from technique to technique, getting distracted and never spending enough time on any one thing.

This isn't necessarily a bad thing, as it's an indication that there are a lot of ideas that I have in my head that can legitimately evolve into dance moves and techniques.  However, if I want to see and feel real improvement, it's important to be able to focus when I set out to practice.  More for the sake of posterity than anything else, here is the practice routine that I came up with, along with a few notes describing why each part is there.

Routine vs Innovation

Before I go further, I think it's important to mention that routine and innovation are both important in any practice regimen.  Innovation is an opportunity to let yourself do whatever your body and the music are telling you to do, and is where you're going to find the most creativity.  Routine is where you will practice the fundamental movements that are core to the style of dance that you are pursuing (or even any activity in particular - scales for a piano player, for example).  Routine provides you with a solid set of fundamentals upon which you are able to actually create and innovate.  A good dancer needs to have a significant amount of both of these elements, so be sure not to neglect either of them when practicing.

Brainstorming

Before starting to plan out my routine, I wanted to do a braindump and get everything in my head out onto paper.  There's no magic to this technique - you just sit down with a pencil and paper, and write.  Don't question anything, just write.  After you've sat there for three or four minutes without writing anything, you can be reasonably assured that you've gotten everything immediate down.

The results of my brainstorm look like this:

  • Waving
  • Tutting
  • Popping
  • Fresno
  • Choreography
  • Glides
  • Floats
  • Flexes
  • Foundations
  • Experiments
So, there's nothing particularly groundbreaking here, but I have an idea of the kind of stuff that I want to fit in to a standard ninety minute practice session.

Note also that I wrote down Experiments.  This is the placeholder for setting aside some time specifically to work on experimentation.  Not practicing anything in particular, probably just ten minutes or so doing whatever.  I may end up hating everything that I come up with in those ten minutes, but, on the other hand, I may discover a new type of movement that I hadn't considered before.

Practice Routine

The total amount of time I felt was reasonable for practicing was around ninety minutes.  Anything more and I'm devoting more time than I have available.  Anything less and I really don't give myself much time to innovate.  When I first started practicing, I figured that it would be a stretch to get through forty-five minutes, however, once I actually force myself to overcome the inertia and actually get started, time seems to fly by pretty quickly.

So, what do I have planned?

  • Fresno and Variations (15 minutes)
This one is a natural starting place.  The Fresno is the technique upon which everything else in popping builds, and is the starting point for the dance itself.  Practicing the Fresno provides the opportunity to practice good isolation, good hits, getting funky, and being creative.  No matter how good I get, I will always be able to practice the Fresno, come up with new variations and tightening it up.

Some specifics I want to practice are:

  • Tight, crisp hits and isolations
  • Walkouts
  • Broken walks and hits into and out of the Fresno
  • Transitions from the Fresno into other techniques (waves, tuts, etc.)

  • Tutting (15 minutes)
Tutting is the newest technique I've worked on, and as such, there is a lot of room for me to improve.  I need to practice not only transitions to and from various poses, but also just making the poses themselves clean and tight.  Nothing looks worse than going into a box stance and having the box look more like a shitty oval.  Don't settle for a shitty oval.  Go for a nice clean box!

Specifics I need to work on:

  • Tightening up poses
  • New poses
  • Transitions to and from various poses
  • Footwork throughout
(I have learned most of my tutting so far without footwork, but you're not dancing if you're only moving half of your body - I need to work on this)

  • Waves (15 minutes)
Waving is one of the trickier techniques for me, in terms of practice.  I have a fairly good grasp of the fundamental concepts for good waves, and I've practiced arm and body waves quite a bit.  However, I feel that I'm really letting myself down when it comes to actually being innovative with waving, and having a deeper understanding of the techniques.

For example, I know enough about waving to be able to use it when I'm freestyling, sending a wave up from my feet through my body and out my arms, but that's as far as it goes.  I've never taken the time to sit down and practice sending waves in specific directions, or as specific transitions.

So, that's part of what I'm aiming to do here.  Some specifics:

  • Foundations (practice the individual isolations)
  • Body wave (focus on isolating the hips)
  • Waves through my legs and feet
  • Waving into and out of various poses (eg, into King Tut pose), and transitions from waves to various other techniques
  • Kick wave
  • One-sided body waves (wave travels only down one side of the body)
  • Variations on Phil Chbeeb's wave (view here at 34 seconds)

  • Glides and Floats (15 minutes)
I've never really put enough time into learning to glide well.  Part of that is because until recently, my practice sessions have been exclusively on carpet, arguably the worst surface to practice gliding on.  They're also been inside, which means I can't practice with shoes on, which makes it that much harder (less support for the toes).

Gliding is a very frustrating and tedious technique to work on.  Having the correct floor and footwear makes things a little easier.  Specific things I intend to work on:

  • Sideglide (specifically from left to right)
  • Basic float (the foundation for most gliding)
  • Snake glide
  • Box glide (but work on side glide first)
  • Forward glide
  • Stationary glide
Nothing much to elaborate on here.  Gliding is the technique I'd like to see the most progression on - there's a lot of stuff I could be doing that I don't because I've never focused on this technique.

  • Flexes (15 minutes)
Flexes are a technique that I never really learned properly the first time around.  After Dillon covered them in one of our classes, it dawned on me how valuable it was to correctly learn these fundamental ways of segmenting and turning your body.  A twist-o-flex may not look astonishing when done at normal speed, but the foundation can fit in with almost everything else that you do.

Specific flexes I want to work on:

  • Standard twist-o-flex (with 4 pivots)
  • Twist-o-flex with 5 pivots (add an additional head pivot in)
  • Twist-o-flex shown here at 4:50 (thanks Guillaume!)
  • Neck-o-flex
  • Master-flex (I need knee pads to work on this one)
  • Standard twist-o-flex, done backwards.
  • Choreography (15 minutes)
Although choreography could technically fall as a sub-item into each of the above categories, I made a point of devoting at least 15 minutes in my routine purely to practicing this skill.  If I don't, I end up spending all of my time working on fundamental movements.  It's never a bad thing to have a really strong foundation (and there's ALWAYS things that I can find that need improving), but the only way to improve at choreography (and realistically, a complete dancer) is to spend some time working specifically on this skill.

One of the things that I've been working to appreciate is that choreography doesn't need to be something complicated. It can be as simple as putting together some Fresno movement, and then sending a wave through my arms, down one side of my body, up the other, and lastly, out my other arm.  This isn't difficult choreography, but until I actually put it together and practice the sequence, it will never be as tight as it needs to be.  And therein lies a small part of why choreography matters to me.  Freestyling, to me, is the opportunity is to make use of anything that I have come up with in the past.  Choreography is the opportunity to tread new ground.  Once I've done that enough, it can become part of my freestyling repertoire, but not until.

Specific things I want to work on:

  • Various routines from the Fresno
  • Waving choreography
  • Tutting choreography
  • Some choreography including glides
  • Some choreography including footwork for both tuts and waves

So that's basically my practice routine for the summer.  If I get tired of working on things in this manner, I can always mix it up and change.  That is the power of my mind - look upon its works and despair!

I'm attending a popping workshop here in Victoria put on the Groovy Gs (of Vancouver) this coming Saturday.  I'll definitely have some thoughts to post at that point, so check back soon.

The small things

By Adam Quiney on June 1, 2009 5:00 PM | No Comments
As I've mentioned before, I'm a big fan of little things that increase the efficiency of things that I do frequently.

Below are a few programs that I have installed on my machine at work that enable this for me.  The machine that I have to use at work runs Windows XP, which sucks, because I truly believe that OS X is a vastly superior operating system when you care about efficiency and productivity.  However, without further ado:

  • AltDrag
This is a simple, low memory-footprint program that does one function on Windows: Hold down the Alt key, then click anywhere on a window to move it around your screen.  Seems unnecessary, but it adds a little bit of efficiency when you don't have to go hunting for a title bar.

Once you've used this application, you'll be annoyed every time you have to sit down at a computer that doesn't have it installed.  You can download AltDrag here.
  • WizMouse
Same idea as above.  A low memory-footprint that does one function on Windows: Whenever you use your scroll wheel, that event is drilled down to whatever window is directly beneath your mouse, rather than sending the event to the active window.  This doesn't change the focus or Z-order of your Windows. 

This is very handy, especially when doing things that require having something like an Excel spreadsheet and a web browser both open, both requiring scrolling.  WizMouse can be downloaded here.

  • KeePass
This guy is a really tight password manager that I came across on Lifehacker.  KeePass allows you to keep strong and unique passwords for everything you need, and ensure that you never encounter a situation where you arrive at a website knowing you have a login, but unable to remember what it is.  KeePass creates an encrypted database file that you can also sync this across all of your computers using Dropbox, which means you just need to remember one strong password for KeePass, and one strong password for Dropbox.  Once you've got that, you can ensure that you maintain strong and unique passwords for everything you sign up for. You can download KeePass here.

  • TopDesk
A simple application that allows Windows to mimic the expose functionality that exists in OS X (Macintosh's operating system).  Once you start using expose, you will rarely alt-tab again (although it's still the best way to quickly bounce back and forth between two applications).  You can download TopDesk in evaluation format to try it out, but it's worth paying for the full version.  You can download Topdesk here.

These programs will need to stay resident in your memory in order to function (with the exception of KeePass), but all of them are very low in terms of memory-footprint, and should not cause any significant problems.  Give them a shot and see if you like any of them.  I have gone as far as to install each of these on my thumb drive so that I can run them when I'm helping out a friend with their computer - they've become such a convenient part of my daily work that I can't stand having to work without them.

Making the most of your time

By Adam Quiney on May 22, 2009 6:42 PM | No Comments
Today's my thirtieth birthday.  For a lot of people that's a pretty big milestone.  Some people see it as the start of entering mid-life, some the end of youth.  I try to live my life by staying present in the moment whenever possible, and so I aim to avoid finding myself in a position where my birthday comes around and I think "Holy crap, thirty years have already passed".  I like to believe (and only time will tell) that one of the best defenses about wasting your youth, your young adulthood, your mid-life, and all of the other incredible phases of your life, is to try and take the time whenever possible to appreciate it.

It seems that right around this age, people typically start to lament a lack of spare time.  I think there's a number of reasons for this - one of which is certainly that as our life gets busy, we find ourselves with less time to slow down, turn our eyes inwards, and reflect on what is going on.  Probably the most common reason for this problem is that people gradually add more things to their plate over time, and before they know it, they no longer find themselves with spare time.

Filling your spare time with things that you want to do is an efficient use of your time, but often, we lose sight of exactly what we're spending our time on, how much time we have available, and end up wasting time simply trying to manage everything that we've picked up.

There's a couple of things that we, as individuals, can do to avoid this.  Today, I'm just going to write about some really simple ways to increase the amount of time that you have at your disposal.  None of these ideas will be ground-breaking, but maybe there's a few that you haven't considered before.

Be present in each moment

Okay, I cheated and kind of already mentioned this one.  Still, this is a really important part.  I picked this up when I first watched Marc Lesser giving a speech at Google called Accomplish More by Doing Less (you can watch that video here).  Marc is a quirky character that spent some time as a monk studying Zen habits in a monastery, before earning his MBA.  One of the key points he mentioned in his video was one of the fundamental concepts of Zen, which is to be present in each moment.

Being present in each moment isn't a complicated thing, but it isn't simple to accomplish.  It's simply a matter of taking yourself out of your headspace and being aware of how you are feeling.  Take a minute to reflect and ask yourself some of these questions:

  • What am I doing? 
  • How does it make me feel? 
  • Why do I feel that way? 
  • How might my actions currently be affecting other people?
The more often you take the time to account for how you are feeling and what you are doing, the more often you will become aware of the day as you are moving through it.  One of the easiest ways to burn through your time is to get caught up in something without coming up for air.  This doesn't always have to happen when you're having a stressful day at work - as the well-known maxim goes: Time flies when you're having fun.

Okay, I confess, this tip isn't really about creating more time, it's about appreciating the time that you do spend.

Improve your typing speed

Okay, this tip is specific to me, and people that spend a lot of their time in the same medium that I do (computers).  However, this specific case can be applied to yourself in a more general sense: Figure out ways to make the things you do frequently more efficient.

The aim is to find small things that add up over time.  I spend a lot of time writing e-mails, blog entries (these things aren't short!), chatting with people on MSN, and browsing the net.  Anything that I can do that will make these activities more efficient is going to gradually lead to more time for me.  Consider the following: The greater the amount of time that you spend doing X, the greater the benefit you will reap from a small improvement in your efficiency performing X.

Growing up, I learned quickly the benefit of memorizing the location of each key on the keyboard.  But I never moved past that.  I could type quickly using two fingers and a thumb from each hand, but I had to keep my gaze fixed squarely on the keyboard, and I made a hell of a racket when I was banging away.

After the first year in Computer Science at UVic, I realized how ridiculous it was for someone majoring in the studies of computers to be unable to type correctly.  I tracked down a copy of Mavis Beacon (a typing tutorial), and got to work.  At first, progress was slow and agonizing.  I would be chatting with friends on MSN, deliberately typing out each word, slowly, but correctly.  On an almost per-second basis, I would feel the urge to just hammer out the words the way that I knew how, but I maintained my discipline and stuck with it.

As a result, I can put together long essays, e-mails, win arguments on the internet, and chat with friends without my typing speed being an obstacle.  The content I create in those mediums has also improved - not directly because I am able to type faster and thus more, but because I can now forget about typing.  It is no longer an obstacle getting in the way of what I'm really setting out to do, which is to articulate thoughts.

Improving typing speed may seem like a small thing, but it's something from which I've reaped big rewards over time, simply due to the sheer quantity of time that I spend sitting in front of a computer (don't talk to me about carpal tunnel syndrome - I'm hoping it's just a fad that will blow over).

Write stuff down

Here's an easy one that leads to big rewards.

  1. Buy a small notebook and pen, and keep them on you at all times
  2. Whenever you have an idea, write it down
That's all you need to do to get more benefit from your time.  The more often you write ideas down, the more ideas you'll capture, and the more you will free up your mind from the burden of having to remember things.

The less time you have to spend remembering things in your head, the more time you will be able to spend thinking about how to solve problems you're currently dealing with, resolving issues that may arise somewhere down the line, planning out how you will spend the rest of your time, and just being present in the moment.

If it sounds too simple, or even trite, I can appreciate that.  If I hadn't iteratively moved towards this type of approach, I too would doubt its validity.  However, I can attest that simply lightening the load that is normally placed on our minds will do wonders for your ability to appreciate and make the most of your spare time.

The other thing that will come naturally out of writing things down is an enhanced sense of mindfulness.  When you force yourself to write down thoughts and ideas, and to make those ideas more concrete, you will naturally become much more aware of what it is that normally occupies your mind.  Maybe you start to realize that you have spent the last three of your breaks at work annoyed about how messy your office at home is.  Maybe you've been spending a lot of time thinking about how out of shape you are. 

Making the most out of your time doesn't mean have an abundance of time with which you do nothing.  It means spending your spare time in the way that will best lead to your happiness and sense of fulfillment.  Dealing with the things that are on your mind is how you accomplish this.  I guarantee that once you've cleaned that office up, you will no longer be wasting your time in a funk thinking about it.

Stop procrastinating

Again, this is trite right?  Procrastinating is a problem that many of us suffer through, but try as we might, cannot overcome.  While the subject of procrastination could really be an entire blog post unto itself, I can share quickly a few of the things that I use to avoid this beast.

One of the traps that I notice people run into with procrastination is that they don't really contemplate what it means to waste time avoiding doing the task that they know they need to accomplish.  Procrastination usually means the following:

  1. You need to accomplish task A
  2. Instead of accomplishing task A, you put it off, and instead do a mildly distracting task
  3. You waste three hours of time, then spend the rest of your time frantically trying to accomplish task A
This approach isn't rewarding, and you typically end up wasting your spare time without even realizing it.  During step 2, you are focused on the fact that you haven't yet finished task A.  Because your mind is occupied with this fact, you are unlikely to pick up a task that requires any mental investment, and so most of your time will be wasted doing something frivolous. 

Frivolous activities and pursuits are good.  In fact, they're essential.  However, you should make a point of consciously making the decision that you want to spend your time this way.  When you procrastinate, you let the task that you are avoiding dictate how you spend your spare time, and that's an excellent way to minimize what you get out of it.

When you have a task at hand that you don't want to get done, Focus on the other things that you want to accomplish today.  Focus on what you will not be able to do later if you procrastinate now.  Procrastination is typically so easy for us to do because we focus on the task that we do not want to do, but this is never how procrastinating works.  That undesirable task is typically something that has to be done anyhow, so by procrastinating you are simply delaying the inevitable.  The items that are optional and fun to do but require some mental effort, however, are the tasks that we actually prevent ourselves from ever getting to when we procrastinate.

Another tip I was given was taking a more systematic approach, which some people find preferable.  When you sit down at the start of your day to begin working (or sit down in the morning on a weekend to begin working on chores and projects), write out a timetable detailing how you plan to spend your time. Include breaks you'll take, time you'll spend making dinner, doing the dishes, having fun watching TV, etc.  Once you've done this, get to work.  Make a note of any time that you veer off your schedule, either because you procrastinated, or a task went longer than expected, or any other reason.  At the end, review your schedule and see how you did.

One of the things I like about this approach is that it forces you to do some reflection.  How realistic are you when determining how you'll spend your time?  Is it really honest that you put down that you would only watch thirty minutes of television?  The other thing that this approach provides you with is another way of seeing what you sacrifice when you procrastinate.  When you have everything written out on a schedule in front of you, it's pretty easy to see immediately what you are giving up by delaying on a given task.

Develop a system for tracking your tasks

This last one should come as absolutely no surprise to anyone at all that ever reads this blog.  I'm a big fan of staying on top of your tasks.  If making the most of your time means accomplishing more things that you want to do, I think a good system that enables you to do that is essential.

Although the systems that I've described using for myself have grown in complexity over time, a system that works for you does not need to be, and can literally be as simple as the tip I already mentioned (write stuff down!).  By keeping track of the ideas that you have and storing them in a meaningful way, you'll be able to stay on top of more things that you genuinely want to do.

Before I started to make an effort to capture ideas that I had (note: it's no longer an effort, it's simply become a natural part of my daily process), I would spend the majority of my evenings playing video games.  Playing video games are rad, no doubt, but even when I didn't want to do this, I would still fire up the Xbox and zone out for a couple of hours.

These days, when I want to play video games, I do so purposefully.  All I mean by that is that I make a mental decision that that is how I want to spend my time.  You see, before, I would play video games out of boredom.  My thought process would be "I don't know what I want to do, so I'll just play video games".  They're easy, they provide interactive entertainment, etc.

In aiming to accomplish more, we should strive to avoid doing things out of boredom.  We certainly want (and deserve!) moments when we take a step back, have a deep breath, and maybe just veg out on the couch.  But that's different from simply sitting around bored.  Being bored is the worst way to spend your time, because it means you're simply letting it slip away.

An effective system will allow you to capture ideas and tasks that you have, and give you something to look to as a reminder when you're not sure what else to do.  Having a system that works for you will let you review the thoughts you've had recently and determine if there's anything else you want to do before you decide that you'd really rather plunk down in front of the TV and relax.

Accomplish

So that's really it.  Some of these tasks are simple, like improving your typing speed, and some may requiring overcoming some inertia to start putting in motion.  However, whichever angle you decide to start on, think about the next steps, and ignore the nagging voice in the back of your head that tells you all of the reasons that you can't do something.  Determine what you want, figure out the next step, and then act on it.

Get out there and accomplish!

Inconsequential Update

By Adam Quiney on March 28, 2009 10:56 AM | 2 Comments
It's been a decent while since I've blogged.  Every time the spectre of a week passed without blogging raises its head, my mind goes to the many entries I've read stating that a good blog needs to be updated regularly.  Unfortunately, I'm just not geared that way.  I can appreciate that people that are paid to write professionally (even if only on a free-lance basis) need to be able to get the machine working and produce, but I don't enjoy writing when I'm not inspired.

In addition to inspiration, I need time to sit down, think about a concept, and then flesh it out before I can even begin to write about it.  In school I was absolutely one of those students that constantly got frustrated when a teacher taught us the correct way to go about writing an essay (brainstorm, overview, etc. etc.), I would follow that plan and get a poor grade, and then next time whip something up the night before and get a better grade.  Just like that, the negative behaviour was enforced.  Nevertheless, these days, with concepts that I consider reasonably complicated to write about, I find these techniques essential, and am glad that I at least paid attention in class, even if I didn't implement the lesson being taught at the time.

As far as normal life is concerned, things have been busy (aren't they always).  Taxes, chores, and taking on any additional extra work that naturally comes out of having a spouse in school full-time have all eaten into my spare time.  No spare time, no time for solitude and contemplation, no time for inspiration, no time for writing.

Beyond the day-to-day things, I've taken on a few new things in my spare time.  One of them is pursuing some volunteer work with the group that is putting on the West Coast Music Festival in Whistler this year.  This is a new festival, but one that I'm very excited about and would like to be a part of from the ground up.  I'm also still considering volunteering my time to aid in the management of our local Victoria Electronic Music Festival this summer, and so this is eating up some spare cycles as well.

Lastly, something new has come to fruition that I've been waiting on forever.  Last year I briefly took some hiphop dance classes, in the hopes that it would provide some inspiration for the styles of dancing that I really want to keep pursuing, which is popping and locking (and all the other funk styles under those umbrellas).  I liked the hiphop classes, but they weren't really what I wanted to be learning, and I just wasn't willing to sacrifice the time to do something I was only tangentially interested in.  However, Brooke (the owner of Vibestreet Dance, and a generally all-around cool girl) sent out a group e-mail recently that mentioned popping classes.  I couldn't believe it.  I've been waiting for over ten years to take a popping class in Victoria.  I'm not exaggerating - our urban dance scene is simply that weak on the island.

The classes start this Monday and will go for 6-7 weeks.  We'll see how things fare, and if I'm enjoying it, I'll sign up for more and keep going.

So, this entry has already digressed from my original topic related to work, so we'll switch this into a general update and I'll continue on this path.

I invited my friend Graham to join me, but he declined, suggesting that the class would be too basic.  While I think that he's correct (at least, as far as what he's willing to devote his time to), I'm comfortable with this fact.  My popping has been self-taught right from the beginning, aside from two workshops that I've taken.  The workshops have been fabulous, but you can only learn so much over the course of a day or two, and if there's one pattern I've noticed about progression and improvement, it's that you will forever be hampered if you don't start out with the right fundamentals.

I'm hoping that I can learn and crystallize some of the things that I've always advocated other people starting out learn, but have never been able to train myself to practice correctly, such as: Fresnos, Twist-o-Flexes, Correct isolation for various pops, and so on.

All of these are extremely important techniques from which you can improvise the rest of your dancing around.  When my friend Michi was initially starting out, I made a point of giving him feedback when he wasn't correctly carrying out these fundamentals, which in turn let him avoid the same mistakes and bad habits that have become engrained in my own dancing over the years.

My expectation is that I will be both incredibly frustrated, and incredibly enlightened.  The frustration comes from trying to unlearn the bad habits I've acquired and replace those with the correct techniques.  The enlightenment will come from the feeling of finally learning how to correctly apply these techniques and then to use them in later dances.

I was thinking this morning about why squash has really taken off for me, but dancing has not.  Dancing has always been a passion of mine, and even when I was in middle school, I had a yearning to learn how to dance, but no idea where I would actually go to take classes (too bad too - what a difference that early start would have made).  The conclusion I've come to is that for my interest in dancing to continue and stay strong, I need to find a culture for it.

When I first started dancing and practicing, it was just Graham and I.  We kept this up for a while, but grew weary of it.  Then I discovered raving.  The rave culture has plenty of very valid, very negative connotations associated with it, but the one truly positive one that I found was that good dancing was respected.  Bad dancing was also respected, unfortunately, but there was still an elite group of people that you would see time and again at these parties and that you would recognize and bust out with.

Once I outgrew the rave culture though, there was nothing less to spurn me onwards and keep me going at it.  I can go out to the bars now and then and find good DJ's to dance to, but there's nothing inherent in this situation that encourages someone to keep improving.  People at the bar like to see good dancing, but there's no need for me to improve beyond a certain point - the moves and routines that I was using ten years ago still earn praise, and so there's nothing driving me forward.

Does this sound silly?  Shouldn't you do something out of the sheer love you have for it?  Yes, to an extent.  But we are all humans, suffering from interest and passion that waxes and wanes.  Maybe it's just me, but if I want to keep up with something, I need a culture behind that to support it.

So, that's the other thing I'm really hoping I can discover with this dance class - a culture of other people that are interested in the same styles that I am, and that will imbue me with a desire to continue progressing.  Will it happen?  I don't know.  Sometimes these things occur serendipitously, without you being able to force them.  I'm not going to these classes expecting anything other than a starting point and a way to learn the fundamentals.  But, I'm going to keep my eyes open for further opportunities and new sources of inspiration.

Stay tuned - I've got at least one more entry planned for this weekend, this time to actually write about what I've had on my mind related to HR practices, and Monday night will likely have a new blog entry explaining the first popping class, so that should be an interesting read.

Shaw's optics

By Adam Quiney on February 19, 2009 8:21 AM | 2 Comments
I came into work today to see the following in my inbox:


We have good news for you. Shaw is committed to bringing you the very best products and services, and that includes the FASTEST Internet at the best value. As a result we are making significant upgrades to our network in your area which will allow us to increase your Shaw High-Speed Xtreme-I Internet download speed by 50%, from 10 Mbps to 15 Mbps! This will not affect your monthly cost for High-Speed Xtreme-I; your bill will remain exactly the same.

You will also continue to enjoy PowerBoost™, an extra burst of speed while downloading at no extra charge. The best part is you don't have to do a thing. It will all happen automatically.

Our network upgrades will take place over the next month. Once we have completed the upgrade in your area we will notify you by email to let you know.

What you will notice is how much faster you can download photos, videos and large files, giving you the best online experience. We hope that you enjoy the 50% download speed increase.



Immediately my skeptical hackles are up.  Why is Shaw doing this?  Is this just part of natural upgrades to their line, and it makes more sense to put in 15 Mbps capable cable instead of 10?  This note comes from internet.notifications@shaw.ca, which seems legitimate.  However, it just seems so unusual for a company to do something like this without any financial kickback beyond the optics and better perception it will generate for themselves.

In any case, it's nice to see some positive news related to a telecom company amidst the near-constant news items about secret fees, sneaky contract-changes, and general client-reaming.

New Meaning

By Adam Quiney on February 16, 2009 1:44 PM | No Comments
I liked Davin's most recent blog entry post, mostly due to the subjective nature of the title.  Simply on a whim, I'm going to add to this idea in the hopes that it creates a mini-meme amongst my group of friends.  If you've got a blog and you read this one, post something similar, along with a photo that you feel illustrates this notion to some extent.

potato_vodka.jpg
This is a picture of some Japanese potato liquor (not vodka though) that my hairdresser brought back from Japan for me as a Christmas gift (Eriko is very cool).  I wanted to quickly put together a photo that worked with the concept of new meaning in some manner, and so the elements here that I thought worked are foreign language and the juxtaposition of the incoming sun's rays with the blinds drawn against my window.

What does any of that actually mean?  I don't know, but I do know that I don't really want to analyze it either.  Sometimes it's okay just to like something for what it is.

The term new meaning currently has heaps of significance for me, to the extent that it would be futile to try and write about it while on a break at work.  Ideas for another time...
« Management | Main Index | Archives | Mobile »

Search

Mobile Update

Tag Cloud

Recent Comments

  • Adam: Yes! I agree. When I'm doing something ad hoc and read more
  • Davin Greenwell: I'm just about to re-familiarcize myself with Remember the Milk read more
  • Davin Greenwell: There is a lot to be said for down time, read more
  • Davin Greenwell: Ah yeah, it makes sense. AND it is a big read more
  • Graham: It's exciting to open new chapters in life like that. read more
  • Graham: Great video shares. Hilty and Bosch and 2 of my read more
  • Adam: @Davin - I totally agree with you. In squash, the read more
  • Davin Greenwell: Analysis paralysis is an easy trap to fall into. When read more
  • Davin Greenwell: Sounds like a useful course to me. Thanks for the read more
  • Adam: Blake - thanks for your comment. Although I felt that read more