Year: 2005

Bonnie Nardi on the structure of invisible work

Lilia points to what looks to be an interesting piece on knowledge work
and visibility/invisibility. As she says, “more to read.”

And while I was searching for the right link for “It's just a matter of common sense”: Ethnography as invisible work by Diana Forsythe to add to my story I came across A web on the wind: The structure of invisible work by Bonnie Nardi and Yrjö Engeström, which is an editorial for the “invisible work” issue of Computer-Supported Cooperative Work.

Wonder how I could miss it – with all my interests in invisible work?

More to read 🙂

Advanced Bash Scripting Guide

If I ever get around to it, this might be useful

An in-depth exploration of the art of
shell scripting. A “must-have” guide for sys-admins, web-developers and
programmers working on Unix-like systems.

This tutorial assumes no
previous knowledge of scripting or programming, but progresses rapidly
toward an intermediate/advanced level of instruction . . . all the
while sneaking in little snippets of UNIX® wisdom and lore. It serves
as a textbook, a manual for self-study, and a reference and source of
knowledge on shell scripting techniques. The exercises and
heavily-commented examples invite active reader participation, under
the premise that the only way to really learn scripting is to write scripts.

Light blogging ahead – from snow to sand in 24 hours

One fringe benefit of living in Chicago is that one morning you can discover the following view outside your front door:

and 24 hours later be looking at the
following:

We are now enjoying a bit of Spring Break in Kauai including my first ever opportunity to share a golf course with free
range chickens:

Given my general level of golf skills, this was an appropriate venue.

We
also have a high speed internet connection in the condo we are staying
in, although I expect blogging will take a back seat to sun
and sand.

SendToAny – send any file to any app

Here’s a cool little hack that extends the utility of the “Send To…” command on context menus in Windows.
SendToAny synchronizes your Start Menu to the Send
To… menu so you can send any file to any application, regardless of the file association you might have set up on your
system.

So, if you want to open an RTF file in WordPad for example, rather than Word, you’d simply right click on the RTF file
and choose Send To… and navigate to WordPad in the Accessories menu.

This is really helpful on a Tablet PC when working with the pen as you can click-and-hold on any file, pop up the
context menu and open the files(s) in your preferred application.

SendToAny is donationware.

Mensa wordplay courtesy of John Dvorak

Courtesy of John Dvorak's blog. Some very clever wordplay.

Although I’ve never seen this printed in the Washinton Post it’s
called the The Washington Post Mensa Invitational. And once again it
supposedly asked readers to take any word from the dictionary, alter it
by adding, subtracting, or changing one letter, and supply a new
definition. The University of California Alumni Magazine does
somethihng similar to this every month, by the way, but has failed to
post it on the net for a decade. Maybe I’ll post a few of the better
ones myself.

Here are this year’s winners. None of them get through spellcheck.

1. Intaxication: Euphoria at getting a tax refund, which lasts until you realize it was your money to start with.

2. Reintarnation: Coming back to life as a hillbilly.

3. Bozone (n.): The substance surrounding stupid people that stops
bright ideas from penetrating. The bozone layer, unfortunately, shows
little sign of breaking down in the near future.

4. Foreploy: Any misrepresentation about yourself for the purpose of getting laid.

5. Cashtration (n.): The act of buying a house, which renders the subject financially impotent for an indefinite period.

6. Giraffiti: Vandalism spray-painted very, very high.

7. Sarchasm: The gulf between the author of sarcastic wit and the person who doesn’t get it.

8. Inoculatte: To take coffee intravenously when you are running late.

9. Hipatitis: Terminal coolness.

10. Osteopornosis: A degenerate disease. (This one got extra credit.)

11.
Karmageddon: It’s like, when everybody is sending off these bad vibes,
right? And then, like, the Earth explodes and it’s like, a serious
bummer.

12. Decafalon (n.): The grueling event of getting through the day consuming only things that are good for you.

13. Glibido: All talk and no action.

14. Dopeler effect: The tendency of stupid ideas to seem smarter when they come at you rapidly.

15. Arachnoleptic fit (n.): The frantic dance performed just after you’ve accidentally walked through a spider web.

16. Beelzebug (n.): Satan in the form of a mosquito, that gets into your bedroom at three in the morning and cannot be cast out.

17. Caterpallor (n.): The color you turn after finding half a worm in the fruit you’re eating.

And the pick of the literature:

18. Ignoranus: A person who’s both stupid and an asshole.

via B. Delaney

Productivity blog showdown

Without doubt, a false dichotomy, but this promises to be
entertaining at the very least. Any synthesis will be a helpful
contrast to the still all-too-prevalent notion that drudgery in and of
itself is good for the soul.

Like Frank, I start with a bias in favor of Fred's position as part of
my personal cursade to rid the world of busywork. It reminds me
of an incident during a college summer job over 30 years ago. I had
been hired as a “material accounting clerk” and my job was to spend
each day poring through three-inch thick stacks of greenbar computer
paper containing inventory control reports. I was looking for line
items with zero items in inventory but cost still on the books and
filling out forms to process write-offs. This was one of those seminal
moments that convinced me that I had no future in accounting.

For all that drudgery I could at least understand that this was a job
with some purpose. The incident that truly pissed me off was when my
supervisor handed me a handwritten sheet of numbers and asked me to
calculate the mean and standard deviation (with an adding machine and
slide rule). When I was done I brought the results to my supervisor and
asked what they were going to be used for. His response? He didn't need
the results for any purpose. He knew I was a statisics major and
figured I would enjoy doing the calculations just for fun! This was a
supervisor who believed in the virtue of work for its own sake and a
lesson to ask the right questions before doing what I was told.

Productivity Showdown, Day 1. Productivity Showdown, Day 1
— Is productivity rooted in intensity and effort or in laziness and
efficiency? Obviously a false dichotomy, but a potentially entertaining
one. To that end, Slacker Manager has organized a “blog showdown”
between proponents of each of the sides of the productivity coin.

“Welcome to Day 1 of a 3-day
'Productivity Blog Showdown.' If you're just joining us, here's the
quick background of what's going on. A few days ago, I noted that I'd
like to see a 'showdown' between two upcoming gurus of personal
productivity, Fred Gratzon and Steve Pavlina [who I've pointed to recently in my GTD mode – FP]. Both guys agreed to do the showdown, we collected some questions from readers, and here we are.”

I've got to get familiar with Grazton,
since throughout my career, I've always thought that the best
Industrial Engineer is a lazy Industrial Engineer, who ardently avoids
unnecessary work.

Efficiency is just politically correct laziness. (Laziness is the mother of efficiency?)

And productivity comes from applying efficiency to the things that need
to be done to achieve one's goals. And avoiding the things that don't
need to be done. There is no honor in putting in 12 hours a day if you
can get done what needs to be done in 10, or even 8.

I guess I know what side of the showdown I'm starting on. Let's see if Steve and Fred can turn the showdown into a synthesis. [Frank Patrick's Focused Performance Blog]