I had a long break (relatively speaking) over the New Year. Lots of time to think, lots of time away from the computer. I don’t make New Year’s Resolutions as such but I did a lot of thinking on goals, direction, what makes me happy, how to spend limited time etc. I came up with a simple goal for this year:

Produce more, consume less.

Produce more what? Hold on a moment…. I’m having a flashback to Maths class where my teacher is shouting “5 what? Apples, oranges, monkeys?” after I wrote down an answer without units.

The answer is anything that makes a positive difference, great or small. So anything from web sites to blog posts, to email replies, to meaningful conversations with people I meet, to taking more photos. Consuming less means less RSS reading, to web site surfing. I don’t watch much TV any more because of the time it robs you of, but web site surfing is about the same. It seems more intellectually fulfilling, and depending on the sites or feeds you do learn stuff (A new fave is http://betterexplained.com/) but it is still pretty passive and requires a magnitude less effort. It isn’t a patch on actually doing stuff, actually creating stuff. So that’s what I am going to start doing.

I’m also going to  try out an experiment resulting from a quirky thought I had.  “What if the only application I used was Thunderbird (my email client)? So no web browsing.”  My guess is that I would reply to mails and stay in touch better with friends and family.  Once I set up email to blog posting and maybe some way of finding out the latest footie result without a web browser, I’ll give it a go for maybe 5 days (Mon-Fri) and see what happens.

Posted on January 7th, 2008 by Ian Cheung
Filed under: GTD | 2 Comments »

Here’s the video of the presentation I gave on Information Architecture at the Apple Store, Osaka.  You’ll need QuickTime to view it but most people who have iTunes installed should have QuickTime.  It is about an hour long and your comments are most welcome.

Information Architecture - How to improve your web site in 30 minutes by Ian Cheung

Posted on October 25th, 2007 by Ian Cheung
Filed under: Videos, Web Dev/IA | 4 Comments »

[If you attended please leave a comment below, good or bad. Tell me what you thought of it, what you liked or disliked about it or just a thumbs up or down]

I gave a presentation on Information Architecture earlier this week at the Apple Store in Shinsaibashi. It was the first time in ages I had presented to a large group. Here are my thoughts.

I enjoyed it, but the first 10-15 minutes I was more than a bit nervous. At one point my mind went totally blank! Garr had mentioned that it would be a strange feeling at first since the presenter is facing the audience and the bright backdrop of the store.

My greatest problem was remembering what slide came next. This meant that a couple of times I revealed the next slide too soon. On one occasion it meant that I had to skip a question to the audience because I had revealed the answer slide, and so I lost a small chunk of the presentation. This threw me off completely and was the reason my mind went blank a little later on.

There were a lot positives, at first it seemed that an hour would be hard to fill but I actually ran over and had to rush through the end part to squeeze the example sites and points in. I also enjoyed answering the intelligent questions at the end. The best thing wasn’t anything in my presentation but meeting the audience later and chatting with them at the store and nijikai. One of the audience members had actually met Joshua Bell and had a private lesson with him.

Things I would improve on the presentation are; the ending (it was a bit tame), connecting the dots on the whole process, and trying to remember which slide came next.

I was so nervous I forgot to thank everyone who helped. So big thank-yous to Garr and Stu for their help and advice, Rie for her patience the whole week before, Rie’s mum and dad for babysitting, and the staff at the Apple Store. The video of the presentation will be online sometime in the next couple of weeks. I’ll post a link here when it is. In the meantime, here are some links to things and sites I mentioned in the presentation:

Facebook (if you want to add me, my address is ianc [at] starconcepts.co.uk)

Oboeyasui.com (http://oboeyasui.com/ian is a list of all the online places you can find me)

WashingtonPost story: Pearls Before Breakfast (the full story about the not so ordinary busker)

Miss Teen South Carolina (with subtitles)

Zombo.com (if you have time, wait till the end and yes there is an end!)

Luminous Landscape

Osaka Public Transport Timetables

NeilKeegan.com

The Simple Dollar

Posted on September 23rd, 2007 by Ian Cheung
Filed under: Web Dev/IA | 6 Comments »

I wonder if anyone else has noticed but Amazon isn’t so cheap for books any more.  At least Amazon Japan.

I usually browse through books on Amazon and use the “Save for later” options.   This has the effect of telling me of price changes since I last logged on.  And prices have been going up in general.  New books that I add to the list show savings of a few percent (￥66 on a book costing around ￥3000) or with a lot of computer related books 0, zip, nada.

Maybe it is Amazon shifting focus from market share to profitability which is good but it might also loose mind-share too.  I spend way too much on books so maybe it is a blessing in disguise for my wallet. 

Posted on September 15th, 2007 by Ian Cheung
Filed under: Books | No Comments »

You know that you’re a geek when looking an air filter you notice that there are settings for 1, 4, and 8 hour cut-offs and you wonder where is 2? *ahem*

Posted on September 5th, 2007 by Ian Cheung
Filed under: Uncategorized | No Comments »