Well, I think the nursery is finished, at last. Walls, skirtings and cupboard painted, blinds and curtains installed, cot assembled. Now Karen’s just got to do her bit. ;-)
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Tag: personal
Insights into the private life of Ricky Robinson.
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Empathy Belly
Karen says I need to get one of these:
I’m not so sure.
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New York, NY
I’ve just returned from New York, where I was attending the PerCom 2007 conference in White Plains. The conference was okay. Some interesting papers on using RFID to do some clever things (one that I remember in particular was about using the weaknesses of RFID to do intrusion detection). This year, there were a few HCI type papers accepted, one of which was about interacting with wall-sized video panels. The PerWare and CoMoRea workshops ended with some fairly lively discussions, which is a sign for continued interest in those workshops. My presentations at CoMoRea went well, though I was totally out of it by the end of the second presentation due to a cold or flu which I picked up from somewhere and which I’m still recovering from. Next year’s PerCom will be held in Hong Kong.
I had the weekends on either side of the conference to explore Manhattan. It was the first time I’d visited New York, so there was a lot I wanted to do. My first notable experience of New York was the freezing cold temperatures and the snow. I happened to arrive on the day that a severe snow storm blanketed large parts of the north eastern United States to the extent that JFK, La Guardia and Newark were shut down. When my plane landed at JFK, they’d already grounded most other flights. I ended up sitting around the baggage carousel at JFK with my fellow passengers for more than an hour because – get this – the luggage bay doors had frozen shut. Then, once I’d retrieved my suitcase, I found myself waiting outside in -2° Celsius temperatures for another hour because there was a severe shortage of taxis. Presumably there was a shortage of cabs because outgoing flights had been grounded, which meant there were no passengers being dropped off by cabs, which meant there were no cabs to convey passengers from my flight. Eventually, it was my turn to jump into a cab, and boy, was I in for a wild ride…
As we drove along an expressway (probably Van Wyck) from JFK towards Manhattan, I noticed there were traffic accidents and bogged vehicles everywhere. The snow and sleet were causing absolute chaos on the roads. Little did I realise that the cab I was in was about to get sideways, too. We were driving along, and all of a sudden, the cab fishtailed and slid across three lanes of expressway towards the centre barrier. Unbelievably, at that moment, there were no cars to the left of us, so we avoided an accident on that count, but there was still the centre barrier to deal with. Somehow, at the last moment, the cab driver managed to straighten the vehicle, and narrowly avoided colliding with the barrier. I’m still not quite sure how he managed to pull it off without even grazing the barrier; I was sure that physics dictated the front left headlight would get smashed, but it was like the cab turned on a pivot at the last second, rather than doing a normal arc turn. At this point the driver said: “Whoah! Do you have your seatbelt on?” I put my seatbelt on as soon as I sat down in the cab!
All the way to my hotel on Central Park South, I was trying to put some life back into my poor frozen fingers by holding them in front of the heater in the back seat. I was glad to finally arrive at the hotel (after our little incident, the driver stayed below 50km/h for the rest of the trip, so it took a while) and retire to my nice warm room.
The next day (Saturday, March 17), I strolled (or rather, trudged) through Central Park, taking a round-a-bout trip to the Metropolitan Museum of Art. This gallery has a number of Vermeers, Rembrandts and Rubens, so it kept me amused for the rest of the day. Saturday was St Patricks day, and New York has a famous St Pat’s day parade, which I watched a fair bit of. Apparently it’s quite rare for the parade to take place on snow covered streets. As I was walking from 5th Avenue back towards my hotel after I’d watched the parade pass, a massive chunk of ice fell from some skyscraper into the street a few feet away from me with an almighty crash. All I can say is I’m glad nobody was underneath it (I’m especially glad I wasn’t underneath it), because that person would not have lived to see another St Patrick’s day. For the rest of the day I was looking up at the sky, watching for falling blocks of ice.
On Sunday, I checked out Bloomingdales and then walked to the UN building, which was closed to visitors, and then over to the Rockefeller Center and Times Square. I ended up going to the “Top of the Rock” (that is, the top of the Rockefeller Center), which had an amazing view of Manhattan and surrounding regions. After spending a bit of time browsing various shops, including the Sony shop at the bottom of the Sony Building, I headed back to the hotel to pick up my suitcase and laptop, then hauled everything 21 blocks to Grand Central Station where I caught the train to White Plains.
Upon returning to Manhattan the following Saturday, I went, with a new friend, Matthias, whom I met at the conference, to Battery Park to get a view of the Statue of Liberty. We walked along the Hudson to the World Financial Center and Ground Zero, the World Trade Center site. It’s unbelievable to think that there used to be two massive towers standing at this site, and although construction on some new buildings seems to be getting underway, there’s still a sadness hanging about the place, and I got a kind of eerie feeling while looking over the site. Matthias needed to fly back to Germany that day, so at 3pm or so, we started to head back to my hotel, where Matthias had left his bags for a few hours.
The next day I took a boat cruise around Manhattan Island, which was very worthwhile. There were some awesome views of the Manhattan skyline and the various bridges connecting Manhattan with New Jersey and Long Island. The guide was a fountain of knowledge about New York. Then I caught a 3 o’clock showing of the Broadway musical The Producers, which was hilarious.
On Monday, I took the subway downtown to Wall Street to photograph the New York Stock Exchange and some other buildings. Trinity Church, between Trinity Place and Broadway at Wall Street, is a beautiful building in the neo-Gothic style (at least, I’d say it’s neo-Gothic from what little I know about architecture). Then I headed back uptown to the Museum of Modern Art, to while away the final hours of my New York trip. I’m not the hugest fan of most kinds of modern art. I dig many of Cézanne’s paintings and a lot of Picasso’s work, but I fail to appreciate anything as abstract as a Pollock or a Mondrian. I was hoping that seeing some of the paintings by Pollock, Mondrian and company up close would give me a new perspective; but, alas, they still didn’t do anything for me. Nevertheless, it was well worth the $20 entrance fee.
One of the highlights of a trip to New York is the food, from the street vendors to the delis to the upmarket restaurants. My modest travel budget didn’t allow me to try any cuisine from the last category, but I did sample the sidewalk fare. One subtly interesting fact is that a large proportion of the street vendors use halal meat, while some of the others are kosher. This was good news for me, as I still refrain from eating pork. In Australia, you might, if you’re lucky, find chicken-based hotdogs at Woolworths or Coles; but from what I hear, they’re a pretty poor substitute for the real thing. Meanwhile, New Yorkers seem to devour these halal hotdogs by the truck-load. I ate at a few different burger joints (Burger Heaven was great), and dined at a few delis. I also tried the Italian restaurant across the street from where I was staying for my second weekend in New York: good food, good wine, good service.
I had a good time in New York. I was a bit wasted during the second half of the trip due to the stupid ailment I picked up, but other than that it was a blast. Really glad to be back home though!
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How to Get Things Done
After a recommendation from Rhys, I read David Allen’s How to Get Things Done (called Getting Things Done (GTD) in the USA and elsewhere). I’d heard of GTD in various places such as 43 Folders and Tim Mansfield’s blog, and I’m positive that Ben mentioned it to me some years ago, but for one reason or another I’d never really taken much notice of it. This time I decided to follow up on my curiosity, and I’m pleased that I did. Don’t let David Allen’s sometimes clumsy explanations or his annoying and frequent use of the word “psychic” deter you from reading his book; at its core, How to Get Things Done offers a powerful way to make progress on all those jobs, large and small, that you need to complete. In this blog post I’m just going to explain the parts of the book that I’m already putting into action, and I’ll assume that the reader has some familiarity with GTD.
Collecting
I have three inboxes. There’s an inbox for physical stuff like forms, reading material and so forth sitting on my desk at work. There’s my e-mail inbox, and then there’s my brain dump inbox which is the voice memo recorder on my mobile phone, which has been getting a very good workout lately. Often, I’ll think of something that needs doing while I’m on the run. The quickest way to capture those thoughts is simply to speak it into my phone after pressing a single button. I’m attempting to implement the collection phase just as the book sets out, so I won’t write any more about it here.
Processing and Organizing
The stuff in my physical inbox gets processed exactly the way the book sets out. The way I process my e-mail is slightly different to the book. Although it’s not specifically mentioned in the book, it seems there’s an assumption that any e-mail filtering rules are disabled, so that you’re forced to look at and process all the mail coming into your inbox, determining whether it’s junk to be discarded, whether it’s actionable or whether it’s reference material or support material for a current project. I’ve disabled all my e-mail filters, and I’ve set up the following folders:
- [Assignment Support] for e-mail that relates to an ongoing project (what David Allen calls “projects”, I call “assignments”, simply because the word “project” has a specific meaning within my workplace). An assignment is any task that requires more than one action to complete it;
- [References] for e-mail that contains longer-term reference information that might be useful in the future;
- [Requires Response] for any e-mail that requires a response to be written which cannot be dealt with immediately, either because it will take longer than two minutes, or because more information is needed before I can respond;
- [To Read], which contains long e-mails or e-mails with attachments which can’t be processed immediately; and
- [Waiting For], which temporarily holds e-mails that I’m waiting for a reply for, or which contain instructions for someone else to carry out some actions.
The first two folders contain sub-folders which are used to store e-mail for particular assignments (in the case of [Assignment Support]) or which relate to specific topics (in the case of [References]). I no longer have a “Sent” folder. E-mails I send appear in my inbox. This forces me to make a decision immediately as to whether the e-mail I’ve just sent can be deleted, or whether it should be moved to one of the above folders. At work, I use Outlook for e-mail. It’s not my favourite e-mail application by a long shot, but for various reasons I am using it at work (although I might soon be using Entourage – more on that later). E-mail that comes into my inbox which is actionable at a specific time or on a particular day gets dragged over to the Outlook calendar. Any actions arising from e-mail that must be done at some point, but not necessarily at a specific time gets dragged over to the Task list in Outlook. No task in the Task list has a reminder set. It’s simply a list of Next Actions that need doing at some point. I prepend each task in the list with a context such as “Home”, “Work”, “Shops” etc. Of course, any actions deriving from things in my physical inbox get put in my calendar or task list also. It usually takes no more than five minutes each morning to convert the voice memos, mentioned above, into next actions and/or projects. If the thought I have relates to something that needs to be done at a specific time before 9am the next day, then I take the time to put the action into the calendar on my phone so I’m reminded at the appropriate time. After converting the voice memos to actions etc., I synch my phone calendar and task list to the one in Outlook at the beginning and end of each day. Notice that my phone is being used only for collection and for reminders. Under normal circumstances, I do not directly enter actions or projects into my phone: it’s too slow and cumbersome using T9 to create calendar entries and tasks while I’m on the run. The one-button press voice memos, on the other hand, they work a treat!
In addition to the e-mail folders, I have organised much of the material on my computer into various directories with similar names to those above.
I’ve gathered all my physical papers and other stuff and organised them into labelled manilla folders. Then I store the folders in alphabetical order in my filing cabinet at work. I shouldn’t really have been surprised at how much faster I can find things now. I’m also in the processing of establishing a tickler file at home and at work for organising physical things which I’ll need at a particular date in the future (bills that must be paid, plane tickets, football tickets and so on). The tickler file is so simple, but I reckon it’s a veritable stroke of genius.
Assignments (projects) get listed on a private web page I can access from work or home. Generally this page only gets looked at and updated once or twice a week, so it’s not something I have to carry with me everywhere I go.
Reviewing
I am trying to institute a weekly review, whereby I gather any open loops (stuff) and then process it according to the above procedure. I remove any completed assignments and create new ones if need be. One of the things I like about GTD is that the whole thing is a bottom-up process. Assignments are created primarily because you’ve decided something needs to be done, and to get it done will take more than one action. The assignment is really just a marker that stays in the Assignment list until all the dependent actions are completed. This contrasts to typical project management techniques where you identify the project first, then try to break it down into sub-tasks. With GTD, it sometimes happens like this, too. But most of the time it’s the other way around.
Doing
Then there’s actually doing the actions you’ve identified. Hopefully, if I’ve got the above phases sorted, the doing just happens. David Allen’s book sets out some ideas for choosing which action to complete at any particular point in time. The calendar and the Next Actions list organised by context makes the decision much easier.
The subtitle of the book is The Art of Stress-Free Productivity. Initially, attempting to implement GTD will probably cause you more stress. A key theory of GTD is that getting everything out of your head and putting it in a trusted system will enable you to relax and focus on completing the task you have in front of you. The problem is, in the beginning, it’s very difficult to trust the new system you’ve implemented, and you worry about whether you’ve collected all your open loops and whether you will remember to review your lists and so on. It’s easier to “trust” the faulty system of keeping everything in your head; it seems more comfortable even though you know it’s flawed. After a few weeks of GTD, though, it becomes much easier to trust the system, and you do begin to feel less stressed and more productive. I’ve still got a long way to go, though.
RickyRobinson.id.au has served as my personal website for many years now, although I think that it has been rather usurped by The Thin Line in recent times. To address this concern, RickyRobinson.id.au will now serve as my professional website, documenting my research and listing my publications. The Thin Line weblog will now be the place to find anything to do with my personal life, although I’m still wondering whether to host photos on this weblog or to upload them to Flickr. RickyRobinson.id.au has been given a facelift to coincide with this separation of professional and personal content. I hope you like its new look.
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More books
Karen and I went to Sunnybank to watch Charlotte’s Web today. I was glad to find we weren’t the only adults in the cinema. Not a bad movie at all. Hearing Steve Buscemi do the voice of Templeton the rat was worth it alone. After the movie we had lunch at the impressive Landmark Chinese restuarant which is just outside the shopping complex. It does yum cha every day. It has a very nice interior, and it seems extremely popular, particularly with the local Chinese community.
While we were at Sunnybank, I used the voucher my brother gave me for Christmas to buy Animal Farm and a book called How to Get Things Done, by David Allen. The second book was recommended by my friend Rhys, whom I saw at our annual UQIT2K Christmas gathering (UQIT2K being the name of the mailing list we set up after we graduated from ITEE at UQ in 2000). I figure I need to get a bit more organised. After taking an official Myers-Briggs test at the NICTA retreat, I found out that I’m an ENTP. I’m only marginally ‘E’. I used to be an ‘I’, and my personality is only E-like at work. I’m definitely ‘N’, ‘T’ and ‘P’. The ‘P’ means I’m laissez faire, disorganised and a bit chaotic. While the laid back thing is good, I’d like to organise some aspects of my life a bit better, which will hopefully give me more time to do more stuff, such as reading all those books I still have to read!
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My Christmas haul
I already mentioned that I was given the book Nineteen Eighty-Four for Christmas (by my parents-in-law). I’m enjoying it much more this time around than when I read it for the first time sometime during my teens. Karen bought me the new U2 CD, U218 Singles. It’s a compilation of U2’s greatest hits, plus two new singles. She also got me a nice pair of Jensen headphones to replace the dodgy ones I have at work. Mum got me some clothes (I was hanging out for a new pair of shorts – I’m utterly hopeless at buying new clothes when I need to, though my Mum and Karen are trying to correct that flaw), Dad got me a 2007-2008 calendar of Italy, which I’ll hang in my office space at work, and Nigel got me some chocolates and an Angus and Robertson book voucher. I’ll probably spend the book voucher on The Road to Serfdom, Capitalism and Freedom or Animal Farm. Karen and I also bought ourselves some goodies, such as the Canon MVX430 video camera.
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Canon MVX430
Yesterday, in the post-Christmas sales, Karen and I bought a Canon MVX430 video camera. We’d been saying for a while that we should invest in a video camera to take on holidays etc. After reading all the reviews, deciding we didn’t need an absolute top-of-the-line camera and agreeing that we didn’t want to spend more than $1000, we came to the conclusion that the Canon Elura 100 would be perfect for us. The respected camcorder.info website rated the Elura 100 the best video camera in any class for 2006. But it turns out that the Elura is not sold in Australia, at least not under that name. After doing some specification comparisons, I realised that the MVX430 and the Elura 100 were the same, except that the Elura 100 has 20x optical zoom as compared to 18x for the MVX430. The digital zoom also differs between the two. And of course, the MVX430 is PAL-based whereas the Elura 100 is NTSC-based. My suspicions were confirmed by a discussion on the camcorder.info bulletin board. There is a camera being sold in the UK called the MVX460 which is more-or-less an exact match of the Elura. For some reason it isn’t being sold in Australia. Anyway, we ended up getting the MVX430 for $679 from JB-HiFi, who were good enough to match Myer’s sale price. That’s more than $100 less than the RRP. I’ll be getting a further $75 back from Canon when I claim the Christmas cashback offer.
My poor computer has begun its decline towards the scrapheap (or recycling heap, that is). One of the fans has gone, and it isn’t a part that can be replaced any more, such is the pace of change these days. Furthermore, neither Karen’s nor my own computer supports firewire (or USB 2.0 for that matter) meaning we can’t transfer any video footage from our new camera to the computer. My ancient computer monitor, which predates my current computer, died a couple of months ago. That has since been replaced with a sexy Dell 20-inch widescreen LCD monitor. No sooner had I replaced my monitor than the trouble with the fan began. Anyway, it looks like you can put together a very decent box for little cost these days. Another alternative might be to buy a PCI firewire card for my current computer, but that depends on how long my PC is likely to last without the deceased fan (which I believe is for the onboard video). We’ll see.
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Cairns
We had intended to go to Cairns sometime just before Christmas, but Karen had to present a paper in Cairns on Tuesday so we decided to take our leave a bit early. We headed up to Port Douglas last Friday night straight after work and stayed there for three nights before returning to Cairns for another two nights.
While we were at Port Douglas we took a boat ride out to Low Isles. Absolutely beautiful. Saw heaps of green turtles while we were there. The tour operators, Quicksilver, were first class, and genuinely friendly. They had to deal with a whole bunch of people throwing up on the way out and on the way back. The seas were very choppy and we were in a largish sailing boat. The crew suggested that anyone who tends to get sea sick should take some preventative tablets (which they made freely available). I guess it didn’t work for some people. I don’t imagine that sea-sickness turned many people off their lunch, which was included, because it was mouthwateringly brilliant: prawns, chicken and a variety of salads.
On Sunday we saw the Daintree, Daintree River and Cape Tribulation with Billy Tea Bush Safaris. Again, it was wonderful. We spent a good part of the day cruising around in a big Landcruiser with ten others plus the driver. We saw some smallish saltwater crocodiles on our Daintree River cruise. The smallest was about 20cm long! Our boat driver, Bill Smith, was a real funny bloke, and he had eyes like a hawk. Unfortunately we didn’t spot any cassowaries in the Daintree Rainforest. I went for a swim in Emmagen Creek with some of the other people on our tour. Cape Tribulation was a very idyllic looking place, with its secluded beach and gentle waves.
Monday was spent walking around the town of Port Douglas. We walked up to the lookout for a nice view of the beach. Wouldn’t mind buying one of the houses up there on that hill! On Monday afternoon we caught the bus back to Cairns.
On Tuesday I walked Karen to the Cairns City Council building where she had to give a presentation to various government types. Then I headed off to Kuranda on the Skyrail cableway. The Skyrail was impressive in that it was a fairly long ride with two changeovers in the middle. At each changeover, you can do a five minute bushwalk through the Barron River Gorge rainforest. I had a cable car all to myself for the entire journey. Kuranda itself was pleasant, but extremely touristy. I checked out the markets and went for a couple of bushwalks through the rainforest. The train ride back to Cairns on the Kuranda Scenic Rail afforded some nice views of Barron River Gorge. Karen and I had dinner on the Esplanade.
We spent Wednesday wandering around Cairns. We checked out the main shopping centre. We got back home at around 8pm on Wednesday night. A nice holiday, and Karen’s presentation was very successful.
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Gondola Cruise
Last night Karen and I took a gondola cruise up the Nerang River and through some Gold Coast canals. This was part of a wedding gift given to us by my friends. The cruise included dinner, and it lasted about 1.5 hours. It was magical. Instead of giving a detailed account of where the gondola went, what we saw and what we ate, I’m just going to recommend that you go and do it some time, if you haven’t already. Thanks once again to everyone who contributed to this gift; we really loved it!