In the Twittersphere for London, Ontario there has been a trend recently to change what we use as a hashtag, or label, to identify tweets pertaining to our City and area. For years now I have been using #LdnOnt as the hashtag for London. As you can guess, simply using #London is often confused with London England and searching on that hashtag brings up both resident's tweets. Recently, there has been an influx of competing hashtags, such as the current favourite #yxu. Primarily, I see no reason to change my tried and true hashtag but let's see why I don't like #yxu.
Why is #yxu a bad Label? It is Cryptic, Elitist, and Immemorable.
It is Cryptic because it is nonsense. The letters do not stand for anything at all and you can not decipher its meaning by simply looking at it or cross-referencing it to any knowledge of London aside from it's actual precise representation. So in other words, the only way to understand what it is, is to look it up and even then, it means nothing more than a code for London's Airport.
It is Elitist because if you do not know we are all using it, you would likely not intuit to use it. My argument for this? How many people in London actually fly in or out of our Airport? I've lived here for 6 years and have flown to British Columbia twice and don't even know where our airport is, let alone the code, I fly out of Pearson. I have flown out of the Powell River airport twice and have no earthly idea what it's airport code is. Nor do I know the airport codes for Prince George or Orillia where I also resided for a number of years.
Ask yourself if someone in Hamilton or Chatham would think to look for London tweets by our airport code? What about someone in Somalia? I understand some major Canadian cities are using their codes, namely Vancouver and Toronto, but let's face it guys, those are two of the busiest International airports in all of Canada. London is not. So the way you'll know how to find our tweets is if... you already know the password into our elite club.
It is Immemorable because it is nonsense! There is no mnemonic property at all to #yxu or any other airport code aside from pure coincidence. For example, nearly every time I fly to Vancouver and decide to use the airport code at booking I have to double-check whether YVR or YYZ is Vancouver or Toronto - and that one even has a coincidental mnemonic in it (YVR has VR for VancouveR) but I start wondering, "or was it the opposite of what makes sense." You see I can get doubtful because I know YYZ means nothing. I know YXU means nothing. How am I to remember them other than through sheer repetition?
In my opinion a good label, a good index, a good way for people to find each other is not something they have to learn. It isn't something WE have to learn to use and memorize. It is whatever comes naturally, whatever makes sense, and whatever means something. #ldnont isn't perfect, but it at least means something when you read it.
Showing posts with label personal. Show all posts
Showing posts with label personal. Show all posts
Wednesday, September 22, 2010
Friday, March 19, 2010
Disturbing New Images
I tweaked my sidebar with a fun but pointless and potentially disturbing-looking little widget.
Further I signed up for http://www.formspring.me/Oathbreaker so that you can now ask me for all the disturbing imagery that your minds can think to ask for. If you want to break down my candy coating (because I come across as such a fuzzy, nice guy I'm sure) then here is the hammer to do it.
Apparently, Alice in Wonderland is chalk full of disturbing images in the classical Tim Burton sense. Hopefully I will get a chance to see what my fellow Tim has been up to on the big screen soon. Have you seen it? Tell me what you think in the comments!
Further I signed up for http://www.formspring.me/Oathbreaker so that you can now ask me for all the disturbing imagery that your minds can think to ask for. If you want to break down my candy coating (because I come across as such a fuzzy, nice guy I'm sure) then here is the hammer to do it.
Apparently, Alice in Wonderland is chalk full of disturbing images in the classical Tim Burton sense. Hopefully I will get a chance to see what my fellow Tim has been up to on the big screen soon. Have you seen it? Tell me what you think in the comments!
Tuesday, February 2, 2010
February 1, Deuce-Aught-Ace-Aught - Breaking News
For some damn reason I am sporting a scruffy goatee again, as in my glamour shot in the sidebar.
I can't say how long it will last but it seems a few weeks may be in store for those around me.
Also, don't miss the LOST finale season premiere tonight, 9pm EST. I'm afraid you may have to endure a LOST post or two upcoming. It's moments like these I wish I had that whole Hi-Def fad covered.
My final revelation is that Black House so far is a heck of a riveting book... half Talisman, half crime thriller, with a dash of Dark Tower mystique.
I can't say how long it will last but it seems a few weeks may be in store for those around me.
Also, don't miss the LOST finale season premiere tonight, 9pm EST. I'm afraid you may have to endure a LOST post or two upcoming. It's moments like these I wish I had that whole Hi-Def fad covered.
My final revelation is that Black House so far is a heck of a riveting book... half Talisman, half crime thriller, with a dash of Dark Tower mystique.
Wednesday, December 9, 2009
What I'm doing
I've been chipping away at Bram Stoker's Dracula, which I picked up at the used book store for a couple bucks. I didn't realize it was written in the form of recorded letters, journal entries, and newspaper clippings. What's weird is that it reminds me in parts very heavily of Salem's Lot (which I read right before this) and I have to continually remind myself the chicken came before the egg in this case.
Overall it is very engaging so far considering it is a bit passively written.
In other news my work instituted an enterprise wide collaboration system with Blogs, Wiki-like capabilities, groups, and projects. A lot of my creative juice has gone there instead of here in an effort to kick start the site and hopefully build a readership amongst my colleagues and maybe even some influence on real decisions. It's been weird writing only expositions on work-centric themes but a good challenge. I'm really thinking of taking the Intro to Non-fiction Continuing Studies course in the fall because of this.
Finally, I just wanted to take the time to thank Zaynab for giving me the guts to rename my blog, I really am happier with it this way even if I did lose all my comments! Woo, my comments are back!
Overall it is very engaging so far considering it is a bit passively written.
In other news my work instituted an enterprise wide collaboration system with Blogs, Wiki-like capabilities, groups, and projects. A lot of my creative juice has gone there instead of here in an effort to kick start the site and hopefully build a readership amongst my colleagues and maybe even some influence on real decisions. It's been weird writing only expositions on work-centric themes but a good challenge. I'm really thinking of taking the Intro to Non-fiction Continuing Studies course in the fall because of this.
Finally, I just wanted to take the time to thank Zaynab for giving me the guts to rename my blog, I really am happier with it this way even if I did lose all my comments! Woo, my comments are back!
Monday, November 23, 2009
Weekends Wasted and the Challenge to Fail
Another weekend come and gone. I am always so excited for the weekend to get here only to spend it entirely camped out in front of my computer or my XBOX or sleeping in to make up for my self-destructive weekly habits. Sometimes it seems I spend my whole life looking forward to being disappointed.
But don't we all? We look forward to movie releases, book releases, game launches, TV Shows, holidays, vacations, family events, seasons, weekends, classes, trips, finishing things, starting things, buying things, meeting people, being rid of people, and accomplishing something.
Look at how much life we miss out on in the meantime! Not to mention many of those activities end up being less exciting or fulfilling than we imagined. But some of them do, some of them are completely fulfilling, and these always involve great loves or great people.
By all means look forward to that writing class in which you will be enriched by other people's passions or look forward to that turkey dinner with the family where your love banks will be recharged. Look forward to making music or poetry or playing sports; look forward to whatever you are passionate about.
But please don't just look forward to them, actually do them. Are you looking forward to seeing your sister next month? Call her! Are you looking forward to learning guitar? Play! Are you looking forward to meeting someone? Go out and look (or talk)! Are you looking forward to being in shape? Work out!
That is sometimes hard enough to do for the little things but what about the giant ones like pursuing your dreams, taking risks, and trying something new?
This concept has played in the lives of generations of people. Most of us are held back because we are afraid of failure and rejection. We have the misconception that if we do not succeed immediately we are failures and that is somehow a bad thing. I've got news for you; humans are fail machines. We are designed to fail at something until we get it right. If you are not failing at something new, then you are doing it wrong. Sure you learn a bit from success, but you learn so much more from failure.
Whatever you do, don't hide at home behind your hopes and dreams, venture forth and fail!
Thursday, November 5, 2009
The Time-slice Paradox
One thing that I do not excel at is so-called Time Management. The bare truth of the matter is that I simply don't "get it". Perhaps it is a function of my preternatural obsession with the literal defintion of the namesake I carry (Shirk), or merely a learned behaviour unwittingly harvested from a bout of debilitating depression as a teenager.
Often lauded as key in Time Managment is Multitasking. This is a term often thrown at me in the context of what I do poorly, as if an evolved human adult should inherently be able to do it well. The term itself comes into the popular lexicon through computing and the famously multitasking processors in our home computers. It is implied through it's popular use, and idiomatic use in self-management circles, to mean the ability to and act of performing more than one task at a time. This is utter nonsense.
In computing, with the exception of multi-core processors, multitasking never entails two processes having control of the main processor core at one moment, but rather it is the ability and act of priority switching between them. Even in multi-core processors the trick is that there is more than one processor core available! If you equate a cpu core to the human brain - which I might point out we have only one of - it is clear Multitasking really means, the ability to juggle multiple tasks based on priority, focusing on only one at a time.
Given this better definition of Multitasking I contend I am actually pretty decent at it. Where I fail is in judgements involving relative priority and efficient use of focus length. In the first case, priority is highly relative and subjective. Nine out of ten times my problem is in not using another persons relative priority matrix but instead using my own. Since I am a selfish, egoistic being, this is fraught with hazards. So fair enough, I'm basically a newb at applying an understanding of what other people find important. Luckily I am lately able to get pretty close as I build a secondary internal matrix of 'common priorites' such as timeliness of arrival (people hate it when you are late or make them so), fullfillment of promises (if you say it, do it, and not late, see #1), observance of details (do everything you said you would neglecting nary a detail), and added value (only if you've done the other three).
My main challenge is in efficiently determining how long to focus on any one task. My nature is one of the artisan, focusing intently on one work of art until it is completed then moving to the next. I am not a slave to this nature and do juggle mutiple tasks at once but I'm all to often stuck focus-firing one item down until I've long past the time where my priority matrix should dictate I switch targets. This is where I encounter the Time-slice Paradox.
In my personal life I have many, many pulls on my time, such as, cleaning, laundry, organizing, planning, preparing, gaming (oh so many games), reading, writing, exercising, cat time, sleep time, friends time, travel time, etc. Any number of these things feeds into two factors in regards to my feelings towards a given day, 1) my sense of personal effectiveness and 2) my sense of accomplishment. The Time-slice Paradox is essentially the Heisenburg Uncertainty Principle of life management. The more clear I am about 1) the less sure I am about 2) and the reverse.
On a day where I return from work and perform 1 hour of each cleaning, reading, writing, eating, XBOX and PC I will feel a very high sense of personal effectiveness but will feel like I accomplished very little in any of them. On a day where I come home and spend no more than an hour on cleaning/eating and spend 5 hours playing a game on XBOX, I will feel I have accomplished a great deal on that game, but been fairly ineffective overall, wasting most of my time on one thing.
Perhaps this is only something that effects me, a result maybe of my own skewed sense of accomplishment, but it no doubt plays into all my Time Management woes, confusing my ability to rationalize the proper size of time-slices to use in my multitasking. Considering I am lagging on writing assignments, slacking on blog posts, slumming in a chaotic apartment, starting to watch 2 new TV series, and sitting on 4 or 5 new games... this is going to be one heck of a paradoxical month.
Often lauded as key in Time Managment is Multitasking. This is a term often thrown at me in the context of what I do poorly, as if an evolved human adult should inherently be able to do it well. The term itself comes into the popular lexicon through computing and the famously multitasking processors in our home computers. It is implied through it's popular use, and idiomatic use in self-management circles, to mean the ability to and act of performing more than one task at a time. This is utter nonsense.
In computing, with the exception of multi-core processors, multitasking never entails two processes having control of the main processor core at one moment, but rather it is the ability and act of priority switching between them. Even in multi-core processors the trick is that there is more than one processor core available! If you equate a cpu core to the human brain - which I might point out we have only one of - it is clear Multitasking really means, the ability to juggle multiple tasks based on priority, focusing on only one at a time.
Given this better definition of Multitasking I contend I am actually pretty decent at it. Where I fail is in judgements involving relative priority and efficient use of focus length. In the first case, priority is highly relative and subjective. Nine out of ten times my problem is in not using another persons relative priority matrix but instead using my own. Since I am a selfish, egoistic being, this is fraught with hazards. So fair enough, I'm basically a newb at applying an understanding of what other people find important. Luckily I am lately able to get pretty close as I build a secondary internal matrix of 'common priorites' such as timeliness of arrival (people hate it when you are late or make them so), fullfillment of promises (if you say it, do it, and not late, see #1), observance of details (do everything you said you would neglecting nary a detail), and added value (only if you've done the other three).
My main challenge is in efficiently determining how long to focus on any one task. My nature is one of the artisan, focusing intently on one work of art until it is completed then moving to the next. I am not a slave to this nature and do juggle mutiple tasks at once but I'm all to often stuck focus-firing one item down until I've long past the time where my priority matrix should dictate I switch targets. This is where I encounter the Time-slice Paradox.
In my personal life I have many, many pulls on my time, such as, cleaning, laundry, organizing, planning, preparing, gaming (oh so many games), reading, writing, exercising, cat time, sleep time, friends time, travel time, etc. Any number of these things feeds into two factors in regards to my feelings towards a given day, 1) my sense of personal effectiveness and 2) my sense of accomplishment. The Time-slice Paradox is essentially the Heisenburg Uncertainty Principle of life management. The more clear I am about 1) the less sure I am about 2) and the reverse.
On a day where I return from work and perform 1 hour of each cleaning, reading, writing, eating, XBOX and PC I will feel a very high sense of personal effectiveness but will feel like I accomplished very little in any of them. On a day where I come home and spend no more than an hour on cleaning/eating and spend 5 hours playing a game on XBOX, I will feel I have accomplished a great deal on that game, but been fairly ineffective overall, wasting most of my time on one thing.
Perhaps this is only something that effects me, a result maybe of my own skewed sense of accomplishment, but it no doubt plays into all my Time Management woes, confusing my ability to rationalize the proper size of time-slices to use in my multitasking. Considering I am lagging on writing assignments, slacking on blog posts, slumming in a chaotic apartment, starting to watch 2 new TV series, and sitting on 4 or 5 new games... this is going to be one heck of a paradoxical month.
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