Graham Chastney

I’ve been trying out a new tool recently – the Windows Vista Snipping Tool.For most of what I do it’s a direct replacement for Jing. Jing does a whole load more than the Snipping Tool – it’s just that I don’t use those other features very often.

Having said that, there are a few difference between them even for a basic user like me:

• The Snipping Tools starts a lot faster than Jing on my device.
• Jing provides more sophisticated annotation capabilities – these include text and arrows, whereas the snipping tool is just highlighting and freehand drawing. I don’t often annotate.
• Jing provides a mechanism for capturing menu’s – something I’ve been unable to find in the Snipping Tool. Something i often want to do.
• Jing runs all of the time – but you have to start the Snipping Tool each time you want to use it. This is both a positive and a negative thing. i don’t do that many captures so don;t really want something running all of the time.
• They are both free – if you have Windows Vista.

An introductory video from Microsoft:

Windows Vista Demo: Snipping Tool

I am struggling with a system today that is going slow. It’s nothing unusual this particular system is always slow, or at least I perceive it to be slow. In other words, it works slower that I would like it to – but worse than that, it works slower than my attention can sustain.

I’m now multi-tasking – I’m writing this in the seconds in-between this particular system responding. I’ve lost attention on my primary task, which is to interact with the slow system and I’ve moved onto a secondary task; writing this blog.

Everyone should know that multi-tasking is not the most efficient way of doing anything, but I’ve fallen into the trap and my attention has now completely gone. It happens like this:

• Interact with system – click.
• Wait a few seconds.
• Interact with system again – click.
• Wait a few seconds – get bored, check Twitter.
• System is now waiting for me to finish on Twitter.
• Interact with system again – click.
• Wait for no seconds – already expect a delay, check FeedDemon for updates, see an interesting one, read it.
• System is now waiting for me to finish on FeedDemon.
• I notice system has come back – take a few seconds to remember what the next step was.
• Interact with system again – click.
• Wait for no seconds again, start to write post, also try to keep an eye on the system coming back but I’m not very good at it. Now only writing blog post because I can do that without any waits or interruptions. Not doing blog writing particularly well either.
• Look back at the system after several minutes, notice that it has come back. It’s probably been waiting for minutes but my attention is completely gone.
• Realise that I’m not doing what I should be doing so agree with myself that I am going to go and finish the primary thing that I should be doing. Struggle to focus on it because my mind has got into a groove on the blog post.
• Give up and go back to the post. Think that if I get it finished I will be able to refocus on the job at hand.

This type of attention conflict is completely destructive to my productivity. I don’t get any of the tasks done and feel guilty for loosing focus on the things I should be doing. In many ways it would be better that the system was unavailable than running slow. I’d rather focus on one thing and be completing that than trying to do multiple things poorly but it’s just not engaging enough to keep my attention.

Working, as I do, in IT service design and management most customers primarily contract in terms of availability. The system must be available all of the time. If the impact of performance can be even more damaging than lack of availability – perhaps we are measuring the wrong thing?

Perhaps I just have a very short attention?

Anyone feel a little crazy today – I must admit I am.

I’m sure that most of us can think of someone who this video really applies to. Make the most of them they are real treasures.

Yes, I know, no posting for weeks and then three in a day. Perhaps my muse has come back.

I have become increasingly conscious of a nervous twitch.

Whenever a see an address line in a browser I always start www. – why do I do that? It’s completely unnecessary these days.

If a site doesn’t correctly resolve and requires the www. then they are probably idiots and I shouldn’t be going to their site in the first place.

I wonder how many more of these useless inefficient habits that I have.

I wonder how many menus I navigate through when the answer is directly in-front of me.

And while I’m at it, can someone please tell me what has happened to my fingers recently that is stopping me hitting – ‘ . I can’;t type n’t anymore, it’s always n;t which is driving me just a little nuts.

How frustrating?

I’m currently stuck in a kind of ironic loop – which is frustrating.

I subscribe to a technorati feed for links to my blog, it’s a really good way of finding out that people have linked to me.

A little while back Sam wrote a post call “How Frustrating?” I can’t link to it, because it’s not there anymore. On a daily basis my technorati feed us updated with this particular post:

So every day I get reminded of a post titled “How Frustrating?” that I can’t even look at because it’s not there – how frustrating.

I’m just playing with the new Windows Live Writer Beta. Looks very sweet.

It’s the simple things.

One of my plugins wasn’t supported – so it asked me if I still wanted it.

There’s a new (I think) “manage site” link and set of option which takes me to my typepad management page.

Not going to write much because I should be doing something else.

I have a colleague who inputs the location details for conference calls with this information in this order:

TELECON

Chairperson Name: 
Company:
Conference Phone Number:
International Access Phone Numbers:
Conference Access Code:

If you look at this in one way it makes perfect sense.

You want to know where the meeting is and who’s meeting it is – that seems quite sensible. Next you want to know what number to dial and then having dialled it you want to know how to access it.

That makes sense – doesn’t it?

The problem is this. Give me the access code and I know the rest of the information. From a usability point of view the order ought to be completely different.

This may seem like a completely trivial issue but it actually has significant usability implications. When I look at these diary entries on my BlackBerry I have to open them to get the access code because it’s not on the preview screen of the entry in my day view. The helpful details at the beginning push this vital information off the screen. When the meeting reminder pops up I have to scroll down to find what I am looking for.

In Lotus Notes (our corporate email system) it does get shown, but it’s something of a jumble.

I’m not picking on this particular colleague I have a number of examples of people who do a similar thing and I know that this person is trying to be helpful. One person sends the information out in a nicely formatted little image – which is completely useless on the BlackBerry because we don’t download images.

Next time you are trying to be helpful try to think about how helpful you are really being.

This is just one of a very long list of things that I would like the world to know. Perhaps one day I will write a book with them all in and they will make me famous, but until then I will make myself content by knowing that I have told you.

One of the questions that I get asked from time to time is “why do you write a blog?” it’s a fair question – writing takes time and energy, so why bother? There are a number of answers to this question and today I’m only going to deal with one of them – memory management.

“Memory is a child walking along a seashore.  You never can tell what small pebble it will pick up and store away among its treasured things.” Pierce Harris, Atlanta Journal

I’m over 40 now and my memory is not what it used to be. This isn’t some kind of misinformed modesty statement, your brain starts to loose connections from your 20’s onwards, and my brain is going through the same natural cycle. I’m trying to do things to protect what I have, but I can only slow it down. I’m also learning a whole set of management techniques to mitigate for this loss. Learning them early seems like the best way of making sure that they are embedded within my working practice before I really need them.

One of the most powerful ways of managing memory is to write. Once something has been written the brain seems to archive the information and only remembers a pointer to the information. The challenge is then to have a really good pointer or search system available. That’s where the blog comes in.

What I write on the blog naturally gets a pointer, that’s the way that blogs works. Adding tags makes for even more pointers. What’s more it also gets full text search so if my brain pointers aren’t quite correct I can still find what I want. I can then let my brain archive the information without having to worry about finding it again.

Sometimes I’ll meet someone who reads my blog and they’ll make a comment about something I have written and I’ll be surprised by what they have read. I’ve already archived it but it’s fresh and new to them. It sometimes takes me a few seconds to remember what it is they are talking about.

Off now to forget this information.

According to Verizon there is a saving of between 5 and 35 times to be made when a meeting is run virtually:

Telecommunications company Verizon has wielded the power of senior-level buy-in to further increase its remote conferencing use in an effort to reduce meetings spending and unnecessary travel and support green initiatives.

“Let’s face it, we have to be cost-conscious and environmentally smart, so that needs to be mirrored in the way we travel,” said Debra Goldmann, senior specialist for Verizon Travel Services. “We took a look at how much people actually spend for a certain type of meeting versus how much they would spend for a virtual meeting. We found that a face-to-face meeting is between five and 35 times more expensive than a virtual meeting.”

When it comes to virtual meetings I have to admit to being something of a cynic. My issue isn’t with the cost savings of moving meetings virtual – my issue is with the diminished value of these meetings.

I don’t think that anyone would argue with me that any virtual platform – video or audio – detracts from the value of the meeting. This results in meetings that are protracted in length and tend to communicate at a very high level. Any discussion that has required a deep understanding or close collaboration has been, in my experience, a failure.

With all of these limitations I wonder whether the value of many virtual meetings is so low as to make them more expensive than face-to-face meetings. I have participated in many teleconference meetings which have been massively protracted by the limitations of the medium. These meetings have then used far more time than a physical meeting would have, but they have also added massively to the lead-time for resolution. In one particular occasion we were working on a technical problem for over three weeks before a face-to-face meeting resolved the problem in under 2 hours.

Having said that, I spend hours of my working week on teleconference calls – and they work very well when they are about transmitting information and not about collaboration.

I also have to admit here that my experience on HD telepresence systems is very limited and it may be the game-changing technology that some people tell me it is.

Perhaps I’m just a Luddite.

I’ve been wondering whether one of the most powerful things that separates the humans from the animals is the simple list.

It’s easy to tell when I am focused – I have a set of lists and I am working my way through them. It’s just as easy to tell when I am out of control – I have no list.

There are many, many personal and professional management systems that at their basic level are systems of lists.

I love the interaction of twitter – which is basically a dynamic list.

I’ve also noticed that if you want a really popular blog post you write a Top 10 list or similar.

Lists are everywhere.

The human skill is handling and manipulating the list.

I wonder if there are any exercises that I could do to make my brain better at handling lists?