Tech Tinkering

Browsing the tool aisle

Working at learning, or, pluggin’ for results

Learning, On the job, Tech, Tech tinkering

Jan 042012

When I read about the Organize Series plugin for WordPress (a focus of Monday’s post), I thought, “This could do it.”

No I didn’t. I don’t know about you, but I rarely think to myself in complete sentences. Phrasing like this is how we capsulize a more complex experience. What I believe was going on at the time was something like this: I had a situation I wanted to change (the way I used to manage a series of posts here on my blog no longer worked). And the Organize Series plugin at first glance looked like it could accomplish at least two things:

Provide automatic navigation between posts in a series (so I wouldn’t have to hard-wire the links).
Display a list of all the posts in a given series (for me to use as a summary or as a table of contents for the series).

If I’d thought about it longer, I might have articulated another goal: have some way to list all the different series I have. But I’m not usually that strategic. Still, what I came up with (provide navigation, display a list) acted as my critical-to-quality elements. CTQs were widely used at GE when I worked there; I use that acronym partly tongue-in-cheek and partly to highlight informal criteria.

So, I put Organize Series to work, and within 10 minutes I had automatic next/previous navigation for posts in a series, along with an indication that they were part of a series:

(You can click the image to see the entire post.)

When I was still considering whether to use the plugin, I said to my wife, “Wouldn’t it be great to know how to write a plugin?” On reflection, I realize this statement was another capsulization–a series of them, nested inside each other. ”Know how to write a plugin” really means:

“Know how to write a plugin” really means “write a plugin that works….”
Which in turn means “write one that produces results…”
Which means “write one that people use to accomplish things that matter to them.”

To me, this is an important distinction for workplace learning: You can learn on your own for your personal satisfaction, and if you’re satisfied, then that’s a sufficient result. In the workplace, though, you’re part of a larger group (even if that group is you and one individual client), and so the result has to matter within that context.

What’s this got to do with my plugin tinkering?

Think of it as my own workplace learning. At this point, I was still some distance from my (loosely articulated) end state. I hadn’t moved much toward my other CTQ of displaying a list of all the posts in a series. In fact, I didn’t yet grasp all the options in the plugin, let alone know how to make them work in a way useful to me.

I only put this here to scare you a little.

About 5% of the info from the plugin's page of options

But…In my first 15 minutes with the plugin, I’d achieved a result that I found valuable. That left me more willing to experiment–which, put another way, says I was somewhat more willing to spend time trying to achieve the next valuable result.

To me, this is a core principle for any type of workplace learning: formal or informal, face-to-face or virtual. I need to be able to accomplish something that looks to me like real work–produce something that I see has having on-the-job value. And I need to do that sooner rather than later, which is why twenty minutes on introductions, half an hour on expectations for this workshop, and twenty minutes on learning objectives will invariably drive me to teeth-clenching frustration. Or to eating more of those lowest-bid-hotel pastries.

One of the unexpected outcomes of achieving an initial on-the-job goal is that you end up better able to visualize other goals. In a sense, learning leads to new problems (or opportunites) because you’re better at grasping the current situation and at visualizing different ones.

In the course of my experimenting with the Organize Series plugin, I did find at least one way to display a list of all the posts in a series. I can make a box like this appear alongside the title for each post:

Example of a 'series post list box' - a box listing posts in a series

The posts in my most complex series

You can click that image if you’d like to see the first post in the series, though I’ve turned this “series post list box” feature off for now, until I learn how to control the way it displays. Having managed to produce it, though, I’ve picked up several more goals for myself. I was about to write “learning goals,” but I want to stress that they’re all tied to accomplishment.

I want to learn how to use code that’s part of the plugin to, for example, display a list of posts like the last example where and when I want it.
I want to find out how to modify the plugin’s template (the tool it uses to display the full text of all the posts in a series).
I may even want to learn how to modify the PHP or CSS code to make things happen.

That last is quite a goal for someone who doesn’t really know how to program. But my various experiments to date, and especially the things I see as successes, have taught me that I can learn to successfully modify small bits of PHP code and achieve relatively high-value results.

So I’m accomplishing what looks like real work to me.

A series of learning events, or, keeping up with the past

Generic musing, Tech tinkering

Jan 022012

Dave’s Whiteboard marked its fifth anniversary last month. (No, I didn’t notice, either.) You might not think it, given my recent output, but my Whiteboard means a lot to me — so much so that whenever I think about changing the theme (the package of files that controls the appearance) I end up considering one that looks much like what I’m currently using.

Sticking with what I’ve had has more and more often meant I run into technical problems. My current theme is out of date in several ways–for example, it’s not widget-aware. That means is that I can’t take advantage of simple ways to customize and control the appearance.

I’ve occasionally written several posts on a single topic (a series of posts). At the time I used a WordPress addon (a plugin) that automatically added previous/next links so that a reader could work through a series without worrying about date or about intervening but unrelated posts. That same plugin created a table of contents as well, so you could tell where you were in the series.

That plugin stopped working a few months back; I have no idea why. The effort to manually input the links–to hard-wire them, so to speak–was more than I was ready to expend. Still, I plan to write a series or two in the coming months, and I wanted to have a low-maintenance way to present all my series.

So this past weekend I started experimenting with the Organize Series plugin. I tested to see if it could link the three posts in my series about the book Improving Performance, by Rummler and Brache.

And it could. What’s more, with a $15 add-on, I’m able to use a little bit of code and automatically generate a list of posts in a series, like this:

Improving Performance (the book)

Rummler and Brache: Improving Performance
Three levels of performance
Process is a verb, output is a noun
Dirt in the performance engine

I had to do some tinkering, and I had to purchase a $15 add-on for the plugin, but I’m content so far: I’ve accomplished my short-term goal of making each of my series work like a series again–without a lot of hand wiring.

That list of posts in the Improving Performance series, for instance: to make it appear here after installing the Organize Series plugin and the add-on, I inserted the following code into my post:

[ post_list_box series=65 ]

Enough WordPress mumbo-jumbo. I’m going to revisit this from the perspective of learning on the job. My hunch is that there’s a kind tradeoff that a person’s willing to make when he has a problem to solve (or an opportunity to seize). What going into figuring worth is the amount of effort expended, and the value of the results… as seen by the person with the problem or opportunity.

CC-licensed photo by Craig Bennett / theclyde.

How to Save Google+ Items to Evernote

Tech tinkering

Jul 302011

(I haven’t figured out how to embed images in a Google Plus post so they show up where I want, rather than as a gang of photos at the bottom. I also haven’t posted here in a while, so I thought I’d ignore the figuring and sneak in some posting.)

Here’s an easy way to save items from your Google Plus stream to Evernote.

Step 1: Get your Evernote email address (the one Evernote assigned to you when you signed up.)

Sign onto Evernote.
Click Settings.
At the bottom of the Settings page, you’ll see Emailing to Evernote.
That’s where you’re find your Evernote email address.

Step 2: Create a new Google+ circle. (I named mine “Evernote.” You go wild like that, too.)

Step 3: Click “add a new person.” Enter your Evernote email address.

Enter your Evernote email address.

Step 4: Enter a name for this new “person.”

Enter a name for the Evernote email address

Step 5: You’ll see the new person in the new circle. (You can add others, but I didn’t.) Be sure to click “create circle.”

Create the new circle.

That’s it for setting up the circle. Here’s how you use it:

When you find an item in your Google+ stream that you’d like to send to Evernote, click the Share button, then select your Evernote circle. (I made Evernote the first in my list of circles, mostly so it’d show up first in the screen shot below.)

Sharing an item in your stream

Google+ reminds you that someone in that circle isn’t yet on Google+. They mean “your Evernote email isn’t,” which is true. You can share the item with additional people or circles, but I’m trying to stay simple here, so I just click Share.

Confirmation (part one)

I don’t know if Google+ is being solicitous or just fretful, but when you do click Share, you’ll get a second reminder that someone you’re sharing with isn’t on Google+ and will have to settle for email.

Confirmation (part two), or, are you sure you're sure?

Within a minute of my having shared the item in Google+, Evernote had it in my default notebook.

How it looks in Evernote

The only quibble I have here: the item received by Evernote comes from me — I was sharing stuff in my stream with Evernote, right? And so, if it’s an item that someone else posted (one that was in my stream, but not originally from me), there’s no indication in Evernote of who originally shared the item.

If I click that “view or comment” link in the Evernote note, I will see the item as it originally appeared in my stream — with, in this example, a link to Jane Bozarth, who originally shared the item.

Back to the source

I’m grateful to Beth Kanter, who’s shared a number of useful Google+ tips, and to Vikki Baptiste, whose comment on one of those tips led me to search for the details of how to do this.

In progress: my (Ever)note on getting things done

Generic musing, Improving performance, Tech tinkering

Apr 112011

I’ve been trying to get better control over the projects I work on and the data related to those projects. So this isn’t me avoiding work; this is me reprocessing by talking about the challenges I felt and then about how I’ve tried to address them.

What I had wanted to do was:

Reduce my paper clutter
Reduce my digital clutter, which felt nearly as heavy
Reclaim my workspace, both physical and virtual
Seize more of the potential of electronic notes than I had so far

That sounds like mainly organization and housekeeping, but if you rise above the roadway, it’s managing. I wanted to do better at managing both work and non-work projects. I figured if I could accomplish any of those things in the list, and especially more than one at once, I’d be far more likely to get a project done. Or at least get it moving.

What would matter?

At GE, we talked about CTQs: the critical-to-quality items that represent a customer’s view about what’s most important for a product or service. My own CTQs for doing better included:

Retention–whatever’s in the system is ultimately in my own custody, not solely a wisp in someone else’s cloud bank.
Ubiquity–a system that I could use in my office, on a client site, or somewhere else.
Dwell time–an increased ability for me to stay with the task at hand.

Was that a wrong note?

For some time, I’ve used Evernote, which modestly says you can capture anything, access it anywhere, and find things fast. (Optional side trip: Evernote’s 90-second intro: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jQP0gkPnEcY .)

Evernote lets you create individual notes, store them in virtual notebooks, and access them on your own computer, from any computer, or through a smartphone–hey, ubiquity! The database with your notes is stored not only on their servers (which you don’t own) but also on your PC, with automatic synchronization. You can cloudify if you like, but having a local copy of the database helps satisfy my CTQ for retention.

I’ve used Evernote for more than two years, mainly in that unfocused, plunge-right-in, that’s-kind-of-cool way. (A particular favorite: because I sketch a lot of ideas on flipcharts, I love being able to snap a picture, transfer it to Evernote, and later search for text in the image.)

Seek and ye shall find

Most of the time, though, I was also making multiple notebooks and creating a myriad of tags. When it comes to tagging, some people believe that enough is enough and too much is plenty, but for me there’s a real problem with diminishing returns. (We’ll skip over the issue of typos, as well as the pluralization dilemma: Is the tag finance or finances?)

I’d been cruising a predictable arc, from an initial everything-fits enthusiasm to a distressing suspicion that I’d reinvented the junk drawer.

To be is to be done?

On a separate track, I’d been reading David Allen’s Getting Things Done. I approached this book with hesitation, or more accurately evangeloskepticism, because of the… well, let’s say, the ardor of some GTD adherents. The people who always say “GTD.” If they were Apple users, they’d be the ones who care about the code name for the next operating system.

Messy and distractable I may be, but I appreciate the advantages of a system, even if I sometimes appreciate it from afar. Allen’s approach is more about thinking systematically than about particular tools–though you can, if you desire, buy a set of 43 plastic file folders for only $39.95 (plus shipping). So I’ve been applying elements of that system, and adjusting the way I work with my paper files and with Evernote, and I’m happy with how the results look so far.

Closeup of Notebooks in Evernote's sidebar

Different ways to see your project

Two useful, intertwined concepts: first, a task is something you can complete in a single chunk of time. ”Peel the carrots” is a task. If you’re like me, “do the grocery shopping” is also a task; I may have a big list of items, but I get them in one trip.

At my house, we have a cluster of grocery-related tasks: plan dinner for the week, check the ingredients we need, build a grocery list, shop (ideally, with the list). Getting Things Done calls such a cluster a project: “any desired result that requires more than one action step.”

Which leads to the second useful concept: you don’t do a project, you do the next step. From a manage-your-work perspective, think of the project as the goal you want to achieve (groceries purchased, workshop delivered, kitchen remodeled). You revisit the project to generate thoughts about what the next steps might be. When you don’t have any more steps, the project’s done.

So I create what I call a project page, which is a highfalutin name for a note on which I put a short description of the goal of the project, along with a timeframe (however nebulous) and the tag I’ve chose for that project. I’ll also use the project page to jot notes about ideas related to the project. That means the project page becomes a kind of greenhouse where idea seedlings can germinate until they turn into action steps.

Action steps (things I can do) become separate notes, each tagged as part of the project. So do reference items, like email that I forward to Evernote, making the contents of the email more readily searchable. So do things like PDF documents, which can be dragged into their own note.

Now I have a Projects notebook. I use Evernote’s filtering tools to control what I see when I click the Projects notebook, like this:

Search in just one notebook for a particular tag

Previously, I had more than a dozen project-specific notebooks in that sidebar. And if I create a new notebook for any multi-step effort I have (even small one with long duration, like “get a digital copy of the LP that Mom has no turntable for”), I could easy have three or four dozen.

This works better. And I can do the same sort of selective display across multiple notebooks.

If it’s not a step, it might be a reference

David Allen suggests putting all your project-support material (things that don’t require an action but that you want to retain) into a reference file. He leaves the form of that file up to you, though he’s quite the fan of a single, alphabetical-order, paper filing system. I have those, but I prefer keeping digital (i.e., searchable) copies, which now go into a Reference notebook.

Search all notebooks for items with the _ABC tag

Allen might be less in favor of a separate location for the work-specific diaries that I call project logs, so if you see him, don’t tell him that’s what I have. I tend to make the logs for large projects; for small ones, I’ll jot ongoing notes on the project page. Not necessarily consistent, but, oh, well.

More than a third of my Evernote items are in the REFERENCE notebook. To me, this makes sense. For active projects, a lot of the relevant material isn’t a trigger for action; it’s project support. It’s reference material.

If an item appears useful to more than one project, I apply multiple project tags. That way it’ll show up in project-specific searches.

I also have a Project Archive notebook. When I complete a project, I select all its items from the Projects notebook and move them to the archive. Why? Because that’s what I’ve always done.

In my corporate, cubicle-based days, the bottom of my four-drawer file was labeled Attic. It became a combination of historical record, reference room, and security blanket. (I’m no hoarder, though; every year or two, when it got full, I’d weed it back by a third or so.)

The Projects notebook and the Project Archive account for another 20% of my notes, which means that together with Reference, half of what I keep in Evernote is in just three notebooks.

Not that there’s a prize for Fewest Notebooks Used–though if there were, Ruud Hein would be a real contender. He wrote an Evernote GTD How To that inspired me to experiment and adapt. (I also like his tone and his pragmatism.)

Speaking of pragmatism, this post is long enough. I have a follow-up underway with some more examples of what I’ve tried and what results I’ve gotten.

Evernote examples are my own.
CC-licensed images: dwell time by Owen Blacker.
Junk drawer by windsordi / Di Bédard.
Archive of papers by Ben McLeod.

Tools and translation, or, rocking with Bénabar

Language, Tech tinkering

Dec 152010

Yesterday, I saw a tweet about Universal Subtitles, an open-source site to “make the work of subtitling and translating video simpler, more appealing, and, most of all, more collaborative.” The site lets you add captions, subtitles, or translations to videos online. (They say they work with Ogg, WebM, FLV, Youtube, Vimeo, Blip or Dailymotion.)

I’d been wanting to find out how to add captions to videos, the way I’d seen song translations done on Youtube. On La charrette pélagique, the blog I (infrequently) write in French, I’ve tried translating some French songs into English. The hard part there is that you can’t easily fit two translations side-by-side, so you end up alternating languages one verse or chorus at a time.

In addition, if you’re trying to understand spoken (or sung) language, I think it helps at times to be able to see the words in sync with the audio stream.

So, for a good part of yesterday afternoon and this morning, I used Universal Subtitles to create both an English translation and a French transcription of La berceuse (“The Lullaby”) by the French singer Bénabar (Wikipedia bio in English, French; French-language website).

(If you’re the parent of little kids, or know people who are, I think you’ll enjoy Bénabar’s take on lullabies.)

I haven’t figured out how to embed the subtitled version here, so if you’re curious:

Click this link: La Berceuse
Below the video, choose the language for the subtitles (“original” [meaning French] or English)
Play.

Universal Subtitles is a collaborative effort, which means someone else can come along to edit my French-language transcript (I have my doubts about a word here and there), my English translation, or my synchronization. For myself, I wish there were a way to save my own version–to keep it as I made it, for my own purposes–but that’s a minor point.

What’s more important is the immediate usefulness of this tool.

Older Entries

Dave's Whiteboard

Tech tinkering

Working at learning, or, pluggin’ for results

A series of learning events, or, keeping up with the past

Improving Performance (the book)

How to Save Google+ Items to Evernote

In progress: my (Ever)note on getting things done

Tools and translation, or, rocking with Bénabar

So to speak

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