Dave’s Whiteboard

Thank you for the good wishes.

I couldn’t find a link to the piece we’ll use to get things started, so I’ve put it (temporarily) on my site. The tune’s 200 years old, composed by the legendary Niel Gow, and played here by Celtic Fiddle Festival: Cam Ye by Atholl

A little over ten years ago, I had a first date over coffee. I don’t remember how long it lasted, because in some ways, it hasn’t stopped.

We’re getting married today (which is why I’m writing this post in advance).

Here are two pieces of music we’ll play.

In the Science News section of today’s New York Times, I learned about The Encyclopedia of Life. Its goal is to create an online page for each of the world’s 1.8 million known species.

Now that’s a book. And look at how it’s being put together:

“If we had sat down at a blank screen and started to write, word by word, preparing the encyclopedia would have been virtually impossible,� said James Edwards, the project’s executive director.

The designers wrote software that could automatically draw information — maps, DNA sequences, bird songs, photographs, evolutionary trees, and so on — from many sources and organize them in one place in one standard format. Ten of the biggest natural history libraries in the world are scanning millions of pages of scientific literature, which computers are text-mining to add more information to species pages.

An initial version will have some 30,000 species, including 24 highly detailed exemplar pages “to show just how much information the encyclopedia can handle.” And, because the project aims at a wide audience, a slider on the page will let the reader determine the amount of content, from novice to specialist.

For more:

• The EOL Home page
• A blog post from NYTimes science writer Carl Zimmer
• One of many YouTube videos on the EOL:
  
   
• E. O. Wilson’s 2007 TED talk about the Encyclopedia of life (22 minutes)

I revisited an old acquaintance this morning — a chapter in Peter Block’s classic, Flawless Consulting.

The “flawless” part didn’t always sit well with me, but Block sees consulting flawlessly as:

• Being as authentic as you can be at all times with your client
• Attending directly, in words and actions, to the business at each stage of the consulting process.

Block sees three possible roles for a consultant:

• The expert, in which the consultant is a specialist in some area. The manager has “neither the time nor the inclination” to solve the problem at hand. In general the manager is inactive; most control is with the consultant.
• The pair of hands, in which the consultant is essentially carrying out orders and following the analysis done by the manager.
• The collaborator, in which the consultant and the manager work together to solve a problem. In this case, both parties are partners in addressing the problem.

Block provides checklists and other tools for helping define and guide the consulting relationship. It’s been a while since I dipped into this book, but I always benefit when I do.

The Philharmonic Center of Arts in Naples, Florida, holds an annual illusion content. They’ve posted the top 10 finalists from last year’s competition.

My personal favorite: Bouncing Brains.

(I’d put an image here, but they’re animated — and worth the trip.)