PK Shiu
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WordCamp Boston 2012 Review

Serendipity

This year's WordCamp Boston went off with an interesting start. I got there about half an hour early, grabbed a coffee sat down at one of the tables in the keynote area. After chatting with the only other person at the table for a bit, something sounded strangely familiar. When I mentioned I lived in the South End, she figured it out. We sat almost at the exact same spot, during breakfast, and chatted at last year's WordCamp. What are the chances?

Introvert

The opening keynote speaker was non other than Diane Darling the famous FFI and author of The Networking Survival Guide, and "how to work a room". She gave her usual funny and insightful talk about how Introverts can still network effectively.

Stylesheet Preprocessors

First session I attended is "How we can have nice things" by K Adam White. My main take away was the benefits of using a stylesheet preprocessor, like SASS or LESS. I know of LESS from the bootstrap CSS framework but have yet to try it. Now there is a reason to try it. One thing that I wish LESS support is the @extend feature, which would allow clean rule inheritance in the CSS.

To make any of these work, one should get node.js working on your desktop environment so that you can run javascript at command line.

Wordpress Optimization

A talk on Wordpress Optimization by Ben Metcalfe, co founder of WP Engine, which also which gave out the coolest t-shirts at this unconference. He gave a useful set of recommendations:

A funny fact is that he listed a list of plug-ins to avoid -- things like broken link checkers. Later on, in another session on SEO, another speaker recommend using the same plug-in. Ben is right of course, broken link checking should be done outside of WordPress.

Wordpress as an Application Framework

This talk was not what I expected. The presenter created a piece of code to allow PHP code to access a global (singleton) object, which is useful for adding more functionality to Wordpress. But that is far from being an application framework. Is is more in the line of -- if you want to stick with wordpress and knows PHP, this is one approach for writing more custom PHP code.

Content and more Content

After lunch I switched track and attended the sessions on content and SEO. Jeff Cutler gave an entertaining talk about the process of creating content.

  • addictomatic, a search aggregation site (like duckduckgo) is a site that I didn't know about, and
  • the importance of an editorial calendar -- I know I should use one, but now I am convinced.
  • YouTube, storify and instagram seems now to be "valid" channels to consider when cross posting content

SEO

No wordpress conference would be complete if I did not attend a session on SEO. I sat in on a session by Casie Gillette . She recommended a few tools that I did not know about:

  • Screaming Frog's SEO Spider
  • sharing plug-ins: sharebar and sharaholic
  • Google authorship markup is all the rage apparently, it is a way to have Google recognize your blog posts with you as the author, showing your picture alongside search results. The authorsure plug-in is one way to handle it.
  • related posts link using YARPP

Podcasting

The last session that I attended is Guerilla Podcasting by Lanna Lee Maheux. She makes a good case of using a podcast specific hosting service for the podcast because they will charge by size vs bandwidth. If you have a successful podcast you will be paying bandwidth costs if you host the files at a normal hosting company. Libsyn, buzzsprout and blubrry are the three sites that she mentioned.

Final Thoughts

Due to scheduling conflict I had to leave wordcamp early. There were other sessions that I wanted to attend. All the sessions were tapped and should be available online. Overall I like this year's program better. I still think there are one SEO session too many. I wish they have more case studies instead.

Family living, South End vs Lexington

Now that we moved, I have started blogging at the Lexington Patch. This article talks about my initial observation about what has changed from living in the South End to living in Lexington. One additional point about our move -- our new place is very close to Lexington Center. So everything is within walking distance, exactly like the South End. While we miss the Chinese supermarkets and Peters Park, we still get the benefits of having everything else very close by. If we have to get into a car to drive 5 minutes to get to anything, we may feel a little differently.

 

Flower thief caught

I planted some nice petunias along our driveway in the new house. One day later all the flowers were gone or broken off. Neighborhood kids? I don't think so. Today I caught the thief red handed. Not only he munched away most of the flowers, he is sunning himself two feet away. He did not even move when I got this close to take the picture.

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How to Adjust IKEA SAVERN Shower Curtain Rod

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I do not buy spring loaded shower curtain rod too often so I often forget how to install and adjust one. After the move I bought a IKEA Savern show curtain rod and for a few minutes cannot figure out how to adjust the length. Then it came back to me. You just PULL. There is a lot of built in resistance inside the rods to keep them attached. You just have to pull really hard to extend the rod until it is just a little longer than what you need. Another tip: If you ended up pulling the two rods apart, make sure you insert the smaller rod back into the larger rod spring side last. The spring at the end of the smaller rod is supplying the tensions.

Nice Folks, Mean Folks Part Two

In my previous post, I described the nice things that happened this morning. This post tells you about the not so nice people I encountered today. Remember my "dumber than a dumbbell" post last year? I thought that is behind me but I thought wrong. My Tai Chi student has signed up for some program at the Boston Sports Club that gives her a lot of coupons for "free friends visit". So she has been using them on and off to get me into the club to do the Tai Chi class. Since she has been away for almost two months we actually have not been going for awhile. Today, only our second time since the beginning of Summer, a BCS staff stopped us at the entrance.

"You can't use that coupon, it is for new visitors only", she waved that in front of my friends face. My friend explained that she was told that she could. In fact, the only reason she signed up for the special program is to get those coupons to use for the Tai Chi classes. "No you cannot, see what it says here" the lady pointed at this little postage stamp sized coupon again.

The conversation went downhill from there. I explain to the lady that I am truly puzzled why she explicitly go out of her way to annoy my friend and myself. I told her the additional irony -- I just received a flying from (a different location up the street) BCS offering corporate membership at my office. And her attitude turns me off Boston Sports Club completely.

I really try to understand this lady's mental process (or the lack of). What does she think she is doing? Is she profiting from this or being hurt by this. Today we paid the extra $15 guest fee. So Town Sports made $15. Hurrah! But would we ever go back again? Highly unlikely. So there is no future $15. My friend currently has a family membership. She is so annoyed that she wants to quit now. So that are more hundred of dollars of annual due lost. Why?

You think the lost of one membership is not a big deal. But this is a tight neighborhood. This is my second blog posts that I am writing on this topic. Will this in anyway be positive PR for Boston Sports Club? Or negative?

I quickly checked their yelp listing here. Here are some juicy excerpts:

  • "Staff, including the General Mgr. in particular, often looks like they would rather be anywhere else.  Can't say I blame them, but it's called "acting", I do it at my job all the time."
  • "The hairdryer holders in the women's locker rooms are all broken so the hairdryers just lay on the shelves leaving no room for toiletries etc. Towels are thin with wear. The staff, both front desk and trainers, are indifferent. Asking a question generates attitude - especially the trainers."
  • "The 1-star is for the woman who handles the memberships at this location. Every time I talk to her, she gives me incorrect information. She seems so vibrant, confident and well-versed that you want to believe her - sadly it's a facade."
  • "The staff always says "Have a good workout" even though they clearly don't mean it and don't care."

Enough said.

Nice Folks, Mean Folks

Two things happened today within 10 minutes of each other. Once involved a Boston Police officer. One involve a neighborhood health club manager. If you guessed the nice folk is the Boston Police officer, you are correct. I parked my car on the street early in the morning today right next to my loft and my office. I did not see a poorly taped sign that says temporary no parking. (I still cannot read it). Late morning I got a phone call from an unknown number. This is what happened:

The police officer, instead of towing my car away because turned out that they are doing construction around my parking spot, looked up the registration. He then walked around the block to my building. Fortunately he miss read the loft unit number and knocked on my old neighbors door. They answered the door and rightfully was surprised that a police is at the door. The nice police officer explained that, instead of towing my car, he just want the owner to move it. Once my neighbor realized what is going on, he called me on the phone. I ran downstairs, moved the car and waved a quick thank you to the officer standing next to the construction site.

There is a bit of luck involved here, with the police officer knocked on the wrong door, and that my neighbor was home. But clearly he could have just towed my car. Instead, he and my neighbor saved me a lot of brief and money.

The mean folks tale is here in a different blog post.

Tips for Moving Houses (2012)

I moved so many times that I wrote up some moving tips on the web in 1996. You can read the old version there. This is an update version, ready for our next moving to the suburbs:

According to some studies, moving is the second most stressful thing in life. Here are some tips for moving:

  1. Throw out all the stuff that you don’t need months before you even found the new house. Most of our time is actually spent on this part. It is hard, but do it. (Optional) Watch any of thehoarders TV shows for inspiration.
  2. Buy more boxes then you think you need. You can always freecycle them afterwards. U-Haul has an “unused box return deal”, but I have never managed to figure out how it actually works.
  3. Buy large clear plastic boxes for packing heavier items or for items that you want to keep dry. You can end up using these for putting items in storage as well. We buy the large ones from Costco.
  4. Pack to unpack. If you are to take away one tip, this is it. Come up with a numbering system for each room and area in the new house. Pack items so that each complete box contains items that are destine for one room. Label that box with the number. Your movers will love you, and you just cut unpacking time in half. I put blue or white masking tape on the boxes, and write “(1) Kitchen”, or “(6) Bedroom” etc on them.
  5. Label and/or map all your computer and audio/video cables so that you can quickly plug everything back together.
  6. Plan furniture placement before the move. Asking the movers to rearrange furniture over and over waste time and money. I (being a amateur architect of sort) create a site plan of the new home and lay it out on floor planning software before the move.
  7. Give the movers clear instruction, and let them do their work. Do not have unnecessary family members around to give contradicting directions.
  8. Make sure the showers are working great in the new house before the move. Bring a personal care kit with you. It is nothing more annoying then not being able to at least relax and clean up while unpacking.
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Moving Tips 2012

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123-2321_IMG
123-2321_IMG

I moved so many times that I wrote up some moving tips on the web in 1996. You can read the old version there. This is an update version, ready for our next moving to the suburbs: According to some studies, moving is the second most stressful thing in life. Here are some tips for moving:

  1. Throw out all the stuff that you don't need months before you even found the new house. Most of our time is actually spent on this part. It is hard, but do it. (Optional) Watch any of the hoarders TV shows for inspiration.
  2. Buy more boxes then you think you need. You can always freecycle them afterwards. U-Haul has an "unused box return deal", but I have never managed to figure out how it actually works.
  3. Buy large clear plastic boxes for packing heavier items or for items that you want to keep dry. You can end up using these for putting items in storage as well. We buy the large ones from Costco.
  4. Pack to unpack. If you are to take away one tip, this is it. Come up with a numbering system for each room and area in the new house. Pack items so that each complete box contains items that are destine for one room. Label that box with the number. Your movers will love you, and you just cut unpacking time in half. I put blue or white masking tape on the boxes, and write "(1) Kitchen", or "(6) Bedroom" etc on them.
  5. Label and/or map all your computer and audio/video cables so that you can quickly plug everything back together.
  6. Plan furniture placement before the move. Asking the movers to rearrange furniture over and over waste time and money. I (being a amateur architect of sort) create a site plan of the new home and lay it out on floor planning software before the move.
  7. Give the movers clear instruction, and let them do their work. Do not have unnecessary family members around to give contradicting directions.
  8. Make sure the showers are working great in the new house before the move. Bring a personal care kit with you. It is nothing more annoying then not being able to at least relax and clean up while unpacking.

My Educational Game Design class made Lifehacker

LifeHacker wrote a piece on Plan Your Free Online Education at Lifehacker U: Summer Semester 2012. The Educational game design class that I am taking at MIT is listed as one of the course! Now they are linking to the free open courseware version which is three years old. This is the link to the actual class. Hopefully our projects will be posted on the class website soon for the world to see! If you want to find out more about the class experience, I wrote about it here, on our work with Portal 2.

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Back to Lexington

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In the PK's tradition of making important announcements on April's First, it is now semi-public knowledge that I am giving up the city living and heading back to the burbs. At this point I only wished I kept my last house in Lexington. Instead it is now a delicately timed project of selling, renting and buying, in some order between Boston and Lexington. I know I am really going to miss living in the South End. At this point the kiddos are half complaining about leaving "the best house ever". But then they have never had a backyard, nor a private driveway, nor a school that actually has a playground and ball field attached. The pros and cons have already been analyzed in this other blog post. I won't repeat it here. But it is a large part a financial decision. Having stared at risk assessments for over a year while developing WealthMate, the financial implications are getting to me. Also, it seems that, while we are still in the East coast, why not give the kids a bit of the typical American suburban life experience.

Talent from Understanding

ballet_class
ballet_class

What is Talent? Do I have it? How do I get it? This is an often asked question. My son attends the Boston Ballet School. His teacher, a well loved and well known teacher, Luciano, recently explained his thought on talent. My students parents often ask me, "Does my little Holly have talent in Ballet?" he said. His answer is right on:

Talent is a Gift

Some say talent is a gift. There is some truth to that. Having the right body type, or the right physical ability, helps. Especially with something like Ballet. However having the gift sometimes make the student works less hard. Pay less attention. Things come too easily. In the long term, having the gift along is not going to translate to success. In fact, if managed wrong, it could hurt.

Talent from Practice

Practice makes perfect. The Russian ballet schools sometimes share this philosophy. Talent from repetition. Again, there are some truth to this view. But repetition alone is not going to make your great.

Talent from Understanding

70% of talent is going to come from understanding. It is coming from your head. You need to understand why something is done, understand how your body works, understand the ecosystem of your particular field. With understanding, you will know how to leverage your gift. With understanding you will know what to monitor during practice. What do you need to improve.

I totally agree with this view. It goes far beyond ballet, or music, or tai chi. Try it yourself.

Group Class Project and a Portal Weighted Companion Cube

It has been many years since I have to do a group project in school. It was always painful doing group projects in the MBA days. Working students schedule differs from full time students. Expectation is different. For this Games for Education class, there are four group projects. Yes -- FOUR! For the first project, we are to design a curriculum around the game Portal 2. Our project ended up pretty good. And I was pleasantly surprised how well the group project dynamics worked out. The working notes and final paper were written collaboratively using Google docs. Wished we had Google docs back in the MBA days?

Expectation

I do not know what is the expectation of the professor in terms of the projects. Looking at our own project, and the other three projects in the class, I think everyone could have done a little more. All the concepts are good but the presentation, and in our case our paper, could be better. I wonder if this is because this particular course can be part of a student's HASS requirement -- Humanities, Arts, and Social Sciences. So in most case it is not a major for a student? Personally I wish I had something like this when I was at Imperial. It would have given me a great introduction to the real world. But in this case the students maybe viewing this as a lighter class? Or that because it is much less of an engineering class, and everyone else is more used to engineering class work.

Portal Cube

Because our project is on the game Portal 2, I have decided to locate a 3D printed portal cube for use in the presentation. We use the cube as a focus device -- whomever has the cube can talk during audience participation. It was a big hit. How I got the cube made? I found a local person on Etsy that print and sell them. He was nice enough to rush me a cube, and I met him literally on the street to pick up the cube before class. If you need anything printed, check him out!