Thoughts from a Bedraggled Mind

Sh*t Project Managers Say

2012-01-23T16:11:00.000+08:00

Top Editor's Picks From AddictiveTips

2012-01-23T13:16:00.000+08:00

Kung Hei Fat Choi! Kiong Hee Huat Tsai! Kong Xi Fa Tsai! (If you are interested, please see the definitions here for each of these Chinese New Year greetings).

To start the New Year, I found these great lists from AddictiveTips covering what are considered to be the best Android to Windows applications. I hope you'll enjoy going through the lists as much as I did! (All images are from the corresponding AddictiveTips pages.)

Update:
1/26/2012 - Added 60 Best Linux Applications

150 Best Android Applications of Year 2011

85 Best iPhone and iPad (iOS) Applications of Year 2011

100 Best Mac OSX Applications of Year 2011

150 Best Windows Applications of Year 2011

30 Best Windows Phone Applications of Year 2011

Top 150 Extensions and Web Applications of Year 2011

60 Best Linux applications of Year 2011

Word of the Lourd (WOTL) Episodes About Filipino Traits

2011-08-05T23:09:00.003+08:00

I first learned of Lourd de Veyra about a year ago when I saw one of his Word of the Lourd (WOTL) YouTube video series. I immediately got hooked. Well who wouldn't be for someone who loves political satire blended with black humor. His short videos are like fingernails scraping a chalkboard, unpleasant and primal yet direct and honest (I hope this made sense!).

My favorite episodes are those focused on "unique" Filipino traits. I put quotes on unique because these traits may have their international versions (I am erring on the safe side here). I made a compilation of these videos for everybody's multiple (viewing) pleasure.

Daigo Umehara's Awesomeness

2011-08-04T20:01:00.001+08:00

I have not been playing fighting games (at home or in the arcade) for almost a decade now. As a result, it was only now that I learned of Daigo Umehara and the famous Evolution 2004 championship match he fought with Justin Wong which he won via a dramatic comeback (an understatement really) and by a "hair or pixel" of life. Enough with the words and watch the video below to see Daigo's awesomeness in action.

5 Top Galleries of Stunning Macrophotography Shots

2011-07-31T23:57:00.002+08:00

Macrophotography will always have a special place in my heart. Even if I stopped taking pictures (temporarily that is), I still have my Canon 100mm macro lens. Likewise, I constantly search for galleries showcasing the best macro photography shots to admire the beauty of the unseen parts of nature. i have listed below the top 5 galleries I have found so far.

From Smashing Magazine:
25 Beautiful Macro Photography Shots
35 Examples Of Stunning Macro Photography

Macro photography. The best of the best (85 pics)

43 Of The Extremely Creative Wonders Of Macro Photography

30 Best Macro Photography Shots

Shameless advertising as well, I have included one of my favorite macrophotography shots that I have previously taken when I was still active.

Stuck In a Rut

2011-07-30T22:58:00.000+08:00

I have been stuck in a blogging rut for quite some time now. It is easy to blame work, hobbies and other duties in life but in this case, no excuses at all. For the past 6 months, I just don't have the interest and focus to blog anything even if I have lots and lots of topics and ideas in my head. They're just there in my head floating carelessly and aimlessly.

As a result, I already had thoughts of deleting this blog due to my lack of interest. This was until I read a ProBlogger post about what to do with an inactive blog. I don't know why but this post created a small "spark" in me which eventually turned into a flame rekindling the reasons why I made this blog in the first place.

Of course, there will be changes based on my lessons learned. This is to ensure that I will be more consistent in my postings. On the other hand. what will remain as a constant are the topics that I will blog about. These are still the crazy, random, unique, sometimes nonsensical and humorous topics revolving around my "personal zeitgeist."

Time to rock and roll again! \m/

O'Reilly Blogger Review Program

2011-01-31T23:35:00.003+08:00

I learned about O'Reilly's Blogger Review Program through one of Scott Berkun's blog postings. He mentioned about getting a free copy of his book, Myths of Innovation through the Review Program and that got my full and undivided attention. I'm a sucker for anything that is free especially books!

How can you join this program? It's very simple actually.

1. First and foremost, you need to be a blogger of course! (Check!)
2. You like reviewing books or videos. (Double check!)
3. Once you are sure of 1 and 2, you can sign-up for your free account. (Done!)

After creating my O'Reilly account the other day, I received an email today informing me that my application for the program had been approved! Wow that was fast! I was so excited I immediately requested for a copy of ... The Myths of Innovation (of course!) for my first book review.

I had been an avid reader of O'Reilly's technical and business books. These books were instrumental to my growth as a programmer before and a project manager now. Now, I can get (I hope!) O'Reilly books for free and have a topic for my blog. Hitting two birds with one stone. How great is that!

Happy New Year!

2011-01-01T16:50:00.001+08:00

It was awfully quiet in this blog for a good 8 months! Imagine, the last post I made was April 16 and I only made 4 posts for the whole year!

First and foremost, I must admit that for these past months, I have been experiencing what I call the "blogging block" for anything related to project management, photography and technology. I find it difficult to even complete a single paragraph in my planned posts. As a result, I have these numerous drafts queued in Blogger. On the other hand, even with this "block" still hanging heavily in my head, I write this short note to everybody.

A Happy New Year To All!

May this be a year of more health, prosperity, success, happiness and most especially blog posts! Cheers!

ProjectManager.com: Tips for Running Project Meetings

2010-04-16T23:51:00.004+08:00

Author: Jason Westland

Do you repeatedly have to attend Proposal Meetings? If you must, in that case skim through these suggested methods to find out how to implement them easily and without difficulty.

Guide for Initializing Proposal Meetings

Everybody hates meetings that take so long. So your work is to make it precised, highly motivated and to add a substance. If you organize this, then you'll increase group motivation and spirits. The following are 5 guides to help you...

Tip 1: Prepare carefully
To ensure you obtain the most out of your meetings, you should arrange them carefully. Ahead of every gathering, put in writing 3 goals that you need from the convention. The following are several examples:

I need the group to perceive we're on schedule.
I need several challenges or hindrances to be discussed.
I need them to feel significant and encouraged.

Next you should discover how you're going to accomplish your objective. The subsequent number of tips will assist you with this.

Tip 2: Start and end carefully
Like in theatre, people largely recall the introduction and the end part the most. So start and end your talks mindfully. Once you initiate the discussion, impart to them what the target of the gathering is, what you need to make out of it and the reason it's focal. This gets their thoughts and prepares the field. As you end the discussion, ask them what has been agreed / achieved in the gathering and the next methods moving forward.

Tip 3: Structure the discussion
You should be in complete control of the conference at all times, to make sure that:

The business meeting follows the schedule
You don't get stumped on a single concern
An individual doesn't take control it
Each one has their voice

Begin by standing or sitting in a noticeable place in the area. Increase your voice a little to make presence. Take part frequently once participants discuss too long. Be respectful but firm. Structure the business meeting as a coach would direct a soccer team - by constantly monitoring, listening and guiding the group. If feasible, assign someone else to write the minutes. This gives you the time necessary to structure the discussion so that the schedule and your 3 goals are met.

Tip 4: Park it and proceed
Often in meetings, a single subject matter can take the big part of the engagement schedule. If the subject is not associated to your definite discussion objective, then inform the group to park it and proceed. Take note the subject on a whiteboard or paper and attend to it with the appropriate group members independently after the gathering. This keeps your meetings brief and structured.

Tip 5: Keep it results oriented
Projects are all about getting the job completed. So ensure that where viable, all argument results in an action to be fulfilled. Concentrating on the proceedings that are necessary, is a significant way of reducing the time of meetings.

Jason Westland has been in the project management industry for the past 16 years.
Find out about his new project management software here.

ProjectManager.com

2010-04-16T23:24:00.005+08:00

Screenshot of the ProjectManager.com website.

About one week ago, I was surprised in receiving an email from ProjectManager.com. I felt honored since they told me they were impressed with my Time Management Tools for Busy Managers article. As a result, they would like to send me articles from ProjectManager.com's and are requesting to have them published in my blog. Of course I replied yes, yes, yes!

In this regard, I am dedicating Friday as my ProjectManager.com day. I will be posting articles that I receive from ProjectManager.com on this day and today is the start of this momentous event.

Canon 70-200mm F4L Coffee Mug

2010-03-05T11:13:00.002+08:00

Image from PDNPulse

What is more awesome that owning a Canon L lens? Drinking from it! Kudos to Canon for making us fanboys drool all over again this awesome giveaway. They previously brought out the Canon EOS 5D Mark II flash drive and now this! It will even be more shocking if this mug is also "stabilized."

Here's the PDNPulse article for more information.

New Year, New Focus, New Projects

2010-02-28T20:31:00.001+08:00

Cartoon by Dave Walker. Find more cartoons you can freely re-use on your blog at We Blog Cartoons.

It took me a long time staring at the window and waiting for something before being able to post this, a new posting after three months and my first for the new year, 2010.

Why the hiatus? Admittedly, a question had been plaguing my mind for several months now. How can I make this blog unique and stand out amidst the more than 130 million plus blogs (as of January 2009) out there? Because of this question, I suffered from paralysis by analysis in my quest to find the answers.

After reading through several blogs about blogging, I came across two articles from Problogger which inspired me and helped me unstuck myself from this rut.

Principles of Successful Blogging – Confessions of a ProBlogger
What Are You Taking For Granted That Might Be Useful to Others?

As a result, even if I still do not have a clear answer to my question above, I thought it would be better if I'll be moving along and continue my blogging activities, moving rather than standing idly waiting for rhyme and reason. As Kahlil Gibran aptly said, "A little knowledge that acts is worth infinitely more than much knowledge that is idle."

What are my plans then for this year? Well for starters, I have been toying around the idea of my own version of lists and I already have a couple in mind. In addition to this, I am preparing to take the PMP exam and I am planning to share tips, lessons learned and best practices that I will be amassing along the way.

I am raring to blog this year and it is great to be back! =)

Star Wars and Project Management

2009-11-29T14:59:00.002+08:00

I think the analogies between Star Wars and project management (PM) work are like the Energizer Bunny. They go on and on and on. =)

I found this article that Phil Bennett wrote about the similarities between Star Wars and project management. His children, when they were still small, asked him what did he do at work. This could have been quite easy to answer if he was a policeman or a doctor or a fireman. Necessity was indeed the mother of invention or if might say, creativity, thus the Star Wars metaphor in describing PM work was born from Phil's head.

I have listed below the salient points of the 3 Star Wars parallels that Phil wrote.

Context
Hans Solo was frozen in Carbonite in The Empire Strikes Back and then Luke and friends came to save him in Return of the Jedi.

PM Work Parallel
To "unfreeze" and save a project from "enemies," a project manager uses status reports, letters of executive support and corporate goals.

Context
"The Force" is one of the most ubiquitous concept in the Star Wars saga that it has become part of the pop culture, especially the phrase, "May the Force be with you."

PM Work Parallel
To bend the will of the people around a project manager much like "The Force," he can use strategic plans and stakeholders' sign-offs and support.

Context
The sequence of the Star Wars saga did not follow a linear path (from 4, 5, 6 first then moving to 1, 2, 3 later).

PM Work Parallel Project always tend to move in a non-linear path even if the Gantt charts are all finished and the critical path has been identified. If I may add here, projects are also susceptible to the Murphy's Law laying waste to even the best laid and organized plans.

C3PO and Job Hunting

2009-11-29T14:49:00.002+08:00

I got this from {codesqueeze} using my preferred RSS reader, Google Reader.

This is another lessons learned derived from the Star Wars saga. Remember the scene in Stars War IV (A New Hope) when Uncle Owen was looking for a droid and he chanced upon C3PO. Here is a transcript of their conversation.

Uncle Owen: You, I suppose you're programmed for etiquette and protocol.
C-3PO: Protocol? Why, it's my primary function, sir. I am well-versed in all the customs
Uncle Owen: I have no need for a protocol droid.
C-3PO: Of course you haven't, sir. Not in an environment such as this. That is why I have been programmed in
Uncle Owen: What I really need is a droid who understands the binary language of moisture vaporators.
C-3PO: Vaporators? Sir, my first job was programing binary load lifters very similar to your vaporators in most respects.
Uncle Owen: Can you speak Bocce?
C-3PO: Of course I can, sir. It's like a second language to me. I'm a-
Uncle Owen: Yeah, alright. Shut up. I'll take this one.
C-3PO: Shutting up, sir.

Max Pool surmised that 3 simple rules regarding job hunting or even job security could be learned from this conversation. From these 3 rules, quoting him, "It is always better to gain new experience and skills; however, do not worry about lacking the knowledge of everything the universe has to offer. Proving that you know how to learn, unlearn, and relearn is the greatest thing you can offer an employer."

8 Management Lessons from Star Wars Episode III

2009-11-28T11:54:00.004+08:00

Image drawn by hedbonstudios

While cleaning my hard drive today, I found this old PDF file I downloaded I think about 2 years ago. It was written by Vincent Chia circa 2005 and it was about the 8 management lessons that could be derived from Star Wars III: The Revenge of the Sith. Reading through it again, I couldn't help but smile, being a huge Star Wars fan myself, and nod my head in agreement to some of the lessons most especially that of Talent Management (Lesson 2), Performance Management (Lesson 3), Group Think (Lesson 5) and Succession Planning (Lesson 7).

--------------------

Management Lessons from Star Wars Episode III
(Friday, 27 May 2005) - Written by Vincent Chia

It is a widely acknowledged fact that George Lucas decided to release Episodes 4, 5 and 6 first ahead of Episodes 1, 2 and 3 because the latter episodes were more focused on action and less heavy on social and political messages. Do not get me wrong, I really enjoyed Episode 3. There was just the right balance of action, social and political messages as well as the right dose of tragedy. But if you look closely, you can also pick up some Management Lessons too. Here they
are in rough chronological order.

LESSON 1

Context
Chancellor Palpatine has taken control of the Republic Senate, rising to power as Chancellor through a series of political plotting as well as charismatic speeches. He subsequently assumes full control of the Senate by asking them to grant him emergency powers during the Clone Wars. Eventually he dissolves the Republic and turns it into an Imperial Empire. Democracy has failed because of the bureaucratic processes that the Senate has been caught up with. And this has enabled Palpatine to exploit it through his political plotting.

Management Theory
A Bureaucracy derives its authority from Rational Authority rather than Charismatic Authority. Thus, in making decisions, there should be laws and precedents to aid the decision process rather than be swayed by emotions. And while a Bureaucracy should follow rules, the rules should be part of its process rather than the be all and end all. When a Bureaucracy gets too caught up with its rules and forgets its function, then it has strayed from the ideals of Weberian Bureaucracy.

Lesson
A Bureaucracy begins to fail and break down when rational decision making is not practiced. This is further accentuated by its obsession and eventual engulfment in its rules and processes instead.

LESSON 2

Context
Anakin Skywalker is clearly a talented Jedi whose metaclorian count is higher than that of even Master Yoda himself. Still, it is not clear how Anakin is being managed as a Talent. But it is clear that the Jedi establishment will not bend one bit in its handling of Anakin. The suggestion is that he has been treated just like any other Jedi would be, even though he was the "Chosen One". He was even refused admission to the Jedi order in Episode I. Eventually Anakin betrays the Jedi and is turns over to the Dark Side of the Sith.

Management Theory
Talent Management is a fine process. The difficulty is usually in convincing an organization that the people they are nurturing are really the talents they seek. However when this is established beyond doubt, then these Talents need to be managed in a way for them to best benefit the company. Usually they require special nurturing that is beyond the bureaucratic setup of the organization. This is because if they do not receive this special nurturing, it is likely that they will seek greener pastures where they will receive this special nurturing.

Lesson
To bring out the best in your Talents, they need to be specially managed and nurtured, and not left to the established rules and processes of the organization.

LESSON 3

Context
Anakin Skywalker is appointed to the Jedi Council but not promoted to the rank of Master. All members of the Jedi Council hold the rank of Master. And the speculative reason for this is because he is too young. In truth, even his own master Obi-Wan Kenobi has realized that Anakin is more powerful a Jedi than himself, having saved his life on nine occasions. The frustration experienced by Anakin eventually plays a part in his growing distrust and impatience with the Jedi Council.

Management Theory
When doing performance measurement and performance appraisal, it is important to have Key Performance Indicators. And these KPIs have to be clearly communicated to the people being evaluated. Without this, performance measurement becomes unclear and this promotion and promotion prospects become hazy. This haziness gives rise to frustration and distrust.

Lesson
Promotion criteria and KPIs for performance evaluation should be clearly and transparently communicated to the people being evaluated.

LESSON 4

Context
Anakin Skywalker’s appointment to the Jedi Council was courtesy of Chancellor Palpatine. The Jedi Council make use of this closeness between Anakin and Palpatine to get Anakin to spy on Palpatine. However they do not trust Anakin fully with his mission and also limit his involvement in other future missions. This lack of trust culminates when Anakin tells Master Windu that Chancellor Palpatine is the Sith Lord. Windu clearly still refuses to trust Anakin and does not bring him along to deal with Palpatine.

Management Theory
The degree of trust between superior and subordinate is a case of whether you believe in Theory X or Theory Y management. There is no trust in the Theory X management style practiced by Master Windu and the Jedi Council. And clearly we see that this does not make for effective man-management as eventually Anakin, seduced by the dark side of the force intervenes and betrays Master Windu.

Lesson
A Theory Y management where a degree of trust exists between superior and subordinate is clearly a more effective management style than Theory X management, especially in times of crisis.

LESSON 5

Context
The Jedi Council is made up of a bunch of Master Jedis who have been on it since Episode 1. While most of the decisions are made by consensus, there does not appear to be much dissent or disagreement within the council members. So really whether or not the Council meets, the conclusion is likely to be the same. There are no devil’s advocates to question the wisdom of the Council.

Management Theory
While it is good to have consensus as a basis for decision making, it is important to have a fair bit of dissension and disagreement in the decision making body. This strengthens the quality of the decision that is made. And more importantly it prevents this phenomenon called "Group Think." Group Think is when a group of people have worked together so long that they begin to talk and think like each other. This may be good for corporate culture but it is not good for a decision making body which needs diversity of opinion to arrive at an optimal decision.

Lesson
Some dissension and disagreement is important in a decision making body or process, as it prevents "Group Think".

LESSON 6

Context
Led by Count Dooku, the Separatist movement starts to amass firepower to establish a military threat to the Galactic Republic. The Jedi Knights who are the traditional peacekeepers of the galaxy start to take on the role of Generals to lead the Republic’s Clone Army against the Separatist. Eventually they find themselves spread too thinly and in a role that is not suited for their training. It is indeed tragic that most of the Jedi get gunned down by the Clone Army, while leading from the front. Only Master Yoda who has directed his Clone Army like a General survived.

Management Theory
Every company and every person has a core competence. If that company or person engages in their core competence then they will reap the maximum benefit from their time and effort. Conversely if they engage in activities outside their core competence then they will not be optimizing their return on their time and effort. Furthermore, they may even experience a negative return.

Lesson
Always stick to your core competence.

LESSON 7

Context
As the Separatist start to open more fronts of conflicts across the Galactic Republic, the Jedis find themselves spread thinner and thinner. Eventually there are insufficient Master Jedis to handle the various conflicts as Master Windu is left alone to confront Chancellor Palpatine on Coruscant. This lack of numbers is an important factor leading to the demise of the Jedi.

Management Theory
Succession Planning is something that current management always delay. Perhaps it is with fear that grooming the next generation of management to take their place would result in their own demise. However a more enlightened management will treat this as a chance to find themselves in a more elevated role or realize that having more capable managers will allow the company to expand in size.

Lesson
If you as current management fail to embrace succession planning, you will eventually find yourself continually shorthanded and overwhelmed with issues.

LESSON 8

Context
Nearing the end of the dual between Anakin Skywalker and Obi-Wan Kenobi on Mustafar, Anakin is on a raft in pool of lava and Obi-Wan is on the banks, uphill to Anakin. Obi-Wan tells Anakin that he has the higher ground and so he is clearly at an advantage as compared to Anakin. Anakin chooses to disregard this established wisdom and choose to believe in his personal powers instead. He executes a jump onto Obi-Wan and gets his legs and hands sliced off by Obi-Wan.

Management Theory
There are certain established wisdom in the field of business and finance. This includes Economics, Finance and Management Theories. Often these theories are pretty robust in their basis as they have been worked on and developed by some of the best human minds for the last hundred years. So it is usually not wise for people choose to depend on personal heuristics or personal judgement over these established wisdom. Put another way, there is real value in the
established wisdom that has been accumulated in the form of Economics, Finance and Management Theories in the field of business and finance.

Lesson
It is wiser to depend on Theory than to depend on your personal heuristics and judgement.

As One Door Closes, Another Window Opens

2009-10-22T13:50:00.001+08:00

Image from Microsoft Office Clipart

This might sound ironic but when I read in the white paper, Talent Management in a Down Economy from Taleo about job creation during a recession, it actually made sense. According to the article, it is a misconception that hiring stops during a recession. In fact, hiring continues and job opportunities are still available!

As a point in case, data derived from the US Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) showed that in the 2nd quarter of 2001 when the the dot com bubble burst, 1.2 million jobs were lost. On the other hand, in the same period, 7.6 million jobs were created.

History is repeating itself again and the same case will be applied to the current global recession. Old jobs will be lost but, new ones will be created. These jobs are the by-products of new opportunities as businesses look for new markets to grow into, new products to develop and new services to offer. Likewise, new jobs will also be created when businesses go back to their roots and focus on core products and services. Recessions always provide that impetus for businesses to improve the overall strength of its current workforce by making it lean and efficient and at the same time infuse it with new, skilled talent.

I saw this trend starting here in the Philippines albeit the massive layoffs happening in several companies. As an example, one multinational company which shed numerous jobs in its financial department is currently expanding its support operations.

What is the lesson learned here then? Do not stagnate in your current job! Always look for learning opportunities in potential growth areas. This will give you the leverage to capitalize and grab potential job opportunities most especially during recessions. This will also help conquer that fear of being fired.

From my standpoint, the opportunities right now are in service management, business intelligence and process improvement frameworks (ISO, CMMI, Six Sigma). These 3 focus on the identification and implementation of opportunities in reducing costs without sacrificing quality while increasing productivity, 3 critical factors needed right now in this challenged business climate.

Firing a Bad Hire

2009-10-22T13:44:00.001+08:00

I found this great article in TechRepublic's Blog regarding a first hand account from Benny Sisko on how he fired a bad hire. He listed 6 lessons learned on how to avoid having a bad hire and I interjected my ideas in some of the lessons.

1. Perform a two-part interview.
Interviews are best done more than once with two or more pairs of eyes and ears in each sessions. Each interviewer is coming to the session with his/her own biases and expectations and this ensures that all questions are covered with the applicant. If not all, at least the most critical ones. Some may consider this as a waste of time but compare it with the lost time in productivity and morale impact later on due to a bad hire, the extra time and effort is well worth it.

2. Test the candidate.
Match the technical tests as close as possible to your technical requirements. If the position requires web development using HTML, JavaScript and CSS, give the applicant a test on how to develop a sample website using these 3 technologies. This will give you a pretty good idea on the skill level of the applicant without asking too many questions. In fact you can even go deeper afterward and conduct a code analysis to further probe on the logic and rationale behind his coding practices and framework.

3. Get more references and then get more references.

4. If he does slip by, coach, coach, coach.
Actually, even if the new hire is not slipping, it is worth it to have monthly or even bimonthly sessions to be more proactive if he/she is already encountering difficulties or only seeing potential problems in the horizon. These sessions will also serve as excellent feedback mechanism to level any expectations or misconceptions regarding assigned responsibilities.

5. Listen to the team.

6. Take the probationary period seriously and make it known that I intend to do so.

Firing: The Bad and The Ugly

2009-10-22T13:36:00.002+08:00

Image from Microsoft Office Clipart

Firing is one of the sordid tasks that all managers must face and handle sooner or later. I had my own share in the past and these all evoked unpleasant memories. However which way you sugarcoat a termination, it would always be received negatively albeit temporarily. Unfortunately this will become more of the norm within this year rather than an exception because of the global financial crunch. Not a day goes by that I see news about a company reducing 10% of its workforce here or a company laying off off 3,000 employees there.

The Philippines is not spared even with the expanding offshoring / outsourcing opportunities coming in. I read in the news about Accenture Philippines which laid off 500 employees as part of a redundancy program. There was also the news about the "total shutdown" of Intel Philippines' operation affecting almost 2,000 employees.

In this regard, if you are faced with this dire situation, this might help you ease the tension and stress. I found this great post from Slacker Manager about a US News blog article that Alison Green wrote on how to fire someone. I very much agree with point #6 (Know you’re going to be emotionally drained afterwards) and what Slacker Manager added as point #7 (Don’t take it personally).

Firing always makes me "psychologically" sick. This is the reason why I always schedule this kind of meeting on a Friday so I have a chance to "recuperate" over the weekend. Likewise, whatever is said during the meeting, don't take it personally. Be like a Teflon-coated pan to ensure that nothing sticks to you since all the negative words that will be hurled at you are just the consequence of the outburst of emotions.

Hiring: Interview Questions

2009-10-22T13:32:00.001+08:00

Image from Microsoft Office Clipart

The hiring process is littered with "dead bodies." I considered myself having a high "batting average" in getting great hires but unfortunately I also have my own share of wrong decisions.

From my perspective, hiring is a probabilities game. In order to increase the probability of getting great hires, I need to expand and refine the various tools and techniques I am using in the hiring process. The first one I would like to share here are the questions I use during the interview process.

Interview applicants are always showing their best feet forward during the interview process. As a result, it is my responsibility to ask the right questions in order to peel through these layers and probe deeper to reveal their true personalities and tendencies. I know volumes of books have already been written regarding this topic so I will not be focusing on them anymore.

My focus will be on the list of questions that I amassed through the years. I got these questions from a speed-dating website. It will come as a surprise to some but for me it made a whole lot of sense. In speed dating, a couple is only given 5 minutes to ask questions and assess if there is a fit or "click" between the two of them. As a result, these questions are quite pointed and the answers provided to them can serve as a foundation to deeper, probing questions.

Listed below is a sample of these questions and a small description about their rationale in a job interview situation.

Pursuit for Skills and Knowledge
I would like to know if the applicant is motivated in expanding his skills and knowledge outside that of the domain knowledge he is getting from work. This is usually reflected on the activities he is doing during his sparetime and the kind of books he is reading.

When you have spare time, what do you do for fun?
What do you do during weekends?
What's the latest book you have read?
What's the latest technical book you have read?

Attitudes and Values
I would like to know the priorities in life of the applicant, what drives or motivates him to work, who drives and motivates him, who influenced him to be him now.

What do you cherish the most in life?
What person has most influenced you in your life and why?
What attitude do you have right now you want to change?
How do you think you are viewed by others?

Education
I usually hire fresh graduates. As a result, I would like to know how did they perform in college since this could be a reflection on what would be their performance at work.

Why did you decide to take up {course}?
Tell us a little about how well you did in school.
Tell us a little about your extracurricular activities.
What were your best and worst subjects (favorite and least favorite)?
Did you have a job while in college? If yes, can you describe the job and your responsibilities.

Loco Roco 2: Berries Location in Tropuca and Chapo-Wahr Stages

2009-10-05T02:03:00.000+08:00

In the first Loco Roco, collecting all 20 berries was, from my standpoint, just bragging rights to friends. This is drastically changed in Loco Roco 2 where getting all the berries in one stage means unlocking a short movie about a character in the Loco Roco world. A great reinforcement indeed!

Unfortunately, knowing the location of the berries is the easy part. Actually, for 1,000 pickories, a Mui Mui will help you find 1 berry. The problem though is getting all 20 berries has proven to be quite a challenging endeavor most especially in the 2nd and 3rd stages.

What I'll do here is to help you out on the easy part. I'll post the location of all berries in the various stages. Getting all 20 will be up to you.

TROPUCA STAGES

Tropuca Stage 1

Click image to enlarge

Tropuca Stage 2

Click image to enlarge

CHAPO-WAHR STAGES

Chapo-Wahr Stage 1

Click image to enlarge

Chapo-Wahr Stage 2

Click image to enlarge

Loco Roco 2: Throne of Mui Mui King

2009-10-05T01:59:00.000+08:00

This is the location in the Mui Mui House where you will unlock the Throne of the Mui Mui King. It is located on the topmost portion of the house. In order to build it, you need the following parts:

1 Gorjan Stone
4 Great Horn
2 Pupi Weed
1000 Pickories

You can get the Gorjan Stone either from the Loco Race mini-game after playing it for about 20 times and winning 1st place or from the underground digger that appears when you quit or load a stage (the mine should be yellow / gold in color). You can get the Great Horn from the Mui Mui Crane mini-game. As for the Pupi Weed, unfortunately I could not recall where I got it and searching Google was not helpful. I will update this post once I get more information.

Once you built the Throne, the Mui Mui King would immediately appear sitting on it. All the while I thought something would happen, a new stage or mini-game would be unlocked or a new part in the Mui Mui House would appear. Guess what? Nothing! He is the King and nothing happened?!

Likewise, you may be wondering is he doing something special in the Mui Mui house? From what I am seeing, none! He just sits on the throne waving at the other Mui Muis. I think that is the reason why he is a bit soggy in the mid-section.

Loco Roco 2: Special Story Movie

2009-10-05T01:57:00.002+08:00

You would be able to unlock this movie once you built the Special Projector in the Mui Mui House.

To do so, you need the following parts:

2 Shapola Stone
1 See-through Stone
3 Meteorite Fragment
1000 Pickories

You can get the Shapola Stone from the Chapo-Wahr stages, the See-through Stone from the Shamplin 2 stage, and the Meteorite Fragment from the Mui Mui Crane (assuming you have already unlocked it) but it is quite a common item that you can easily find in various stages.

Enjoy the movie.

Loco Roco 2: Mui Mui Friends

2009-10-04T01:26:00.000+08:00

Click image to enlarge.

Here are all the Mui Mui Friends (13 in total) that I am able to get from the Mui Mui Crane. I think I was able to get all of them. As I mentioned in my post about the Lab Counter, you need to get the Mui Mui Friends in order to unlock some of the map parts as well as some songs in the Mui Mui House.

Loco Roco 2: Lab Counter

2009-10-04T01:22:00.002+08:00

This is the location in the Mui Mui House where you will unlock the Mui Mui Lab Counter. It is located in the basement of the house. In order to build it, you need the following parts:

1 Ancient Tableau
2 Cheranka Tree
2 Thorn Fragment
300 Pickories

You can get the Ancient Tableau from the Mui Mui Crane, CaloCaro stages 1 and 2 (seldom though in stage 1), the Cheranka Tree is a common item that you can easily find in the various stages, and the Thorn Fragment from the Mui Mui Crane and in Tropuca stage 2 or other stages where you find the item insect.

Once you built and clicked on this house part (to click, press the button X when an exclamation point appears while placing the pointer on top of the counter), you will be able to see 4 maps that also require 3 parts. These are listed below.

Bumpy Map (Maps 1 -3)
Coarse Map (Maps 1-3)
Smudged Map (Maps 1-3)
Soggy Map (Maps 1-3)

This is the process that is still sketchy for me but as you complete other parts of the house (I am not able to document which are these parts and using Google will unfortunately return little information), some of the map parts will unlock. You will also be able to get these map parts once you get the Mui Mui Friends from the Mui Mui Crane.

Listed below are the new stages that will be unlocked once the map parts are completed. To unlock the new stage, press the button X when an exclamation point appears while placing the pointer on top of the completed map parts list.

Bumpy Map -> Perculoka 2
Coarse Map -> Jaojab 3
Soggy Map -> Kelapton 2
Smudged Map -> Buibui Fort 3

These 4 stages are the most difficult stages that I encountered. In the original stages, not even once did my Loco Roco died. In two of the stages, dying is the norm not the exception. The other 2 stages require logic, eye-hand coordination and abstract thinking. I have described below what you can expect from these stages.

Perculoka 2
This is the easiest among the four. You just need to bounce your Loco Roco properly and avoid jumping in the water. Once you are in the water, you will be directed to the end of the stage.

Jaojab 3
You need to think ahead in order to assess where you need to go in this "rotating" stage. If you think you are stuck, you definitely are.

Kelapton 2
A steady eye-hand coordination is required in this stage. I am almost at the last part. Almost!

Buibui Fort 3
If you are a masochist, this is the stage for you. I'm always dead in the first 10 seconds that's why I stopped playing this stage. There must be something wrong with my eye-hand coordination or the stage is just so frustratingly difficult!

Loco Roco 2: Mui Mui Crane

2009-10-04T01:19:00.002+08:00

This is the location in the Mui Mui House where you will unlock the Mui Mui Crane. It is located in the upper right side of the house. In order to build it, you need the following parts:

2 Curly Tree Branch
3 Superhard Panel
2 Meteorite Fragment
500 Pickories

You can get the Curly Tree Branch from the Bui Bui Forts (1 and 2), the Superhard Panel if ever you encounter and destroy a Bui Bui plane, and the Meteorite Fragment is a common item that you can easily find in the various stages.

Once you built the Crane, it will move out of the Mui Mui House. When you exit the house back to the World Map, you will find the Crane near the Tropuca stages. It has become a mini-game where, for 100 pickories, you can grab unique items. Randomly while playing the mini-game, the Mui Mui Crane will be replaced by the bigger Bui Bui Crane.

One of the most important use of the Crane is you can get here the Mui Mui Friends which you need to get the maps for the Lab Counter. This will be the topic for my next post.

Loco Roco 2: Mui Mui House

2009-10-04T01:17:00.000+08:00

My Mui Mui House. Click image to enlarge.

I have been playing the PSP game Loco Roco 2, everyday, for almost 6 months now and I have not finished unlocking all of the secret stuffs. That's how deep the game is compared to its first incarnation.

My favorite and most played feature of the game is the Mui Mui House. You will need to gather specific materials to unlock specific areas, parts and furnitures of the house. These areas will eventually unlock additional stages or mini-games in the game.

The only thing left right now in my Mui Mui House is the Juice Server. Well that is unless something is unlocked again after I completed all the parts. Unfortunately I do not have the patience yet to get the honey material from the darn bees because they are just so hard to get.

I'll provide detailed information in later posts on how to unlock the critical parts of the house to get access to the mini-games and additional game stages.

Books, books, books!

2009-09-16T00:25:00.000+08:00

Jurgen Appelo of Noop.NL posted a great article about books. He posted 8 questions about books and I would take up the challenge and answer these questions.

1. How many books do you read (on average)?
I read about one book a month.

2. Which books did you read lately?
Peopleware
1001 Ways to Reward Employees
The 24-Hour Business: Maximizing Productivity Through Round-the-Clock Operations

3. Why did you choose to read those books?
The 1st two books are about team management and performance management. The 2nd book is about businesses running 24/7 schedules and how to optimize the operations. I am currently into operations management and these three topics are the most important areas that I am working on.

4. What is your (brief) opinion of those books?
These are niche market books with very specific topics. They did an excellent work in discussing, elaborating, providing lessons learned and best practices with the specific topics discussed.

5. What book are you reading now?
Toyota Talent: Developing Your People the Toyota Way
Toyota Culture: The Heart and Soul of the Toyota Way

6. What is your opinion of that book so far?
Content-rich! These 2 books delved into the nitty gritty details of how Toyota produced and retained talented people.

7. Which books are you planning to read?
The 100 Best Business Books of All Time by Jack Covert and Todd Sattersten. I am still waiting for my order since the popular bookstores here in the Philippines do not have this book in their list yet.

8. Why do you intend to read those books?
I would like to know what are the additional business books that I need to add to my library.

9 Which 2 books had the biggest influence on you? (Olav Maassen added this question to the list)
The Greatest Salesman in the World
Jonathan Livingston Seagull

I read both books when I was still in secondary school and both gave me that profound sense of drive and motivation coupled with a healthy dose of optimism that enabled me to challenge myself constantly in order to rise against adversity and mediocrity and follow my dreams.

The Stork

2009-09-12T13:29:00.001+08:00

This was one of the advertisements from Monster.com. Watch and be inspired by its powerful message.

Making Things Happen and The Lean Six Sigma Pocket Toolbook

2009-09-08T04:58:00.000+08:00

Each time I have a chance to go outside the Philippines, I bring with me a list of books that I am unable to buy locally. Thus, when travel beckoned a few months ago, I took the opportunity to buy the project management book, Making Things Happen by Scott Berkun.

This is the updated version of The Art of Project Management which I partially read before courtesy of a friend who lent me his copy for a few days. It was a great book chock-full of practical advices and best practices from a program manager who has been refined by Microsoft's "furnace."

Much to my dismay, both books are not available locally thus when I arrived to my destination, I immediately went to a Borders store and bought a copy of the book.

I also found another great book, The Lean Six Sigma Pocket Toolbook. I am planning to take the Black Belt certification and this book is a great resource for re-learning the more than 100 tools and methodologies used in Six Sigma including that of Lean Six Sigma.

Career Timeline

2009-09-08T04:53:00.002+08:00

I got the idea of a "career timeline" from the resume of my former Director and with his permission, I also applied the same concept to my own resume and made some revisions and improvements along the way. Here's how it looked like.

It was a straightforward graphical representation of my resume but portrayed, in an easily understandable medium and in so few words, my work experiences, competencies and trainings.

Unfortunately, this has been put to shame when I saw the resume of Michael Anderson. His resume elevated the career timeline into a different level. It is better viewed than described so click here to view his career timeline / visual resume. Click here as well to understand his thought processes behind his resume. I think my career timeline needs a makeover.

Free Project Management Tools

2009-08-29T08:42:00.000+08:00

Image from Microsoft Office Clipart

As project managers, we have used or currently using popular project management tools such as Microsoft Project and Visio and MindManager. But, what if your current company has limited licenses for these applications due to budget constraints or you recently joined a startup with no budget yet for these applications.

The answer to this problem are open-source project management tools. There are already a plethora of these tools but the ones I listed below are those that I used and found to be near or even challenges the features and performance of its commercial counterparts.

Project Scheduling and Management: Open Workbench

Diagramming: Dia

Mind Mapping: FreeMind

10 Project Management Trends in 2009

2009-08-29T08:38:00.001+08:00

Image from Microsoft Office Clipart

Rudolf Melik, the CEO and founder of Tenrox and the author of The Rise of the Project Workforce: Managing People and Projects in a Flat World, wrote in his blog what he deemed to be the 10 potential project management trends in 2009.

I have listed below these trends and provided some of my thoughts as well.

10. The increasing correlation between project management and operational excellence

This is true. Senior executives are now highly visible in all aspects of project management to ensure that activities stay in synch with business strategies and ensure ROI.

9. The CFO and the project manager friendship

8. The rise of the Project Workforce

7. Dispersed customers, projects and teams kill politics

This I am skeptical. I reckon that this trend points to bad politics but there is no need to "throw the baby with the bathwater" so to speak. There is still a need for good politics most especially if you are dealing with global teams. For example, due to the distance, the project manager needs to ensure that the right resources are assigned to the team, costs are diligently tracked and the right stakeholders support and promote the project. All these will be difficult to achieve if the project manager is not an adept "politician."

6. Finding the right talent gets a lot easier

I agree. Due to advances in communication and collaboration technologies, we can now tap great talents available in any country. The whole world is now the resource pool! The project manager is no longer constrained by the limits of the resources available in his/her locale.

5. Emphasis shifts from project management to workforce management

4. Uncertainty is the new normal

I think a better word for uncertainty is ambiguity. With this in mind, two critical skills come in mind that will play a huge role for the success of members of the workforce. These are adaptability and sense of urgency. Adaptability to ensure that we flow with and not against change. Sense of urgency to quickly implement an activity or solution to immediately test its veracity.

3. The rapidly increasing service web

2. Enterprise software technology cross-pollination gains momentum

1. Leadership matters

In the light of all the recent management scandals and fiascos, having the right leader has become the cornerstone of the success of a project (micro) or the organization (macro).

Click the links below to view the articles.

Ten Predictions for Project Management Trends in 2009 Part 1

Ten Predictions for Project Management Trends in 2009 Part 2

Ten Predictions for Project Management Trends in 2009 Part 3

Time Management Tools for Busy Managers Part 2: Xobni for Outlook

2009-08-28T07:57:00.001+08:00

According to research, by 2009, 41% of our time will be spent on managing e-mails. As a result, it makes sense that reducing the amount of time of managing our e-mail inboxes will already be a huge help for us to attend to other priorities.

This is where Xobni, a free(!) Outlook plugin, shines like a bright light amidst the daily deluge of emails. I have listed below some of the main features of Xobni which I find quite useful based on my experiences.

1. Email Analytics

This shows by ranks, graphs and statistics how you and your contacts use e-mail.
This is my favorite feature since for example, I can graphically see what time during the day my contact usually replies to my emails. This helps me know what is the best time to send an email to a contact and when to expect a reply.

2. Fast e-mail search

I am very fastidious in organizing my e-mails into specific folders. This helps me constantly achieve my target of retrieving an e-mail that I am searching in less than 2 minutes.
With Xobni, I can do away with my 2 minutes search criteria. I can search my e-mails in almost real-time speed. It is that fast! It begins showing the appropriate e-mail as I type the keyword/s. By the way, my PST file is more than 4GB in file size thus you can imagine the power of Xobni in searching e-mails.

3. Web Services Integration

Xobni allows you to integrate your Outlook to social networking sites such as LinkedIn and Facebook and web services such as Yahoo Mail and Skype.

You can learn more about Xobni by viewing the 3 demos below. You can download Xobni here. For updates, you can check out Xobni's blog.

Demo 1

Demo 2

Even Bill Gates demoed Xobni

Time Management Tools for Busy Managers Part 1

2009-08-27T19:58:00.002+08:00

One of my primary goals this year is to manage my time more efficiently in order to be more productive. I currently handle several projects, too many to count since I am too busy LOL.

Kidding aside, I wear two hats right now. The first hat is that of an operations manager, ensuring that my team is meeting the day-to-day SLAs and metrics for the various tasks assigned to us. The second hat is that of a strategist working through business development opportunities in order to further expand the empire so to speak.

Now, I want to excel and be at my best in both professional hats. Not only that, I also want to excel in my personal life as well, in both my family and personal endeavors. A tall order don't you think? I think so too but I believe that it is a good problem that can be cracked, with the right tool/s and mindset of course. As a result, I would like to share in these series the best practices I have learned so far with the hope that it could also help you as well in your own search for time management nirvana.

This is about the 6 time management tools from Julie Morgenstern. This is an excellent article written by Andre Kibbe of Tools for Thought where he summarized these 6 time management tools.

I have listed below these 6 tools to pick your interest as well.

1. Self-Assessment

- "What's keeping me from getting to them?"

2. Estimating how long a task will take

3. The 4 D's (Delete, Delay, Delegate, Diminish)

- I use these to manage my e-mail inbox. What a great help!

4. Develop a big-picture view

5. Time maps

- "It is a template of how we generally allocate our time during each day of a normal week."

6. Planner

- This is the "landscape" that holds everything you intend to do and when you intend to do it.

Click here to get the details about these 6 tools.

Twitter Tools

2009-08-27T06:58:00.002+08:00

Image from Geek and Poke

I mentioned in my last post that I am using TweetDeck as my primary Twitter client. Now, I would like to share the other Twitter tools that I frequently use.

URL Shortener and Tracker

tr.im has recently become my favorite URL shortener. I used TinyURL and is.gd before but my main concern was how to track the links I shared if they were being viewed. This is where tr.im shines because it tracks the number of visits to the trimmed URL and the visitor's location. I previously used Tweetburner but I find tr.im's interface more usable and friendly.

Twitter Statistics

I track my Twitter usage statistics through the following tools:

Twitter Grader: You can get here your overall "Twitter Grade" as well as learn the top 50 Filipino Twitterers.

Twitalyzer: This is the tool if you would like to know your relative influence, signal-to-noise ratio, generosity, velocity and clout to name a few.

Mr. Tweet: This tool acts as your personal networking agent by recommending relevant users to follow and improving your Twitter usage through relevant statistics.

Twitter Mobile

I own a Nokia e61i and I installed Twibble Mobile in it to track tweets when I am not in front of my PC. In my opinion, this is the best twitter client so far for S60-based phones.

If you want more tools, here are some links to illuminate your path towards Twitter nirvana.

7 Truly Useful Twitter Tools You Might Not Know About

Sanity check: 10 tools that will make you a Twitter power user

Twitter: Top 20 tools

And here are 4 insightful tips on how to use and not to use Twitter.

Ten Twitter Tips That’ll Take You To The Top

Be Careful What You Post

Branding Yourself with a Twitter Background

Finding the Right “Brand Voice” on Twitter

Twitter and TweetDeck

2009-08-26T18:17:00.001+08:00

I started my Twitter account about 8 months when curiosity struck me based on the news and reviews I read about the service. Within the first 2 months, I "lurked" my way through Twitter and found several great information about project management that I would not easily find in my normal blog searching process. Wow! I thought this could be a great source of information leads for my blogs.

On the third month, it suddenly dawned on me that I could evolve my Twitter usage from just a real-time "encyclopedia" to something more useful and relevant. With the new and profound sense of purpose, I started cranking the wheels so to speak and implemented my plans of using this great service more effectively.

Now, at this juncture of reaching more than a thousand contacts that I follow, I asked myself, how can I manage efficiently the sheer volume of real-time "Tweets" that I am getting from these contacts? I am bewildered to see some Twitter folks with 10,000+ following and followers and again asked myself how are they managing their's?

The answers to these questions lay on 2 great videos (which I embedded below) from Jesse Newhart where he shared his lessons learned on how to follow 15,000+ contacts in Twitter and on how to turn Twitter followers into friends. Great tips indeed! Another wonderful thing here is I have been using TweetDeck for 4 months now and it is only after watching Jesse's videos that I realized its full potential.

Project Status Report Template

2009-08-26T18:00:00.000+08:00

One of the critical skills of an effective project manager is about over-communication of project events. In line with this, providing project status reports to the stakeholders is critical to ensure that they will not be surprised of any events during the course of the project.

Techrepublic's project management expert Tom Mochal created a project status report template for this critical task in project management. The template covers in a straightforward manner the following areas:

Project description
Overall status
An explanation of any items that were flagged as potential problems
Planned accomplishments for the next reporting period

Microsoft Excel Project Plan Template

2009-08-26T07:28:00.002+08:00

I have been using this template for several years now. I use it if I need to quickly create and submit a project plan. I also use it for small-to-medium sized projects that do not need a full-scale Microsoft Project plan.

This project plan is very easy to manage and accessible to everybody especially those who do not have Microsoft Project. You can download the template from Techrepublic.

All The Books in The 100 Best Business Books of All Time

2009-08-25T14:55:00.002+08:00

Image from 800ceoread

I found this list from the book's official site. Reviewing the list, I currently own 12% of the books. It is not much but it is a good start. Time to go the bookstore and start expanding library. Eventually, I will share my own list of books that I find to be the best based on my experiences.

--------------------
You (Improving your life, your person and your strengths.)
Flow by Mihaly Csikzentmihalyi
Getting Things Done by David Allen
The Effective Executive by Peter Drucker
How to Be a Star at Work by Robert E. Kelley
The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People by Stephen R. Covey
How to Win Friends & Influence People by Dale Carnegie
Swim with the Sharks Without Being Eaten Alive by Harvey B. Mackay
The Power of Intuition by Gary Klein
What Should I Do with My Life? by Po Bronson
Oh, the Places You’ll Go by Dr. Seuss/Theodore Geisel
Chasing Daylight by Eugene O'Kelly

Leadership (Inspiration. Challenge. Courage. Change.)
On Becoming a Leader by Warren Bennis
The Leadership Moment by Michael Useem
The Leadership Challenge by James M. Kouzes and Barry Z. Posner
Leadership Is an Art by Max De Pree
The Radical Leap by Steve Farber
Control Your Destiny or Someone Else Will by Tichy and Sherman
Leading Change by John P. Kotter
Questions of Character by Joseph L. Badaracco, Jr.
The Story Factor by Annette Simmons
Never Give In! Speeches by Winston Churchill

Strategy (Eight organizational blueprints from which to draft your own.)
In Search of Excellence by Thomas J. Peters and Robert H. Waterman, Jr.
Good to Great by Jim Collins
The Innovator’s Dilemma by Clayton M. Christensen
Only the Paranoid Survive by Andrew S. Grove
Who Says Elephants Can’t Dance? by Louis V. Gerstner, Jr.
Discovering the Soul of Service by Leonard Berry
Execution by Larry Bossidy and Ram Charan
Competing for the Future by Gary Hamel and C. K. Prahalad

Sales and Marketing (Approaches and pitfalls in the ongoing process of creating customers.)
Influence by Robert B. Cialdini, PhD
Positioning by Al Ries and Jack Trout
A New Brand World by Scott Bedbury with Stephen Fenichell
Selling the Invisible by Harry Beckwith
Zag by Marty Neumeier
Crossing the Chasm by Geoffrey A. Moore
Secrets of Closing the Sale by Zig Ziglar
How to Become a Rainmaker by Jeffrey J. Fox
Why We Buy by Paco Underhill
The Experience Economyby B. Joseph Pine II and James H. Gilmore
Purple Cow by Seth Godin
The Tipping Point by Malcolm Gladwell

Rules and Scorekeeping (The all-important numbers behind the game.)
Naked Economics by Charles Wheelan
Financial Intelligence by Karen Berman and Joe Knight
The Balanced Scorecard by Robert S. Kaplan and David P. Norton

Management (Guiding and directing the people around you.)
The Essential Drucker by Peter Drucker
Out of the Crisis by W. Edwards Deming
Toyota Production System by Taiichi Ohno
Reengineering the Corporation by Michael Hammer and James Champy
The Goal by Eliyahu M. Goldratt and Jeff Cox
The Great Game of Businessby Jack Stack with Bo Burlingham
First, Break all the Rules by Marcus Buckingham and Curt Coffman
Now, Discover Your Strengths by Buckingham and Clifton
The Knowing-Doing Gap by Jeffrey Pfeffer and Robert I. Sutton
The Five Dysfunctions of a Team by Patrick Lencioni
Six Thinking Hats by Edward De Bono

Biographies (Seven lives. Unlimited lessons.)
Titan by Ron Chernow
My Years with General Motors by Alfred P. Sloan, Jr.
The HP Way by David Packard
Personal History by Katharine Graham
Moments of Truth by Jan Carlzon
Sam Walton: Made in America by Sam Walton with John Huey
Losing My Virginity by Richard Branson

Entrepreneurship (Seven guides to the passion and practicality necessary for any new venture.)
The Art of the Start by Guy Kawasaki
The E-Myth Revisited by Michael E. Gerber
The Republic of Tea ** by Mel Ziegler, Patricia Ziegler, and Bill Rosenzweig
The Partnership Charter by David Gage
Growing a Business by Paul Hawken
Guerrilla Marketing by Jay Conrad Levinson
The Monk and the Riddle Randy Komisar with Kent Lineback

Narratives (Six industry tales of both fortune and failure.)
McDonald’s: Behind the Arches by John F. Love
American Steel ** by Richard Preston
The Force by David Dorsey
The Smartest Guys in the Room by Bethany McLean and Peter Elkind
When Genius Failed by Roger Lowenstein
Moneyball by Michael Lewis

Innovation & Creativity (Insight into the process of developing new ideas.)
Orbiting the Giant Hairball by Gordon MacKenzie
The Art of Innovation by Tom Kelley with Jonathan Littman
Jump Start Your Business Brain by Doug Hall
A Whack on the Side of the Head by Roger Von Oech
The Creative Habit by Twyla Tharp
The Art of Possibility by Rosamund Stone Zander and Benjamin Zander

Big Ideas (The future of business books lies here.)
The Age of Unreason by Charles Handy
Out of Control by Kevin Kelly
The Rise of the Creative Class by Richard Florida
Emotional Intelligence by Daniel Goleman
Driven by Paul R. Lawrence and Nitin Nohria
To Engineer is Human by Henry Petroski
The Wisdom of Crowds by James Surowiecki
Made to Stick by Chip Heath and Dan Heath

Takeaways (What everyone is looking for.)
The First 90 Days by Michael Watkins
Up the Organization by Robert Townsend
Beyond the Core by Chris Zook
Little Red Book of Selling by Jeffrey Gitomer
What the CEO Wants You to Know by Ram Charan
The Team Handbook by Peter Scholtes, Brian Joiner, and Barbara Streibel
A Business and Its Belief by Thomas J. Watson, Jr.
Lucky or Smart?by Bo Peabody
The Lexus and the Olive Tree by Thomas L. Friedman
Thinkertoys by Michael Michalko
More Than You Know by Michael J. Mauboussin

--------------------
** To buy The Republic of Tea, visit their site.
** American Steel is presently out-of-print. Your best bet is to head to your local library.

Certified Bookworm

2009-08-25T04:47:00.003+08:00

I had been on a blogging hiatus for the past 3 months since I had the privilege of being a part of a project team involved in defining and creating a global services solution. The project had very tight schedules, numerous deliverables and I need to be outside the country several times for more than a week. Now that the critical phase of the project has been completed, I can go back to my regular blogging schedules.

I love books. I can stay in a bookstore the whole day wondering through the shelves and perusing all the books that interest me. I cannot help but be amazed sometimes because all these knowledge, experiences, lessons learned, best practices are right there, immediately available, and the only thing you have to do is open a book. Likewise, I find reading books as the most cost-effective, bang-for-the-buck way of not stagnating in your current job and further expanding your career horizons. How good is that!

As part of my weekly routine, I visit Powerbooks to browse its latest collections just in case the books from Amazon are already available locally. I also frequently visit Booksale, a local used books store. Through this store, I was able to find gems such as Code Complete by Steve McConnell, Managing by Harold Geneen and Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance by Robert Pirsig to name a few.

Image from 800ceoread

The latest business book to graze my radar is The 100 Best Business Books of All Time by Jack Covert and Todd Sattersten. I learned about this book through Slacker Manager who gave it an excellent review. Quoting him, listed below are the 5 reasons why you need to buy the book.

It has reviews of 100 books so you know which books you should add to your library (or you can feel smart knowing which of the best books are already in your library).
It’s only $25.95 (or Php 1,795 from Powerbooks), which means you’re investing less than $.26 per book review.
It’s got a wonderful leadership section, so you’ll be able to talk to your manager a little bit more about what her/his favorite book is.
It’s got a management section, so you can be a better manager.
It’s easy to understand even if you haven’t read any other business/management books.

Twitter Visual Guide

2009-05-10T21:18:00.008+08:00

Image by Applicant.com

If you are still wading through the thick muck of figuring out how to use Twitter, here is a great visual guide (from the folks at applicant.com) on how to use Twitter as a business management tool, a way to improve customer service or even as content trafficker between social media websites. Kudos to the folks at applicant.com! Click the image to view its original size.

Big Bad Beetle Mecha!

2009-05-10T20:09:00.007+08:00

I think Gundams is well on its way to become a reality in Japan. They currently have the popular humanoid robot, Asimo, and it is constantly being improved and now this, a real mecha beetle developed by a Japanese engineer over the course of 11 years. Its design is based on a rhinocerous beetle and dubbed the Kabutom RX-03, an obvious tribute to the Gundam mobile suit RX-78. It has no practical use right now since it is still a prototype but its development can serve as small steps in ultimately building mobile suits in the future. I will be more than glad to see it have a fusion reactor and huge laser cannons on its back. LOL!

Check out the video above and click here for more details about the "Mushi Mecha."

TedTalks: Information Design and Statistics

2009-04-10T12:29:00.005+08:00

Before, I see statistics as numbers, graphs and charts with boring imprinted all over it. But, when I saw Hans Rosling presentation at TED about third-world myths and how he debunked them, I was blown away on how he creatively presented (using Trendalyzer) the huge volume of data and statistics.

Hans Rosling: Debunking third-world myths with the best stats you've ever seen

TedTalks: Creativity

2009-04-10T12:01:00.005+08:00

I discovered TED via Twitter when one of my contacts posted a great video about why we do what we do. TED stands for Technology, Entertainment, Design which started out in 1984 to bring people together from these 3 disciplines in a conference. TED's website makes the best talks in these conferences available for free for the public.

Imagine that! All the great ideas from the world's greatest thinkers readily available as a source of inspiration to us. I salute and commend all the people from TED for such a wonderful endeavor and powerful mission of spreading these great ideas. In this regard, this is my own small way of spreading these great ideas. I will compile by topic the best videos, from my standpoint, where I learned and inspired the most.

The first topic I am posting is about creativity. The first video is from Tim Brown who is the CEO of the "innovation and design" firm IDEO. He discussed the vital link between play and creativity. The second video is from the author Elizabeth Gilbert who shared the radical idea that instead of the "rare" person being a genius, there is a genius in all of us.

Tim Brown: The powerful link between creativity and play

Elizabeth Gilbert: A different way to think about creative genius

Great Images With Humor

2009-04-10T11:51:00.005+08:00

Image screen capture from Smashing Apps

This is a great compilation of creative images with a twist of humor taken by imaginative photographers. The list may be short but it will surely jumpstart your creative juices.

Click here to see the compilation.

Photography Themes Galleries

2009-03-31T22:20:00.015+08:00

This is a compilation of the various beautiful and amazing galleries I found showcasing the best photographs following a specific theme.

Urban Decay Photography Gallery

Image by Gundross

In stark contrast to the glitz and glamour of the city lies the dark and grungy beauty of urban decay.

Rain Photography Gallery

Image by Agnieszka Borkowska

Some photographers do not like bad weather but some bask in them. These photographers were able to capture the drama and atmosphere that one is unable to extract from good weather.

Night Photography Gallery

Image by Jose Maria Cuellar

Even if night photography is very technical and challenging in nature, you will be rewarded with beautifully lit buildings with light trails, fireworks, lightning strikes and star trails to name a few.

Street Photography Gallery

Image by Blake Andrews

Capturing the decisive moment is the mantra followed by street photographers. As a result, I have very deep respect for them who are able to visualize the image in their minds, compose on the fly, and capture the right moment in the nick of time.

Reflective Photography Gallery

Image by Azzam Merchant

Reflective surfaces surround us thus we can use them to create surreal / abstract photographs or provide a creative depth to images.

Underwater Photography Gallery

Image by Eldad Hagar

Due to the high cost of specialized equipment for underwater photography and the requisite advanced techniques, only a handful of photographers are able to attempt and become successful in this field. On the other hand, amidst these challenges, a photographer will be introduced to a stunning new world of strange creatures and breathtaking ethereal vistas.

Motion Blur Photography

Image by Lee Cullivan

Cameras do not just freeze time. Controlling the shutter speed enables you to creatively create images that depict motion and the sense of motion or speed.

Free EBooks

2009-03-31T21:14:00.006+08:00

Image screen capture from Hongkiat.com

I am very fond of books as you can see from the several posts I made in my Project Management blog. Thus when I found this site which compiled the sites where you can download ebooks for free, I am grinning from ear to ear and jumping for joy.

Without further ado, listed below are the two links.

20 Best Websites To Download Free EBooks Part 1

20 Best Websites To Download Free EBooks Part 2

Photoshop Text Effects

2009-03-31T20:46:00.008+08:00

Image screen capture from Photoshop Roadmap

I have been scouring the Web in search for tutorials on how to create great-looking Photoshop text effects. I am planning to use this for the creation of headers for my four blogs. I have already created a header for my Handheld Video Gamer blog although I think it still needs some tweaking and additional pizzazz.

Listed below are the various tutorials I have found so far.

15 Amazing Photoshop Text Effects

The Best 80 Photoshop Text Effects on the Web

30 Awesome Photoshop Text Effects Tutorials

6 Quick’n'Dirty Photoshop Text Effects From Scratch

Creative and Funny Bus Advertisements

2009-03-15T16:54:00.004+08:00

Image from Toxel

Click here to be amused and amazed.

Awesome Photo Manipulations

2009-03-15T16:10:00.004+08:00

Image from Toxel

There are regular photo manipulations that you see everyday based on tutorials that you get from the Web (see my last post about 100 Photo Effects Photoshop Tutorials). On the other hand, there are those extremely awesome photo manipulations that make you scratch your head and ask, "How did he do that?" This will definitely be your reactions when you see the digitally modified photographs of Erik Johansson. Just one word, awesome! Click here to be blown away.

100 Photo Effects Photoshop Tutorials

2009-03-15T04:13:00.007+08:00

Image screen capture from Photoshop Roadmap

I found this extensive tutorials list a few days back while searching for Photoshop Text Effects tutorials. It is an extensive list of recreating photo effects from Cross Processing to Watercolor using Photoshop. Some of the tutorials even focused on recreating traditional photography techniques. This is also a great way to improve your Photoshop skills and know-how.

Nikon's F-Mount 50th Anniversary

2009-03-11T03:11:00.005+08:00

Image from Nikon.com

March 3, 2009 was the 50th anniversary of Nikon's F-mount, the lens-mounting system for its SLRs and Nikkor lenses. To coincide with the anniversary, Nikon is releasing a new logo for the F-mount (shown above).

Even if I am a Canon user right now, I have deep respect for Nikon's products. In fact, I almost became a Nikon user if not for the price difference between the Canon 350D and the Nikon D70s. My first choice back then was the D70s but unfortunately I was on a budget. Who knows, the winds may change in the future and I will eventually shift to a Nikon. That Nikon F6 is just a sight to behold!

For now, let's enjoy this great video for Nikon's 90th anniversary.

Stop-Motion Film: Building the Lego Millennium Falcon

2009-03-10T21:43:00.007+08:00

Building the LEGO Millennium Falcon from Gizmodo on Vimeo.

This is an amazing, painstakingly-done work! Imagine 5,195 pieces(!) of the Lego Millenium Falcon being assembled by Lego Star Wars characters and machineries caught in a stop-motion video. To top it all, there are even side stories such as Darth Vader and Stormtroopers messing up the construction, complete with light saber and blaster effects. Great work indeed and a must-see for die-hard Star Wars (like me of course).

FrancisM

2009-03-07T07:53:00.010+08:00

Image from lyricskoto

To Francis Magalona. A great artist. A proud Filipino. A Free Man. Through your music and photographs, your memory will live on.

"Every color and every hue
is represented by me and you.
Take a slide in the slope.
Take a look in the kaleidoscope.
Spin it around and make a twirl
in this kaleidoscope world."

I'd Like to Teach the World to Sing

2009-03-05T18:29:00.005+08:00

Another blast from the past Coca Cola ad that I vividly remember being shown during the Yuletide. The utter simplicity and innocence evoked by this ad made it such a classic, at least with my generation that is.

The first version of this ad came out around 1971 to spark good feelings in reaction to the pains and sufferings brought by the Vietnam War. This is the second version that came out around 1984.

Signs

2009-03-03T08:09:00.005+08:00

In the age of social networking sites, instant messaging programs, e-mail and mobile phones to name few, it is quite refreshing to see a film about relationships that bloom because of, for lack of a better word, "old-school" communication techniques.

The Handheld Video Gamer

2009-03-01T23:15:00.005+08:00

Based on the traffic that I saw to the Loco Roco 2 guides I posted in this blog, I decided to create a new blog dedicated to handheld gaming, most especially about Playstation Portable and Nintendo DS games. And voila, here it is, The Handheld Video Gamer!

I have already transferred all the Loco Roco 2 guides in this blog and deleted them here. Watch out for more guides as well as news and reviews in The Handheld Video Gamer blog. Catch you there.

The World Inside a Coca-Cola Vending Machine

2009-02-27T20:23:00.005+08:00

How I wish that the new Coke ads are as beautiful and creative as this one.

First Time. First Love.

2009-02-27T18:36:00.007+08:00

Do you remember this ad? Do you remember the song?

This Coke Ad first came out in 1987. Wow! This really brought back good ol' memories. It perfectly captured the fire and intensity of youth. Thanks to one of my team members who found it.

Stand up. Finish Strong!

2009-02-26T17:06:00.004+08:00

When I saw this video about Nick Vujicic, I remembered the old adage, "I was complaining that I had no shoes until I met a man who had no feet."

On the other hand, even if Nick is without limbs, he has been a constant source of inspiration and strength to those who are facing challenges and obstacles in their lives. He indeed stood up and finished strong!

Psychological Effects of Social Networking Sites

2009-02-25T00:55:00.009+08:00

I think we need more researches in this field especially now that social media is already ubiquitous in our lives. I think we need to learn what are the potential biological and psychological side-effects of the social media.

Here's the latest research that I was able to find. Baroness Greenfield, director of the Royal Institution, warned that social networking sites such as Facebook and Twitter are "changing children's brains" making them more self-centred and reducing their attention spans. According to her, these sites pose the risk of "infatilising" the minds of the children since they are replacing face-to-face interactions which are key to the development of a child's sociability.

To get more details about this research, click here.

Ben Stiller's Top Performance in the Awards Night

2009-02-24T13:56:00.006+08:00

Ben Stiller parodied Joaquin Phoenix when presenting the Cinematography nominees. All hail to Ben, the "serious" comedian!

If you are wondering what is the context of this parody. Take a look at this.

How Hollywood (Still) Misuses Technology

2009-02-21T10:46:00.008+08:00

Image screencaptured from NetworkWorld

The Oscars for this year is already knocking at the door (airing this Sunday, February 22 to be exact) but the folks at NetworkWorld, "in honor" of the Academy Awards, compiled the top movies for what they call the 404 Awards. This recognizes how Hollywood movies still applies technology wrongly. Sit back and enjoy the slideshow.

Flickr Explore and FlickrLeech

2009-02-19T18:56:00.003+08:00

FlickLeech Adobe Air application

Whenever I feel I am in a photographic rut, I always visit Flickr's Explore Page (or commonly known as Interestingness) to be inspired and bathe in the creative juices of fellow photographers worldwide. Unfortunately though, it was quite a chore to scroll through 50 pages of the day's top 500 images. What more if you plan to go through several days or even months worth of top images.

This is where FlickrLeech, created and maintained by Andrew Houser, is heaven sent. What it does is show in one page all of the top 500 images of the day. It was previously a web site but due to the strain brought about by loading 500 images (even if these were just small preview images), the server hosting the site brought it down.

As a result, Andrew converted FlickrLeech into a desktop application utilizing Adobe Air. You can download the program here or just visit FlickrLeech's site and get more information as well. Be aware though that the program is still in Alpha stage meaning you can encounter some errors while using it. In case you encounter one, you can send your feedback to Andrew's email address.

Macrophotography: Extension Tubes

2009-02-18T15:38:00.002+08:00

Image from Kenko

Using extension tubes is one of the cheaper alternatives in doing macrophotography. These tubes are exactly just that, tubes that extend or move the lens away from the camera film or digital sensor. As a result, the lens can focus closer, magnifying the subject in the process. The longer the extension, the greater the magnification.

You will be encountering 3 limitations though. First, extension tubes cause light loss. The farther the lens from the camera film or digital sensor is, the greater the light loss. As a result, this will cause a darker viewfinder and longer exposures.

Second, the longer the lens' focal length, the lower will be the magnification. Conversely, the shorter the focal length, the higher the magnification. This can be computed using the formula below

M = Y/X

where:

M = magnification
Y = total length of the extension tubes in mm
B = lens' focal length in mm

As a result, if you have a 50mm lens and the total length of the extension tubes is 68mm, magnification will be 1.36x or 1.36:1. On the other hand, if you have a 100mm lens attached to a 68mm extension tube, the magnification will just be less than life-size or 0.68x to be exact.

Third, the shorter the focal length of the lens, the closer the subject needs to be to the lens to achieve focus. All lenses has a minimum focusing distance. For example, the minimum focusing distance of the Canon 50mm lens is 0.45m or 1.5 ft. Attaching a 68mm extension tube to this lens results to a reduction in the minimum focusing distance to about 4 inches. If you are dealing with a lens whose focal length is shorter than 5omm, there will be a high probability that the minimum focusing distance between the subject and the lens will be very small. This will be quite impractical if your potential subject is an insect.

By the way, you may be wondering what is the process for computing the minimum focusing distance for a lens attached to an extension tube. It is not quite exact, well as per my research, but I found a great forum thread which discussed this topic.

There are many types of extension tubes depending on the manufacturer. One of the most popular, which I currently use, is manufactured by Kenko (see image above). It is composed of 3 tubes with various lengths, 12, 20 and 36mm respectively. You can use the tubes separately or you can combine or stack all three to get the 68mm length.

Images from Amazon

Canon has its own set of extension tubes, albeit more expensive than the Kenko tubes. One is 12mm in length while the other one is 25mm. You can also use these tubes separately or you can combine both to get 37mm.

If you like to experiment or the Do-It-Yourself (DIY) type, you can also make your extension tube. As I mentioned above, the concept behind these tubes is just to move the lens away from the camera film or digital sensor. If this is the case, you can use any material for the tube as long as it is sturdy and you can place the right adapters so that you can attach it to the lens and camera body. I found two DIY extension tube examples from the Net, one made from a PVC pipe and the other one from a Pringles can, both did a great job in getting great macro images.

You may be asking now, what is the difference then between the DIY and the commercial tubes (except of course for the price). Well, from my standpoint, that will just be the presence or the lack thereof of electronic contacts connecting the lens and camera body. The commercial tubes have electronic contacts which allow you to get camera metering and even focusing. For the DIY tubes, these do not have the contacts thus you need to manually set the metering and even the aperture of the lens. I will be discussing how to do this in my next post when I tackle how to use reversed lens where you will encounter the same problem, the lack of electronic contacts between the lens and the camera.

To give you a sample of what you can get using extension tubes, you can find below a slideshow of the images I captured using a Canon 50mm lens and Kenko extension tubes.

Macrophotography: Measuring Magnification

2009-02-17T14:39:00.002+08:00

Magnification is the differentiating factor between macrophotography and closeup work. Anything equal to or higher than 1x magnification (or 1:1 which means the image is the same size as the object being photographed), this is considered to be a macro. Anything lower than 1x magnification is considered to be a closeup.

To measure the magnification of your macro gear setup, get a ruler with mm scale. Take a picture of the ruler focusing on the mm scale. Ensure that you will be able to get a measurement of the image's width in mm. Now, get the width size of your digital camera's sensor. For example, for a Canon 40D, it's 22.2mm. A great resource for this information is Digital Photography Review. Now, divide your sensor's width to that of the width in mm from your image.

As an example, based on my test image below, the width's size is approximately 13mm. Using the Canon 40D sensor size, we divide 22.2mm with 13mm.

Click image to enlarge.

22.2/13 = 1.7. As a result, the magnification of this macro gear setup is about 1.7:1 or 1.7x magnification.

Another example based on my test image below, the width's size is approximately 6mm.

Click image to enlarge.

22.2/6 = 3.7. This is equivalent to 3.7:1 or 3.7x magnification. This is already enough to make a tight portrait of an ant or fly.

Macrophotography: Raynox DCR250

2009-02-16T20:49:00.002+08:00

I started with macrophotography when I bought the Raynox DCR250 out of curiosity. This is a closeup filter that you can snap-on to lenses with 52 to 67mm filter sizes. This is how the Raynox looks like attached to my Canon S2 IS via the Canon Conversion Lens Adapter (LAH-DC20).

Click image to enlarge.

This setup is not for the faint of heart though. It looked deceptively simple but when the lens is zoomed to its maximum (equivalent to 432mm), you will get about 2x magnification. At this magnification level, a slight twitch from your subject or a light breeze will look like a storm of movement from the viewfinder. If you do not have a stable support or your blood is laced with caffeine, you will always end up with blurry images.

You can find below a slideshow of the images I captured using the Raynox.

By the way, you may be wondering what is that thing covering the pop-up flash. That is my home-made flash diffuser cut from a small water sprayer. It is a big help in cutting down the harshness of the light from the flash, all the more essential when you are close to your subject.

The Latest: The Beauty and the Beast

2009-02-15T22:08:00.003+08:00

These are my current camera gears. One is more than 20 years old while the other one is 3 months old.

I was very lucky when I had the privilege to buy Daniel Go's Canonet G-III QL17. I had been looking for one for quite some time now since I am very interested in trying my hands on film. My heart skipped a beat when I laid my hands on this beauty. The sheer simplicity and quality made me understand why the camera lasted and still operational for all those decades.

I sold my Canon 350D which was my photography companion and provided me with great service for 2 years. I decided to sell it though to utilize the new technologies and features found in the Canon 40D. This new model is a beast in terms of features. What I had a hard time doing in my 350D, I can easily accomplish with the 40D.

The Beginning: Canon S2 IS

2009-02-15T21:56:00.003+08:00

This was the camera that opened my world to the beauty and challenges of photography. It was a Canon S2 IS and even if it was a point and shoot camera, through it, I was able to learn the foundations of photography and got amazing pictures.

The most important accessory I bought for the S2 IS was the Canon Conversion Lens Adapter (LAH-DC20).

Through this adapter, I was able to attach filters in front of the lens. My two most favorite filters were a close-up filter (for macrophotography) and an infrared filter (for infrared photography). You can find below two pictures I took using the S2 IS with these filters.

Macrophotography

Infrared Photography

I would be explaining in details in later posts about the gears and workflow I used to get the two pictures above.

Wunderkinds

2009-02-12T14:23:00.015+08:00

Image from Engadget

I read this article from Reuters about 2 weeks ago regarding a 9-year old boy from Singapore who developed an iPhone application which has been downloaded over 4,000 times. Besides this accomplishment, he already knows 6 other programming languages. This reminded me of the 9-year old girl from India who became the youngest Microsoft Certified Professional. She is currently reviewing for the Microsoft Certified Systems Engineer exam.

I was kidding with friends before that if ever I have a child, by the age of 9, he/she already knows how to program in C/C++. It was a tongue-in-cheek statement but because of these news, this is no longer a laughing-stock.

Quite astounding feats for such young children don't you think so! You may be wondering how did they do it? Genes? Environment? Parental support and motivation? Combination of these 3? Common sense will dictate that these 3 factors are indeed critical but I'll provide another perspective in providing an explanation.

This will be in the realm of psycholinguistics, which is defined in Wikipedia as, "the study of the psychological and neurobiological factors that enable humans to acquire, use, and understand language." To summarize the language development process, children roughly go through these 4 stages.

Stage 1	Babbling stage	4 months old
Stage 2	One-word stage	1 year old
Stage 3	Two-words stage	2 years old
Stage 4	Complex-sentences stage	2 years old and onwards

According to studies, a three-word stage seemed to be non-existent. Once a child move pass the two-word stage, they will start speaking longer, more complex phrases and eventually sentences.

Now, let us go to programming languages. Behind the seeming complexity and otherworldliness, they are just that, another language with its own set of grammar, semantics and syntax. If a child is exposed to these components of programming languages, he/she can easily pick up and learn the new "language."

In fact, based on various researches, the younger a child learns a second, or third or more languages, the better. The ballpark age will be on or before 7 years old. As Lewin Thomas, the author of the Fragile Species, aptly described, "Childhood is the time for language, no doubt about it. Young children, the younger the better, are good at it; it is child's play. It is a onetime gift to the species."

Health Energy Potion

2009-02-10T08:12:00.006+08:00

I am surprised that it was only recently that somebody thought of creating an energy drink packaged similarly to the health potion used in the extremely popular video game, Diablo. I vividly remember more than 8 years ago, 2 days after Diablo II was officially released, that I bought the game and played for 4 consecutive days hacking my way through demon hordes and eventually defeating an Über-Diablo. I think I nearly busted my mouse and almost got carpal tunnel syndrome. It would have been nice if this health energy potion was already available back then!

The potion is being sold by ManaPotions and comes in 2 versions, the red health potion or the blue mana potion. It is claimed to contain as much "caffeine as 2 cans of red bull." Talk about punch! Click here for a review from the good folks of CrunchGear. Enjoy the funny video as well.

Street Fighter IV Opening Movie

2009-02-08T22:12:00.007+08:00

When I saw this beautifully rendered opening movie of the upcoming Street Fighter IV, I could not help but go back in time more than 10 years ago when I first played Street Fighter II. I was groping my way through back then on how to execute the infamous Hadōken and Shōryūken moves of Ryu and Ken. Actually, both characters before were just mirror images of one another sharing the same moves and even sprites. The only distinguishing factors between the two were the color of their clothes and their heads. This is quite different now where the moves and fighting styles of Ryu and Ken have been made distinct.

I do not know what is in store for the future of the Street Figher franchise. Looking back at its 2 decades of history though and reviewing its latest incarnation, I think the future is bright.

Gmail's Multi-Pane Inbox

2009-02-08T07:13:00.009+08:00

This is not my Gmail Inbox. I got the image from Gizmodo.

I have been an avid Gmail user for more than 5 years now. As proof, my current storage is now at 7.3GB. I made Gmail as my default webmail account due to several reasons.

1. It was the first to offer a huge storage space of 2GB. Other accounts before (5 years ago) only offered a puny 100MB.

2. I liked the email thread feature. This helped me easily track the progress of the "email conversation."

3. Innovation. Innovation. Innovation. New features are constantly being introduced by the Gmail Lab folks. Their latest incarnation is the Multi-Pane Inbox, a boon for multitaskers and "attention-deficit" folks like me.

To enable this feature, go to your Gmail settings and click Labs. Look for Multiple Inboxes and enable it. After saving your changes, you will see a new Multiple Inboxes tab in Settings. Here, you will be able to define the position of the new Inbox Panes as well as its contents. If you have previously defined labels, you can use the label name as the content source for the pane following the format is:LabelName or label:LabelName. Pretty nifty isn't it! Click here for more information.

Tekken 6 Trailer

2009-02-05T20:21:00.003+08:00

I used to play Tekken starting with version 2 up to 4 including Tekken Tag. Most often than not I played in arcade shops which included the occassional challenges with other players. Ah, I found this to be the good old days of gaming where challenges were done face-to-face, side-by-side with a crowd of fanboys at the back. Now, most are done virtually, online.

Unfortunately, I stopped playing in the arcades when I tried my hand with Tekken 5. I was beaten miserably, by the game's AI! It was probably because of the new moves that I am no longer familiar with or age catching with me (reflex was no longer as fast as before), or a combination of the two.

Now, I just play its PSP version (Tekken Dark Resurrection), occassionally drop by in arcade shops and watch the latest crop of players trying to outwit each other or look for the latest Tekken videos. Here's the latest one I found, a beautifully rendered trailer for the upcoming Tekken 6 for PS3 and Xbox 360.

Pepsi Max I'm Good Ad

2009-02-05T07:47:00.005+08:00

I was a Coke drinker for almost a decade until I got a chance to taste Pepsi Max. There was no turning back afterwards. I was hooked!

Nothing against Coke but from my biased standpoint, Pepsi Max tastes a lot better, by a mile actually, than Coke Zero or even the Regular Coke. Even Pepsi's advertisements are a lot cooler than Coke's. Just like this one. Enjoy.

Facebook Turning 5

2009-02-04T23:57:00.007+08:00

On the eve of its 5th birthday, Facebook released several images showing the evolution of its interface / web design. Click here for more details from TechCrunch.

I have been using Facebook for less than 5 months, yeah I know I started late in riding the bandwagon but right from the start, I am hooked and that is an understatement.

PCWorld also listed 5 reasons why Facebook is loved. I definitely agree with #2 an #5. Facebook has a clean interface and actually from my standpoint, a great case study for usability and information design. Its interface is worlds apart from Friendster's layout which is confusing to say the least. I also agree with the great applications available. I am currently burning the keys with Hatchlings, Bowling Buddies, and Word Challenge.

Google Chrome Ad

2009-02-04T16:11:00.005+08:00

I liked the concept, the simplicity and the subtle messages the ad conveyed.

Don't Fight Monday

2009-02-02T10:44:00.003+08:00

It's Monday again folks. Here's a recently found video for all of us.

History of the Internet

2009-02-02T09:53:00.006+08:00

A great video I found in YouTube about the history of the Internet. What's amazing here is how the information has been designed in order to clearly explain and deliver a technically complex and information-rich story.

YouTube Interactive Game

2009-02-01T06:49:00.006+08:00

I digress again from my Loco Roco series but I cannot help but post this creative game (time waster in other words) which according to Gizmodo is the first interactive YouTube game. Finally, a great use for YouTube annotations! Enjoy the game.

[By the way, if you are stuck, just pause it. It is still a video. =p}

Final Fantasy Advent Children Complete Trailer

2009-01-31T04:32:00.006+08:00

I digress a little bit from my Loco Roco 2 series and temporarily switch to fanboy mode. Anything about Final Fantasy triggers this mode. Most especially if I happen to just learn that there is another Advent Children movie version coming out with extra 25 minutes footage. The Japanese release will be on April 16. The wait will be torturous again. For now, this amazing and gorgeous trailer (as expected from Square Enix) will suffice. Enjoy and click here for more details.

Visual Guide: Unemployment Rates

2009-01-26T00:51:00.010+08:00

Image from Microsoft Office Clipart

Courtesy of the good folks from Mint's blog, here's another excellent and visually stunning guide about the truth behind the unemployment rates.

Enjoy: http://www.mint.com/blog/finance-core/a-visual-guide-to-the-financial-crisis-unemployment-rates/

By the way, you can also find a small note below the article pertaining to WallStats.com. It seeemed that these visual guides were collaborations between Mint and WallStats. I visited WallStats.com and voila!, found a site dedicated to information designs and visualizations. I will definitely be sharing more visual guides in the near future as I dig deeper into this marvelous site. Stay tuned.

Infosynth

2009-01-22T03:40:00.008+08:00

image from Mediation from Darkness to Light

This is a by-product of my reflections on the ideas I put forth in my last post regarding digital interconnectedness. My initial reflections revolved around the story of the blind men and an elephant, on how reality is perceived based on each individual's perspectives, that reality may be is an amalgam of these various perspectives.

In lieu with these thoughts, what if a service is developed which unifies all sources of these "perspectives" and aggregate them in order to come up with a single, unified viewpoint for "reality." Imagine this service crawling and mining all possible websites and show the information gathered in a single, unified, synthesized form.

To use as a metaphor, the closest that we have right now to this service is Microsoft's Photosynth. Through this program, all photos related to a specific subject are synthesized to come up with a unified, 3D-dimensional, 360-degrees experience about the subject. Here's an example, Photosynths of President Obama's inauguration.

Imagine the same thing but besides images you are dealing with all other forms of data (e.g. text, videos). This service will mine all websites such as blogs, mini-blogs, social networking sites, news headlines and the like and synthesize all these information into a unified, 3D-dimensional representation. This will be very powerful indeed and I think quite scary in the sense that, let's say, you search for Din Cordero. The results will pretty much give you a unified picture of who am I in "3D glory." Not a pretty picture if I imagine it. LOL!

I am pretty sure that someone, somebody out there may have already thought about this idea as well. If you can point me to the right direction or in even to a service that is already developed similar to what I described above, I will definitely highly appreciate it.

Digital Interconnectedness

2009-01-21T06:47:00.010+08:00

I was reflecting on President Obama's inauguration speech when a thought suddenly hit me. I immediately browsed the Web to help validate my thoughts and found, staring me in the eye, what I was looking for.

President Obama's Inauguration Day was the ultimate showcase of our interconnectedness, of how unified and interdependent had we become through the digital ecosphere. I looked at my Facebook contacts and most of the statuses, updates and events revolved around the Inauguration. I browsed through Flickr's latest photos and they revolved around the same topic. I checked my Twitter account and it was flooded with Inauguration-themed tweets. The latest posted topics to the blogs I subscribed to all pointed to the same thing. I think I just barely scratched the surface here with the sites I mentioned. There are tons of other sites which provided news, photos, videos, feedbacks, opinions, what-have-yous about the Inauguration.

What I am driving at here is I feel never have been at any point in time that we have become so interconnected this way, unified with a purpose, and connected and communicated via the digital ecosphere. I am very excited on what all of these means for us and our future. Actually, I cannot still fathom the full impact of this global interconnectedness and the possibilities and opportunities in store for the future. This was indeed a historic day!

Visual Guides to the Financial Crisis

2009-01-21T05:00:00.011+08:00

Image from Microsoft Office Clipart

Ever since I read the amazing book, Information Architects edited by Richard Saul Wurman, more than a decade ago, I had become a proponent of information architecture whose main goal is to make the complex clear. This goal has become quite overtly critical in our era where we are all drowning from floods of data.

In this regard, I have been on the constant lookout for publications, online and in print which adhere to the tenets and principles of information architecture. While browsing through the Mint's blog, I found two incredible and visually stunning articles about the Financial Crisis. Part One dealt about what brought America to the current financial crisis up to the government Bailout. Part Two described how the bailout would be funded and how it should have been funded according to experts.

These two articles are good reading materials regarding the current financial crisis but on top of that, and the most important from my point of view, these are excellent and beautiful examples of information architecture. Kudos to Mint!

Naruto 431 (Naruto Erupts)

2009-01-16T15:21:00.006+08:00

To all Naruto manga readers out there, after more than 2 weeks of waiting for Chapter 431 and reading lots and lots of possible spoilers, here at long last is Chapter 431.

Naruto is definitely on a different league now that he learned the Frog Katas in Sage Mode and you can see clearly see it in this chapter. The Giant Rasengan is just awesome!

Unfortunately we have to wait for next week again to see what will Naruto's new move be. Ah, the price of being a manga fanboy.

Pre (Palm reborn)

2009-01-12T23:39:00.012+08:00

Image from Engadget.com

I didn't want to ride the hoopla behind Palm's new smartphone but when I read about Ars Technica's article on Synergy, Palm's new personal information management system, I decided to jump in the bandwagon right away.

I had been an owner of several Palm PDA models from the IIIe to the Zire71. I followed Palm's growth to become the undisputed market leader and to its unfortunate downward spiral for the past years by squandering its market share and competitive advantage.

But now, with Pre, I am seeing a Palm reborn from the ashes of directionless stupor. Hey, as a side note, that is probably the meaning of Pre, Palm reborn. LOL. Anyway, what gets me this excited is with Synergy. It seemed that Palm has broken free of the repository-based paradigm where data is stored in a PC and it is synched to the Phone. It is instead following a cloud-based paradigm where data modified in the phone is stored in the cloud in whatever service it originated from.

In geekspeak, "Ultimately, webOS acts much like what Daniels described in his interview; that is, it moves away from a repository datasource model to a federated query service model, where the device queries multiple services for state that it then caches locally, before invisibly propagating any changes back out to the cloud." All I can say is WOW!

Pearl Jam

2009-01-11T20:04:00.007+08:00

It was a lazy Sunday afternoon and I was browsing videos in YouTube when I stumbled upon this rare, old-school gem. I am an avid Pearl Jam fan and finding one of their early promotional videos was nirvana (no pun intended).

Feeding the fire

2009-01-11T00:28:00.008+08:00

This is from Sacha Chua's blog, she is a popular Filipino techno evangelist and the entry is about her father, John Chua, a well-known and respected photographer here in the Philippines. This article struck a personal chord and had been a constant source of inspiration. I hope that you will be inspired and moved as well in becoming "fire feeders," for being so passionate in life that it will serve as a beacon amidst mediocrity.

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How ashen my father was under the harsh fluorescent lights, I thought, as I pulled a chair up and offered to help him with the small computer I'd just restored. I knew that he needed the computer for his work tomorrow and that he was under a lot of stress. Yet despite the strains of the day, his voice was gentle and thankful, so different from the harried voice I'd heard on the phone earlier - so different from the impatience and grumpiness that frightened many of the employees.

Even as a child I had always seen him with a vivid red sunburn from days spent exploring the world and taking pictures. When he removed his watch or his eyeglasses, you could see pale strips of porcelain-white skin - part of his Chinese heritage. He lived like that, too - fantastic adventures coupled with a surprising gentleness. He glowed with the incredible passion that filled and sustained him: his photography. My father encouraged us to pursue our dreams. He lived his, and that gave us hope. He loved photography, getting up early and working late into the night creating beautiful images. Of all the people I know, he was the one most passionate about his dreams.

Today... today was different. The color seemed to have drained from his face. There was an unaccustomed sadness in the voice that had so often told me exciting stories of wild adventures. Today his words seemed to come from very far away. He asked me for such small, simple things. And because he asked so gently, I wanted to do everything. He was so grateful when I got them to work. Sometimes I couldn't. Instead of becoming cross, he simply smiled and said that that was okay.

We finally got the camera and the computer to work together; all that he needed for the next day's. My father let out a sigh and began to confide in me, unfolding his frustrations and his fears. We talked of passion and frustration, of plans and pains. He was worried about my sister and about the company. Their indifference sapped his strength, undermined his confidence. I looked at him closely. Suddenly he seemed so very old and so very tired. I wanted to throw my arms around him and cry.

How I wished I had been the one to follow in his footsteps, but my heart is in another field. I learned something important: fire feeds fire. I must always be near other people who are passionate about something or my soul will die as his seems slowly dying.

When the next day brings with it the thrill of the shoot and a system that works, perhaps he will rediscover his passion. I can only hope that the people around him realize how important they are to him. Their incompetence can break him. Their interest can inspire him. His work is important to him. He is important to me, both who he is and what he stands for.

May the world never break my father's spirit nor quench his passion. In a world of dim lives and mediocrity, he blazed with a light that so few know.

Manga Online Sources

2009-01-10T22:36:00.008+08:00

I have been a fan of manga for almost a year now. My interest started when I got tired of the fillers on the ongoing Naruto and Bleach anime. Fillers are storylines outside of the manga story arc. I searched the web and found two excellent manga sources, One Manga and Manga Volume.

As a result, I no longer watch the anime episodes but constantly followed the manga chapters instead. I am now light years ahead from the anime storyline. Spoilers galore! Just like this small teaser from the latest chapter hehehe...

Personal Blog

2009-01-10T21:47:00.002+08:00

I have decided to create a blog that will serve as the antithesis to my more serious blog, The Bedraggled Manager. This blog will be the Yang to the Ying, the Joker to the Batman, the Sith to the Jedi, the Mojas to the LocoRocos... I think you get the picture.

Disclosure Policy

2009-01-10T19:13:00.007+08:00

This policy is valid from 10 January 2009 (when I started this blog).

I am the lone author of this blog. I write and edit all of its contents.

I accept forms of cash advertising, sponsorship, paid insertions or other forms of compensation. On the other hand, the compensation received will never influence the content, topics or posts I make in this blog. All advertising is in the form of advertisements generated by a third party ad network. Those advertisements will be identified as paid advertisements.

Likewise, I am not compensated to provide opinion on products, services, websites and various other topics. The views and opinions expressed on this blog are purely mine. If I claim or appear to be an expert on a certain topic or product or service area, I will only endorse products or services that I believe, based on my expertise and experience, are worthy of such endorsement. Any product claim, statistic, quote or other representation about a product or service should be verified with the manufacturer or provider.

I make sure that this blog does not contain any content which may present a conflict of interest.

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