The Air Prayer Hack

Lately, I've been having a lot of conversations with my friends of a spiritual nature, and today experienced an epiphany that combines my two current preoccupations: improving focus and maintaining connections with people:

1. Angela, my music teacher, and I have been having some excellent discussions about Christianity and the nature of love with respect to the teachings of Jesus. We both agree that love is a vast and inclusive feeling. This is what "being connected" really is.

2. I have started making up rituals to get me focused in the morning, and this has led to an awareness of long-standing meditative practices. Breath control is at the root of many disciplines, I've realized.

3. Ashish had bought me that book I mentioned the other day, The Four Agreements, which has a prayer in the back of the book that equates the feeling of love with breathing:

   Focus your attention on your lungs, as if only your lungs exist. Feel the pleasure when your lungs expand to fulfill the biggest need of the human body--to breathe.

   Take a deep breath and feel the air as it fills your lungs. Feel how the air is nothing but love. Notice the connection between the air and the lungs, a connection of love. Expand your lungs with air until your body has the need to expel that air. And then exhale, and feel the pleasure again. Because when we fulfill any need of the human body, it gives us pleasure. To breath gives us much pleasure. Just to breath is enough for us to always be happy, to enjoy life. Just to be alive is enough. Feel the pleasure to be alive, the pleasure of the feeling of love...

I gave this a try, and found that mindful breathing is indeed pleasurable. As I reflected upon the feeling of being alive and healthy, I breathed deeply and felt thankful to the powers that be for that moment. I was actually in the moment, not thinking about lunch or work or whether I should ditch my old notebook for the shiny new MacBook Pro 17. To breath is the fundamental human need, primal and immediate. Not only is it a calming feeling, breathing is highly portable. I can bring this sense of peace with me wherever I grow, so long as I remember to be mindful.

When I was a kid, our family always said Grace over dinner. Our prayer was the old standard: God is great, God is good. Let us thank Him for this food. Amen. As I grew older, the saying of Grace turned toward the silent bowing of heads, excepting special holiday occasions when the most wizened / least starving of us would launch into a meandering monologue of thankfulness. So we haven't used the "God is great, God is good" prayer in quite some time, perhaps because it seems a little inappropriate to me as an adult. This is because I say it the same way I did when I was 9 years old, using a sing-song hop-scotch delivery that really tries to make the almost-rhyme between "good" and "food" work. I enjoy the playfulness, but as an adult I really can't get away with it anymore and be sincere.

But what if I prayed actively saying anything at all? It occurred to me that I could just pray with air. That is, through mindful breathing. I called it The Air Prayer, and it goes like this:

1. Take a normal breath, deliberately.
2. Take a longer, slower breath, savoring the sensation of the air entering your lungs.
3. Take a deep lazy breath, hold it for a pleasurably long while, and then exhale slowly.
4. Say "Amen".

It combines meditative breathing with the feeling of love and life that comes from it, presuming that you don't have lung problems. Call it love, call it life, call it a meditative mind trick: it was the most basic affirming prayer I've made in quite some time. When I was feeling stressed today, I found that I was always just a couple breaths away from completing the prayer; I just stretched the next breath out and uttered an Amen of thanks for being alive.

And so, I thought I would share. Enjoy!

That New Job Smell

A friend of mine has to get up early to head to work everyday, and makes a habit of stopping at a local place to get breakfast at 7AM to ease into the day. This sounded very interesting to me.

As a freelancer with tendencies to stay up late, my daily working hours tend to fluctuate with the particular mix of projects I have going on. As a result, I'm always constantly fighting my sleeping rhythm to keep some semblance of normal waking hours. Complicating my working rhythm is the ongoing effort to be more social, meeting friends at normal times after work. The net result is that I'm almost always tired during the day, which affects productivity and keeps me up late. I also like seeing the sun, however briefly, for at least part of the day. The net result: I don't really feel good about my working schedule, because doesn't synch my social life, sleep cycle, and working energy in a productive manner.

So, on Monday I'm going to start a two week rhythm-establishing experiment. That is, I'm going to:

• Wake up every day at 630AM
• exercise (that's new, too)
• shower
• head out to the same place every morning to grab a cheap cup of coffee
• Review the day's work to be done, and compare to the previous day's progress
• Map out the course of the day, with some immediate tasks (probably using the Emergent Task Timer)
• Head home, and do a 4-hour work block
• Eat lunch
• Do a second 4-hour work block
• Eat dinner
• In bed by 1030PM

The theory is that since not having a daily schedule (my 2006 experiment) didn't quite yield the results I wanted, training my body to be awake at predictable times might be the way to maximize my productive juices. Also, I've been playing this game called Harvest Moon, which is a farming role-playing game for various console gaming systems. Every day my in-game alter-ego has to wake up at 6AM, hoe, seed, water, and harvest a variety of crops throughout the year for profit. On top of that, there are festivals to attend, search mines for treasure, fish, and make various farm improvements. You can raise chickens, sheep, cows, train your dog to fetch balls, so they can win prizes that impress various woo-able girls. It's a lot of work; in fact, there's no way you can do it all in a single game "day" because your character becomes fatigued and will pass out. As I played the game I got the distinctly uncomfortable feeling that I was learning stuff about life that I should have already known.

The last time I did anything like keep a regular schedule was when I worked in Boston, and I was very keen on maintaining a working rhythm for reasons of energy. The morning and evening drive would sap a lot of my energy, and ultimately I found it wasn't workable because I ended up not having any time to do my own things.

As I thought about the old job, I remembered the extra sharpness that a new job tends to bring to one's self, so for fun I am going to pretend I have a new job:

So I'm working for a company run by this guy Dave Seah, and my primary job function will be to get his business and design processes running smoothly to improve both workflow billables and customer service, to replace the ad-hoc system that's in place now. I'm sure I'm going to be horrified by what I see. My secondary job function is to build the tangible assets of the studio, both what can be "seen", and in terms of "packaged process" that can be readily shown or applied to client businesses. At the moment, the assets are scattered all over the place.

An overall consideration is that the systems I put in place support---not impede---the creative process that is at the heart of the practice. Mr. Seah hates accounting, but he's accepted that a certain measure of this (I'm thinking daily review, at minimum) is necessary.

Lastly, Mr. Seah wants to regularize the workflow and project management such that no one has to burn the midnight oil every single night. Steady, measurable, profitable progress is more highly valued...we want people to go home every night to spend time with their family and friends, and to feel good about the progress they're making in terms of the project work and their own growth. The challenge will be to maintain a high level of creative energy as well; innovation and original thinking is so very highly valued here. Creative energy and methodical process would seem to be mutually-exclusive ideals, but I've got some ideas.

Oops, it's 1045PM already, and I've got to get to bed. I'm working Monday to get a head start even though it's a holiday.

Three Mindsets for Making Things

I have tended to judge myself by what I know how to make. When I had my first stint at management, I wasn't directly making anything, and it was very difficult for me to feel good about it. Over the years I've come to appreciate what a good manager does, and have seen that what I did was worthwhile. I learned how to see beyond individual achievement as my primary metric.

Still, there's one thing that hasn't changed for me, and that's the desire to create quality product. It's supremely important to me, and I tend to scope projects to the ability I have to do them well based on my personal knowledge and expertise. Quality. Competence. Experience. Expertise: These are the foundation of the kind of practice I am trying to build.

And this may be just what's holding me back.

The Competence Model

I was chatting with a friend about our respective attempts at making some dough. He runs a growing agency that's expanded in all kinds of directions. Like me, he places tremendous emphasis on competence, quality, and expertise, going to great lengths to secure the very best for his clients. In fact, he's probably a lot more thorough than me, though otherwise we are pretty similar in our approach to determining what's good and what's not.

Anyway, we were talking about self-promotion and excellence, and got onto the topic of people who could sell vapor. He knows a few people who can do this, who are able, despite not knowing very much at all about HOW anyone could really build the thing, had no problem selling it. My friend made the off-hand observation that this was something that we could never do, the implication that we are so deeply rooted in having to know how to do something that we'd never be able to make a vaporous (and hence outrageous) claim.

His observation was on-the-mark, but saying "never" to me is a sure-fire way to get me thinking of loopholes and tricky bypasses; I like to think there's always a way in, if you can define "way" and "in" from a novel perspective. In my imagination, I'm James Kirk battling Khan at the end of Star Trek II, avoid the trap of "two-dimensional thinking" as I battle starship-on-starship in a battle to the death.

So, let's check some assumptions and see where they go!

The Curse of Vaporware

For those of us with a technical production background, the immediate reaction to "selling vapor" is extremely negative. It seems dishonest. We think of all the times we "bought on a promise", only to be screwed later when the vendor failed to deliver. Once burned, twice shy becomes our default state of interaction with products and services. Let's face it: the vast majority of products out there are just...well, kind of there. They're not terrible, but neither are they great. They're right in that zone of mediocrity that Kathy Sierra illustrates so well, and we as consumers would rather feel strongly: good or bad. With the bad stuff, at least we are confident in our decision.

Still, I find vaporware interesting in two ways:

• When the vaporware does have great promise, it captures our imagination. The excitement of the possibilities is balanced by the likelihood of failure; this is something we've all learned through life experience. What results is a kind of dramatic tension, knocking our emotions around in a way that is actually pretty intoxicating. If the product, by some miracle, lives up to the hype, then we are swept off our feet. In every piece of vaporware lies the seeds of a whirlwind love affair, with all the excitement and passion and heartbreak that entails.

• It's a little different when we sense that the vaporware is a malicious attempt to manipulate us to someone else's advantage. If we allow for the benefit of the doubt, the disappointment of vaporware is perhaps due to incompetence undermining the best of intentions; at worst, it's outright fraud, and we are outraged. It's pretty bad when you're in the situation where you're working with someone who doesn't know what they're doing (a case of their reach exceeding their grasp) or is deliberately misrepresenting their abilities to take advantage of a situation. How do you know if they're able to deliver on their promise? Anyone can make up a product out of thin air, and if you've ever had to clean up after someone's lies you learn to distrust these people implicitly. Or you learn to develop a Cold War perspective, separating intention from action as you evaluate the evolving situation.

So what's the upside?

It came to me as my buddy was expressing with increduality at the sheer chutzpah these guys had in come up to him and explaining what they'd just sold. The thought that came to mind was, "well, they'd be fine if they worked with him", and then it clicked: I would entirely believe in someone who could "sell vapor" if I knew that they also possessed the ability to pick good people to do the actual work. Then "vapor" becomes "vision".

I also realized that we were thinking like consumers who had been burned, not like creators who build new experiences.

The Consumer Mentality

For those of us who grew up without much business experience in the family, we've been conditioned to think like consumers, not producers. We think a lot about the following:

• The Best Value for our Money!
• The Best Quality!
• The Best Features!
• The Most Effective!
• The Best Feeling!
• The Best Picked from Many Choices!

When I started getting to the point where I could create new things, I went through two initial stages of realization:

(1) That I can make a thing in exchange for money.

I realized I could make something, and in exchange receive compensation. However, that wasn't enough; hence, stage 2:

(2) That the people I'm working for have the same consumer values as I.

To respect myself and gain others respect, I need to create to standards that I hope to receive myself. This put my focus on developing expertise to create high quality product. I started to think like a craftsperson.

Stage 2 is where I'm at right now, thinking mostly about the things that I can make with my own two hands. When I think of expansion, I think of working with more people who share those same values of quality, expertise, and honesty. These values are all consumer focused; in other words, I'm thinking about customers in terms of what they will receive. This is a fine way to think about customers, of course, but it's also a limiting perspective: if I think about product craft all the time for my customers, I not thinking of how to really scale the business operation. Or indeed, how to grow it. I'm constrained by the ability to find other craftspeople to work with me.

Now, I'm not saying that I am thinking of NOT thinking about quality product, technical prowess, and expertise: those are all fundamental and necessary, otherwise who's going to buy your stuff? What I'm saying is that focusing entirely on craft doesn't allow me to focus on creating larger opportunities where that craft can thrive. Staying a craftsperson isn't the way to do that, and if you've ever tried to hire someone who works the way you do, you know how impossible that task seems. Small quality-oriented operations are largely constrained by the people they can find to expand. They do well, but growth is slow, often by design because the addition of the WRONG person can destroy a team. That's our assumption, anyway, often learned the hard way. But what is the wrong person? And is the assumption implicitly that the RIGHT person is "someone who is technically competent"?

To test this, I posed the following question to myself:

If I didn't have to worry about finding a quality production team to do the work, could I "sell vapor"? Could I even be good at it?

Selling vapor now becomes selling vision, and getting that vision made is all about leadership and communucation...you know, the kind of thing that Steve Jobs does, backed by people who really know what they're doing in their areas of expertise. Jobs himself has a highly-developed ability to pick the right people to bring his very intuitive sense of design to life. If there was ever a rule to apply to picking partners, it would be this: pick the people who demonstrably have picked great people to work with them. In the case of those guys who sell vapor so well, what's even MORE important is how well they can sell their own team. If I came across a guy who was trying to sell me vapor, and they said, "Oh, and your buddy is also working with us"...hell, that impresses me, and I'm much more likely to be on board. In other words: Don't shop product or talent. Shop the team.

If I didn't have to worry about doing the production myself, and instead could rely on people that I KNEW could do the job, how liberating would that be? How would you like being the person responsible for directing the development of an iidea? Wouldn't it be great, if you too were 100% confident in your ability to be the vision setter? How many of you out there are in the same boat?

So here's what stage 3 is:

(3) That I can find people who are smarter / better than me to do the things that I am not good at, so I can focus on bringing the vision to life.

I saw an interview on Charlie Rose with Warren Buffett, and he said that he hired people who were smarter than he was. I thought perhaps this was a kind of company morale-building PR statement, but on reflection it really is the secret to effective scaling. The hard part, of course, is learning to recognize the smart people, because that takes considerable smarts of your own. Buffett is quoted as saying that he doesn't invest in businesses that he doesn't understand; without that understanding, perhaps he's unable to really tell how smart the business management really is. I think by "understand" he means total comprehension; Buffett is not saying that the business needs to be "simple".

What I don't know is whether I'm a vision person or not. However, recognizing that there is a valid way to think of vapor as vision is pretty liberating. The poet who coined that phrase about "reach exceeding grasp" in the first place meant it inspirationally; this desire is what moves us forward in the first place. The price of admission, however, is to really make the effort to be an expert in more than just one field, so you have a better chance of finding those people who are incredibly smart in the way that you are not.

Ways to Think of Making

To sum up, here's the three modalities I now know are accessible to my creative thinking:

1. Create the best possible expression of my soup-to-nuts knowledge, expertise, and experience to solve a problem hands-on. This is the craftsperson / engineering mentality, placing value on methodically and consistently being able to forge quality product from the primordial dust.

2. Declare, then sell a vision. Absolutely own it. Guide it to fruition personally, by working with people who operate in modality 1. This is the guy who sells vapor, but it's vapor only because the blueprint in that guy's head hasn't yet been taken by a production team and made real. On the surface, this has all the elements of a production disaster in the making. However, if one applies the Buffett criterion of making sure that "you understand what each other is trying to do" before you invest your time and energy...just maybe you'll find someone smarter than you to work with, and wonderful things may happen.

3. Pick the next easiest thing to do that seems like it would work, and do it. I haven't talked about this at all up to now, but as you might guess it's related to the Get Things Done (GTD) Two-Minute Rule. This modality is an iterative approach that works pretty well most of the time, and applied consistently I think it probably gets you 75% of the way to Excellence. That's often good enough; when you hit the 75% mark, then modality 1 or 2 might help squeeze out that last 25% of goodness.

Three Ways to Procrastinate

A commenter recently mentioned the idea of living in alignment with your values, and looking at the list above I'm thinking that procrastination may be a misalignment of creative modality.

While I believe in Modality 1, "High Quality Production Expertise" and practice it to the best of my ability, it's an approach that requires tremendous patience and meticulousness. I've trained myself to do it, and am regarded as being fairly patient and detail-oriented as a result. However, I am realizing that I may be misaligned: I really am quite impatient, and like things to happen very quickly. While I've learned to wait, I don't really like it. When approaching a project that takes research and planning, my natural impatience tends to sap my enthusiasm, which leads to procrastination and that feeling of non-productivity. Enthusiasm is restored when you're working with happy, empowered people; you're sharing the creative burden with people who think as you do, so the project goes more smoothly.

Modality 2, "Being the Visionary", may be more my speed. However, to be in that leadership position you need to either PAY for privillege or EARN it. It's better to earn it, of course. In the past, I'd been uncomfortable because I hadn't felt I've earned the right. Now, with more years of experience, I can feel more confident in the role of Benevolent Design Despot. Whether that would actually work out, I have no idea, but it is interesting to think about. It means letting go of the actual production work, and wholeheartedly accepting the role of visionary, teaching and guiding throughout the project because that's what you have to offer the team. You're splitting the creative burden across lines of expertise and responsibility, which I think helps keep people focused and productive. An example that comes to mind is doing Quality Assurance for software. When there's no budget for QA, it's tempting to just say, "Oh, just have the programmers do it, since they're the ones fixing the bugs." Wrong. Debugging is pretty draining, and for me asking me to then go into QA mode after fixing one is just asking too much. To be great at QA, you have to be a devious and unconventionally-thinking person. You try random things, and then when you find something you figure out how to reproduce it. It's a sufficiently different mindset that switching to QA mode afterwards will drive you a bit mad, especially if you're fixing several dozen bugs a day. Also, the idea of having the person fixing the bugs also clearing them as "fixed" is like asking a fox to guard a henhouse, or letting Congress approve their own raises in salary.

Modality 3, "Take the Next Step" is a great GTD concept. I think people who are "classically productive" in the sense that they "just do it" probably think like this all the time. They know that taking many steps leads to progress, and experienced creatives know that "chicken scratching" will eventually lead to something useful. They don't think that much about what COULD be, they instead take what IS. Taking a step will create a result, which provides new input for the next creative step; it's an incredibly powerful cycle once you've learned to be comfortable with it by not fixating on the distance goal. Instead, you focus on the what-just-happened and what-happens-next. If you can define many small steps to have a tangible immediate result, procrastination doesn't have enough time to set in.

Conclusion

I've touched on a bunch of different ideas that have been on my mind:

• That vaporware is not that different from vision. The difference depends on the team you can line up to do the production work, and how well "the vision" is disseminated.

• That there are three was to think about making things: as an expert, as an expert who is looking for the team, and as a set of simple steps that one "just does".

• That being able to choose someone "smarter than you" to work with means you have to be smart enough to recognize someone's brilliance in the first place.

• That one's "making style" and notions of "how one should make things" can be out of alignment with one's personality. I'm impatient, therefore I find modality 1 a little tedious to put up with if I don't have someone else to work with. So maybe I should think in modality 2 and 3 instead, and trust that my training in modality 1 will help me find the great people to work with.

True? False? Who knows? I'll be thinking of ways to apply modality 2 in the coming weeks.

Self-Parenting is Harder Than I Thought

Yesterday I split my personality in "parent" and "inner child". I probably am just crazy, but I am finding the experience rather illuminating so far. It's not unlike wearing two hats, but with a subtle difference. Consider the following dualities:

• Businessperson and Artist
• Visual Designer and Developer
• Producer and Production Designer
• Creative and Adminstrative
• Manager and Developer
• Architect and Builder

Since I'm a solo practitioner, I tend to flip back and forth between "manager" and "creator" roles as need be. It's no wonder that I lose track of which hat I'm wearing at any given time; I have to wear many hats, which involves an expensive context switch.

Now, consider the following pairs:

• Parent and Child
• Teacher and Student

The difference: instead of focusing on the work, you're focused on the success of a person. The first set describes roles that are tied to process or product. That is a different mentality entirely! Shifting the emphasis to people lessens my mental overhead.

How?

Instead of remembering and cycling through all those things I should be doing---accounting, advertising, making money, chores, and so on---I just have to think one thing: nurture the child. The rest follows in support of that. This is rather similar to an earlier epiphany about my passion: it's not the thing that's important, but who.

You real parents out there can tell me how delusional I am, but maybe I've caught a glimpse of a shadow of a bit of something that's important.

Day One of Parenting Myself

Even with the unfair advantage of parenting myself, I still managed to goof it up. The morning started well enough: I got a good chunk of work done on some ActionScript 2.0 work, using a new library and development process that will pay off in the long run. However, I did not get as far as I wanted, and clearly I could have pushed harder to finish up by 5PM. As it was, I frittered away my time until 8PM, upon which I remember I had to eat. In my bachelor days, this wouldn't have bothered me because I eat when I want. But with the responsibility of an Inner Child, this is an entirely different matter! Is that any way to run a household? What if this got out to Inner Child Services? I might have to get a real job!

So I belatedly cooked dinner and ended up eating around 1000PM. Tomorrow I'll set cooking time to start at 5PM, and shoot for no more than 30 minutes of preparation.

On the plus side, I ate a healthy meal of pan-fried chicken and collard greens. I thought about watching some TV, but my budding parental senses compelled me to do the dishes and tidy up the kitchen (though I didn't sponge off the stove...don't want to overdo it on the first day!) Only after that, did I allow some TV time, watching an episode of Full Metal Alchemist. It's a rather disturbing animated series, dealing with complex occult themes. Which of course makes it awesome to my 14-year old self...I just hope he doesn't get nightmares.

Anyway, after dinner I was back down in the office salvaging my less-than-productive day. My plan: hit the sack by midnight, start the next day early, instead of starting another shift of work and staying up to 4AM. Since time was short, I decided to just sort some bills. After much gnashing of teeth and popping of eyes, I realized there would be no Xbox-360 for Little Dave, but lots of government cheese unless I lay down the hustle more thickly. I am newly motivated!

One bummer is that I had promised my inner child that we'd draw spaceships and shoot hoops. At best, we managed to watch some TV---I mumbled something about work taking longer than I thought. This is a disappointing precedent to set. Tomorrow I'll make it up to him, and already I wonder if I'm going to make this a habit, turning myself into a latchkey kid through neglect. Self-parenting is harder than I thought!

A Note On Silliness

I'm kind of amazed that this is such a compelling exercise. I suspect it's working because I have an empathic imagination, which makes it easy to objectify the abstract notion of my "inner child". As an example, when I bought my first new car in 2000, I had really wanted a "tornado orange" VW GTI. They didn't have one at the local dealer, so I settled for a silver one, which was also nice. The day after I said I'd take it, another dealer called me excitedly and told me that they had JUST GOT IN a new orange GTI, and that I could pick it up any time. A sane person would have ditched the silver one and switched, but I felt I had made a commitment to the silver one and didn't want to just dump it like that. Sometimes, I am saddened by uneaten cookies; here was a cookie brought into existence to be enjoyed by someone's happy mouth, but instead its potential was wasted and unmourned...

I should say in my defense that the main reason I kept the silver GTI was that it would be less visible to police, as I was planning to "fully enjoy" the capabilities of the car. And while an uneaten cookie is rather sad in theory, the reason they remain uneaten is because they are empty calories and lack a certain tastyness---a lot of cookies are just mediocre, you know. Still, part of me cares just a little bit, before I toss 'em down the garbage disposal. I am a such a monster!

It's not much of a leap from that to adopting an inner child :-)

Adulthood 101

Yesterday I had the epiphany that I'm still much like a child: given to indulging my impulses at the expense of long-term well-being, still in-the-dark about a lot of basic household processes, and not shaping my own development as a human being responsibly.

The trick might be self-parenting my inner child.

Adopting Myself

Now that I'm the proud parent of my inner child, I've got to think about what I want for him. Naturally, I want him to develop into an upstanding, happy, and confident human being. This is what I know about him so far:

• He's about 14, likes spaceships and cats.
• He doesn't really like sports because he's not good at them.
• He has some anxiety about being "good" at things.
• He's good at observing how things connect together.
• He's shy, but likes writing and using his imagination.

As an adult, there are certain things that I need to provide for us:

• Financial security to avoid unpleasant shocks and discomfort.
• Quality time, growing and learning together.
• A model for what adulthood is, so he learns this through osmosis as he grows older. Adulthood isn't all responsibility without reward.
• A program of general fitness, health, and mental stimulation.
• An environment in which self-discovery can safely occur.
• Physical security.
• Stability.
• Emotional support.
• Community connectivity.

To be able to do all that, I need to:

• Focus on my business prospects
• Manage my time, so I can spend quality time with my inner child
• Use myself as an example for how to be a happy adult
• Demonstrate the fundamentals of living and playing responsibly
• Demonstrate cause and effect of our choices
• Be dilligent in tracking the critical signs of a healthy household: cash flow, health & fitness, having good things to eat, stability of household services, and insurance against future crisis.
• Be pro-active in anticipating cause and effect

When I woke up this morning at a relatively early 730AM, I put myself into self-parenting mode and immediately got my ass out of bed, showered, and put on some actual work clothes. I even combed my hair; my stylist would be thrilled, as she says that one should ALWAYS look good. In my case, that just means looking slightly less rumpled, but that's still an improvement.

I cooked breakfast, because I knew that it's an essential part of the day. I took out some meat for cooking lunch, thought about what vegetables would be good to have for dinner. I also knew that providing regular breakfast creates a routine, and routines are good for establishing a sense of security and home, forming a comfortable base from which one can explore. So I (we?) ate breakfast, wished each other a good day, and then I got myself downstairs to the office to work. Blogging is work too, you know! :-) Later this evening, we'll probably draw some spaceships and do some chores, maybe shoot some hoops. I'll make a list that describes the whole idea of "balancing the checkbook" so we both know what's expected.

Does it Work?

This was a surprisingly fulfilling morning. I have a lot of things I need to take care of now, because I'm nowhere near having any of those items on the list in a secure place. But it's a fascinating exercise...particularly of my imagination :-) We'll see how long this lasts...I'll be running it for at least this week.

So 5 bloggers walk into a bar…

So it's 20 years in the future, and these five old bloggers walk into a bar on 6th Street to reminisce about the glory days.

Blogger 1: "I remember sitting at this very table, arguing about the nature of the web. Then it hit me: categories are how people understand information! If I could own a category, I would draw the traffic and the revenue. Search naturally funnels eyeballs toward the top few sites. AdSense did the rest. And that's how I made my fortune."

Blogger 2: "Hey, I remember your site! I used to read it every day before I took on President Armstrong's re-election campaign in 2016. I think you're dead wrong about category, though...it's all about content. You had great writing. I learned something every day from it. So yeah, category got you there, but content is what kept us. And because the content was good, we trusted your opinion. Great writing. Great insights. Useful links. And really funny. It worked for El Dooce in our campaign too...the people felt they could trust someone who so embraced pooping and by extension: diversity and tolerance. I mean, we all poop, right? And that's how we built our powerbase...quality content. People loved it, and their hearts followed."

Blogger 3: "Heh, I remember that first debate between Armstrong and those other assholes. They thought they could attack her character with citations from her own blog. The flicker of panic across their faces, when they realized that the old ways of character assassination don't work when half the audience grew up reading her blog and had already formed their own opinions about her character...man, that was priceless. They just looked like cardboard cutouts of real people by comparison. Information transparency break down fear, uncertainty and doubt! That's when I knew that it wasn't category or content that ruled the world...it's context. The old regimes were masters at manipulation through controlling the context of our information experience. In the old world, when nothing was really verifiable except through the inbred reporting of The Old Media, everything seemed equally credible or ludicrous. I made my fortune by creating a personal context management tool, leveraging the wisdom of informed crowds to find the relevant patterns in so-called reported fact. The Old Media...they were great at building a news reporting organizations, and in the scramble to chase advertising revenues through market size, as opposed to the value in factually clarifying the state of the world. Idiots."

Blogger 4: "You said it, girl! When I found your site, I discovered things about myself that I didn't know were important. You helped me find my community too...that's what gave me power and confidence! It was a lot like my first SXSW, the first year they held it on the moon. I was hanging out at the WordPress party, floating upside down over this giant picture window, looking down upon the Earth. The first thing I thought was that the Earth looks weird without a cartoon animal humping it. The second thing was that it was home, and that I wished other people could be up here too and get the feeling that we are all from the same place. At the same time, I was at this great party with a community of people who believed in the coolness of what we were doing...democratizing the creation of information, and using those pathways to find each other in real life in a way that was empowering and non-sucky. Writing that e-voting plugin for WordPress just sort of fell out of that, and who knew that Diebold would be out-of-business three years later because of it? My life is better because of the community we founded, and the positive energy that came from that."

Blogger 5: "Wow, it's great to meet all of you. I've read all your blogs for years, and for me it wasn't really context, content, category, or community. Well, they were all important, but what made the difference was continuity. I read you guys every day. I got to know you. It grounded me in the torrent of information spewing from the web, because I felt I knew you were you stood, and that helped me see my own life in perspective. You know how 'all politics is local'? Well, that applies to everything...business is local, best friends are local, experiences are local. We're more fully engaged when all our senses are used and when we have common experiences. I recognized that the Internet was a new form of shared locality, just like everyone else, but I made my fortune by recognizing that maintaining any form of continuity is magic. It's the foundation of relationship, and real relationships are what makes things doable."

Bartender: "I thought this entry was going to be some kind of a funny joke."

Me: "Sorry. I thought so too."

Hair Styling meets Team Leadership

Last February 14th, I was at the En Vogue Salon getting my regular hair cut. The owner, Kim, commented that I'd made considerable progress in my personal grooming and attitude since I had first started coming there. There was, however, one skill that continued to elude me: the stylish hair muss. I finally figured it out, and I realized that there was a lesson about team leadership somewhere in there too.

Crazy? Read on.

The Mystery of Hair Mussing

A little background for those of you who are mystified, as I once was, by the world of hair styling: After you get your hair cut, the stylist will typically put something in your hair to make it look better. In my case, Kim uses a "styling wax" (Paul Mitchell Tea Tree™, if you must know). She dabs a small amount on her fingers, spreads it over her palms, and then with a few expert swipes at my hair makes everything look right. It's magical! Carson Kressley on Queer Eye for the Straight Guy calls this zhushing, and the best way I can describe it is that it's an artful running of the fingers through the hair. The result should look in-place, but free and playful. Kim is a master of the zhush, and even though I've seen her do it many times when I'm in the chair, I could not for the life of me duplicate it at home. Clearly, my technique was at fault, though I could not understand how I could mess up something as simple as running my own fingers through my own hair.

I mentioned this sad state of affairs to Kim, who cheerfully asserted that it was really easy. She said that we'd do "Hair Wax 101" after the hair cut, and she even promised that she'd wash my hair again if it didn't work. Now that's service...you can see why I like going to this place.

It's All in the Finger Pressure

Here's what I was supposed to do, as explained by Kim:

1. Put a small, pea-sized dollop of hair wax onto the tips of my fingers.
2. Rub hands together, spreading the wax evenly over the fingers and palms.
3. Run fingers through hair.
4. Tweak hair until it "looks good."

I did 1 and 2 just fine. Then, as Kim watched with mild horror, I used my fingers as a kind of meaty comb, pressing firmly into my hair and scalp. I went from the back and front, thoroughly applying the product throughout my hair. The result: spiky helmet head. The problem? Too much force.

Kim commented, having diagnosed the problem, that guys tend to put too much pressure on their hair. She told me that from now on, I was only to run my fingers through the top layer of my hair. She fixed my head as she explained the process; I noted as I watched that I shouldn't touch my scalp at all. If you do, what happens is that you end up waxing the roots of your hair, which makes them stick up funny or lie flat against your scalp. And to be clear: it's not a "good look."

The second trick is just let the hair fall where it wants to. When your hair is cut by an expert, it will do this. The hair wax is to add some texture and some variation to the surface, plus a little bit of sheen. Some bits of hair will be out of place after the zhush. She just flicks those parts lightly until they land better. You don't want to force the errant hairs into place, because it'll look unnatural. It's like dusting cocoa on a cake, or scattering rose pedals or leaves...you want things to fall naturally to look natural.

Application to Team Leadership

About a week later, I was relating this story to the New Media Group. We had been talking about management styles prior to this, and I made the observation that the "artful hair muss" was very much like an experienced team lead. So many new managers think that their responsibility is explicit control over a team or project, so they press hair and apply external controls that end up being unfunky and unproductive. The result is a mess. The experienced team lead, on the other hand, already knows what naturally happens in a team environment and knows how things will "naturally fall" given the personalities involved and the nature of the task. A few artful zhushes and taps, and everything falls into place. There is no need to apply explicit pressure to force things into place, because the experienced team lead knows how things will unfold. Of course, having the project set up right in the first place (analagous to having a good haircut) helps the project fall into place even better. Remember, though, there are two parts: you need expertly cut hair in the case of the hair wax, and you need to have a team that can work together. Every head of hair has its cowlicks and weird quirks that an expert stylist can work around, and the same is true for every team. It's easier said than done, of course.

So next time you're putting gel in your hair or energy into your group, consider the light touch and help things fall where they naturally would. You need less force than you might think, and sometimes you don't need any at all. Think about how you'd organize the team along natural strengths, and what you need to do to make sure that these fall into place naturally. At the very least, it'll help those long meetings go by quicker.

Hocus Focus

The past couple of weeks have been, for me, very un-GTD. Instead, I seem to be in a "Things are Getting Done, Somehow" mode; stuff happens, but not in any particularly directed manner. To top that off, I haven't been doing my PCEO forms, nor have I been doing Menu of the Day. Yet, I'm feeling weirdly productive. I think it's because I've been talking to a lot of people and have been slowly booking up a backlog of projects, so now, it's time to get busy!

It's focus that eludes me at the moment.

Here's my problem: I've got more than a few projects I'm working on simultaneously, each requiring different parts of my brain:

• A pure eye-smacking visual design project
• A Flash XML protocol definition and back end interface
• A corporate web rearchitecting and reskin
• Creating a video game class library for a learning environment.
• Conceiving and writing my first article for an online magazine

Then there's the usual:

• Continued Printable CEO forms development
• Ongoing social network expansion
• New Media Group
• Conference Calls & Meetings
• This blog
• Business stuff like accounting, creating marketing strategies and collateral, etc.
• Keeping a clean house

I'm not used to dealing with this many projects at once, but I figure it's good to pile on the pressure to see what happens.

I immediately have noticed that my "action path" is quite random. Instead of focusing on one task and seeing it through to completion, the environment itself is distracting me. For example, I'll need to write a check, so I pull up a bill and start filling it out. In the process of finding the bill, I have to find an address, so I look at my mail program, get distracted by another email I have to answer, which triggers a need to dig info up on Google, and then I have to go upstairs and I forget that I was paying the bill, because in the process of grabbing a stack of mail from upstairs I end up reading something that distracts me further from my path. Then I see a pair of socks on the floor and start collecting laundry.

And that's a good reason not to work at home :-) It's filled with distractions! However, working at home is a lot cheaper than renting space, so I need to find another way to maintain focus.

Elements of Focus

I think we tend to think of Focus as a kind of mind trick: you're either focused, or you're not. You tell your brain "OK, FOCUS" and the well-trained mind tunes out all distractions.

If your brain doesn't work that way, then focus can be gained through use of external motivators. For example, a project manager can remind you of what you need to deliver by what time. Your state of mind is regulated by a third party that acts as a sort of pacemaker for keeping your brain in a regular rhythm. Setting a deadline and promising it to someone is another way of putting some external regulation on your focus mechanism. In game design, keeping the goal clear and concrete is essential! "Ship By This Date or Die" can work wonders :-)

I also have a theory about how your eyes play a role in the focus game. This thought popped up just a few days ago:

• I was talking to a friend about really listening to people. Eye contact is important in making the other person feel that they're in a conversation, and I mentioned that I sometimes am not sure exactly where to look. If I focus on the left eyeball of the other person too long, I wonder if it's too intense or maybe impolite. So I move my gaze around a bit. My friend found this fascinating because she's a martial artist, and part of her training is to know exactly where to put your eyes. She thought it was cool that a non-martial artist like me was thinking of these things. In each case, the eyes are essential parts of the activity.

• You know how the physical act of smiling cheers you up, even if you're feeling bad? By forcing yourself to configure your face into a smile, something happens that makes you feel better. It's fascinating that the body can induce good feeling to chair-bound nerds as myself; I suspect that people who exercise regularly totally know what I'm talking about.

So combining these two insights together, here's what I'm thinking:

If I deliberately control what I'm looking at during the course of the day, will focus follow? In other words, visual focus lead to mental focus, much in the way that smiling leads to feeling good.

It seems plausible, though I have nothing backing me up. Most of the time my eyes are looking at everything and taking it in. It's natural then that I get distracted; since I'm not controlling what I'm looking at, I'm allowing distracting impulses to enter my brain, which has to fight off the impulse. And the best way to not get into a fight is not to be there in the first place, you know?

Other Contributors to Focus

Above we've talked about The Mind, and the Mind Following the Body. There are other helpful tricks that we can think up too. Consider the Body itself:

• The string around your finger is a good mnemonic to remind you to stay on task. It engages our senses (our built-in interrupt system), and he physical proximity of the string provides low-level and continual reinforcement of what you need to do.

  The reason it works is that it's pretty much always in view. It catches your eye if you've chosen your string well, and even the sensation of having a string on your finger may remind you that you should be focusing.

• Diet affects my mental clarity, I find. Complex carbohydrates (breads, sugars) induce an insulin rush that makes me feel sleepy and unfocused; I have learned to cut out sugar and other carbs almost entirely if I need to be focused and alert. If you are one of those people who feel like napping after lunch, then you're probably in the same boat. Hard to focus when you're feeling sleepy.

• Also overlooked is proper hydration. You're supposed to drink 64oz of water (not soda) a day. When I've remembered to do this, I've felt great. This contributes a great deal to mental clarity, but not in an obvious cause-and-effect way. Give it a try and see if you don't feel better after a day.

• Adequate and regular sleep cycle? Can't focus if you're tired.

• Regular exercise gets the blood flowing. And sometimes just going outside and going for a 15 minute walk induces a marvelous sense of clarity and focus, as you ponder what it is you need to be doing.

Consider also environmental approaches:

• Paper-based approaches work partly because they're less distracting. Computers morph between productivity tool and entertaining distraction in the blink of an incoming email. Paper doesn't morph like that, which is why I like it. Plus you aren't limited to displaying your task list on the computer screen, but can move to another area where you can think.

• Feedback-based Procedures help focus, because it narrows down the list of things you really have to be aware of to move forward, and you don't have to think. It never occured to me that the type of projects that I tend to do themselves are not particularly proceduralized in this way. By creating some procedure for doing this kind of creative work, I may be able to improve my productivity by simplifying the complexity of my mental work. An interesting idea!

• When you don't have a separate office away from home, a work shrine might provide a sense of respite away from distraction where you can see the big picture again. I haven't been able to maintain this as well as I like.

My tentative conclusion is that Focus can be trained. I could even develop a focus-enhancing regimen that increases my productivity. Will have to think how that can be packaged for deployment in any given situation.

Which reminds me:

• Distraction storage is essential if project ideas keep popping up. My Pickle Jar is good for that, as is this blog. I don't have time to think about this stuff now, so into idea cold storage it goes.

Ok, that's enough for now. I really should be working :-)

» Read Part II of Hocus Focus

Creating a Hybrid CD-ROM with Toast 7

Geeky notes in progress to myself on a CD-ROM project: how to create a CD that will work on the Mac and on the PC, using Roxio Toast 7 and a small flotilla of support utilities. This is the first time I've done this in---geez---12 years, so I had to research the current process.

I don't want to have to look this up again, so I'm writing it down. VERY GEEKY. You've been warned.

These notes are still a little rough, but should get you in the ballpark of what you need to do

Make sure you read the comments at the end too; there are some helpful notes that other users have added (especially regarding the tricky hiding of files).

Update for Toast 8: I'm told by a reader that the newer version of Toast, version 8, actually implements a lot of these features more intuitively now. I have not personally confirmed this though.

Authoring Options

The project: A Flash Projector that loads SWF movies from a subdirectory named _data. The projector needs to automatically run on the PC, and open a folder on the Mac with the projector readily clickable. Also, want to make it very obvious what to click on by hiding files that are not user-friendly.

I last used Toast in 1993 to make hybrid CD-ROMs. These are CD-ROMs that have both the nice Mac icons and PC files. The Mac doesn't see the PC files, and the PC doesn't see the Mac files. If there are shared files (for example, giant video files), they can be made visible to both Mac and PC sides.

• MacImage is a PC solution that does the job, but doesn't allow you to create a nice Macintosh partition with custom backgrounds. Looks like a good solution for sharing data with basic functionality, but it won't create a CD that holds up to the expectations of discerning Macintosh users.

• Adaptec Toast 7 Titanium ($99, Macintosh) still has a custom hybrid mode that allows you to create decent hybrid CDs. And a lot of other "home" oriented uses like "backing up your DVDs" and other such nonsense. Despite that, I bought it after MacImage didn't end up doing what I needed. It seems to work, though the UI dialogs are a little buggy. This used to be very solid German software when it was just from Astarte. What happened?

Hardware / Software Kit

Here's what I ended up using...

• Powerbook 12" with a Matshita CD-RW CW-8122 combo DVD/CDRW drive.
• Mac OS X 10.4.3
• Roxio Toast 7 Titanium (version 7.01)
• AutoOpen 1.0 from Nibfiles.com No longer available!
• Apple Disk Utility 10.5.3 (198.5)
• XCode developer kit utility SetFile to set invisibility bit
• Photoshop w/ IconBuilder XP from iconfactory.com (Windows Version) to create .ico file
• Text Editor on PC to create autorun.inf file
• Blank CD-RW disk for testing (didn't want to waste lots of CD blanks)

Prepping the PC Side

When someone inserts the CD into a Windows PC, it should automatically run a file (assuming AutoRun is enabled and functioning). This is accomplished with the AUTORUN.INF file. It must be prepared on the PC side, because PC-ANSI line endings must be used otherwise AUTORUN will fail. In other words, don't use the Mac to create the following file, and don't edit it on the Mac either. Here's my AUTORUN.INF file:

[autorun]
label=E3Expo Prospectus
icon=_dataE3Video.ico
open=E3ExpoProspectus.EXE

Notes:

• label is the name of the CD as it will appear in My Computer. This is different from the CD-ROM Volume Name. It may contain spaces and be over 16 characters (unlike the CD-ROM Volume Name). This may be a feature only available on Windows XP.

• icon is the pathname to an icon to use for the CD-ROM, as it appears in My Computer. Here it's pointing to a directory called _data. The E3Video.ico file contains Icon resources created with an Icon Editor. In my case, the program I used was The IconFactory's IconBuilder XP.

• open is the program to run. The pathname may not have any spaces in it. You can also select an icon to show, if it's embedded in the EXE, if you're not using the icon entry by appending a comma followed by a number. To do this you would have to build the icon into the EXE resource, which requires other development tools on the PC to do.

You'll note that there's three files listed: The _data folder, the AUTORUN.INF file, and the projector itself E3ExpoProspectus.EXE. The average person may not know which file to click on to run it, should AutoRun fail to work on their computer. Fortunately, we can hide all the files except for the projector using the Toast 7 ISO Layout Tools.

Prepping the Mac Side, Part I

We're going to make a separate disk image to contain all our files for the Mac side. This will allow us to set it up just right:

• We'll have a cool Custom Background Picture for the Folder!
• There will just be ONE icon, the movie projector, to click on!
• The Folder with the projector will automatically open when the CD is inserted.

1. Launch Disk Utility (it's in your Applications/Utilities folder). Create a new disk image that's big enough to hold all the files you want. I made a 40MB disk image, with R/W access, and named it as I want my CD to be named when it's inserted. Save the disk image (it has a .dmg suffix) somewhere. Use Disk Utilty to mount the disk image. An icon will appear on your desk representing the new disk image. This is a virtual hard drive. Cool! For the sake of example, the Disk Image shall be named E3Expo Prospectus.

2. Copy all your Mac files, including files you plan to SHARE on the PC side, into the new disk image. Arrange them how you want. Warning. In my limited experience, deleting and re-adding files seems to mess up some file references after I burn (background images not showing up, for example). It might be something else, but thought I'd mention it. Renaming files is OK, though.

3. To apply the background folder image, go to the Finder's View menu and choose Show View Options. Click This Window Only at the top, then choose Picture at the bottom. Navigate to an image that's on the new disk image you created. If it's not there, move it there. For my example, the background file (I'm using a PNG file) needs to be on the volume named E3Expo Prospectus, because that's going to be converted into my CD of the same name.

4. Adjust the size of the window to match the background, and position icons artistically. If there are files you're planning on hiding later, just stuff them somewhere away from where the pretty layout is happening. You may want to use the Finder to hide the toolbar (the selector on the left of the window) and change to icon view. Both these options are in the Finder's View menu.

5. Close your folder window and open it again. This will save the layout.

We're eventually going to hide all the files we don't want users to see, but before we do that we have to set up Toast 7 to access files shared between the Mac and PC side. That's because Toast can't see hidden files, so to add them to the PC side they need to be left visible.

For reference, here's the files in the _data folder, to be shared between both the Mac and PC sides of the disk, as it appears in my mounted disk image on the Mac:

/Volumes/E3Expo Prospectus/
    _data/
        folderbg.png
        video.swf
        loop.swf
        E3Video.ico
    E3Expo Prospectus

The only file I want showing is E3Expo Prospectus, the application(not the volume name). So, I plan to hide the _data folder. Since I also need to share this folder on the PC, I need to wait until after I've added it to the ISO builder in Toast. Make sense? No? Well, just take my word for it.

Toast Prep, Part I -- Build PC ISO Side of Disk

The Custom Hybrid mode is available when you show legacy formats and settings in Toast 7's preferences. While you're there, also check Show hidden files in content areas.

1. Make a new CD and choose Custom Hybrid as the type. You'll see that you can choose a Mac and an ISO part of the CD. We're going to set up the ISO side first. This is what the PC sees.

2. Click on the Select ISO button and you'll see a Layout box. Add all your PC files here. For SHARED files, add them from the Mac disk image you've been working on. Toast will figure out that these are shared files and will do its magic behind the scenes. Note that there is some kind of bug with adding folders...if you add a folder first, the listing gets messed up. So add a regular file first, then the folder.

3. Name the CD to something other than "My Disc" It must be less than 16 characters to conform to Windows standards ("Joliet"). Note that the label entry in the autorun.inf file will be displayed in place of the actual CD Volume name on newer computers; older computers will see the old name.

4. After you're done adding everything, we can hide the files. Select the Icon (not the name) and type COMMAND-I (Info). You can then check the hidden option. Alternatively you can double-click the Icon to get this dialog. It doesn't seem to be documented. You can even hide the AUTORUN.INF file and AutoRun will still work, at least in my limited testing.

5. I left the Layout and Settings dialogs alone. The Defaults seem to work fine.

Prepping the Mac Side, Part II

Now that we've added our shared _data folder to the ISO side, we can go ahead and hide the files we don't want to be seen by the Mac user.

1. You need to make sure you have XCode, the development environment, installed on your Mac. It's included with every MacOS X CD, and it's also downloadable. It's HUGE, so you might look around for another utility that sets the hidden bit on files. I had XCode installed already, so I just used that and didn't both to look elsewhere.

2. Open up Terminal (in Applications/Utilities). Type the following without pressing RETURN at the end. Also leave a space after the "V"...

   /Developer/Tools/SetFile -a V 
   

3. Now, open up the disk volume you've been playing with the custom background and icon positions, that you ran AutoOpen on before. Find the name of a file you want to hide (it can also be a folder). Drag and Drop it on the Terminal window. The rest of the command line will be be filled in, and you'll see something like this (here I dragged the _data folder):

   /Developer/Tools/SetFile -a V /Volumes/E3Expo Prospectus/_data/
   

4. Go ahead and press RETURN now. This will set the INVISIBLE BIT on the file. Do this with the other files you want to hide. If you need to undo the invisible bit, replace the upper-case V with a lower-case v in the command line (use the up/down arrow keys in Terminal to review and edit history).

5. You'll probably notice that the files don't seem to be disappearing right away. Don't worry about that...it takes MacOS X a while to catch up. We'll be forcing it to do that in the next few steps.

6. When everything is done, EJECT the disk volume, then REMOUNT it. You may do this through Disk Utility, which seems more robust than double-clicking the .DMG files directly. My system becomes unstable otherwise.

7. The files you set to be invisible should now be invisible. You'll probably want to resize the window and rearrange the remaining icons to make everything pretty.

8. Move the newly-prettified window to the upper-left corner of your screen. This ensure that the folder will be viewable on machines that don't have the high resolution that yours has. Close the window, then open it again.

9. Now use AutoOpen to set the disk volume to Auto Open. Consult the manual for specifics. This will set the disk image to open automatically when inserted, once it's burned to a CD. If it actually works, send your $10.00 to the author of AutoOpen! [12-15-2006] Apparently AutoOpen has disappeared, but this article has some information about Auto-opening folders by using the following command in Terminal (I've modified it to reflect the name I'm using for the Mac disk image):

   sudo bless -folder "/Volumes/E3Expo Prospectus/" -openfolder "/Volumes/E3Expo Prospectus/"

   Note: I haven't tested this yet, but am just writing it here for next time I need to burn a CD.

Toast Prep, Part II -- Prepping the Mac Side

Having finished making the mounted disk image exactly the way we want, we're finally we're ready to set up the Mac side of the CD. It's easy: Just click Select Mac... on the Custom Hybrid window in Toast 7.

1. Select the disk volume you've been doing everything to.

2. Click OK

3. You're done!

Burning the CD

I used a CD-RW (rewriteable CD) to test my CDs on both PC and Mac. Keep in mind that CD-RW discs aren't as fast as regular CDs, so if your application is data-rate sensitive you'll want to check it on a regular CD-R to get the true sense of how it works.

Anyway, click the big red button in the lower right of the screen to burn the CD. It should take just a few minutes.

Testing the Mac Side

Now the exciting part...making sure the damn thing works.

1. If you have another Macintosh, test on that. If you don't, make sure your unmount the disk image you selected in Toast first! Otherwise you'll have two copies of the same volume, and when your CD runs it will grab files from the disk image. You want it to grab files from the CD itself.

2. Check that the folder is opening automatically when you insert the CD.

3. Check that the background image is showing up correctly.

4. While you're at it, check file names too. Make sure everything's pretty the way you like it.

Testing the PC Side

1. Find a different CD that you know works with AutoPlay, and make sure AutoPlay is working. Some PCs do not have functioning AutoPlay. The owner may have turned it off, or AutoPlay has become corrupted by a third-party piece of software. Troubleshooting AutoPlay on a PC is not my idea of fun, so I'll skip the explanation. If it doesn't work, find a PC that does have it working. Most CD-based installers for the PC use an Autorun.INF file, so chances are you have a CD you can used to test.

2. Once you've found a PC with working AutoPlay, insert your Hybrid CD in and see if it works. If it doesn't, double-check the AUTORUN.INF file. You might have screwed up a pathname, left out the [autorun] line at the top of the file, or you didn't listen and used a Macintosh to create the file with the WRONG line endings. You might have also used a filename with a SPACE in it for the open line. I have done all these things, and they are all irritating things to have happen to you.

3. If AutoRun does seem to work, then you're good! Look in My Computer and see if the name of the CD is showing up as how you've defined label in autorun.aif. This may be a Windows XP feature...not sure if it's available on 98, ME, or 2000 (see the end of this doc for my testing notes). Also check that the Icon (the .ICO file specified in the icon line of AutoRun.INF) is showing up.

4. Double Click the CD-ROM Icon. This should relaunch the application instead of opening a browser window.

5. Quit the application, and right-click the CD-ROM Icon. Choose EXPLORE from the menu that pops up. You can then view the contents of the CD and make sure everything that's hidden is supposed to be hidden. If you've done your job, the only visible clickable file is the Projector executable. There's almost no way to mess that up.

6. Have a beer. Good job.

Wrapping Up

If everything looks good, you can master the CD. The CD mastering company just called me and told me they need a physical CDR that has been tested and checked on the target platforms. That is, the CDR I send needs to be tested. Perfect. They duplicate it bit-by-bit. They can accept an image (ISO), but it costs $200 to turn around a check disc.

The format of the CDR: Mac side is HFS (Mac OS Standard, not Extended) , and PC Side is ISO-9660 Mode 1 (Mode 2 is called CD-ROM XA in Toast 7, Mode 1 is just called CD-ROM).

A reader points out that the Mac side of the disc will truncate long filenames to the much-hated 31-character filename limit.

Tested Platforms: PC

• Windows XP SP2 + service updates to 12/19/2005, AutoRun Enabled ... OK!
• Windows XP SP2 + service updates to 12/19/2005, AutoRun Disabled (and broken) on my notebook. Only Projector file visible, clickable. Acceptable.
• Windows 2000 Advanced Server + service updates to /12/1/2005, AutoRun Enabled. Icon didn't show, replaced with generic icon. label didn't show. Presentation launched automatically. Double-clicking CD drive launched presentation as it should.
• need to set up some virtual machines for Win98, ME, 2000 testing

Tested Platforms: Macintosh

• PowerBook 12" MacOS 10.4.3 ... OK!
• iBook 300MHz (bondi blue) running MacOS 9.2 ... No autoopen or fanciness of course. Flash Player doesn't even run on it anyway.

I Hope I Kinda Might Perhaps Won’t Write Like This Anymore, Maybe.

When I'm writing on a topic I'm not yet familiar with, I have a tendency to pepper my writing with wussy phrases like I have a tendency to and not yet familiar with. The passive voice...bleah!

I don't know [where this comes from]... [it might] be [some] charming artifact of my upbringing, as I was raised by genuine missionaries in a [somewhat] academic household. [Sometimes I wish that] my writing sounded more deliberate and less cover-my-ass. I'm better now, [but] [it still] creeps in [from time to time]. There's a fine line between being humble and sounding like a homesick puppy.

I was discussing this with another friend of mine, pointing out the I hopes and maybes that "swept the legs" out from under his otherwise fine prose. The solution: make use of a much-hated feature in Microsoft Word to retrain our writing reflexes!

How? Use AutoCorrect to replace wishy-washy expressions in your writing! Go to the AutoCorrect Options (under Tools) and enter phrase pairs like these:

• I HOPE becomes As the Lord is my witness, you can bet your SWEET ASS...

• MAYBE becomes if I had a nickel for every FREAKING TIME this happened I'd be a FREAKING MILLIONAIRE...

• A TENDENCY TO becomes abso-freaking-lutely kiss-my-ass and hope-to-die WILL...

The shock and horror of seeing these phrases sprout unbidden in your Word document---in that letter to your sweet old grandmother, for example---will quickly train you against using those wimpy phrases ever again. You'll find new ways to avoid them, because the probability of remembering how to turn off AutoCorrect is really low given the sheer number of "features" clogging up Microsoft Office these days.

Ah, the power of negative reinforcement! I love the smell of Microsoft in the morning! And there are other applications, like for the harried men on Match.com who must send out hundreds of "special" form emails every day:

• U R HOT becomes not only are you beautiful and intelligent, but in all my travels throughout this world I have NEVER come across a profile more delightful than yours. Come! FLY WITH ME!

Have fun! As the Lord is my witness, you can bet your SWEET ASS this is useful :-)

ASIDE: Maybe the hate is unwarranted on my part, but I can't stand AutoCorrect fiddling with my sentences and bulleted list items. It wreaks havoc when you're writing technical documentation with mixed-case capitalization. I'm also not a fan of automatic misspelling correction...how will you learn that you're spelling things wrong if it's doing it behind the scene? That's just the way I feel, so I usually turn it off after the irritation builds to the boiling point.