The Occasional Blog

We were discussing notable books at work so I put together the below list and decided that it might also be useful here. The links go to Amazon if you’d like to read a synopsis. If you’d like my take on any of them, just let me know.

At work, I’ve been taking Japanese classes and have been using OmniFocus to help me with daily practice. Here’s a screenshot of a typical morning:

Learning Japanese in OmniFocus

So let me explain the setup. For each word or phrase I want to study, I create a separate task that is set to repeat every two days. In the task name, I have the english word and in the notes I have the word in Japanese with the romaji. When I study, I don’t look at the notes until I want to double-check my answer. If I’m right, I increase the repeat of the task by a day. If’ I’m close, I leave it as is. If I’m wrong, I decrease the repeat by a day. That way, I practice words I’m not learning more frequently and words that I do know naturally move out to show up less frequently.

I’ve been using this system for a couple of years and it’s working pretty well. Currently, I have hundreds of words that in my rotation with anywhere from 30-50 on the list for each day which keeps things manageable. The romaji text is deliberately in a light color so that I focus on the word in Japanese (hiragana or katakana). The only downside is that I’m only focusing on English to Japanese. I need to reverse the many of them to increase my recognition of the Japanese words themselves. Any other ideas for improvements?

This is the first in a series of posts about OmniFocus that I’ve been thinking about for ages. I’m going to keep them short to eliminate excuses for not getting to them.

For the unfamiliar, OmniFocus is a OS X application based on the Getting Things Done methodology by David Allen. I’ve been an avid user for over five years and it is central to my productivity both personally and professionally. These posts will presume you’re generally familiar with the software. If not, they may not make complete sense.

Read more…

mpeay: I’m a big @OmniFocus fan and live in wine country (Temecula, CA). Maybe *I* should combine the two interests? Hmmm…. http://t.co/17zFR4n8h9

mpeay: “The greatest of faults is to be conscious of none.” –Thomas Carlyle

mpeay: Wrestling with the email system for a meeting invite. Trying to not make me grumpy.

mpeay: An old take for a new sound http://t.co/hqQRuosNos

Kickstarter is a crowd-funding site to back creative projects. I’ve heard of plenty of projects and considered backing a few, but the first one I bit on was Brassft Punk. The concept was a creative one. Take a few tracks from the electronic music group Daft Punk and arrange them for a New Orleans brass band. I got my download code this week and am very pleased with the results.

Here’s a preview of “Harder, Better, Faster, Stronger”:

You can preview the other tracks or purchase them at Juno Download.

I was able to attend the Trace3 EBC a few weeks ago in Las Vegas. I can honestly say it was well worth the few days in being away from the office. One of the best speakers was Peter Hinssen whose presentation was like a long TED talk. I re-watched it with my family a week ago and they enjoyed it which confirms it’s not just me being overly geeky. If you watch it, comment below with how many slide you think make up the presentation. I might have a surprise for you.

Trace3 EBC 2013 Peter Hinssen from Trace3 on Vimeo.

This is good to think about as the world in certainly changing and you’d be best to think how so that it doesn’t take you by surprise.

I had an unexpected event occur yesterday and, honestly, it’s got me a bit concerned. Yesterday, while making breakfast, one of the outlets by the range started smoking. Nothing was plugged into it and nothing splashed onto it, but a trickle of smoke was there, nonetheless. After quickly throwing the breaker and allowing it to cool down I removed the faceplate and found this:

With no specific electrical experience, I wasn’t sure where to turn. I decided to stop by the local fire department to see if they had any thoughts. They didn’t have any specific comments, but did recommend talking to the local building and safety department which should provide some good perspective. If there’s some defect or age-related problem, I certainly want to know so I can take the necessary steps to remediate it.

What’s got me concerned is the unclear cause. Honestly, it’s a blessing that I was standing right next to it. If we weren’t home, there’s a chance there wouldn’t be a home to be sitting in right now to write this. Without knowing the root cause, it’s a bit hard to sleep comfortably at night.

I called building and safety today, but with the holiday, I wasn’t surprised to only get voicemail. I’ll be staying home tomorrow to see if I can learn something useful. I won’t be comfortable until I do.

 Update (02/19/13):

I visited my local city hall and spoke with a gentleman from building and safety. He was quite helpful partially due to the fact he was a professional electrician before becoming a building inspector. He mentioned that about 90% of all house fires are due to situations like this. What likely happened was that a downstream outlet was pulling some significant current that ended up arcing through the neutral screw terminal. While it was 12 gauge wire, if they aren’t screwed down tightly or completely, it can end up arcing.

At this point, I’m satisfied that the replacement outlet or any other ones won’t just spontaneously ignite (like when we’re not home), but will certainly entertain evaluating all of the kitchen outlets for proper condition. On the plus side, I now have a bonus fourth day to my three-day weekend.