Corte Madera Ride
Finally got out for a nice long bike ride. Sunday was one of the nicest days of the whole year here. High 60s and a little windy but even managed to get a little sunburn.
My friend Jason came up from the south bay and we left mid-morning for a ride. I had done most of the route before, but was excited to show Jason Sausalito and the golden gate close up. It was a very enjoyable day. We rode very leisurely (mostly because I am so out of shape) and stopped along the way to enjoy the scenery. It’s really nice that a large portion of this route from Sausalito to Corte Madera is a separate bike path.
Jason and me before crossing the Golden Gate Bridge. View on Flickr
I was pretty sore Monday and still am a little bit today, but that’s what I get for riding 30 miles without working up to it.
DJs in the House
Last month we had an awesome off-site event for work. We broke up into three teams and each created a music production. This included hands-on learning how to DJ and laying down a music track. Each group then performed their music front and center. Our DJs, MC++ were led us a to a clear victory even though there was no competition!
It’s me, learning how to DJ. See more photos of my work group here and here.
I’ve added streaming videos to my website. In the past I’ve always linked to YouTube or Google Video but now I’ve been able to convert my AVI files into Flash videos and embed them directly into my blog posts. Although these other sites are nice, I’m trying to keep my stuff completely independent so I can maintain complete control over my content. With the embedded player below, you can download the high quality original AVI file by clicking on the down arrow in the player controls.
Here are Matt and Vijay laying it down.
[flashvideo filename=http://storage.davewknight.com/videos/djs_yautos/MVI_1855.flv link=http://storage.davewknight.com/videos/djs_yautos/MVI_1855.avi image=http://storage.davewknight.com/videos/djs_yautos/MVI_1855.jpg /]
And our DJs’ final performance.
[flashvideo filename=http://storage.davewknight.com/videos/djs_yautos/MVI_1856.flv link=http://storage.davewknight.com/videos/djs_yautos/MVI_1856.avi image=http://storage.davewknight.com/videos/djs_yautos/MVI_1856.jpg /]
Update: Found this great video of all the final DJ performances.
Web Designer Study
The website, A List Apart has released a study it conducted in April 2007 of over 30,000 web designers across the world. Supposedly this is the “the first data ever collected on the business of web design and development as practiced in the U.S. and worldwide.” I find that hard to believe but I suppose data has never been collected on such a large scale. You can read the full report, but it’s also cool that they are releasing all the anonymized raw data. I was thinking what would be cool is if someone built a simple visualization that let you drill down and look at the data. The tables in the report which try to get at the second dimensions of the data just don’t cut it. There are always other data combinations that people are curious about. And I’m sure every designer who reads it knows that. I’m also wondering if there any off-the-shelf packages that could be used to do this quickly?
Here are some findings that I found somewhat interesting:
Only a little more than half of web workers find their educational background to be relevant to their work.
I guess this goes to show that the web design field is a very learned-on-the-job skill. The way in which the Internet grew up is probably a cause for this. But I think the 46% number is huge. The industry is very well developed and still many people went to college for something they don’t even see as relevant in their design work. I wonder what the average number for this is across all fields of professionals?
The relevance of education declines steadily with age.
This tells a little bit more of the story from the first chart. Web workers coming out of college feel their educational background is much more relevant than someone who is over 50. Or even over 39. This makes perfect sense because older workers didn’t have access to relevant education when they were younger. And I think the sharp drop after age 39 correlates well to the invention and growth of the Internet compared to the college age.
Web worker job satisfaction increases with age.
The trend of job satisfaction is reversed when it comes to age. Older web workers are more satisfied with their jobs. This could be for a variety of reasons and could even but a natural trend across all of humanity for all I know. (I guess I’m to young to know personally).
So why did I pick these particular items from the survey? I guess as I was reading the study I began thinking about the relationship between job satisfaction (i.e. being happy) and educational relevance. I realized I interpreted education relevance as feeling competent in one’s job, but I suppose that isn’t necessarily related. What do you think? Are these aspects of work related? Does educational relevance equate to feeling competent in your job?
Update: My friend Daniel pointed out that the Many Eyes visualization website has a partial dataset for this study. I couldn’t get it to show me any visualizations though. Now for a second wish… comments to this post in facebook that show up on my webpage!
Another Halloween
With Halloween approaching, I am now soliciting costume ideas. I don’t have any good ideas yet and there isn’t a lot of time left to plan and execute a great costume.
Aruna is coming this week to visit and will see my apartment for the first time! My new job at Yahoo is going well… I’ll try to write more about that soon.
Happy October!
Team Zissou Halloween Costume
I received a request yesterday asking about how we made our Team Zissou halloween costumes last year. I figured why not put the details up here for all to enjoy. This is important stuff so I’ve tried to be as complete as possible.
In getting our costumes we wanted to be as authentic as possible and also had a limited budget. As we shopped around to find parts I think we were a little skeptical of how it would turn out but in the end it kicked ass. I’ll be a thorough here as possible, because after all this is very important!
Hat: Found a simple kind at TJ max that worked great. You’ll probably be inside most of the time so try to get something light. It needs to be large enough so you can roll the end up and have it fit tight.
Shirt: Dickies or similar long-sleeve button-down modified into a short sleeve. We cut and then rolled the sleeves.
Pants: Nurse scrubs. It was hard to get the color to match the shirt exactly but we got close.
Blue Stripes: We found dark blue duct tape that was perfect. You might also be able to find painters masking tape in dark blue. The duct tape sticks much better though. Just run strips down the sides of the pants, down the sleeves of the shirt and down the front of the shirt. Check fabric or hardware stores for this.
Gun: Finding a good toy gun was actually the hardest part. I think we ended up finding cheap ones at a dollar store type place. They were actually cap guns.
Holster: This is a key part of the costume and it will set you apart from any other zissous you may encounter on halloween. We used a black wide elastic strip and applied velcro with adhesive backing. Just a simple elastic band around your upper leg will work great, just slide the gun in. Both of these you can find in a fabric store.
Shoes: We didn’t want to splurge on actual Adidas Zissou shoes (they are pretty pricey), so we improvised. We found knock-off blue and white adidas shoes at payless ($10-$15). We dyed the laces yellow-gold using Rit dye (fabric store).
ID cards: Don’t forget this to show to anyone who challenges your authenticity. You need to have the hat and shirt done in order to take the picture to edit, print and laminate the cards. You can use the template below.
Emblem: We also ironed-on Zissou logos on our shirts like the one below. We tried to put the red-yellow-green stop light emblems on the hats but that didn’t work out.
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