My favorites for week 19, 2011

Something to laugh: my favorite comic strip of the week – about communication in modern times

Something to watch: my favorite video clip of the week – about a real bad joke with Windows XP

You have a fellow worker next to you who always leaves his PC unlocked when leaving his desk ? Here is your opportunity to play a real bad trick on him. Can be done in one minute or so, may be you first try on your own PC. I recommend to let your victim not suffer for too long, he might get crazy about this soon. Get him some help after a few minutes latest, may be a good way to earn a free coffee . And whatever you do, never ever mention that you found this in my blog !

Something to enjoy: my favorite photo  on flickr under a Common Creative license – about Acadia NP

"Frenchman Bay in Acadia NP" by axel_magard. Let me feature one of my own photos here this week from Acadia NP, where my wife and I have been in 1997. Just this week I scanned in more of my slides with my CanoScan 5600F, and here is one: “Frenchman Bay in Acadia NP”.

Something to surprise: my favorite "I really didn’t know this" of the week – about infected computers in Germany

Did you know that 5.3 of 1000 computers in Germany have been infected with malware in 4th quarter 2010. These are twice as many as one year before. However Germany is still below world-wide average of 8.7 of 1000 infected computers Source: heise online article “Microsoft: Zahl der infizierten Rechner in Deutschland verdoppelt”

My favorites for week 8, 2011

Something to laugh: my favorite comic strip of the week – about cubicle landscapes

One of the many reasons why I love Dilbert comics is that they very often are about the pleasure to work in these modern cubicle landscapes our employers have crafted for us. Well, I only go there if I have to, otherwise I stay at home. Why should I go through this morning commute madness ( actually not so bad in my case; just a 20 minute car ride into Mainz, a medium size town in Germany ) just to get to a place where I actually can not work efficiently ? Anyway, here is another nice one about this topic:

Something to watch: my favorite video clip of the week – about an amazing Guitarist

Thinking outside the box might mean to use a tool in a very different way than people do usually. Watch Erik Mongrain playing his guitar in a very different way … http://www.dailymotion.com/swf/video/xerqg Amazing Guitarist

Something to enjoy: my favorite photo  on flickr under a Common Creative license – about a crater in Death Valley.

"Little Hebe Crater" by stevelyon. Apparently the Little Hebe Crater must be somewhere in the Death Valley Area, as I assumed when looking at this photo by Steve Lyon, and as I confirmed through Wikipedia. I must have missed it when I was there in 1995. May be next time. You can’t see everythng when travelling…

Something to surprise: my favorite "I really didn’t know this" of the week – about facebook

Did you know that Facebook has 642 726 020 users world wide, most Facebook users come from the US, where 49 % of the population have joined this social network, Germany is on rank 11 with 16 million users, that is 19 % of all Germans in the US the majority of Facebook users are female. Source: These statistics are available here on socialbakers.

Something to talk about: my favorite quote of the week – about language

Language is the source of misunderstandings. ~ Antoine de Saint-Exupery, French writer (1900 – 1944) ~ Especially human language ! Watson did a great job last week to deal with this and win the Jeopardy! Challenge. In case you missed it you may want to head to my stream of IBM related videos on youtube and find there 6 10-minute video clips showing how the 20-minutes show episodes went last week on Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday, or you may just want to watch this nice 10-minute summary. A collection of articles about Watson I have collected here as a Goodle Bookmarks List.

My favorites for week 3, 2011

Something to laugh: my favorite comic strip of the week – about feedback

It’s probably a good advice to give feedback only to people who ask for it. They will be the ones who appreciate your effort. Don’t come up with feedback if people who are supposed to digest it are not in the mood to do so, like Charlie Brown here in this Peanutrs comic strip.  And keep in mind – as I mentioned here in “Handling Feedback”: Participation in feedback should be voluntary, for the feedback receiver, and for the one giving feedback !

Something to watch: my favorite video clip of the week – about domino

Domino Day at someones home: watch this "Amazing domino video for Restless Legs".

Something to enjoy: my favorite photo  on flickr under a Common Creative license – about the moon and winter in Denmark

I believe the moon looks the same anywhere, nevertheless here is a great shot of the moon from Flemming from Denmark. And if you want to get an impression how winters look like in Denmark check out the other photo: “Winter in Denmark”. "DSC_1708" by flemming. d5000. "DSC_1240_Winter in Denmark" by flemming. d5000.

Something to discover: my favorite bookmark of the week – about comparing countries

IfItWereMyHome is a nice web site allowing you to compare countries in terms of how it would be to live there instead of your own country. For example if you currently live in USA moving over to Germany would make you consume 50 % less oil, give you 25 % more free time, makes you staying alive for 1.17 extra years. Those and more interesting facts about countries compared to other countries plus a nice map on the right comparing countries by its size are available on this web site.

Something to talk about: my favorite quote of the week – about patents @ IBM

It took 50 years for IBM to have 5000 patents. In 2010, IBM received more than 5000 patents! ~ Video "A Passion for Invention: IBM Inventors Break Patent Record" on youtube; thanks Luis Benitez, for twittering this ~ Since 18 years IBM is the company with the most patents. IBM’s worldwide patent portfolio exceeds 40,000 active patents ! Amazing what 400.000 smart people can achieve, isn’t it ? From my presentation I use every year for Engineers Weeks here is a chart showing some of the most famous IBM patents:

Handling feedback

Giving feedback is one part of handling feedback, receiving feedback another part. For a successful feedback rules should be followed by both parties.
I remember a feedback method called "Hot Chair" where someone has to sit in the middle of the room while others are giving feedback to him or her – usually personal feedback. This sounds like a tough situation but works great if those rules are followed and in most of the cases people feel well afterwards: both parties, those who got feedback and those who gave feedback.
I am not sure whether I recall all the rules, so list below might not be complete:

• Feedback Sender
  • Participate in the feedback voluntarily
  • Always talk from your point of view, talk about what you experienced or felt. Typically a sentence whould start with "I felt …. after …" or "I like/dislike …", important is the "I" here. Talk about your perception, not the feedback receiver himself.
  • Do not give advices. Do not start a sentence with "You…". ( Leave it up to the feedback receiver to draw conclusions )
  • All other communication rules: as short as possible, clear language, don’t repeat youself, …
• Feedback Receiver
  • Participate in the feedback voluntarily
  • Listen, don’t respond.
  • At the end thank for the feedback and tell the feedback sender that you will think about his feedback but not necessarily change anything since you are the person YOU like to be and not the one HE/SHE likes to be.
  • It is up the the feedback receiver to ask special people for their feedback or to just wait if anyone volunteers to give feedback

Some of the rules might not apply in reality. For instance often you receive feedback without haven asked for it. While feedback is given you should not respond – this can be done in case of written feedback easily. First read it, then understand in, then think about it, ( then sleep about it; a good rule I remember from my military duty time; may be just having a cup of coffee or tea is good enough sometimes ), then respond if you want to explain something and do not forget to thank the feedback sender for his time he/she invested to improve you.
Some rules should apply in real life, like the first two listed for feedback sender and #2 and #3 listed for the feedback receiver. I think it is OK to respond some time later but not while the feedback is given.

Filling out a form at the end of a class is probably not a perfect method to obtain feedback. It is the quick way and allows to do some statistics afterwards but the better way would be to invest one hour for a feedback discussion.

My favorites for week 2, 2011

Something to talk about: my favorite quote of the week – about being critical

How much easier it is to be critical than to be correct. ~ Benjamin Disraeli, speech, January 24, 1860, British politician (1804 – 1881) ~ I know I am critical very often, though I hope I am still correct in what I say. Nevertheless I agree to that quote: it is much easier to be critical than to be correct.

Something to laugh: my favorite comic strip of the week – about the “big picture” guy

A nice fit to this quote is this Dilbert comic strip about the "Big Picture" guy:

Something to watch: my favorite video clip of the week – about "Little Red Riding Hood"

Here is the fairy-tale "Little Red Riding Hood" ( "Rotkäppchen" in German ) told in a very different way:  http://player.vimeo.com/video/3514904 Slagsmålsklubben – Sponsored by destiny from Tomas Nilsson on Vimeo.

Something to enjoy: my favorite photo  on flickr under a Common Creative license – about Klatschmohn

"some corn poppies || etwas Klatschmohn" by Tobias. Winter is not over yet on the northern part of our planet, most of us are still struggling with snow, rain, light-less days. Thus, time to look at some colorful pictures to do something good for our eyes and mood. “some corn poppies || etwas Klatschmohn” was taken in July last year by Tobias, but just uploaded to flickr this week under a Creative-Commons License.

Something to discover: my favorite bookmark of the week – about The Power of Saying "I Don’t Know"

The power of saying “No!” is a key to a proper work life balance. Why saying “I don’t know” actually is more of a strength than a weakness is nicely described by Janine Popick in “The Power of Saying "I Don’t Know"”.

My favorites for week 41, 2010

Something to laugh: my favorite comic strip of the week – about technical knowledge

Documentation is always important, not only in your life as a professional, but in your private life as well. Think about the special knowledge you possess, for instance about your finance matters or technical equipment in your household. Does your family depend on your availability all the time, or do you have enabled them to fix problems on their own through some documentation or training you have provided ? This comic strip from “Herman” is nicely drawn and funny, but there is also a lot of truth and food for thinking in there. How much does your team in the company depend on your availability ? Have you been professional enough to provide good documentation about your job and responsibilities and enabled them to solve problems on their own ? Or do you prefer them to be dependant on you ? Give a man a fish and you feed him for a day; teach a man to fish and you feed him for a lifetime. What is true for a man might be true for a woman as well, right ? Knowledge is the best charity. To learn a lesson is a far better reward than to receive a gift.  It is better to know how to help yourself than to beg from others. Give and take is fair play. (Source: wikipedia)

Something to watch: my favorite video clip of the week – about communication and language

We all know: communication can become quiet difficult. This funny sketch demonstrates how difficult it can become if someone starts to speak a very uncommon "language": "Funny Hugh Laurie & Stephen Fry Comedy Sketch! ‘Your Name, Sir?‘ "

Something to surprise: my favorite "I really didn’t know this" of the week – about space shuttles

The last Space Shuttle mission is scheduled for February/March 2011: Space Shuttle Endeavour is supposed to deliver some parts to the ISS and an antimatter measuring instrument into the orbit. To acknowledge the end of the Space Shuttle Program bild der wissenschaft – my regular monthly science read – published an article with some interesting facts about that program. Did you know that 132 Space Shuttle missions have been accomplished so far, 2 more are scheduled, 2 ended with a complete disaster ( Challenger in January 1986 and Columbia in January 2003 ), making that program less reliable than attempted. 5 shuttles have been in the fleet: Columbia ( 28 missions ), Challenger ( 10 missions ), Discovery ( 39 missions ), Atlantis ( 32 misisons ), Endeavour ( 25 misisons ) More than 2000 tons is the weight of a space shuttle during take off, 24 tons is the weight of the cargo it can lift into the orbit. 355 astronauts have used a space shuttle to get into the orbit, among them 332 US astronauts and 7 Germans. Taking into account those who used it multiple times 787 human beings have been taken into space using this program. Discovery is the shuttle with most missions ( 39 ), spending 363 days in space, orbiting Earth 5.400 times, flying a distance of 213 million kilometers in total. All shuttles together have orbited Earth 21.000 times and flew 850 million kilometers. Longest mission was performed by Columbia in November 1996 lasting 17 days and 15 hours. Discovery reached the largest height in December 1999 with 609 kilometers during the third Hubble repair mission. 32 times a shuttle docked at the ISS, 9 times at the Russian space station Mir. Shuttle astronauts have delivered 63 satellites into the orbit plus 13 research units which returned to Earth. Source: “bild der wissenschaft 10/2010”

Something to learn: my favorite tip of the week – about the touchpad on your thinkpad.

Does it sometimes gets into your way ? You are typing in a lot of text and suddenly your windows starts scrolling automatically like crazy ? Because you have somehow touched the touchpad ? Sometimes it might be a good idea to simply disable it, especially when you don’t use it usually anyway. Head to Start –> Control Panel –> Mouse, then open the “UltraNav” tab ( at least that’s how it works on my Lenovo W500 thinkpad with Windows XP installed ), then uncheck “Enable Touchpad”. Now, what if you need it sometimes ? If you check on “Show UtraNav icon in the system tray” you get that little icon into the system tray which allows you to enable or disable it any time with just two clicks. Left-click on that icon, that click on the menu item “Enable Touchpad” or “Disable Touchpad”.

Something to enjoy: my favorite photo  on flickr under a Common Creative license – about shadow and light

"Illa de Arousa" by Noel Feans. I like this photo because of the nice light and shadow effects and the interesting atmosphere it generates. It has been taken by Noel Feans somewhere in Spain and is called: “Illa de Arousa”.

Something to talk about: my favorite quote of the week – about fish and knowledge

Give a man a fish and he will eat for a day. Teach a man to fish and he will eat for a lifetime. Teach a man to create an artificial shortage of fish and he will eat steak. ~ Jay Leno (1950 – ), US comedian & television host ~ While I was googling for that quote I used above – Give a man a fish and you feed him for a day; teach a man to fish and you feed him for a lifetime. – I was surprised to see how many variations of that quote exist: <—see this one “Give a man a fish, and he’ll eat for a day. Give a fish a man, and he’ll eat for weeks!” by Takayuki Ikkaku, Arisa Hosaka and Toshihiro Kawabata, Animal Crossing: Wild World, 2005 “Give a man a fish; you have fed him for today.  Teach a man to fish; and you can sell him fishing equipment.”—Author unknown “Teach a man to fish and you feed him for a lifetime.  Unless he doesn’t like sushi—then you also have to teach him to cook.”—Auren Hoffman, Herald Philosopher “Give a man a fish; you have fed him for today.  Teach a man to fish, and he will sit in the boat and drink beer all day.”—OldFox

It is hard to control the human brain

Sometimes it is hard to keep your brain under control. Because a lot of things are processed more or less automatically without requiring your attention. Which is good and probably even vital to survive.

I became aware of this fact this morning when listening to one of our radio stations here in Germany during breakfast. They have a little game running during which one candidate is asked tricky questions for 30 seconds and all he or she has to do is to respond and avoid three words: “Ja” (“yes”), “nein” (“no”) and “Bonn” ( the former capital of Germany ).

You would think this is easy to achieve. You have to concentrate for just 30 seconds and you have to apply a very simple rule: avoiding those three words. I tell you: most of the candidates fail. Because when asked a question – and of course the questioner knows how to do this the tricky way – those words simply flow into your response automatically and suddenly you lost. The point is you have to communicate in a very different way. Instead of letting your brain fire pre-defined response phrases you have to slow down and review each phrase before your allow your mouth to send it out. It is unbelievable how hard it is to do this, and even you do this your checking might be incomplete and you have escapes.

The rule looks simple at the beginning, but may be is a bit harder. The German word “ja” is part of other words like “jawohl” and often also used as a filler word, thus there are so many opportunities that you use it even you did not want to use it.

People are forced into a very unnatural communication mode to do this checking of phrases before releasing. It is not the way we communicate. If you get a question and you would like to answer “ja!” but then have to find an alternate response it is very hard to generate one, it takes time and the new response somehow will sound weird and artificial.

"Reigh’s Brain rlwat" by Reigh LeBlanc.

A nice example of how tasks are automated in our brain. Think about how many things you do when driving a car without even realizing. You know how difficult it is when learning how to drive a car: you have to think through every task you perform. The automatic execution of tasks later on is a true indicator that finally you really learned how to drive a car. The stopping of thinking as a true indicator of maturity, experience, skill, professionalism ? Interesting thought.

Does it sometimes happen to you that during a meeting or phone call you say something which a moment later falls into the category of things better not said ? Blame your brain for this ! It has been doing too much in automatic mode instead of consulting your conscious.

While with some discipline you might learn how to control your language it becomes much much harder to control your body language. Not a big point currently in the world of web conferences and phone calls, but in a meeting your brain might generate a lot of messages through your body you actually don’t want to send out. But – why not ? Your brain may be less of a liar than your conscious, those automated responses may make you appear more natural and frank than your artificial responses and finally foster truth, openness and trust. Another interesting thought, don’t you think ?

Communication options and The Tower of Babel

Before we developed our capability to use languages – to talk and listen by using an agreed upon vocabulary – there was probably no way to have some form of complex communication. Before paper and writing had been discovered there was simply one option: talk to someone face-to-face. After that one could decide whether to write a letter or meet someone to talk to probably after a multi day or week travel. And we rarely had the idea to communicate with people on a different continent.

"Tower of Babel" by ThomasThomas.

The phone invented more than 100 years ago opened up a third option and a real revolutionary one. Ten years ago many options had been added meanwhile, according to this 10-year-old article: audio tapes, video tapes, CD-ROMs, radio, fax, internet, e-mail, TV, video conferencing. What is meant by “internet” ? Well, remember, that was the Web 1.0 era, where a few could publish their messages through internet sites. Instant messaging and newsgroups are not mentioned as well but I guess have been available already to some extent, may be still too exotic in these days.

While reading through this list I realize how many options have been added meanwhile in the Web 2.0 era: blogs, wikis, photo and video and audio ( podcasts ) sharing sites, profile and social networking sites, bookmark sharing and survey sites, twitter, Q&A tools and collaborative document sharing sites. I believe: we experience a sort of exponential growth in the number of communication options.

This means that we have to invest some of our time in finding the right communication tool for a given purpose. Face-to-face, instant message, e-mail, comment on a profile page, blog post, wiki page, a document sent via e-mail or shared in any other way, a tweet, a  phone call, a video conference, a meeting in a virtual world ? And for each option we have to find out: company internal or public ? Within the boundaries of an intranet or going out into the wild wild web ?

Businesses are constantly adding new communication options, but they very rarely take any away. It’s also rare for them to provide any guidance to their employees to help them sort through the options.

found in Assessing your communication options by Clive Shepher

Will this actually lead to a smarter society, will this increase the body of knowledge of the human race or a particular community or enterprise, or are we more and more running into confusion how to use all these options right, how to communicate efficiently ? Are we encountering a new Tower of Babel phenomenon ?

Instead of becoming smarter, don’t we spent much time on trying to consolidate all these sources of information and to worry about how to use what communication vehicle efficiently ? Is there any value add in developing tools to feed or integrate multiple communication tools ? Is it good to have multiple social networks which are different ? Isn’t it more good luck than intention to find some useful information ? How much time do we spend each day to learn new communication tools and communicate about communication tools instead of focusing on something more important ? is there anything more important ? Why do we fail to take options away, to consolidate and to reduce complexity ? Is the human race or an enterprise as a collective unit intelligent, are its individuals, and where are we heading with this ? What dominates in our life: competition or collaboration ?

Am I getting too far with my questions ? Definitely yes. I will need to write some more postings to really sort out this brain dump.

Different kinds of humor

Every year on New Year’s Eve we do it: we watch “Dinner For One” in TV – sometimes even several times that evening since it is shown on several channels at different times. It has become kind of a tradition already. Again and again we find it funny. It is a kind of humor based on repetitions: the more often the butler stumbles upon this tiger fur the better we laugh.

You don’t know what it is all about ? Well, it is about Miss Sophie celebrating her 90th anniversary with 6 friends who unfortunately all passed away meanwhile. Her butler is arranging a dinner table laid out with 6 + 1 dishes and he has to play the role of the 6 who can’t make it anymore to this event. And of course he has to drink for all of them. Very well played by Freddie Frinton and always an enjoyment for me, my wife and many other Germans to watch this.

But not for everyone. This time we spent New Year’s Eve with my sister in law in Regensburg and her daughter has been there as well, coming from Abu Dhabi with her new Sudanese husband. Of course he had to watch the show with us – and he did not find it funny at all. My wife later on told me that some of her friends have friends in UK and one evening when they watched the show together those folks could not laugh either about this. Come on, this is supposed to be British humor, isn’t it ? May be I am wrong, may be it is just a kind of humor we Germans think is British humor.

This comedy sketch has been written by an English writer but the TV show is a German production – delivered in English language. You can watch it here on youtube or here on Google; the latter one is the version with a German introduction.

As I mentioned British humor or what I believe British humor is supposed to be: something I can not laugh about is Monthy Python. I hate their shows and also this famous movie Life Of Brian many would rate as the most funny movie ever. I admit: I never watched it entirely.

Anyway, time to draw a conclusion out of this: humor is very subjective. Whether you find something funny depends on your character, your culture, your background, your current mood. Because of this it is always risky to tell a joke during a meeting or conference call – you can’t foresee how everyone else will perceive it. It might happen that something you find real funny other’s don’t find funny at all – of even worse.

The same applies to blog postings to some extent. Good grief, I hope I have not offended too many people with my blog so far when posting things I find funny like for instance comic strips. Nevertheless, in case of a blog posting or a book or any other piece of writing the reader can opt out any time – which might be more difficult in a meeting.

Language and technology

Sometimes it is amazing to see how language is influenced by technology.

Yesterday I was watching the episode “Cover Story” from the TV show Navy CIS. In this episode Abby, the weird girl from the crime lab, has to analyze three letters sent by a stalker to the publisher of a novel obviously used by someone to determine victims to kill.

“Abby” in the TV show “Navy CIS”

As she reports results of her findings she uses an interesting term: “See what I have found out about the n-Mail … “. As everyone looks very puzzled at her she explains: “n-Mail stands for normal mail, just to distinguish this from e-Mail …”

Thus she calls those paper letters “n-Mail”. Isn’t that funny ? Originally in our language we used “mail” for mail and later on “e-mail” for a special type of mail introduced through the internet.

Ah! I am using muscles I didn’t even know I had! No wonder you’re stuck at chapter six

Tony DiNozzo in “Navy CIS, episode “Cover Story”, while using McGee’s mechanical typewriter. ~

My favorite magazine “bild der wissenschaft” always publishes some letters to the editor every month and they either mention the name of the writer and his/her city, in case the letter was sent by regular mail, or the name and the addendum “per mail”. In a letter I was writing to them I mentioned that “per mail” is not really accurate since everyone is writing to them per mail; what they probably mean is “e-mail”. In their response they stated that “mail” nowadays means “e-mail” ( when used in Germany, I guess ). Anyway, some weeks later they changed it and use the term “per e-mail” now. Probably others have complained about this as well.

This episode from this TV show made me think about what actually is “n-Mail” nowadays ? I actually would think that “n-Mail” is equivalent to “e-Mail” since “e-Mail” has become our normal way to communicate in written form and using paper letters starts to become the exception, the antiquated way to communicate. Check yourself: how many paper letters do you write and send out per week, and how many e-mails do you send out per week ?

May be “p-Mail” would be a better term because it accurately describes the medium ( “paper” vs. “electronic” ) used for that type of mail.