Work Smart & Play More

A little fsck’ing, if done properly can put a smile on your face

I turned on my computer last night to find that it wouldn’t boot, opposite of smile. It would try, but then either just shutdown or I would get the Apple GSD (Gray Screen of Death).

My first concern was my data and specifically my pictures, I have a ton of images. After a brief panic attack, I remind myself of my backups. I have nightly scripts setup that back up my important files to a local external hard drive as well as a remote server. 

I have a couple of recovery CDs, but couldn’t get the computer to boot from them rendering them useless. Just an FYI, the computer that was having issues is an iMac using a wireless keyboard & trackpad. As useful as the wireless keyboard is, it didn’t serve me well last night. There are keyboard commands you can press as the computer boots up to put it in different modes, but doesn’t work so well for Bluetooth keyboards. This is because the commands need to be entered early in the boot process and the keyboard isn’t recognized just yet. Luckily I have an older computer in the house that uses a wired keyboard. So, I kicked my daughter off of Facebook and stole her keyboard. 

The first thing I try is to boot in Safe Mode, you can do this by pressing the Shift key during boot. No luck, same issues. 

Next is to boot in Single User mode, Command + S during boot. This brings you to a command prompt. Having spent a good amount of time on Linux machines I’m fairly comfortable getting around in a shell. Once at the command line I immediately check that I could access my user files, all good there. I assumed that there was something wrong with the boot files. I then run the ‘fsck -f’ command, this does a file system check and the -f forces the fixes. Bad news: I get a error message stating
I/O error. Invalid node structures
** The volume Macintosh HD could not be verified **

A little more panic sets in, but I realized the fsck is a wrapper for multiple file system checks. After a little Googling, I found the command fsckhfs. This is the command specific to my hard drive format, HFS. I then run ‘fsckhfs -rf /dev/disk0s2’. The disk0s2 is the specific partition that was having a problem. The original ‘fsck -f’ command gave me that information. This did the trick, the corruptions were fixed and the machine booted normally. 

I ran the Disk Utility application upon reboot and it looked like there were still some issued that fsck_hfs didn’t resolve. I had to reboot the computer with Command + R pressed. This brought me to a Recovery screen in which I could run the Disk Utility again. I selected the Repair Disk option and all is good in the world again, big smiles.

Some Thoughts from SXSW

What do artists, brands, technologists, filmmakers, and musicians all have in common? Two weeks of the best mashup our industries could want, I’m talking about none other than SXSW, hosted in Austin, TX.

For a first timer, SXSW is completely overwhelming.  There are multiple sessions going on all at the same time at multiple locations throughout Austin’s downtown area.  This event takes over the city, both day and night.  There are just as many things to do after hours as there are during the day.  The one saving grace was the SXSW app.  It allowed me to manoeuvre through the event with so much greater ease.  I attended this event with my colleague from our London office, Kashif Hasan.  This was the first time for the both of us.  I now have a much better idea of how to approach this event next year as I definitely plan on coming back. There is just so much to soak up, I came away from this event inspired not only for my company, but also for my clients.

If you plan to go to SXSW, here are a few tips:

• Book everything - flight, accomodation - early
• If you want to be right in the middle of everything, then stay at the Hilton
• Get your badge as early as possible; the lines after the first day were ridiculously long.  Some folks said they waited in line for a couple of hours to get their badge.  I got mine on the first day and waited maybe 20 minutes max
• Plan your sessions one day at a time, don’t try to schedule everything up front, it’s just too overwhelming
• For the big keynotes, get there at least 30 mins early and expect to wait in line.  Most of the keynotes are broadcast to other rooms, so if you are really far back in the line, go to some of these rooms
• Make sure you make time to enjoy yourself

The energy was amazing, just being around so many creative people makes you think differently about how you approach ideas. The overall event seemed to start off a little slow, it rained for the first couple of days so everyone tended to stay indoors. Once the weather picked up the mood and vibe completely changed, the entire area was energized.

There is too much to go over in a single post, so I wanted to highlight just a few themes that were discussed during the sessions.

Are UX consultants the new brand guardians?

More and more our online and digital experience with a company helps define the brand for good or bad.  Because this is so important should the torch of brand guardianship be handed over to UX consultants?  There are pros and cons to both sides of this argument, but in the end we need to be cognizant of the entire user experience across multiple mediums and not just the digital space. If we define our UX consultants more broadly and focus on the entire experience across multiple channels, then yes there is a possibility for the torch to be handed over.

Companies need to be listening to what their customers are saying about them and not just what they are saying to them.

Everyone now has the ability to publish favorable and not so favorable information about companies to the general public. Given this reality, more and more of our truths are being defined by the public.  Companies need to learn how to harness that information.  This applies not only when an individual publishes some content directly to a company, but also when they are talking about a specific industry. An example would be if someone published a tweet that a particular hotel was overbooked and that person did not have anywhere to stay, a savvy competitor should be monitoring tweets for hotel chains in their area.  This would allow them to offer a room to that individual if they had the availability. In this scenario, the savvy competitor wasn’t just listening to tweets to them, but also about their competitors.

This is just the first of many installments.  Please stay tuned and feel free to contact me if you wish to discuss any of these topics further.

Putting ideas to the test

By nature I’m a tinkerer; I like to play around with new and different things.  So when I have an idea the first thing that comes to mind is that I have to try it out.  I recently came across an issue in which I tried to register for a Twitter handle, but it was already taking by someone.  I’m sure that I’m not the only one that has experienced this problem.  The issue in this situation is the this particular handle has become stale, meaning that the person has never sent a tweet and the account was created in 2010.  This was the seed that generated the inspiration for my idea.

Twitter is just one location in which this could occur, there are plenty of other examples: domains, Tumblr, Facebook, etc.  I started to search for online exchanges, in which individuals could procure or release handles from someone else.  There are plenty of sites for domain exchanges, but I couldn’t find anything for other types of digital handles.  So what is a tinkerer like myself going to do?  … go out and build it myself.

Fade to stage left, in comes handleswap.com.  I decided to start coding again and build a site in which people can identify what handles they either want to acquire (swapin) or release (swapout).  The initial focus is on Twitter handles, because they have a decent API and I wanted to solve my immediate problem, which was to get the handle I’m looking for.

Currently it is against Twitter’s policies to buy or sell handles, so handleswap.com doesn’t deal with the actual exchanging of handles just yet.  (Don’t tell anyone, but this is being worked on.)  What you can do however, is to let people know the handles you want to swapin or swapout.  The best part is that all you have to so is send a tweet.

To SwapOut a handle, just send a tweet and include “@handleswap #swapout”.  This will let the system know that the owner of the tweet wants to release that particular handle.

To SwapIn a handle(s), send a tweet and include @handleswap #swapin as well as include the twitter handles you would like to acquire, eg: “@handleswap #swapin @handleyouwant, @secondhandle”.

If you feel that this idea is worth pursuing, please let me know by sending a tweet to swapin or swapout a Twitter handle.

Not just nerds in a corner

I was inspired to start blogging again after attending a talk given by the CEO of Etsy, Chad Dickerson.  The talk focused around the importance of the engineering culture at Etsy and how it’s helping the company move faster than they thought they could.  For those that don’t know Chad, @chaddickerson on Twitter, was the CTO until July of this year and has been the driving force behind Etsy’s engineering team.  Chad discussed how at Etsy, they have a “just ship” mentality that has manifested itself as a means to ship code to production by anyone at anytime, even by members of the board.

Although I am a strong proponent of continuous deployments, I’m not going to argue the merits in this post (we will save that for another time).  I would however like to focus on an underlying theme that was touched upon during the talk.  The reason why Chad was able to build such a culture within Etsy is their view on technology.  The engineering team is a true partner in the business and not just to the nerds that are put in a corner and only consulted with when there is a system problem.  Looking at the technology teams as core to the business allows for more collaboration between the groups creating better alignment on the overall company objectives.  It seems like such an obvious thing, but in my experience the technology teams are typically treated like the little brother that you don’t want but have to keep around.  Lets face it, almost all businesses today rely on technology for day-to-day operations, and Etsy is no exception. The technology is the backbone of that organization.  I don’t want to trivialize the amount of effort that I’m sure the team put in to get to this point, this was not an overnight process.  The point I’m trying to make is that the company supported this approach and could have only been accomplished with that support.  Chad, please keep up what you are doing, you are not only a great example for technology companies to follow, but I think for CEOs of all types.

You can find out more about Etsy’s engineering culture at their Code As Craft blog.

Most thoughtful gift

I consider myself a very fortunate man. I have everything I need. I’m not bragging, this is just how I feel.  Because of this, when asked on special occasions (b-days, father’s day, etc.) what I want or what people should get me, my typical response is “I don’t need anything.” I realize that this can be frustrating for family & friends that are trying to do something nice for me.  No one feels this frustration more than my wife. So what do you purchase for someone that doesn’t need anything?  You get them something that can not be bought, and that is exactly what my wife did. For father’s day this year, she gave me something we could all use more of, time.

After a fantastic breakfast that she and the kids made for me, she got everyone ready and took the kids to work with her. My gift for father’s day was time to myself. This is something I haven’t had in a very long time. I could do what ever I wanted for the day. In case you are curious, I went to the movies and took a long walk through the Great Swamp.

This gift of time allowed me to clear my mind and reflect on what I consider important & valuable in my life. We spend too much of our lives IN our lives, not able to take a step back and appreciate what it is that we have.

Time slips by too quickly, as I’m reminded everyday when I look at my oldest daughter.  Against my approval, she has transformed from a cute little girl to a beautiful young woman. The lesson here is to make the effort to enjoy your life and the people in it, you only get one shot at it.

Why is the why more important than the what?

I haven’t pooped in a while, so I figured it was time.  Take it easy, I’m not being literal, I’m referring to an older post I wrote.

Have you ever wondered why some people’s thoughts/ideas solicit more of a reaction than others?  Why do some companies have a stronger following than their competitors in the same business.  According to the speaker in this video below it has to do more with how things are being communicated as opposed to what is being communicated. Not only that, but when things are communicated in this specific manner our reaction is more biological than it is psychological . I think the speaker does a better job of describing this than I could, so take a look a the video.

So the question to each one of us is, what is our purpose?