n0d3.org

1. Make it as short as possible. Remember that people have jobs to do and it’s better that they put the info in the intranet incorrectly than not at all.
2. Use visual examples of positive and negative use. Make sure that these visual examples clearly show why the “on-guideline” version makes their life easier. If it doesn’t make their life easier, perhaps the guideline isn’t required.
3. Try to incorporate the guidelines into the application/site itself. If you want specific header-tags used for headlines, have a separate text-entry box that formats the headline to your tag spec. If you want people to only use italics or bold for specific types of knowledge, include a short instruction right next to the text block. Anywhere that you can include instruction and advice right in the interface is worth far far more than the actual document in terms of getting the organization to adopt your standards.
4. Include links to specific guideline sections right in the interface (an extended version of item 3). Have “read more” links in your in-interface advice that go to short pop-ups (ala a help system).
5. Each entry of your guideline might consist of one brief sentence describing the rule, one brief sentence describing why the rule exists, and positive/negative examples. Avoid paragraph length text.
6. Now take that same document from item 5 above and reverse it so that you start with a problem-based statement and then a solution (your rule).
7. If you’re comfortable with the risk, consider a wiki-type intranet system. There’s always some busy-body who will enjoy going through and making the content conform to the guidelines.
8. Before/During/After roll-out, survey the users to see if they understand the guidelines and whether the guidelines are valuable or not.
9. Determine how you/your boss/your stakeholders/etc will measure the success of your guidelines before roll out. Keep this in mind as you design and deploy.
10. Continue measuring and improving your intranet with the guidelines involved.

This post assumes you are on a Mac. Otherwise you may be wondering what the hell I mean when I talk about “the Dock” because I’m not talking about where my cousin parks his Mumba.

Purpose of post:

Get the most out of your Macintosh by eliminating distractions.

Assumptions (and yes, Frau Berg told me already: ASS-U-ME aka assumptions make an ass out of u and me):

You have too much crap in your doc. It shines and wiggles and you’ve never made a conscious choice about what is there. If this is not you, read no further.
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So before I get too deep into this, I love my iPod Touch. I think Apple is swell. I used my Touch for about two or three months before I hacked it. This post explains why.
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I’ve been a big fan of learning languages for awhile now. Did some German and Russian in HS. Some Russian and Bulgarian in college. Messed around with French once when I was a kid. Learned some Jamaican Patois one spring break (much to the amusement of the locals in the villages I was visiting). Plowed through some Pimsleur CDs right before my trip to Japan (I’ll write more about that sometime, the general feeling was that the CDs were worth it).

Here’s a great article on language acquisition. While I’m a bit of a convert to the Pimsleur “no grammar” method, I do like Timothy’s quick teardown technique for languages. Can’t hurt. And if you don’t have the audio resources on hand or find yourself in a situation where language acquisition is unexpectedly required, I think his approach would come in handy.

I’d love to see more on this, particularly if it can be broken down into the fastest possible approach. Acquire expressive independence in a half-hour, say. Obviously you’d still not be a “fluent” speaker. But in what traveling I’ve done it seems to me that people appreciate a good faith effort enough to help you improve and treat you very well.

Alright. First up. Confession: I have a BMG membership. It’s true. I bought all those INXS and Paula Abdul disks for 1 penny. I even taped the penny on the paper and mailed it in. Whatever. We’re here to talk about BMG survivors: the people who realized how ridiculous the game is, paid out their memberships, then just responded to the emails. If you know this shit, were born before 1975 but are still interested in reading this post… scroll on down to the second unordered list (that’s bullet lists for you all non-webheads).

First, a set of rules for other suckas:
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Tired of debugging every bit of CSS sweet code you write? Are a control freak that came from print or letterpress or worse? You don’t mind declaring everything that needs to be declared? Bring on the hammer. Maxwell’s Silver Hammer.

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I just got both the Behringer BCF2000 and Logic Express 7.2. This is, after a fair bit of consideration and contemplation, what I consider to be the first step up from GarageBand and: a Powerwave (for people who don’t have bands with drums) or a Firepod (for people who do have bands with drums).

Behringer makes decent gear at a great price. They save their money on documentation. You might as well put their manuals in the WC for better use. Which brings us to the How-To.
How to set up the BCF2000 to work well with Logic Express 7.2
Goal:

Make the BCF2000 do it’s best to emulate the Logic Control MIDI controller to the best of the BCF2000’s ability and as quickly as possible.

Before you proceed: This article is not for you if you have rotary knob BCR2000, but here’s a link

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