It’s been four years of awesomeness at IBM. I’ve:

• helped companies and communities collaborate
• facilitated brainstorming workshops with executives from leading companies
• built web apps in Drupal and Ruby on Rails
• created popular tools for community newsletters and analyses
• drawn comics that made people smile across IBM, and
• learned from and shared with people around the world.

It totally rocked. Thank you!

Mid-February 2012, I’ll be on to my next experiment. I want to help people save time and make better decisions. Let’s see how we can make that a sustainable business!

I’m looking forward to learning more about business, and sharing the adventure with you. =)

Stay in touch!

• Blog: http://livinganawesomelife.com
• Twitter: @sachac
• E-mail: sacha@sachachua.com

Stay tuned!

Read the original or check out the comments on: Getting ready for my next experiment! (Sacha Chua's blog)

Most of this weekend was taken up by schoolwork. J- had a large Math project to work on – cereal box design (volume, surface area, ratios, etc.) and a writing assignment. She also needed to work on her application for the CyberArts high school program.

I don’t know how other families handle it. W- has been tutoring J- through the tough parts, and that takes time.

As for me, I followed up on the events I attended last week. I’ve also been working on Project C. Spotted a few things I missed last runthrough. Sometimes it feels like three steps forward, one step back. But that’s okay.

Also, I made spaghetti and meatballs for the first time!

(Helped J- learn Inkscape, too. Yay!)

Read the original or check out the comments on: January 22, 2012 (Sacha Chua's blog)

Read the original or check out the comments on: Quantified Self Toronto #9 (Sacha Chua's blog)

Just posted my yearly review for 2011. You can browse through the annotated pages on Slideshare. You can also download the PDF from Slideshare or from my site. View it in full screen mode for the most fun. (Mom, if you want to print this, you’ll need 182 sheets of legal-size paper…)

In case the embed doesn’t work or you don’t want to go through the entire thing, you can still see this year as a sketch (click on it for a larger version):

Want to go further back in time? Check out my other yearly reviews!

Read the original or check out the comments on: 2011 in review (Sacha Chua's blog)

You need to doodle your way through lots of faces until you get the hang of drawing them the way you like them. I haven’t quite figured them out yet, but I’m getting there. Minor variations on a theme help me understand things better. This must be why there are lots of classical music pieces that sound alike – composers figuring things out, too.

I like the simple style I picked up from Sachiko Umoto’s Illustration School: Let’s Draw Happy People. Two dots, a nose, a mouth. That’s all we need. Actually, people want to see faces so much, you can pretty much pick anything with two “eyes” and bilateral-ish symmetry.

It’s fun to draw faces. They make me happy even if I don’t fill in the rest of the figures.

Practice will help me learn how to draw better. Faces, then torsos, then legs, then arms, then hands.

Progress!

Read the original or check out the comments on: Practising drawing: variations on a theme (Sacha Chua's blog)

Read the original or check out the comments on: Sketchnotes from Quantified Self Toronto Oct 21 2011 (Sacha Chua's blog)

Watson is the question-asking trivia-spouting Jeopardy-winning artificial intelligence that IBM has been working on. Aside from handily beating human contestants and prompting rounds of “I for one welcome our new robot overlords”, Watson might have interesting applications in medicine, law, and other challenging fields. What else might we use this kind of power for?

I don’t think Watson can recognize speech yet, but maybe someday!

The part in which I think out loud and make things less funny in the process of understanding humour

I’m not entirely happy with the helpdesk setup here. It’s a classic joke, but it twinges the same part of me that replaces "user" with "person" whenever I can. Also, totally awesome people use the systems I build. I run into far more programmer bugs and d’oh moments myself than classic "user errors". “Is it plugged in?” is further along the spectrum than “Have you rebooted?”, as rebooting is (unfortunately) still very much a valid approach to problems. Anyway, it was a joke that needed to be made. Now that we’ve made it, we can move on.

“Toronto” refers to Watson’s mystifying response to a question about US cities – understandable when you learn about how Watson works, but still interesting and strangely reassuring.

The "server on fire" bit refers to this idea of printer on fire, which I think I came across in a compilation of funny Linux source code comments. There’s a story about that, of course.

I wonder what related situations might be interesting. Relationships are fair game. Time travel: Watson in scenes of childhood or old age? Watson in the distant past, or in the distant future? There’s inverting it: imagining a cluster of people madly looking things up behind the scenes like a distributed Mechanical Turk (the old-school kind). There’s swapping other things in: what would a cat be like with response probabilities? Hmm…

Read the original or check out the comments on: IBM Comic: Watson on helpdesk duty; variants (Sacha Chua's blog)

J- was preparing for a quiz on pre-confederation Canada. To help, the teacher had labelled the settlements with A, B, C, and so on. J had made her own mnemonics. For example, D stood for ReD River Settlement. But the letters weren’t assigned in any obvious order, so J- was memorizing an arbitrary association.

Placing the information on the map was much more useful. We scanned in J-’s handout, then J- traced it using Autodesk Sketchbook Pro. With a blank map, J- could then add layers with her labels. After a few tries, she could correctly label all the areas in less than a minute and a half. (… and so could I! That will probably come in handy for any citizenship tests.)

We created a new map for Canada’s current provinces, and we quizzed ourselves on that too. For kicks, we took J’-s jigsaw puzzle of the provinces of the Philippines, mixed up the pieces, and assembled everything without looking at the picture. That was fun, although I was a bit slower putting together Mindanao’s provinces than I was at Luzon and Visayas. (More travel?)

Out of curiosity, I flipped through the other pages in her folder. One of the sheets had a timeline of events. “What if we could learn the order of these events?” I asked J-.

1. She looked at me, probably as intimidated as I was. I remember having such difficulty with trivia like that in my history classes. Time to see if I could pass on some tips from Moonwalking with Einstein and other mind-hacking resources.
2. I told J- about the idea of a memory palace – exaggerating the characteristics of items you need to memorize, then imagining them in specific locations in a place you know well. We walked through the process of imagining reminders:
3. golden blueberry bushes in the front yard for the prospectors of the gold rush
4. our cats meowing to be let out of the door – Ottawa
5. a colony of dust bunnies on the shelf – BC became a colony
6. Americans politely fighting over the litter boxes – the American Civil War
7. Charlotte Lucas and Mr. Collins on the sofa, discussing their impending union – Discussion at Charlottetown
8. … while Mr. Collins’ 72 relatives crowd in front of the bookcase (recalling Lost in Austen) – 72 Resolutions in Quebec
9. Mr. and Mrs. News and Mr. and Mrs. Canada getting together around the kitchen table – Nova Scotia, New Brunswick, Canada West, and Canada East
10. Tripping over a giant rubber eraser in an HBC bag blocking the corridor – Rupert’s Land, HBC 
11. Walking up the stairs and meeting a man with a big toe – Manitoba joins
12. Peeking into the guest room and seeing a busy party – BC joins
13. Going to the bathroom – PEI
14. Going to J’s room and seeing her toys in a circle – Consolidated Indian Act

We imagined it while we were in the living room. She physically traced the steps and talked about the things she imagined. Then she mentally retraced the steps. Even after watching a movie (Pom Poko, by Studio Ghibli), she still remembered the sequence. Let’s see if she ends up using it in school!

It’s fun adding tools to J’s learning kit. She picked up the strategy of inventing mnemonics. She made flashcards to practise the Gnommish alphabet from the Artemis Fowl series. Now she knows about mapping and the memory palace technique. For dates, we might try the Major system, if we can wrap our minds around it. I wish I’d learned about these things when I was in school, but hey, good to pass on the hacks! =)

Thoughts:

1. It’s better to find useful associations than arbitrary ones.
2. Autodesk Sketchbook Pro and other drawing programs can be good educational tools.
3. Learning something might not be important, but learning how to learn something – ah, that can be valuable.
4. The memory palace technique is great for remembering sequences. Exaggerated images stick in your brain.

Read the original or check out the comments on: Learning new tricks about learning: maps and history (Sacha Chua's blog)

So. Drawing. Forget all the pretty pictures that other people can make. Can you draw as well as a 3-year-old kid draws? For reference, here are some typical developmental stages: http://www.learningdesign.com/Portfolio/DrawDev/kiddrawing.html

You can probably draw at least as well as a typical 3-year-old child. It’s not hard. A circle, a few lines, and your imagination can fill in the rest. That’s drawing. Drawing doesn’t have to be amazing. You can start wherever you are. You can even get better if you want.

When I feel stuck, I draw the most stereotypically kid-like drawings I can think of in order to get me past the “I can’t draw”s. I celebrate the fact that I can draw something recognizable. This makes me realize my challenge is more about “I can’t draw as well as I’d like to.” That’s manageable. That’s just about time and attention and practice. It doesn’t matter if I have years of catching up to do. I can draw, and I can get better. Differentiating between my “I can’t”s helps me stay motivated.

Do you tell yourself that you can’t draw? What happens if you tweak your expectations?

Read the original or check out the comments on: Getting rid of the “I can’t draw”s (Sacha Chua's blog)

I’d been thinking about footswitches for a while, but I held off on buying one because they were expensive. Turns out that building your own is easy, even for someone with limited electronics experience. I do have the unfair advantage of having a spouse who’s an electrical engineer, but I figured out this circuit and code by myself!

The hardware for this circuit is really simple. If you’re lucky, you might find a three-way foot switch at your local audio-equipment-carrying surplus shop. If not, you could make your own, but I haven’t tried doing that yet. =)

The fun part is in the code that makes this a six-function USB keyboard. The code below maps left, center, and right short presses to F13, F14, and F15, while left, center, and right long presses send F16, F17, and F18. Here’s the code:

const int redPin = 9;
const int tanPin = 10;
const int bluePin = 11;
const int orangePin = 12;
const int debounceDelay = 150;
const int longPressThreshold = 650;

int currentState;
int lastSwitch;
long lastDebounce;
long lastPressed;
int lastSwitchDebounced;

uint8_t buf[8] = { 0 };	/* Keyboard report buffer */

#define SWITCH_NONE 0
#define SWITCH_LEFT 1
#define SWITCH_CENTER 2
#define SWITCH_RIGHT 3

#define STATE_WAITING 0
#define STATE_SHORT_PRESSED 1
#define STATE_LONG_PRESSED 2

#define KEY_F13	0x68
#define KEY_F14	0x69
#define KEY_F15	0x6A
#define KEY_F16	0x6B
#define KEY_F17	0x6C
#define KEY_F18	0x6D
#define KEY_F1D	0x6E
#define KEY_PAGEUP 0x4b
#define KEY_PAGEDOWN 0x4e

void setup() {
  pinMode(redPin, INPUT); digitalWrite(redPin, HIGH);
  pinMode(tanPin, INPUT); digitalWrite(tanPin, HIGH);
  pinMode(orangePin, INPUT); digitalWrite(orangePin, HIGH);
  pinMode(bluePin, INPUT); digitalWrite(bluePin, HIGH);
  Serial.begin(9600);
  delay(200);
  lastSwitch = 0;
  lastDebounce = millis();
  currentState = 0;
}

int getCurrentSwitch() {
  if (!digitalRead(orangePin)) { return SWITCH_LEFT; }
  if (!digitalRead(tanPin)) { return SWITCH_CENTER; }
  if (!digitalRead(redPin)) { return SWITCH_RIGHT; }
  return SWITCH_NONE;
}

void sendKey(int currentSwitch, boolean isShort, boolean keyDown) {
  buf[0] = 0;
  buf[1] = 0;
  int debug = 0;
  if (keyDown) {
    switch (currentSwitch) {
        case SWITCH_LEFT: buf[2] = isShort ? KEY_F13 : KEY_F16; break;
        case SWITCH_CENTER: buf[2] = isShort ? KEY_F14 : KEY_F17; break;
        case SWITCH_RIGHT: buf[2] = isShort ? KEY_F15 : KEY_F18; break;
    }
    if (debug) {
      Serial.println(currentSwitch);
      Serial.println(((int) buf[2]) - KEY_F13);
      Serial.println("Down");
      Serial.println(isShort ? "Short" : "Long");
    }
  } else {
    buf[2] = 0;
    if (debug) { Serial.println("Up"); Serial.println(isShort ? "Short" : "Long"); }
  }
  if (!debug) { Serial.write(buf, 8); }
}

void loop() {
  int currentSwitch = getCurrentSwitch();
  if (currentSwitch != lastSwitch) {
    lastDebounce = millis();
  }
//  Serial.println(currentSwitch);
  // Debounce it
  if (millis() - lastDebounce > debounceDelay) {
    switch (currentState) {
      case STATE_WAITING:
        // No keys pressed yet
        if (currentSwitch != SWITCH_NONE) {
          lastPressed = millis();
          currentState = STATE_SHORT_PRESSED;
        }
        break;
      case STATE_SHORT_PRESSED:
        // Wait to see if this counts as a long press
        if (currentSwitch == SWITCH_NONE) {
          // Send the keystroke
          sendKey(lastSwitchDebounced, true, true);
          sendKey(lastSwitchDebounced, true, false);
          currentState = STATE_WAITING;
        } else if (currentSwitch != lastSwitch) {
          // Shouldn't happen, but just in case you're using a different footpedal...
          sendKey(lastSwitchDebounced, true, true);
          sendKey(lastSwitchDebounced, true, false);
          lastPressed = millis();
        } else if (millis() - lastPressed > longPressThreshold) {
          currentState = STATE_LONG_PRESSED;
          sendKey(lastSwitch, false, true);
        }
        break;
      case STATE_LONG_PRESSED:
        // Wait for the transition
        if (currentSwitch == SWITCH_NONE) {
          currentState = STATE_WAITING;
          sendKey(lastSwitch, false, false);
        } else if (currentSwitch != lastSwitch) {
          // Likewise, switching between inputs shouldn't happen with this footpedal,
          // but just in case...
          sendKey(lastSwitch, false, false);
          currentState = STATE_SHORT_PRESSED;
          lastPressed = millis();
        }
    }
    lastSwitchDebounced = currentSwitch;
  }
  lastSwitch = currentSwitch;
}

After you upload the code to the Arduino, you’ll also need to reflash the ATMega8U2 chip so that it can act like a USB keyboard. This sounds scary, but the instructions on the Arduino site can help you. When you’ve gotten the hang of reflashing the ATMega8U2 with the standard firmware, reflash it with the Arduino-keyboard-0.3.hex (Uno) or Arduino-keyboard-0.3-mega2560.hex (Mega) firmware from Arduino Hacking. After you reflash, unplug, and re-plug your Arduino, it should now appear as a keyboard. If you made a mistake, don’t panic. Just reflash the standard firmware onto it, and you can upload new programs again.

The last step is to map the F13..F18 function keys to something useful on the computer. I do this in software instead of hardcoding it into sendKey so that I can easily change the keycodes without reflashing the device. I’m on Windows 7 for work and other reasons, so I use AutoHotkey to map the keys. For example, the following AutoHotkey code maps left and right to Page Up and Page Down, and the center to Alt-Tab.

F13::Send, {PgUp}
F14::Send, !{Tab}
F15::Send, {PgDn}

This is a great combination for, say, reading an e-book while eating noodles.

On Linux, you can use Xmodmap or XBindKeys to remap your keys. For the Mac, KeyRemap4MacBook might work – haven’t tried it, though.

Picture!

Making a USB footswitch turned out to be an easy and fun weekend Arduino project. Hope you can build on this idea for more awesomeness! =) I’m looking forward to finding my next project idea. Hmm…

Read the original or check out the comments on: Code and circuit for a six-function Arduino-based USB footswitch (Sacha Chua's blog)

All the characters are male, but that’s not me, that’s the book. I’m still working on making stuff up in my head.

Getting there. I don’t have a “style” yet, but learning how to do different kinds of styles can’t hurt.

I do know I’m not a satirist. I’m not going to take corporate culture apart, like Scott Adams does in Dilbert does. I figure there are enough people in the world

I want to learn how to draw so that I can explain things, like the way Larry Gonick did in the Cartoon Guide to Statistics (there’s a whole series!), and how Scott McCloud explains things in Understanding Comics and his other books. I want to tell stories. I want to point out little things about life that make me go “Aww…”

Let’s see where it takes us!

Read the original or check out the comments on: Practising drawing (Sacha Chua's blog)

It takes you to this:

More than a hundred comments so far, and it’s only noon! Looks like lots of people appreciate a bit of humour on Mondays. =) The w3 editorial team planned this as a 3rd-Monday-of-the-month feature, so the next one will come out on September 19.

I like IBM, so these comics will be more about gently poking fun at our culture than about sharp cynicism or Dilbert-like humour. Someone’s got to be able to look at the bright side of corporate life. =)

This comic’s visual style was inspired by Exploding Dog, which I love for its use of colours and simple shapes. I drew it on a Lenovo X61 tablet using Autodesk Sketchbook Pro.

I’ve requested a whole bunch of books from the library and am making time for regular practice. Looking forward to learning more about comics while squeezing this into the gaps of my day job (consulting and Drupal/Rails web development). Glad to make people’s Mondays a little bit brighter!

Read the original or check out the comments on: “Hello, Monday!” comic series launched on IBM intranet home page; now I’m a comic artist! (Sacha Chua's blog)

I used to hate writing. I thought it was just about term papers and book reports. It took blogging for me to discover that I could write for myself, not just for teachers, and that writing – my technical notes, my decisions, my “here’s how I’m trying to figure out life” confusions – could save me a lot of time. So now I want to help other people get over that hump, get out of that rut, get going. Get writing.

Holly Tse will be interviewing me at 9 PM EDT today (Aug 16) on how blogging can help you with your process of self-discovery. I don’t have sound-bites or snazzy “here, buy this e-book” self-promotions, I just want to help people figure out how to use blogging to learn more about life. It’s not just about personal branding, search engine optimization, or being cool. It’s useful for getting the hang of things, taking notes, and sharing them with others.

Want to pick up ideas or ask questions? You can listen for free on the web or on the phone – sign up at http://lotusblossoming.com/sacha and the access details will be e-mailed to you. If you use the web interface, you can ask your questions using the Q&A interface right there. Please post questions as soon as you think of them. I’ll work on following up with a more detailed as we figure things out together. Can’t make it? I’ll post notes on my blog (of course!). You can subscribe to make sure you get it, or if you leave a comment here, I can send it to you too. =)

You might also be interested in other things I’ve written about blogging, including this seven-part series packed with thoughts and tips on the value of blogging. Hope that helps!

Read the original or check out the comments on: Discovering Yourself through Blogging (free teleconference Aug 16, 6 PM PDT, 9 PM EDT, 9 AM Philippine time) (Sacha Chua's blog)

One of the things I tell people who want to write is that it’s okay to start off being unoriginal. Imitation is a great way to learn. So I’m going to take that advice myself. I haven’t drawn enough to discover my original voice. I won’t get there until I try lots of styles.

This is me drawing like the way Exploding Dog makes me feel.

My goal is to grow down until I can draw like a five-year-old again, but with a twenty-seven-almost-eight-year-old’s ideas.

Read the original or check out the comments on: Learning by imitation: getting inspired by Exploding Dog (Sacha Chua's blog)

I think I’m going to focus on slowing down and building things better. This idea of a minimally viable product fascinates me. What’s the essential part of a system? How can we make that solid before moving to everything else? Make sure the pot can hold water before you glaze it.

There’s a teaching story I like about the importance of practice. Making lots of pots can be an easier and more effective way to learn than trying to make a single perfect pot, as long as you’re paying attention and learning from the pots you make. Well, that’s how the story goes. In real life, it’s more like “But I want to make sure this pot holds water, and why aren’t the sides straight, and I thought I plugged that leak, ooh, hey, look, that part’s all pretty now, well, here goes…”

Read the original or check out the comments on: Software and making pots (Sacha Chua's blog)

One day, W- had an idea. We got revenge on the kitties by meowing at them while they were napping. The morning meows stopped for a while. Now they’re back again.

I guess sometimes aloof kitties just want company.

Read the original or check out the comments on: Mornings at our house (Sacha Chua's blog)

The long-weekend fairy has snuck up on me again. (Don’t you just love it when that happens?) I’m tempted to scramble because there’s so much to do at work, but that’s when it becomes even more important to slow down.

I like web development and the ability to build something that makes people’s lives better. I need to figure out a way to reduce the stress of having a high “bus factor” – the risk to a project if someone gets hit by a bus (or wins the lottery, in a more positive version). You might think that’s a risk with rare consequences – after all, I’ve gotten hit by a bus precisely zero times. (Ditto for the lottery, but that’s also because I don’t buy tickets.) A high bus factor means that if two or more projects go critical around the same time, things get tough.

I liked working in a larger development team, but I haven’t been able to do that recently. I’m trying to prepare for the future by investing in training other people, but people shuffle in and out of teams, so it’s tough. But I’m picking up good skills in estimating, working with clients, digging into the possibilities of Drupal and Rails, and patiently sanding down the rough edges of the websites I’m building, so I’m making good use of the time.

As it turns out, piano is like yoga for the mind. Playing the scales is relaxing. You can tell when your mind drifts, because your fingers get tangled up or you hit the wrong note.

Building stuff is relaxing, too. I just have to dig deep enough into it to remember that feeling.

Read the original or check out the comments on: Long weekend ahead (Sacha Chua's blog)

Stuff I’m going to do before the next meeting (~6 weeks?)

• Get back into tracking time so that I can check on hobbies and share what I’m learning with other people
• Track community-supported agriculture box in more detail, cross-reference with groceries

To find out about upcoming meetings, join the Quantified Self Toronto meetup group!

Read the original or check out the comments on: Sketchnotes from Quantified Self Toronto meetup: Conferences, pollution sensing, and growing old at home (Sacha Chua's blog)

You see, I often ride my bicycle to work. This means maneuvering my long-framed bicycle through the mudroom, out the door, and down the porch stairs. The door has two parts: the actual door, which opens inward, and the screen door, which opens outward. If I roll my bicycle near the door, then open it, the door often gets stuck in front of my bicycle. If I open both the door and the screen door, one of our cats usually slips out and starts exploring the porch. (I’m looking at you, Luke.)

Today I had an epiphany. If I open the house door but not the screen door, then I can get out more easily and I don’t have to worry about the cats slipping past. This is what it looks like:

Yes, I know, obvious, but I managed to get through one whole year with this bicycle without having that aha! moment, because I always thought of door-opening as an integral operation: open the house door, then open the screen door. Close the house door, close the screen door. Even though we sometimes leave the house door open and the screen door closed to let in summer breezes, it didn’t click until I stopped and thought about why I was getting stuck in the bike room.

Little things like that are the cruft of un-consciously moving through life, and it’s so much fun to fix them. So many opportunities for improvement everyday!

Read the original or check out the comments on: Kaizen in the little things: The way the door opens (Sacha Chua's blog)

Highlights from Social Leverage talk by Howard Lindzon. Keep an eye on the sentiment for your industry, figure out where there’s momentum, build domain expertise, and get in the game.

500px, TitanFile, High Schore House, Vizualize.me, We are TO Tech, Alphaslides. (Click for bigger version.) I liked High Score House’s demo the best. They’d obviously tested a lot and had fun along the way. =)

Sketched with Autodesk Sketchbook Pro on my Lenovo X61T. Sketchbook is my new favourite note-taking program. Even though it doesn’t have Microsoft Onenote’s handwriting recognition and search capabilities, it encourages me to draw more compactly and to use more colours, and it’s more reliable. See other sketchnotes if you want to explore!

(Update: @truejebus says TitanFile is hosted in Canada.)

What did you think about Democamp Toronto? Have you blogged about it? Please share your thoughts and links in comments!

Also check out Tom Purves’ writeup.

Read the original or check out the comments on: Sketchnotes from Democamp Toronto 29, June 2011 (Sacha Chua's blog)