Author: Carl Page 96 of 153

Spy Dead Drop

On August 2, 2014

Backstory: The International Spy Museum in DC is giving away tickets to celebrate its 12th anniversary. I love a good game, especially when prizes are involved so I was excited to play along. I work a few blocks from the Spy Museum so I am in the right part of town to chase down their clues as soon as they were announced.

They are doing this spy style and leaving dead drops around the city. They are not being very spy-like by announcing the locations on Twitter. I have been on the hunt since Monday when I learned about it. Tuesday, I tracked the spy to the carousel on the National Mall but was too late. Wednesday’s drop was too far away from work, in the Congressional Cemetery so I missed it. Thursday was at Shake Shack next to the museum. Despite being there minutes later, it too was gone. Friday’s was at the National Portrait Museum near the portrait of George Washington. I found out about it as I was walking along the National Mall after work on my way to the Metro Center Metro.

When the Tweet came out, I was notified by text message and I raced back to the Portrait Gallery. I was determined to find it first, yet sure someone else would best me to it. If not another Agent, then a visitor at the museum. Upon arriving, I wasted no time and asked the woman at the front desk where the portrait of George Washington was.

Second floor second room on the right.

So I raced up the stairs. Turning the corner, I saw the portrait and braced myself for disappointment.
But today would not be a repeat of yesterday. It is a new day and 25 minutes after the dead drop was left, I retrieved it.

Thank you @IntlSpyMuseum!!! I thought for sure they'd be gone. And now they are. 😀 pic.twitter.com/o2K0ElydUC— Carl T. Holscher (@peroty) July 25, 2014

Delighted, I stuffed the envelope into my bag, making sure to carefully close it to secure the prize. I then casually made my way to the Metro and made my way home. On the way, I texted my wife I DID IT!!!!!!! I was so excited to have made it to the dead drop in time. As I entered the room and claimed the tickets, an older couple was looking at me like I was nuts.

The man said, “Are you part of a game or something?” I said, “Yes. The Spy Museum is doing a promotion where they drop tickets randomly around the city and announce the location on Twitter.” He said, “We were wondering, we saw someone put it there but wasn’t sure what it was.”

I silently thanked him for not picking up the envelope before I arrived. In the back of my head, I also wondered if he was with the Spy Museum and was placed there to watch over the tickets. But maybe I’m paranoid.

Or maybe I’m not.

Dispatch from the Trenches #3

By Carl

On August 1, 2014

In Links and Quotes

I advise clients who are frustrated that they can’t get a domain that they had in mind to pick another, something short, easy to spell.
Something evocative. Anything, really, as long as it ends in dot com. We can build a brand and message for a new, sensible domain. But if you pick something other than .com your consumers will still end up at whatever site does end in .com.

— Modern Marketing 101: There Are No Domains But .Com — First Today, Then Tomorrow

The number of new top-level domains are nauseating. The top-level domain is the last part of a domain name. For this site, it’s .com. For schools, it would be .edu and government is .gov. There are now many, many more.

I get confused by the new TLDs, like .ninja, or .social imagine how other people who are not web natives feel.

If you’re appealing to everyone then stick to .com. Since like Randy says, that’s where they’re going to end up anyway.

Read a book instead

Reading books makes me happy. Being on my phone makes me miserable. So, I made a wallpaper for my iPhone’s lock screen to remind me that I have a choice. You can download a copy for yourself right here.

— Read a book instead

It’s easy to get stuck into the loop of lock phone. Open Twitter. Close Twitter. Lock phone. Repeat.

I like books. I enjoy reading but my reading has tapered off. Even listening to Audio-books has slowed down. This is a good reminder to break the loop of phone staring.

With all those photos being taken, chances are you and I have at one point accidentally wandered into someone else’s frame. It’s likely, however, that you’ll never really know you’ve photo-bombed someones shot. That’s why I was surprised by a Twitter message that I received
out of the blue from a photographer I’ve never met.

— I Was Hidden on This Guy’s Hard Drive for Over 6 Years

I often think about this working in Washington DC a block from the Capitol. On my lunch breaks, I often walk around the Capitol Building or the Capitol Reflecting Pool.

Even in poor weather, there are always people there. Tourists. Government workers. DC Residents showing their out-of-town friends and family the city. And they are all taking pictures.

They snap pictures of the building. Of themselves in front of it, or “holding” the Washington Monument. They snap photos of friends, family and themselves. The ducks are also a big hit with the new batch of baby ducklings furiously swimming along behind mama duck.

On my walks, I often wonder just how many people’s photo albums and Facebook posts I end up in. How many times have I been captured as I walk around on my lunch break?

The More of Social Media

By Carl

On July 30, 2014

In Observations

Social Media is all about more.

Tumblr adds posts to my Dashboard in trying to get me to follow more blogs.

Twitter adds paid advertisements in trying to sell me things.

Facebook is one giant ad.

All of these services constantly recommend people they feel I’d enjoy following.

What if there was a site that gave you less? What about instead of recommending new people to follow or ads to buy from offered you a quieter experience?

Have you been following a person for years and never liking or sharing anything they post. What if the site asked you why you still followed them?

What about an RSS feed that you skip or skimmed through everyday? What if your RSS reader tracked your reading time versus post length. Then asked if you still wanted to read it.

I don’t want my media to ask me about new things. The purpose is not to replace what I read now with other things. I don’t want a paid-for promotion system. I don’t want the network to guess who I’d also like to follow.

I use Tiny Tiny RSS for my RSS reading. I host it on my server. I like it for a number of reasons, but one of them is it shows me inactive and troublesome feeds.

I can see who has not written in weeks or even years and remove those feeds. I can see what feeds are showing errors. Then I can visit the site and see if the feed has changed. Or if the site is gone, remove it.

It’s a simple feature but it goes a little way towards removing the cruft of social media and helping me trim down my lists.

Remove not replace is my mantra.

Dispatch from the Trenches #2

By Carl

On July 26, 2014

In Links and Quotes

Since a worker is basically knackered and good for nothing but a quick dinner and a DVD box set after eight hours of work, she might as well go the extra mile and work into the night if it results in fewer commutes and a routine four-day weekend.
— Billionaire Calls for Three-Day Workweek | New Escapologist

Having an extra day or two off would make a huge different to quality of life.

When I was in college, I never had class on Friday. For four years I didn’t have to be anywhere on Friday. This was my recoup day. I would sleep and work on projects. Saturday would be fun day where I’d goof off. Sunday was a work day.

I worked for the school’s newspaper which meant 12-16 hour days trying to wrangle the paper’s reporting staff into providing their stories so I could lay them out and get the paper to the printer so it could be returned and delivered on Monday.

The last company I worked for offered an “RDO” schedule. This stands for Regular Day Off. It was an optional schedule where I would work an extra hour everyday and in return I would get a day off every two weeks.

The day off was decided beforehand by the company to assure proper coverage for our customers. But it was an amazing perk. Having that day off during the week to schedule vehicle maintenance and health appointments was the best perk of working there.

Even if I used the day to see a movie and sleep in, I returned to work feeling more rested and less stressed.

People often compare Minecraft to LEGO; both support open-ended creation (once you’ve mastered the crafting table, you can build nearly anything) and, of course, they share an essential blockiness. But I think this comparison is misleading, because a LEGO set always includes instructions, and Minecraft comes with none.

Minecraft is a game about creation, yes. But it is just as much a game about secret knowledge.

— The secret of Minecraft — The Message

As a kid, I was a Lego addict. I would build things for hours in my room. I have not dipped my toe into the world of Minecraft partly for fear of losing myself forever in a colorful world of blocks.

This was a really interesting read because Minecraft is all about secret knowledge. You’re presented with a world. You have to survive. No manual. No instructions. No help.

Even though Fog Creek, Trello, and Stack Exchange are now three separate companies, they are all running basically the same operating system, based on the original microprocessor architecture known as “making a company where the best developers want to work,” or, in simpler terms, treating people well.

This operating system applies both to the physical layer (beautiful daylit private offices, allowing remote work, catered lunches, height-adjustable desks and Aeron chairs, and top-tier coffee), the application layer (health insurance where everything is paid for, liberal vacations, family-friendly policies, reasonable work hours), the presentation layer (clean and pragmatic programming practices, pushing decisions down to the team, hiring smart people and letting them get things done, and a commitment to inclusion and professional development), and mostly, the human layer, where no matter what we do, it’s guided first and foremost by obsession over being fair, humane, kind, and treating each other like family.
— Trello, Inc. – Joel on Software

This is the operating system I want. This is the life I want to have. I urge you to click-through and read that second paragraph on Joel’s site because it’s filled with links. I wish there was more talk about operating systems like the one Joel build and not ones impersonating National Parks.

He has the right idea. Treating people well is the currency of the 21st Century.

Ducks

By Carl

On July 25, 2014

In Observations

Since I’ve started eating better, the second phase to Operation Be Less Fat is exercise. All this week I have taken walks around the National Mall and Capitol Building. Working in DC does have its advantages for lunch-time strolls around the city. The constant influx of tourists makes for superb people-watching.

I’ve been taking pictures as I walked because it’s relaxing. It’s a Friday in the summer. Enjoy some ducks.