sacha chua :: living an awesome life

Sites such as aircanada.com, pcfinancial.ca, and (horror of horrors!) torontopubliclibrary.ca had gotten _unbearably_ slow on Linux.

Here's how I fixed it (as root):

echo 0 > /proc/sys/net/ipv4/tcp_window_scaling

I love you, Ubuntu forums.

Here are some free upcoming webcasts I'm planning to attend:

Anyone else dialing in? =) Maybe we can share notes.

This week:

• It was my last week on the Transition2 project, and there weas a big change that I needed to make to the source code internals in order to prepare things for future features. I didn't know how much I'd complete, but I told the project manager I'd give it my best try. I made surprisingly good progress, and I think that was partly due to a new habit of waking up really early in the morning to do that coding. The unit tests also made it easier for me to verify that things still worked. I managed to get all of my tests working today - hooray! It still needs a lot of tweaking before then, and I (or the next developer) still need to figure out localization, but it's in pretty good shape.
• I gave a speech on blogging at Concordia University in Montreal. The weather was poor, so only fifteen or so people came, but I think I helped a number of people gain confidence. People liked the stick figures. =) I learned a lot while preparing and delivering that presentation. I blogged about how I mindmapped and storyboarded the presentation, and with that as my preparation, I found it easy to change the presentation a bit in order to accommodate the mix of people I met there. I had originally planned to talk to a younger crowd because the talk was part of the Backpack to Briefcase series, but a number of people were interested in professional uses of it, so I mixed a little of that in. I also used a webcam to record my presentation. That was a good idea.
• I stayed a couple of extra days with Michael McGuffin and Alice Servera, which was a fantastic idea. It's so much better staying with friends than staying at a hotel, and it was also a good idea to stay over a bit instead of going back right away. I convinced Michael to cook something for us, and the pineapple fried rice he made was wonderful. I told them stories about my life in Toronto, and we chatted with my mom over the computer. =) I also enjoyed playing with their kids and meeting Alice's extended family, who were all warm and friendly.

Next week:

• I'm looking forward to starting on a new Drupal-based project. I'm joining an existing team, so I'll get to learn from the ways they're currently doing things. =)
• I need to put together some paperwork: invoices, permanent residency application, passport renewal, etc.
• I'd like to start sewing that 3/4 sleeve pajama top out of red fleece. =)

The way I prepare presentations has changed quite a lot since I started speaking in public in 2002. (Wow, it's been six years!) I was preparing a presentation for Concordia University students on Web 2.0 at work, and I figured that it's gotten to the point where I can actually explain to other people how I do it. In the process, I'm sure we'll figure out ways to do things even better. =) Here's what I did:

I started by writing some details about the talk along the top of the page: where it is and who's attending. Then I drew two stick figures: one for people going into the talk, and one for people going out of the talk.

I focused on the people going out of the talk. What did I want them to be able to do? What did I want them to understand? What did I want them to feel?

After I sketched the outcome, I went to the beginning. What would people be thinking, going in? What would be their experiences and assumptions?

Then I drew an arrow from the person going in to the person going out. Somehow, my presentation would need to help people get from point A to point B.

I added lots of arrows feeding into that main arrow. Which stories could help people move towards the outcome? I listed as many stories as I could.

Then I started mindmapping the presentation so that I could group similar elements and flesh things out in more detail. I wrote my key message on the right side. Then I broke it down into parts, which I refined further. I cross-referenced it against the first page to see if I had any other stories that fit in nicely, and to make sure that all the parts I wanted to include were related to the arrow between point A and point B.

And then it was storyboard time! =D I didn't have any storyboard templates lying around (maybe I should print some!), so I used graphing paper instead. I could've used my Cintiq for this and the previous steps, but graphing paper had been more convenient when I started, and it didn't cost me that much more time. =)

It was strange making a storyboard for the presentation. I'd hear snippets of the presentation in my head - sudden snatches of potential transitions and ways to illustrate topics. I started from the first slide and followed the images as they flowed. There are better ways to illustrate these things, I'm sure, but this was a good start! =)

After I created the storyboard, I opened up Inkscape and brought out my Cintiq tablet. I made a grid of 800 pixel by 600 pixel rectangles, 5 rectangles across and 9 rectangles down. I set the rectangle fills to black and my pencil color to white, and then I started drawing. I occasionally cleaned things up with the node tool and the delete button, both mapped to shortcut keys on my tablet.

A couple of hours later, it was done.

Then I needed to figure out how to get it into a presentation. I didn't want to export each frame, because it was hard to keep things in sequence and inconvenient to rearrange slides in the presentation software. Instead, I exported the entire thing as a large image. I used ImageMagick (convert -crop 800×600 slides.png slide_%d.png) to slice the image into tiles, and the OpenOffice.org Photo Album extension to import all of the slides. Bonus: they imported in sequence!

I saved the slides as ODP and PPT, and exported the slides as PDF. Et voila:

The slides don't make sense without me, but that's okay. =) I may make a standalone version if it works out.

Our cat has a firm idea of what constitutes a perfectly acceptable wake-up time for breakfast: 6:00. I've taken to waking up early and making her breakfast, getting read

Today I arrived at work at 7:00. The lights were still dim. I don't think anyone else was in the IBM office. I got a lot done. I remembered to leave work early, too, and I got a lot done at home as well. I remember blogging about early starts a number of times, and I like it when I can get into the rhythm of it. W- and I will make sure we keep in sync, too.

Preparing a few things the night before makes things so much more convenient. After dinner, I pack my lunch, leave a pot of oatmeal to soak on the stove, and set out all my clothes in the order that I need to put them on. The rest of the time is mine to spend, and then it's another great morning.

I'm getting the hang of the little things, too. The subway ride is the best time for Japanese flashcard practice, because I'm sitting down. The Pimsleur language lessons are best for dish-washing time, because I need my hands to be free. I'm working my way through French, and I hope I'll be able to practice understanding conversation when I'm in Montreal.

There's still a lot of room for improvement. Depending on need, I may make early mornings my personal project time. Right now, I'm relaxed, but not feeling very creatve. There are a number of things I still need to follow up on, including possible tea party plans. (I'm a month late with my tea parties!) But things are good. =)