Category: Meta

Happy new year, here is to a better one

I realized today that I haven’t posted anything here in quite a while. Maybe it was a normal ebb in the blogging stream, but there is more to it than that.

Those that are parents are well aware of the ability of an a child to pull your head out of the echo chamber of your own thoughts. I certainly felt that effect this year.

Combine that with the rise of the microblogging, of which I am finding myself very fond. Twitter lets me make a simple declarative statement in 160 chars that I would have felt the need to write paragraphs explaining or reinforcing on this site. On twitter, I can just say “I like watching the CBC. Canadian commercials are just nicer.” If I posted that here, I’d need to explain why Canadian commercials are nicer and maybe track down some Canadian commercials on youtube to include or whatever. That is too much effort when there are diapers to change. I also like the immediacy of the microblogging, the responses and directs, the conversations spilling out across multiple people very quickly. I’ve also found that with my limited time, twitter/friendfeed/facebook have basically replaced my RSS reading for the most part. I’m getting the same information faster through twitter than I do through firing up my RSS reader. I would expect, for 2009, that you will see fewer posts here, but there will be much less “chaff” and more “wheat.” If you want the chaff, the random thoughts and weird ramblings, follow me on twitter.

I’m finding myself cautiously optomistic about this coming year, but much less optomistic than I have been for quite some time. The morass and decline in the country following eight years of George Bush’s presidency is unlikely to be cleaned up quickly, no matter what kind of wunderkind that Barack Obama turns out to be. Barack Obama’s appointments have been somewhat underwhelming so far, the “team of rivals” justification rings somewhat hollow given the political infighting that could arise. An inexperienced executive leading a team of rivals could be a recipie for disaster. I’m delighted with Obama’s victory and what that can mean for our country, but he is taking on a herculean task and he has raised expectations so high that it can all fall apart very quickly.

I want to start this year on a positive note (for a change). So, I hope that for anyone reading this that your 2009 is better than your 2008 was.

Intonarumori performs in Seattle 11/7/08

SIL2K and BROWNBOX
present

*SIL2K*
performs
Tetraktys

An Oratorio after Pythagoras
Rachel Lissman, narrator

Based on Lucretius'
"On The Nature of the Universe"

And closing the evening:

*inBOIL vs. Intonarumori*

Friday November 7
7:30pm
$5 cover
The Rendezvous
2322 2nd Ave, Belltown/Seattle

[Update 11/7/08: The Stranger's Classical Music Column, The Score, previews the show]

the bio

I’m really bad at writing my bio. This doesn’t come up often enough that I have a canned text, but it does come up more often these days. I tend to write my biography to suit the occasion, but I was checking out my friend Kevin’s website and I really liked what he did with his bio.

It’s a bit tough, I’m too mid-western to want to toot my own horn, but too much of an ego-maniac to not think that people don’t care.

I thought that this site had some good suggestions. I’d like more if anyone has them.

speaking of resumes

I talk about resumes a lot. That is because I see many of them. A zillion years ago, when I first had to write a resume, all I had was a crummy pamphlet from the career center that was completely unhelpful. So, I like to help out when I can so that I don’t have to look at lame resumes.

I thought that this article was actually pretty decent on the subject of spiffing up your resume’s design. Although, if you aren’t French, I would avoid calling it a résumé.

Give your résumé a face lift (LifeClever)

P.S. unless you are from Europe, don’t call your resume a Curriculum Vitae either, that comes off really twee.
P.P.S. ignore the résumé and c.v. rules if you are actually applying for a job in Europe.

I just read 200 undergrad and graduate student resumes

My eyes are killing me.

Why the heck are you cramming so much unimportant information onto your single-sided single-page resume? You make it completely unreadable! Especially when someone (like a hiring manager) is trying to scan through hundreds of scanned pages.

Also, a new tip. Your paper resume will be scanned. It will be OCR’d. If you use tiny text on a background that provides low contrast with your text, no one will call you. EVER.

I found myself starting at the top of the page and letting my eye fall naturally down it. If I couldn’t get enough information to decide if I wanted to actually read it quickly, I just skipped to the next one.

It turns out that a good and specific objective statement is worth more than I ever gave it credit for. It was how I could tell a computer graphics grad student from a business undergrad.

Another question: why do you think anyone cares what high school you went to?

It’s great that you were a summer camp counselor, if I’m hiring a summer camp counselor. But I’m not, and it is just crowding your already crowded resume. Leave it off.

What, you are studying Human/Computer interaction, and you produced a resume that I need an electron microscope to dis cipher?

Sigh…

So, if you found me because you just got e-mail from me to talk about an internship, congratulations! Your resume is legible and clear, or your name begins with a letter from the beginning of the alphabet before my eyes started to glaze over.

Tips for Talks from Rands

I’ve been giving a lot of talks over the last few years, and I’m starting to get better at it. Rands does a great how to on creating a good presentation.

Rands In Repose: Out Loud

I would add one suggestion: go watch presentations from Lawrence Lessig, Al Gore and Scott McCloud. All were really great speakers, some of the best presentations I’ve seen in the slide-deck-style. Another tip: use as few words on slides as you can. The more words you have the less people listen to you and the more they read the screen. I’m working my way towards the zero words talk. I was pretty close in my last one, maybe by my next one…