Information Management 2

This is a follow up to an earlier post about TiddlyWiki (TW) and using it to manage a large writing project.

I use several TW extensions or plugins. These aren't that hard to find. If Google isn't your friend, the main TW web site has links to the key add-on repositories. I'll warn that this describes my TW preferences and an organization structure that works for me. Different people find different ways of working that work for them. Your mileage may vary.

TW is text based, so all the formatting commands are combinations of characters, tags, etc. Remembering them isn't necessarily impossible, but I have better things to do in most cases, especially for color coding and other features. I tried several editor enhancements and settled on QuickEdit. It's a decent balance between usability and simplicity. I added Indent to the menu (positioned after Strikethrough) because I use that and the format tag is complex. In the QuickEdit_format tiddler, I copied the Strikethrough entry and replaced the strikethrough-specific lines with

title="{{indent{}}}" accesskey="N"
onclick="config.quickEdit.wrapSelection(this,'{{indent{','}}}'); return false;"

I also installed the TagsTree plugin. This lets me have a tree-view menu of important tags on the left side. The menu can be nested and items can appear in multiple parts of the menu if the tags overlap. This sounds confusing at first, but it's actually useful because I can tag something to where it properly belongs and as Pending Work or Research or whatever else applies so I see it both places. If I remove the cross-link tag, the entry drops out of that section, or I can change the tag and move it to another section. To simplify the TagsTree menu, I created a tag called zzMenu (zz makes it appear at the end of any list of tags and is my note-to-self that this is a configuration thing) and put that on any tag set I want to appear in the menu. Then the MainMenu tiddler becomes:

[[GettingStarted]]

<>

Finally, I installed RenameTags, which lets me rename a tag and change the tag in all the tagged entries. So if I change tag AAA to BBB, RenameTags will ask and, if I approve, all entries with tag AAA will be retagged to BBB, keeping the relationships between tags and tagged entries intact. I try to be smart about what I call my tags, but sometimes I realize I need to rethink. This plugin makes it easier.

I have a few other plugins floating around my TW. Some of them were brought in to support the three above, but QuickEdit, TagsTree, and RenameTags get far more direct use than anything else.

 My TagsTree menu (tagged zzMenu) contains the following entries

• Articles -- News articles that have an idea I (might) want to use. Pasting the text in TW makes them searchable.
• Books -- The story is broken into several "books". Each one has an entry that includes subitems for an Overview of the book (often linked out additional entries for sub-sections or arcs), notes, and anything else that I think belongs to the book as opposed to something more general.
• Characters -- Character entries. I tend to create these empty and fill them in as needed. Some characters are currently blank. Others are very detailed. Some are in between.
• Notes -- mostly the output of research and reading, I also capture cross-book issues to resolve (entries begin with "ISSUE" to make them obvious and group them together). I also have subfolders for certain groups of notes (notably kendo and youkai, both of which play important roles in the story)
• Pending Work -- things I need to do, think about, resolve, at some point. In some cases, this is specific entries in character information (not all characters, just specific points I need to address, for example, the names of an important character's parents on his Family Friends Relationships section), notes that need action, specific edits (begin with "EDIT" to make them obvious), etc. This becomes a one-stop place to look when I'm not sure what I need to do besides write/edit. As noted above, items drop out of Pending Work as they're completed--are tagged with zzPending Work Completed and show up in a submenu at the bottom of Pending Work. This lets me see progress on this section.
• Research -- areas where I need to do research. I tend to group related topics and strikethrough items as I complete them. The results of research end up in notes or information in other entries. As research is completed, I may embed links to those entries here if I feel it's important or if I think I might want to expand the research results.
• System Reference -- The only thing here right now is a list describing how to do markup. I found it somewhere online and pasted it here for the times
• zzSystem Info -- The systemConfig list is here (things that run or are setup as part of TW startup, basically all the add-ons). I also have a zzAppearance tag which I put on the StyleSheet and ColorPalette entries so I could find them easily. I used the latter two to tweak TW's appearance to suit my preferences.

 The only other major item here is my character entry setup. That's long enough to deserve a separate post sometime in the future.

  

Off Target

Last week, I had a rather unpleasant experience with a major retailer. They advertised a sale, but in the store, the labeling was rather poor. I ended up picking up a couple of the wrong flavors, thus didn't qualify for the promotion and ended up paying more than I had expected. The cashier couldn't fix it at the register or easily identify which items were the wrong ones. I had frozen food and a trip home (Florida pre-summer) so couldn't wait for a manager, who probably wouldn't have been able to do anything either. So I walked out with the product planning to return it.

I was near another store later the same day. Tried to return the product. Was told I had to do same day returns at the same store. I'm thinking, "Wait, this is a national chain. Why does location matter?" I guess their IT systems aren't quite as real-time as some of their competitors. When I told the person I was dissatisfied he said something to the effect of, "I'm sorry someone at another store made you feel that way." And I stand there thinking, "Hello? This store, that store, you're all the same entity as far as I'm concerned. The only difference is that you happen to be where I am and the other one isn't. So much for brand identity."

A couple of days later, I returned to the original store and returned the product. The person taking the return seemed rather bored. Given the history outlined above, she didn't think all the trouble was worth anything more than a stock, "I'm sorry you've had trouble," that sounded very insincere, especially since she wasn't looking at me when she said it and spent more time chatting with her coworkers than speaking to me or listening to what I said. She tried to tell me she could only give me money back on a gift card. I insisted she credit the card I'd used to pay because I have no intention of shopping there again. After a couple of rounds of this, she called one of her coworkers over who hit a couple of keys and credited the card, after she'd insisted it couldn't be done.

My question is, how could this retailer be so off target? Don't they train their employees to understand that they are the company? Not this desk, this store, even this region--they are the company to the customer. Given that I'm talking about different groups of employees on different days at different stores, I have to conclude this isn't just an isolated case of a bad apple employee. Do their marketing people realize how much poor marketing tactics (putting some of an item on sale, but not others) and labeling (making it difficult to determine which is on sale, creating consumer confusion) costs them in the end? Arguably, I could have filed a false labeling complaint because the product I picked all came from rows that were labeled as being on sale (clearly some items were shelved in the wrong places). Do they not see the risk that could be averted by a simple sign listing exactly which flavors are on sale rather than labeling each individual shelf sticker? (Would one larger sign take less time to install than a bunch of shelf stickers that ultimately don't solve the problem?)

I wrote a letter describing what I've summarized above in full detail and sent it to corporate headquarters. I included my store credit card, cut in half. I'll pay the next bill and then cancel the card. I won't be shopping there again. I went out of my way to shop at this store because I liked their price. I still had to do some of my shopping at another store. I'm willing to pay a little more for excellent customer service. Or about the same for the expectation that I'll get mediocre customer service.

Bringing this around to a more personal level, I am very conscious of how my behavior reflects on any branding I choose to attach myself to, and how branding reflects on me. So I'm very conscious about wearing clothing or carrying accessories that attach me to the company I work for. Same with any organizations or affiliations I have. I don't put bumper stickers on my car--because I don't want any stupid thing I do to reflect poorly on whoever I value that much, and I don't any stupid thing they do to reflect on me. See, I recognize that I do stupid things, and I try to make sure those don't affect others. If I'm wearing someone's livery or visibly connecting myself with them by where I am and what I'm doing, I think three times before I do something to be sure I don't do something stupid. Even for things I'm not being paid for, haven't been formally trained for, etc.

So, if you're identifying yourself with a particular company or other organization by the clothes you wear, the umbrella you carry, the bumper stickers on your car, etc., consider how your behavior reflects on those organizations. Maybe we'd live in a happier world if people thought about the consequences of their behavior and how others perceptions affect both their own reputations and those of the organizations they affiliate with.

Banding Together

My son is in his school's band (middle school, 6th-8th grade). This is his school's first year with a music program in four years. The interesting thing for me is to watch him and the other students get on stage and perform or sit in the band room and rehearse. Not just the music, but their behavior, which is typically much more professional on stage than when I see them wandering around campus. I watch my son (and many other students) sitting straight, holding his instrument properly, concentrating, playing his instrument, taking feedback, practicing willingly at home, and am amazed at the difference. Band gives him something he looks forward to at school. If the school did not offer a band program, or if more of our school choice options offered a band program, we'd probably be moving to a different school next year. This is how important the band program is to him and therefore to my wife and I.

Our band director has been a major factor in the band's success. He has pushed the students to excel, coached them into improvement, committed over 4 hours per week of his own time (unpaid) for rehearsal... And that summary ignores all the other work he does outside of school arranging music, pulling events together, making things happen so the band can achieve things that make other band directors take notice.

Friday, the band performed at a local elementary school that is a feeder for my son's middle school. The music teacher there wrote a good article on her blog explaining her campaign to revive the music program at my son's school. This history was valuable to me, and she has my thanks for all her hard work. (http://www.schoolmusicmatters.blogspot.com/2012/05/kernan-middle-school-band.html)

Her post, other comments I hear, policies and rules I run into all provoke an interesting question. When I look at the level of maturity and professionalism these students demonstrate, the amount of work many put into the program, their passion, their focus, their ability to accept criticism and work to improve, I have to ask what other programs in school teach these skills or inspire a willingness to learn these skills? Probably not core academics. (Sorry, core academics teachers, but it's true.) So why are the programs that teach these critical life skills always first under the gun when the school looks for a way to trim budgets? Professionalism, responsibility, maturity, the sense that they work to achieve and achieve what they work for, these will serve students far better in the real world than some of the trivia core academic teachers are compelled to teach by one or another group's political agenda.

Maybe the state needs to offer incentives for excellence in some of these non-core programs where students can find their passion and explore a future that may be a road less traveled, that teach students these valuable life skills. Not everyone should be a scientist, mathematician, or engineer. (I'm an information architect with a degree in computer science and engineering, so I'm obviously not opposed to those professions.) To be honest, not everyone can be. It takes a particular mindset to be able to do some of these things, and not everyone has it. Some people can be and want to be musicians, artists, dreamers, creators. That also takes a particular mindset. We must support opportunities for all career directions or the world we live in will be much poorer. For that matter, many people in science and engineering are also creators, artists, musicians. There is an affinity between music and math--reinforced by my son's scores on statewide math tests, where he typically excels. Perhaps music should be seen as another aspect of a larger math education. Perhaps art should be seen as an aspect of composition and writing. Perhaps we should value people who create--be they engineers or authors, scientists or composers, mathematicians or sculptors--instead of those who manage, administer, oversee those who create, those who make, those who produce, but themselves create, make, produce nothing.

Enough politics, here are some pictures of the band warming up before the performance.

We not only have a concert band (pictures above) but a jazz band. Yes, this is one committed band instructor. (My son is leftmost in the jazz band.)

Information Management

I said earlier that I write, and that the work in progress is large. That means a lot of research to do, information to capture, ideas to note. Keeping track of all that is quite a challenge. I've used notebooks of various sizes and configurations. They're handy for capturing something quickly, or if I need to make a sketch of something, but finding things in them can be challenging. I considered note cards, but a significant fraction of the information I capture is fractional, expands over time, gets moved from one area to another, possibly out of step with seemingly related information--in short, I have a network of information, not a neatly categorized library. Technically minded person that I am, my immediate thought was note taking software.

There are several big names in the field, primarily phone/tablet centric, though several have web platforms accessible from any browser. But none of them really suit my needs. First, I don't want to maintain a network connection just to access my notes. Second, a phone screen is not adequate to manage my notes. Or to type on. And handwriting or sketching on a phone? Forget it. Tablet? Maybe large enough, but I haven't found any with decent handwriting or sketching capabilities--I've tried a couple just to see how they worked. And voice recognition is not particularly desirable. (I'm reminded of the story of a group of writers working on a shared world anthology discussing the current (very violent) state of affairs in the series in the middle of the restaurant, suddenly realizing that everyone had gone quiet and was staring at them.)

After short experiments with three or four apps, tools, etc., I quickly saw major problems with all of them, and learned what various features meant. I realized these tools weren't going to cut it for me, so I cast my net a little wider.

I eventually found a personal wiki called TiddlyWiki (site) (Wikipedia entry). It has several major positives. It is entirely free (no subscriptions to get extra bandwidth, storage, or features). It stores all the data locally (you can link to media on the web, but notes are local). It runs in a web browser (nothing to install on any computer). It has a lot of extensions that add useful capabilities. It is very flexible. Most TiddlyWiki information I've found has been in TiddlyWikis hosted on the web, so it's obvious that if I really wanted to have access from a web browser on my phone (not), I could.

Oh, it's searchable, so if I need to find that note about topic X, it's a lot easier to find than in those pages of tiny handwriting in a notebook.

And a couple of writers have posted empty wikis showing how they organize information. I looked at these, and stole ideas here and there, but in the end, didn't use any one solution.

I got the base TW from the website and installed it on a flash drive and have been fiddling with it for about a week, finding extensions that add the capabilities I want, setting up notes, testing the tool and my organization structure--adjusting the organization structure a few times. Setting up more notes. I'll carry around a small (paper) notebook for taking quick notes. I'll enter them into the wiki on a regular basis. I've set up an organization structure lets me tag information to specific characters, parts of the story, etc. and to categories like "Work Pending," a to-do list of sorts. As work is completed, I change the tags to attach it to the appropriate places and move it out of pending to completed.


So, this seems to be my information management solution for the work in progress. I can see using the same tool with a similar setup for managing a thesis writing project. I'll write a post later explaining the extensions I use and how I've organized my information.

Attitude Adjustments

My son has several letters attached to him that classify him as different from other kids. One set of letters is AS (Asperger's Syndrome). Another set is ADHD. And another is IQ (very high). Each of these sets of letters brings different positives and negatives. For example, IQ means he often sees how to do things after one or two examples--sometimes none. On the other hand, he struggles to explain how he knows what he knows when it is intuitively obvious to him. Doesn't know the formal terms for some of the things he understands and can explain. Tests don't like kids who can't explain how they know what they know and don't know formal terms.

But my topic isn't all the pluses and minuses. My topic is my attitude about all these letters, and the attitude I sometimes see other parents of kids with letters show.

About a year ago I read a post on a blog I follow discussing an issue related to ASDs (Autism Spectrum Disorders--AS is part of that spectrum). The article was controversial because it was about the whole autism/vaccine debate. I'm not here to get into that debate.

I am here to talk about all the people who posted about their kids with autism saying their kids were defective, broken, damaged, unfit. I'm not making that up. They used exactly those words--sometimes made even harsher statements. The sad part is, these writers seemed to miss the deeper implications of what they said, how those words reflected on and affected their own attitudes toward their child, and what that attitude implied about their ability to truly help their child.

I'll note that all of these posters were anti-vaccine. Again, I'm not trying to get into that particular debate, just noting that the people who had stopped looking for someone to blame talked about their kids differently. That's my point.

As we attached letters to my son to explain his differences from other kids, I didn't worry about who to blame. Who didn't matter. I wasn't going to be able to extract any benefit from any who. If it was genetic, should I beat up myself or my wife or my grandparents? Would that change anything for the better? If it was environmental, should I spend years pursuing lawsuits and cursing the people who'd caused it? Would that help my son in the here and now--the window of time when we have the greatest opportunity to help him learn how to operate among neurotypicals without sacrificing his individuality?

No. Fix the problem, not the blame. And the problem isn't my son, or even the letters, it's certain behaviors, attitudes, approaches that result from them. And knowing the letters, I can learn approaches that can help him find an appropriate balance between conforming and being himself, ways to use his differences to his advantage.

The letters changed more than my son. They changed (and continue to change) the way I interact with my son. I needed to learn to see impending meltdowns so I could help him see them and redirect. I needed to focus on positive achievements, improvements, growth. Token economies, talking it out, behavior modification techniques, breaking it up. I spend a lot of time educating educators, have learned a lot more than I ever thought I'd know about certain laws, and am continually amazed by the sometimes brilliant, sometimes stupid people I see in schools. (Sometimes the same person is both.) All that changed (continues to change) me at least as much as it changed (continues to change) my son.

I don't claim to be anywhere near perfection, but I know I am a better father to my son today because he has all these letters attached to him. My son is not defective. He is unique like any child should be. He is not unfit for his intended purpose. Who am I to define a purpose for his life? Maybe his purpose is to make me a better person. I am not particularly concerned why my son has all these letters. He does. I'm not going to change that. It always amuses me that the people who believe vaccines cause ASD nevertheless want a vaccine that will make their kids "normal." Really? You're going to trust the same people who "broke" your kid to fix him? (It isn't going to happen anyway. Too much brain circuitry to rewrite.)

And would it be a good thing to "fix" all these problems and make everyone "normal" (whatever that is)? I think not. Who wants to be just average? Temple Grandin says the person who made the first flint spearhead wasn't some yakkity-yak sitting around the fire talking, it was the Aspie, sitting alone in the back of the cave, fascinated by the way stone flaked when he hit it just so. I bet she's right. I've read articles discussing the link between neurological difference and great minds--thinkers, scientists, artists, dreamers. I think the world would be boring if every person's brain worked the same way.

If your child has letters attached, if you think your child is broken, defective, unfit, ask yourself if it isn't your attitude that's broken. Who's going to spend a lot of time helping trash shine? I have a diamond in the rough--sometimes very rough. Polishing that diamond takes a lot of care and effort and learning. But I believe it can be done. That's my attitude.

Habit Forming

I neglect this poor blog horribly (in case that wasn't obvious). I started it as an experiment, an alternative "journal" for a class. Perhaps that association is the problem. Not that the class carries negative associations, but that this blog was for a class that is now long ended, and has occasionally, briefly attached itself to other classes. Right now, that's all on hiatus for various reasons. So maybe it's time to rethink the role of this medium.

I write.

In 2009, I took a creative writing workshop class at the local university. I emailed the instructor before class (as is my habit) and he said to have a story ready to workshop. I didn't at the time, but over the couple of weeks between then and the beginning of the semester, I had something started--sort of a Japanese light novel, but in English, and less random than the few I've read or seen animated. My base idea pushed me toward this style--a sort of Japanese urban fantasy story and the notion that it should be manga-like but still literate and thoughtful. (Not that there aren't literate and thoughtful manga out there.)

The story idled along for a couple of years coming in fits and spurts. Then last year it jumped from about 60k words to 200k words as the overarching story fell into place. (It has since grown even more.)

So, as I said, I write. Which brings me back to the core point of this meandering post.

Recently I read an author who talked about forming the habit of writing on a regular schedule as a means to write more. (Sounds obvious, but it's true. Look how fast the story grew when I wrote on it almost daily for a year vs. writing on it here and there for a few days a month.) So I've decided to make this blog another writing habit. At least once a week. Whatever I want to write about. Pick a topic and write a few paragraphs here. That's the current goal. I may step it up over time. I'm still writing "the story," spending at least an hour or two on it most days, and I don't want this to interfere with that.

And don't expect everything to be about writing, or the story, though so many things that seem unrelated are actually parts of the same whole.