Last week I flew to London for the UX London conference at The Great Cumberland Hotel. It was an inspiring 3-day conference that consisted of a few well-known guest speakers and a few days of intensive workshops.
While I learned a lot from each speaker, I think the one that had the most meaningful impact on me was Don Norman’s talk titled “In Favor of Complexity”. While this spans many fields, on the web we see designers today trying to make things as simple as possible which may not always be the right solution. Norman argues that because life and people are complex, the tools we use or the things we interact with must (but not always) be complex as well. He gave a few examples that covered devices like an Italian espresso machine to Al Gore’s messy desk. In the desk example, just because I can’t go into Mr. Gore’s office and understand where things are doesn’t mean it isn’t an efficient/productive workspace environment for him. My take away from Don’s talk is that intuitive designs come are based on understanding and providing tools to afford more complex inputs might not be such a bad idea.
I found out today that my blog was being hacked ( People were injecting links into the comments they left causing traffic I didn’t want). I took this as a sign that I should probably update so here we go.
Here are 10 highlights over the past year (in no particular order):
On Thursday I leave to Paris for 2 weeks to visit Noelle. It’s been a few months since she’s left and while I’m surviving, this will be a good fix for the remaining time she’s there. So what’s new … I FINALLY closed escrow on my land!! The pending item securing the permit with the city and that just happened Wednesday. Now the real fun of building begins. I still haven’t secured a builder but am in the process of interviewing.
I moved into a new apartment in Sunnyvale with my buddy Eric from college. The last apartment I had raised the rent about 45% on me in two months (no there is no rent control) so I figured that if I was going to be paying that much for rent I might as well move away from the train tracks . In the process of the move, I lost my point and shoot camera which is why you haven’t seen many picture updates from me. I have a new camera on rush for my trip to Paris. Hopefully I’ll get to post while I’m there (or at least sometime in the next 2 weeks as opposed to 2 months)
Over the past few months Richard, Erick and I had been learning a new dance for our quarterly performance at the Dancevisions music center in Mountain View. While we originally rented out the studio for fun, Laura Zweig (the studio’s caretaker) convinced us to put together a routine for our first performance at the Palo Alto Arts festival. We’ve definitely come a long way and our most recent piece is something I can safely say we are most proud of. Our show was this past Saturday and you can view it below:
While I wish I could say the whole thing was our idea, we drew inspiration from a Korean breakdancing crew that is no longer together called the expression crew. I still give us a pat on the back because we needed to re-choreograph the whole thing since theirs was for 15 to 20 dancers. We named it A for awesome because … well … It’s Awesome
Man I’m really taking my time updating this thing. Because I don’t have a lot of time to write, I figure I’ll just give a brief overview of everything that’s been happening.
Graduations & Visiting Home
Last month I took a trip down south to visit and attend a few graduations. I also got a chance to see most of my High School and college friends. Generally when I’m down there for business I never get a chance to really spend time with them so I dedicated a week (with light meetings) to just fly down and see everyone.
Hometown homiez
Additionally I took a trip to Sacramento for memorial day weekend with Noelle to visit her family and watch her talented brother perform at a small concert in fair oaks.
Do you remember me constantly talking about how much I loved the new Lexus IS250/350 when it came out and how I kept annoying everyone saying I was going to get it? Well I finally did. Obsidian black with cashmere leather interior. 306hp of pure bliss and it drives like a dream.
Backpacking in Yosemite
Had my first backpacking experience to Minaret Lake. It was really really fun but we had to cut our trip short due to nightly visits by wolves to our camp. It would have been OK because they left us alone in the tent but a gust of wind came along and blew our tent in half. Yea not so fun.
Last week I flew to London for the UX London conference at The Great Cumberland Hotel. It was an inspiring 3-day conference that consisted of a few well-known guest speakers and a few days of intensive workshops. 
. In the process of the move, I lost my point and shoot camera which is why you haven’t seen many picture updates from me. I have a new camera on rush for my trip to Paris. Hopefully I’ll get to post while I’m there (or at least sometime in the next 2 weeks as opposed to 2 months)
