Jeff Bach's Blog

A Great Discussion on the User Experience

worker bee — Thu, 22 Dec 2011 21:07:33 +0000

Rarely do I find a conference video that holds my attention. Sometimes though, the combination of topic, delivery, and whatever else hooks me and keep me listening. ReelSEO is a video site I pay attention to, and it recently posted a video taken from a conference in Lisbon, Portugal on User Interface Design. What really got me though was the lecturer’s command of the topic and the example and studies she cited. I found this well worth listening. One theme that comes up throughout are the new, mid and old parts of the brain (in her words) and how each “part” is responsible for certain aspects of decision making.

ReelSEO USer Interface discussion

Geology in Wisconsin ? actual rocks ?

worker bee — Fri, 13 Nov 2009 20:26:48 +0000

As a geology major from Montana, I have long enjoyed looking at the rare rock cut as I drive through it here in the Midwest. I always think to myself that I am going to pull over and go back and look at the rock faces. But I never do.

Over in Waukesha on County F where it intersects with J there sits an enormous hole in the ground, with exposed rock faces hundreds of feet tall. It is a quarry owned by Payne and Dolan called Waukesha Lime & Stone. I’ve been over that way for work several times and like the rock cuts, each time I would drive by this immense hole in the ground I would think about stopping and looking. Yesterday I finally did. I had a shoot over that way and afterwards I had a couple minutes to spare. So I pulled into Waukesha Lime & Stone, asked permission at the entry office, got it and then walked over and looked through the fence and into this big hole in the Wisconsin ground. I was expecting it to be full of water, since right behind me a few hundred feet away was a sizeable river. You would think with a constant water source perched 250 feet about the bottom of a hole that the river would leak and the hole would fill. But it was mostly dry with no pumps in site. Guess this rock is pretty tight.

I think the rock is the Niagara Falls formation, which is largely dolomite. This is the same as the caprock over to the east of us, over which Niagara Falls pours every day. It is a huge formation spanning several states. While several theories exist each explaining how dolomite is formed, I think that all would agree that Wisconsin was a marine environment when this formation was built up.
The other neat thing in looking at this face is that I think there is an old fault running through this exposure. Just like out in sunny CA., old stable on the craton Wisconsin has a fault. fyi earthquakes have been felt in all 50 states. The largest earthquake we know in the US happened on the New Madrid fault down in Missouri, not out on the coast like you would think.

once again – why I love the internet

worker bee — Sat, 07 Nov 2009 14:09:31 +0000

One of my clients has a pretty stout list of reference customers. Everything except their zip code. Oh and the list is in a wps format. This is Microsoft Works. An old version at that. I try installing converters, tricking Word, changing extensions, using Notepad and Wordpad. Nothing will open this wps file. One quick search on opening wps files, I find Zamzar, upload the file to Zamzar, and two minutes later (actually less than that), I have a converted file ready to go in Word.

Thank you Zamzar. A perfect online service if ever there was one.

fyi, Zamzar looks to be able to convert just about anything to anything. High on my list of services.

funky art in Stoughton

worker bee — Wed, 04 Nov 2009 14:55:02 +0000

Every day my kids and I drive the same road to drop them off at school. One day soon after school started, we all noticed some landscaping in a yard we drove by every day. Soon enough it was done. But it was not landscaping. It was art. Specifically one woman’s art that she made from an old tree that had been part of her yard for years and years before city powers decreed it must be cut down.

She saved the tree, let it dry and then turned her inner voice loose on it.
Finally, one morning I remembered to put the camera in the car AND later that day drive home on the road where this art piece was located. None of us had seen the homeowner, so I didn’t know what to expect. Happily, the artist and homeowner answered the door. After a quick handshake we walked out in her yard and she told me all about her art installation.
Great story. Great person. And one of my personal favorites when it comes to art. Until I saw this piece I didn’t know I even appreciated art.

Help with prototyping

worker bee — Tue, 03 Nov 2009 16:56:15 +0000

So I have been working through an idea. A tangible idea for a product that could someday be available for retail sale. But first I have to get through a couple rounds of prototyping. And that is where the pain starts, or so I am discovering. It’s funny where the biggest trouble spots are.

#1 BY FAR is sourcing materials.

#2 is vocabulary. Simply knowing what a piece or part or raw material is called is non-trivial.

#3 – is finding a reseller that is willing to do a one-off or small quantity sale.

Most industrial supply shops are not setup for retail, or other small quantity sale. They want an account, a PO number, and a check at the end of the month. A walk-in customer with ten questions and maybe a five dollar sale? Forget about it, go talk to the part-time pimply teenager at Ace Hardware, maybe they can help you. This is the unmentioned difficulty of a startup business, especially if it is a product.

It is here that Fastenal has been instrumental in my efforts to get a prototype built and working, so that I can evaluate, test, and refine my product.

Fastenal as I see them, is one of the rare industrial supply shops that are willing to talk to a walk-in customer. More importantly, the person doing the talking is an experienced and capable industrial sales kind of guy.

Like Brad Milbauer at the Stoughton Fastenal shop for example.

He has listened to me describe what I am looking for and then added the correct term to describe the widget I have been arm waving about. Several times he has suggested options that hugely improve my product, as well as make it cheaper and quicker to manufacture. I could not have found a better guy to help me through prototyping. Fastenal is unique in that, from what I see , they have retail locations that are bases for their sales reps. Those sales reps also spend time in that shop with retail customers as well. So they can do both the industrial and the retail sale. I am a fan. Thanks Brad. Thanks Fastenal.

finally – after months of training race day cometh

worker bee — Sun, 25 Oct 2009 14:46:52 +0000

The Kettle Moraine Ottawa Lake version of the North Face Endurance Challenge 50k finally happened yesterday. Seems like it took forever to get here. But it finally did. Lots of credit to North Face and all of the assisting people and organizations that were part of putting it on. I thought this race and its surrounding pieces was the best organized and executed running event I have ever done. The race bag was fabulous. They had a very very good hot lunch setup. Trail drinks and snacks were top notch. All of which made the entry fee quite worthwhile, almost to the point where I wonder how North Face is making any money on these events. Maybe they are not? Maybe it is publicity and marketing? At any rate, I thought they did a FABULOUS job on this event.
The Ottawa Lake area of Kettle Moraine State Park is a very nice place. Yet one more place in WI. I had never been…until yesterday. Even in the flat gray light of a windy cold fall morning it was quite nice. Ottawa Lake is one of very few campgrounds open year round. If my kids ever want to go winter camping, that will be the place.

A great event

The trails that the events ran over, were perfect. Variety, ups and downs, nice tree cover, and best of all, all of the race corners and turns were very well marked. For this race, all my training was solo, without anyone around to talk to, just hours in the dark running down empty country roads, occasionally swearing at some bumpkins loose dog. But this event was a huge social experience. Lots of chat on the trail with people at my pace until one or the other of us would stop or go creating some separation. Looking around at my fellow racers it was evident that many of them know each other as well. The social part of this stuff always surprises me. The number one highlight for me was that having this race as a target got me out for some of the best training I have ever done. My last ten runs or so were all at least half-marathon distances. For the typical string bean runner this is probably hohum stuff, but for me, this many runs of that distance was precedent setting. I have never run this much for anything. I also discovered the pleasures of running in the dark, something that I had never done prior to training for this event. So that entry fee was well worth it. I got my money’s worth before the race ever started. So all of that was the high.

The lows were numerous, starting with the fact that I DNF’ed after only 6.6 miles. The plantar fascia on my right foot was whacking me hard with every step almost from the first mile. Right up next to my heel. Every step reminding me it is there. The past two weeks I had been about as sick as I have been in quite awhile. Race day I felt good lung-wise, but endurance-wise I was off. After only a few miles I was just drenched in sweat, which I have learned leads to some serious problems for me towards the end of a long cool run. I think dressing for an event like this is tricky. A very cold windy start and then a fast change once you are on the trails. One of these days I’ll get it right, but for today I was just right for the cold and way overdressed for the trails. Overall, I am disappointed in my performance. I did get out of bed and I did show up and start the event, but other than that I have nothing good to write about my effort. Other than…there are several more races in the next few months that may well allow me to redeem myself!

Great job North Face!

Why I love Photoshop

worker bee — Tue, 13 Oct 2009 14:55:11 +0000

Why I love Photoshop

Once again, the longer the problem lasts, the easier the solution always seems to be. I have a client who wants spin images like this. OK. I go to his shop, setup my camera gear and turntable and spend a long day acquiring images. In front of a green screen. Which solves some problems and creates others. The problem that I worried about the whole day was “how am I going to get rid of the green in the glass on the fairing and still keep the glass looking like glass?”
Sure enough the next day back in my office, I searched and searched. Found nothing about removing color from glass. And then poom done. I found the neutral density filter (add adjustment layer then Black and White presets then neutral density). It solves my problem. It works and it is quick to apply. Pshop saves the day.

Zarletti’s – a great shoot in downtown Milwaukee

worker bee — Fri, 09 Oct 2009 17:08:30 +0000

A few days back I spent a day in Milwaukee doing some video work. Very enjoyable. Every time I am in Milwaukee I find myself liking it more and more. Maybe it is because I don’t live there and only visit. Maybe it is because my kids are not caught up in some tragic public school system issues. Maybe not though. After a couple years of regular visits for video shoots, every place I have been in that fine old Midwest city has been truly enjoyable. Zarletti’s is the most recent example of enjoying a shoot in Milwaukee. It’s an Italian restaurant. I was there during lunch time. Great food, great crowd, great location, all of which made for a very enjoyable shoot. Maybe I’m a bit biased here. The main video location is up on Citysearch. If I ever manage to get my wife in Milwaukee on a Friday night, this is the spot I want to take her.

Ponoko – an industrial Cafepress ?

worker bee — Thu, 01 Oct 2009 14:49:41 +0000

So #1 kid had soccer practice last night, leaving me with time to browse while waiting for practice to end. So off to the mall I go. Coffee and a magazine. Inc. magazine was the choice this time. Haven’t read it in ages. It kind of lost its way a while back and I drifted off to Fast Company. But I saw Inc. and decided to try it again.

My favorite article in this issue was about Ponoko. A variation on the aging theme of entrepreneurialism, but still a good read. Ponoko, as I read it, came across like an industrial Cafepress. At a high level, the concept for both is to allow the individual to make something “one-off”, in lieu of spending hundreds or thousands on a production run involving a high volume. Cafepress does it with coffee mugs and t-shirts and other light items. Ponoko does it with plywood and acrylics and more industrial materials. Designers can make lamps, wine racks, wooden toys. Heavier stuff.

This hit home for me as I am in the midst of prototyping a camera accessory. I just want to make “one” to see if it is even feasible to further pursue. “Making one” is at the core of Ponoko. Sourcing, buying material in small qty from industrial sources, and looking for stuff you don’t know the name of, all hit home for me and were part of the Ponoko story as well.

I think Ponoko is a great idea. It opens up the next step of making physical tangible objects in small quantities in a “just in time” business model. Cash tied up in inventory, overhead in the form of rented storage and work space, and excess labor during slow times are all solved in this business model. Customer orders one, Ponoko’s laser cutters make the pieces and either send to customer or to you for final assembly.

The fly in the ointment is that they are in New Zealand, so shipping costs pretty much at least double the finished cost, which to me makes their biggest customer base, us here in the USA, non-players. Once they have some US-based cutters set up and operating, things should really start humming for them. Fingers crossed.

P.S. – I poked around some more and found 100kgarages.com, which is a riff on a presidential campaign debate topic. This “alliance” of small manufacturers who own CNC routers from ShopBot, is solving the problem of distributing the manufacturing around the globe and alleviating the high shipping costs associated with having just one source in New Zealand trying to supply the world. The idea is to have “a garage” somewhat nearby the designer who is in need of a specialty manufacturer. Like it.

an unexpected phone call explaining an unexpected “win”

worker bee — Thu, 17 Sep 2009 17:24:06 +0000

I just got off the phone with a woman from Anchor Bank. At first I was expecting gloom and doom and fraud warnings etc. But she was calling to tell me that this picture, which I had impulsively submitted months ago when they were running a calendar photo contest, had won an entry in their calendar. It is going to be the September 2010 photo. I had forgotten about this photo submission, so it was a very pleasant surprise to receive this phone call. No prizes are involved or anything, but it is still fun. I’ve never won anything like this before.