Despite feeling a bit under the weather this past week, thank you amoxicillin, I did a small vBulletin job, integrating UserVoice with a private forum for Kickstarter project backers, as well as starting on a little Shopify cart design consulting job. I’ve also been doing a bit more brush up on the InDesign skills, as I think that’s going to be the big project this coming week. I’ve been taking it a little easier on the weights and the hiking, but I’m looking forward to getting back at it full steam shortly, now that I’ve mostly kicked this Summer cold.
Archive for Personal Development
Operations Management from Coursera
I’ve recently enrolled in my first Coursera class, An Introduction to Operations Management, taught by Christian Terwiesch from the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania. The six week class starts in September and I’m very much looking forward to the Coursera experience. This will not be my first online class, but I have heard very good things about the Coursera method and structure. I am already familiar with a lot of the subject matter, with training in Total Quality Management (TQM) from AT&T and other Business Process Management systems, and I am looking forward to getting some fresh perspectives on Operations Management, particularly as it relates to some of my Project Management training and background. Operations is sort of the flip-side to Project Management and it’s important to have a grasp of each of their issues, methods, and priorities.
Evolution of Online Education Possibilities
I enjoyed this TED talk from Daphne Koller on the rapidly evolving possibilities of online educational opportunities. I wish that Coursera.com had a few more web development and/or prject management offerings, but I’m sure there will likely be more options in the near future.
Low Key Weekend
I’ve been doing pretty well with the hiking and weights recently. Besides that, it’s still all about tutorials and online seminars these past few weeks. Lunch with old friends, no really big news.
Adventures in Ongoing Education
The rhythms of product and technological upgrades have converged such that I am now buried in various tutorials and classes. I’ve spent a number of years behind the scenes, tending to a collection of websites with all sorts of back-end idiosyncrasies and needs. And now, it’s time to catch back up a bit on current front-end development skills and best practices.
I put a site in my portfolio and later realized that I hadn’t actually worked on the front-end design for that site in about eight years, at least! I’ve worked on it’s back-end technology for nearly a decade, making all sorts of upgrades and improvements, migrating from one software package set to other even more modern scripting solutions, but the simple front-end just never seemed like it needed attention. I am very proud of how the site functions for it’s clients and it’s success in achieving it’s goals as a service. Then I looked at the sort of front-end splash page code… ugh. This is embarrassing.
So, I’m working on giving the front-end a bit of an overhaul, along with taking some continuing education classes, to brush up on the latest and greatest skills and methodologies. Not that I don’t have experience with the latest codes and tools from working with a number of different sites, but I could use a refresher on putting it all together from scratch again.
This has unfortunately coincided with a large print media layout project that also requires a bit of a brush up on Adobe InDesign CS5. I’ll be honest, it’s been a product cycle or two since I’ve worked with InDesign, or QuarkXPress, or PageMaker for that matter. So, this could be fun. More tutorials and exercises.
Meanwhile I am also looking to get an additional new professional certification, so I have a pretty significant exam looming on the horizon for that too. Time to put on some coffee and, well I was going to say hit the books, but it’s more like sit and watch educational videos, webinars, Lynda.com, CreativeEdge.com, etc. MMmm… coffee.
Getting back into shape – and staying fit
As many people who know me IRL can attest, I’ve been hiking up and around Griffith Park nearly every day (avg. 6 days a week) for about the last two years now. I either go in the early morning or in the evening before they close the park trails.I generally take the fire roads up to Griffith Observatory, or go up the mountain to the very top. Every once in a while I get out to Runyon Canyon, although not so much lately. I like to take the hand weights and I’ve worked up to bringing along a pair of 15lb dumbbells up the mountain trails as I hike.
I’ve also just started using MyFitnessPal.com, well really been peer pressured into using it, but it’s working out to be pretty cool. I’ve never really been good at keeping track of calories and that sort of thing, but the tools offered on that site are pretty robust. They have a ton of different food products already entered into their searchable system, so I don’t have to guess or do the math in my head anyway. They crowd source the nutritional data, so if I can’t find it, I can just enter a new product and other people that consume the same thing can confirm the data I put in. So, it tracks daily intake as well as daily exercise.