is subject to change
"subject to change" because my goal is forward progress; as a husband, as a dad, in my faith, in work, in fitness.
This site is intended for non-work-related thoughts, but I'll probably veer from that occasionally. You can read about my adventures with Lean Technologies, Inc. over here.
I live in central Iowa and love it. Grew up in the Twin Cities, MN, but have grown to love the small town life. I loved the 'Cities, but have grown to appreciate the lack of time spent in-transit in a small town. Lots of walking. It's a different energy here...directed toward family and friends and relationships.
I'm a self-trained web application developer and believe I've gotten pretty good at it. I love to solve people's information challenges, and to take people from "IT/software-hater/skeptic" to "this is easy and has really improved my ability to get things done."
Perfect example of how well my parents took care of their stuff
These lights are probably from the 1950s? Not sure, but it's amazing that EVERY BULB STILL WORKS!
Great example of the contrast of today's disposible culture versus my parents who were both raised by depression-era be-as-frugal-as-possible parents. We were going to use them on this little tree, but the bulbs get REALLY HOT, so we decided against it for safety. We did, however, use the hooks, which are dated on the package from 1959 and were originally priced at 9 cents.
Comments [0]
Is your singular purpose in life to get retweeted? If so, I have no idea why, but here's your starter kit
So, my good friend Joel (@ActsOfIowa) pointed out yesterday an interesting article from copyblogger with data showing the most retweeted tweets on Twitter (those last four words would have comprised the most bizarre collection of words three years ago). I like data, so I found this information interesting.
Here are some things that stood out:
“Nearly 20% of all ‘normal’ tweets contain a link, yet almost 70% of retweets do.”
“I found that retweets tend to be noun-heavy and use third-person verbs.”
The above images define some of the most retweetable words and parts of speech you should include to get people to share YOUR stuff with the rest of the world! Combine this with copyblogger’s Compelling Headlines, and you should be writing some great tweets.
Probably the next most important thing to consider is the first two words of your tweet. Check out Jakob Nielsen’s research on this from his April Alertbox (First 2 Words: A Signal for the Scanning Eye) of this year. Probably more than anywhere else users are scanning their tweet streams for info (okay, this is an assumption, I have no data to support that statement, but I know from my personal use of Twitter I do some major scanning). So on Twitter, more than ever, the start of the tweet had better provide useful information.
In that research, they tested “how well people understand a link's first 11 characters shows whether sites write for users, who typically scan rather than read lists of items.”
Later in the year, Nielsen shared how they used iterative design to arrive at the best possible tweet format for their usability conference this year (Twitter Postings: Iterative Design). Through five rounds of iterations, they took this tweet from this:
Announcing LAS VEGAS and BERLIN as the venues for our biggest usability conference of the year http://bit.ly/UsabilityWeek
To this:
LAS VEGAS (October) and BERLIN (November): venues for our biggest usability conference ever http://bit.ly/UsabilityWeek
Somewhat related, and a fascinating thing to examine is Nielsen’s eyetracking research, which creates a “heat map” of where users’ eyes scan web documents.
Finally, according to the data, I believe I have concocted the tweet that is least likely to ever get retweeted right here!
“Hey! Bored watching/listening to game at work. Haha! Tired…well, going back home to bed but gonna sleep some tomorrow. LOL!”
In summary:
- Include links
- Think nouns and third-person verbs
- Consider your first few words carefully for scanning
Happy (re)tweeting!
Filed under //
twitter
Comments [0]
Five years ago yesterday
…my mom left us to go hang out in Heaven.
John 14:2-3, “In my Father’s house are many rooms; if it were not so, I would have told you. I am going there to prepare a place for you. And if I go and prepare a place for you, I will come back and take you to be with me that you also may be where I am.”
The picture was taken when my mom first met our first daughter, Riley, a year before my mom passed away. Toward the end, Riley brought some of the last smiles to my mom’s face at the hospital when my mom watched Riley learning to walk…and ironically, my mom was also struggling to walk.
The metastatic breast cancer that my mom had been fighting had moved to her brain and was limiting her in many ways. The last couple of months we experienced ever-dimming glimpses of my mom’s personality.
I still remember the last thing my mom said to me. A little over two weeks before her passing I spent most of the day on the floor working on a puzzle in my mom’s room. She said nothing. Different people would stop by and we would have conversations. Seemingly, my mom was just an observer. She did smile once when my sister and I laughed about my college ID picture that my mom never thought was funny. I had shaved a receding hairline for it.
But, as I was saying goodbye, something burst through the haze that hung over her efforts to communicate, and she uttered, “Thank you for coming” and smiled at me. The three of us in the room at the time, while internally amazed, for my mom’s sake all acted as if it were perfectly normal that she had just spoken…as if she had been participating in the conversation all along.
Two weeks later, we spent our Thanksgiving at the hospice. That Saturday, the battle was over.
Comments [0]
Comments [0]