So … here is the new bend …

New bent stretcher

Two stretchers overlapping

Here is the table as it currently stands (without the top in place).

Base in place

I am finding it interesting to experience how this table has changed already from my initial designs and thoughts. Already we have four separate legs instead of the two wider coopered panels and the curve designed for the stretchers has changed significantly.

Tapered leg

Table frame

This weekend however I had to venture into unknown territory – bending. Having not done this before I was faced with quite a nervous and stressful weekend ahead. The first order of business was getting together as many clamps as I could. I bought out an entire box of 15 clamps from the local Bunnings and a few large boards of cheap chipboard.

Once I was back home, I started to build the “form.” A form is simply a piece of wood which is cut to the shape you need the final bend to match. Kind of like a mould, but for wood instead of chocolate! This took the better part of a day to complete.

Creating the curve

With the form done, I moved to cutting up a heap of strips of Silky Oak. I made these around 3mm each. Still solid enough but thin enough to bend without cracking. With the most stressful part coming up next, I took a little break before diving into it. Because I only had a few minutes to work before the glue dried, I had to have anything at the ready.

Everything ready at arms length

15 clamps to hold it into place

After 24 hours in the mould, I hesitantly took off all the clamps. The result? Perfect! It still needs some cleaning up and sanding, but the curve holds really well and it surprisingly quite solid.

Bending results

The top will be made using some of the MCG English Elm I acquired. When finished, it displays quite a nice rich brown/gold colour. Inlaid into the top will be a strip of Silky Oak. This should pick up on the lighter golden colours in the Elm and add an interesting feature to draw your attention to.

Table top

Looking on from the side … I’m thinking of beveling the ends of the top to lighten the feel of the piece. The top will be supported by two solid blocks of English Elm similar to what I’ve done with another table. I will taper the legs down to the bottom again to lighten them and will also cooper them (curve) towards the centre. Two stretchers of Silky Oak will sit near the bottom along the longer sides of the table.

Side view

The two stretchers will be held “in tension” in the middle giving the whole piece some nice curves. I’m already wondering how many pieces of timber I will snap getting this right! Not sure what timber I’ll use to hold these stretchers together yet or the join that I will use to attach them to the legs. Those details will eventually show themselves once I start.

Stretchers in tension

It looks like a Valentine’s weekend full of milling wood for me!

The Commonwealth War Graves Commission ordered the flag from their usually reputable supplier in France (whose name I didn’t get). For some reason the flag which was delivered was not to Australian standards. The Southern Cross was reversed, the Union Jack was upside down and the entire flag didn’t conform to normal Australian standard sizes (instead it was the usual European size).

The person I spoke to informed me that a replacement was ordered on Wednesday 3rd February and the correct flag has now been flying at the site. The process for ordering these flags has apparently also been tightened and the Honorable Greg Combett Minster for Defence and his office are also on top of it.

Obviously none of this should take away from the ceremony itself nor the lives these brave people laid down for our freedom.

Case closed.

Update Thursday 11 February 2010

ABC News article regarding the flag published today.

If you didn’t spot it, here’s a crop of the Australian flag flying at half mast.

An odd Australian flag

Do you see it yet? First spotted by “Astro744″ on the IceInSpace forums, the Southern Cross is backwards! In the Australian flag, the 5th star of the cross should be the furtherest away from the Union Jack and instead be placed closer to the flag edge. Instead, it appears reversed. This can’t be an issue of editors mirroring the footage because even then the 5th star in the Southern Cross should still be closest to the outer edge.

So, has the person responsible for locating the flag and arranging for it to be flown at this ceremony in Fromelles completely stuffed this up by buying a fake flag on eBay, or am I completely missing something here? There are other official flags of Australia, but none of them have a backwards Southern Cross.

Update 5th February

I received this response from the RSL today:

On the surface this does appear to be so, but logic suggests no-one could make a National Flag with such an error. A more careful examination of the screen shot reveals that the flag is fluttering and folded across the vertical centre line, creating an impression that the Epsilon Crucis (5^th star) has moved towards the jack.

You could pursue this further with the Media division of the Defence Department but I seriously suggest that it is an illusion cause by the wind moving the cloth of the flag.

I have quite a logical mind and have very good spacial perception. This flag is not waving the manner described above. If you were to bend/fold the flag so that Epsilon Crucis appears on the left side of the constellation instead of the right, then there will clearly be other distortions, namely the moving of Delta Crucis (the outermost right star) towards the centre and even the complete covering of the two vertical stars (Gamma and Alpha Crucis).

I even tried to replicate the flag with a piece of material and fold it by hand to make the constellation appear mirror image. I haven’t yet succeeded.

The Department of Defence have responded only with a “we’re looking into it” response.

Update 7th February

I have posted the following video to highlight the error.

Update 9th February -- Mystery solved

The mystery of the flag has been solved.

What is the difference between designing and composing?

Purchase it from Amazon

When designing, you spend your time documenting a faux version of what you are going to build (software or woodwork). You then take these specifications to your workstation or workbench and begin following the plan step by step. When something comes to you out of left field, you go back to your designs and re-design the changes in. Then get back to your station and keep on working until the piece is finished.

When composing, the work feels much more organic. You document/design an idea of what you want to build. In Scrum (an agile software development process) you write up a series of very brief stories which point to the functionality people want the piece to have. When woodworking, you do your best to draw a rough idea of what you want to build on a piece of paper. You take this to your workstation or workbench and begin typing or chiseling away. As your product comes to life, it changes depending on what you see and the challenges you face. You take these in your stride allowing both the output of your work and your idea of what you want to build coalesce until the piece is finished.

But software isn’t like woodworking

Some might say that software and woodworking are completely different endeavours. One is structured and planned, the other is creative and artistic. Over the last couple months I have started realising that they are both very much alike.

Software is more akin to photography & painting than to engineering & building bridges. Making software is creative. You start with an idea of what the product needs to do. You move quickly onto starting to build it. Then by getting feedback about what you are doing from your customer (and yourself) you make small course corrections and continue until the piece is complete.

This is very similar to working on a piece of furniture. You start with a basic design and then allow the pieces of wood guide you the rest of the way. The various grain patterns you see, the “weight” of the piece as you put it together and even your mistakes are elements which you use to course correct as you build.

Even taking a good photograph is like this. You might have an idea of what you want to capture but it isn’t until the scene comes through your lens and then hits your computer where you finesse it that the eventual result reveals itself.

Professional software developers need to start helping people understand this. You don’t need a detailed gantt chart and spec to deliver a premium piece of software. What you do need is a solid idea of the function it must deliver and lots and lots of reviews, communication and creative energy.

So as I begin my many and various projects this year, I hope to focus more on composing rather than design and allow the results to guide me.

The best boss I ever had—Ed Hahn, who directed Organization Development at Mattel—made it clear: You’re only work colleagues until you get to know each other. After that, you’re friends, acquaintances, or enemies. Work, Ed said, is social.

via Facebook at work isn’t an either/or proposition

Email overload

In this post, Shel Holtz talks about how Facebook is becoming a more responsive form of communication than email. Too often, important messages get lost in your email (sometimes on purpose). I have emails in my inbox which have been there for months just waiting for me to action them one day. I’ve even taken the little red flag off some because I know I’m not ever going to get to them.

Email has been around now for decades. It’s a staple of our information diet and we’ve learnt how to deal with it. We have even developed specific behaviours around email, mainly because there is just so much of it to deal with.

Shel describes a distinct difference with social networks. The difference being that there is a strong desire to respond when a friend contacts you via Facebook, Twitter or other “social” tools.

• Is this just because social networks are still a new phenomenon?
• Is it because the “status update mountain” is still a molehill, unlike the “email mountain” becoming Everest?
• Or is there perhaps something else at play here?

Transience

The nature of conversations in social networks is transient. There is a “now” feel to much of what is posted. This also gives it a non-persistent feel as well. In most of the networks I participate in, there isn’t a “keep unread” or “flag for later” notion. What you see when you look at the screen is what is going on right then and there. I find myself caring less about what happened whilst I wasn’t online. This is what people are calling the “real-time web.”

This “real-time” nature may be why I feel an urge to respond as soon as I read the tweet or status update. Because it’s happening right now, I feel a connection to the present moment and therefore the urge to engage. Email no longer has that effect on me. We’ve learnt that you can keep an email in your inbox for years with no repercussions. We haven’t figured that out yet with social media – there is a huge desire to not miss anything.

Relationships

In her article, Shel talks about the increasingly social nature of the workplace.

It’s another example of the intermingling of employees’ work lives and their lives away from work. People used to keep these dimensions of their lives separate, mostly because you interacted with your work colleagues at work and your friends and family at home. Those distinctions are rapidly evaporating when you add your work friends to your social networks; they all become part of a single relationship pool.

via Facebook at work isn’t an either/or proposition

It is now very easy to keep in touch with work colleagues and learn more about them, their interests and their everyday lives. This voyeuristic relationship building is different from the traditional face-to-face getting to know you many of us are used to. Whilst you can debate the effectiveness of it, in the workplace something very interesting is happening.

Different faces

I would say that most people turn up to work with their “work face” on. When they leave, they put back on their “true face.” I’ve written a bit about this duality before and it’s a topic I’ve very passionate about. I believe it is truly changing the nature of work and the nature of our relationships.

Becoming “friends” with your colleagues bring this duality into line. Your work and non-work self suddenly come closer. People get to know the real you. You get to know the real people you work with. Your ability to work with one another is enhanced, significantly. Ultimately, you become free to become yourself and your organisation benefits because of it.

We respond quickly to work friends who ask for help via Facebook or Twitter because we have a closer relationship with them. They have become a part of our social circle. We know when they’re having trouble raising their children. We’ve seen the photos of their wedding. We may have read about their religious beliefs (which is not something usually discussable at work.) We feel connected to them and therefore our desire to engage increases.

As Ed Hahn says, “work is social.” I would add that “work is becoming more social.”

An aside: For any of my staff members reading this, it doesn’t mean I will accept your sick leave announcement via Facebook or Twitter. I’m not quite that progressive (yet)!

It’s so right now

Instant Noodles

After playing with Google Wave for a bit, a friend of mine remarked that it was more like Instant Messaging than email or wiki. The penny immediately dropped for me. Wave encourages increased expectations for an instant response. As I played with Google Wave, the times I saw my colleagues typing along with me was really fun and engaging. I suddenly became anxious however when they had moved onto other things and I contributed to a Wave. I had kept the same expectation that they were there waiting for me. I even found myself getting a little disillusioned when they didn’t respond to my little blips after a couple minutes.

We already grapple with this problem when sending emails. Many people have come to expect a quick response to an email. In this highly connected world we are developing, that expectation is spreading. I can no longer count the number of times I have seen people playing on their Blackberries during meetings. Yes, our meetings need to be more productive but that is no excuse for not being present.

Will Google Wave contribute to this expectation epidemic? What happens when people are left waiting for a response? Will that cause the “wave effect” to dissipate and lead to people jumping off the platform?

As an email replacement

I would like to see a gateway of sorts between Google Wave and the current email system. Something like this would really assist organisations and individuals wanting to move exclusively to waves but still be able to interact with the rest of the world. With the open platform that Google has provided, hopefully some smart folks will create this.

Until then, complete transition may just be too difficult for some. Google risks Wave becoming something extra rather than a replacement for something fundamental. I already have two email clients open all day (Outlook and GMail) and if I want to engage heavily in Google Wave, then I will also need to keep that open. The Google Wave Add-on for Firefox helps by giving users alerts as things change. Google Gears might also be useful here as well. But neither of those go far enough. One next logical step to increase adoption would be a fully fledged gateway between EMail and Waves, at least for the messaging components.

There is an alternative … That is to gain enough traction on Google Wave that the network effect takes over. The Gone Google campaign may help. As more organisations move from Microsoft Exchange to GMail, a further transition to Google Wave might be easier.

As a platform

Google Wave

Many commentators have focused on the current Wave client provided by Google themselves. Google Wave is much more than this client. It has an API but it is much more than that too. Google have worked quite hard to deliver a new protocol called Wave Protocol. Will Google Wave however suffer a similar perception problem that Lotus Notes faced in its prime? Lotus Notes was always viewed as an Email platform but infact it was significantly more than that. I wonder if Google Wave will be perceived as a “replacement for email” platform and nothing more?

Hopefully, developers and organisations out there will build on the protocol itself and find new and exciting ways to use it. The Google Wave client is only one way to breath life into this protocol.

Where will I use it?

To be honest, I’m not yet sure. I had heightened expectations from watching the various videos out there. Now I am beginning to realise that the real time nature isn’t the reality for Google Wave.

• Group work, perhaps on discrete documents, strategies, projects
• Potential replacement for a wiki
• Organising a camping trip

EMail? No, not for me. Not yet anyway.

Meditation Stool #1

The other evening at my meditation class, one person asked me how long it took me to make my small meditation stool. I made it over a weekend and it only took me 3 or 4 hours to pull together and apply the finish (not including waiting/drying time).

On my way home I found myself thinking about this a little more. It didn’t take 3 or 4 hours at all. It took more like 155 years + 4 hours and is still taking time as long as it continues to exist.

Perhaps it was the after-effects of meditation, but I began to realise quite acutely how long a piece of wooden furniture really does take to make. The tree has to be planted, grown, harvested, milled & dried. Then the furniture has to be fashioned. Finally, the timber continues to change over the remaining years of its existence.

Nothing more to say about this yet, except that this brief conversation has changed the way I view my working with wood.

Energy / Environment

Energy & environment

Government are talking about energy prices rising. The fact that they are informing the public of this necessity is a good thing. Now whilst I don’t profess to understand very much about the economics at play here (e.g. subsidies, trading credits) I know enough to recognise that this is a really complex equation to balance.

There is a lot of work being done on establishing the carbon trading regimes, subsidies and various caps. Although really difficult stuff, it is mainly technical work. Some of the economics do venture into behaviours and this is where we go into more of the adaptive work that needs to happen.

Adaptive aspects of this work are around helping the population to make the trade-offs in their values. Currently we want both cheap and readily available energy and to maintain our current lifestyles and bank balances. We want countries and organisations to save energy, stop polluting the earth, but keep making profits in our share portfolio and also keep us employed. Something obviously has to give. Which values do we need to leave behind or adjust and which do we need to take into the future with us?

Businesses also need to challenge their own values. Social responsibility and philosophies that contribute to the environmental and social improvement of the world may need to be traded with traditional values around stock prices and earnings. It may even be that the fundamental notion of “value” needs to be challenged. Currently companies provide returns to their shareholders in the form of money. This may need to change to include a profit that is measured around social responsibility, sustainability and providing a general good for society. To do this, people will need to see benefit in receiving “money” in the form of good will and improvements to society rather than solely in their bank balances.

Violence in our cities

There has been a recent spate of ethnic related bashings in Melbourne. It is being reported as a crisis. We know now that crises can be a sign of an adaptive problem that hasn’t been resolved.

Technical solutions have been thrown at this over numerous years on different situations. Increasing police presence is in the most often used bag of tricks. You get more police, the violence still occurs but you may manage to catch it before it escalates. Is that a solution? It certainly takes some of the immediate pressure off people complaining about this issue and gives them time to retreat to their cubicle, but I don’t believe it solves the underlying problem.

So then we turn to “education programs.” This is going down the right track but unfortunately my experience of these is that they are delivered in purely technical ways — a few ads on TV, press releases, community meetings, catch phrases (“Violence against women, say no!”) and posters in toilet cubicles. The work is hardly ever given back to the people with the problem. To do that would open up a great deal of confrontation and uncertaintly and risk people not being pushed out of their elected positions.

Racial violence

The people with the problem here (both the basher and the bashee) need to work through this together. It will be a direct assault on their values but is the only way to begin to resolve the problem. What values do they hold that are behind this violence? What values do they need to change and leave behind? These letters to the editor (the first few on that page) show an incredible array of what individuals consider to be the “truth” and root cause of this issue. Some point towards recognising this as an adaptive challenge, but most of them I believe continue to focus on rational solutions which will not help.

Rudy Giuliani is used as a case by Heifetz and Linsky. He became renowned for having been successful in lowering the crime rate in New York. In quite a dramatic case, Abner Louima, a Haitian immigrant, was brutally attacked by police after being arrested. The public rebelled at this excessive use of police force. What Giuliani didn’t recognise at the time was that the public needed to be engaged in the debate on what values they were comfortable giving up in order to solve the crime problem. Did they want their civil liberties eroded away in order to solve the problem? Was the problem worth that or not?

This is an example of where the adaptive work was done by people without the problem (e.g. the pollies). The work needed to be done by the people asking for crime rates to be lowered. They needed to come to an understanding themselves of what trade offs would be required. The solution imposed may not have been the solution decided by the people, but that doesn’t matter. The challenge is to people’s values so they needed to be involved in discovered the solution they were happy to live with.

The same issue is begining to surface here in Melbourne with the racially motivated attacks I mentioned earlier.

Censorship and our relationship with China

Censored

This is a great example of an adaptive challenge that stems from deeply rooted beliefs and values. Australia wants a close relationship with China for trading and economic reasons. At the same time their censorship and human rights practices are at odds with ours.

Defending our freedom of speech is something us Australians like to hear that our elected officials are doing. Definitely defend it. That’s a value we hold dear so we feel it needs to be defended. China however has a different perspective on all of this. I believe that it is less about any notions of freedom or even any notions of censorship and is more around their pride and how they are perceived/promoted throughout the rest of the world.

Granted, this is a very post-modern type analysis of the issue and could possibly be left there with a “accept all your differences” type approach. But that won’t solve the problem. Nor will defending values on both sides. Difficult discussions need to happen between the two countries to come to a better understanding around this issue. We can continue to cry foul when their practices offend us and they can continue publishing press within their country about how Australia is “anti-China and siding with terrorists”.

The rhetoric in our papers here is that China needs to better understand how to engage with the West. I believe this needs to happen on both sides. We need to better understand the Chinese perspective and they need to better understand ours. And it isn’t just about understanding and tolerance. It’s about accepting the pressure this relationship puts on our opposing values. Underneath it there will certainly be values in common (e.g. doing the best for our respective countries and people) and it is there where the conversation needs to move to.

*  *  *  *  *

These are three big examples that have come to my mind recently of real life adaptive challenges. There are also plenty of smaller level ones which are in no way less difficult to achieve. In fact these more personal challenges that you face in your every day life (with work, family and loved ones) can be the most rewarding ones to explore.