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Blog Notes-January 2009

LogBook

Back to my idea of a LogBook as a running commentary of notes to myself. Just a place to collect information. Not necessarily organized - beyond chronological or subheading. My Blog is still an easy way to write more formally. But which takes more time - a blog or notes in this wiki?

  1. Financial Life Organizer (FiLO), which is very similar to PocketMod. PocketMod has individually selectable pages. The idea behind both is to print a single 8 1/2 x 11 sheet of paper with 8 small size pages that can be folded into a pocket sized booklet. Folding instructions: http://pocketmod.com/howto/
    1-1-2009
  2. Planners in the DIY fashion - it is New Years Day after all!
    1-1-2009
  3. Grid+Lines paper system by doane paper. Very functional, includes a PDF to create your own.
    1-14-2009
  4. The Ascent of Money: A Financial History of the World by Niall Ferguson (the book) and online courtesy of PBS, the 2 hour documentary. The book / video traces the evolution of money and shows financial history is the context history. Watch the PBS video or read the book reviews at Amazon.
    1-23-2009
  5. Disk File file browsing came to the top of my list today as I realized that I'm running out of space on my laptop (ok 12GB isn't very close to zero, but it is getting there!). I know that I've written about an (unused) tool sometime in the past few years - so I found my blog entry from June 2007 for SpaceMonger. But it looks as if development has stopped as the last version was from 2006. Time for an alternative. WinDirStat (Windows Directory Statistics), open source and last updated in 2008, seems perfect. WinDirStat is a disk usage statistics viewer and cleanup tool for Microsoft Windows. As I write this it is collecting data from my drive, including a cute little pac man figure that gobbles up file and folder info onscreen.

There are 3 components:

  • a collapsible/expandable directory list (Windows Explorer type folder tree view) - sorted by file/subtree size,
  • a colorful treemap which shows the whole contents of the drive / directory tree, and
  • an extension list (of file extensions) which serves as a legend to the colors in the treemap. 1-6-2009

Video

Watch the growth of Wal-Mart across America in this animated, map based video. Time lapse from 1962 to 2007. 1-14-2009

Advice for studying

Excellent article with 12 hints for accounting students. Albrecht, W. David. (2008). Ace Your Accounting Classes: 12 Hints To Maximize Your Potential, American Journal of Business Education, Volume 1, Number 1 (Quarter 3), pp. 1-8. Also available on the author's blog. 1-14-2009

Accounting Students view of the world today

CFO Magazine has a short article on the view of accounting opportunities today through the eyes of several university accounting majors. Straight from the Students' Mouths -

Accountants-in-training share perceptions about their education, the business world, their career prospects, and their mixed feelings about landing a job at a Big Four firm.
They are secure in their awareness that they are in high demand. Their sights are set on learning a lot in a hurry. They view the financial crisis as being full of opportunity. Most of all, they like to keep their options open.
Those traits came through loudly and clearly from a group of accounting students from The College of William & Mary in Williamsburg, Virginia, who visited CFO.com's New York offices on Thursday. The eight students showed little evidence of possessing the sense of entitlement their generation has been reputed to have. They know they are going to work hard.

continued at CFO.com 1-18-2009

Data Center videos

GeekBrief.TV has a couple of videos that bring you inside the data center for a quick tour of some important elements.

  • Inside the Data Center 1/14/2009
  • Roboticized Data Center 1/13/2009 Discussion and command console demonstration of the automated process to configure a server (or several) to fit the needs of enterprise level customers within about 20 minutes. This video is more about setting up space in a data center. See Inside the Data Center for the view inside.

1-19-2009

Data Analysis - Charts - Visualization

  1. Choosing a Good Chart A related website is Extreme Presentation with a presentation methodology toolset.
  2. Periodic Table of Visualization Methods - clever, JavaScript pop-ups to explain individual methods of data visualization within 6 categories
    1. data visualization
    2. information visualization
    3. concept visualization
    4. strategy visualization
    5. metaphor visualization
    6. compound visualization
Also identifies each method as:
  1. Detail vs Overview vs Detail & Overview
  2. Convergent vs Divergent Thinking
The research paper describing the approach is also available. "Towards A Periodic Table of Visualization Methods for Management"

Lengler R., Eppler M. (2007). Towards A Periodic Table of Visualization Methods for Management. IASTED Proceedings of the Conference on Graphics and Visualization in Engineering (GVE 2007), Clearwater, Florida, USA.

Visual Literacy organizes useful information and links, in addition to the periodic table.

1-19-2009

Trackbacks

The Law of Forced Efficiency: This law says that, 'There is never enough time to do everything, but there is always enough time to do the most important thing.'

Brian Tracy

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