New (recycled?) blog

As the green revolution is sucking up way more things in my life/house than I had expected, and have thrown up a lot of thought, I have created a new blog for all thing eco in my life:
Recycled Chimo
This will also allow me to keep my work from my tree hugging lifestyle...

The Green Revolution

I have started to read this book called How Green are my Wellies and read something about a wardrobe refashion challenge. Basically for a limited time, you don't buy new clothes. I really like this idea, and have decided to take it heads on for a year. This sounds very scary (to me at least) but lord knows I have enough clothes to last me a few years, not just one.

Along with this new challenge, I have decided to take seriously what I have been dabbling in here and there, of greener living. I already do use the ecoballs for washing and I promote the use of baking soda for cleaning all the time.

So here is my green revolution rules!

1) I shall not buy new fashion items for one year.

This means no new clothes (thankfully I just bought a whole load of undies last week), no bags, no shoes, no accessories.
However, I am allowed to buy second hand items. I am not worried about this as I used to work in oxfam so I know the trade pretty well. Unfortunately, I do know that the staff get the best pick (as I did when I worked there) and I also no longer agree with oxfam's policies (fortunately there are plenty of other places I can go rummage).
I am also allowed to make my own fashion items. This is good as I can make lots of things, and it will give me an opportunity to learn how to make clothes.
I am allowed to revamp clothes I already have. This should be fun, it is something that I have been meaning to get my paws stuck in for a while.
I can be given new items, but I must resist brand new items. This is to stop my lovely kind mother from buying me an entire new wardrobe out of pity for me.
This next one is not in the standard rules, but I would like to give it a try: I am not allowed to throw out clothes immediately. I must either revamp or find other uses so that it is reused at least once more.

2) I will only buy green/organic cosmetics skincare

with the exception of: hair bleach/dye, hair styling products and nail polish/removers, although I must endeavor to minimise my use of these non-green products and try out more eco-friendly alternatives.

3) I will only buy green house hold cleaning products

I already use ecoballs for washing and baking soda & vinegar for most cleaning, but I will go all out green on all cleaning products from now on.

4) I will do my best to recycle as much as I can

Again, I already do this, but I can do more!

but most important rule of all,
I will not look like a tree hugger while doing all this!!

I will however use up all the products I do have at the moment first, as I think it would be even more un-green to throw out products that are perfectly usable, just for the sake of principles.

I am now going to curl up with the laptop and do some further research into this green living thing...

あなたのタスク vs ADHDな人

カップルなどは、夜、夕食後、ソファーに座ってよく明日しなきゃいけない事を話し合いますよね。でもADHDの私には、こう聞こえます：
「あー明日は（ピーーーーーーーーーーーーー）をしなきゃ。」

そうです、ナーンにも聞こえてないのです。

聞きたくない訳ではないんです。悪気があって聞いてない訳ではないのです。ただ、聞いてしまうと、脳がオーバーロードしてしまうから、シャットダウンしなければいけないのです。一人分のスケジュール管理やタスク管理でも精一杯なのに、他の人のタスクまで頭にたたき込まれたらたまったもんじゃない。タスク達がボトボト頭から逃げていっちゃいます。だから、その人とあんまり関係ないタスクの話になるとシャットダウンしちゃいます。

だから話し合いたい時に話をちゃんと聞いて話し合ってくれる人になってほしかったら、この２ステップをおすすめいたします：

ステップ１：よぶんな(その人に話さなくても出来る）事ははなさない。
ステップ２：話す事はその人と本当に話し合わなければ出来ない事だけにする。

しばらくすれば、相手は、あなたがタスクの話をする時はちゃんと聞いて話し合わなければとおぼえてくれます。

例えとすれば：
「あー明日、洗濯物干して、預けてた荷物とりにいって、本をかいかなければ。それから夕飯図くり。夕飯なにがいい？」
（多分、私からの返事はないでしょう。とっくにシャットダウンしちゃってますから）

それより、こっちの方が効果的だとおもいます：
「明日の夕飯なにがいい？」

「パスタがいい。」

はいおわり！

味気ないかもしれませんが「話聞いてなかったでしょう？」とけんかするより断然いいとおもいませんか？

Your tasks to an ADHD person

When you tell an ADHD person your schedule or tasks, it sounds like this:

"God tomorrow I have to do........................... all that in one day!"

yes, that's right, we tend to blank out have glaze over the world when you start telling us the long list of things you have to do tomorrow. It's not that we don't care, we do. However, an ADHD person often struggles to keep up with their own tasks, that they really can't cope having someone input in their brain what someone else has to do. It's really not a good idea to overload an ADHD person with two people's tasks right?

The unfortunate side effect of this is that if you keep telling us your tasks, we learn to switch off every time you tell us your tasks. So, even when you actually want our input on it, talk about it, we're already switched off. A good way to get around this problem is in two steps:

1) Do not overload an ADHD person by talking to them about tasks that you don't need their input on.
2) Keep talking about tasks to the ones you actually want to discuss with them about.

Soon, your ADHD partner will learn that you will only talk about a task when you want their full attension and learn to do so for you.

For example, I would probably switch off at the following:
"oh yeah I have to do some washing, then go pick up a package, then go buy a book I've wanted, make dinner... oh what do you want for dinner?"

You probably won't get a reply to the question of what I want for dinner, because I've already switched off to protect myself from the other person overloading my brain. A much more effective way would be:

"What do you want for dinner?"

"Pasta would be nice"

Done :)

Cool Design

This is good engineering to me...



Found on this blog

New Blinged Toy

I bought a new toy the other day, the Asus eee PC mainly for when I go to Japan at the end of June, and for the conferences. It was white, and I couldn't resist blinging the whole thing... I chose to use swarovski crystals (of course) in Fushia, rose, light rose and aurora, in SS12, SS9 and SS5 size.

I glued the rhinestones all around the edges....

Then started to cover it with fushia and rose stones... This was how far I got after day 1:

At the end of day 2:

.... and finished!! (on day 3)

New Tool

As I mentioned previously, I work between 4 different machines with 3 different operating systems. This makes maintaining constant work flow very difficult. It's frustrating when you want a particular link only to remember that you saved in on another machine.

I have started to use Foxmarks, which synchronises bookmarks on all your firefox browsers, be it at your office or at home. If, like me, you cannot install it on your firefox at work, then you can still access your book marks by logging into their website.

I don't know why I didn't bother using this before, it is making my life so much simpler.

Mind Mapping

I have finally jumped into the mind mapping tool.

Mind mapping was something I have always wanted to get into, and have read lots about, but I resisted it for the following reasons:

1. I worried too much about having a messy handwritten mindmap.
2. I worried about what if I wanted to add more and move thingsa?
3. I worried about not having access to them at all times.

I realise there are several software out there that works great. However, I work across four different machines, 3 different operating systems and one which I cannot install anything on.

Finally, after some inspiration from a great blog by Asada san something clicked today, and I thought about trying an online tool. So I did some searching online (well, google) and I have joined MindMeister I chose this as it seemed easier to use than couple of others I tried out, it's more intuitive to use, and most importantly, it's easy to make it colourful! colour is always good!


I have made a few mindmaps this afternoon, and I am loving it already. It feels like drawing a map of how my brain is thinking. I knew this in theory, but it is only now that I am using an automated tool that I am able to draw a clear and tidy mind map.

It's also a great idea incubator. I have now drawn a map about all the different areas I have to work on for my PhD. I can now go away and when I think of something else to add, I can just log on, find the map, and add to it, without ever worrying about running out of space or losing the map amongst pages and pages of writing.

The only thing I would like is to be able to draw a note that is unrelated to any node. This is for writing notes about the map, such as what it is for and dates edited, etc. I'm not sure if this is lack of tool or lack of knowledge of tool...

A Week's Reading

(my gosh, I can't believe I last posted in October last year!)


well, exam time is here, which means invigilation time for me -> I get lots of time to read! so here are some of the books I have been reading in the last week:

頭のいい人がしている仕事のメモ術・ノート術
最強のビジネス文章&書類術
頭のいい人がしている究極の手帳術
STUDY HACKS!
考具—考えるための道具、持っていますか?
図解 百戦百勝のメモ術・ノート術—仕事
頭のいい人がしている整理・ファイリング術
佐藤可士和の超整理術
情報は1冊のノートにまとめなさい
定時で上がる!手帳術
[図解]スピード・ノート
「超」整理手帳2008 スペシャルBOX
人生を変える手帳術
整理の技術—あの資料はどこに行った

Unfortunately, these are all Japanese books so probably not very useful to the people that usually read this blog, but basically, they are books about organisation, how to orgnaise your diary, how to make notes, file, etc.

And yes, I speed read... however, I have noticed that I can only speed read in Japanese and not English. This is extra interesting in that I have spent most of my life reading English, and therefore I should be faster at reading English, but I am not... how strange is that?

I have also re-invented my organisational system, but I shall post about that at a later date :)

Dyslexia

I was interviewed for another article, and I have a feeling my reply is way too long to be published in full, so here is the reply in full :)

1) When did you first recognise you had trouble with reading/writing etc?
I never recognised I had reading/writing difficulties until I was diagnosed with Dyslexia. However, in school, was a very frustrated person. I knew I was just as good as other girls, and I knew I worked really hard, but my grades were always average. I didn't get Ds and Es, but I could only get a couple of As, and the rest were Bs and Cs, no matter how hard I tried. I found it difficult to form my ideas into words - I could see the answer in my head, but by the time it was on paper, it tend to be a jumble of mess. I believe I still do that now!

2) When were you first diagnosed with dyslexia?
I was 23 when I was diagnosed with severe dyslexia. It was by chance that a friend was doing her final year project on dyslexia, and we started talking about our revision style. Certain things I said must've triggered something and she asked if I was dyslexic and suggested I should get checked out. The thought had never crossed my mind before that I could possibly be dyslexic. I didn't have a very good understanding of dyslexia then.

3) How has it affected your life?
Dyslexia itself? I'm not quite sure, because looking back now, post-diagnosis, dyslexia has always been part of my life, and I learn to work with it. It's hard to know how something has affected you when you have never been without.
Diagnosis itself however, was an eye opener for me. First week I spent crying - I fell down the trap of believeing dyslexia equals stupid. I was filled with self-doubt that I could ever do anything of any value, now that I had this thing called dyslexia. Fortunately, in the second week, I thought to myself "but I've got this far (I was in my final year of my BSc), I can't be stupid!". Then I started reading about dyslexia, and how to cope with it - turns out that I had developed a lot of coping mechanisms for dyslexia without realising. I also realised that many of the skills I have, I gained because of my dyslexia, not despite it.
Dyslexia has become inspiration for my life since then. My whole work is motivated by the hope that one day, it will help children with dyslexia - so that they may not feel so angry with themselves for not being able to do what society expects them to do.

4) How did UCLan help you with your dyslexia?
A lot of this happened when I was studying in another university, and I was pretty much ok with dyslexia by the time I came to UCLan, so I decided not to take up valuable resources offered by UCLan that other students, with more needs could be given the time for.

5) What is your current job role/position?
I am a full time Ph.D. student in the Computing Department, and I also lecture on a part time basis.

6) What did you study at UCLan?
I completed my MSc in Human Computer Interaction in 2005 and I am currently undertaking my Ph.D. at UCLan.

7) Can you tell me about your research and your findings?
My research studies how children make typing mistakes, to see if dyslexic children make different sorts of typing mistakes to non-dyslexic children make. If there is a significant difference between the two groups, I believe we could use that to creat a simple, free test that can be applied to every child, which may pick up dyslexia earlier in children. I want to reduce the number of people like myself and many others that slip through the system undiagnosed, quietly struggling through school.

8) Anything else you would like to add about dyslexia, yourself?
Dyslexia, I believe is a gift - it give me meaning in life, a purpose and a reason. However I am not a special case. With the right help and understanding from family, friends, teachers and society, any child with dyslexia has the potential and the right to have the most amazing life. All we need are chances. Chances to show people what we can do.

De Atramentis inks

Gorgeous inks, some you just won't see anywhere else, really interesting range, including ones with interesting scents and themed on historical people.

I bought the Charles Dickens and Leonardo da Vinci (of course) inks, both of which are great colours.

De Atramentis Inks

Why I refuse to take ADHD medication

Fast forward to 15:08 into the talk:
Sir Ken Robinson Talks about Gillian Lynne

Post Secret Project

very moving.

Video

Labelling your moleskine

If you carry more than one moleskine of either size, you know that few seconds spent on figuring out which is which in your bag or on your desk all adds up right? or it may be just me that worries that all those seconds had robbed me of spending time saving the world... anyway, so the only sensible thing is to label each of them in some way.

Debossing would be a neat idea, but I was too scared to smack a hammer on a lovely moleskine, and I don't have a set of those letters that you use to to deboss with. Besides, the whole point of this is that it's easy to do, and easy to read...

So came the labels.

Dymo labels:
Stylish, looks great against black. Does not last very long at all (days), due to its relative inflexibility and the spine's roundness.


Tepura lables:
4mm: lasts the longest (months), but font rather small to read.
6mm: Looks the best, medium life span - (weeks).
6mm extra strength: The extra strength adds nothing to the life span on a moleskine.
9mm: Makes labels easy to read, but not as stylish, medium life span (weeks).

Right now, my moleskines are all labeled with tepura 4mm tapes, just because it lasts the longest.



check out other ideas of decorating your moleskine on flickr's moleskinerie.

Diary Moleskine Hack

As people know, I am pretty addicted to moleskines, and like to have any excuse to use them.

I've also been searching for the *perfect* diary for myself for years. I often start of with two, sometimes three diaries at the beginning of the year, use and compare, then get another diary around august when the academic year diaries come out. All in all, I try out about four diaries a year, and have tried most diaries out there, both in Europe and Japan.

One problem is that they never 100% suit my (very picky, very choosey) needs. The weekly view is too small, the monthly view is too small per day, doesn't have a monthly view, etc etc. So I finally took the plunge and drew my own... at least that way, if there's something i'm not happy with, I can actually tell the creator so, and get changes made to the diary! It's been just under 2 months now so I thought i'd report on the "making of" and "use of" experience.

For this task, I have used a Large squared moleskine notebook. It has 240 pages, which means after 52 weekly vews (104 pages), and 12 monthly views (48 pages - 2 pages glued as one) it still leaves 88 pages for notes (112 pages if you use single pages for monthly). I also thought the square paper would make my life easier in drawing all those lines. It also has the advantage that as the lines are closer together, you ultimately end up able to write more on the page.

Here is the cover... nothing new here:

Added a "Schedule" label with a Tepla 4mm black on white label... I find this is more durable than any other tepla lables, including the 6mm "extra strong" sticky label. I label all my moleskines, to make my life considerably easier when there are several in my bag.

I split the notebook into three sections.
1. Monthly view
2. Weekly view
3. Notes
The sections are devided by pink cards stuck on page so it's easy to see where the sections are, without being obtrusive (I didn't want tabs sticking out the sides).

Here is the monthly view. Monthly view are very important for me as that is where I do all my schedulings... It frustrates me when diaries do not come with monthly views. Before I could start drawing up the squares, I stuck 2 pages together to creat one thick page for all the months. This is because I didn't want any writing to be seen on the other side (I HATE THAT!!), and this will block any writing, regardless of what pen you use (within reason).
I created a blank column on the left hand side, to allow me to make quick notes about other people's schedules (e.g. when my supervisor is away), and also to even up the table. One thing I do not like are diaries that put two days into one square just because the month spreads over 6 weeks. So I settled on a 6 sqare by 6 square per day, which looks tidy and gives me ample space.
I have always colour coded my schedule:
Red: Important events, deadlines meetings and appointments.
Blue: Travelling info.
Black: Any other info.
Orange: Birthdays.
Deadlines are also starred and doublelined.
Events that have no fixed dates are usually written in with a pencil or stuck on a post it note.

This is one of the seprators. Glue A6 piece of card on page, and trim slightly bigger than the page. I use this space to keep notes for the following year.

The weekly view: This is basically my tickler files (for portability... I can't lug 43 folders between England and Japan all the time!). Tasks gets written here that I must do on that day. The tasks are (of course) colour coded:
Red: Tasks that needs to be done on a computer (my macbook pro is red so it's just association).
blue: tasks that have to be done at the office.
Black: tasks that can be done anywhere, or mostly at home.
(I sometimes slack off and don't colour code!)
I use circles to indicate the "waiting for"s.

Notes section: The 88 pages left are free for me to keep lots of lists. Lists like, sometime/maybe, 101 things to do in 1001 days, anything! The only thing I did do for these pages were to draw a line through them, so that I would use the pages more economically.

Book darts keep track of what page I'm on, to indicate "this month", "this week" and "Next blank page".

The whole process of creating the diary took just an evening while watching TV for most of the time.

In using the new diary:
so far, I have really enjoyed using it. Previous to this notebook, I used to carry a Monthly diary, a pocket moleskine diary (weekly) for tickler file, and another pocket moleskine (Plain) for the lists. So it's nice to have all three in one notebook. I've yet to "not have a space to jot something down" which is crucial..... and it's a MOLESKINE :D

Kyoto Trip

Went to Kyoto with my mother again to continue the pilgrimage we started back in spring. Did 5 temples, just 5 left to do in the winter.

Mt Fuji on the way to Kobe airport.

Found Oxygen-in-a-can, being sold at convinis, flavoured oxygen no less! From left to right, green-grapefruits, blue-strong mint, pink-rose lavender, orange-not sure, black-coffee. Even I found this weird!

Kyoto Tower as seen from my hotel room at Hotel Granvia, my favourite hotel in Kyoto.

Kiyomizu temple for the... 6th or 7th time?

Three empty cicada shells, the grounds of kiyomizu temple was littered with them!

Close up of a cicada shell.

Training around Britain, August 2008

I have discovered a great deal, called Brit Rail Pass which you can only purchase from outside the UK, but it makes travelling by train stupidly cheap in comparison to what we normally pay.

So to make the most of it, I have decided to spend whole of August next year to travel around England and Scotland. Plan is to spend 2 weeks below Preston, and 2 weeks above Preston (so that I can spend a night at home half way).

If you're interested in joinging me for any number of days, please let me know, especially all my friends that live in Europe, this is a great way (not to mention cheap!) of travelling around England & Scotland :)

I'll post more details on the journey as I plan them :)

Travel Millage

5.7.7.
Preston->Manchester (car): 30 miles
Manchester -> London (plane): 185 miles
8.7.7.
London -> Edinburgh (train): 411 miles
9-13.7.7.
Around Scotland (train): 645 miles
13.7.7.
Edinburgh -> Carlisle (train): 98 miles
Carlisle -> Preston (car): 89 miles
Preston -> Chester (car): 57 miles
15.7.7.
Chester -> London (train): 179 miles
16.7.7.
London -> Manchester (plane): 185 miles
Manchester -> Preston (car): 30 miles
20.7.7.
Preston -> Penrith (car): 71 miles
23.7.7.
Penrith -> Preston (car): 71 miles
30.7.7.
Preston -> London (car): 240 miles
London -> Tokyo (plane): 9536 miles

Total miles travelled in July = 11,827 miles

no wonder I haven't had time to blog...

Month in Review - June

I know this is a month late, but only realised that I did not get round to blogging this!

Things I did in June 2007

1. Went to Denmark
2. Went to an international conference (in Denmark!)
3. Made new friends from the conference.
4. Designed 2 new experiments.
5. Came up with a new paper idea.
6. Designed a tool for establishing student-supervisor expectations.
7. Attended and presented at two internal conferences.
8. Learnt about visualisation methods.
9. Designed a new evaluation method.
10. Tutoring a staff member to get more organised.
11. Helped a friend in getting more organised.
12. Attended a team building day.
13. Made several contacts from the above day.
14. Taught 80 teenagers hour to make stock animation.
15. Saved and paid for bestfriend's daughter's birthday party.
16. Planned out a one day workshop.
17. Helped out on a usability test.
18. Learnt that it's ok to accept yourself as you are (I don't remember this now!!).
19. Identified new ways of analysing data I already have analysed.
20. Made effort to stay in regular contact with my close friends.
21. Learnt to listen more to others.
22. Took time out to consult friends.
23. Planned an induction day event that doubles up as data gathering experiment.

If you ever feel that you've done nothing and achieved nothing, I recommend you trying this, I thought I had done NOTHING in June!

Good Beginners guide to GTD

The blog "Getting Things Done" has written a great guide for absolute beginner of GTD and rather than waste a lot of time re-writing the same thing (when I should be writing a call for papers) I am going to link his page so I can tell people to go read it there :)

GTD for Absolute Beginners