Author Archive: Paul Epps

An elevated spirit is weak and a low spirit is weak. Do not let the enemy see your spirit. — Miyamoto Musashi, The Book of Five Rings

Aside

He in his madness prays for storms
And dreams that storms will bring him peace.

— Mikhail Lermontov

Look Out for the Blue Hose

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My boy texted me this afternoon that one of the starting cornerbacks for the Cal Golden Bears is in a class with him. In a masterpiece of scheduling, the Cal football team plays the Presbyterian Blue Hose this coming Saturday because apparently Bryn Mawr was unavailable. (Presbyterian College is a church-affiliated college of 1,200 students located in Clinton, S.C.) I texted back, “Tell him to look out b/c Presby is coming off a big win vs North Greenville. NORTH GREENVILLE!” Read more →

Aside

What is most easily put into words is not necessarily what is most important.

The Ruins

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And now behold what remains of this powerful city: a miserable skeleton! What of its vast domination: a doubtful and obscure remembrance! To the noisy concourse which thronged under these porticoes, succeeds the solitude of death. The silence of the grave is substituted for the busy hum of public places; the affluence of a commercial city is changed into wretched poverty; the palaces of kings have become a den of wild beasts; flocks repose in the area of temples, and savage reptiles inhabit the sanctuary of the gods. Ah! how has so much glory been eclipsed? how have so many labors been annihilated? Do thus perish then the works of men–thus vanish empires and nations? — C.F. Volney, The Ruins, or, Meditation on the Revolutions of Empires and the Law of Nature Read more →

What Would People Say?

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‘Spartacus’ star Andy Whitfield dies of lymphoma at 39 Whitfield’s wife, Vashti, in a statement called her husband a “beautiful young warrior” who died on a “sunny Sydney morning” in the “arms of his loving wife.” — msn.com Never heard of him. Also, his wife’s remarks are a tad self-serving, but they did get me to thinking what people would say in the event of my own untimely demise. Best case: “He was a pain in the ass but at least he was interesting.” More likely: “He was a pain in the ass. Once in a great while, he said something interesting. You had to wait for it.” Read more →

Kids Can Be Good at Anything

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If they want to. If it’s important to them. For example: My kid has played hockey most of his life. We know some families where all the kids — boy or girl — play hockey, and almost all of them are good players. I don’t know any families where all the kids play hockey and they’re all bad. Those families have decided for some reason that it’s important for kids to play a good game of hockey. Another example: We live in a school district with a lot of Asian families. They don’t care about hockey. In Asian families, it’s important for the kids to be good at academics and music. You don’t see a lot of Asian guys in the National Hockey League, but you do see a lot of Asian kids at our nation’s best universities. It’s a parenting challenge — getting kids to assign importance to the… Read more →

EppsNet at the Movies: Day for Night

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Day for Night (1973) Directed by François Truffaut. With Jacqueline Bisset, Jean-Pierre Léaud, François Truffaut, Valentina Cortese.. A movie about making a movie . . . The director says, “Making a film is like a stagecoach ride in the old west. When you start, you are hoping for a pleasant trip. By the halfway point, you just hope to survive.” Highly recommended! Read more →

Aside

Some days you slap the panda, some days the panda slaps you.

Happy Labor Day

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When there’s BBQ ribs to be eaten, it’s every man for himself. Wait, that’s sexist. Let me rephrase. When there’s BBQ ribs to be eaten, it’s every mf’er for themselves. Happy Labor Day! Read more →

Marco Polo

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“You can’t fool me. I investigate things. I’m like Marco Polo.” “I don’t understand. How are you like Marco Polo?” “I investigate things.” “Are you thinking Marco Polo was a detective?” “Yeah. That guy who died last year.” “You mean Columbo?” “Right, Columbo.” Read more →

User-Centered Design

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Design should: Make it easy to determine what actions are possible at any moment (make use of constraints). Make things visible, including the conceptual model of the system, the alternative actions, and the results of actions. Make it easy to evaluate the state of the system. Follow natural mappings between intentions and the required actions; between actions and the resulting effect; and between the information that is visible and the interpretation of the system state. In other words, make sure that (1) the user can figure out what to do, and (2) the user can tell what is going on. — Donald Norman, The Design of Everyday Things Read more →

Start by Visualizing Perfection

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One can come at improvement from two angles: How can we make things suck less? or What is the ideal state that we should shoot for? I’m for the second option. It is the classic Lean approach to improvement, BTW: Start by visualizing perfection. — Mary Poppendieck Read more →

Refrigerators

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Office email: A friendly reminder that all refrigerators will be cleaned out this Sunday. Please take anything home that you do not want thrown out. I do not want this carton of Macadamia Vanilla Bean ice cream to be thrown out. Wait — does it matter if I brought the item in, or just that I don’t want it to be thrown out? Read more →

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