kev/null/vox

Vox Hunt: By Yours Truly

nobody@vox.com(Kevin Cheng) — Wed, 25 Oct 2006 11:04:48 -0700

Show us a self-portrait.
With enough social sites and conferences needing bios, I've got my share ... here's two common ones I use.

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Thinking is Hard Work

nobody@vox.com(Kevin Cheng) — Wed, 11 Oct 2006 00:48:04 -0700

I'm at the halfway point for a 3 week long project I'm doing with my team where we're coming up with ideas and visualizing the future of Yahoo! Local and Maps. Sounds rather im-porr-tahnt wouldn't you say? It's interesting because coming up with solutions and also communicating them in a concise way turns out to be way more taxing than doing the actual day to day design work. Who knew thinking could be so draining? I feel like in a week and a half of doing this, I've spent more mental energy than I have in the past few months combined. I need to do this kind of thing more in my spare time on my numerous side projects.

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Jane Kim for School Board

nobody@vox.com(Kevin Cheng) — Fri, 29 Sep 2006 12:50:01 -0700

Pseudo cross post. For those that don't look at my "real" blog, Jane Kim is my future roommate and friend and she's running for San Francisco School Board. It'd be great if you can help out in terms of an online donation but more importantly, I can't vote as a Canadian and if you can, I really hope you pick Jane and her platform.

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Creating Your Own QoTD

nobody@vox.com(Kevin Cheng) — Tue, 22 Aug 2006 12:35:43 -0700

When I looked at George's personal QOTD, and then his link to Anil's, there wasn't any clear explanation of how it could be done. So I dissected the URL for their respective questions. The URL for George's looked like this:

http://www.vox.com/compose/?xid=6a00b8ea069777dece00c225228b71604a&rule=qotd&ArcheType=Answer

The link is a compose link so it takes you straight to a "new post" screen. There's three parameters: xid, rule, and ArcheType. Rule and Archetype are "qotd" and "Answer" so these seem like obvious ones to keep. The problem was, there wasn't anything obvious that set the actual text.

Looking at the actual prepopulated text when I clicked on George's qotd, I realized that it was simply copying the exact title he wrote and the "quote" was his blog text. Therefore, it was simply copying the post's details in a certain way based on the rule and archetype. It figures out what post it is from the xid.

So how do you get the xid? You can do it by saving your post and then going to edit it. In the URL, you will see an xid which you can copy. So step by step, creating your own QOTD goes like this:

Create your QOTD but leave the answer link out. The title is the answer's title, the entry is the quoted question.
Save it as a draft.
In the url, you'll see something like http://www.vox.com/compose/posted?asset_id=6a00c2251cf071604a00c22523ba6a8e1d copy the part after "asset_id".
Go back to your post and now add an answer link. The link should say something like http://www.vox.com/compose/?xid=XXX&rule=qotd&ArcheType=Answer where XXX should be the ID that you just copied in step 3.
Save and Publish.

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QotD: A-Ha!

nobody@vox.com(Kevin Cheng) — Mon, 21 Aug 2006 08:36:29 -0700

Thanks to George for pointing this out on his blog (with a very appropriate qotd title of his own) the ability to do your own qotds. So just to goof off ... what is your favorite music video of all time? [Who asked this question?] [Answer]

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QotD: Is This Thing On?

nobody@vox.com(Kevin Cheng) — Sat, 19 Aug 2006 12:41:01 -0700

When was the last time you had to speak in front of a group? How did you feel?

I wish there was a way to answer QOTDs from the past. I can't be on Vox everyday and forcing me to only answer today's question doesn't force me to come back daily, it just makes me go "oh, I don't like this question," and not post (or hopefully, post something else). I'm still wrestling with when I post something to kevnull.com anyways.

I went to the effort of going back in time to answer this QOTD because it was actually asked the day after I just did a presentation for UXWeek. I had some morning jitters, more so than I normally do. Prior to the presentation, my stomach felt queasy and my nose was sniffling. I tried having some juice and muffin to help stabilize. As I was getting some food, I sniffed lightly and the woman next to me said, "bless you," which freaked me out because I suddenly felt this sniffling was going to be a bigger deal especially since it was mic'd.

The audience was about 100-150 which is a pretty good size but not overwhelming as I felt like I could still interact with them. A little bit of a twist in this time's presentation was that before I had everyone draw each other, I got them to sing happy birthday to an attendee. That was memorable, I hope.

From the feedback I've heard, everyone seemed to enjoy the presentation thoroughly and the butterflies left as soon as I started (though immediately after, the stomach acted up again). If anyone reading this was at the presentation, thanks!

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Vox Hunt: Earn Your Stripes

nobody@vox.com(Kevin Cheng) — Sat, 19 Aug 2006 12:24:15 -0700

Take a photo of something striped.

The New Adaptive Path Team Photo

I am actually on a quest to make this top "interestingness" for "adaptivepath" tag (and perhaps for their individual tags, too). Go star and and stuff.

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QotD: Hello, Cleveland!

nobody@vox.com(Kevin Cheng) — Wed, 09 Aug 2006 14:40:36 -0700

If you had a band, what would you call yourselves?
Question submitted by Zoot.

I've often thought that the most mundane things make the best band names. Things like street/road signage, when used as a band name somehow sound a lot deeper. For example:

No U-Turn
Lost and Found
Keep Dogs On Leash
Congratulations Lee Elementary Class of 97

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A Puzzle For You

nobody@vox.com(Kevin Cheng) — Wed, 09 Aug 2006 14:36:03 -0700

http://n.nfshost.com/1.html

start at 1. get to 30. i'm at 13 at the moment ...

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QotD: You've got to blog!

nobody@vox.com(Kevin Cheng) — Mon, 31 Jul 2006 12:27:13 -0700

If you could get someone in your life to start a blog, who would it be and why?

I'd get Jane, Sean , Mark and Gareth to blog. Because they're on my team and looking at this Vox demo on a projector.

Mark in Canucks/Roots Gear

Paper Prototyping a Jacket

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