Alien Invasion in My Backyard / Deceptive Desserts

Issue No. 119

FROM SLOBBERY ROBOTS AND ALIENS WITH BRIEFCASES TO DIDGERIDOO LESSONS

Alien Invasion in My Backyard: An EMU Club Adventure
by Ruben Bolling
Andrews McMeel Publishing
2015, 112 pages, 5.3 x 8 x 0.4 inches

Buy on Amazon

TV will tell you the truth is out there. Decades ago folks would warn you to “Keep watching the skies!” But kids know the truth: The mysteries aren’t out there, they’re right here. They are in every bump from the attic, that weird locked door in the basement, and, especially, the often mystifying backyard. Kids know that’s where the real mysteries lie, and we’re all lucky that Ruben Bolling knows it, too.

Alien Invasion in my Backyard, the first in the EMU Club series, is a fun and ridiculous (in just the right way) story of the creation of the Exploration Mystery Unbelievable Club. The book itself is intended to be the Official Report of their first mystery and written by eleven year-old President Stuart Tennemeier who, other than planning on a growth spurt in college, is planning to document all their amazing adventures. His best friend, CEO Brian, and his little sister Violet (no title because Mom makes them let her join) join him to solve all of life’s important mysteries. And we can’t forget Sergeant at Arms Ferdinand, Stuart’s loyal dog who proves critical to cracking the case. As an Official Report the reader gets direct access to the EMU Club files, including photos of their whole adventure lovingly taped to the lined graph paper it’s printed on. This is fresh from the brave pioneers themselves and you’ll read and see every detail, from slobbery robots and aliens with briefcases to didgeridoo lessons.

Ruben Bolling is the pen name of the creator of the awesomely acidic Tom the Dancing Bug and a finalist for the 2016 Herblock Award for Editorial Cartooning. This, his first work for kids, is a light, charming read that one can only hope gets into the hands of many a little one thirsting for adventure. As a recovering child who looked for mystery behind every door but mostly found it in books, I can tell you I enjoyed reading every moment of this book and cannot wait until I can share it with my own little adventurer. Once he learns how to talk, find important clues, and play the didgeridoo, of course. – Rob Trevino

BAKE THE MOST GHOULISH SWEET TREATS YOU’LL EVER EAT

Deceptive Desserts: A Lady’s Guide to Baking Bad!
by Christine McConnell
Regan Arts
2016, 288 pages, 8 x 10 x 1 inches

Buy on Amazon

Take a ripened crafter, mix in a pinch of YouTube lessons on cake decorating, blend that with a humorous fascination with the macabre, and you’ve got Christine McConnell’s new cookbook, Deceptive Desserts.

Just four years ago McConnell had never even baked a cake. But she was already a professional makeup and hair stylist, an impeccable photographer (much of which she learned through YouTube), and even created her own vintage-inspired clothes. Then after seeing some online photos of beautiful cakes, she decided to take a few online lessons on cake decorating. In 2013, while perfecting her baking skills, she made a batch of life-sized chocolate tarantula treats out of Girl Scout cookies for Halloween and realized that baking the dark side was her new passion. Her list of ghoulish culinary masterpieces quickly grew, along with her Instagram account, which now has over 248,000 followers.

Books That Belong On Paper first appeared on the web as Wink Books and was edited by Carla Sinclair. Sign up here to get the issues a week early in your inbox.

Project Management

Tools for Possibilities: issue no. 191

How to run a project

Peopleware

Hard-won wisdom fills this small book: How to create a team, place, or company that is productive. First published 20 years ago, and updated once since then, copies of it have quietly served as a guru for many start ups and successful projects in Silicon Valley. Neither academic nor faddish, two veteran consultant authors offer real intelligence. This book has totally informed how I do projects. I learned about the myth of overtime, the need for closure and ceremonies, how teams jell, and why everyone should and can have a window. I first read it decades ago and re-read it every time I embark on anything involving more than one person and several years of my life. Unlike a lot of management lore, it is aimed at the project level (where I want to be) rather than the large organization. The message in the book touts productivity, without ever mentioning the dreary idea of time management. It’s more about optimizing people, and thus the title, Peopleware. — KK

• I was teaching an in-house design course some years ago, when one of the upper managers buttonholed me to request that I assess some of the people in the course (his project staff). He was particularly curious about one woman. It was obvious he had his doubts about her: “I don’t quite see what she adds to a project — she’s not a great developer or tester or much of anything.” With a little investigation, I turned up this intriguing fact: During her twelve years at the company, the woman in question had never worked on a project that had been anything other than a huge success. It wasn’t obvious what she was adding, but projects always succeeded when she was around. After watching her in class for a week and talking to some of her co-workers, I came to the conclusion that she was a superb catalyst. Teams naturally jelled better when she was there. She helped people communicate with each other and get along. Projects were more fun when she was part of them. When I tried to explain this idea to the manager, I struck out. He just didn’t recognize the role of catalyst as essential to a project.
• Any regular get-together meeting is somewhat suspect to have a ceremonial purpose rather than a focused goal of consensus.
  But organizations have a need of ceremony. It’s perfectly reasonable to call a meeting with a purpose that is strictly ceremonial, particularly at project milestones, when new people come on board, or for celebrating good work by the group. Such meetings do not waste anyone’s time. They fulfill real needs for appreciation. They confirm group membership — its importance and its value.
• Modern office politics makes a great class distinction in the matter of allocating windows. Most participants emerge as losers in the window sweepstakes. People who wouldn’t think of living in a home without windows end up spending most of their daylight time in windowless workspace.
  We are trained to accept windowless office space as inevitable. The company would love for every one of us to have a window, we hear, but that just isn’t realistic. Sure it is. There is a perfect proof that sufficient windows can be built into a space without excessive cost. The existence proof is the hotel, any hotel. You can’t even imagine being shown a hotel room with no window. You wouldn’t stand for it. (And this is for a space you’re only going to sleep in.)

• The purpose of a team is not goal attainment but goal alignment.
• A few very characteristic signs indicate that a jelled team has occurred. The most important of these is low turnover during projects and in the middle of well-defined tasks. The team members aren’t going anywhere till the work is done. Things that matter enormously prior to jell (money, status, position for advancement) matter less or not at all after jell. People certainly aren’t about to leave their team for a rinky-dink consideration like a little more salary.
  
  There is a sense of eliteness on a good team. Team members feel they’re part of something unique. They feel they’re better than the run of the mill. They have a cocky, SWAT Team attitude that may be faintly annoying to people who aren’t part of the group.
• In my two years at Bell Labs, we worked in two-person offices. They were spacious, quiet, and the phones could be diverted. I shared my office with Wendl Thomis who went on to build a small empire as an electronic toy maker. In those days, he was working on the ESS fault dictionary. The dictionary scheme relied upon the notion of n-space proximity, a concept that was hairy enough to challenge even Wendl’s powers of concentration. One afternoon, I was bent over a program listing while Wendl was staring into space, his feet propped up on the desk. Our boss came in and asked, “Wendl! What are you doing?” Wendl said, “I’m thinking.” And the boss said, “Can’t you do that at home?”
• Organizations also have some need for closure. Closure for the organization is the successful finish of the work as assigned, plus perhaps an occasional confirmation along the way that everything is on target (maybe a milestone achieved or a significant partial delivery completed). How much confirmation corporations require is a function of how much money is at risk. Frequently, closure only at the end of a four-year effort is adequate for the needs of the organization.
  
  The problem here is that organizations have far less need for closure than do the people who work for them. The prospect of four years of work without any satisfying “thunk” leaves everyone in the group thinking, “I could be dead before this thing is ever done.” Particularly when the team is coming together, frequently closure is important. Team members need to get into the habit of succeeding together and liking it. This is part of the mechanism by which the team builds momentum.
  

• Lost production due to change of personnel.
• Productivity took a hit when Louise left, even passing below zero for a while as others scurried to make up for the loss of a well-integrated team member. Then, eventually, it worked its way up to where it was before.
  The shaded area on the graph represents the lost production (work that didn’t get done) caused by Louise’s departure. Or, viewed differently, it is the investment that the company is now making to get Ralph up to where Louise was after the company’s past investments in her skills and capabilities.
• Once a team begins to jell, the probability of success goes up dramatically. The team can become almost unstoppable, a juggernaut for success. Managing these juggernaut teams is a real pleasure. You spend most of your time just getting obstacles out of their way, clearing the path so that bystanders don’t get trampled underfoot: “Here they come, folks. Stand back and hold onto your hats.” They don’t need to be managed in the traditional sense, and they certainly don’t need to be motivated. They’ve got momentum.
• Have you ever been in an organization that simply glowed with health? People were at ease, having a good time and enjoying interactions with their peers. There was no defensiveness, no sense that single individuals were trying to succeed in spite of the efforts of those around them. The work was a joint product. Everybody was proud of its quality.
  Presented below is an admittedly simplistic list o the elements of a chemistry-building strategy for healthy organization:
  -Make a cult of quality.
  -Provide lots of satisfying closure.
  -Build a sense of eliteness.
  -Allow and encourage heterogeneity.
  -Preserve and protect successful teams.
  -Provide strategic but not tactical direction.
• When you first start measuring the E-Factor, don’t be surprised if it hovers around zero. People may even laugh at you for trying to record uninterrupted hours: “There is no such thing as an uninterrupted hour in this madhouse.” Don’t despair. Remember that you’re not just collecting data, you’re helping to change people’s attitudes. By regularly noting uninterrupted hours, you are giving official sanction to the notion that people ought to have at least some interruption-free time. That makes it permissible to hide out, to ignore the phone, or to close the door (if, sigh, there is a door).
  At one of our client sites, there was a nearly organic phenomenon of red bandannas on dowels suddenly sprouting from the desks after a few weeks of E-Factor data collection. No one in power had ever suggested that device as an official Do Not Disturb signal; it just happened by consensus. But everyone soon learned its significance and respected it.
• When you observe a well-knit team in action, you’ll see a basic hygienic act of peer-coaching that is going on all the time. Team members sit down in pairs to transfer knowledge. When this happens, there is always one learner and one teacher. Their roles tend to switch back and forth over time with, perhaps, A coaching B about TCP/IP and then B coaching A about implementation of queues. When it works well, the participants are barely even aware of it. They may not even identify it as coaching; to them it may just seem like work.
  
  Whether it is named or not, coaching is an important factor in successful team interaction. It provides coordination as well as personal growth to the participants. It also feels good. We tend to look back on significant coaching we’ve received as a near religious experience. We feel a huge debt to those who have coached us in the past, a debt that we cheerfully discharge by coaching others.
• Learning is limited by an organization’s ability to keep its people.
• The most likely learning center for any sizable organization is the white space that lies between and among middle managers. If this white space becomes a vital channel of communication, if middle managers can act together as the redesigners of the organization, sharing a common stake in the result, then the benefits of learning are likely to be realized. If, on the other hand, the white space is empty of communication and common purpose, learning comes to a standstill. Organizations in which middle managers are isolated, embattled, and fearful are nonstarters in this respect.
  

• If you have ever undertaken a major development effort, you almost certainly know the wisdom of the adage, “Build one to throw away.” It’s only after you’re finished that you know how the thing really should have been done. You seldom get to go back and do it again right, of course, but it would be nice.
  This same idea can be applied to whole careers. Between the two of us, we’ve spent nearly thirty years managing projects or consulting on project management. Most of what we’ve learned, we’ve learned from doing it wrong the first time. We’ve never had the luxury of managing any of those projects over again to do it entirely right. Instead, we’ve written this book.

Once a week we’ll send out a page from Cool Tools: A Catalog of Possibilities. The tools might be outdated or obsolete, and the links to them may or may not work. We present these vintage recommendations as is because the possibilities they inspire are new. Sign up here to get Tools for Possibilities a week early in your inbox.

Retro Recomendo: Creative Practice

Recomendo - issue #515

Our subscriber base has grown so much since we first started nine years ago, that most of you have missed all our earliest recommendations. The best of these are still valid and useful, so we’re trying out something new — Retro Recomendo. Once every 6 weeks, we’ll send out a throwback issue of evergreen recommendations focused on one theme from the past 9 years.

Learn to draw from Lynda Barry

This hand-drawn book is the best course on art and drawing I’ve seen. The cartoonist Lynda Barry has been teaching non-artists to draw, and she has somehow magically captured her class into this book called Making Comics. This guidance is particularly aimed at people who think they can’t draw. It will teach you how to draw, more importantly how to see, and even more importantly how to create with originality, by taking yourself out of the way to see what shows up. It refreshed my very concept of art. I’ve already given two copies of it away. — KK

Mini sketch book

One of my daughters draws for hours a day, and she carries an Arteza 3.5×5.5” Mini Sketch Book Pocket Notebook everywhere she goes. She’s tried out different brands, including Moleskines, but prefers the Arteza sketchbook for its texture and versatility. It works well with pencil, ballpoint pen, ink pen, and markers. — MF

Explore the world of contemporary collage

Collé is a weekly email that explores the world of contemporary collage. Each issue highlights a new artist, showcasing their work and creative process. I’ve always viewed collage as the most accessible art medium, yet I am consistently astounded, inspired, and humbled by the creations featured in this newsletter. Check out their archive of past issues. — CD

Online figure drawing

I live close to the Art Director’s Guild headquarters in Los Angeles, which has weekly evening figure drawing classes. My daughter and I go there occasionally, but I recently discovered a site called Line of Action that has a useful figure drawing practice system. It shows you a series of figure models posing for specified periods of time, just like a real figure drawing session. The hands-and-feet tool is especially useful (and challenging) for me. — MF

Blackout poetry without torn books

Blackout Poetry Maker is a web app by Emma Winston that lets you make blackout poems without destroying a single page. You can pick from three sample texts or paste in your own. I used excerpts from my diary and made one I called “All the unknowns are outlined.” — CD

Maker tips newsletter

I continue to be impressed by Gar’s Tips & Tools, a newsletter that we co-publish with Gareth Branwyn. Every week Gareth scours the internets and the youtubes to find practical tips for makers of all stripes. His sources range from weekend crafters to hard-core professional workshoppers, from sewing cosplay to blacksmithing to woodworking. I generally find at least one or two tips I did not know about. All in a one quick read with ready links. — KK

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Book Freak #210: The Art of Money Getting

P.T. Barnum's Golden Rules for Making Money

Get The Art of Money Getting

P.T. Barnum was 70 years old when he turned his most popular lecture into this book in 1880. By then, he’d already built America’s most famous museum in New York, introduced General Tom Thumb to audiences, served as mayor of Bridgeport, gone broke from a disastrous investment in a Connecticut clock company, and clawed his way back. He was 60 when he co-founded the traveling show that eventually became Barnum & Bailey Circus. The Art of Money Getting compresses a lifetime of hustle into 20 plainspoken rules.

Core Principles

1. Don’t Mistake Your Vocation

Barnum’s first rule: pick the work you’re built for, then aim to be the best at it. Most people get this backward. They take whatever job pays and spend decades fighting upstream. The people who succeed have a knack for what they do. Find your knack first.

2. Avoid Debt Like the Plague

Debt eats self-respect. Barnum says young people, especially, should avoid it. The moment you owe somebody money, you’ve handed them a piece of your freedom. The whole game is keeping income above outgo.

3. Whatever You Do, Do It With All Your Might

Half-doing is expensive. Barnum watched neighbors spend whole lifetimes poor because they only kind of worked, while somebody else got rich doing the same job thoroughly. The people who go all in pull ahead of the ones who don’t.

4. Preserve Your Integrity

Nobody buys from someone they don’t trust. You can be the friendliest merchant in town, but if a customer suspects you of cheating, they’ll walk to the next shop. Dishonesty might pay this week. It costs you over a lifetime. Reputation is the actual asset.

Try It Now

1. Examine your current work. Does it match your natural abilities? If not, what would? Make a plan to move toward it.
2. List your debts. Create a concrete plan to eliminate them, starting with the smallest. Avoid taking on any new debt this month.
3. Pick one task you’ve been half-doing. This week, do it with all your might. early and late, leaving no stone unturned.

Quote

“Money is, in some respects, like fire. It is a very excellent servant, but a terrible master.”

Book Freak is published by Cool Tools Lab, a small company of three people. We also run Recomendo, the Cool Tools website, a YouTube channel and podcast, and other newsletters, including Recomendo Deals, Gar’s Tips & Tools, Nomadico, What’s in my NOW?, Tools for Possibilities, Books That Belong On Paper, and Book Freak.

Metal-free Stretch Belt/Virtual Ride & Radio/Expat-rated Countries

Nomadico issue #207

Arcade No-metal Stretch Belt

I wrote in an earlier issue about an off-brand mesh belt I wear on airport days that doesn’t have any metal in it. That one has a clasp belt, but a new one I’ve been trying has a nicer-looking buckle that snaps the two ends together and feels solid. The belt itself is stretchy too, so it’s a superior double-duty one you can wear during more demanding activities. It’s well-made, comes in 11 colors, and is guaranteed for life. See more here on Amazon.

Take a Virtual Drive in Istanbul or Rio

Want to know what it’s like to drive around a foreign city, listening to a local radio station? You can do it from home by visiting DriveAndListen.app, which uses dashcam footage. The tunes really transported me to the scene in Delhi and Izmir and when I pulled up Havana, I was riding in a vintage car. If you don’t like the station you can change it, just like in a real car.

Countries the Expat Execs Rank Highest

I hesitated to highlight this Internations Expat Quality of Life Survey since that site mostly appeals to relocated corporate executives living in walled-off enclaves. Turns out it’s full of interesting and detailed insights though. Panama was the big winner, moving from 16 to 3, joining always-highly-rated Spain and much richer countries like Luxembourg and Austria. Czechia and China moved into the top 10 and I’m assuming someone will replace #2 Dubai in the next one. But the Philippines got trashed despite the sea and sunshine (#45 of 46) and wow does the survey kill that “America is the greatest” boast since the country ranks #43. “The USA ranks dead last when it comes to Healthcare and receives disappointing results in the Safety & Security Subcategory (43rd).”

Online Security Issues at American Airlines

If you have an AAdvantage account with American Airlines, you should probably change your password. As in today. The company is being quiet about how much data was compromised in several hacker-claimed cyberattacks in the past year, one of them in April. Based on my wife’s frustrating experience though, it was a lot. The company locked her out of her account a month ago, saying it was compromised, and she still doesn’t have access. After a month of hold times, six sessions of being passed around between agents, and unkept promises about a fix, they’re now apologizing that “The fraud department is completely overwhelmed right now.”

A weekly newsletter with four quick bites, edited by Tim Leffel, author of A Better Life for Half the Price and The World’s Cheapest Destinations. See past editions here, where your like-minded friends can subscribe and join you.

What’s in my NOW? — Greg Schneider-Bateman

issue #254

PHYSICAL

• Feel Good Bench: I use a cushion when I meditate at home, but when I travel, I pack a Feel Good Bench. You can spend way too much time comparing different benches online. This one is sturdy, comfortable, slides into a backpack, and is solidly constructed with wires and magnets.
• Clock Parts: I love clocks. I have a classic Simplex schoolhouse clock in my kitchen that was on the wall of every one of my classrooms growing up. But for a long time it was powered by a long, ugly cord hanging down the wall. So I fixed it with parts from Clockparts.com. They have the parts to turn any old clock into a battery powered clock. My Simplex clock now runs a sweep hand on one D battery that I replace every two and half years. My antique Ingraham mantel clock runs great, and you’d never know it is battery powered.
• RO Bucket: I have a hobby sugarbush and tap twelve trees on my city lot in Saint Paul, MN. But boiling all that sap while teaching and raising kids is a challenge. The RO Bucket helps me manage it by removing around 60% of the water. It saves me crazy amounts of time and money and allows me to stay on top of big sap runs. It’s easy to use and maintain and Carl, the owner, is always available to troubleshoot problems.

DIGITAL

• Omnioutliner Pro: I bought my first PowerBook in 2001, and OmniOutliner came preinstalled. I’ve never looked back. I think, read, and write structurally, and so my tendency is to outline. This tool helps me organize all my writing and speaking projects. Most often, I use it to plan out my courses. I’ve built a template to organize each course by weeks and days. It’s easy to update after class with what worked and what didn’t. The Essentials version gives you a feel for things, but the Pro version is where the magic really happens.
• YNAB: This is probably over-recommended, but YNAB is easily the one digital tool I can’t live without. My wife and I have been using it since 2010 to manage finances. It’s allowed us to budget for moving, buying a house, changing jobs multiple times, having one then two then — surprise — three kids, prioritizing travel, and saving for retirement. The transparency allows us to have super easy money conversations. It’s the first app I open every morning.

INVISIBLE

N-1

Call it Buddhist, Stoic, existentialist, or whatever, this is my shorthand for capturing the idea that we will do everything in our lives a finite number of times and that eventually we will do everything a final time. I tattooed it on my arm. It helps me more deeply appreciate the good moments, recognize that even the challenging things will end, and reminds me that there will eventually be a final time. And, sadly, we often don’t know when that is. Is it now? Sam Harris’s Last Time meditation from his excellent Waking Up app conveys this better than I can.

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What’s in my NOW? — Greg Schneider-Bateman