Creative Challenge: Photograph a space, invent a story

| Mac

For our 13th creative challenge, we set forth into the very heart of danger looking for a mysterious space. The challenge is to photograph said space, create a story of what it is, or why it is the way it is, and of course, share it with us. Here’s mine.

Along the beautiful eastern coast of Vancouver Island, near Cherry Point, stands a bizarre looking structure, on the edge of a sandy and well forested shore line. As my friend and I scuttled passed in his 15.5 foot motor boat, the space called out to be explored, so we went ashore and snapped these photos.

 

I believe it’s an old, derelict lumber camp. The pulley system in the odd structure would have been used to pull logs down to hungry barges, and the ungraceful breakwater might have been setup to protect waiting logs from being carried out to sea by the tide and waves.


Visual Management, Willpower and Weight Loss

| Mac

As you know from my Learning to See post I’m currently working towards another professional designation. What you don’t know is that the credential being pursued is Lean Bronze Certification (LBC).

One of the many Lean tool philosophies is Visual Management. Visual Management is about using visual indicators to affect people’s behaviour and the overall performance of a system or value stream. I recently adopted a visual tool to incentivize my personal goal to lose weight.

To understand my weight loss predicament you should be aware that I live in the present. In a recent personality survey, the Maieutik test, I was roughly attributed to spend 25% of the time in the past, 50% in the now, and 25% looking forward. This seems intuitive to me – one of my personal credos is of sensible hedonism. Bringing us to the problem of why I’ve rarely been able to lose weight. The notion of weight loss and better health is sort of abstract and the immediate pleasure of a snack is far from.

A friend and colleague of mine listens to many audio books, and one day during a coffee or cocktail, he was telling me of one of the case studies in the Influencer, where a set of research indicated that the number one thing you could do that would help you lose weight was weigh yourself daily. It sounded interesting, but inwardly I was skeptical. I could not make the connection as to why measuring yourself daily would make such a dramatic impact. I also knew that for me I would tend to forget the exact measurement anyway; I’d have a rough idea but not the exact numbers in my mind, thereby making exercise moot. Would I really have the will power to get out the scale every morning? Too many obstacles. Nevertheless, weight loss came up amongst my foundational vitality goals within my happiness project.

Then at long last came a solution, the Withings Wi-Fi enabled scale! Using my love of gadgets to get me on the scale daily, leveraging the principles of visual management to keep me inline, and the promise in the Influencer actually worked! The desire to keep that line trending down the next morning, this real goal as opposed to some abstract good health goal made all the difference in my commitment to eat better.

Eat better you ask? A different colleague of mine has cracked that code – cut out carbs after 2pm (assuming a 10pm bedtime). 4.2 pounds in a week? For me the proof was available if I could forgo the pudding. Previous to this experiment, I would not have thought I was a big snacker. I don’t stop at the store on the way home to buy chips… but if they are in the house… well, not anymore! My morning date with my Withings scale is, strangely, enough of an incentive to practice restraint, which is paying off for my vitality and my waistline.

I’ll update my progress and the graph in a few weeks, to keep you up to date on progress towards my goal to lose 10 or more pounds.

Gallery / Status Updates

One month in and I’ve lost 7.1 pounds. My third week set me back a little bit,  I was seduced by thin crust gluten free pizza after 2pm… twice… how bad could that be? Apparently bad enough. However all is now well, I’m back to my  lowest weight and the trend line is once more pointed downward.

Stories and RPGs

| Mac

I have a secret… I am a role playing nerd. I got into it very young. It started for me as a game without dice. Kids in Family Housing at UBC would play by one kid telling a story and the other kids each choosing actions and words for a unique character within the story. At the time I didn’t know there was an entire industry around this concept but I loved the stories. I found making the choices of one of the main characters, attempting to have him live up to the high standard of Sir Cedric, intoxicating – I still do. This introduction evolved into an interest in fantasy novels, a brief sojourn with choose your own adventure novels, and a sustained interest in the role playing and strategy gaming industry. The most well known title of the genre is, of course, Dungeons & Dragons.

With the advent of computer technology role playing games went through a transformation from the physical table top to isometric 2D story driven, turn based, strategy games where you controlled a whole party (team) and it played out for you through your cathode ray tube (CRT) one virtual dice roll at a time. From there the genre evolved to real time, 3D, story driven, action games where you control a single character, issue orders to party members and it all plays out with voice acting and cinematics on your wide screen HD TV. One company has been more influential than any other in shaping this transformation, and that company is Bioware from Edmonton, Canada.

The Bioware trilogy Mass Effect, which recently concluded, is the pinnacle of the real time, 3D, story driven, action game where you virtually embody the hero, and thereby navigate the hero’s story. Mass Effect has been heralded as the most influential science fiction setting since Star Wars and my next post will set out in broad strokes the wonderful Mass Effect story. There will be spoilers so if you haven’t experienced the Mass Effect trilogy and you plan to – proceed with caution.