Currently browsing the Fun Category

Fun things that may be related to management or just something I decided to post, like my travel photos
Recommended posts: 5 Things About Me - Glacier National Park photos - Innovation Example - The Cat and a Black Bear


Awesome CatCam

Posted on June 10, 2007  Comments (0)

CatCam - photo of the famous cat photographer CatCam - cat photographer on the run CatCam - cat photographer get picture of another cat

I posted this to our science and engineering blog last week: Awesome Cat Cam. It doesn’t really have anything to do with management: I suppose I could make a case for creativity… but basically it is just really cool (it also illustrates some good product design and testing points). CatCam by Juergen Perthold – this great project involved taking a digital camera and some additional equipment to create a camera that his cat wore around his neck which took pictures every 3 minutes. The pictures are great. The cat got photos of several other cats and seemed to like spending time under cars. You can now order your own CatCam.

Sometimes I have some challenging ideas, or crazy like some other people would say. This time I thought about our cat who is the whole day out, returning sometimes hungry sometimes not, sometimes with traces of fights, sometimes he stay also the night out. When he finally returns, I wonder where he was and what he did during his day. This brought me to the idea to equip the cat with a camera. The plan was to put a little camera around his neck which takes every few minutes a picture. After he is returning, the camera would show his day.
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For the second try I used the plastic package of a child toy (Kinderueberraschung), put a stone in it for loading it with some weight and attached it again to the cat collar. This time the part returned – dirty and scratched outside, water inside. What the hell is the cat doing !? This raised the requirements for the camera protective housing a lot
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Big moment no. 1: attach the collar with the camera to the cat. The reaction was not very happy but finally accepted. Reality check passed :-)

Related: The Cat and a Black Bear – Automatic Cat Feeder – The sub-$1,000 UAV Project

Boston Travel Photos

Posted on May 28, 2007  Comments (0)

Photo of Boston

After I presented the Deming Seminar in Boston last year a spent a few extra days in to enjoy the city. See photos from my Boston visit including: Boston Fine Arts Museum, Boston Science Museum and Boston Common.

Related: Shaker Village of Pleasant Hill, Kentucky – New York City Photos – Glacier National Park photos
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A4 Paper Art

Posted on March 31, 2007  Comments (0)

Fun A4 Paper Art – unrelated to an A3 report. Another innovative use of paper: Teaching Engineers Experimental Design With a Paper Helicopter by George Box.

NCAA Basketball Challenge 2007

Posted on March 12, 2007  Comments (0)

Once again I have created a group on the ESPN NCAA Basketball Tournament Challenge for curiouscat basketball fans. To participate, go to the curiouscat ESPN group and make your picks.

Go Badgers and Go Davidson,

Innovative Marketing Podcast

Posted on January 25, 2007  Comments (4)

Lego Mindstorms

This podcast on Lego Mindstorms NXT, Lead Users, and Viral Marketing is interesting. The discussion does a good job of explaining how factors like web 2.0 and “open source” can allow business to operate in a new way and take advantage of new opportunities. Understanding these ideas is much more innovative than most of what I read in the “business press.” And the message is explained clearly, so one does not need to understand these concepts to appreciate the business opportunities. See links below: Lego Mindstorms are also just cool.

via: eContent

Related: Open Source for LEGO Mindstorms – Lego Learning – science and engineering podcast libraries – Gadgets and Gifts – Intellectual Property Rights and Innovation – Better and Different

Z-List: Management Blogs

Posted on January 5, 2007  Comments (0)

Ok, I am going to build upon the z-list meme. Hopefully my modification will be seen as acceptable. I have modified the zlist to shorten it to management related blogs. I was added to one with: Making Z-List and Checking It Twice. I don’t really see how Seth’s blog is a “z-list blog” [more like a-list] but it is the first place I saw the a z-list and knowHR included it and it is excellent so I included it.

Management Z-List:

Bob Sutton
Creating Passionate Users
Seth Godin
KnowHR Blog
Curious Cat Management Improvement Blog
Chief Happiness Officer
H.R. eSources
Lean Blog
Evolving Excellence
Panta Rei
Shmula
Got Boondoggle?
Lean Builder

For other bloggers that want to pick this up and add to it (via the KnowHR): “The trick is to pick up this list from here and add your blog to the bottom along with a few more Z-List links that you think people should know about. I copied the list from Seth by grabbing links in the page source…you can do the same.”

Create Your Own Book

Posted on December 26, 2006  Comments (0)

I received a custom made photo book from my brother. It is amazing. It is a hardcover book, full of photos. The quality is amazing. The book is printed by blurb. Looking on their web site the pricing is surprisingly cheap: 150 page full color hardcover book – $39.95 (for 1 copy! – 10% discount at 25 copies…), as little as $18.95 for a full color softcover book up to 40 pages. The site says books are normally printed in under a week.

I have not tried it but it appears printing your own great looking book is about as easy as creating a blog. I knew it was getting easier to print books, but still I find this very cool. Blurb can import photos from Flickr and Picasa.

Management Blog Tag

Posted on December 21, 2006  Comments (6)

John and Bill Hunter

I have been tagged by Mark Graban of the lean blog: “Tag” – 5 Things You Don’t Know About Me.

      • I spent a year in Singapore and another in Nigeria while I was growing up.
      • Dad, Bill Hunter, was a professor (related to the item above), who co-authored Statistics for Experimenters and applied Deming’s ideas in the Public Sector for the first time. Out of the Crisis pages 245-247 include a write up on that effort with the First Street Garage. Peter Scholtes, at the time worked for the City of Madison, and played a big part in the effort. He went on to write the Team Handbook and The Leader’s Handbook.
      • I was on the Wisconsin Badger Basketball camp championship teams in 7th and 8th grade. The second year we played the championship game on the regular Badger Basketball home court. The Badger’s are a bit better now then they were then.
      • I have flown on “Air Force One.” Not technically, since it the president was not aboard, but while working for the White House Military Office I flew on the plane on a couple test flights. It is officially “Air Force One” only when the President is flying.
      • I spent many Thanksgivings beating John Dower, my father (and other of the family members of both) at Oh Hell. Some might claim I remember more victories today than took place at the time.

John Hunter. The small person is me, the bigger one is Dad.

I tag: Kathleen Fasanella, Mike Wroblewski, Peter Abilla, Karen Wilhelm and John Dowd.

More on Madison’s Quality efforts: Doing More With Less in the Public Sector: A Progress Report from Madison, Wisconsin – Quality in the Community: One City’s Experience

No Customer Focus

Posted on November 3, 2006  Comments (3)

John Battelle writes the excellent searchblog. A recent post, Rant: The Comcast HD DVR Is Simply, Terribly Awful, provides another example of a company lacking customer focus. See the comments for even more confirmation of the lack of customer focus.

The interface is simply abominable. Unintuitive and careless, it copies the major features of Tivo’s approach but fails at every single detail – and in UI design, everything is in the details. No surprisingly, it utterly misses the core purpose of a DVR: to treat television as a conversation instead of a dictation. Without a doubt, this is an interface built either by Machiavelli’s cohorts, or by graceless bureaucrats, or both. No, wait, it’s worse.
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Not to mention, the damn thing is slow – beyond unresponsive. There’s no way you can accurately predict where and when the thing might stop and start when you are fast forwarding or rewinding. The Tivo is like an Audi, but the Comcast drives like a 1972 Gran Torino Station wagon.
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But that’s not where the crappiness ends. No, not by a long shot. Turns out, the ####### Comcast HD DVR *does not have a hard drive.* That’s right, when the power goes out, the ####### box loses ALL OF THE SAVED PROGRAMS!!!!

Related: posts on customer focus (including doing it right) – Usability Failures – Customer Focus at the Ritz – CEO Flight Attendant – Companies in Need of Customer Focus – Dell, Reddit and Customer Focus

Management Improvement Search Engine

Posted on October 25, 2006  Comments (0)

Google has launched a nice new feature that allows users to create customized search results. I have talked about this idea before: Improve Google. Last year I posted about Rollyo, which allowed what Google now does (using Yahoo for the underlying search). I liked Rollyo but the new Google offering is better, so I have switched to using Google.

Try our Management Improvement search engine

This searches, using Google technology, over 50 management improvement web sites that I have selected. Sites include: (this blog, Curious Cat Management Improvement Connections, Curious Cat Management Library…) and the best management improvement sites (in my opinion), including: The W. Edwards Deming Institute, Lean Blog, Panta Rei, Center for Quality and Productivity Improvement, Superfactory, Got Boondoggle?, In2:InThinking Network, Peter Scholtes, Center for Quality of Management, and many more. I will also be adding more; please share your suggestions.

Add the Management Improvement Search box to your site.

Innovation Example

Posted on June 27, 2006  Comments (3)

graphic of airline ticket prices over time

Farecast is a cool internet application, and one that might actual save you money to buy, say a digital camera.

Farecast provides data and analysis to those looking to purchase airplane tickets. The graph above shows ticket prices for tickets between Boston and Washington DC over the last 60 days. I have thought for quite some time I need better data to make the best purchase decisions. Farecast seems like a great fit.
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The Cat and a Black Bear

Posted on June 10, 2006  Comments (12)

photo of Jack the cat and a bear

Tabby cat terror for black bear

A black bear picked the wrong yard for a jaunt, running into a territorial tabby who ran the furry beast up a tree – twice.Jack, a 15-pound orange and white cat, keeps a close vigil on his property, often chasing small animals, but his owners and neighbors say his latest escapade was surprising.


“We used to joke, ‘Jack’s on duty,’ never knowing he’d go after a bear,”

See larger photo – AP Photo by Suzanne Giovanetti

Clawless kitty chases bear up tree – read more on the story and see more photos.

In, How to get traffic for your blog, Seth Godin writes: “Don’t write about your cat, your boyfriend or your kids.” Good advice, in general. Of course he follows that up with: Write about your kids – a sentence later. You have to learn the rules and then learn when (and how) to break them.

Curious Cat Travels: Bear Warning sign (I will have to see about bring Jack on my hiking trips) – Bear at Yellowstone – Big Cats in Kenya

VIP?

Posted on March 16, 2006  Comments (0)

The images shows: I am 64th in line as a VIP. If I were not a VIP I would be 1st in line.

Actually the graphic is mainly just funny. The real broken part is that the system has disconnected me twice and then you have to wait to be readmitted – granted only a minute and a half. CBS is trying live internet video on a scale not attempted before. It is bound to have a level of service less than tried and true methods.

By signing up early (still for free) you could be treated as a VIP. The first time I tried to sign in my VIP status helped. The image for the video is of pretty low quality but still I am satisfied. I would hope in future years the quality will improve. But for now I am happy with this opportunity at all. The biggest failure with the current setup is the do not allow viewing of the game that “is being broadcast” in your area. However right now my station stopped showing the Marquette game and the internet site still doesn’t let me view it. They really should fix this problem.

See more broken items

NCAA Basketball Tournament Challenge

Posted on March 13, 2006  Comments (0)

Once again I have created a group on the ESPN NCAA Basketball Tournament Challenge for curiouscat basketball fans.

To play, sign in to ESPN and register, if you need to, or sign into your account (using the link at the very top of the page).

Once you create your entry, you will see a link to “create or join groups.” Click that link. Then enter curiouscat in the find group box. Select the curiouscat group and enter cat as the password.

Seth Godin Video

Posted on March 5, 2006  Comments (0)

Seth Godin has a great blog on marketing. To me, his views put marketing within the context of the system (of the whole organization) rather than a disconnected “stovepipe” as it is often treated. This fits with my bias in favor of systems thinking. He has written several books on the topic:

  • All Marketers Are Liars: The Power of Telling Authentic Stories in a Low-Trust World
  • Purple Cow: Transform Your Business by Being Remarkable
  • The Big Moo: Stop Trying to Be Perfect and Start Being Remarkable by Seth Godin and many others

He recently spoke at Google: view via Google Video. I found the video enjoyable and worth the 45 minutes.

Random comment: he needed some simple help from someone who spoke Japanese, he posted a message to his blog and a few minutes latter had two volunteers. I think that type of interaction is cool.

John Simpson

Posted on February 20, 2006  Comments (0)


This is the best I can do to create my Simpson self. Until I have a guest appearance on the show, I guess this will have to do. You can try for yourself using the Simpson Maker: post a comment with a link to your character.
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Books: Blink, Freakonomics and more

Posted on January 16, 2006  Comments (1)

I finished reading two very popular books this weekend: Freakonomics and Blink: The Power of Thinking Without Thinking by Malcolm Gladwell. While both books were enjoyable and interesting, they really seemed to offer a few good or interesting ideas stretched to fill a book. That is the same thought I had after reading The World is Flat by Thomas L. Friedman. I found all of them fine. I found them to be worth reading, but I don’t know they warrant as much attention as they have received.
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Glacier National Park photos

Posted on January 1, 2006  Comments (0)

I have posted photos from one of my most enjoyable days from last year: photos from hikes in Glacier Waterton International Peace Park


Me on the top of the Bear’s Hump trail in the park, Waterton, Canada. A great, very steep trail.
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Bad Visual Controls – Software

Posted on December 18, 2005  Comments (2)

Bad Visual Controls Example: Software via Lean Manufacturing Blog. Funny example. If I had to use it I might use a different adjective.

In the example, the software uses icons that are not obvious. The user has pasted labels on their monitor with text description of each icon. The labels are smaller than the icons.

Some resources for web usability and software usability “A user interface is well-designed when the program behaves exactly how the user thought it would.” (that is pretty hard [impossible actually] to accomplish when the user doesn’t have a clue what will happen).

Firefox 1.5 and Rollyo

Posted on November 29, 2005  Comments (1)

The new Firefox 1.5 web browser is available. It is a great browser I have been using for at least a year. It is free, secure and has great features.

You can also try a search “roll” I have setup for the various curiouscat.com sites (via Rollyo). This allows you to search those sites I have included in the “roll” and only those sites.

I have also setup a management “roll” which includes some of my favorite management sites. This is a great tool that lets you search a predefined list of sites (including blogs). You can also setup your own “rolls.” I think this is a very nice feature, let me know what you think.

You can add these search rolls to your Firefox search box (so you can select to search using Google, Yahoo… or one of these search rolls).

Also, if you have not looked at Open Office yet, take a look at it also (previous post: OpenOffice 2.0). We also have a page with some of the freeware we think is worthwhile.

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