Author: Wyn

| Wyn

Arndis Skin for PmWiki v1 in Cream I created the Arndis skin for PmWiki in the spring of 2004.  I was running PmWiki v 0.6 or 1.x at the time.  It’s been through a few rewrites since then, but the visual design is much the same as the original.

Like my other web designs, it’s standards-compliant, semantic, accessible, etc., etc.  It’s a simple liquid two-column affair, with a brighter content area floating in a sea of background and sidebar. I made several colour variations:

Going beyond the pretty looks, I did some things to suit myself with this skin. There is a breadcrumb trail to show the reader her location in the site. The sidebar contains some auto-updating sections that use javascript snippets to work their magic. The editing command tabs are an unordered list, for the reasons given in A List Apart. This particular unordered list began life as an example from Listamatic, but I tweaked the heck out of it over several generations.

Arndis Skin for PmWiki v1 in GreyArndis Skin for PmWiki v1 in Sage

The hardest thing to do to it was the you-are-here marker, which highlights the current tab. I needed a CSS selector for it and only it, which meant I needed a hook in the HTML PmWiki generated. Happily, the creator of PmWiki is very good at answering questions or helping out with small things like this, and he pointed out a hook that already existed in the code.

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| Wyn

In 2003 Chris Reed of BlueLightning Studios and I collaborated on a speculative business proposal to Solectron about why and how they needed to improve their callcenter intranet and knowledgebase (KB). Chris, having worked there between contracts, knew what condition the intranet was in. Working at HP had taught me that KBs have to be maintained, and it’s best if they’re maintained by the people using them,1 because nobody else has the same incentive or expertise to keep it up to date. Therefore we recommended turning the KB into a wiki with some editorial controls, and using an enterprise-strength wiki engine on a Debian Linux server for maximum value at minimum cost.

Intranet Improvement Proposal (PDF, 1.3 mb)

The Long Version

When Chris worked there, the Solectron callcenter in Belleville had a rudimentary intranet and KB, but the de facto way to get information was to ask your neighbour or a second level tech (henceforth a “second”) for advice. Having worked in callcenters before, Chris knew that this was an inefficient, unreliable and unscalable way to do research. When he and I had worked together at Compaq, we had a comprehensive, up-to-date KB, which made it much easier and faster to support our callers. Personal advice is a wonderful way to get answers, but often those people are busy, and you could look the answer up for yourself. Continue reading →

  1. This was before Wikipedia became a household word and people admitted that user-maintained content might be worthy of consulting. Only geeks knew about wikis at all. ↩
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When I worked in the HCS group at HP, I found a simple and efficient way to organize the paper copy of our knowledgebase (KB).1 It required much less work and paper to update than the alternative.

So that the techs could find the printed-out articles in the binders, I planned to make tables of contents and indices by client and article title. The trouble was the page numbers those needed. If I used book-style page numbers, I would have to renumber at least one 2″ binder full of pages, and then correct the index and contents by hand every single time an article changed length. Continue reading →

  1. The master copy was on the intranet, but after a power outage disrupted customer service, management decided they needed a copy on paper for emergencies. ↩
| Wyn

Treehouse Model: view from ground Whoever it was that said “it takes twice as long as you think it will” was an optimist. Sometimes it takes three times — as this project did. The silver lining for you is that it taught me how not to manage my time, and how to recognize when I need advice in order to stop banging my head on the wall.

We were asked to design, draw and model a 650 sq. ft. house for two people anywhere in the world but North America. Outdoor spaces were encouraged since they didn’t count towards our square footage, but no major functions could be left outdoors. I asked my friend Allison if she and her husband Paul would be my clients, and we promptly had a brainstorming session over tea. She wanted the house to be on New Zealand’s North Island, but didn’t have a specific town in mind. I located it in the Coromandel Peninsula, between Tararu and Whakatete Bay. Allison is a witch, Paul is a shaman and energy healer, and they are both tall, so they both wanted the house to be in harmony with nature, have high ceilings, and have quiet space to meditate in. There were many other desiderata, but these were the most important. Continue reading →