Once again, I find myself in Hong Kong on business. After leaving San Francisco at 1:20am early Wednesday morning, our plane landed at about 7:00 AM local time Thursday morning. Out of the fourteen hours of our flight last night, I slept for about seven of them. Never very solidly, as we kept hitting patches of mild turbulence every half hour or so. I drank plenty of water during the flight, and am continuing to do so. Nevertheless, jet lag is already punishing me in full force. continued

Joshua Heyer wrote me today with a question which I’ve never given much thought. Writing out my answer surprised me in how much I could articulate that which I do almost subconsciously. Joshua wrote:

“I have a simple question for you. How do you stay organized? I’m struggling with keeping things on point and I’m wondering what you use. […] Any thoughts on how to improve my organization with software, practices, etc… are much appreciated.”

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Best taken while suspended upside-down, dangling by a rubber band strapped to your ankles. Begins with intense anxiety. Guaranteed rush to the head follows. Heart continues pumping for at least 30 minutes after.

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On Friday, Mt. Hutt was still closed, and I had almost given up hope of boarding in NZ. But after walking around Methven, John and I learned that one small club field was actually still open: Broken River. Not willing to forfeit another day of boarding, we jumped at the chance. A 90-minute drive away from Methven, and we were switchbacking a narrow, rocky road up to the club field. After parking at one of the tight bends and dropping our gear into a lift that would pull it up to the changing room, we had another 20 minute hike up the mountain in front of us, just to get to the ticket window. After buying a lift ticket, collecting our gear from the lift, and changing into our boots, another 15 minute hike up to the first rope tow. continued

As I sit at a gate at SFO, waiting for a hop down to LAX where I catch the Time Travel Express to Sydney, the fact that I’m leaving for a whole month doesn’t seem quite real yet. It’s a strange feeling. No anxiety or stress, but an odd feeling that I’m not prepared to be traveling for a month. Sort of like those dreams where you show up to school or some public place, then realize you’re wearing nothing but underwear. continued

My goodness, it’s only a little over a week until Web Essentials 04 kicks off. How does time go by so quickly? This looks to be (easily) the largest web standards event in the southern hemisphere this year. John Allsopp wrote me last week, informing me they’ve got loads of attendees coming from all over Australia, New Zealand, and even Japan. continued

Q: What happens when you’re scheduled to appear at two conferences back to back to give a total of four presentations within six days, and you end up cancelling your appearance at one of the conferences because you’re unsure if your lower back, with a disc that herniated a month prior, might not do so well with the combined stress of preparing for and travelling to both events? continued

The second of a series, the header image from the Articles section originates from a photo that conjures up great memories with international friends. This is Café en Madrid…

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In the first of a series, I present the original, undoctored photo used for one of the header images on Stopdesign. This one: the home page. There’s a story behind each one of them, which will help humanize the abstractions I’ve used for each header. This photo was taken while I was visiting Miami in November 2002 for the AIGA I|O: Interaction Only Conference. I dubbed it… The Drive-By.

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After a bit of drilling down through numerous folders of mailboxes, selecting all, then marking as unread, my unread message count is back to normal levels.

If anyone couldn’t glean my sense of humor from yesterday’s post? Yes, I found staring at the number of unread emails (27,385) on top of Mail’s dock icon to be quite funny. It’s nothing I was upset about, and was only a minor annoyance to go back through ~200 mailboxes to select-all and correctly mark the messages as read. continued