I've been busy on a few other sites recently.

I took the decision to start splitting out the information on Award Sounds into more specific sites.

alancward.co.uk features my photography and I'll continue to post photography-related articles over at that site from now on. I'm just building up that site now, so it may be a bit sparse this week. read more »

How would you process map a cup of tea?

I once had a recruiter vet me based on whether I could process map a cup of tea. I think he was new to the job and was fed a script from his client.

What's the actual answer?

Firstly, a cup of tea isn't a process. You can't map a cup of tea. It's an object, not a process. You can process map the process of making a cup of tea, but not the cup of tea itself. read more »

The industries of Stock Photography and Stock Music have a lot of similarities.

Stock Agencies

Both rely on artists submitting their creations to agencies. The agencies are changing the way in which the artists interact with the customers of the art. Importantly for the artist, the agencies are devaluing the art resulting in the art becoming commoditised. Unfortunately, the artist is at the end of the chain and is also becoming commoditised.
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We've still got issues with the RSS feed from this site since the upgrade to Drupal 6.

The first article shows correctly in the feed and then becomes repeated, often replacing the 2nd, 3rd and 4th articles and so on.

Since the Feedburner feeds are due to be moved across to Google Feeds anyway, I'm going to disable the Feedburner module for the time being and revert back to Drupal's built-in RSS feeds.

To continue following, please subscribe to http://www.awardsounds.co.uk/rss.xml read more »

I mentioned before about a process having a single output. In other words, in a sequential process where one process step is performed after another, then there will usually only one output at a time.

If there are two outputs, it's often a good sign that it should be a decision point or a gateway instead of a process step. read more »

Some of my other activities have led me to produce a Proof-of-Concept for another project. It's called Awesome Amps and has proven how quickly I can get a multi-site Drupal installation up and running.

The Concept

The idea started as part of the gift ideas for guitarists series. I was thinking of money-is-no-object amplifiers. As well as that, it fits with the activities over at Earn More Than Before. read more »

Introduction

In the previous article in the Fundamentals of Processing Mapping series, I introduced the concept and use of swimlanes in process mapping. In this article, I want to expand on how the swimlanes are connected by introducing messages. read more »

After a hiatus over winter, the next set of Venn episodes is now in pre-production.

There have been two meetings this week; last night's was a meeting of the script-writers. We spent most of the time adding weight to the characters, discussing the major story arc and what each episode would show.

Change in role

This was my first time being involved in the initial stages of a script. Usually, I'm happy to be reviewing and commenting someone else's work. It's a different feeling to be part of the script-writing script. read more »

At the end of the previous article in the Process Mapping Fundamentals series, I mentioned that I'd written the processes from two different perspectives. Swimlanes allow you to display who does what in a simple and easy-to-understand way, allowing you to combine the activities of several people and roles into one diagram. read more »

Now with the increasing size of memory cards, most of us have become all too accustomed to snapping at anything. After all, we can separate out the keepers from the trash back in the office.

Delete in the field?

I used to have a policy of not deleting any photo out in the field, but I stopped this a couple of years ago. Now I'm much happier with fewer images and a higher ratio of shots:keepers. read more »