Pek Pongpaet

Went to the panel titled “We Have Been Objectified: Identity, Consumerism, and the Future of Designed Objects”
This session related to the film “Objectified” by Gary Hustwit (of Helvetica fame).

I took away from this panel 3 lessons:

1. Tell a story. Your product should speak to the user.
2. Build lots and lots. There is no secret to successful design other than trying out many variations and seeing what works.
3. Everything should be intentional. This applies to the Pareto principle (aka the 80-20 rule). Average products satisfy the 80 percent of your needs. It’s the products that go the extra 20 percent that truly stand out.

Popularity: 1% [?]

Some of you readers of my blog are fitness buffs so this one’s for you. My friend Scott “Beaver” Jones of the Chicago Lions happily agreed to do 5 Questions for my blog.

Tells us a bit about your background and how you came to be a professional rugby player
I was an All American my last two years at University of Tennessee and then decided to move to New Zealand after graduation to gain more rugby exposure. I returned to the states after 4 months and moved to Chicago where I was recruited to play for the Chicago Lions, one of the most prestigious clubs in the US, with aspirations of making the USA National Rugby Team. Mission Accomplished in 2004 when I was invited to tour with the US Eagles to play against Ireland and Italy.

Is the life of a professional athlete all it’s cracked up to be? What are some of the perks? What’s are some of the drawbacks?
Is it all what its cracked up to be? Absolutely, the pride that you have singing your national anthem in front of screaming fans is one of the best moments ever. Its also fun signing autographs for young fans even if they have no idea how worthless my autograph actually is, but it is nice putting smiles on their faces in that moment.

Perks? Of course the obvious is the travel and the tons of sports gear. In addition to that there are police escorts and it really is something to remember. One time in Dublin, the traffic stopped and the people on the streets were all curious of who was in the police escorted charter bus, pretty cool. We also got to eat dinner with US Ambassador to Ireland.

Drawbacks? Travel to all of these places is amazing but there is little time to enjoy because it is all business with practice twice a day and little freedom with tape reviews in between sessions.

Could you describe to us your training regimen. How often do you train? How long do you train? And what do you do (training wise)? Also tell us a bit about your diet.
Training and Eating heading into World Cup Trials? Everything was intense. We sent all of our workouts via heart rate monitors and all food intake into Boulder CO headquarters. I would train 5-6 days a week and the majority was once in the morning consisting of cardio, abs, core, balance and once in the evening consisting of speed, strength and power. As far as the food, i would eat a lot. Generally start off the morning workout with a protein shake and then have fruit and veggies along with protein bars prior to a healthy sandwich and veggies for lunch. I would have another snack(protein bar, peanut butter sand) before evening workout and then protein and or pasta for dinner. I cut out alcohol, junk food(as much as possible) and caffeine. I consistently drank water or gatorade throughout the day.

Could you give us some tips for us non-professional athletes to stay in shape?
Stay in shape tips for non professionals? Ideally get get in some physical activity at least once a day but knowing that can be hard I would go for walks, jog, gym(15 min cardio doing intervals of 30 sec on pushing yourself and 1 min off regular pace then go to weights but make sure you alternate with weights and get your heart rate up with star jumps or clap push ups or up downs(you will be surprised how hard it is when you have to get on the ground and then back up 5 times in a row.) situps, etc… Stay hydrated and stay away from fast foods another thing I failed to mention I gave up during training. Always eat all three meals a day and try to supplement with snacks in between about every couple hours.

For more information on the USA Rugby Team and the Chicago Lions, go to:

• http://www.usarugby.org/
• http://www.chicagolions.com/

Popularity: 3% [?]

Starting today I will also be blogging for Roundarch. This is very exciting for me since I get to represent Roundarch from a UX perspective. Something must give, so as I result, I won’t be posting here as much but I remain committed to putting up quality posts that reflect my interests in technology, startups, business, marketing/advertising, and of course martial arts.

Read my first Roundarch post here.

Popularity: 2% [?]

My friends Shelly and David have been hard at work at Autodesk ever since their company was acquired and wanted to share their brainchild with me. Project Dragonfly is a free web based application available through the Autodesk labs site that allows you to create home floor plans complete with furnishing in top view 2D mode or 3D isometric view. I saw an earlier version a few months back, and it’s really quite impressive.

What’s amazing about this application is how intelligent the system is. Objects that belong on the wall automatically attach themselves to the closest wall. There is built-in collision detection so you don’t create furniture abominations. Objects that belong on the floor such as rugs automagically go underneath sofas.

For you tech geeks, you should know that this is all done in 3D and the performance of the application is amazing considering how many 3D objects there can be in the scene all with pretty high resolution textures.

Read more about it here.

Popularity: 10% [?]

I recently logged into LinkedIn and noticed Google Ads on my profile page. The fact that Google is trying to make money off ads is not interesting to me. I think it’s a great business model that works for them, but I couldn’t help think that they could earn much more if they actually tried harder. Here’s what I saw:

3 text link ads.

• The first one was for Flash UI design services. Apparently Google thought that since I’m a Flash guy with UI skills, that I might be in need of Flash UI design services. Seriously? FAIL.
• The second ad was for a Master Yu’s martial arts classes. While I commend Google for at least getting the martial arts style of interest to me right, I TEACH martial arts classes myself. What use are his classes to me? FAIL again.
• The 3rd ad was for Illinois Shotokan Karate. See, any human with an ounce of intelligence, after looking at my LinkedIn resume would gather that I only do Chinese martial arts. Well at least they got the region right, but this ad does not interest me at all. It’s like showing a Formula 1 guy info on Nascar. Gee, it says you like cars so you must like all cars. FAIL.

Basically those ads were a waste of my time. I was so offended at how off their algorithms were that I’m now inclined to install ad blockers altogether. This serves to show you that showing ads based on contextual data doesn’t necessarily work. Google’s better off mining my interests on Facebook and my blog and showing me ads that pertain to me wherever I go (based on IP or whatever). Even showing ads for movies would have been better.

Looking at my LinkedIn profile, I see it now tells me stuff like what my status message is, what my twitter is, what slides I’ve favorited on Slideshare. Why not get at that data? This is all stuff I like and am interested in. By being smarter about it, you might actually get a click out of me instead of this post.

Popularity: 1% [?]