Do you often work in multiple languages? Are you learning a new language? Have you ever had the need to translate something quickly and on the fly?

 Well if you answered yes to any of the above questions and you are working with English/German/Russian/French or Japanese and running Mac OS X then I have a great solution for you. All you Windows users I think you should petition the author of this software to release a version for Windows as it truly is a great application.

 Jisho 2.3 has just been release I have been fortunate enough to get the author of this great software to answer a few questions for me. Even if you are not interested in this great dictionary software the author has some unique insights of life and things in general. Now to the interview….

1. Can you please describe what Jisho is?

   At its core Jisho is a Japanese-English dictionary. Beyond that though, it supports Japanese-German/Russian/French searches as well. It can also search in the reverse too, so English/German/Russian/French-Japanese.

2. Who would be the primary user of Jisho?
   Jisho is primarily intended for people who are interested in Japanese culture (video games, manga, anime, etc..) and language learners as they would have the most obvious benefit from a program like Jisho.

3. How can your users benefit from using Jisho?
   The immediate benefit that I see, and this is from my own experience, is I am more willing to look any and every word I see or hear that I don’t understand. Especially with it’s integration with OS X I can look up words by just selecting it and pressing a key command. I can’t count the number of words I have learned because of ease and speed of looking up words.

4. What was your motivation to write Jisho?
   I originally wrote Jisho before getting into university as I knew I was going to study Japanese and would need a dictionary. Since I found it quite useful I thought others might as well so I decided to release it publicly.
5. How much time would you say you have invested in the programming of Jisho?
   Oh I don’t even have a clue. A lot of time. Hundreds of hours at least.

6. Jisho has undergone many changes since its conception. Can you describe some of these and explain how the changes you have done make Jisho a better program?
   Jisho started out as a confused mess I think. The major changes is the adherence to Apple’s Human Interface Guidelines, and adopting some Apple technologies that allowed me to completely redesign the interface in literally a few hours and still have a fully functioning application. I actually got a post on the Sugoi Soft blog that demonstrates the differences at http://www.sugoisoft.com/blog/2007/10/02/how-far-jisho-has-come
7. Even though this is the latest release of Jisho, I know myself as a developer I am always focusing on future changes. What changes does the future have in store for Jisho?
   The future for Jisho is going to be expanding to more dictionaries to make it even more comprehensive. I also want to integrate Jisho more with the system and their life better. I’ve been toying around with making Jisho play well with the iPod and other juicy stuff like that.
8. Where/how did you learn how to program?
   I learned to program by mostly teaching myself. I did take some classes at the local community college back when I was a freshman in high school, but that was more basics and data structures.
9. What has been the best part of developing Jisho?
   The best part of developing Jisho has been knowing that I make a product that people are passionate about. That my work can help improve people’s lives is still incredible to me. Of course the monthly checks are pretty good thing too.

10. What has been the worst part of developing Jisho?
    The worst part of developing Jisho has been the dealing with criticism of Jisho. Especially after the 1.0 release of Jisho as it was my first time to take such criticism of something I had poured so many nights and weekends into. It felt like a direct criticism to myself. Overtime though I have learned to extract the valid points and steal their good ideas to future incorporation.



11. How often do you use Jisho yourself?
    I use Jisho everyday, many many times day.
12. Do you have any plans to release a version of Jisho for platforms other than Mac OS X?
    I’ve thought about it, I’ve even gotten a few requests for Windows versions, but I feel my energy would be better spend on making great software for the Macintosh.
13. How did you come up with the name Jisho?
    I wanted a name for Jisho that was different. Something that encapsulated what Jisho does in a word. Something like Dictionary is boring (and already taken). Luckily for me though foreign languages are rife of words that we don’t use in English. Thus I picked Jisho, which is Japanese for dictionary.
14. Do you have any comments you would like to share with the readers of Tenacious Creations?
    

    Yea, thanks for taking the time to read the interview and if you use a mac give Jisho a whirl. If you decide to buy, input the coupon TCTHANKS and receive 10% off Jisho through Sunday.

 If you run a mac I highly recommend that you give Jisho a whirl as the developer suggests. James Van Dyne is the man behind Sugio Soft and Jisho and I would like to thank him for his time for this interview and the discount he is giving to Tenacious Creations readers.

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 While serving in the military I picked up a good number of sayings and expressions that I still use today. One of them was the 7 P’s rule.

 What exactly is the 7 P’s rule. Well it stands for Proper Previous Planning Prevents Piss Poor Performance. This rule can apply to anything you are doing from blogging to taking a trip some where. A little bit of planning can prevent a lot of frustration later.

 Lets’ take a blog post for example and apply the rule of the 7P’s. So in order to write this post I first have to choose a topic, in this case the 7P rule. Then I gather or create any images that I will use. From there I write a brief out line of what I want to say in the post. Now I know we all disliked writing outlines in school but it does help. It doesn’t have to be anything fancy, just out line the points you want to cover. This is my outline for this post.

 By planning what I need and locating resources before I write I am able to just write. I have every thing at my finger tips and I do not waste time looking for things. I often times have a great idea for a post, so I will write it down and do a quick outline. That way I can be on the look out for relevant resources for that post while doing other things. When I am ready to write my research time has been minimized. To me there is nothing more valuable than time, it is the one resource than I cannot replace no matter how hard I try.

 When you save time you are indeed becoming more productive. For example let us just say that you want to build some shelves in your home. Now you could just go to the hardware store and buy the material that you think you need. But I am quite confident that this will result in you having to make additional trips to the hardware store. This costs you in time, fuel and wear and tear on your vehicle.

 Now lets build the same shelves and employ the 7P rule. First we would take measurements so we know how much material we will need. Then we would make a list of the mounting hardware, screws etc. From this list we could also determine if we will need any additional tools to install these shelves and add that to our list. Now list in hand off we go to the hardware store to buy our supplies. If the store has knowledgeable staff (this is becoming harder and harder to find) we could ask them to go over our list and suggest anything we missed. If we properly planned our project we should not have to make any additional trips to the hardware store. We save the time, fuel and other associated costs. Not to mention the frustration caused by not having everything we need at our disposal.

 A little bit of planning before hand can save time, money and most of frustration. When you start any project remember the 7 P rule.

• Proper
• Previous
• Planning
• Prevents
• Piss
• Poor
• Performance

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 A short time ago I wrote a post on how much I love white boards or dry erase boards. Well Julia the founder of Kleen Slate got in touch with me to tell me about some products she has created for white boards / dry erase boards.

Julia saw a need and filled it with her revolutionary idea of having erasers attached right on the dry / erase marker. No more having to hunt around for the eraser when you make a bumble while writing, or worse yet using your fingers to wipe off the writing.

 Now before you go telling me that it is just easier to use your finger let me relate this anecdote to you. While attending a conference the presenter was making extensive use of the dry / erase board to explain some formulae. Well he occasionally made a blunder and would wipe it quickly off with his finger. However one time after doing this he wiped his face and left a green mark across his face. Well no one in attendance told him and he went the rest of the day with a green mark on his face. I am sure this made him lose some credibility in the eyes of his audience.

 The first product I want to discuss is the KwikChek II. This is essentially a paddle with a plain dry / erase side and a lined dry / erase side. My wife who works in a nursing home immediately saw the advantage of this when she saw it. She told me it would be an excellent tool for communicating with her patients who are hard of hearing or have difficulty speaking.

  I think it is really well designed for many applications. It is one of those items that once you have it in your hand you can think up endless possibilities for it. A few are listed on Kleen Slate’s web site. I do like the fact the it has a holder for the marker, this way you can always have the two together.

Other possible uses that I can think of right now are:

• To relay time information to runners / bikers in a race.
• To display the channel information for R/C enthusiasts.

 The erasers on the small markers are incorporated to the cap. This makes them extremely versatile. Once you remove the cap and place it on the end you have both your writing end and erasing end. Much like a pencil. The erasers perform better than any other dry / erase eraser I have used. They remove all the ink with no trace leaving a clean dry erase surface. As for odour from the dry / erase markers they are not any worse or any better than those already on the market.

 The big markers do not have the erasers attached to the caps. A feature I would of really liked to have seen as I tend to be a little bit absent minded and can fore see myself misplacing a cap from one of the markers. This can be an advantage as you will be able to easily reuse the erasers from these markers with new markers. Again the erasers perform exceptionally well and are very nice to use. The odour again is much like other dry / erase markers out there.

 All things considered if you regularly make use of white boards (dry / erase boards ) I would recommend using these products. The erasers perform better than any other dry / erase erasers I have ever used. I will make sure that all my dry /erase markers in the future are equipped with these erasers.

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 The other night I was talking with some colleagues and they were complaining about having to deal with so much e-mail every day. I naively asked them how much e-mail they get in a day. I was surprised when the answers ranged for 10 to 50. I sometime wish I only got 50 relevant important e-mails a day. The fact is I get close to 100 or more a day, and that is not including spam. They all require my attention, but thankfully not all of them require a response. So how do I deal with them?

 The most important tip that I cannot stress enough is to not deal with them as they arrive. Set a specified time when you will answer e-mails, and also be sure to set the amount of time you will devote to answering e-mails. I normally give myself two hours a day, one hour in the morning and one hour in the evening to answer my e-mails. When you get snail mail delivered you don’t immediately answer the mail. PLus the first thing most people do is sort their mail before opening it. If it works in the non digital world, what prevents it from working in the digital world.

 One of the hardest things I had to learn when dealing with large amounts of e-mail is to not feel compelled to answer each and every e-mail immediately upon reading it. After I read the e-mail I assign it to two different categories. The first being the nature of the e-mail. For example if it is an e-mail having to deal with this blog it is assign as “TCBlog”, if it has to do with Google Adsense I tag it as “Adsense”. The next category that I assign it is the priority it requires an answer.

 If you ever take an emergency responder or first aid course they always teach you to survey the situation. After your survey you perform triage and deal with the most life threaten situations first. This is similar to how I deal with e-mail. I have different levels of priority for my e-mails.

• Requires Immediate Action – These are e-mails that require urgent decisions and as the name says immediate action. I try to use this category sparingly. Things that would fall into this group would be responses to contract offers, emergency support etc. I will sometimes answers these right after reading them, if not the are top of the list when I am done sorting my e-mail.
• Requires Follow Up – These are e-mails that do require me to act on them but there is no urgency. If they get answered today or tomorrow all is well. Most of my business correspondence falls with in this category.
• Requires next day Follow Up – The e-mails that are tagged here are mostly of a personal nature.These will be the first e-mails I will answer tomorrow after sorting my e-mail and dealing with the R.A.T.S.
• No Follow Up – These are those e-mails that are alerting me to something, or from mailing lists that I follow. They don’t require an answer and are not time sensitive, but they are still of value to me. I read these at my leisure. Or something new that I have been trying is to have the computer read these out to me while I am performing other tasks. So far this is working very well, but I’ll save that for another post.
• Junk Mail – This is where I dump my spam, e-mail chain letters and any other e-mail that is of no value to me. Generally speaking this is my spam folder.

 Up front this may seem like a whole bunch of extra work just to answer e-mail. The hardest part is setting up the system and working with it. Once you get it going however you time savings is clearly evident. I have found I am more productive answering my e-mails this way. It has greatly reduced me stopping in the middle of something to answer an e-mail. Not completely however because there are times when after a phone call or something I am expecting an e-mail that require immediate attention. I have found the time it saves as well as the distraction it prevents to greatly increase my productivity.

Tell me your suggestions on how you deal with large amounts of e-mail.

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 How do you improve your creativity? How do you keep coming up with fresh new ideas? Well it is my belief the mind acts like any other muscle in the body and if you do not exercise a muscle it atrophies. If you don;t exercise your mind you will find that your mind also will atrophy and it will be that much harder to think of new ideas and solutions to problems.

While dropping my card at a few sites I came across this site which had a nifty little creativity exercise on it.

Basically the author suggests that you take 6 sheets of paper and everyday do something creative with the paper. I have modified this a little bit. Every day I take a sheet of paper and write down one different way to improve traffic to Tenacious Creations. On the seventh day I will gather all my ideas and review them. So far it has been working very well and I have been able to come up with a new idea each day. I am really looking forward to reviewing them at the end of the week. Guess what – I’ll more than likely post about what I cam up with.

 I encourage you to do the same sort of thing with a problem you want to solve. Or how about just doing one creative thing each day and documenting it? Let me know how it works out for you.

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