If you've got a LinkedIn profile, this post is for YOU!

Mr. T is an avid gamer- there's quite honestly no other word for it. He also dabbles a bit with designing accessories such as clothing and armor for games like Team Fortress. He uses GIMP, Blender and a few other nice pieces of freeware that are quite commonly employed in the world of game design. He also uses terms like "procedurally generated" as part of his normal speech.

And this has exactly "what" to do with this blog?

Well, procedurally generated is generally a gaming term, but more specifically its a coding or programming term. If you're a gamer you're probably familiar with this term, but if you're not, consider a normal search on Google or Amazon. Let's say you're looking for a certain kind of cheese. Google and Amazon will both display results based upon your previous browsing history, other surfers' previous history AND general popularity. When I typed "c" into my browser, "complex" was the 1st Google result, and Amazon returned nothing. "ch" in the browser gave me "chicagotribune" while Amazon returned "charcoal". To get "cheese" out of Google, I had to type "cheese" + space); Amazon only needed "chee" to get me to cheese.

I told you all of that to tell you this: I have two drafts that I want to publish, but both of them are once again on the backburner- this time because of an observation I had whilst surfing contact suggestions on LinkedIn. Hence, it is not uncommon for my blog's subject matter to be procedurally generated after a fashion.

As in a previous post from July of 2016, I'd like to talk a bit about professional deportment. Last time I addressed email addresses specifically, but also addressed data quality. Today I'd like to get more personal and address your LinkedIn profile with some brutal honesty which I hope will help your online presence look a bit (well, a metric ***ton) better: it's your mug.

*I'm not sure about other parts of the world, but in American English, your "mug" is a colloquialism that can mean your portrait (as in, your mugshot- the photo the police take of you when you are apprehended). And, once again, it does not imply in any way that you've ever run afoul of the law- it's just a casual way of saying "your picture"- or selfie.

Apologies- for once- to my American audience: this blog is read in over fifty countries, of which the vast majority do not speak English as their 1st language, and many have to be transliterated. Trust me, as someone who has been formally exposed to over half a dozen languages: idioms and colloquialisms do NOT translate gracefully or accurately!

So, there I was on LinkedIn. I had received an invitation to connect with someone in my field, and I accepted it. Once I did this, LinkedIn offered a slate of its own recommendations, procedurally generated by my existing network, career field, and who knows what else!

As I am IRL decidedly NOT a social butterfly, I welcome the LinkedIn suggestions and peruse them. Here's where it gets real and if you've skimmed down wondering when the wall of words would end, swallow your beverage and START READING NOW.

Gentle readers, I've had tons of sales training, and yet (for a number of unrelated reasons) I stink at sales. One thing I remember, though, that was common to all of this sales training, is this: we buy from folks like us, or ones that we like. I do not like generic silhouettes, nor will I connect with them. After all (and this is true) I am terrible with names. If I cannot connect a name with a face, I cannot make a connection. If Nikola Tesla, H.G.Wells, Steve Jobs and Sir Richard Branson had all sent me LinkedIn connection requests multiple times, and all they had for an avi was the default silhouette, I would decline them every time. Lesson 1 is: put up a real picture.

There's a caveat here, though: occasionally, a portrait may be TMI. There may be very good legal or safety reasons for omitting a portrait. In this case, you'll need to be creative if you desire a social media presence of any sort, but please... avoid the default silhouette!

Lesson 2: Your picture should be you. Unless you have some real issues as noted in the caveat following Lesson 1, put your picture here.

Lesson 3: Your picture should somehow communicate your personality, your passion, or your profession. For professional men, I don't think you can ever go wrong with a suit... or something that infers that you came to the office in a suit, but by 10 in the morning the jacket and tie were gone and the sleeves were rolled up. If you're C-level, you have license to go either way. For professional women, I'm sorry, I have little advice because the three-piece suit is not standard women's attire... I think. OTOH, if you're a working professional in a specialized field, wear the eye protection or hardhat or hearing protection or operate a specialized piece of equipment. My picture is a bit silly- but prized. Although its not a great picture, it was taken by a coworker with my camera, it really reflects my personality, and I like it.

Lesson 4: Your picture should not be an afterthought. You've invested time into creating your LinkedIn profile- why use cheap wallpaper? See lesson 3 regarding my picture. But... the idea here is about pictures that probably should not be used in a LinkedIn profile. So, don't reuse badly cropped photos of ANYTHING. Don't use prom photos (yes, I've seen 'em), wedding photos (ditto), graduation/seminar photos (uh-huh), photos with bad flash, poorly lit studio shots that obviously show you're seated in front of a pretty backdrop, obvious bad selfies, photos with your complexion/skin tone unfavorably illuminated. Ladies especially: attire or photo angle that emphasizes a particular feature (noses, etc) or sexualizes your portrait. When in doubt, have a disinterested (honest) third party check it out.

"But," you might say, "it's only LinkedIn."

According to a recent report, LinkedIn has 467 million members. Only China and India are more "populous". The whole world is looking at your mug, my friend.

As always, I am hochspeyer, blogging data analysis and management so you don't have to.

Not in the cards, I guess

Several years ago, we picked up a nice piece of software from Nova Development called Art Explosion Greeting Card Factory. We've been very happy with it, try to keep up with new version releases, and as a result have probably purchased no more than five preprinted greeting cards in that time. Jennifer uses it fairly often, but I don't. As such, it's been a while since I made a card.

As I've told folks in real life as well as on some of the LinkedIn groups of which I'm a member, most software does so many different things that there will always be something you don't know, and the easiest way to learn software is by using it. And so it went with me yesterday- I could have asked Jennifer to make the card for me, and she probably would have. She also would probably have made a nicer card... but as toddlers often say, "I can do it MYSELF!"

Well, there's that, but more than that, I wanted to show the recipient that I could do a thing or two with graphics, layout and text. So, I sat down and began to create. In addition to not being the resident expert and not doing this very often, this was also a new version of the software which I had never used before.

I left the inside for last, as there would only be a short note and a piece of clipart there and started on the front, setting the card to landscape. I found a very nice picture on Google and pulled it in, resized it and sent it to the back. Next, I checked for the exact verbiage and put a nice quote on top as a headline, and changed the color of the font. Finally, I grabbed a few other images off of the internet and saved everything. I went back to the internet and grabbed a few nice fonts. Since I haven't done any of this in some time, I learned that I should have grabbed the fonts first. I saved my card and closed the program.

I added the fonts to the Windows fonts directory and reopened my card. Instead of my beautiful art, there were diagonal neon green and orange stripes! Feathers ruffled but undaunted, I asked Mr. T what graphics editor he preferred. I was going to use GIMP, but I recalled both he and Amanda didn't like GIMP- he suggested Paint.net. Back to the desk... download Paint.net. Redownload both images, crop the smaller one and save them as individual .jpeg's. Satisfied, I reinserted the background, cloned the smaller one a few times, positioned the clones and saved. Then, I added a bunch of text to the back cover and formatted, positioned and saved the project. This time I printed it, and closed the program.

I was pleased with the proof copy, so I opened up the Save again. Images were gone, and stripes were back. I needed to get this card off in the morning, so I got rid of the stripes, pulled the images back in and repositioned everything. I added some clipart and text to the inside, saved and printed it. I was happy with the result. Time from start to finish (including searches, downloads and installs): around five hours... but it was a fun and satisfying five hours!

Lastly, a data update. I'm in a particularly unpleasant bit of data entry right now- absolutely no copying is possible. For all you AFOL's (Adult Fans Of Lego- and yes, that's a real acronym and definition) out there, I'm in the 3005 01x01x01 elements. The ones that have printing on them. I'm not sure exactly how many I did, but it seemed like a few hundred!

That's all for now- I have a card to mail!

As always, I am hochspeyer, blogging data analysis and management so you don't have to.