Ask MetaFilter posts tagged with process

I cho-choose you

about_time — Wed, 09 Jul 2008 04:56:05 -0800

I am a member of an academic committee that handles award nominations. Our job is to chose which of many internal applicants may apply for an external award. Often such awards accept just 1 or 2 applicants from a single organization. What is the most transparent and fair process for making such decisions? Alternatively, what are problems you've faced on similar committees? In terms of transparency, I am looking for a process that allows us to say ahead of time "here are the rules by which we will make all decisions" and then afterwards "here are the decisions we made in this particular case and why". The people who are submitting applications are my peers, that is, I can't simply say "I'm the boss, that's why". I'm also concerned with bruised egos from saying, "X is better than you."

I don't need suggestions for a full process from me-fi, just some rules or vague suggestions for what you think is important. For example, "If it is the last year that someone is eligible for an award, they receive a preference" as some awards are early career awards.

Thanks for you help.

Gallery-quality prints from slides.

Sreiny — Sat, 05 Jul 2008 09:13:07 -0800

What are my options for gallery-quality prints from slide film? I've had an inquiry in showing some of my photographs in a small gallery here in the city. All of the photos were shot with slide film. In the past I've scanned, had printed and framed these on a purely consumer level. I'd like to look into what processes (printing methods, scanning, etc), papers, framing that professional fine art photographers employ when they need to have gallery-quality photographs from transparency film produced.

For now, let's assume that price isn't the biggest factor and that the photos would be around 16x20. I'm in Chicago, if that helps. Your help is much appreciated!

A framework for designing a self-study course using free material?

TheManChild2000 — Fri, 16 May 2008 13:34:46 -0800

Is there a high-level general procedure or process that can be used to design a course of self-study in any topic? There is a broad electrical engineering topic that I intend to spend the next X months learning more about, and would like to approach it efficiently, if possible. I'm wondering if there is a generalized self-study framework that I could simply plug the details for pursuing this particular topic into.

I don't want to go out and spend big bucks on the textbooks that are available. There is a large amount of free material available to me. My general plan is to gather everything that I can, sort and prioritize it, spend a chunk of time just reading, and then see if I can pick a more specific direction after that. But hey, maybe there's a smarter way...

Learning how to model the processes of a medium-sized business

yoz420 — Fri, 09 May 2008 02:41:24 -0800

A friend has recently been offered a position that will involve modelling the company processes in her company. She has a good knowledge of the business but needs to learn to formalize this knowledge into proper business process models. Where can she start a crash course on the formal approaches to modelling and creating diagrams of the processes used in this company of about 100 employees? There is a lot of information on the web about this, but it's difficult to separate out the noise from good information. I am looking for recommendations of insightful websites or good introductory books that you have found useful in the past, as well as any advice based on your own experience of doing this sort of thing.

A phantom process was eating my CPU!

Burhanistan — Wed, 30 Apr 2008 09:22:26 -0800

Has anyone ever heard of a Windows Server process called "daupbsvc.exe"? This was using a significant amount of processor time on a VMWare Windows 2003 server. Google and Microsoft return no results, as do all of the relevant support forums for the applications that server runs. I seriously doubt it was a virus as that would've returned many search engine results, and that server doesn't contain any end user files nor is it used for any type of web browsing (though it can connect to the internet). I killed the process and it didn't come back. It also isn't showing up in any of the directories of that server, hidden or otherwise. Any ideas?

Physical cut-ups: Making Frankenstein vinyl records and books

0bvious — Tue, 25 Mar 2008 03:29:01 -0800

I want to physically cut-up vinyl records and books into pieces, which I will then glue back together in various, alternate combinations. What are the best methods of doing this? Artist Christian Marclay did a similar thing with records (anyone know any sources of info on this?), so that when he glued them back together the frankenstein records could still be played. This would mean that the cutting technique did not destroy any of the vinyl's structure, it also meant that each record had to be cut very precisely, otherwise the fragments from several different records could not be glued back together.

I also wish to do a similar thing with old books, so that you get a kind of frankenstein, mish-mash of different book combinations. It would eventually be like doing a Burroughesque cut-up on physical forms.

Any ideas on technique would be greatly appreciated. How would I go about doing this? Have you seen similar things done by other artists?

Thanks

Destroying works of art as a creative process?

CreativeJuices — Tue, 11 Mar 2008 10:24:20 -0800

Art Filter: MeFites, can you help me compile a list of outstanding artists, any medium, that destroy their work as part of the process? In particular I am looking for an artist that I saw a clip of on the Anthony Bordane show, "No Reservations". Stats: she is an older woman from Argentina, has worked with Andy Warhol, works with food, tries to demystify art and destroys her work.
Any other artists that destroy their work would be great!

How do I organize and archive my digital photography?

chrisbucks — Fri, 29 Feb 2008 16:08:34 -0800

What is the best work-flow process for handling digital photos from capture, processing to archive? I've been knocking off a few paying assignments lately and have had some work published in newspapers and and quickly finding myself engulfed in both film and digital clutter. Particularly for some of my modeling contracts I find myself ending up with over a gigabyte of photos per shoot. I need to find a way to deal with this. Also I do some medium format and 35mm photography which I scan into the computer.

Currently I'm working as so:
-Capture in RAW
-Edit in photoshop, retain the original CR2 file and also save a jpeg copy, then create a low-res jpeg for the web.
-Once a week back up my directory of photos to an external drive
-I send clients 2 copies of a CD of their shoot, and I burn myself a copy which I file in a accordion folder.

A lot of the photos are sorted by either subject matter or date of capture, really I have no idea what I'm doing and there seems to be several different systems going on at once.

What formats should I be saving the files in? Taking into account the best preservation of quality and of space.

I'm a bit of a digital junk collector, and I'm sure there are photos going back years which are sitting moldering away in my stacks of CDs and on drives. In terms of clients photos is there much point at all in keeping them after handing over the goods and receiving payment?

Can anyone make some recommendations on a Purchasing Process management software?

doomtop — Fri, 02 Nov 2007 12:32:19 -0800

Can anyone make some recommendations on a Purchasing Process management software? I'm looking for an electronic purchasing process system, preferably web-based or with some level of web-based functionality. Also very important is a high emphasis on ease of use and simplified user interface. If Google made a product like this, I would be checking that out first.

I am looking to facilitate and automate a purchasing process, including submitting purchase requests, checking the status of open requests, adding notes to requests, automated e-mail updates on requests, user-level access controls, a user-based approval process, etc.

Those are the main features. Other great things would be the ability to export purchase orders into quotes/invoices, with the ability to manage markups and select specific items from purchase requests to export into invoices.

I am also interested somewhat in Quickbooks integration (or other accounting software), but don't care so much about this aspect as the main features.

Does anyone know of any good examples of this type of product? Has anyone used this type of software before?

It doesn't matter if it's free, open-source, or costly and proprietary. All I care about is the functionality and ease of use.

These twenty docs go into a bar...

cashman — Thu, 25 Oct 2007 12:25:39 -0800

How can I optimize an MS Word doc compilation process? 20 into 1. There are twenty-ish people who email separate individual reports in MS Word to a final person who compiles them into a big report. Each individual report in MS Word is the same format/template. It has name fields, checkboxes and some free form stuff. Probably 3 pages or so. There are, say, 35 or so text fields that are filled out by the individual, including the checkboxes. Some of the free form stuff is like: "notified the bus driver of the route change", and the name of the report sender has to be appended to the front of that sentence for the final report.

The ideal solution to come up with one summary report would be to put the stuff into google docs, share it with all twenty folks and essentially let them compile the report, then the compiler could just be a reviewer/editor. Unfortunately, for several teeth-gnashing reasons, that can't be done. Another way would be to send the document to the first person, who then sent it to the next person, and so on, until once again, they compiled the report themselves, with no additional work for any one of them. Again, teeth-gnashingly not possible. Can't set up any web forms either.

The final person has the twenty docs. What's the best or simplest way you can think of for them to compile the information from the twenty word docs into the final word doc, aside from the stone age way of cutting and pasting?

Is there some macro that could be set to grab the information from each heading and plunk it all down in the master document, grouped? Should the individuals send the information in a plain text email that can somehow be more easily manipulated using google docs or something?

Agent for service of process for very large banks?

Kimpossible — Thu, 16 Aug 2007 23:01:13 -0800

How can I find out who the agent for service of process is for very large banks?

review project with team, best practices

Anonymous — Wed, 08 Aug 2007 15:35:43 -0800

Reviewing a project with team, now that it's over -- best practices? my colleagues have recently completed a long term (6 month) project. Some of it went ok, some of it was really unreasonably difficult. The project is a success, but the process took a toll.

We're to review how it all went down, in a few days. Does anyone have any ideas about how to do this that won't end up in a constellation of finger-pointing and complaining?

The goal is to make it constructive and help figure out how to do it better next time. At the same time, we have to acknowledge some serious errors made by various folks on the team.

Any suggestions or experience with this?

How to stop wasting time programming?

mrgreyisyelling — Tue, 01 May 2007 13:57:16 -0800

Why do I always take the long route when programming? I'm no master programmer - but - I feel like I'm missing something. I'm constantly finding myself trying to tear down one wall or another, in attempt to resolve some issue, only to find halfway into it, that there was a ten minute fix right in front of me. Complications fade away, problem solved. I'm no master programmer - but - I feel like I'm missing

My current process is: Big to small, broad to specific. In my mind that seems to be golden - but in practice I can waste hours working out a problem that was misconceived to begin with.

Though I think to a degree it is epiphany, but its happening too often for that to be the case. It has become almost part of my work process - one I would like to stop. I was wondering if there is some sort of strict method developing code that might save me some cycles and have me stop wasting time.

How do you edit your company's Wikipedia entry?

zooropa — Fri, 29 Dec 2006 13:34:43 -0800

How do I make a correction to a Wikipedia entry? My company's chairman has discovered some errors on the Wikipedia entry describing our company. How would we go about editing the entry?

Some of the errors are blatantly incorrect pieces of information. Others are more open to interpretation, and are definitely shaded in nuance and can go either way.

Please understand that we're not looking to clean this up for good PR, but to do the honest thing and put real fact in place of innuendo.

So how does one go about doing this? Is there a process of addressing grievances? Or do we just go in, click "edit this page", and just start writing?

Links to helpful HOWTO's and READMEs would more than appreciated. Also, comments are welcome, too. Is it bad form for a company to edit its own wikipedia entry? Again, we're not interested in a PR whitewash, merely a correction of clearly erroneous or outdated information. No flames, please.

Can a minor accept a document from a process server?

jeffbarr — Wed, 18 Oct 2006 22:55:06 -0800

Is it legally binding in the state of Washington for a minor to accept a document delivered by a process server? Early this month a process server attempted to serve me with some papers. I wasn't home and but my 16 year old son was. My son informed the server that he was a minor, but the server convinced him to sign some sort of form indicating that the papers had been delivered.

Is this legal?

If not, could I successfully claim that I had never been properly served?

Kill the out of control python in Tiger!

mikel — Mon, 13 Feb 2006 21:36:02 -0800

In the past few weeks I have started to notice a strange problem in OS X - a process called 'python' starts and will not stop on its own. I'm running Tiger 10.4.4. I have noticed that occasionally the fan in my Mini goes on for extended periods of time and when I check the SysStat Dashboard (or top in the terminal) I notice a process called python that is taking up 35%+ of CPU. Load Averages generally go up to 2.x or so when this occurs.

It's easy enough to note the process number in the dashboard and then open up a terminal and kill the process, and there have been no noticable negative side effects of doing so. I suspect that something I do in Firefox might be calling this process in sort of an old-school plugin behaviour, but I have poked around and can't find any mention of anything like that happening.

I would much prefer to figure out what this is and figure out how to prevent it from occurring (if possible).

Sales process development books

will — Tue, 03 Jan 2006 21:26:07 -0800

Have a sales process development book or other resource recommendation? Looking for something practical with sample processes and documents, less on theory.

Finally, A Performance Question That Doesn't Involve AnonAskMe...

NotMyselfRightNow — Wed, 16 Nov 2005 06:51:58 -0800

What's the best performance review process you have ever gone through at a company? What did it involve? Why do you feel it was a good process?

Are there good examples of the design process online or in book form?

jeremias — Fri, 11 Nov 2005 14:58:50 -0800

Are there good examples of the design *process* online or in book form? I'm looking for examples of how designers take a project through stages i.e. sketch to the rough draft and then revision and then final draft. Preferably I'd like to center on print design rather than web design although great examples of the latter would be helpful.

XP Processes

punishinglemur — Wed, 20 Apr 2005 16:06:58 -0800

Windows XP SP2 says: "The process cannot access the file because it is being used by another process." How can I find out what "another process" is?

Question number 11241

NotMyselfRightNow — Tue, 26 Oct 2004 11:25:08 -0800

Small- to medium-scale inventory management system recommendations? [+]

Question number 11014

PinkStainlessTail — Sun, 17 Oct 2004 09:43:46 -0800

When converting an MP3 to WAV (for playback on a CD player that can't handle MP3s) What's the best method? Playback MP3 and record to WAV with a program like Total Recorder? Convert formats directly with something like Audacity or CDex? Doesn't matter?

Question number 10109

benjh — Sat, 11 Sep 2004 20:55:25 -0800

I am in the process purchasing a house and want to feel more secure. Security in a concern...

Question number 8026

mnology — Thu, 17 Jun 2004 11:10:00 -0800

Translating technical certifications (Network+ and A+) in to an MCP. Is this possible? I've scoured forums and newsgroups related
to technical certification, and found items that alluded to this possibility, but with no specifics as to the process. Where could I research this more? Has anyone experienced this process? How would one go about doing this?

Question number 7880

rhyax — Fri, 11 Jun 2004 11:05:16 -0800

UK elections: looking at this thread I was wondering how elections work in the UK. From that post it sounds like not all MPs are elected at the same time, but this page on the Electoral Commission isn't very helpful. [MI]