Long ago, when I set up this blog I read a few primers on blogging. One of them suggested that you have a picture of yourself on your blog. There were lots of good arguments for doing it, so I dutifully hunted among my photos for a picture of myself. Turns out that I didn’t have too many (I tend to be behind the camera rather than in front of it).

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I did find one that I liked. It was on a nasty old fishing boat on the Prince William Sound (in Alaska). A friend of mine had bought the boat and invited a few friends for an multi-day cruise. There was no running water. The bathroom was a 5 gallon green bucket (I’ll leave it to your imagination how we “flushed” it). At the end of the trip, I was scruffy as hell, but I’d had an absolute blast tromping around the rugged islands of Alaska. That’s where the pipe picture was taken.

As my blog actually accumulated readers, there came a trickle of negative feedback about the pipe, which has increased to a steady stream. Some people feel like I was trying to look serious. Or academic. Or rich. Or that I was just clowning around. To me, the photo had a ton of meaning. To anyone else, not so much.

For some reason, this made me think of one of my favorite posts on product/UX design. Here’s a quote:

“When I started working on Wufoo, I was definitely a bad designer. I thought I was hot shit and knew all the answers. I saw the user as a wild beast that needed to be tamed. He got in MY way. Use the tool the way I designed it, fool—not the way you think it should work [emphasis added]. Thinking back, I remember being angry all of the time.”

One of the big lessons (which I continue to learn a little bit more every single day) is that it doesn’t matter a damn bit what you’re saying (whether you’re “saying” it to a user with design or saying it with words or pictures on a blog), it matters what’s being heard.

So I’ve pulled the pipe picture in favor of a more recent one. Some people suggested that I keep it as a “schtick”, but I’d rather be known as “that guy who kicks ass with RescueTime” than “that guy with the pipe” (who actually never smokes a pipe).