Work
chaff
29/12/07 07:51
I have come to realise that defining much of what I
actually do as Chaff is useful.
What is chaff?
Chaff is the stuff that you just sort of end up doing. It is generally not stuff that you really intend to do. You don't generally wake up in the morning wanting to do chaff.
Where does chaff come from?
Chaff in comes via all sorts of ways. It might just be little jobs around the house that need doing, mail that comes through the door, paperwork, or unexpected phone calls. But right now, most of all, chaff seems to come through the email.
Who wants you to spend time on chaff?
Well sometimes you want to do chaff, just to keep things ticking over, you need to get more paper for the printer, or answer the door for the postman. Often chaff is something that someone else wants you to do, it might be part of their grand masterplan, but generally it is not part of yours.
Is chaff unimportant then?
Well not really, it includes routine maintenance sort of stuff that you know needs done, and helping out other folk, and even just being a sociable person. Bump into someone and have a ten minute conversation you were not expecting, then that was chaff.
What is the problem with chaff then?
The problem is that unless you are careful, you easily end up spending all your time on chaff. You are bogged down with chaff before you leave home, commute in, chaff again, spend half the morning on endless emails, get interrupted and lose the plot, attend a meeting that seems pointless, commute home, big pile of spam and TV programmes that you end up watching every week but don't know why. All your day has been caught up with chaff, and then there is no time for what you deep down feel you ought to be doing.
So chaff is evil and we should avoid it?
No one can avoid chaff, it is a fact of life. You might be able to delegate it. If you did not do any chaff, then you would end up a jobless, unthinking robot with no friends.
How do you deal with chaff?
You need to find your own ways of dealing with chaff. For example by devoting fixed amounts of time to chaff, for example only check your email periodically and then only for a set amount of time. Knowing that it is time limited, encourages you to get through them quickly. Tackle a pile of chaff at the same time, rather than letting it interrupt you all the time. Don't be afraid to try different approaches to constraining your time spent on chaff.
One thing that I find works well for me, is when I draw up my task list for the day, I divide it into two columns, chaff, and everything else. So all the stuff that is chaff goes into the chaff column, and the rest goes into the other column. When doing work, I then try and alternate the different columns, so that a chaff task, is followed by something from the 'productive' column, and then back to the chaff. That way nothing completely grinds to a half.
Do you get extra time then?
You probably won't end up with extra time, but you will at least be taking control of the time that you do have. For example if you can ring fence time in your diary for something and are prepared to stick to it, then you can have that half day to read that important report you always meant to.
Why not skip chaff altogether?
You need to work with other people, if you simply ignore anything that does not fit in with your masterplan, you will end up starving and alone. However you can avoid chaff taking over your life. The important thing to realise is that how well you tackle chaff says very little about you, it is how you tackle the big issues that says something about you. Find ways of getting chaff out of the way as quickly as possible to let you devote your time and energy to the big stuff, rather than simply leaving the leftover time and energy to the big stuff, if you are lucky.
So remember chaff is not your friend, chaff makes you feel busy without being productive.
Bully chaff, treat it badly, take back control of your life.
What is chaff?
Chaff is the stuff that you just sort of end up doing. It is generally not stuff that you really intend to do. You don't generally wake up in the morning wanting to do chaff.
Where does chaff come from?
Chaff in comes via all sorts of ways. It might just be little jobs around the house that need doing, mail that comes through the door, paperwork, or unexpected phone calls. But right now, most of all, chaff seems to come through the email.
Who wants you to spend time on chaff?
Well sometimes you want to do chaff, just to keep things ticking over, you need to get more paper for the printer, or answer the door for the postman. Often chaff is something that someone else wants you to do, it might be part of their grand masterplan, but generally it is not part of yours.
Is chaff unimportant then?
Well not really, it includes routine maintenance sort of stuff that you know needs done, and helping out other folk, and even just being a sociable person. Bump into someone and have a ten minute conversation you were not expecting, then that was chaff.
What is the problem with chaff then?
The problem is that unless you are careful, you easily end up spending all your time on chaff. You are bogged down with chaff before you leave home, commute in, chaff again, spend half the morning on endless emails, get interrupted and lose the plot, attend a meeting that seems pointless, commute home, big pile of spam and TV programmes that you end up watching every week but don't know why. All your day has been caught up with chaff, and then there is no time for what you deep down feel you ought to be doing.
So chaff is evil and we should avoid it?
No one can avoid chaff, it is a fact of life. You might be able to delegate it. If you did not do any chaff, then you would end up a jobless, unthinking robot with no friends.
How do you deal with chaff?
You need to find your own ways of dealing with chaff. For example by devoting fixed amounts of time to chaff, for example only check your email periodically and then only for a set amount of time. Knowing that it is time limited, encourages you to get through them quickly. Tackle a pile of chaff at the same time, rather than letting it interrupt you all the time. Don't be afraid to try different approaches to constraining your time spent on chaff.
One thing that I find works well for me, is when I draw up my task list for the day, I divide it into two columns, chaff, and everything else. So all the stuff that is chaff goes into the chaff column, and the rest goes into the other column. When doing work, I then try and alternate the different columns, so that a chaff task, is followed by something from the 'productive' column, and then back to the chaff. That way nothing completely grinds to a half.
Do you get extra time then?
You probably won't end up with extra time, but you will at least be taking control of the time that you do have. For example if you can ring fence time in your diary for something and are prepared to stick to it, then you can have that half day to read that important report you always meant to.
Why not skip chaff altogether?
You need to work with other people, if you simply ignore anything that does not fit in with your masterplan, you will end up starving and alone. However you can avoid chaff taking over your life. The important thing to realise is that how well you tackle chaff says very little about you, it is how you tackle the big issues that says something about you. Find ways of getting chaff out of the way as quickly as possible to let you devote your time and energy to the big stuff, rather than simply leaving the leftover time and energy to the big stuff, if you are lucky.
So remember chaff is not your friend, chaff makes you feel busy without being productive.
Bully chaff, treat it badly, take back control of your life.
consider the future
22/12/07 12:29
As one year is on the way out, and another is on the
way in, it is worthwhile to pause a moment and
consider the future.
One thought that lurks like an elephant in the room, is the impact of globalisation, and world markets, on our lives. Britain is no longer the manufacturer of assorted sundries for all the world. We are no longer the pre-eminent power that we once were.
And yet, too often we think that we exist cosily within a welfare state that will protect and nurture us all, regardless.
But exactly what competitive advantage does Britain have as a country. It is difficult to argue that we are smarter, or work harder, equally although some in Britain own capital, or land, most of us do not, in any substantial way. In fact, Britain is fast becoming a nation of debtors. Dependent on favourable interest rates, merely to stay afloat.
We no longer have the easy benefit of living in a pre-eminent country. Mere location does not carry the benefits that it once did. The fact that we live in Britain does not make us ready workers in factories. Likewise services are increasingly capable of being outsourced, just as manufacturing has been.
At the moment we are all familiar with the outsourcing of call centres, but our lives are increasingly digital. This Christmas the shops seem unusually quiet, as shopping increasingly shifts online. So retail need no longer be on our high street, if we simply order on line, who is employed, where. Orders could be managed and sent automatically, vast sheds could provide goods for delivery. Goods that are increasingly made overseas.
So JK Rowling writes a book, it is published by a UK company, then printed overseas, comes over by the container load, and is distributed by Amazon. Where exactly is the role for the British worker in this scenario. Likewise the entire country cannot make a living providing services to each other. We need to provide exportable goods and services, to balance those we import. But increasingly the exportable goods and services have very little staff component. The staff component is highly skilled/valued, a superstar component. JK Rowling, James Dyson, Whisky brands, top universities, there is a role, but increasingly it is a role for the rich few not the poor many.
And the few are mobile, there is not much that they need to stay for. Society is increasingly becoming divided between the prosperous few, and the unskilled many. The welfare society relied on an implicit contract between the generations, and the classes, that you put in, and you took out, at times you put in, at times you took out. But increasingly there will be people who have virtually opted out of the welfare society, they pay for their children's schooling and university, they never claim benefits, barely access the NHS, would never be eligible for benefits anyway. If these people are superstars, then the world is their market. They need only stay here while the quality of life suits them. Overtax, or under-provide and they are free spirits to move on, as they will. They feel no duty to provide endlessly for a feckless underclass, they spend their lives doing their best to avoid.
Having said all this, I do not think that it is a vision that we need to fall victim to. A superstar economy is not an economy that I want to live in, nose pressed enviously against a window, watching the conspicuous consumption. By and large, the high end, high value work is not individual work. It derives from a group. You might talk about superstar academics, but really academics exist in a campus. I've blogged before on how big companies like Google, and Apple are starting to talk about having a campus. Why not government departments, or R&D facilities. Who does not enjoy spending time at a campus. Fresh young people carrying books, and arguing about things that they believe in. Great people become great, by surrounding themselves with other great people.
If we want to have a superstar economy, then we need to think in terms of campuses. Creating networks of possibility, easy soft quick links between like minds, fast track ideas, and approaches. Hothousing ideas to see what works, testing different models.
In terms of government, a devolved model offers tremendous opportunities, for small agile nations to try out ideas, that would be incapable of implementation in a slower larger country.
All this thinking is of little benefit, if it cannot inform how we out to adapt to thrive, you cannot merely adapt to survive, that is a charter for extinction. You need to adapt to thrive.
There are probably no certainties, but certain things are doubtless safe bets;
networking - you should build and build your networks, your capacity to create, and draw on networks.
information technology - you should be a relentless and determined user of information technology to deliver your goals, though not necessarily as an end in itself.
acceptability - you should be capable of interacting productively with as wide a population as possible. This might mean languages, or simply a welcoming smile, or helpful demeanour. The future belongs to those who can move about easily.
curiosity - you should always be curious, always asking and trying. The curious mind is a nimble mind.
time poor - the libraries of tomorrow are endless, not mere shelves, nor libraries, but warehouses recreating themselves endlessly. We need to become adept at skimming and dipping. Comfortable in our relative ignorance.
balancing between an attention to detail, and being easily bored - willing to put the time into figuring out something, but quick to move onto more interesting pastures.
And I suppose on a personal basis, it is always useful to be fit, healthy, and have some money behind you. If I can manage these things myself, if we can manage these things, if they can manage these things ...
Finally in personal terms there is an interdependence between having qualifications, experience and abilities. You need to balance these, as on their own, each has its limitations, but together they reinforce and support each other. The qualifications reinforce the skills, but it takes experience to actually demonstrate them. Any personal development needs to take account of all three, if it is to succeed.
Addenda - I've just read the attached article, and much of it chimes with what I have said above, however, even beyond this, it is very thoughtful and worthwhile
http://www.scotlandsfuturesforum.org/The%20Goodison%20Group%20in%20Scotland/GGIS%20Final%20Report%202007.pdf
One thought that lurks like an elephant in the room, is the impact of globalisation, and world markets, on our lives. Britain is no longer the manufacturer of assorted sundries for all the world. We are no longer the pre-eminent power that we once were.
And yet, too often we think that we exist cosily within a welfare state that will protect and nurture us all, regardless.
But exactly what competitive advantage does Britain have as a country. It is difficult to argue that we are smarter, or work harder, equally although some in Britain own capital, or land, most of us do not, in any substantial way. In fact, Britain is fast becoming a nation of debtors. Dependent on favourable interest rates, merely to stay afloat.
We no longer have the easy benefit of living in a pre-eminent country. Mere location does not carry the benefits that it once did. The fact that we live in Britain does not make us ready workers in factories. Likewise services are increasingly capable of being outsourced, just as manufacturing has been.
At the moment we are all familiar with the outsourcing of call centres, but our lives are increasingly digital. This Christmas the shops seem unusually quiet, as shopping increasingly shifts online. So retail need no longer be on our high street, if we simply order on line, who is employed, where. Orders could be managed and sent automatically, vast sheds could provide goods for delivery. Goods that are increasingly made overseas.
So JK Rowling writes a book, it is published by a UK company, then printed overseas, comes over by the container load, and is distributed by Amazon. Where exactly is the role for the British worker in this scenario. Likewise the entire country cannot make a living providing services to each other. We need to provide exportable goods and services, to balance those we import. But increasingly the exportable goods and services have very little staff component. The staff component is highly skilled/valued, a superstar component. JK Rowling, James Dyson, Whisky brands, top universities, there is a role, but increasingly it is a role for the rich few not the poor many.
And the few are mobile, there is not much that they need to stay for. Society is increasingly becoming divided between the prosperous few, and the unskilled many. The welfare society relied on an implicit contract between the generations, and the classes, that you put in, and you took out, at times you put in, at times you took out. But increasingly there will be people who have virtually opted out of the welfare society, they pay for their children's schooling and university, they never claim benefits, barely access the NHS, would never be eligible for benefits anyway. If these people are superstars, then the world is their market. They need only stay here while the quality of life suits them. Overtax, or under-provide and they are free spirits to move on, as they will. They feel no duty to provide endlessly for a feckless underclass, they spend their lives doing their best to avoid.
Having said all this, I do not think that it is a vision that we need to fall victim to. A superstar economy is not an economy that I want to live in, nose pressed enviously against a window, watching the conspicuous consumption. By and large, the high end, high value work is not individual work. It derives from a group. You might talk about superstar academics, but really academics exist in a campus. I've blogged before on how big companies like Google, and Apple are starting to talk about having a campus. Why not government departments, or R&D facilities. Who does not enjoy spending time at a campus. Fresh young people carrying books, and arguing about things that they believe in. Great people become great, by surrounding themselves with other great people.
If we want to have a superstar economy, then we need to think in terms of campuses. Creating networks of possibility, easy soft quick links between like minds, fast track ideas, and approaches. Hothousing ideas to see what works, testing different models.
In terms of government, a devolved model offers tremendous opportunities, for small agile nations to try out ideas, that would be incapable of implementation in a slower larger country.
All this thinking is of little benefit, if it cannot inform how we out to adapt to thrive, you cannot merely adapt to survive, that is a charter for extinction. You need to adapt to thrive.
There are probably no certainties, but certain things are doubtless safe bets;
networking - you should build and build your networks, your capacity to create, and draw on networks.
information technology - you should be a relentless and determined user of information technology to deliver your goals, though not necessarily as an end in itself.
acceptability - you should be capable of interacting productively with as wide a population as possible. This might mean languages, or simply a welcoming smile, or helpful demeanour. The future belongs to those who can move about easily.
curiosity - you should always be curious, always asking and trying. The curious mind is a nimble mind.
time poor - the libraries of tomorrow are endless, not mere shelves, nor libraries, but warehouses recreating themselves endlessly. We need to become adept at skimming and dipping. Comfortable in our relative ignorance.
balancing between an attention to detail, and being easily bored - willing to put the time into figuring out something, but quick to move onto more interesting pastures.
And I suppose on a personal basis, it is always useful to be fit, healthy, and have some money behind you. If I can manage these things myself, if we can manage these things, if they can manage these things ...
Finally in personal terms there is an interdependence between having qualifications, experience and abilities. You need to balance these, as on their own, each has its limitations, but together they reinforce and support each other. The qualifications reinforce the skills, but it takes experience to actually demonstrate them. Any personal development needs to take account of all three, if it is to succeed.
Addenda - I've just read the attached article, and much of it chimes with what I have said above, however, even beyond this, it is very thoughtful and worthwhile
http://www.scotlandsfuturesforum.org/The%20Goodison%20Group%20in%20Scotland/GGIS%20Final%20Report%202007.pdf
writing Christmas cards
16/12/07 20:10
I'm not sure how worthwhile it is doing this blog,
I've already done an update on our trip to see the
Mountain Goats, and there is not a huge amount to add
beyond that.
I've been spending the weekend writing Christmas cards, and wee notes to put in with them. Not that I actually have that many to write, it is just that I'm not terribly quick. Just as well I have a deadline to work to, or I would never get them done. Christmas is certainly a once a year, imperative to drop a note to all sorts of good friends that you don't see often enough.
One thought, amongst many, obviously, I was thinking about my job.
I'm a bit of a perfectionist and I'm always beating myself up that I don't manage to do absolutely everything that I hope to do. I suppose my job, in common with many these days, is largely self defined. I decide what I need to do, or what I ought to do. That's why you get paid smart guy rates, because you have that degree of autonomy.
That means that there will always be a tension between the two extremes -
that old standby of how little do I need to do to avoid being sacked
or
doing everything possibly in my power to sort out all the problems of the world.
And part of my comfort level is to find a balance between these two extremes, a comfortable comfort level, one that I don't feel guilty about.
In order for work to be sustainable, you really need to be comfortable in yourself. Being guilty, angry, worried, all the time, will tire you out.
I should be more accepting of the fact that I cannot do everything under the sun, that I possibly might.
Another balancing factor, is being able to split work into different strands, so that you can spend some time on one strand, some time on another, that way, if you are never getting to the bottom of anything, at least you are keeping things ticking over nicely.
Similarly, you need to be able to split your life into different strands, so that if one strand is not going so great, then at least the others are more satisfying.
Finally coming round to the initial point that I was intending to make, I was wondering about what I could do to make myself better at my job.
I don't think that it is as easy as just working longer, it is more complex than that. It is about skills, and creativity, networks and experience.
I'm not sure that I could bottom it all out in one go, but simply tackling the task with a loose methodology, which is kept under review, usually works.
I guess that important things to do would be to
1 make time for development, for example
2 pick up on opportunities offered at work
3 personal study, social policy and social research for a start
4 network
5 identify useful skills to develop, for example
6 negotiation
7 plan and track, and think innovatively about my development.
I'll think about making a personal project of this for a while, ....
Other jottings, I have just figured out how to send files between my computers by Bluetooth. Boy it is so cool.
Nearly tripped over a young deer this afternoon, out walking the dog, and this little deer shot out from just before me, and hopped off away across the field. Its little white rump bobbing up, as it skimmed over the field like a stone across the water.
Of course my dog was too busy pee-ing on something to spot any of this.
I've been spending the weekend writing Christmas cards, and wee notes to put in with them. Not that I actually have that many to write, it is just that I'm not terribly quick. Just as well I have a deadline to work to, or I would never get them done. Christmas is certainly a once a year, imperative to drop a note to all sorts of good friends that you don't see often enough.
One thought, amongst many, obviously, I was thinking about my job.
I'm a bit of a perfectionist and I'm always beating myself up that I don't manage to do absolutely everything that I hope to do. I suppose my job, in common with many these days, is largely self defined. I decide what I need to do, or what I ought to do. That's why you get paid smart guy rates, because you have that degree of autonomy.
That means that there will always be a tension between the two extremes -
that old standby of how little do I need to do to avoid being sacked
or
doing everything possibly in my power to sort out all the problems of the world.
And part of my comfort level is to find a balance between these two extremes, a comfortable comfort level, one that I don't feel guilty about.
In order for work to be sustainable, you really need to be comfortable in yourself. Being guilty, angry, worried, all the time, will tire you out.
I should be more accepting of the fact that I cannot do everything under the sun, that I possibly might.
Another balancing factor, is being able to split work into different strands, so that you can spend some time on one strand, some time on another, that way, if you are never getting to the bottom of anything, at least you are keeping things ticking over nicely.
Similarly, you need to be able to split your life into different strands, so that if one strand is not going so great, then at least the others are more satisfying.
Finally coming round to the initial point that I was intending to make, I was wondering about what I could do to make myself better at my job.
I don't think that it is as easy as just working longer, it is more complex than that. It is about skills, and creativity, networks and experience.
I'm not sure that I could bottom it all out in one go, but simply tackling the task with a loose methodology, which is kept under review, usually works.
I guess that important things to do would be to
1 make time for development, for example
2 pick up on opportunities offered at work
3 personal study, social policy and social research for a start
4 network
5 identify useful skills to develop, for example
6 negotiation
7 plan and track, and think innovatively about my development.
I'll think about making a personal project of this for a while, ....
Other jottings, I have just figured out how to send files between my computers by Bluetooth. Boy it is so cool.
Nearly tripped over a young deer this afternoon, out walking the dog, and this little deer shot out from just before me, and hopped off away across the field. Its little white rump bobbing up, as it skimmed over the field like a stone across the water.
Of course my dog was too busy pee-ing on something to spot any of this.
The geek as hero, arcana as power, a new alchemy.
17/11/07 06:29
quite a lot to report
how I am getting on with my new computer
After much effort doing installations (all trouble free, just time consuming) last weekend, my new laptop is now up and running, with the exception of Time Machine. I even ran software update yesterday, and applied a system patch, but still no joy, now TimeMachine. I've checked out SuperDuper and we are still waiting for an upgrade to that to allow it to ran with Leopard. So my backup strategy is now two-fold
It is now clear that routine maintenance for two computers, which for me, basically consists of doing a weekly backup, and a monthly run of Disk Utility and OnyX will become quite time consuming. However my first two computers both eventually crashed out with corrupt hard drives, which then needed to be reformated and reinstalled, so I am perfectly resigned to doing proper backups.
I also watched the OSX Leopard introductory tour yesterday, and I'm slowly getting my head round the new functionality of Leopard. A lot of it is not gee whizz new, but rather tucked away, and you have to go looking for it. Spaces seems interesting, but I've not quite got my head round it. I guess that I will just have to spend time playing around with the new OS, and browsing through material about it. A lot of it is selling functionality that I did not know I wanted, so there is the task of understanding the functionality, then understanding how to use it.
I ran the laptop, connected upto the internet router via an old ethernet cable, and the Mail worked fine, I don't think that connecting two computers to the same mail account will cause problems actually. Well not with received mail, I might need to be a bit cannier with sent mail though. I'll need to lash out on a longer ethernet cable, but it will be cheaper than buying a wireless router.
At the moment expenditure on IT seems to be a constant item, though in fairness, I am not spending on much else.
It is great being able to run two computers, it also means that I can spend an evening typing away on my laptop, while the rest of the family can use the desktop. Yesterday I was using the laptop, while Hannah was playing away on the Sims, and Sketchfighter.
If I am primarily using the laptop for typing, the screen is plenty big enough, it is light and easy to move around, the power cable with the magsafe link is easy and safe to use. I am persevering using the trackpad, and now quite like using the one finger for moving the cursor and two fingers for scrolling facility. No sure that browsing folders in CoverFlow is particularly quick, but intriguing none the less.
In terms of version control, I'm using the laptop primarily for stuff that does not need the internet connection, while the web-based stuff I do on the desktop. However I might be persuaded to upgrade to a family license for RapidWeaver in due course, just to make life slightly easier. Ditto other applications, probably just as easy buying family licenses for software from now on.
Despite all this positive stuff, with the absence of reliable backups, I am mighty glad that I am not running Leopard on my main computer, and do not intend to upgrade it to Leopard, because it might be a bit of a memory hog, I cannot back it up, and I really want complete no risk/no worry peace of mind on my main computer. Running two internet capable computers does feel a lot more secure than having one, and all the putting your eggs in one basket, that that entailed.
applying for new jobs
Actually quite a worrisome week, doing two workshop presentations on Monday, which was something that I had not exactly done before, though I had done similar stuff. As ever worry worry worry, but when the adrenaline kicks in, you just stick a smile on your face, and become larger than life, breezing through it. Just as well in this case, as some of the audience were really not used to or expecting a presentation from a government official, so there was a fair bit of questions, and issues raised, but between the adrenaline and past experience, I carried it off with reasonable aplomb. You certainly don't do these things for the hearty congratulations for the audience, but I think that we should be out there, being seen, speaking to people, and more importantly listening to people.
Then a quick briefing of the Minister, which I was leading, but I made sure that I was well prepared, and knew the points I wanted to get across, and the Minister was a real pleasure to meet. So after the initial worry that too went well.
Final worry out of three, for the week, was a job interview on the Thursday. Once again made sure that I was well prepared, even setting aside some time in the office to make sure that I was thoroughly prepared. I did apply for one other post recently, but this was the one that I really wanted, even although the other one would have paid better. This one fits in with my career plan, which is to find a post with elements of project management, working with external stakeholders, and negotiation skills. The team also looked to be a really good mix of people, and the actual work area seemed interesting. It rather reminds me of work that I was doing a while back, that was mad busy, but high profile, challenging, but you were learning so much all the time.
The job would offer a mix of building on skills that I already have, but also enhancing areas that I feel that I need to develop.
The interview went okay, not one that I felt that I had aced, but okay nonetheless. My problem being that it is difficult to demonstrate that you can do something that you have not done before, so I was delighted to be asked at the outset why I wanted the job, so I could say, probably in a gushy/enthusiastic sort of way, that I might not have all the experience on paper, but I wanted to get the experience, I thought I could do it, and I wanted the chance to prove that I could.
We use competency based interviews, which means that you have to talk about similar tasks that you have successfully done, which means that you want good high quality work to demonstrate what you can do, getting bogged down with low quality work makes it difficult to move onto a decent job. Just another aspect of the need to focus on work that delivers significant outcomes, and think carefully about what you put your time into. I am constantly amazed at the high quality of some staff, and that they are not better paid for what they have to do. I might be good at what I do, but there are a lot of really excellent people, so although the work suits me well, I won't rise effortlessly to the top.
starting to write Losing Definition
I have made a start on losing definition, writing it on VoodooPad. To date I have taken stuff that I have written in a previous start on RapidWeaver, only a few pages, and notes from my notebooks, and some poetry from the blog. I don't intend to duplicate the blog in Losing Definition, but it might have stuff that I can use. At present there is a lot of stuff there, that is just working notes, and will get edited out in due course, but I'm still not too sure where it is going, so it is not too obvious what is irrelevant yet. I'll push on with writing stuff, and trawling through stuff that I have already written to find suitable material.
I think the real art will be in the editing, rather than the writing, maybe there is an Ezra Pound who could create a Wasteland from my prose?
In any case, it will take a lot of work and iterations to arrive at something that I am happy with, but it will be a pretty dense mix when it is finished, Giorgio DeChiroco wrote a fishy paste of a novel, called Hebdomeron, which I have never read, and only just remember hearing about, but I feel like I am struggling to create some such 'mythical work'.
Context is of course everything, it will take shape, and it is time for me to get writing, rather that waffling on about it.
Just like magic
There is a famous quote from Arthur C Clarke about any sufficiently advanced technology will appear to be magic. I think that the new Apple operating systems are approaching that level. In some sort of Harry Potter way, we can gesture, and make short incantations, to create magical works.
The geek as hero, arcana as power, a new alchemy.
Nowadays it seems like every home needs a geek, to provide technical support, the new BT adverts with Kris Marshall certainly seem to be going down this line, that there is something attractive and useful about geekery.
My first computer, a Powerbook 165c (introduced in 1993 and running System 7.1) was capable of being understood inside out. There seemed a pretty finite limit to the functionality, and the files and folders. Even adding in a works package like Clarisworks, you still had a pretty manageable degree of functionality, useful, without being confusing.
However skipping forward to my new laptop an iBook running OXS 10.5, the number of files and folders is probably over 800,000, beyond what any reasonable person would know or understand. In terms of functionality, there are now numerous perfectly legitimate ways of achieving the same end. You can customise and enhance, there is no single standard user experience. I can learn tricks and shortcuts limited only by my ability to remember them all, I can add on functionality like QuickSilver to create further magical abilities to shortcut through the complexity.
You really would need to be a genius to understand all of this, or even a decent chunk of it. Computing has therefore evolved into an art, where you need to make qualitative judgements, subjective decisions, balance issues, there are no single right answers, merely strategies that are more likely to succeed.
I often wonder who the future belongs to, it may well belong to those who can master these things. In the past work did not place a great premium on brain power, but increasingly you will need brainpower, and will be responsible for keeping your brainpower upto date, relevant and useful.
I have probably written this before, but I don't think we should be talking about information workers, but about understanding workers. It won't be about having the qualifications, or seniority, it will be about being able to do things.
- how I am getting on with my new computer
- applying for new jobs
- starting to write Losing Definition
- Just like magic
how I am getting on with my new computer
After much effort doing installations (all trouble free, just time consuming) last weekend, my new laptop is now up and running, with the exception of Time Machine. I even ran software update yesterday, and applied a system patch, but still no joy, now TimeMachine. I've checked out SuperDuper and we are still waiting for an upgrade to that to allow it to ran with Leopard. So my backup strategy is now two-fold
- for my desktop computer - continue to run SuperDuper each week to back up the entire system into a partition on an external hard drive.
- for my laptop computer - all newly created documents to be kept in the same desktop folder for ease, and to be backed up from there.
It is now clear that routine maintenance for two computers, which for me, basically consists of doing a weekly backup, and a monthly run of Disk Utility and OnyX will become quite time consuming. However my first two computers both eventually crashed out with corrupt hard drives, which then needed to be reformated and reinstalled, so I am perfectly resigned to doing proper backups.
I also watched the OSX Leopard introductory tour yesterday, and I'm slowly getting my head round the new functionality of Leopard. A lot of it is not gee whizz new, but rather tucked away, and you have to go looking for it. Spaces seems interesting, but I've not quite got my head round it. I guess that I will just have to spend time playing around with the new OS, and browsing through material about it. A lot of it is selling functionality that I did not know I wanted, so there is the task of understanding the functionality, then understanding how to use it.
I ran the laptop, connected upto the internet router via an old ethernet cable, and the Mail worked fine, I don't think that connecting two computers to the same mail account will cause problems actually. Well not with received mail, I might need to be a bit cannier with sent mail though. I'll need to lash out on a longer ethernet cable, but it will be cheaper than buying a wireless router.
At the moment expenditure on IT seems to be a constant item, though in fairness, I am not spending on much else.
It is great being able to run two computers, it also means that I can spend an evening typing away on my laptop, while the rest of the family can use the desktop. Yesterday I was using the laptop, while Hannah was playing away on the Sims, and Sketchfighter.
If I am primarily using the laptop for typing, the screen is plenty big enough, it is light and easy to move around, the power cable with the magsafe link is easy and safe to use. I am persevering using the trackpad, and now quite like using the one finger for moving the cursor and two fingers for scrolling facility. No sure that browsing folders in CoverFlow is particularly quick, but intriguing none the less.
In terms of version control, I'm using the laptop primarily for stuff that does not need the internet connection, while the web-based stuff I do on the desktop. However I might be persuaded to upgrade to a family license for RapidWeaver in due course, just to make life slightly easier. Ditto other applications, probably just as easy buying family licenses for software from now on.
Despite all this positive stuff, with the absence of reliable backups, I am mighty glad that I am not running Leopard on my main computer, and do not intend to upgrade it to Leopard, because it might be a bit of a memory hog, I cannot back it up, and I really want complete no risk/no worry peace of mind on my main computer. Running two internet capable computers does feel a lot more secure than having one, and all the putting your eggs in one basket, that that entailed.
applying for new jobs
Actually quite a worrisome week, doing two workshop presentations on Monday, which was something that I had not exactly done before, though I had done similar stuff. As ever worry worry worry, but when the adrenaline kicks in, you just stick a smile on your face, and become larger than life, breezing through it. Just as well in this case, as some of the audience were really not used to or expecting a presentation from a government official, so there was a fair bit of questions, and issues raised, but between the adrenaline and past experience, I carried it off with reasonable aplomb. You certainly don't do these things for the hearty congratulations for the audience, but I think that we should be out there, being seen, speaking to people, and more importantly listening to people.
Then a quick briefing of the Minister, which I was leading, but I made sure that I was well prepared, and knew the points I wanted to get across, and the Minister was a real pleasure to meet. So after the initial worry that too went well.
Final worry out of three, for the week, was a job interview on the Thursday. Once again made sure that I was well prepared, even setting aside some time in the office to make sure that I was thoroughly prepared. I did apply for one other post recently, but this was the one that I really wanted, even although the other one would have paid better. This one fits in with my career plan, which is to find a post with elements of project management, working with external stakeholders, and negotiation skills. The team also looked to be a really good mix of people, and the actual work area seemed interesting. It rather reminds me of work that I was doing a while back, that was mad busy, but high profile, challenging, but you were learning so much all the time.
The job would offer a mix of building on skills that I already have, but also enhancing areas that I feel that I need to develop.
The interview went okay, not one that I felt that I had aced, but okay nonetheless. My problem being that it is difficult to demonstrate that you can do something that you have not done before, so I was delighted to be asked at the outset why I wanted the job, so I could say, probably in a gushy/enthusiastic sort of way, that I might not have all the experience on paper, but I wanted to get the experience, I thought I could do it, and I wanted the chance to prove that I could.
We use competency based interviews, which means that you have to talk about similar tasks that you have successfully done, which means that you want good high quality work to demonstrate what you can do, getting bogged down with low quality work makes it difficult to move onto a decent job. Just another aspect of the need to focus on work that delivers significant outcomes, and think carefully about what you put your time into. I am constantly amazed at the high quality of some staff, and that they are not better paid for what they have to do. I might be good at what I do, but there are a lot of really excellent people, so although the work suits me well, I won't rise effortlessly to the top.
starting to write Losing Definition
I have made a start on losing definition, writing it on VoodooPad. To date I have taken stuff that I have written in a previous start on RapidWeaver, only a few pages, and notes from my notebooks, and some poetry from the blog. I don't intend to duplicate the blog in Losing Definition, but it might have stuff that I can use. At present there is a lot of stuff there, that is just working notes, and will get edited out in due course, but I'm still not too sure where it is going, so it is not too obvious what is irrelevant yet. I'll push on with writing stuff, and trawling through stuff that I have already written to find suitable material.
I think the real art will be in the editing, rather than the writing, maybe there is an Ezra Pound who could create a Wasteland from my prose?
In any case, it will take a lot of work and iterations to arrive at something that I am happy with, but it will be a pretty dense mix when it is finished, Giorgio DeChiroco wrote a fishy paste of a novel, called Hebdomeron, which I have never read, and only just remember hearing about, but I feel like I am struggling to create some such 'mythical work'.
Context is of course everything, it will take shape, and it is time for me to get writing, rather that waffling on about it.
Just like magic
There is a famous quote from Arthur C Clarke about any sufficiently advanced technology will appear to be magic. I think that the new Apple operating systems are approaching that level. In some sort of Harry Potter way, we can gesture, and make short incantations, to create magical works.
The geek as hero, arcana as power, a new alchemy.
Nowadays it seems like every home needs a geek, to provide technical support, the new BT adverts with Kris Marshall certainly seem to be going down this line, that there is something attractive and useful about geekery.
My first computer, a Powerbook 165c (introduced in 1993 and running System 7.1) was capable of being understood inside out. There seemed a pretty finite limit to the functionality, and the files and folders. Even adding in a works package like Clarisworks, you still had a pretty manageable degree of functionality, useful, without being confusing.
However skipping forward to my new laptop an iBook running OXS 10.5, the number of files and folders is probably over 800,000, beyond what any reasonable person would know or understand. In terms of functionality, there are now numerous perfectly legitimate ways of achieving the same end. You can customise and enhance, there is no single standard user experience. I can learn tricks and shortcuts limited only by my ability to remember them all, I can add on functionality like QuickSilver to create further magical abilities to shortcut through the complexity.
You really would need to be a genius to understand all of this, or even a decent chunk of it. Computing has therefore evolved into an art, where you need to make qualitative judgements, subjective decisions, balance issues, there are no single right answers, merely strategies that are more likely to succeed.
I often wonder who the future belongs to, it may well belong to those who can master these things. In the past work did not place a great premium on brain power, but increasingly you will need brainpower, and will be responsible for keeping your brainpower upto date, relevant and useful.
I have probably written this before, but I don't think we should be talking about information workers, but about understanding workers. It won't be about having the qualifications, or seniority, it will be about being able to do things.
welcome to the transmission party, I love your friends they're all so arty
27/10/07 07:22
Usual mixed bag of material this week
in trains - a work in progress
some jottings entered as a separate blog entry
these are just random jottings inspired by the time I spend on trains, which is a lot of time. Except for the black train, which is about suffering from migraines, which has the relentlessness of an unwanted train journey.
@work
finally getting on top of what seemed like an endless volume of work, but I need to find fresh challenges, though not sure what they are. Overall getting itchy feet for some new issues to get my teeth into, it all feels a bit too quiet.
apple store
dropped in at the local apple store again. What an odd shop. I really don't think that it is about selling stuff. I cannot imagine that they actually make money. Rather they are about ensuring that Apple products are displayed to their best possible advantage, something that retailers have signally failed to do in the past. There is a long history of retailers stocking apple, then failing to display properly, or have any knowledgeable staff, then wondering why they don't sell any. Even at John Lewis, when buying an iMac, they had to call out a techie in a overcoat to talk to me about it, and even then he did not have one at home himself. Other stores were even worse, with apple computers stuck at some Sad Mac prompt - sitting there unloved.
What sold me on the iPod was when my daughter instantly got how it worked without any instruction, seeing a demo model at the local Currys. If a child can get the clickwheel, and love it, then apple is doing something right.
The perennial downside is that there is not much software, but with the growing role of cloudware, and online purchasing, then it really is not that much of a problem now. And to be honest, the off the shelf iMac now comes with a tremendous suite of software, you don't need that much more, unless you are getting pretty specialised.
I suppose that I am an apple fanboy, but would like to see them doing more to put worth back in the hands of users, some of their activities feel more like revenue streams.
I have just heard that new Apple Chips will come out in mid November, so another reason to postpone buying a new Macintosh. Perfect knowledge just makes life so much more complicated!
Note to self, I would like to get some shares in apple sometime.
mountain goat - going to scotland
from the blogosphere, and forums it sounds like my current favourite band, the Mountain Goats will be Going to Scotland.
They are very impressive live, so I am strongly thinking about getting tickets. Probably a mountain of logistics to worry about, particularly now I have a job, and children, but hey, what is life without a little mid life rebellion.
Stewart Brand supports nuclear power
I heard on an Economist podcast that Stewart Brand, one of the people I list as an inspiration, has now come to the view that nuclear power is sufficiently safe, and climate change sufficiently threatening, that he now supports nuclear power. I'll have to dig up the original quote for myself, but certainly an interesting view. I have been somewhat torn on nuclear power for some time now. I was impressed with the professionalism of the people working in nuclear power when I met them through work, and although my preference would clearly be for everyone to reduce their demand for energy to sustainable levels, I really don't see that happening any time soon. Therefore we will probably need nuclear power in the short term to help transition us to less intensive energy use. I actually see the growth in broadband and computers as a positive thing, if we start living our lives more virtually, then audiobooks replace dead tree books, downloads replace CDs, broadband replaces unwanted journeys. I don't think a world where we are all housebound is desirable, but getting rid on unwanted trips cannot be bad.
I hold a modest shareholding in a nuclear power generator, and have found it difficult to square this with my desire to hug trees, but I am coming round to it not just being a pragmatic move, but an important gesture too.
Nature seems increasingly out of whack these days, if cars were elephants, we would be petrified at the sheer number of these hungry beasts tearing up our environment, but they are not flesh and blood, but iron and oil, and we don't even notice them. My intuition is that a system will struggle, struggle, and fail catastrophically, like collapsing fisheries, we are all on that brink of environmental catastrophe.
writing losing definition - books that inspire me
I have decided to start work on another novel, with a working title of Losing Definition. The title refers to how your sight loses its sharpness as you age, and similarly issues and opinions also become less clear cut. I suppose that the temptation is to withdraw within yourself, or a fantasy world. I'll probably just assemble it as a collection of blog style entries, and then reorder them until I am happy. I'll probably take some stuff from here, but writing as fiction would loosen it up a bit, and make for more fun.
I worry that it should have more of a plot, but I'm really not that bothered with plot, characters, or dialogue, so it will just be what it is, rather than some mainstream genre. If seeking inspiration, or parallels, then I suppose my little shelf of wonderful books would be
Confessions of Zeno - by Italo Svevo
Tristram Shandy - by Laurence Sterne
Jonathan Wild - by Henry Fielding
Way of all Flesh - by Samuel Butler
Dark as the Grave Wherein my Friend is laid - by Malcolm Lowry
m - by John Cage
jPod/Microserf - by Douglas Coupland
also a dash of science fiction, that most liberating of mediums, recent reading of ten best science fiction novels, included,
the following films
the Saragossa Manuscripts
the Falls
Wim Wenders - road movies, especially the State of Things
Art films I saw at University generally
and finally a dash of Burroughs, Ballard and Sladek.
As none of these have hit the mainstream, I will write to suit myself, and aim for self publishing onto the web, rather than anything more lavish. However I have enough to live by, and would prefer to write what I want anyway.
Fonts and Clifford
I remain very confused about all the different versions of the Clifford font that you can get, but have decided to buy a couple of the individual styles for use as my default font. Until now I have used Palatino as my default typeface. Also checking out the various half remembered theory behind fonts, etc, for example how we now use font to mean typeface. It is curious how fonts seem to have gone from calligraphy, to hot metal, to digital printing, to lcd screens, without any big issues, when so many other information mediums have made such heavy weather of the issues of transition. And strange that I am coming back to a typeface based on calligraphy, for displaying on my iMac screen, or printing on an inkjet printer.
One of the words we should all know is skeuomorph
we surround ourselves with comforting skeuomorphs, are we afraid of the new.
in trains - a work in progress
some jottings entered as a separate blog entry
these are just random jottings inspired by the time I spend on trains, which is a lot of time. Except for the black train, which is about suffering from migraines, which has the relentlessness of an unwanted train journey.
@work
finally getting on top of what seemed like an endless volume of work, but I need to find fresh challenges, though not sure what they are. Overall getting itchy feet for some new issues to get my teeth into, it all feels a bit too quiet.
apple store
dropped in at the local apple store again. What an odd shop. I really don't think that it is about selling stuff. I cannot imagine that they actually make money. Rather they are about ensuring that Apple products are displayed to their best possible advantage, something that retailers have signally failed to do in the past. There is a long history of retailers stocking apple, then failing to display properly, or have any knowledgeable staff, then wondering why they don't sell any. Even at John Lewis, when buying an iMac, they had to call out a techie in a overcoat to talk to me about it, and even then he did not have one at home himself. Other stores were even worse, with apple computers stuck at some Sad Mac prompt - sitting there unloved.
What sold me on the iPod was when my daughter instantly got how it worked without any instruction, seeing a demo model at the local Currys. If a child can get the clickwheel, and love it, then apple is doing something right.
The perennial downside is that there is not much software, but with the growing role of cloudware, and online purchasing, then it really is not that much of a problem now. And to be honest, the off the shelf iMac now comes with a tremendous suite of software, you don't need that much more, unless you are getting pretty specialised.
I suppose that I am an apple fanboy, but would like to see them doing more to put worth back in the hands of users, some of their activities feel more like revenue streams.
I have just heard that new Apple Chips will come out in mid November, so another reason to postpone buying a new Macintosh. Perfect knowledge just makes life so much more complicated!
Note to self, I would like to get some shares in apple sometime.
mountain goat - going to scotland
from the blogosphere, and forums it sounds like my current favourite band, the Mountain Goats will be Going to Scotland.
They are very impressive live, so I am strongly thinking about getting tickets. Probably a mountain of logistics to worry about, particularly now I have a job, and children, but hey, what is life without a little mid life rebellion.
Stewart Brand supports nuclear power
I heard on an Economist podcast that Stewart Brand, one of the people I list as an inspiration, has now come to the view that nuclear power is sufficiently safe, and climate change sufficiently threatening, that he now supports nuclear power. I'll have to dig up the original quote for myself, but certainly an interesting view. I have been somewhat torn on nuclear power for some time now. I was impressed with the professionalism of the people working in nuclear power when I met them through work, and although my preference would clearly be for everyone to reduce their demand for energy to sustainable levels, I really don't see that happening any time soon. Therefore we will probably need nuclear power in the short term to help transition us to less intensive energy use. I actually see the growth in broadband and computers as a positive thing, if we start living our lives more virtually, then audiobooks replace dead tree books, downloads replace CDs, broadband replaces unwanted journeys. I don't think a world where we are all housebound is desirable, but getting rid on unwanted trips cannot be bad.
I hold a modest shareholding in a nuclear power generator, and have found it difficult to square this with my desire to hug trees, but I am coming round to it not just being a pragmatic move, but an important gesture too.
Nature seems increasingly out of whack these days, if cars were elephants, we would be petrified at the sheer number of these hungry beasts tearing up our environment, but they are not flesh and blood, but iron and oil, and we don't even notice them. My intuition is that a system will struggle, struggle, and fail catastrophically, like collapsing fisheries, we are all on that brink of environmental catastrophe.
writing losing definition - books that inspire me
I have decided to start work on another novel, with a working title of Losing Definition. The title refers to how your sight loses its sharpness as you age, and similarly issues and opinions also become less clear cut. I suppose that the temptation is to withdraw within yourself, or a fantasy world. I'll probably just assemble it as a collection of blog style entries, and then reorder them until I am happy. I'll probably take some stuff from here, but writing as fiction would loosen it up a bit, and make for more fun.
I worry that it should have more of a plot, but I'm really not that bothered with plot, characters, or dialogue, so it will just be what it is, rather than some mainstream genre. If seeking inspiration, or parallels, then I suppose my little shelf of wonderful books would be
Confessions of Zeno - by Italo Svevo
Tristram Shandy - by Laurence Sterne
Jonathan Wild - by Henry Fielding
Way of all Flesh - by Samuel Butler
Dark as the Grave Wherein my Friend is laid - by Malcolm Lowry
m - by John Cage
jPod/Microserf - by Douglas Coupland
also a dash of science fiction, that most liberating of mediums, recent reading of ten best science fiction novels, included,
the following films
the Saragossa Manuscripts
the Falls
Wim Wenders - road movies, especially the State of Things
Art films I saw at University generally
and finally a dash of Burroughs, Ballard and Sladek.
As none of these have hit the mainstream, I will write to suit myself, and aim for self publishing onto the web, rather than anything more lavish. However I have enough to live by, and would prefer to write what I want anyway.
Fonts and Clifford
I remain very confused about all the different versions of the Clifford font that you can get, but have decided to buy a couple of the individual styles for use as my default font. Until now I have used Palatino as my default typeface. Also checking out the various half remembered theory behind fonts, etc, for example how we now use font to mean typeface. It is curious how fonts seem to have gone from calligraphy, to hot metal, to digital printing, to lcd screens, without any big issues, when so many other information mediums have made such heavy weather of the issues of transition. And strange that I am coming back to a typeface based on calligraphy, for displaying on my iMac screen, or printing on an inkjet printer.
One of the words we should all know is skeuomorph
we surround ourselves with comforting skeuomorphs, are we afraid of the new.
a little drained
01/09/07 06:03
Feeling pretty run down
this week, there has been a cold going run down, so
by simply feeling run down, I have probably got off
lightly.
At work I have decided to simply concentrate on
putting in the hours, rather than getting distracted
by lunch-time trips, or heading home early. So I've
shifted my default train home to a later one, which
along with the feeling a bit run down, means that
I've not been out in the garden in the evening,
though truth be told, the weather has been pretty
dismal.
An interesting week at work, I've had a meeting a day
for the past week, and they have all be interesting
and useful in their own way. Working through ad hoc
meetings, seems a very productive way to progress
things, fortunately someone else organised all the
meetings this week, so I simply turned up to them,
which is a lot less effort. The downside is of course
that you still need to prepare for meetings, and
follow up on actions arising from them, so simply
committing to attend a lot of meetings, is simply
avoiding the office, unless you actually do the work
before and after. I also seem to be averaging twenty
emails a day, many needing a fair bit of work, so
I've been playing catch up when I get back to the
office. Working longer hours has helped with this
though.
Overall I am rather impatient with things, by nature
I am an inpatient person, but I figure that God needs
impatient people, or nothing would ever get done. I
do feel that while other folk are making grand
progress with things, I am not making enough progress
on the things that I am directly responsible for, but
then I exacerbate the problem, by wanting to start on
even more new strands of work whenever I create any
free time.
All that said, I seem to be getting good feedback,
and things are going well, so I suppose I am doing
the right stuff, and doing it well.
I also bought another pair of new shoes, in the
shoe-shop sale, so in addition to feeling a bit run
down, I have mighty tired feet, trying to break in my
new shoes. Until the heels get a bit rounded, and the
soles lose their slippiness it is heavy going with
new shoes, like wearing diving boots. Exacerbated of
course, by all the walking to these meetings!
My wife has started college, so we will soon be
returning to the world of queues around the computer,
while she does her essays, so I suppose I really will
need to order a new computer. I think I have more of
less decided on a model, but I'm currently swithering
on just waiting until OS Leopard comes out in
October. However I do wonder what spec of machine it
will require to run. From early reports it currently
sounds buggy, slow and memory hungry. Obviously
TimeMachine is going to use up a lot of hard disk
space, and I am bound to need more than a gig of ram
to run it, I would have thought.
One option is to just buy now, and get a family pack
upgrade to Leopard, but I don't like upgrading the OS
on a Mac, as I generally buy with the basic amount of
RAM, and upgrading the OS, without upgrading the RAM
seems a recipe for problems.
Of course, passing on the currently computer to my
girls, still means that I won't be improving my
access at all, as I will still have to queue up
behind my essay writing wife, to get at the computer
in the evening. That said, I don't really see a
strong case for buying a laptop at the moment. If I
am buying a new computer every year or two, that will
just have to suffice.
Autumn is upon us, time to tidy up the garden, the
paperwork is also stacking up, and I need to rejig
the stuff that I have just dumped up the loft. I
would also like to get started on some serious
cleaning and maintenance around the house. And of
course I really need to make a wardrobe for our
bedroom, after last week's trip to IKEA, I have
starting to work out some ideas in my head for this,
and I might document these as a woodwork project,
from concept to design, to final build, over in the
Making/Furniture pages.
SMART SWOT etc
19/08/07 12:26
some useful descriptors for SMART I came across
recently
simple specific
measurable motivating
agreed achievable
relevant realistic
timebased targeted
and while I am at it,
SWOT = strengths weaknesses opportunities threats
but I'm sure I came across an alternative version with barriers ?
Strengths Weaknesses Opportunities Barriers?
my limited research on google did suggest
SOAR
http://www.ncrcrd.iastate.edu/newsletter/Vol28No3-2006/SWOT-SOAR.htm
strengths opportunities aspirations results
simple specific
measurable motivating
agreed achievable
relevant realistic
timebased targeted
and while I am at it,
SWOT = strengths weaknesses opportunities threats
but I'm sure I came across an alternative version with barriers ?
Strengths Weaknesses Opportunities Barriers?
my limited research on google did suggest
SOAR
http://www.ncrcrd.iastate.edu/newsletter/Vol28No3-2006/SWOT-SOAR.htm
strengths opportunities aspirations results
my new office has Art Deco influences
19/08/07 04:58
All in all a very eventful week.
1 first week at my new office
2 share price volatility
3 lots less travel time
4 held a leaving do for my old colleagues
5 miscellaneous, I want a new computer
1 first week at my new office
I have now gone back to my old office, a few minutes from the railway station, so I no longer need to add a tedious bus journey onto my daily commute. On checking wikipedia, I find that my new office has Art Deco influences, and was completed in 1939, as well as being Category A listed! It is somewhat like being in an episode of Poirot sometimes, although for much of the accommodation, it is rather timeless, - office type accommodation, being as office type accommodation is. Getting used to my new location, and new colleagues, though I had worked with them to some extent in the past.
A little apprehensive to begin with, but now hugely impressed with the move, office, colleagues, work etc. Apart from the commute, I really liked where I was before.
2 share price volatility
the shares of the world seem to have dropped through the floor, with the FTSE even going below 6,000 for a while. I think that this demonstrates why you need a steady head to invest successfully. I took a print off of my share portfolio and the whole portfolio was down 11%, mainly shares I have held for a year, with every single share showing a loss.
Accordingly if I had sold everything the week before, and then bought them again, I could have made a tidy profit. Demonstrating why the shrewd investor always has a time machine. Somewhat galling too, was that I had recently sold off half my stock of a building society and bought shares in 3i, if I had held off the purchase I could have bought much better.
However on reading some articles, and checking my portfolio again, I'm now showing a more modest loss, and 3i, is once again showing a profit. Clearly for the long term switching from a building society to 3i has been a good move.
My most problematic stock has been British Energy, which I have been buying opportunistically when the price has gone down, but to be honest the price is down more than it is up recently, so I am wary of increasing my exposure. It is by any measures a high risk stock, it is not inconceivable that they could fail again, leaving the stock worthless. However they provide a fifth of the UK's electricity, and it is difficult to foresee the UK without nuclear energy for the foreseeable future. I would not buy shares that I felt were unethical, and I do have a green tinge, but I feel that realistically nuclear energy is here for the next thirty years.
3 lots less travel time
as per my new office, I now find myself in the happy position with at least an extra hour to myself each day. I have always told people that I spent three hours a day traveling, but was less sure on the precise split. So I knew that moving to a more central office would make a difference, but was not too sure how much. Based on the past week, I reckon that it must be easily an hour per day that I am saving now. Now I simply get off the train, and arrive at the office ten minutes later, though if I ran it would be quicker. Similarly for coming back, I just leave the office ten minutes before my train leaves, rather than leaving forty minutes before the train leaves, and still missing it sometimes.
Basically I have now lost the bus journey that I used to make, and the connection time and faff, involved. So, for once I seem to be back building up flexi time, have some spare time at lunch, and have a whole extra hour in the evenings. I seem to have more time and energy everywhere. I even managed to spend a couple of hours in the garden during the weekday evenings, something I've not been able to do in years.
Lately, the gardening has been a chore that I have had to squeeze into the weekends, with long grass to cut, and overgrown borders to weed. Being an overdue chore has sucked the pleasure out of it, while being able to simply spend an hour pottering, is much more pleasureable. Being an hour, offers scope for doing something that is a bit of a chore, and something else that seems more fun. That way, neither particularly seems a chore. And to be honest, the evening is much the best time to potter, as it avoids the day time heat.
So this week, I have managed to give my main lawn a much needed mow over, thankfully I have a flymo, so it will cope with grass upto "gosh that needs a cut". Also tidied out my cold frame and started pulling onions and laying them out in the cold frame to dry. Not yet complete with the onion pulling yet, but if the weather is upto it, having some time in the evenings will make a vast difference. Often the problem with jobs is not that you don't like them, it is just that you have too many the same. Accordingly it is nice to spend some time in the garden after a day in the office, or even spend half a day doing the garden, and the balance doing something on the computer.
However now the heavens have opened and rain has stopped play. Yesterday the burns were all swollen, I would not be surprised if there was flooding. Many of the developments round here have been built with sustainable urban drainage systems, which means that a lowered area will fill up with water during periods of prolonged rain, and gradually drain over the following days. I suspect that our heavy clay is part of how this works, clearly it would not work on a light sandy soil. In any event it is quite nice to be plugged into what is happening, to see these ponds created, fill up, and then drain away, as the weather changes.
4 held a leaving do for my old colleagues
in order to catch a few more people, we postponed our leaving do by a week, so we had actually left, but came back with some bottles of wine, to be presented with the usual card and gifts.
I must say that I have been hugely impressed by my old colleagues, I did give the customary speech, which probably included most of what I wanted to say. Of course being introduced by the Unit head, as possessed of a fabulous dry wit, with lots of competing free stand up comedy available at the Fringe, I was under no pressure at all!
I suspect that my management style is Management By Worrying About, and the leaving do was one of those things that I worried about, but on the day it all went well, and it was wonderful to be able to say how much I had enjoyed working with these people. They are friends now, rather than colleagues.
5 miscellaneous, I want a new computer
last week we set up a new desk, with bed above, in my daughters' room. They are still working on tidying the room, it currently being at the "oh my god, this is even worse" stage, which I am advised comes before, the "see it is perfect now" stage.
Megan starts at high school next week, and she was worried about having somewhere to do her homework, so hopefully this desk space will help. I am minded to buy a new computer, that way I could put my current computer up to the girls' room for them to use. Current intention is that although they have a computer in their room, they will not have internet access, they will need to use the computer in the living room to access the internet, something that seems to work better than software based parental controls.
But with Tiger coming out in October, there seems to be very little incentive to buy an iMac before then. Also, I have still not seen a new one in the flesh yet. John Lewis apparently won't get any for another three weeks.
If I was an apple reseller, I would be mighty pee-ed off that you could buy a new iMac at the Apple store now, but were not even getting to see one in the flesh yet. It is after all having stores like John Lewis being willing to sell Apple Macintoshes on the high street, that is helping drive the brand.
I currently have a 17" screen, and would sensibly like to move upto 20", though being immature, the 24" really is very big!
Of course I would also like to be sensible and boost my share portfolio, buy a whizzy digital camera, scanner, etc etc.
1 first week at my new office
2 share price volatility
3 lots less travel time
4 held a leaving do for my old colleagues
5 miscellaneous, I want a new computer
1 first week at my new office
I have now gone back to my old office, a few minutes from the railway station, so I no longer need to add a tedious bus journey onto my daily commute. On checking wikipedia, I find that my new office has Art Deco influences, and was completed in 1939, as well as being Category A listed! It is somewhat like being in an episode of Poirot sometimes, although for much of the accommodation, it is rather timeless, - office type accommodation, being as office type accommodation is. Getting used to my new location, and new colleagues, though I had worked with them to some extent in the past.
A little apprehensive to begin with, but now hugely impressed with the move, office, colleagues, work etc. Apart from the commute, I really liked where I was before.
2 share price volatility
the shares of the world seem to have dropped through the floor, with the FTSE even going below 6,000 for a while. I think that this demonstrates why you need a steady head to invest successfully. I took a print off of my share portfolio and the whole portfolio was down 11%, mainly shares I have held for a year, with every single share showing a loss.
Accordingly if I had sold everything the week before, and then bought them again, I could have made a tidy profit. Demonstrating why the shrewd investor always has a time machine. Somewhat galling too, was that I had recently sold off half my stock of a building society and bought shares in 3i, if I had held off the purchase I could have bought much better.
However on reading some articles, and checking my portfolio again, I'm now showing a more modest loss, and 3i, is once again showing a profit. Clearly for the long term switching from a building society to 3i has been a good move.
My most problematic stock has been British Energy, which I have been buying opportunistically when the price has gone down, but to be honest the price is down more than it is up recently, so I am wary of increasing my exposure. It is by any measures a high risk stock, it is not inconceivable that they could fail again, leaving the stock worthless. However they provide a fifth of the UK's electricity, and it is difficult to foresee the UK without nuclear energy for the foreseeable future. I would not buy shares that I felt were unethical, and I do have a green tinge, but I feel that realistically nuclear energy is here for the next thirty years.
3 lots less travel time
as per my new office, I now find myself in the happy position with at least an extra hour to myself each day. I have always told people that I spent three hours a day traveling, but was less sure on the precise split. So I knew that moving to a more central office would make a difference, but was not too sure how much. Based on the past week, I reckon that it must be easily an hour per day that I am saving now. Now I simply get off the train, and arrive at the office ten minutes later, though if I ran it would be quicker. Similarly for coming back, I just leave the office ten minutes before my train leaves, rather than leaving forty minutes before the train leaves, and still missing it sometimes.
Basically I have now lost the bus journey that I used to make, and the connection time and faff, involved. So, for once I seem to be back building up flexi time, have some spare time at lunch, and have a whole extra hour in the evenings. I seem to have more time and energy everywhere. I even managed to spend a couple of hours in the garden during the weekday evenings, something I've not been able to do in years.
Lately, the gardening has been a chore that I have had to squeeze into the weekends, with long grass to cut, and overgrown borders to weed. Being an overdue chore has sucked the pleasure out of it, while being able to simply spend an hour pottering, is much more pleasureable. Being an hour, offers scope for doing something that is a bit of a chore, and something else that seems more fun. That way, neither particularly seems a chore. And to be honest, the evening is much the best time to potter, as it avoids the day time heat.
So this week, I have managed to give my main lawn a much needed mow over, thankfully I have a flymo, so it will cope with grass upto "gosh that needs a cut". Also tidied out my cold frame and started pulling onions and laying them out in the cold frame to dry. Not yet complete with the onion pulling yet, but if the weather is upto it, having some time in the evenings will make a vast difference. Often the problem with jobs is not that you don't like them, it is just that you have too many the same. Accordingly it is nice to spend some time in the garden after a day in the office, or even spend half a day doing the garden, and the balance doing something on the computer.
However now the heavens have opened and rain has stopped play. Yesterday the burns were all swollen, I would not be surprised if there was flooding. Many of the developments round here have been built with sustainable urban drainage systems, which means that a lowered area will fill up with water during periods of prolonged rain, and gradually drain over the following days. I suspect that our heavy clay is part of how this works, clearly it would not work on a light sandy soil. In any event it is quite nice to be plugged into what is happening, to see these ponds created, fill up, and then drain away, as the weather changes.
4 held a leaving do for my old colleagues
in order to catch a few more people, we postponed our leaving do by a week, so we had actually left, but came back with some bottles of wine, to be presented with the usual card and gifts.
I must say that I have been hugely impressed by my old colleagues, I did give the customary speech, which probably included most of what I wanted to say. Of course being introduced by the Unit head, as possessed of a fabulous dry wit, with lots of competing free stand up comedy available at the Fringe, I was under no pressure at all!
I suspect that my management style is Management By Worrying About, and the leaving do was one of those things that I worried about, but on the day it all went well, and it was wonderful to be able to say how much I had enjoyed working with these people. They are friends now, rather than colleagues.
5 miscellaneous, I want a new computer
last week we set up a new desk, with bed above, in my daughters' room. They are still working on tidying the room, it currently being at the "oh my god, this is even worse" stage, which I am advised comes before, the "see it is perfect now" stage.
Megan starts at high school next week, and she was worried about having somewhere to do her homework, so hopefully this desk space will help. I am minded to buy a new computer, that way I could put my current computer up to the girls' room for them to use. Current intention is that although they have a computer in their room, they will not have internet access, they will need to use the computer in the living room to access the internet, something that seems to work better than software based parental controls.
But with Tiger coming out in October, there seems to be very little incentive to buy an iMac before then. Also, I have still not seen a new one in the flesh yet. John Lewis apparently won't get any for another three weeks.
If I was an apple reseller, I would be mighty pee-ed off that you could buy a new iMac at the Apple store now, but were not even getting to see one in the flesh yet. It is after all having stores like John Lewis being willing to sell Apple Macintoshes on the high street, that is helping drive the brand.
I currently have a 17" screen, and would sensibly like to move upto 20", though being immature, the 24" really is very big!
Of course I would also like to be sensible and boost my share portfolio, buy a whizzy digital camera, scanner, etc etc.
Dreich Day
21/07/07 16:43
Today has been dreich. Sleary rain, and no sign of
the sun. These days I have been so tired at work, it
feels obvious that a break is long overdue. Therefore
I have not felt too guilty to have a bit of a lazy
day. My wife has been reading a £5 Asda copy of Harry
Potter, and I have been pottering about on my
website.
I have tidied up all the pages, giving them proper names, inserted proper tags for the images, watched a couple of vodcasts on using RapidWeaver. I used Cyberduck to tidy up the redundant files that have been uploaded to my webhost in the past, but never deleted. Accordingly the old website now only exists as a home page, the links beyond no longer link up to anything. A little more tinkering with the google search boxes, which don't seem to be doing anything useful, but as they are based on the google webcrawl index, and I'm making pretty major changes to the website on a continuous basis, the content probably is just not picked up yet. Anyway I'll wait see if it catches up with the content. The search facility is not essential, but it would be nice to get it working.
Then had a bit of a look round the web, and blogs on RapidWeaver, and tried out the various Your Head plug ins for RapidWeaver. These are
accordion
blocks
carousel
collage
columns
the easiest way to get the hang of them, simply seems to be downloading them and using as demo versions. I have left some tryout pages on the site, though I'll doubtless delete them in due course. The pricing does not seem unreasonable, so I registered three of them, with a 15% off offer. Though I must confess to finding the website pretty confusing, you pass pages, never to see them again. I probably would have bought all five as a bundle with 15% off, if I had found the page when I was looking for it.
They seem really good, and actually add necessary functionality to RapidWeaver, which is actually quite constrained once you get beyond the existing page templates.
I could quite happily spend days playing around with RapidWeaver, gradually expanding this website.
At work, my little branch is gradually filling up with staff again, and I will shortly return to not running things. I did rather enjoy running things, but was becoming aware that I lacked the experience to tackle all the work I would have liked to. I guess that there is simply no alternative to gaining experience, but hopefully I will continue to gain useful experience over the next year or two. Getting the team staffed up will also let us get moving on doing stuff, rather than just spinning plates, which will also be most welcome.
This week I have been listening to In Debt To ... by Napoleon IIIrd. Checking the blogs, he was reportedly a bit of a prat at someone's party! How small the world is these days. It is an odd album, with its pauses, and odd musical interludes, it is more like a landscape that you find yourself in, than a traditional set of songs. To date my favourite tracks are Guys in Bands and Kate's Song, the former sounds like something off Eno's Here Come the Warm Jets. The latter has shades of Lou Reed in mellow mood. Anyway worth checking out, and approaching with an open mind. Currently only available on download, but folk are already searching for it on Amazon, so it seems to be gaining quite some momentum.
In a rather slack way, I have been thinking about consumerism, and what post consumer thinking would be like. I suppose that post consumer thinking, would celebrate the world around us, our everyday creativity, what we grow, our pleasure in each other, undue focus on spending money, blinds us to so much that is worthwhile.
I have tidied up all the pages, giving them proper names, inserted proper tags for the images, watched a couple of vodcasts on using RapidWeaver. I used Cyberduck to tidy up the redundant files that have been uploaded to my webhost in the past, but never deleted. Accordingly the old website now only exists as a home page, the links beyond no longer link up to anything. A little more tinkering with the google search boxes, which don't seem to be doing anything useful, but as they are based on the google webcrawl index, and I'm making pretty major changes to the website on a continuous basis, the content probably is just not picked up yet. Anyway I'll wait see if it catches up with the content. The search facility is not essential, but it would be nice to get it working.
Then had a bit of a look round the web, and blogs on RapidWeaver, and tried out the various Your Head plug ins for RapidWeaver. These are
accordion
blocks
carousel
collage
columns
the easiest way to get the hang of them, simply seems to be downloading them and using as demo versions. I have left some tryout pages on the site, though I'll doubtless delete them in due course. The pricing does not seem unreasonable, so I registered three of them, with a 15% off offer. Though I must confess to finding the website pretty confusing, you pass pages, never to see them again. I probably would have bought all five as a bundle with 15% off, if I had found the page when I was looking for it.
They seem really good, and actually add necessary functionality to RapidWeaver, which is actually quite constrained once you get beyond the existing page templates.
I could quite happily spend days playing around with RapidWeaver, gradually expanding this website.
At work, my little branch is gradually filling up with staff again, and I will shortly return to not running things. I did rather enjoy running things, but was becoming aware that I lacked the experience to tackle all the work I would have liked to. I guess that there is simply no alternative to gaining experience, but hopefully I will continue to gain useful experience over the next year or two. Getting the team staffed up will also let us get moving on doing stuff, rather than just spinning plates, which will also be most welcome.
This week I have been listening to In Debt To ... by Napoleon IIIrd. Checking the blogs, he was reportedly a bit of a prat at someone's party! How small the world is these days. It is an odd album, with its pauses, and odd musical interludes, it is more like a landscape that you find yourself in, than a traditional set of songs. To date my favourite tracks are Guys in Bands and Kate's Song, the former sounds like something off Eno's Here Come the Warm Jets. The latter has shades of Lou Reed in mellow mood. Anyway worth checking out, and approaching with an open mind. Currently only available on download, but folk are already searching for it on Amazon, so it seems to be gaining quite some momentum.
In a rather slack way, I have been thinking about consumerism, and what post consumer thinking would be like. I suppose that post consumer thinking, would celebrate the world around us, our everyday creativity, what we grow, our pleasure in each other, undue focus on spending money, blinds us to so much that is worthwhile.
perpetual change
15/07/07 05:43
I am perpetually in a state of getting into some sort
of routine, and then changing it. I will continue
with the habit of putting a list of topics at the
head of my blog, and then writing them up.
I have however stopped updating my desktop pictures weekly. My home computer is stuck on one of the photos of some japanese bowls, as is my home screen saver. At work I simply pull a fresh image off my website.
1 developments at work - moving around versus staying, and end to acting up
2 developments at home - more jam making
3 working on my website
4 comments on rapidweaver and forum based support
5 anything else that comes to mind, while typing up the above stuff
1 developments at work - moving around versus staying, and end to acting up - chatting to my current line manager about the benefits of staying in post for a while as opposed to moving around. Traditionally high flyers tended to move a lot, and this meant that other people tended to copy them, if they were ambitious. However people outwith the organisation hate this. It is difficult enough to network anyway, without all your contacts moving every five minutes, and then needing to get the new people upto speed on everything, all over again. In addition, if you only expect to be in post for a year or two at most, you approach it in a much different way, from if you expect to still be there to sort out any corner cutting or burnt bridges at the end of the day. You also realise that the contact you have are essential, and whatever you think of them personally, you need to make the relationships work, rather than just cherry picking the ones you think are most productive.
I have been in the same post for three years, but it has been subject to a lot of change, and although I have been working with the same people, largely, the processes involved have changed a lot. So I have probably had the best of both worlds, the benefits of staying in post, and getting a deeper and better understanding, as well as better links to key people, combined with continuing to learn new skills. I think that this is actually a much better model for development, than simply encouraging frenetic movement all over the place.
It also looks like my short period of running the section might be coming to an end, mixed feelings on that. However, my effective line management is so senior at the moment, that it is difficult to get them to sign off on stuff, so getting someone in who is only slightly more senior than me, and more focussed, should help move things along more briskly, which is the thing that keeps me awake at night (metaphorically speaking). As ever, I'll need to see how things pan out.
2 developments at home - more jam making - the house has been a little jam factory again this week. My wife has been working on jams and preserves, including red onion marmalade! Unfortunately I did not plant any red onions this year, so my wife had to buy them, but she has been able to make use of various fruits from my garden in small quantities, rhubarb and loganberry are relatively plentiful, as as gooseberries. For a garden, the best things to grow, are those that are
very forgiving with when you pick them
redcurrents, rhubarb, gooseberries, blackcurrents
or keep incredibly well
potatoes, apples, onions
or are just so damn nice
strawberries
However with time, it is easy enough to just fill your garden with a bit of everything, giving yourself a big always fresh outdoor larder.
3 Working on my website - I have really been enjoying getting back into working on my website, so although there was doubtless lots else to do yesterday, I spent a fair bit of time working on the website, in so far as I spent time doing anything much. Working on the website could easily become a full time activity, not that it is all that time consuming, but the principle of shearing layers applies, you can easily tackle the work in layers, as you add more, fresh issues and complexities present themselves. I was keen to add a search facility to the website, as it is easy enough for me to search material on my own computer, it would be useful to ensure that there was similar functionality on the website itself. Thinking about it, it was clear that adding the code for google to do a site search, was technically straightforward, albeit beyond my ken. Sure enough google supplies the appropriate tools to generate some snippets of code for insertion on your website, which I duly did. I did need to do a couple of amendments
- to shorten the length of the search box, now at 22 - if you want to check the code for the relevant amendment
- to ensure that the search results opened in a new window - basically "target" - check the code for the relevant amendment too
After a bit of trawling about, I found answers on the support forums to both these questions.
Of course at present, google is working off an out of date index of my site, so the search will not actually turn up anything useful, but that will fix itself soon enough. Things like this make you realise that despite appearances, google is not actually omniscient.
I also took some photos of the coatstand I made a while back, and added some details about it to my website.
As I mentioned above, the work comes in layers, my research yesterday on the support forums, also suggests that I should ensure that all my pages are actually given meaningful names, and I really do need to update names and alt tags everywhere, I have been pretty lazy with them.
I also need to update my iPhoto stuff, as some pages, are simply taking images from my main iPhoto library, so anything new, automatically gets uploaded, whether I want it to or not. Simply a case of putting stuff in folders, and amending a couple of links.
4 comments on rapidweaver and forum based support - I really like rapidweaver. My previous website work has been based on text editors, or simply something like mozilla to do the basic coding. I have always been open to getting web software, and have on occasion reviewed the various options. However Dreamweaver is vastly to expensive for what I could actually justify. This is basically a hobby site, it is not a business. I did get Freeway some time ago, and did one page using it, but I just hated the results. I found that notwithstanding the time it took, basically I preferred the results from coding a page by hand.
However, I just love rapidweaver. It is pretty intuitive, and comes out of the box, with some pretty amazing default themes, and set ups. Basically it is easy and pleasant to use, and the finished results are very impressive.
Having said all this, is rapidweaver for everyone? For someone like myself, who is used to doing pretty basic web coding by hand, it is a delight to use. Since getting broadband, I have also taken an interest in recent developments on the web, so that I can find my way round pod-casts, technorati, support forums, and look up html tags when I need to. The other week, when I could not get rapidweaver to upload, I checked out the support forums, and tried out some stuff, before using an ftp application - cyberduck - and finding out that I have filled up my file allocation with my webprovider, and as soon as I deleted some files, everything worked okay again.
If you really don't want to get your hands dirty with code, then rapidweaver is not the magic answer. It is not as simple as just posting onto livejournal etc, you do need to understand the basics.
After all I was not born knowing the basics of web publishing, I did an hnc option years ago, and I have been dabbling ever since. If someone is keen, then I would thoroughly recommend doing some proper training, it was some of the most enjoyable and creative training I have ever done. In tandem with some training, rapidweaver is excellent.
Initially my thinking was that support forums were probably better than a manual. Certainly manuals, are forever getting printed out, then languishing unloved and unread somewhere. However while a support forum is a fine place to hang out, and is pretty good at gradually expanding your knowledge base, often in unexpected ways, they are not a particularly quick way to find an answer to a question. Doubtless the answer is out there, or in there, but finding it is not easy. Often doing a search is impossible, because your key words, are so common, they do not narrow down the possible responses, and the titles of entries seldom indicate what they contain. The titles are written before any answers are posted.
Like many things, the answer is probably better meta data, either by way of tagging, or by bringing together stuff into a wiki, so that like stuff sits together better. In terms of usability, I find that something with a degree of thoughtful editing, often suits the user best, while something with enthusiasm will contain the answer, it will be buried deep, and something unduly constrained by editing, will inevitably be very hit or miss, and less fun to browse.
Of these rough categories,
thoughtful editing - wikipedia, and various commercial, semi commercial sites
enthusiasm - rapidweaver
unduly constrained - apple support forums
There is also a slight element of fanatical zeal on the rapidweaver forums. While I love the software, I do not hang out on the support forums for hours every week, like some people do. If rapidweaver is to appeal to those with less web experience, then it needs to be presented as an easy learning curve, and that really does require a good manual, a tightly edited wiki style support, and additional technical support. Intrinsically there is no reason why the software could not support this market.
Also worth adding that the vodcasts really are excellent, and should be an essential component of technical support.
5 anything else that comes to mind, while typing up the above stuff
I really fancy getting more computer geek tee shirts, well because, basically, I guess, sort of, that is who I am. Jamfactory tee shirts (rapidweaver) links, and O'Reilly currently appeal, but all very silly and frivolous, lets be honest
I am swithering setting up additional blogs, but really not sure whether it is best to have one blog, with everything in, or separate ones, with relevant stuff in them. The functionality of a blog is pretty appealing, but there is no point in creating something too unwieldy. To be honest, this blog is vastly bigger and more rambling, than any other blog that I have read, which makes me think, that making it even bigger and more rambling, is probably a bad idea.
I have however stopped updating my desktop pictures weekly. My home computer is stuck on one of the photos of some japanese bowls, as is my home screen saver. At work I simply pull a fresh image off my website.
1 developments at work - moving around versus staying, and end to acting up
2 developments at home - more jam making
3 working on my website
4 comments on rapidweaver and forum based support
5 anything else that comes to mind, while typing up the above stuff
1 developments at work - moving around versus staying, and end to acting up - chatting to my current line manager about the benefits of staying in post for a while as opposed to moving around. Traditionally high flyers tended to move a lot, and this meant that other people tended to copy them, if they were ambitious. However people outwith the organisation hate this. It is difficult enough to network anyway, without all your contacts moving every five minutes, and then needing to get the new people upto speed on everything, all over again. In addition, if you only expect to be in post for a year or two at most, you approach it in a much different way, from if you expect to still be there to sort out any corner cutting or burnt bridges at the end of the day. You also realise that the contact you have are essential, and whatever you think of them personally, you need to make the relationships work, rather than just cherry picking the ones you think are most productive.
I have been in the same post for three years, but it has been subject to a lot of change, and although I have been working with the same people, largely, the processes involved have changed a lot. So I have probably had the best of both worlds, the benefits of staying in post, and getting a deeper and better understanding, as well as better links to key people, combined with continuing to learn new skills. I think that this is actually a much better model for development, than simply encouraging frenetic movement all over the place.
It also looks like my short period of running the section might be coming to an end, mixed feelings on that. However, my effective line management is so senior at the moment, that it is difficult to get them to sign off on stuff, so getting someone in who is only slightly more senior than me, and more focussed, should help move things along more briskly, which is the thing that keeps me awake at night (metaphorically speaking). As ever, I'll need to see how things pan out.
2 developments at home - more jam making - the house has been a little jam factory again this week. My wife has been working on jams and preserves, including red onion marmalade! Unfortunately I did not plant any red onions this year, so my wife had to buy them, but she has been able to make use of various fruits from my garden in small quantities, rhubarb and loganberry are relatively plentiful, as as gooseberries. For a garden, the best things to grow, are those that are
very forgiving with when you pick them
redcurrents, rhubarb, gooseberries, blackcurrents
or keep incredibly well
potatoes, apples, onions
or are just so damn nice
strawberries
However with time, it is easy enough to just fill your garden with a bit of everything, giving yourself a big always fresh outdoor larder.
3 Working on my website - I have really been enjoying getting back into working on my website, so although there was doubtless lots else to do yesterday, I spent a fair bit of time working on the website, in so far as I spent time doing anything much. Working on the website could easily become a full time activity, not that it is all that time consuming, but the principle of shearing layers applies, you can easily tackle the work in layers, as you add more, fresh issues and complexities present themselves. I was keen to add a search facility to the website, as it is easy enough for me to search material on my own computer, it would be useful to ensure that there was similar functionality on the website itself. Thinking about it, it was clear that adding the code for google to do a site search, was technically straightforward, albeit beyond my ken. Sure enough google supplies the appropriate tools to generate some snippets of code for insertion on your website, which I duly did. I did need to do a couple of amendments
- to shorten the length of the search box, now at 22 - if you want to check the code for the relevant amendment
- to ensure that the search results opened in a new window - basically "target" - check the code for the relevant amendment too
After a bit of trawling about, I found answers on the support forums to both these questions.
Of course at present, google is working off an out of date index of my site, so the search will not actually turn up anything useful, but that will fix itself soon enough. Things like this make you realise that despite appearances, google is not actually omniscient.
I also took some photos of the coatstand I made a while back, and added some details about it to my website.
As I mentioned above, the work comes in layers, my research yesterday on the support forums, also suggests that I should ensure that all my pages are actually given meaningful names, and I really do need to update names and alt tags everywhere, I have been pretty lazy with them.
I also need to update my iPhoto stuff, as some pages, are simply taking images from my main iPhoto library, so anything new, automatically gets uploaded, whether I want it to or not. Simply a case of putting stuff in folders, and amending a couple of links.
4 comments on rapidweaver and forum based support - I really like rapidweaver. My previous website work has been based on text editors, or simply something like mozilla to do the basic coding. I have always been open to getting web software, and have on occasion reviewed the various options. However Dreamweaver is vastly to expensive for what I could actually justify. This is basically a hobby site, it is not a business. I did get Freeway some time ago, and did one page using it, but I just hated the results. I found that notwithstanding the time it took, basically I preferred the results from coding a page by hand.
However, I just love rapidweaver. It is pretty intuitive, and comes out of the box, with some pretty amazing default themes, and set ups. Basically it is easy and pleasant to use, and the finished results are very impressive.
Having said all this, is rapidweaver for everyone? For someone like myself, who is used to doing pretty basic web coding by hand, it is a delight to use. Since getting broadband, I have also taken an interest in recent developments on the web, so that I can find my way round pod-casts, technorati, support forums, and look up html tags when I need to. The other week, when I could not get rapidweaver to upload, I checked out the support forums, and tried out some stuff, before using an ftp application - cyberduck - and finding out that I have filled up my file allocation with my webprovider, and as soon as I deleted some files, everything worked okay again.
If you really don't want to get your hands dirty with code, then rapidweaver is not the magic answer. It is not as simple as just posting onto livejournal etc, you do need to understand the basics.
After all I was not born knowing the basics of web publishing, I did an hnc option years ago, and I have been dabbling ever since. If someone is keen, then I would thoroughly recommend doing some proper training, it was some of the most enjoyable and creative training I have ever done. In tandem with some training, rapidweaver is excellent.
Initially my thinking was that support forums were probably better than a manual. Certainly manuals, are forever getting printed out, then languishing unloved and unread somewhere. However while a support forum is a fine place to hang out, and is pretty good at gradually expanding your knowledge base, often in unexpected ways, they are not a particularly quick way to find an answer to a question. Doubtless the answer is out there, or in there, but finding it is not easy. Often doing a search is impossible, because your key words, are so common, they do not narrow down the possible responses, and the titles of entries seldom indicate what they contain. The titles are written before any answers are posted.
Like many things, the answer is probably better meta data, either by way of tagging, or by bringing together stuff into a wiki, so that like stuff sits together better. In terms of usability, I find that something with a degree of thoughtful editing, often suits the user best, while something with enthusiasm will contain the answer, it will be buried deep, and something unduly constrained by editing, will inevitably be very hit or miss, and less fun to browse.
Of these rough categories,
thoughtful editing - wikipedia, and various commercial, semi commercial sites
enthusiasm - rapidweaver
unduly constrained - apple support forums
There is also a slight element of fanatical zeal on the rapidweaver forums. While I love the software, I do not hang out on the support forums for hours every week, like some people do. If rapidweaver is to appeal to those with less web experience, then it needs to be presented as an easy learning curve, and that really does require a good manual, a tightly edited wiki style support, and additional technical support. Intrinsically there is no reason why the software could not support this market.
Also worth adding that the vodcasts really are excellent, and should be an essential component of technical support.
5 anything else that comes to mind, while typing up the above stuff
I really fancy getting more computer geek tee shirts, well because, basically, I guess, sort of, that is who I am. Jamfactory tee shirts (rapidweaver) links, and O'Reilly currently appeal, but all very silly and frivolous, lets be honest
I am swithering setting up additional blogs, but really not sure whether it is best to have one blog, with everything in, or separate ones, with relevant stuff in them. The functionality of a blog is pretty appealing, but there is no point in creating something too unwieldy. To be honest, this blog is vastly bigger and more rambling, than any other blog that I have read, which makes me think, that making it even bigger and more rambling, is probably a bad idea.
jam
08/07/07 06:51
I know that I have already posted this week, but that
was a mid-week jotting, so to keep to my usual
pattern of a weekly blog ...
1 my experience with RapidWeaver
2 using GTD at work
3 making jam
4 thinking
5 anything else that occurs to me
1 my experience with RapidWeaver
over the past week I have continued to experiment with RapidWeaver and add new parts to the website. Of course, in order to add something meaningful to the website, you need to have something worth saying. Accordingly I have so far relied on existing content. My very first website was done for a college course, and was all about woodwork. I am not sure that I want to recreate it, but I would like to take some photos of the various woodwork projects that I have done, and put them onto this site with some notes about any interesting design features. I enjoy thinking about design and design solutions, and I think that I have come up with some worthwhile ideas.
It is becoming apparent to me that it is a lot more useful to spend a couple of hours working on RapidWeaver, than simply tinkering for half an hour. If you have a decent amount of time, it is possible to explore options, do a little research, and then make some decent progress. A short session, simply tends to be meaningless tweaking.
I have been using voodoopad to create my own personal wiki for various topics. I might consider either putting elements onto this website using Rapidweaver, for example I could easily enough use the blogging element to record my work in the garden.
I would appreciate a manual for the package, mostly you can get by by experimenting and tweaking, but a manual would be useful in detailing all the functionality. For example what is a permalink? That said, the vodcasts are excellent, and there are still a couple more of them that I can watch, so they might clear up some issues.
2 using GTD at work
after initial enthusiasm for GTD, truth be told, it fell by the wayside at work, through simple pressures of too much firefighting, and not enough time. Basically the section probably needs three people to run properly, and I have been trying to run it single handed. There have been, and will be a lot of changes, so a purely mechanistic project management approach would have been ineffective. The GTD lists simply ended up being lists where stuff got dumped, never to be seen again, but I was finding it difficult to actually track progress across a variety of strands. I have had to focus on the higher level work lately, so this means more strands of work, but they are slower moving, whereas the lower level work tends to be a small number of fast moving strands of work.
Well, I suppose I am split, in strategic mode, I have a lot of slow moving work strands, in operational mode, I have a few fast moving work strands.
Anyway, the pace of work has slackened off slightly, so I have tried to organise myself better. My old approach with GTD, and the one I use at home, is a single jotter, with a page per work strand, and a list of work to do on each. I have amended my work process to
this seems a useful way of killing two birds with one stone, it tracks what stage everything is at, and it gives me a ready prompt list for what to do, for example it is a single list of everything I have promised to do, so if there is a meeting coming up, it is easy enough to see what I promised to do, and what was agreed last time.
being able to collapse all, and expand all, means that I can drill down, or see all, as is most appropriate.
The ability to embed and link in documents is a little constrained, but overall this seems a pretty workable solution.
Because the listing is so useful, I tend to keep it open all the time, and add, or delete items from it constantly. This encourages me to use it, and keep it upto date.
Time will tell whether this is the solution, or merely an artifact of having slightly more time on my hands!
3 making jam
we seem to be living in a monsoon climate, so yesterday, although not without rain, was relatively speaking, a day of sun. We made the best of the day, by heading off to a local fruit farm, where they were selling off punnets of strawberries cheap. I think that with the weather they have been down on visitors, so they were grateful for people coming to take some off them off their hands. The joy and terror of soft fruits is that they go from money to mush almost immediately. I suppose we could have done a bit of fruit picking ourselves, but the weather was still pretty iffy. Anyway took a wander round the local market town, which was clean out of granulated sugar. Obviously everyone is thinking the same as us. They have a soft fruit festival next week, which might be worth a trip.
My wife has now started on the mountain of strawberries and has done three double batches of jam, making 38 jars of strawberry jam. [22lbs of jam]
Alarmingly this still leaves a not inconsiderable mountain of strawberries to process, and turn to jam. Then she will start on a few punnets of gooseberry jam that we also bought.
Of course my garden is a veritable fruit spot, with blackcurrent, rhubarb, loganberry, flowering quince, strawberry, redcurrent, blueberry, cranberry and gooseberry, though none yet in particularly large jam making quantities, also five apple trees, and one damson. Then of course there are countless herbs, with dill and fennel being particularly decorative. I am currently trying to grow wormwood from seed, so with luck I will have some wormwood bushes in due course.
I managed a quick cut of the lawn with yesterday's okay-ish weather.
Today actually looks pretty good, so I will try and do half and half, half a day in the garden, half a day tackling the various paper work that accumulates.
4 thinking
thinking can be split up into two processes
understanding - our understanding is only ever partial, simply based on a few prominent variables. That is why society's understanding seems to shift, and hindsight is always so informative. We do our best to evaluate which are the prominent variables, but we can be wrong.
decision making - which is a specific process that is worth considering in detail.
5 and this week, nothing much else occured to me as I wrote this, so here ends this blog.
1 my experience with RapidWeaver
2 using GTD at work
3 making jam
4 thinking
5 anything else that occurs to me
1 my experience with RapidWeaver
over the past week I have continued to experiment with RapidWeaver and add new parts to the website. Of course, in order to add something meaningful to the website, you need to have something worth saying. Accordingly I have so far relied on existing content. My very first website was done for a college course, and was all about woodwork. I am not sure that I want to recreate it, but I would like to take some photos of the various woodwork projects that I have done, and put them onto this site with some notes about any interesting design features. I enjoy thinking about design and design solutions, and I think that I have come up with some worthwhile ideas.
It is becoming apparent to me that it is a lot more useful to spend a couple of hours working on RapidWeaver, than simply tinkering for half an hour. If you have a decent amount of time, it is possible to explore options, do a little research, and then make some decent progress. A short session, simply tends to be meaningless tweaking.
I have been using voodoopad to create my own personal wiki for various topics. I might consider either putting elements onto this website using Rapidweaver, for example I could easily enough use the blogging element to record my work in the garden.
I would appreciate a manual for the package, mostly you can get by by experimenting and tweaking, but a manual would be useful in detailing all the functionality. For example what is a permalink? That said, the vodcasts are excellent, and there are still a couple more of them that I can watch, so they might clear up some issues.
2 using GTD at work
after initial enthusiasm for GTD, truth be told, it fell by the wayside at work, through simple pressures of too much firefighting, and not enough time. Basically the section probably needs three people to run properly, and I have been trying to run it single handed. There have been, and will be a lot of changes, so a purely mechanistic project management approach would have been ineffective. The GTD lists simply ended up being lists where stuff got dumped, never to be seen again, but I was finding it difficult to actually track progress across a variety of strands. I have had to focus on the higher level work lately, so this means more strands of work, but they are slower moving, whereas the lower level work tends to be a small number of fast moving strands of work.
Well, I suppose I am split, in strategic mode, I have a lot of slow moving work strands, in operational mode, I have a few fast moving work strands.
Anyway, the pace of work has slackened off slightly, so I have tried to organise myself better. My old approach with GTD, and the one I use at home, is a single jotter, with a page per work strand, and a list of work to do on each. I have amended my work process to
- a single word file
- with a numbered list in word format
- with collapsible items
- each workstrand is a numbered item - descriptive title sorted alphabetically, so all meetings are - meeting - blogs Liaison , meeting - quarterly audit
- with actions as subtopics, next action and not much more
- with narrative as body text - for example what has this working group agreed,
this seems a useful way of killing two birds with one stone, it tracks what stage everything is at, and it gives me a ready prompt list for what to do, for example it is a single list of everything I have promised to do, so if there is a meeting coming up, it is easy enough to see what I promised to do, and what was agreed last time.
being able to collapse all, and expand all, means that I can drill down, or see all, as is most appropriate.
The ability to embed and link in documents is a little constrained, but overall this seems a pretty workable solution.
Because the listing is so useful, I tend to keep it open all the time, and add, or delete items from it constantly. This encourages me to use it, and keep it upto date.
Time will tell whether this is the solution, or merely an artifact of having slightly more time on my hands!
3 making jam
we seem to be living in a monsoon climate, so yesterday, although not without rain, was relatively speaking, a day of sun. We made the best of the day, by heading off to a local fruit farm, where they were selling off punnets of strawberries cheap. I think that with the weather they have been down on visitors, so they were grateful for people coming to take some off them off their hands. The joy and terror of soft fruits is that they go from money to mush almost immediately. I suppose we could have done a bit of fruit picking ourselves, but the weather was still pretty iffy. Anyway took a wander round the local market town, which was clean out of granulated sugar. Obviously everyone is thinking the same as us. They have a soft fruit festival next week, which might be worth a trip.
My wife has now started on the mountain of strawberries and has done three double batches of jam, making 38 jars of strawberry jam. [22lbs of jam]
Alarmingly this still leaves a not inconsiderable mountain of strawberries to process, and turn to jam. Then she will start on a few punnets of gooseberry jam that we also bought.
Of course my garden is a veritable fruit spot, with blackcurrent, rhubarb, loganberry, flowering quince, strawberry, redcurrent, blueberry, cranberry and gooseberry, though none yet in particularly large jam making quantities, also five apple trees, and one damson. Then of course there are countless herbs, with dill and fennel being particularly decorative. I am currently trying to grow wormwood from seed, so with luck I will have some wormwood bushes in due course.
I managed a quick cut of the lawn with yesterday's okay-ish weather.
Today actually looks pretty good, so I will try and do half and half, half a day in the garden, half a day tackling the various paper work that accumulates.
4 thinking
thinking can be split up into two processes
understanding - our understanding is only ever partial, simply based on a few prominent variables. That is why society's understanding seems to shift, and hindsight is always so informative. We do our best to evaluate which are the prominent variables, but we can be wrong.
decision making - which is a specific process that is worth considering in detail.
5 and this week, nothing much else occured to me as I wrote this, so here ends this blog.
faffing about
23/06/07 08:48
Write about TwentyThreeBlog here.
Online Identity
I was listening to a pod-cast which was talking about marketing your pod-casts, and using your online identity as a brand.
I suppose that I could market my pod-cast, but it is not really about anything in particular, and will likely remain like that. Well I suppose it is about something in particular, it is about whatever happens to be of interest to me at the time of writing, but I have quite varied interests, so that hardly helps.
There is also the whole issue of an online identity. At the moment, I do not pass on details of this blog to people I know, and although I would be contactable via this blog, it is a standalone identity. I do not intentionally lie or mislead in my blog postings, but then again, I do not really write anything that would make it tremendously easy to identify who I am. Despite that, this is hardly the most impenetrable of disguises, and I could be identified from this blog, with relative ease.
My point being that one of the benefits of the internet is that one can establish separate identities, that meet your various desires and needs. For most people the appeal is that these are separate, the person one chats to about software glitches is not necessarily looking at photos of your family holiday, and vice versa. As in normal society, you choose how much to reveal to others, you focus on what is of mutual interest, but bring in extraneous material at your discretion.
However with searching now so easy, it is far easier for the curious to pull together these disparate identities. For people in the public arena this is probably not new, but for your average person, it is a disconcerting thought, and your average person is far less equipped to cope with any unexpected consequences.
At Work
My role at work continues to evolve. Some time ago, I was the junior member of a small team, now I am the team. Initially it was my role to promote a piece of work, but with a change in administration, my role is now more one of spinning plates, and potentially taking on more plates. Obviously I now have vastly more work to do, but the more important point is that I am expected to do that work in a different style. Because I am now leading the team, albeit one consisting solely of me, I am judged on the big ticket items, rather than the more mundane. The last year has been so intense, and I have such a long commute, that I personally feel that increasing my working hours is not really an option that is sustainable. So, in the jargon, it is a case of working smarter rather than harder.
In practice, this has meant that I am now picking up a lot of engagements, either speaking at, or simply attending meetings, that my boss would have handled before. I am also having to initiate meetings to progress what I want to do. Accordingly when I am in the office, I need to work through incoming work much more effectively. I have adopted a slight variation of the GTD principles,
if it can be done in a few minutes, simply do it then
if it relates to a category of work, simply put it in a folder with other similar work, so that I can devote a half day to it all sometime
if it needs a bit more work, and has a deadline - set up a paper folder with the deadline and quick description on the front
if it needs a bit more work, and has no deadline - simply flag the email
also for when I am at my desk, I tend to work away from the desk whenever I can, for example, if it is reading, I go through to our canteen, if it is something that I don't want interrupted on, I go down to a hotdesking area. That way I am reasonably available, people can leave a message, that I will get back to, but my availability is not slowing me down.
There is a need to be able to work effectively away from my desk, so I have set up couple of pencil cases with everything that I need, from indigestion tablets, to marker pens, and my favorite little film tags, for highlighting relevant material. I suppose that I could be better organised about carrying about work that I could do, but I have generally found that I will have some task that it usefully completed over a cup of coffee somewhere, like writing an agenda, or organising my thoughts on something.
I suppose that in essence, this is a top down approach, consider the most important priorities, first, and fit the rest in round them,
generally, in the past I have taken a bottom up approach, considering all the things that need done, and then trying to fit them in.
Of course the former approach is fine for a team leader, with some discretion, but it is not so applicable for a team member when your tasks are very fixed, and you have less discretion.
Anyway, interesting to see how I am coping with the current challenges, and changing how I work. My gut feeling is that I am probably pretty good at working at this level, but only if the work is of a manageable intensity. I can see that it would be incredibly easy to burn out working like this.
At Home
I am writing this on a Sunday morning, yesterday was wet and dreich. I suppose that I should have done a lot of useful stuff, but to be honest, we were mainly faffing about. Headed up to the new local garden centre, which also sells food, and pretty much everything else. My wife bought some food, I bought some slug pellets, I am finally giving in with having an organic cold frame. I have tried everything, a sandy base, copper tape round my pots, beer traps. This place is not a cold frame, it is an eat all you want slug conservatory! The little black pieces of snot, are dining on tender shots of basil and camomile, and are presumably looking forward to dining on wormwood and feverfew once they sprout. Nothing is growing in the place, I water it faithfully, the slugs and snails eat their fill, leaving it stripped bare!
I also bought a copy of Getting Things Done to send to a friend.
My girls, bought a couple of books for me - Father's Day - and got their faces painted, and one of them even got a goody bag for appearing on the radio show that they were doing when we were there. Easy enough to see who got the best end of this deal.
Also watched a few vodcasts, is that a word, the new Steve Jobs address and the interview along with Bill Gates. One does wonder where they got the idea for PC Guy and Mac Guy, presumably they wanted to cast Bill Gates in the PC guy role, but he was otherwise engaged.
Interesting and thought provoking stuff, technology is at quite an interesting stage at the moment, and I think that we just have to bite the bullet and reckon on buying a new computer every year. Interesting to see that only a small minority (10%) now use an MAC operating system other than 10.4 or 10.3.
Certainly my advice has been that the computers now are so good, so well specified, have so much additional functionality, you would be a fool not to buy one.
Of course running the IT for a family of four is bound to be expensive. Over the past year and a bit, I have
got a new computer, bought, set up, and working with peripherals
moved from dial up internet, to broadband, much wailing and swearing, and a lot of time doing that sort of English as a foreign language teaching, that you do whenever you phone technical support somewhere
got my wife and myself, both using our own iPods
got the whole family set up with their own iTunes and email accounts, and able to share their downloads when they want to
sorted out an external hard drive and an effective back up methodology.
I am now looking to buy a second computer, either a laptop pre October with extra Ram, and upgrade to Leopard, or maybe wait until October and get something with Leopard.
Amongst the many interesting ideas on the vodcasts (does anyone actually call them that, and indeed what about those phonogram recordings, that were all the rage) is the emphasis on post-pc devices, which includes iPods, iPhones, personal organisers, and I suppose anything else that you can find a use for, extending out to a set top box with a hard drive, like tivo, a handheld gaming device, digital image photo frames, and all sorts of other things that I have not really registered. Apple is pretty good at pushing out the boundaries of what a computer is, look at the all in one computer and display of the current iMac, the unloved Newton, the iPod, the Mac Mini, or even the early luggable portable macintoshes! Clearly the model of desktop or laptop, and nothing much else, is unlikely to continue.
Another interesting thing was that Steve Jobs did not really want to predict where computing would be in a few years, which is quite a sensible position for a clever person. There are simply too many unknowns and variables, for it to be constructive to speculate. We can think of possible directions, and good luck to those who want to make money out of them, but it would be insane to think you know what will come. Sometimes it is useful to accept uncertainty, and develop strategies to deal with it effectively. Simply knowing that things are uncertain, is not the same as relinquishing any control, you simply plan and control in a different sort of way.
Online Identity
I was listening to a pod-cast which was talking about marketing your pod-casts, and using your online identity as a brand.
I suppose that I could market my pod-cast, but it is not really about anything in particular, and will likely remain like that. Well I suppose it is about something in particular, it is about whatever happens to be of interest to me at the time of writing, but I have quite varied interests, so that hardly helps.
There is also the whole issue of an online identity. At the moment, I do not pass on details of this blog to people I know, and although I would be contactable via this blog, it is a standalone identity. I do not intentionally lie or mislead in my blog postings, but then again, I do not really write anything that would make it tremendously easy to identify who I am. Despite that, this is hardly the most impenetrable of disguises, and I could be identified from this blog, with relative ease.
My point being that one of the benefits of the internet is that one can establish separate identities, that meet your various desires and needs. For most people the appeal is that these are separate, the person one chats to about software glitches is not necessarily looking at photos of your family holiday, and vice versa. As in normal society, you choose how much to reveal to others, you focus on what is of mutual interest, but bring in extraneous material at your discretion.
However with searching now so easy, it is far easier for the curious to pull together these disparate identities. For people in the public arena this is probably not new, but for your average person, it is a disconcerting thought, and your average person is far less equipped to cope with any unexpected consequences.
At Work
My role at work continues to evolve. Some time ago, I was the junior member of a small team, now I am the team. Initially it was my role to promote a piece of work, but with a change in administration, my role is now more one of spinning plates, and potentially taking on more plates. Obviously I now have vastly more work to do, but the more important point is that I am expected to do that work in a different style. Because I am now leading the team, albeit one consisting solely of me, I am judged on the big ticket items, rather than the more mundane. The last year has been so intense, and I have such a long commute, that I personally feel that increasing my working hours is not really an option that is sustainable. So, in the jargon, it is a case of working smarter rather than harder.
In practice, this has meant that I am now picking up a lot of engagements, either speaking at, or simply attending meetings, that my boss would have handled before. I am also having to initiate meetings to progress what I want to do. Accordingly when I am in the office, I need to work through incoming work much more effectively. I have adopted a slight variation of the GTD principles,
if it can be done in a few minutes, simply do it then
if it relates to a category of work, simply put it in a folder with other similar work, so that I can devote a half day to it all sometime
if it needs a bit more work, and has a deadline - set up a paper folder with the deadline and quick description on the front
if it needs a bit more work, and has no deadline - simply flag the email
also for when I am at my desk, I tend to work away from the desk whenever I can, for example, if it is reading, I go through to our canteen, if it is something that I don't want interrupted on, I go down to a hotdesking area. That way I am reasonably available, people can leave a message, that I will get back to, but my availability is not slowing me down.
There is a need to be able to work effectively away from my desk, so I have set up couple of pencil cases with everything that I need, from indigestion tablets, to marker pens, and my favorite little film tags, for highlighting relevant material. I suppose that I could be better organised about carrying about work that I could do, but I have generally found that I will have some task that it usefully completed over a cup of coffee somewhere, like writing an agenda, or organising my thoughts on something.
I suppose that in essence, this is a top down approach, consider the most important priorities, first, and fit the rest in round them,
generally, in the past I have taken a bottom up approach, considering all the things that need done, and then trying to fit them in.
Of course the former approach is fine for a team leader, with some discretion, but it is not so applicable for a team member when your tasks are very fixed, and you have less discretion.
Anyway, interesting to see how I am coping with the current challenges, and changing how I work. My gut feeling is that I am probably pretty good at working at this level, but only if the work is of a manageable intensity. I can see that it would be incredibly easy to burn out working like this.
At Home
I am writing this on a Sunday morning, yesterday was wet and dreich. I suppose that I should have done a lot of useful stuff, but to be honest, we were mainly faffing about. Headed up to the new local garden centre, which also sells food, and pretty much everything else. My wife bought some food, I bought some slug pellets, I am finally giving in with having an organic cold frame. I have tried everything, a sandy base, copper tape round my pots, beer traps. This place is not a cold frame, it is an eat all you want slug conservatory! The little black pieces of snot, are dining on tender shots of basil and camomile, and are presumably looking forward to dining on wormwood and feverfew once they sprout. Nothing is growing in the place, I water it faithfully, the slugs and snails eat their fill, leaving it stripped bare!
I also bought a copy of Getting Things Done to send to a friend.
My girls, bought a couple of books for me - Father's Day - and got their faces painted, and one of them even got a goody bag for appearing on the radio show that they were doing when we were there. Easy enough to see who got the best end of this deal.
Also watched a few vodcasts, is that a word, the new Steve Jobs address and the interview along with Bill Gates. One does wonder where they got the idea for PC Guy and Mac Guy, presumably they wanted to cast Bill Gates in the PC guy role, but he was otherwise engaged.
Interesting and thought provoking stuff, technology is at quite an interesting stage at the moment, and I think that we just have to bite the bullet and reckon on buying a new computer every year. Interesting to see that only a small minority (10%) now use an MAC operating system other than 10.4 or 10.3.
Certainly my advice has been that the computers now are so good, so well specified, have so much additional functionality, you would be a fool not to buy one.
Of course running the IT for a family of four is bound to be expensive. Over the past year and a bit, I have
got a new computer, bought, set up, and working with peripherals
moved from dial up internet, to broadband, much wailing and swearing, and a lot of time doing that sort of English as a foreign language teaching, that you do whenever you phone technical support somewhere
got my wife and myself, both using our own iPods
got the whole family set up with their own iTunes and email accounts, and able to share their downloads when they want to
sorted out an external hard drive and an effective back up methodology.
I am now looking to buy a second computer, either a laptop pre October with extra Ram, and upgrade to Leopard, or maybe wait until October and get something with Leopard.
Amongst the many interesting ideas on the vodcasts (does anyone actually call them that, and indeed what about those phonogram recordings, that were all the rage) is the emphasis on post-pc devices, which includes iPods, iPhones, personal organisers, and I suppose anything else that you can find a use for, extending out to a set top box with a hard drive, like tivo, a handheld gaming device, digital image photo frames, and all sorts of other things that I have not really registered. Apple is pretty good at pushing out the boundaries of what a computer is, look at the all in one computer and display of the current iMac, the unloved Newton, the iPod, the Mac Mini, or even the early luggable portable macintoshes! Clearly the model of desktop or laptop, and nothing much else, is unlikely to continue.
Another interesting thing was that Steve Jobs did not really want to predict where computing would be in a few years, which is quite a sensible position for a clever person. There are simply too many unknowns and variables, for it to be constructive to speculate. We can think of possible directions, and good luck to those who want to make money out of them, but it would be insane to think you know what will come. Sometimes it is useful to accept uncertainty, and develop strategies to deal with it effectively. Simply knowing that things are uncertain, is not the same as relinquishing any control, you simply plan and control in a different sort of way.
elsewhere elections in Scotland
05/05/07 07:23
There has been quite a lot going on in the past week.
My boss for the past couple of years has left on early retirement, so I am now running the branch. The branch is just me, so I don’t anticipate a lot of disagreements with my staff. I am keen to recruit staff both above and below myself, but I’m not sure how long that will take.
In the past, I could simply work to my strengths, as could my boss. However now that I need to pick up more of her work, I will need to think more strategically, and have a better understanding of how the various blocks of work fit together. I am used to doing or batting of
My boss for the past couple of years has left on early retirement, so I am now running the branch. The branch is just me, so I don’t anticipate a lot of disagreements with my staff. I am keen to recruit staff both above and below myself, but I’m not sure how long that will take.
In the past, I could simply work to my strengths, as could my boss. However now that I need to pick up more of her work, I will need to think more strategically, and have a better understanding of how the various blocks of work fit together. I am used to doing or batting of