04.30.08
Posted in business, life at 8:04 am by coldclimate
Well, I was goign to post about Seth Godin’s interestin Signal V’s Noise post (which is nothing to do with the excellent Signal V’s Noise blog) but then realised that I had nothing more to add to it. He’s right, spam is drowning the world (and totally and completely ineffecive for legal transactions), and with the ease of productions such as delicious, blogger, flickr, twitter, tumblr and facebook, getting you badly thought through and poorly spelled “content” out there is so easy every moron can (and does) do it. Sadly this includes me. Especially the bit about spelling.
I’ve been thinking a lot about life and work and technology (and using the word and repeatedly) for a few months now, and it occurs to me that I am too contactable.
The majority of the contact that comes through these channels is rubbish. I get a couple of personal emails a week, but (work excluded) I get a hundred emails a day. I get a couple of hundred emails a day through work, but of those I actually need to do something with about 15. I am on text message distrobution lists for work related stuff virtually every weekend, yet I have only actually got invovled once in the last few months, all the rest of the time I am mearly on edge. My RSS feed reader (Google Reader) has over a hundred feeds pouring into it, yet I end up clicking “mark as read” to a hundred unread items a couple of times a day.
With mobile email and blackberry-a-likes becoming standard in work life now, virtually everybody is contactable all the time. I have to give out my mobile number (which is no major problem), but once people start ringing you at 9pm because “it’s urgent”, this is a problem. Best advice I’ve been given in the IT inducstry came from a dope smoking ex-folk singer who was a configuration management specialist: “Do the important, not the urgent”, meaning “if you stay reactive you’ll always be battling fires”.
All of noise is starting to drive people mad. Last night a team mate sent out an email at 8pm, our boss replied at 11:30pm, and I replied at 5:45am. This is not about an emergency, or even something really important, it was about the wording of a status report. Yep, you read right. Lunacy. We’re running a 24/7 team, except without shifts or geo-colocation.
So I’m going to make myself less contactable. I’ve been de-cluttering my life for a few weeks, deleting contacts in my mobile I never ring, removing RSS feeds, dumping massive swaiths of bookmarks and one-liner files, and this is helping to reduce the inflow of information. Now I need to reclaim the time.
Possibly a separate work movile is a start, or a whitelisting feature (eg. my phone will only ring if you are a friend, or you go stright to answerphone). Then a bit of inbox filtering. If you cc me in, I’ll only be reading it once a day, when I check the cc box. With a little judicious labelling I should be able to mark up those that are actually importnat.
By de-marking my time I’m hoping to regain some sanity.
Some people would tell me (and have done) that this is “the right thing” and that work “can’t tell you to do this stuff” (eg. work all hours and be contactable at the weekends), because of some form of sense of whats right (I wrote baout that a little while ago but can’t find it to link to it), but I think you have to have gone through the phase of being completely connected and the work that goes with it to then make the decision to stop. Just dismissing it out of hand as daft proves nothing, but going through the it and deciding it’s not for you is another mattter.
Now (as MSN springs into life, and at 7:22 another team mate and I discuss how early we can ring somebody), I just need to implement it, and then work out a way to stay as productive.
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04.28.08
Posted in technology at 10:00 pm by coldclimate
Tonight I finally got all my favorite technologies talking to one another and now when i wave my wiiMote about in the air, little lights in my room get brighter or dimmer (and when I work out how to multiplex the serial signals you’ll be able to change which lights are on so change the colour!).
When I get a chance I’ll write it up.
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04.26.08
Posted in randomosity at 7:42 am by coldclimate
Rest in Peace Humph, I shall miss you. I never did get a chance to see you play at the Bulls Head, and I’m Sorry I Haven’t A Clue won’t ever be the same.
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04.21.08
Posted in rant at 8:58 pm by coldclimate
I hate this sofa. I hate everything about it.
It’s a sleek, low grey number, topped with several black leather cushions. Looks brilliant, doesn’t bloody work.
The it’s so low, when you sit on it, your knees come up round your ears, and the depth of the seat front to back is clearly designer for a giant with the fremour abuot 4 feet long. Your arse end up only inches above your ankles vertically, but your knees aren’t actually over the front of the seat so your feet dangle uselessly until they go numb.
Yout can’t curl up on it sideways either, because it’s missing one end, and the material is slippy enough to mean you slowly side horizontal. If you pile the oh-so-manly black leather cushions up they slide off one another like a stack of well oiled ducks.
You can’t even sleep on the fucker - it’s just not long enough and you hang off the open end. If you had an arm or side on that you could curl into it and sleep (all be it a bit crunched up), but that missing end gets you again.
Basically, it was clearly designer by a salesman who thought he knew whaty people wanted, or my a very tall or very small designer, who had no eyes and wears velco clothes. Wankers.
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04.20.08
Posted in ideas at 3:43 pm by coldclimate
TV has lots of good stuff on it, but it has huge amounts of trash too. Virtually everything comes down to the lowest common denominator, which given some of the truely horrific thing syou here people coming out with, is pretty low.
Now, if I made TV, things would be very different, oh yes…
Firstly these giant adverts for Andrew Lloyd Webbers latest production, also known as I’d Do Anything and it’s ilk. A bunch of fairy pretty, fairy talented ladies singing and being set “challenges”, the public then vote or something, and some judges make some comments. Eventually one of them is chosen, and ALW and co go on to have a west end hit with the audience being one third old ladies, old third over excited children and one third horny father stating at the pretty that got voted in (and taking along their children). One giant adverts.
Now if I ran this thing, it would be different. Firstly, they’re have to do everything that actors have to put up with. They’re have to live in shit cheap accommodation, and eat at antisocial hours. They’re have to do several performances with raging hangovers, and paint the set themselves.
And the judges, they’re be history, or rather they would be very different. Gone would be that bloke form Torchwood, Denise van Whatsit and the bloke who play Dame Edna. In their place would be the top selection of Jeromy Clarkson (the voice of reason for such matters), Clare Balding from the racing, John McCririck and in place of lloyd webber i’d have Jack Dee. That would just about sort it. Oh - and the telephone voting would be gone, you’d only be allowed to vote if you were a registered voter for the General Elections (and you’d have to go to go to a polling station just like the GE too). Much better.
Next up - Shipwrecked. 40 teenagers on an island, full of booze and makeup and being set “tasks” and having to “survive on their own” etc etc. More fake that Jordons tits or the super cheap choclate you get in Christmas decorations.
My Shipwrecked, that would be another matter. I’d load up the place with the 40 brats, all excited that they get to become stars on TV etc etc, and I’d ditch it at sea half a mile off the island. When they swam ashore they’d find some tarpaulins, boxes of matches, machettes, rope and maybe their first night’s meal. Then we’d watch them all from a distance through long lenses as they waited for rescue and had to survive. Lord of the Flies all over again. Chloe, Harry and Antwon wouldn’t have a clue what had hit them, it would be ace.
Big Brother - so many improvements could be made. Every little turd who goes on it now wants to launch their career, become a super star, be famous etc etc etc, but when questioned they will say it’s all about expressing themselves, an interesting experiment in learning to live with others etc etc etc. blah blah blah.
So, my big brother, they’d all troup into the house, and get locked in. Every week one would be removed at random, and when they walked out of the door expecting baying crowds and Devina meeting them there would be… fuck all! No cameras would have been watching them, no crowds following them on telly, nothing. As the door closed behind them there’s be a taxi to the nearest tube stop and a cheque for the minimum wage for 8 hours every day they were in there. They’d had an interesting experiment, learned a lot about themsleves, and we’d had plenty of time to watch something worth while.
I could go on, but I guess you get the idea. Now vote for me.
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04.17.08
Posted in life at 10:00 am by coldclimate
I’m trying to get into a new routine in the morning. I am traditionally a night owl and slug-a-bed, but I’m trying to affect a change. Gone are the days (erm, nights) of staying up until 2 am buggering about with stuff followed by dragging my grumpy bum out of bed at 8am to struggle into work, fueled by caffine and 10am bacon sandwiches, being grumpy all day and only getting productive at 9pm.
Firstly, I’m getting out of bed when my alarm goes off. I used to use 2 alarms, the radio coming on (BBC radio4) to “warm me up” and then my mobile phone’s harsh and abrasive beeping to actually drag me out of bed 15 minutes later. The problem being that I woke up when the radio went off, and then dozed until the phone went off. This method taught me how to doze through alarms. Now I have one alarm - the very harsh and rasping beep of my alarm clock, and once it goes off I have to get out of bed ot turn it off (it’s on the other side of the room). I’ve started not closing my curtains at night so that the rising sun “warms me up” to getting out of bed.
Once I’m out of my pit I then make myself get out of the bedroom and go for a shower, rather than risk “just laying down for a moment” and thus sleeping for another hour.
I’m also getting up earlier. By setting my alarm 15 minutes earlier ever week I should have time to get use to it, and also me getting up an hour earlier each month. I don’t know how early I’ll push it, but 6am seems like a good time. The page that got me motivated to start makign the most of my day is written by a man who is up and out by 4:30am, but I think that’s a bit extream for me. He loves sunrises, I do too, but not that much.
And what do I do with all this extra time I now have? Well, not a lot just yet. I have a cup of coffee and flick through the over night emails. This morning I upgraded a wordpress plugin and glaced my work email because stuff was going on late at night. If I get super motivated, I might start putting my shoes on and going out for a walk (a pre-emptive strike on running) or take the camera out to photograph the world before it gets up. What I won’t be doing is going back to bed to sleep through the sunniest, quietest bit of the day.
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04.14.08
Posted in food, randomosity at 11:34 pm by coldclimate
Put a bottle of cheap dark rum in the freezer. The next day, mix 5 parts fiery ginger beer (not ale), 2 parts dark rum, and one part fresh lime juice. Pour over ice. Slip. Shout Yaaarrrgh and stomp round in circles!
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04.13.08
Posted in randomosity at 11:10 pm by coldclimate
I am a bit of a data whore. I want to know where I’ve been, what I’ve listened to (via last.fm), what I’ve read (via LibraryThing), and if I could record my thoughts (Twitter maybe?) so I could read then again later (especially when I was sober again), I would do.
What I could really do with is LibraryThing for wine. WineThing :) Yes, that is a great idea. Somebody go make it now!
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Posted in interweb at 3:32 pm by coldclimate
Yes, I’m excited by the idea of a new Bond film (the last one being a great film), but the title, well, it leaves me cold. Luckily there’s a wee man called Martin, normally accompanied by an accordion, who has recorded a rather good theme tune. Especially the bit about teaming up with Reg Hollis. Thats genius.
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04.03.08
Posted in ideas at 5:08 pm by coldclimate
I’m having a slow day, lacking motivation or energy, and my eyelids feel heavy, so the only answer so coffee. Black Crack in liquid form, possibly only trumped by redbul rip offs from Tescos in potency.
As I made the coffee I notice quite how perfect the small milk containers all. These teeny tiny pots (they must have a name), fit into the palm of your hand and hold a tablespoon full of milk, you’ve probably used them a hundred times and never looked. I certainly hadn’t. They are masterpieces of design.
The plastic body must be made out of a piece of thin plastic that starts life as an oddly shaped circle (a circle with a child circle tagged on the side I guess), probably about the size of a 2p coin. This is then extruded to form incredibly thin walls, which despite being thin enough to see the shadow of your finger inside, hold in the pressure of me squeezing the little pot in an ill-advised mid-office experiment.
The walls are also ridged, a tiny detail but which means the pots and so much more easily gripped. They don’t rotate in your fingers, and if they are cold and have condensation on (which they will because you wave them above our cup of hot water) they remain very grippable. I doubt the fins add enough surface area to radiate heat more easily, but it’s not impossible.
Where the body of the pot joining the tab which you will hold to open it, it flairs out, forming a teeny tiny spout. This makes pouring far more easy, and means that the shape of the foil lid can’t be circular but instead has a natural “tab”. This means that you automatically grab the tab to open it, and pour it using the spout, completely without noticing .
The foil lid is equally clever. To start with it’s not foil, it’s very thin plastic. Thus it won’t degrade like foil, or be as easily dented or damaged. It is however silver coloured on the underside, to remind you of the foil that was and convey a sense of normality. It’s glued to the top (I think), thought it might have been sealed in place with a quick blast of heat to melt it to the plastic pot. It remains however very easy to pull off, and another benefit of not being foil - it doesn’t tear and splinter like metal yoghurt port lids. The tip of the lid which protrudes out of the circular top and onto the tab of the tub is however not glued down, in fact it’s curving very slightly up because of the tension. You can’t help but use this bit to open it. Amazing!
So this little pot of milk has so clearly been designed (and redesigned) so as to be instantly usable. The amount of airline pots I’ve struggled to get into (and ended up stabbing at ineffectually with the plastic knife) is unreal, but with a few simple changed, this pot just works.
If only software was the same, so intuitive.
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Posted in ideas, technology at 2:15 pm by coldclimate
So today another good idea got made into something. With everything ever for sale being available on the web, the price wars were always going to happen, and in some ways we’ve moved past them (I’ll buy from Amazon because it’s easy even if Jeff’s Mega Book World is a pound cheaper). Once you go beyond the rock bottom prices, the more interesting things include sales, and offers. I linked to a paper which found bargins on Amazon a while ago and today (via the magic of Twitter’s public timeline) I found Buy it Later, a Firefox plugin which lets you maintain a hotlist of stuff you’re interested in, and then messages you (emails or tweets) when they drop in price, or come back into stock.
I might sign up. I should sign up. I should get out of the habbit of buying books one at a time as I hear abuot them, and wang them all on a list like this instead.
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04.01.08
Posted in randomosity at 8:52 pm by coldclimate
What a fantastic little article is What every American should know about the Middle East. This will only take you 2 minutes to read (really) and I guarentee that you will learn something (if I know my demographic). I was embarrassed at how I knew the basics, but missed a few critial bits.
Go in, click through, see if you’re not enlightened.
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