Listening to
I actually think I would tune into a podcast where John Siracusa talked about paint drying. I just like people like him, the David Mitchell, John Oliver types who are critical and detailed and very, very funny.
Accidental Tech Podcast, or ATP to it’s friends, claims to have been born out of a car show from “people who should know better than to do a car show” http://neutral.fm/
John Siracusa’s wonderful mind for detail can be visited from his is now retired podcast called Hypercritical. He is also known for his extremely detailed reviews of new MacOS as they were released but he rose to my attention when he tried to find the perfect toaster oven (55 minute mark) http://5by5.tv/hypercritical/18
Now I’m beginning to tell you all the things you need to know before you can actually start listening to this podcast (see Wonder Woman lament below): which isn’t true. Just jump right into ATP and you’ll get into the swing of things no trouble.
Accidental Tech Podcast http://atp.fm/ Featuring Marco Arment, Casey Liss, and John Siracusa is best listened to via the Overcast app.
Watching
I haven’t been to the cinema in ages. And Wonder Woman wasn’t a movie I wanted to see but relationships are about compromise so I hardly grumbled at the sudden urge to see “that Croatian woman” at Hoyts on Saturday night.
The movies I have recently seen at the Cinema tend to be disappointing. Dr Strange, for instance, had all the ingredients for me to be a happy movie-goer but there was just too much talkie talkie and that’s what Wonder Woman suffered from as well.
I don’t need to know the intricacies of the back story. I don’t have to understand every plot point before it happens. I really don’t. I’m a growed woman who can join dots and realise links between information, you don’t have to ram it down my throat with flashbacks within flashbacks with endless explanations - please stop doing this!
How many hours were we through the movie before Wonder Woman actually started kicking some butt? “Okay so you’re all set up now? you understand about the gods and the war and the badies and the goodies? Right, let’s start the story now…"
Plus the whole setting of World War One’s No-Man’s-Land of trench warfare was heartbreaking to me. Typical Americans* who see the boys in the opposing trenches as the enemy when really they were just like our “boys” - cold, afraid, and dying. I’m pretty sure that if Dianna has stopped to think about it she would have been less inclined to pummel them with their own bullets and just tried to get everyone to calm down**.
I started this “What am I watching" with the idea that the movie was boring, now I’m just kind of getting annoyed at the thoughtlessness of the film.
*sorry that was racist
**too simplistic and uninformed, I know.
Reading
Transform: a rebel’s guide to digital transformation by Gerry McGovern https://www.amazon.com/Transform-rebels-guide-digital-transformation/dp/1782807381
This book is ringing so many bells for me this weekend. Familiar ideas that have been clanging around my day-job for years, really. The idea of rewarding feedback with action and recognition; changing content to suit the top tasks of our customers (or site visitors, or future students, or whomever our audience is); putting customer needs before the needs of the business; cutting content in half (and then in half again) and for the love of Glob, get rid of FAQs - because they’re lazy questions no one ever asked let alone frequently.
“You need to stop being in love with your own business and help people do the tasks they need to do. Constant production doesn’t do that. ”
We’re doing all that, and more, within our project at work. Transform is really showing me all the old thinking and stuck-in-the-past refuse-to-grow-or-change managers that are going to just drag our website back into the mire we pulled it from when they get their hands on it again <= not letting that happen has become our new “top task” as we hope to outlive the managerial dinosaurs and keep our resolve and resilience.
Buy the Kindle edition for yourself, and gift the book to your favourite but most influential managerial dinosaur because you know they can't work their Kindle. It’s money well spent.
Making
Houmous http://www.jamieoliver.com/news-and-features/features/best-basic-houmous-recipe/
Working on
After losing the organisational thread of my life, I’ve resurrected my bullet journal. I spent some lovely time over the weekend listening to atp.com and getting June in order via my journal.
If you’d like a super simple way to track your life and keep your ducks in a row, check out http://bulletjournal.com/ and see if the concept of analogical organisation is something that might benefit you.
Thinking about
The extinction of psychopaths in the workplace based on the idea that the “old way of doing business” won’t cut it any more. Unhappy employees and unethical work practices, along with business priorities over customers will (hopefully) see old business die, and take it’s propensity for psychopathy with it.
Maintaining
Perspective: I heard a saying a while ago that I’ve never been able to repeat as eloquently as I heard it that one time but, in essence it was:
“I am the guardian of this place.”
It works for wherever you are standing. In your home, on the street, in a park, on a website you look after, the office you work in. We are all responsible for where we are to keep it clean and safe and have respect for where we stand.
Pick up that litter; help a newbie; offer a lift to an older person; say good morning; hold a door open; empty the dishwasher at work.
I’m thinking about that and using it to give me some perspective.
