These last two days in Perth have broken records for heat. Both Christmas Day and Boxing Day were several degrees over 40ÂșC. I am immensely thankful that this year, for the first time in my home ownership history, we have a swimming pool. With weather like this, itâs a complete game changer. A benefit of the heat is that upon emerging from the pool, it takes only minutes to be completely dry from the hot air. At which point you are warmed up enough to want to get back in.
I figured it would fun to do the same thing again for 2021. I didn’t take copious notes over the course of the year, so I’m piecing this list together from calendar notes.
Year Notes
Throughout the year I worked on two podcasts, NBL Pocket Podcast and Hemispheric Views. There is no doubt that podcasting has become an integral part of my life.
Managing a child with autism means the year is peppered with visits to medical professionals, school meetings, and a whole bunch of other supportive activities. This becomes part of the tapestry of my life, but it is a burden, no doubt.
Work events hardly rated a mention, because after many years of doing the same thing it was hard to build enthusiasm for the job this year. It’s importance to me has slid down the totem pole.
Western Australia was fortunate in that it was isolated from COVID-19. Our State has had zero community transmission and life within our State-sized bubble has been quite normal.
January
I was still going strong (pardon the pun) with my strength and fitness training.
Attended EPW Reawakening 19 wrestling show.
February
Sold my Kia Sorrento.
Final touches of our backyard renovation were being completed.
Closing in on the WA State Election, in which my wife was a candidate.
Our swimming pool was commissioned, smack bang in the middle of winter.
July
Watched the Olympics - mainly the basketball tournament.
Had a consultation for surgery on my eyelids, becauase of a genetic condition.
Had my first vaccination shot. I got Pfizer.
August
Saw the Boomers win an Olympic medal for the first time.
Traveled to Bunbury for an overnight stay as part of a work event.
Had my second Pfizer shot, to be maxxinated.
Attended Perth Redbacks finals games in NBL1.
September
Had surgery to repair my eyelids.
Started building a friendship with Nick.
Dropped Hannah at the AFL Grand Final at Optus Stadium. I didn’t get a ticket.
Enjoyed a family vacation in Albany.
October
Upgraded our home solar system from 3kW to 5kW.
Hosted the Hemispheric Views live watch event of Crocodile Dundee.
Roamed the streets for Trick or Treat Halloween. I was Patrick Bateman of American Psycho.
November
Had to drain and restart the pool setup because our contracted maintenance company put the wrong chemicals into the water. This was the event that caused the most anger and anxiety to me throughout this year.
Attended EPW Reawakening XX wrestling event.
Successfully obtained NBL media accreditation for NBL Pocket Podcast for the 2021/22 season.
Started some light gym work, trying to avoid the injury problems from last time - even though my shoulders still hurt.
Looking Forward to 2022
Reflecting on these notes for 2021, my life had few highlights. Most of the time was taken with household management and caring for our young kids. There’s not much to look back on that was fun or exciting, and that’s probably why I have struggled a bit with my mental health this year. With no tentpole events through the year, it became a grind of sameness.
Next year I need to be better at identifying and taking action around doing some things that are for me.
If I’m particularly brave, I should review my career path as well, because that has stagnated. I’m probably due for a new challenge, or else my mind may risk atrophy.
This post was originally written in July 2021 for Hemispheric News; subscribe at the Patreon site One Prime Plus to receive this monthly newsletter and other benefits that are linked to the Hemispheric Views podcast.
I am a father of two boys. One is 9 (almost 10!) and the other is 5 œ. I work in a fairly flexible capacity whereas my wife has a highly demanding job that has significant variability. Our time as a family is precious, but sometimes difficult to co-ordinate. So when we do have good quality time together, we want to make it count.
Itâs a challenge to find things to do with as a family that meets all the necessary criteria:
Entertaining to the children individually.
Entertaining to the children mutually.
Entertaining for us as parents.
Engaging for all of us (ideally).
You might think this would be easy. You might have lovely ideas of joyous, considerate play. No. And no.
This is (to coin an Australianism) bloody hard.
While the easy answer is electronic, iPads, Nintendo Switch, Netflix, this isnât necessarily the most appropriate answer. I do have a need to find entertainment that incorporate activity and engagement with all the family members.
An extra challenge to throw into the mix is that my eldest has autism. This can make him cantankerous and difficult to get to engage in things that he hasnât done before or that he doesnât have confidence in his own ability to do (well, immediately).
Recently we have gone to a couple of old classics, and some newer classics. We have played some rounds of Uno. The great thing about this is that our 5 year old can play - and sometimes win - with no skill required. He knows colours and numbers and can understand the concept of matching. Sure, Draw Two and Reverse are beyond him, but thatâs okay with a bit of parental support.
Weâve also played Skip-Bo. To be fair, Hannah and I have enjoyed this more than the kids.
Can you recommend any entertainment options that might suit my family and get them away from their screens for a while longer? Iâd appreciate your suggestions. Fire them back to me via the Discord so that others can benefit too! In no time at all, Martin will be having these sort of challenges with Mac. Heâs a baby now, but that wonât last long!
Either I’m an old man who is shaking his fist at the clouds, or I’m a rational person that isn’t easily bedazzled and deluded by the madness of crowds. I prefer to think I’m the latter. Crypto has captivated the masses, and delivered opportunity to the financial grifters who portray themselves as disciples of a new financial world order.
I may be missing out on ‘easy wins’, trading cryptocurrencies - buying low, selling high. What I know for certain, however, is that I’m missing the opportunity to be the last one holding the hot potato when the music stops and the entire Ponzi scheme comes crashing down.
Wherever there is fervour, I see risk. Where a financial instrument is deigned by “experts” to be capable of changing the world, I see a snake oil salesman wanting to offload empty promises at my expense.
To my mind, a crypto asset has no inherent value beyond the hope that somebody thinks it will be worth more, and so will be willing to pay more, so they can on-sell to the next chump who thinks it will also go up. That’s not a good recipe for sound investing. That’s gambling. Crypto itself has no underlying value. It’s not a commodity with underlying value. It has no intrinsic productive value.
A few days ago I attended the West Tech Fest conference in Perth, and a huge chunk of the day was dedicated to speakers excitedly talking up crypto, memecoins, and other such “financial instruments”. One person was explaining that the younger (current?) generation are more financially aware with a higher tolerance for financial volatility, and therefore willing to ‘take the risks’. I’m calling bollocks on all of this. Of course, these statements were also made by an industry insider - a representative of a business that offers a platform for trading crypto. Now why would they be encouraging profligate “investment” in ridiculous products with no underlying value? As always, this is where I turn to my man, Lester Freamon.
Further Reading
If you’re not convinced that crypto is simply an energy-sapping, hype offering that isn’t going to deliver any of the amazing things it’s zealots say it will, I encourage you to undertake some further reading, and apply some rational economic thought.
We’ve seen bubbles before. They always work the same way. Sure, some people get rich. Some do okay. But many are hurt, and left holding an, ahem, “asset” that isn’t worth jack. Just because this is a digital item riding the Web3 hype train doesn’t mean it’s going to end any differently.
I suggest you read the brilliant work of Stephen Diehl. He has published a number of excellent, considered articles on this topic. Read his work, follow the links and maintain an open mind.
There are a number of great quotes in his articles; below I’ve extracted just a few of my favourites. Everything Stephen writes is so good though, I encourage you to follow the links and read the full articles.
On memecoins:
Memecoins are pure greater fool investments, theyâre basically a hot potato that people trade hoping to offload it on someone dumber than them who will pay more for it. And the implicit assumption behind the terminal value of these assets is that thereâs an infinite chain of fools who will keep doing this forever. Nassim Taleb deconstructed this concept from a quantitative finance perspective in his whitepaper but nevertheless these assets persist because people behave economically irrationally and like lighting money on fire and dumping it into memes regardless of financial sanity. Meme coins like dogecoin exist simply for people to gamble on a fantasy about talking dogs, and bitcoin is a meme token for gambling on a fantasy about living in a cyberpunk dystopia. At the end of the day, memecoins are not that economically distinguishable from Ponzi schemes.1
On the value of crypto as a valuable commodity:
After twelve years of these technologies existing (roughly the same age as the iPhone) there is basically only one type of successful crypto business: exchanges which exist to trade more crypto. 1
Unlike a gallon of petrol which can be burned for energy, or a kilo of wheat which can be made into bread, or a[n] ounce of gold which can made into jewelery, there is no intrinsic use of a bitcoin. There is nothing inside of a bitcoin that can be used for anything other than to offload it on someone else who will buy it for more than what you paid for it. It is nothing more than a pure greater fool-seeking asset.2
On crypto as a Ponzi scheme:
Crypto assets are the synthesis of a speculative mania and a financial scam built around an opaque technology, phoney populism, with a tolerance for intellectual incoherence at its core. And it is a novel type of a scam, one that we donât have a precise term of art for. They share the obscured and circular payouts of Ponzi schemes, the cult-like recruiting of multilevel marketing schemes, the ephemeral nature of high-yield investment fraud, and payout mechanics of pyramid schemes but strictly speaking they arenât exactly like any of the classical scams. 2
Last night our family and and some friends attended Explosive Pro Wrestlingâs Reawakening XX show. This is EPWâs showcase annual event. Their Wrestlemania, if you are searching for a comparator.
At a sold-out theatre the company put on an amazing show.
Iâve always enjoyed wrestling and nothing beats being in a venue where everybody who is there âgets itâ. No need to put up with the naysayers who talk about wrestling being fake, or silly, or whatever other negative comment they want to throw at it for some reason.
Make no mistake though, EPW is high-quality. These performers know what they are doing, are well-trained, and take it seriously.
The Main Event for this show was a no-DQ situation, so it was more intense than one would normally see, and did push the boundaries. Full credit to the wrestlers because there is no way I would put myself through that kind of pain. Julian Ward defeated Mikey Nicholls for the EPW Championship belt and the kids were very excited to meet him at the conclusion of the event.
This is the other great thing about EPW - itâs approachability. Kids getting photos with heroes is totally possible. The venue is a great size so you have an awesome view wherever you sit. Itâs brilliant.
I was in Year 5 at a new school. I didnât know anybody. My previous school didnât have a formal uniform and Iâd worn velcro shoes everyday. Now at this new school I had to wear leather lace-ups, and I didnât know how to tie laces.
Fair to say, I was nervous and apprehensive.
Until I discovered Stratego. Our Year 5 classroom had a bunch of games, but Stratego was epic. I made a good friend playing Stratego. I found my place. I loved the game. Before classes started in the morning, we’d play Stratego. During rainy lunchtimes when outside play was impossible, we’d play Stratego. The winner kept the board, the loser had to shuffle back to the end of the queue of players wanting a turn.
Stratego helped me assimilate into the school and become safe and secure.
In the early 2000âs I found a rudimentary online version of Stratego but it didnât have the same experience as using a real board and pieces.
Fast-forward to now. A few months ago we were on holiday in Albany, Western Australia and we were exploring a toy store in town. On their shelves were boxes of Stratego.
I looked at the games. I looked at my 10 year old son. I looked back at the games and grabbed a box. Was I buying this game for me, him, or both of us? I like to think the latter, but it was probably the former.
Now, here we are. Nostalgia has delivered an experience in the present.
This post was originally written in June 2021 for Hemispheric News; subscribe at the Patreon site One Prime Plus to receive this monthly newsletter and other benefits that are linked to the Hemispheric Views podcast.
My kingdom for a good mouse that works with macOS. Logitech MX Master 3 - garbage drivers cause lag all over the place. Razer Viper Ultimate - doesnât work with macOS. Apple Magic Mouse - ergonomic hell. Why is this so hard?
Despite Apple sales being higher than ever third party vendors arenât willing to come to the party to develop decent macOS drivers for their products. So a person can spend a lot of money on new hardware but still struggle to aim a pointer with precision.
Less than a year ago I bought a Logitech MX Master 3. It is promoted as the most ergonomic, fully-featured non-gaming mouse on the market. From a hardware standpoint it is beautiful. Contoured edges, metallic construction and magnetic resistance make it move beautifully. Until you have to use the Logitech Options software on a Mac. I have tried the Bluetooth connection, I have tried the RF dongle. It doesnât matter. Either option results in random pointer stutters, entire pauses for seconds and other random tomfoolery. It undermines everything that is good about the mouse.
It all got too much for me recently so after speaking to my money spending enabler, Jason Burk, I purchased a Razer Viper Ultimate gaming mouse with docking station. Being a gaming mouse it has multi-coloured LEDs and high frequency tracking, so surely it will be good.
The hardware is good. The software? Not so much as dire, but rather non-existent. Razer do not make a version of the software for macOS. So all the goodness is wasted unless youâre on a PC. That being said, I booted into Windows via Boot Camp and the Windows software is a terrible mess as well. It was hundreds of megabytes in size with a UX that made no sense.
I had packed the mouse back into its box and was ready to return it, when a final search and another discussion with Jason led me down a macOS software rabbit-hole. It turns out there is an open-source community that develops drivers and software for the Razer on mac.
This led me to discover the FruityRazer project and Razer macOS - software drivers to control not just the mouse performance but most importantly, the LEDs!
There are also two shareware software options, USB Overdrive and SteerMouse. To be honest, I haven’t figured out the best combination of all these software options yet.
What I do know, however, is that now the Razer mouse is rock solid. I have a feeling that if I trade out Logi Options for USB Overdrive or SteerMouse that the MX Master 3 will probably be stable as well.
What does this say about the ability or willingness or large corporations to develop decent macOS software? It says they are terrible. What does it say about Apple not being able to develop a good hardware mouse that doesnât deliver immediate RSI? It says that they are terrible.
Facebook is a terrible company and I’ve felt much better about myself since deleting their products: notably Facebook, Instagram and WhatsApp. When ditching use of the apps, there is a withdrawal period of 5-8 days, then after that, it’s fine. Life goes on. Time is returned to your life. You miss nothing of import. I’m still waiting for my “Facebook friends” to check in and see how I’m doing and note they miss my absence…
At what point do we acknowledge that a company is a net negative, and facilitate its end?
Corey Doctorow has written a great article about the latest horrible news arising from Facebook. It’s hard to pull a single quote, but this stood out:
Everybody hates Facebook, especially FB users. The point of high switching costs, after all, is to increase the pain of leaving so that FB can dole out more abuse to its users without fearing that they’ll quit the whole enterprise.
FB’s mission is to increase the size of the shit-sandwich they can force you to eat before you walk away. But they’re not mere sadists: shit-sandwiches have a business model: the more hostages they take, the more they can extract from advertisers â their true customers.
Some weeks ago I bought a wireless CarPlay adaptor for my new 2021 Toyota Camry. The Camry support CarPlay but only when connected with a lightning cable.
My experience with it to date has been mostly positive, with some caveats. The largest issue I have is its “Chinese knock-off” software interface. I don’t quite know how they are making this whole thing work, and not having had CarPlay before I don’t know what earlier generations of the software were like. However, the version that is installed on the CarPlay device has a “bootleg” feel. For example, native CarPlay has iconography for buttons. The CPlay device has icons within button borders and some of these seem slightly misaligned. I also notice on my podcast app that not all the interface elements seem quite the same, such as the speed of playback.
The other weird thing I notice is when playing back voice messages and other interactions with Siri. The volume is much lower than any other audio making it hard to hear. However, I’m reticent to blame this solely on the CPlay device. I think it may have something to do with the configuration of the audio in my car system? I don’t know, and I’m still trying to figure it out.
All that being said, the thing works. I keep waiting for it not to work and partly expecting it to fail, or drop the connection, but it works everytime. It supports multiple devices as well, with both my phone and my wife’s connected to it. It auto-switches based on last use and whichever device is available.
For short trips, I think this thing is great. If I’m travelling a longer distance, I’m still going to use the lightning cable. Would I buy it again? Yes, I would.
I also bought a custom-fit Chi charging pad. It’s not that great, but is necessary if you want to use the CPlay for a length of time and not kill your phone battery. I have found my phone slips off it too easily unless I put the phone in a case. As these things are designed differently to fit each kind of car, your mileage may vary.
This was prompted by my trial of Glass, and the reminder that my Flickr account still exists.
I haven’t had much time to do anything with them, except charge the battery and try to reset them back to a state where they were taking jpegs and letting the camera intelligence do the work.
In a sign of how long they’ve been sitting around for, every camera needed its clock reset. I also seem to have lost some SD cards - does anybody know where I put them?
I took two photos with each camera from roughly the same position. It wasn’t too scientific, so don’t necessarily read too much into the results, but it’s kind of interesting.
My cameras are (with links to relevant pages at DPReview:
Each progressive generation gets better at capturing light, leading to brighter images. The iPhone and its computational photography has to be the greatest revolution in photography since the digital camera was born. Keep in mind that I’m using an iPhone several generations old, and that some of the greatest advancements since this model have been low light capture.
It was nice to pull out the old cameras though, and I think the D7000 and GX7 in particular still offer some value in terms of a change-up from typical iPhone shots.
At this point, the LX3 probably needs to be consigned to use only for outdoor shots with reasonable light.
I despise Electron apps. What is the point of having a superior operating system (macOS) if every app that resides on it is nobbled by not supporting basic elements of the underpinning system?
I see the short-term reason that developers must use: standardised code, cheaper for development, most users don’t know/care.
I also caution about the long-term losses: the damage to brand reputation, the disappointment of ‘power users’ and the risks that can occur from alienating this group.
It’s also hard not to see that this switch to Electron came shortly after 1Password accepted a huge venture capital stake. Investors want their returns.
Users who do care, such as myself, are the proselytising acolytes, however. I’ve recommended 1Password many times over the years, as well as being a paying subscriber of their Families edition more recently, after having bought multiple versions of their earlier standalone apps.
This shift away from fully native apps and the fact that they are removing iCloud support from version 8 in order to enforce the use of their cloud sync service (in an obvious lock-in ploy) was the last straw, so I just downloaded Secrets, paid for the Premium version ($19.99 for each platform) and imported all my 1Password data into it.
I have access to Secrets for macOS through my Setapp subscription. So I can try this out for a while, and if I like it I’m happy to buy the iOS version.
My current 1Password subscription is valid through to April next year so there’s no immediate pressure for me to shut down the 1Password account.
This is what Damian Lillard said after the USA lost to France in their first đ game of the Tokyo Olympics:
“I think that’s why a lot of people will make it seem like the end of the world, but our job as professionals and this team and representing our country at the Olympics, we’ve got to do what’s necessary and we still can accomplish what we came here to accomplish.”
This quote sums up their problem. You shouldn’t be aiming to be be professional at the Olympics. You need to be passionate. You need to have an emotional connection about representing your country. That’s the difference between USA and the other elite basketball teams at the Olympics, and what gives those other teams their edge. Other teams want to do the best in the name of their country.
These players aren’t getting paid to be at the Olympics. They’re there because they want to passionately represent their country. It’s not a job. Being professional isn’t the right approach.
What is there to manage about a wardrobe, I hear you say.
âA lotâ, I respond.
Youâve got your hanging section, drawers and maybe some open shelving. What goes where, and how do you manage this space effectively and efficiently?
When I was younger, jocks and socks were thrown relatively haphazardly into the top drawer. Now Iâm old with a wife and things canât be as simple as that anymore. Now, I fold jocks. Left over middle, right over middle, then a fold in half. They become a little square of underpant. Now they tesselate and stack. Perfect. Organise by colour. You know it makes sense.
Socks are folded in half into one another, forming a rectangular shape. I went through a period of high-level sock management; now Iâve reduced it to left-side of the drawer for business, right-side of the drawer for sport.
When does a pair of pants hang, and when is it folded? Do jeans hang? Not in my world. For some reason, jeans are folded and placed on a shelf, but chinos get the hanging treatment. Dress pants? Well, of course they hang. Shorts are folded too.
Iâve grown to almost be able to fold a shirt like they do in the shops. But not quite. They always end up being a little crooked. Then they are placed in a drawer. In piles. However, with my kids clothes Iâve been taking a different approach. For their clothes Iâm employing the Noguchi Filing System. This is something I learnt from my work with the Lean Thinking, and deployed in personal clothing management. Apparently, others have already thought about this.
Essentially, clothes get stacked in side-by-side, rather than on top of one another, and always get placed on one side. Naturally, more often used clothing ends up towards one side of the drawer. Eventually, you will know that the kids have grown out of the stuff at the other end of the drawer.
I donât consider my wardrobe management to be optimal. There is still work to be done. But I think about it. Which is probably more than most people. Of course, Iâm not normal.
Recently David Sparks has posted a number of blog entries about his status board creation1. This takes the form of a kanban board of significant projects that he manually updates, providing a graphical overview of his work and life.
I’m a big fan of tools based around the lean methodologies, so I was immediately taken by his idea. I’ve done similar things in the past, but David inspired me to build one with a new approach.
What makes HyperPlan great for the construction of a status board is that it is data-driven and dynamic. David takes time each week to edit and change his status board in what is effectively a graphics application. By using HyperPlan, I can change database entries and the software intelligently reconstructs the status board. I have freedom to change the variables I want to ‘pivot’ the table around.
I can create and save ‘views’ of my data, which allow me to construct a status board that has the three key elements of my life: work, family, and me â and elect to view all or some of these. I can focus only on work by hiding the others, or I can view them all together in one kanban board, but still split by these roles.
The following image shows the card layout of a status board displaying key projects across all three of my areas of responsibility:
Whereas this redacted image shows my work projects, and demonstrates how the fields can be shown on each card:
System-based URLs for Contextual Computing
HyperPlan has the ability to add hyperlinks to each card. This enables me to adopt David Sparks' contextual computing linking. I am able to add links to OmniFocus projects, Hook references, or DEVONThink locations all within the relevant card. A right-click on the card allows me to jump straight to any of these locations.
Fun and Engaging
I appreciate David sharing his thoughts and ideas around the construction of a status board.
In building my own, it has been a reminder of how I can make work fun and engaging. The efficiency and pure project-processing of OmniFocus is great, but it doesnât do visualisation. This status board is nice to look at, easy to update, and allows me to consider how loaded up my life is at any particular point in time.
Iâm going to make this a key part of my personal management approach.
I am immensely proud of my wife, Hannah Beazley, who has been duly elected as a Member of the Western Australian Legislative Assembly, representing the District of Victoria Park. As the WA Labor Party won the State Election, she is now a member of our State Government.
While the result was known on the evening of the official polling day on 13 March 2021, the WA Electoral Commission cannot formally declare a result until it has done a full count and exhausted all the preferences of those candidates who did not win. This is a complex system so counting the complete set takes some time, at which point the election is declared.
For the District of Victoria Park, that time has come and the result has been officially declared and published.
Victoria Park was previously held by the Stateâs outgoing Treasurer, Ben Wyatt. Before him, the seat was held by Premier Geoff Gallop. Now, my wife, Hannah Beazley, has the opportunity to represent the people of Victoria Park in the State Parliament.
Hannah has worked for many years towards this goal. She has previously fought and lost elections, but never given up. Now, she is a winner, and itâs fantastic!
In the most recent episode of my podcast Hemispheric Views I mentioned the time I was featured in the Workbench section of Amiga Format magazine.
I loved the Amiga, and I subscribed to Amiga Format in addition to a few other British and Australian Amiga magazines. The highlight of my month was riding my bike to the newsagent to collect my reserved copy.
I always liked the productivity and system utility applications more than gaming. I was a weird kid like that.
Amiga Format’s Workbench section was the Discourse forum of its day. People would write in with questions (with letters as this pre-dated email) and the magazine experts would publish the question and provide a helpful response. It was this section where I learned so much and to this day, Internet forums are still the best way to learn things.
In any case, I recall being stumped on a problem so I wrote in to Workbench asking for some help. I am sure I sent it via Airmail, but even still, getting a letter from Australia to the UK, then into the printing and production cycle resulted in something like a 6-month lead time. I think I had forgotten about it after a couple of months.
Imagine my surprise then, when months later, I see my name in print, in the world’s best-selling Amiga magazine. This was huge! It was the April 1992 issue. That would have put me at 14 years old. Maybe I was 13 when I wrote the letter, who knows?
I kept my huge pile of Amiga magazines for years. Eventually, though, I had to say goodbye. I kept the issue that I was published in for longer, but finally I had to say goodbye to that one also. But I never forgot that I was in the Amiga Format magazine that had Felix the Cat on the cover.
That takes me to now. My friend and podcast co-host Jason Burk writes the best show notes in the podcasting business. He found and linked to an entire online archive of Amiga Format magazines. This was what I needed. I found my Felix the Cat cover, and brought up the issue.
There it was. Page 209. Workbench. “Missing Drawers”, from “Andrew Canion, Australia”. My letter lives on.
Article Full Text
Missing Drawers
From: Andrew Canion, Australia
I have been attempting to design my own split image icon for use as a drawer. I have copied the Empty drawer from my Workbench 1.3 disk. I have then split this icon using the IconMerge program on the Extras disk.
I then edit it with IconEd, and saved the two images back to disk before joining them into one icon with IconMerge again. The actual changing image works fine when I click once, but when I double click to open the drawer itself. I get an error message telling me that the drawer cannot be opened. I’m a relative beginner, so tell me in simple terms what am I doing wrong?
An icon is just a picture to click on. What you’re miss- ing is a directory with the same name (in this case, empty). You’re clicking on an icon, but your Amiga cannot find anything with the same name. To make a directory from the Shell, type:
Makedir nameofmydisk:Empty
It should work then. For nameofmydisk, put the name of the disk that you’re editing icons on. If the name has spaces in it, then you must put double quotes around the whole thing, for example:
I’ve been considering whether my current DEVONthink daily note is the best system for rapid note taking. Of course there’s nothing wrong with it, other than it being super-basic.
DEVONthink Pros
Wikilinking (automatic and manual) to other notes.
Integrated into broader DEVONthink Search/See Also system.
No-nonsense, no futzing with formatting.
DEVONthink Cons
No genuine Markdown editing support.
No outlining support
Just a plain text document.
I’ve been looking at Dynalist and Workflowy. Yet both cost money and feel kind of clunky - like my hands are flippers. That’s because they are web apps living in the Wild West of UIs - no operating system standards holding them to account.
I still have OmniOutliner Pro, which I’ve toyed with once again. Maybe if I keep the OmniOutliner file simple and focused enough, it will do the job. I’ve paid for the software. It’s available on macOS and iOS.
I think the last time I tried using OmniOutliner, I over-engineered my outline with columns, formatting, etc. If I keep it simple it may work better.
Of course, that also means I lose the integrated DevonThink search.
CRIMP stands for a make-believe malady called compulsive-reactive information management purchasing. Symptoms include: never being satisfied with your current system of information management; continuously being on the look-out for something newer and better; purchasing every new PIM program you learn about; and secretly hoping you wonât find the perfect PIM, because then youâd have to stop looking for a better one. ↩︎
Over the past two years my wife has been working at Containers for Change. This is a not-for-profit organisation enabled by the Western Australian Government and funded by the private sector.
When she started it was a start-up organisation working out of a tiny shared office with big plans to get a container deposit scheme (i.e. return drink bottles and cans for cash) up and running across our State.
A week ago, the scheme launched. It features over 200 locations across the entire State where the public can go to drop off their recyclables. It is supporting new jobs. It is providing another income source for families where every dollar counts. It is reducing landfill and facilitating responsible recycling.
As part of the executive team, Hannah has built and managed an amazing team of people. Now, her journey is coming to an end as she moves onto a new challenge. I know she is sad about it and that this has been the highlight of all her career experiences to date.
As her husband, I’m guilty of not giving enough recognition for the job she has done. But I will write here that she has been amazing. I love her and I’m incredibly proud of what she has accomplished.
Who else can say they were able to put a 5.5 metre tall swan, constructed of steel and 10,000 recyclable bottles into the middle of a Perth pedestrian square? That’s an amazing accomplishment, but it’s only the most visible accomplishment of 2 years of hard work and other less visible achievements.
Today I took our two boys to recycle of first batch of containers. They were so proud to be dropping the containers onto the conveyor belt and see them be whisked away and converted into cash.
Social enterprise, delivering economic and environmental benefits. Lots of winners; no losers. That’s the way to do business.
Recently I came across an annoying calendaring problem. I have a number of domain names, with associated email aliases. These all reconcile via my Fastmail account.
I noticed the other day that calendar invitations created in my calendar app of choice, BusyCal, were defaulting to being sent from one of my non-default email addresses.
There was no obvious setting for this in BusyCal and it was an issue that I hadn’t noticed at all over previous years so I assumed there was some problem at the server end. I checked Fastmail but its calendar settings were configured to send calendar events from my primary and preferred domain. Nevertheless, I fired a support ticket to Fastmail. Over the next few days (the one ding on Fastmail is slow support turnarounds) they verified my settings were correct. They inspected the logs generated by BusyCal created events, and tested things from their end. After all of this, they confirmed the problem was coming from BusyCal.
Off I went to BusyMac support. Their fast support turnaround confirmed that it was BusyCal causing the problem, and that the software had no ability to choose which email to send from - it took the first in the arbitrary list of available email addresses.
It didn’t end there, however. Soon after, I received an email saying that they had looked at the issue - agreed it wasn’t ideal, and built a new beta build that offered up an option to choose the originating email address for new events. They provided me a download link to this new beta.
It works perfectly. Now, BusyCal will create new event invitations from my preferred domain.
What really works, though, is tech support. These are the unsung heroes of software. Helping mere users like me get more out of their products. This is another reason why I am happy to pay for software. These people are doing real work, and like the rest of us, they deserve to get paid for what they do.
I’ve been a subscriber to Setapp since it launched. In fact, I participated in a pre-launch user interview to help the MacPaw team develop the offering.
I’ve been a happy customer, and I believe I may be grandfathered into an older plan because I am permitted two seats. This has traditionally been for two Macs, but with Setapp now commencing a formalised iOS offering, I suppose this now makes more sense as a Mac + iPad combination. It’s a shame that the second license doesn’t include unlimited iOS devices, but that’s their business decision to make.
Setapp is a subscription service, and good financial management suggests that one should occasionally audit subscriptions to ensure a good deal is still being attained.
To that end I have completed a quick audit of my Setapp usage.
It pretty clearly indicates that I’m still getting what I would consider reasonable value. Of course, the longer one subscribes, the more you trend towards ‘should have bought it’. But if the major applications release a major paid upgrade, then once again the subscription calculation improves.
All up, I will keep Setapp for another year. And start putting money away for the next years subscription straight away using a YNAB category!
Today marks the end of a personal era for me; it is the last day of my employment with the Chamber of Commerce and Industry of Western Australia. I’ve worked at CCI for 3 months short of 13 years.
When I arrived, my plan was to stay for no more than 2. This speaks to the opportunities I have enjoyed while with the organisation. Over the time I have worked in Policy, Economics, Membership and the Entrepreneurs' Programme, plus other temporary assignments.
I have addressed CCI’s General Council and the Board, and managed Member Forums and Committees. I have represented the organisation before Federal and State Parliamentary enquiries. I have developed and advocated policy positions, been in the media and analysed government budgets. I’m happy that my linkages with CCI are indelibly marked in newspaper articles and the annals of Hansard.
I have worked with people that invested in me, and trusted me. I owe much to many, including John Nicolaou, Frances Parnell, Dana Mason, Kristian Stratton, Jessica Shaw MLA, Barbara Jerkov and James Pearson: all former CCI colleagues who played various roles in my journey, each in different but valuable ways.
Most importantly, at CCI I have been provided a platform to help and support the WA business community. It has been my passion to see successful commercial enterprise operate while maintaining a social compact with the community to provide fair and reasonable opportunity, and improve all our lives as a result. Working to support this has kept me engaged throughout my CCI career.
I am proud to have dedicated 13 years of the one life I have to this organisation. I leave knowing that I will be continuing to deliver the Entrepreneurs' Programme. This is a role I enjoy that is aligned with my passion: supporting local firms in their challenge to grow, succeed, and be part of the fabric of community.
I’ve been trawling through some old text files of mine. I came across a note from 2012 that I initially thought was my own, but now recognise it as the work of Shawn Blanc.
Shawn’s post highlights issues relating to working from home. He references a podcast that I used to enjoy listening to â the Home Work podcast, hosted by Aaron Mahnke and Dave Caolo1
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I can’t find an active link for the podcast. It was last hosted by 5by5. Since the podcast ended Aaron Mahnke has gone on to fame and fortune with Lore and Dave Caolo has moved on to other projects.
Leveraging the notes posted by Shawn Blanc, I see that the podcast noted working from home as thus:
Working from home isnât always about notebooks, apps and office furniture. Much of it happens in the head, between fighting distraction, staying focused and keeping things organised. In this episode, Aaron and Dave chat about leaving work at work (even when itâs in your home) and doing a mind-sweep to keep things clear.
This is a challenge worth remembering, particularly now in 2019 when ubiquitous networking and powerful mobile devices makes it so easy to do work not only from home, but from anywhere at anytime. There is a clear risk of dedicating too much time to work because itâs possible. Yet this doesnât make it the right choice. We really need to protect our leisure time.
My claim to fame in relation to the Home Work podcast was that I once emailed in a question, which the hosts addressed in one of their shows. ↩︎
Many years ago I was employed as an Advisor to our State Governmentâs Minister for Planning and Infrastructure. This followed previous work in the State Department of Transport and for a large grains cooperative which built, managed and utilised transport and logistics infrastructure.
Infrastructure is often taken for granted Itâs reasonable to suggest thatâs when infrastructure is working at its best. When people start talking about traffic or fresh water or power failures it usually means something has gone wrong at an infrastructure level. Not enough road capacity has been built, the desalination plant has failed or the baseload power generator failed to get a steady supply of fuel. There are teams of people across all the various infrastructure providers responsible for ensuring citizens donât think about them or their service. Mostly, these people do a good job. Infrastructure management relies on effective processes driving preventative maintenance schedules. Combined with regular capital works investment to upgrade, improve and stay ahead of the demand curve, infrastructure ideally stays ahead of demand.
The ingenuity of humans, that we are able to build, design and operate infrastructure so effectively is incredible. Additionally we have been able to develop an economic system that incentivises delivery of services. This includes the ability for government to step in as a supplier where market conditions donât support commercial operations.
Infrastructure is also the enabler of unrelated money-making projects. Without basics such as power, water and Internet access, Australia couldnât support the development and operations of companies like Atlassian and Fastmail, to suggest two technology-based business examples. Infrastructure enables these and all other firms to employ people, generate profit, and pay taxes. Infrastructure firms, however, rarely (ever?) are afforded the status that is probably deserving of them. Mike Cannon-Brookes has become a billionaire but I canât find any CEOs of infrastructure firms that have become billion-dollar poster children for their industry. Rather, infrastructure firms are the staid companies that superannuation firms love to buy shares in, as they deliver a boring, regular dividend stream.
So hereâs to the infrastructure, and the people that work on it, that makes our lives better each and every day. Please keep up your yeomanâs work… even if it goes unnoticed and under-appreciated.
It seems that part of the human condition is to view failure as an end in and of itself. I think itâs better to consider it part of the process towards success.
A life well-lived encompasses a procession of trade-offs. We necessarily fail to do all the things we might want. We canât be good at everything. We donât have time to do everything. Are we failing because we donât manage to do it all? Are we failing because weâre not multi-tasking our way to success?
That kind of thinking is probably a path to depression.
Failing is a trade-off. Failing is inevitable. Itâs not possible to achieve the highest goals without accepting failure along the way. We shouldnât beat ourselves up over our failures, because they are necessary to build success.
Time is limited. A failure to do something can represent a successful engagement with something else. I think Iâm making the case for a Mr. Hollandâs Opus approach to life, failure and success. Our greatest success might be hiding behind what was first thought a massive failure.
we need to appear busy because we all know that valuable people are busy people. When we tell others that we are working all the time we are âimplicitly suggesting that we are sought after, which enhances our perceived status.â
So claiming to ‘be busy’ is virtue signalling our perceived value to the world. It has little to do with the actual work, but the importance of the person to whom the work is attached.
In my articles, I determined that busyness is not a badge of honour, but should be seen as a cry for help. James arrives at a similar conclusion. He explains that busyness should be perceived as one being overcommitted, unclear or unable to prioritise and eliminate.
The alternative to being busy is having clear priorities about what constitutes the highest value, triaged within strict parameters, and then defiantly walking away from everything else that falls below the threshold.
This is not something to be celebrated, so let’s not. We need to find a new definition of personal value. James has a good idea for this, but I’m not going to spoil the surprise. Go read his article and find out what he suggests!
Atlassian is an interesting company that possibly doesn’t get the kudos it might deserve. As an Australian, I have admiration for seeing one of ours hit it big internationally. Atlassian and Canva are probably the only two Australian companies that immediately spring to mind as having won big in the international IT space.
I’m impressed that Atlassian continue to walk the walk in regard to their world-view and values. This is evident in their now public approach to mergers and acquisitions. They are trying to reduce the angst and power imbalance and increase the fairness and focus on outcomes.
From their blog post announcing the release of a new public term sheet to support merger and acquisition deals:
one thing has become very clear to us about the M&A process â itâs outdated, inefficient, and unnecessarily combative, with too much time and energy spent negotiating deal terms and not enough on what matters most: building great products together and delivering more customer value.
There is plenty of ego in the IT world. The ‘bro’ culture permeates, and it promotes ego and ‘winning’, rather than value creation and shared successes.
In an effort to reduce this unnecessary friction and increase trust, weâre doing something that, to our knowledge, no company has done before: weâve crafted a new M&A term sheet and weâre making it public.
So much time is wasted through replicated effort. The software world is built on the reuse of frameworks. Not having to re-invent the wheel each time a new project begins is how great advancements are realised. What Atlassian are doing here is providing a fundamental public framework for mergers and acquisitions. Spend less time, money and effort doing things that have been done before and instead focus on getting the deal done and realising the value that prompted the M&A in the first place.
The reality is that because of the leverage that many buyers exert over sellers, certain âmarketâ terms have evolved to buyersâ advantage, even though, based on the data, itâs simply not necessary.
Another example where pure laissez-faire markets are wonderful in theory and damaging in reality. Market power is a thing that is readily exerted. This creates a culture of ‘winners’ and ‘losers’ where the real focus should be on having the reason for coming together create a win for all. This doesn’t need to be a zero-sum game.
I hope this new approach to M&As catches on, and less money is spent on wasteful lawyer fees and negotiation and everybody can end up with a better outcome at the end of the process. The market will be better off, customers will benefit, and the stakeholders to the deal will both be better off with less of the angst, stress and ill-feeling that can arise at the end of a protracted M&A process.
It’s not particularly easy getting into the swing of work after an extended absence. Today is my first day with my legs back under the desk after enjoying an extended break.
This is a time of reacquainting myself with things. Picking up projects and tasks that have laid idle for some time, waiting for my return. Checking in on others and hoping that progress has been made in my absence.
This first day back has not been productive in the sense that tangible and visible work has not been completed. Nevertheless, it’s given me a chance to refamiliarise myself with the job. I’ve got some fresh perspectives on how I want to do the work, so I’ve been able to think on how those might be incorporated.
Of course, I’ve also had that lovely job of reading through hundreds of emails that have built up. Fortunately, with the help of Sanebox, my inbox had been automatically sorted into groups ranging from ‘totally useless’, through ‘probably not useful’ ending in ‘aged, but still probably worth reading’. This made me email triage job quick and easy. At the same time, I was able to unsubscribe from some mail that was clearly junk.
So, today is the day where my engine has been started, and left to idle gently while it warms up. Over the next couple of days, I would expect I might be able to get out of the driveway. We shall see.
Now MarsEdit has been made available as part of my Setapp subscription, so I’m able to give it another go, this time as a paying customer. This post is being written and published using MarsEdit.
It will be interesting to see if the software establishes itself as a consistent part of my blogging workflow. The big challenge is that there are so many great writing apps on macOS (and iOS), so competition is intense.
