Microblogvember: Bryce Cotton is a superb basketball player for the Perth Wildcats.
blogvember
Party
Sunday, November 17, 2019
Day 17 of Blogvember. A full list of prompts for the month is available. I’m not one for parties; my introversion means I’m diametrically opposed to them. Having said that, I’m actually attending a party this afternoon/evening. It is a 60th birthday celebration though and should be a nice one. It is incorporating a showing of Blade Runner. I haven’t seen that movie in about 20 years, so I’m interested to see my interpretation of it now.Animal
Saturday, November 16, 2019
Day 16 of Blogvember. A full list of prompts for the month is available. Our family might be about to lose our second animal of the year to old age. Our Standard Poodle, Jeff, is not holding up so well. He has developed large cysts under his skin, his teeth are wearing out and now he seems to have hurt his paw. Earlier this year we had to say goodbye to our Airedale Terrier, Indi.Microblogvember: The old proverb is that it pays to be selective. Don’t just settle. You can do better than that.
Renovation
Friday, November 15, 2019
Day 15 of Blogvember. A full list of prompts for the month is available. About three years ago we did a house renovation. We had our kitchen gutted and rebuilt, our bathrooms reconfigured, wood floors sanded and interior walls painted, and a new front deck. A huge job already was made bigger because we had to move all of our furniture into storage and move our family into a short-term rental for the duration of the project.Microblogvember: I don’t enjoy swimming in bodies of water where I cannot see below my feet, into the murky depths.
Recycling
Thursday, November 14, 2019
Day 14 of Blogvember. A full list of prompts for the month is available. Recycling is kind of a big deal in our house. Our council runs a three bin system for rubbish management: one bin for food and organics, one for rubbish, and a third for recyclables. My wife Hannah works in the recycling industry. She is the Head of External Relations at Western Australia Return Recycle Renew (WARRRL). This organisation has responsibility for establishing a new container deposit scheme for our State.Microblogvember: Our poor old dog Jeff has a big lump at the top of his neck.
Beverage
Wednesday, November 13, 2019
Day 13 of Blogvember. A full list of prompts for the month is available. My favourite beverage is coffee. There is no contest. There is not much better than an Australian flat white. Italian coffee is great but it’s a transitory drink. You get it at the bar, drink it and leave. Don’t sit down because it will cost you a fortune. American coffee is bad. It’s either sweetened and flavoured to the point where its more milkshake than coffee, or its drip-filtered and been sitting in storage for a while.Wednesday, November 13, 2019 →
Microblogvember: I write this microblog from an event that I have been able to organise. We have a room of people undertaking strategy development and financial forecasting.
Smells
Tuesday, November 12, 2019
Day 12 of Blogvember. A full list of prompts for the month is available. A smell can be a most evocative sense. It can stimulate memory, facilitate calm or revulsion, or provide us with timely information. If I smell new carpet, I am transported back to my Year 1 classroom which had been renovated and new carpet laid. That’s an associated formed around 35 years ago. The smell of a basketball stadium: that combination of sweat, dencorub, and timber treatment to this day hastens my heart beat.Microblogvember: This morning I wanted to stayin bed. Unfortunately, a want was insufficient reason to do so.
Childhood
Monday, November 11, 2019
Day 11 of Blogvember. A full list of prompts for the month is available. I miss my childhood. It was such a different era; it’s hard to recognise my childhood as an experience compared with those of my kids. The memories of my childhood seem like something that should be written off as me looking back through rose-coloured glasses. But I contest that not everything was great and nice, but it really was what retro throwbacks show the 1980s to be.Microblogvember: I used to touch a basketball every single day. It’s now been months since I held one.
Book
Sunday, November 10, 2019
Day 10 of Blogvember. A full list of prompts for the month is available. I’ve made a concerted effort this year to increase my volume of book reading. In recent years my reading has been dominated by web pages, articles and RSS feeds. This resulted in a decline in my book reading - something I used to do a lot of. To track my reading and add some motivation I set a target on Goodreads.Microblogvember: My son is building a Lego craft at the moment that is designed to go into space.
Television
Saturday, November 9, 2019
Day 9 of Blogvember. A full list of prompts for the month is available. There is so much high-quality television programming available now. We have Netflix, Amazon Prime, Apple TV+, Free to Air, etc. There was a time when it was necessary to find things off the back of a truck. I think those days are almost gone. This overwhelming choice has led to a strange outcome, in that I’m actually watching less TV than I probably ever have.Microblogvember: Today’s temperature is forecast to hit 38 degrees Celsius. That is the opposite of cold.
Technology
Friday, November 8, 2019
Day 8 of Blogvember. A full list of prompts for the month is available. This week I’ve had a massive technology upgrade. I’ve moved from a 2013 MacBook Pro (the generation of MacBooks which had great keyboards), to a 2019 27" iMac. I had been deferring this computer upgrade for ages, as I dithered between getting a new MacBook (and which variant?), an iMac or even a mac mini. I was hoping the iMac would gain the T2 security chip and possibly a new display with reduced bezels.Microblogvember: A pet peeve of mine is when people describe an asterisk as either an asterix or a star.
Work
Thursday, November 7, 2019
Day 7 of Blogvember. A full list of prompts for the month is available. All in all I have a pretty great job. I’ve been doing it for long enough that I feel I have well and truly mastered the fundamentals. With my interest in personal productivity I have constructed a range of efficiencies into my process flow to make things easier for me. This enables me to increase my overall productivity, do more with no more effort.Microblogvember: We tend to think that we always have complete agency over our lives. If you stop and think how much is actually left to random chance, it can be a bit frightening.
Microblogvember: I take my kids to the park and inevitably they find a stick to play with. Trees make the most versatile toys ever known to man. A stick can be a proxy for any number of imaginary things.
Family
Wednesday, November 6, 2019
Day 6 of Blogvember. A full list of prompts for the month is available. I am most comfortable within a nuclear family. I grew up in a family with my Mom and 3 siblings. We had a few extended family members, but most lived in different parts of the country or overseas. As an adult the nuclear family is again the structure we are living in, except now I’m the Dad.Nature
Tuesday, November 5, 2019
Day 5 of Blogvember. A full list of prompts for the month is available. Right now in Perth we are in the perfect time of the year to enjoy nature. We are moving into nice spring sunshine with temperatures in the mid-twenties. This is a time to enjoy, before the Perth furnace gets cranking for summertime and I can’t step outside without getting burnt. The grass is still green from winter, before it browns off over the summer months.Microblogvember: When I was a kid my friends and I would typically play sport on the street. Cricket and tennis were the two typical games. I don’t see kids doing that anymore.
Food
Monday, November 4, 2019
Day 4 of Blogvember. A full list of prompts for the month is available. Over the past year I’ve been enjoying food a bit too much. Concurrently I’ve stopped playing sport. This has led to an imbalance in the food in/energy out equation. In turn, I’ve seen the growth of a generous belly for the first time in my life. I’m not particularly pleased about this. My kid calling me ‘fat Dad’, is jesting that cuts a little too close to the bone!Microblogvember: If you want to be arithmetically precise, don’t say average; instead say mean.
Failing
Sunday, November 3, 2019
Day 3 of Blogvember. A full list of prompts for the month is available. It seems that part of the human condition is to view failure as an end in and of itself. I think it’s 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 can’t be good at everything.Microblogvember: I haven’t been invited to a fancy dress party in years… which is good, because I don’t really like them.