Seperated at Birth?
February 13, 2006Over the past couple of months a number of people have told me that I look like Carl Williams — accused drug trafficker and alleged underworld figure notorious for his involvement in Melbourne’s gang war. Carl is pictured left below, and I’m on the right. What do you think?
Funny, I see a slight resemblance, but I’m yet to experience a resteraunt or bar being ‘emptied’ upon my arrival or people making me overly generous offers. Yet.
The Art of Common Courtesy
February 13, 2006I’ve finally come to the conclusion that common courtesy is like common sense — it’s not all that common!
A couple of instances (incidentally all on the same day) played out last week, where people did not show up for pre-arranged meetings, were terribly late or just plain forgot. In a business context, my view is that this is just not acceptable.
As someone with a high ‘J’ on the Myers-Briggs type indicator (J-types tend to prefer a step-by-step (left brain: parts to whole) approach to life, relying on external rules and procedures, and preferring quick closure), the type of behavoir experienced last week is a ‘trigger’ for me … it’s frustrating, infuriating and severely affects my temperament.
Unfortunately, I suppose I’ll just have to recognise that others just don’t have the same standards of professionalism and courtesy that I do and learn to live with it (or at least deal with it!). Enough said.
Proprietary Standards and Mobile Phones
February 7, 2006Rhetorical question: Why do mobile manufacturers insist on having proprietary standards for accessory ports? Why can’t I plug my iPod headphones into my mobile phone so that I can listed to the radio, just as I can interchangeably plug them into any other type of defice with a standard 1.5mm headphone socket? Why should I have to get a different car charger or handsfree kit for my partner because she has a different handset? And, if you think this is an issue relating to locking out competitors products, you’re only half right — Nokia have also changed their own ’standard’ with their latest phones. Obviously it’s pure and simply designed to sell more accessories. Annoying!
Metal for Melbourne
February 7, 2006Donna bought me a turntable (remember those?) for my birthday back in December. Its got a built in pre-amp, so I can easily hook it up to my PowerBook with a RCA -> 1.5mm input adapter. And it works a treat! I’ve been using it a lot lately to rip some of my old vinyl.
The process of ripping the vinyl and converting it into audio (mp3) is a relatively simple task thanks to Audacity — an open source audio editing suite, complete with mp3 libraries and available for Windows, Mac and Linux. The instructions here helped me get up and running in no time at all. Warning: the burning process itself is time consuming! You’ll have to manually flip the LP’s and also tag the audio file with track names. You can also play around with the audio so that you can remove some of the ’space’ at the front and back ends of the recording. The quality of the audio is suprisingly good.
I’ve been digitising some of my old ‘Metal for Melbourne’ labelled stuff that — as far as I know — was never released on anything other than vinyl, and is unlikely to be. I’m so rapped to be able to listen to some of my all-time favorite riffs! If anyone is aware of if/where I could lay my hands on some of this material on CD, I’d love to hear from you. Specifically, I’m interested in mid-80’s local metal bands such as Taramis, BlackJack, Nothing Sacred, Tyrus, Rampage, Prowler etc.
Rock on!
Paralysis by Analysis
February 6, 2006Some pearls of wisdom from a post by Tom Peters:
Any decision beats no decision.” … “When Microsoft decided online computing was real, Bill Gates refused to talk with employees for three months unless they prefaced the conversation, about anything, by explaining how it related to the Internet. That’s focus. No waffling. And the company immediately shifted direction.” I.e., if you’ve got a problem or incipient problem, don’t screw around and around doing analysis aimed at producing the “perfect answer”—just get the hell on with something, anything directly & unmistakably related to the issue at hand.
Having worked as a business/planning analyst, I can definitely identify with this as I have witnessed it first hand. Left too long, this problem can become ingrained into the culture of an organisation and saps the energy of those workers who are driven towards outcomes and who try and take initiative. Don’t get caught out!
[A further thought]:Â I’m a bit of a perfectionist, and I’m not for one minute saying that I’m not guilty of this myself, but you must be AWARE of this tendancy and balance it with a good dose of pragmatism.
