2024-01-11 Links

Daily Reads:

I love reading Alex Hayward-Waterhouse’s blog posts. He says while he’s recently been opening his blog posts with "At the advanced age of 81", he’s isn’t quite done yet.

Simon Wardley on why Cynefin and Wardley Maps are complementary tools Bears reading a few times. I’ve not tried the OnlineWardleyMaps tool yet.

Listened to Will Larson on Lenny’s podcast.

Saw this stunning photo taken by Valerio Minato. Already glowing in the darkness, the hilltop Basilica of Superga sits directly in the center of the Monviso mountain with the moon precisely framing the pair. HT Grace Ebert.

QOTD:

From the music of the day by Jackson Browne:

I don’t know what to say about these days
I’m seeing people changing in the strangest ways
Even in the richer neighborhoods
People don’t know when they’ve got it good
They’ve got the envy and they’ve got it bad

Music:

Jackson Browne – The Long Way Around

2024-07-10 Links

Daily Reads:

We learn from each other, and from our own mistakes. Learning in public includes accepting that there are times when you will get it wrong. Simon Willison is contrite about what he got wrong with his last post on the term Artificial Intelligence. I didn’t see the problem with his original post, given it was written on his personal blog, and it was an opinion on terminology. I can also see why he thinks a particular sentence was clumsily written.

Gary Marcus is not a fan of the OpenAI crowd. This is a howler of an observation about Open AI’s recent lobbying to the UK Govt. John Lam calls it like only an artist can in a tweet.

HT Jim Nielsen for this link – interacting with each other is the whole point of being human. I’m subscribed now to the Aboard podcast.

Who knew that used fire trucks are on sale? And relatively cheap too (HT Tyler Cowen)

Rob Miller wrote a blog about the UK Post Office travesty a while ago titled The Thermocline of Truth. I remember sharing that widely at my then employment, trying to get the leaders to recognise the parallels between the two organisations. Several years later, and possibly too late for many innocents in the saga, the UK government is finally doing something to clear the names of the wrongfully convicted humans.

Jesse Kornbluth recommends Guy de Maupassant’s Bel-Ami. I think it’s in the public domain too. I’ve not read it yet, but it is on the list now.

Baldur Bjarnnson has thoughts not too dissimilar to mine in "to plan a strategy you must first have a theory of how the hell things work", except of course he writes publicly about his struggle, and his process of discovery. This article complements very well Henrik Karlsson’s post a few days that caught me by the collar and shook me wide awake.

QOTD:

people matter. Even in the wildest of innovations, people still matter, and human relationships still matter, and you can’t shortcut it.

  • Rich Ziade on the Aboard podcast

Music:

Tchaikovsky: Symphony No. 5 in E Minor, Op. 64, TH. 29 – II

2024-01-09 Links

Daily Reads:

Edward Donner fine tuned a LLM on 240K test messages

Simon Willison has made peace with using the term AI – rather than explicitly calling it LLMs.

Prof. Ethan Mollick sees signs and portents in the year ahead for AI

Fabian Pfortmuller on The challenges of building community

Maria Popova shares 17 lessons from 17 years of Marginalian I missed this from October last year.

An interview with Dr. Gladys McGarey, the Mother of Holistic Medicine, who is 103 years old.

Derek Sivers: When in doubt, try the difference. Useful ideas.

Oliver Burkeman: The eight secrets to a (fairly) fulfilled life

QOTD:

The only viable solution is to make a shift: from a life spent trying not to neglect anything, to one spent proactively and consciously choosing what to neglect, in favour of what matters most.
– Oliver Burkeman

Music:

Freddie White: Tenderness on the Block

2024-01-08 Links

Daily Reads:

I found the time to read only one article today. Bob Ewing in "A New Year for Regrets and Courage", asks a question I’m asking myself every day: "If I truly had the courage this year to live my life on my own terms, and speak my mind in an authentic way, what would I do and say?"

QOTD:

When you counsel someone, you should appear to be reminding him of something he had forgotten, not of the light he was unable to see.
– Baltasar Gracian, writer and philosopher

Music:

Donovan: Universal soldier – breaks my heart every time.

2024-01-07 Links

Daily Reads:

Shankar Vedantam at TED: You Don’t Actually Know What Your Future Self Wants

Christensen Institute: Education innovations to watch in 2024

We’ve seen that employer-centric approaches to building and assessing career pathways focus almost exclusively on in-demand skills. In turn, they tend to minimize the role of networks. That’s because networks benefit individuals more than they benefit corporations. Put differently: employers need skilled individuals to fill jobs. But individuals need more than just skills. They also need networks, and myriad at-bats, in order to learn skills, grow confidence, enjoy job options, and build successful careers.

Training programs that I’ve seen in my working life are often designed by those who have nothing to do with the work, and often much to do with compliance – for legal reasons or their bosses own agendas. That quote highlights the challenge that Bob Moesta calls out in his book Demand Side Selling – many products and services are designed without consideration for the customer.

Seth Godin riffs on ‘management’ in the Akimbo podcast episode on Aravind Eye Care . How is it possible for one man’s vision (pun intended) to give eyesight to those who could least afford it?

QOTD:

If I have ever made any valuable discoveries, it has been owing more to patient observation than to any other reason. -Isaac Newton

Music:

Mariachi sol de Mexico perform Guadalajara

2024-01-06 Links

A day out in nature with conversations that revolved around boats and diving. I discovered terms I’d never heard before like rebreathing and getting narced. A trio of perenties (Australian goannas) were our companions too, getting very friendly with us (after of course my first shock when the monsters crept up near my feet when I was in deep listening mode 😳 )

Very little reading today!

Daily Reads:

Antirez: LLM’s and programming in the first days of 2024 (HT Jeremy Keith)

QOTD:

Fear prophets and those prepared to die for the truth, for as a rule they make many others die with them, often before them, at times instead of them.
– Umberto Eco, philosopher and novelist

Music:

Chet Atkins introduces a group of fantastic musicians in this YT video titled The World’s Most Famous Unknown Band

2024-01-05 Links

Daily Reads:

Andrew Chen on The Next Next Job, a framework for making big career decisions. This is a topic that is on my mind a lot 😄

Ordinary Mastery: John Durrant argues for Audacious Aspirations, Low Expectations.

Richard Merrick’s Postcard from the Edge speaks of the impoverishment of language, and the work of the artisan in regenerating both words, and the world.

HT Tyler Cowen: Roger Silk on The Rate of Return on Exercise 5.8%, according to the author.

QOTD:

“If you want to teach people a new way of thinking, don’t bother trying to teach them. Instead, give them a tool, the use of which will lead to new ways of thinking.”
\ – Richard Buckminster Fuller

Music:

Ashley Campbell with Carl Jackson cover Ashley’s dad’s hit Gentle On My Mind

2024-01-04 Links

Daily Reads:

I’m not alone. Scott Eblin shares his thinking around his decade long plan for purposeful growth.

At some near point in the future, I’m going to be working with spreadsheets again. I know present Microsoft Excel only barely looks like its pre-historic ancestor from the 1990’s and has much of its internals and even externals revamped. Articles like this one remind me that open source tools can complement my skills, and to keep working with them as much as I can while unemployed. Haki Benita, Fastest Way to Read Excel in Python Also, "It depends" is a perfectly good answer, sometimes the best answer, when followed by a clear explanation of the nuance. Who’s listening, though?

This is a moving post from a giant in the software world. An Unreasonable Investment. Reading it reminded me of Chandru from my first ‘corporate’ job. He taught me almost everything I needed to know about databases and structured querying and saving countless hours of un-formatting… I messaged him today, and he was happily surprised to hear from me. 😄

QOTD:

People who demand neutrality in any situation are usually not neutral but in favor of the status quo.
– Max Eastman

Music:

Richard Smith Beatles Medley

2023-01-03 Links

Daily Reads:

Came across these handy tools to share individual Obsidian notes when you don’t have a Obsidian Publish subscription. It results in a copy of course, not the original note being shared, but it serves the purpose. Could also simply email the note, but then keeping track of edits, urgh!

Jeremy Connell-Waite has put together a handy website called Better Stories with some great looking resources. Bookmarked.

Dan Pink interviews Dan Heath on the 3-2-1 Podcast on the Power of Moments. The awareness that key transitory moments can be made magical with a little effort and thoughtfulness

Adam Mastroianni on De-bogging oneself. I love his ability to concoct labels to the ridiculous things we make up and pretend they are real problems. That’s why having goofy names for them matters so much, because it reminds me not to believe the biggest bog lie of all: that I’m stuck in a situation unlike any I, or anyone else, has ever seen before.

Where does AI (in all its forms) be applied, beyond the hyperventilation about code, text, and images? The Scientific American has this story about explainable AI (in contrast to black-box models) while discovering a new class of antibiotics.

Steven Levy from Wired in a fun interview with Yann Le Cun – How Not To Be Stupid About AI.

Simon Willison tips his hat to Tom Scott and talks about the formidable power of escalating streaks. So much inspiration here! Watch Tom’s final video

QOTD:

Never let your sense of morals get in the way of doing what’s right.
– Isaac Asimov

Music:

A Celebration of New Orleans Blues with Hugh Laurie Storytelling, music, history, humor, tour-guiding, and much more rolled into an fantastic 52 minutes.

2024-01-02 Links

Daily Reads:

The Guardian had an article about a rise in women exploring sexual fantasy in midlife. I found it fascinating that behind the lurid headline, is a segment of population that has unmet needs, rarely spoken about aloud at least in my circles. Someone’s discovered the commercial potential, and even attracted government investment in the idea.

Nicole van der Hoeven shares how to use bookmarks in Obisidan

Tracy Durnell’s Big Questions and a hundred dozen links in there. The trap I’m caught in is information consumption, and her framing of what to read, and why, makes it really tempting to try it myself.

The idea of the indieweb is captivating. Knowing how to implement in on my own site, another matter. This book on Micro Blogs by Manton Reece is for my reading, and possible implementation, although I have not yet figured out the why, besides my usual "this is cool".

A 2 min snippet of Matthew McConaughey’s speech at the White House in the aftermath of the Uvalde school shooting.

Rob Walker, in Resolved shares ideas for ‘resolutions’ for 2024 – be less boring by Rob LaZebnik is imaginatively fun! (go somewhere you’ve never been, indulge your senses, get permission to do something normally off-limits, get out of your creative comfort zone…)

Matt Mullenweg celebrates his 40th birthday soon. He wants more people to blog as his Birthday Gift. I think it’s a great idea too! My story: I came across an article by Om Malik about his connection with WordPress/ Automattic sometime in 2007 (I think?) I finally got around to creating a blog of my own in 2009, and started using WordPress in 2010. For a non-techie like me (& having seen Google kill off its products way too often), WordPress has been a steady, easy, part of my life for the last 14 years. Anyway, Happy Birthday Matt!

QOTD:

I am a kind of paranoiac in reverse. I suspect people of plotting to make me happy.
– J.D. Salinger

Music:

An Australian icon, Slim Dusty, says in verse how I feel today: Looking Forward, Looking Back

Looking forward, looking back
I’ve come a long way down the track
Got a long way left to go
Making songs, from what I know