There’s a scene in Get Smart where Max fights with the KAOS agents while they’re on a plane. It turns out that both of the pilots on the plane were agents, and Max comes back to the passengers and asks “does anyone know how to land a four-engine jet?” And that was the premise for …
Author Archives: cafedave
BOOST feedback method
Just watched a video a friend posted about (among other things) how to give feedback using the BOOST method. Feedback should be Balanced, Objective, Observed, Specific and Timely. Balanced: not just an emphasis on the negative, but both negative and positive. Objective: not framed emotionally, but looking at the facts. Observed: based on something you …
waiting – a lesson from elevators
Last weekend was the first sermon I’ve preached in a long while, on Acts 6:1-7. It’s a story from the early days of the church where a complaint had come up that some of the widows (of a particular people group) were being neglected in the daily distribution of food. We can learn some lessons …
end of another era
It’s the end of four years studying towards an MBA. It’s a degree with a strange configuration, really; split into two parts, the first stage is comprised of eight subjects to complete in trimesters. The MBA attracts people with different levels of ambition and so for some people, despite demanding full-time jobs, they manage …
meta
A lot of press coverage this week on Facebook’s corporate name change to Meta. An interview with Mark Zuckerberg at The Verge shows some of the thinking behind the announcement. What do you do when you have billions of customers who are using your service on a platform you don’t control, and where your ability …
two more months of MS Teams
For four years I’ve been studying, and using Microsoft Teams on and off. This has been a good way for various uni small groups of students to collaborate and share files, but one thing had confused me. Often when working on a folder of files, to find the most recent one, I would want to …
medium and message
This picture of a quilt, where someone had sewn together a representation of graphs of temperature data and UK COVID deaths reminded me of the way that the chosen medium influences the nature of a conversation. And done! A year of temperature minima and maxima, and UK COVID deaths, recorded in fabric. Data visualisation has …
clickbait and netflix
Compelling argument on Slate about Netflix heading the way of all social sites as they follow the way of all sites that are seeking to monetise attention.
average face
Noah Kalina has been taking a photo of his face every day for over 20 years. Here is a rolling average of these photos, shown at 2 months per second. It’s a bit of a confronting demonstration of the passage of time.
working from near home
Sydney is again in lock-down (or as we’re calling it, a stay-at-home order), so this article on working from near home by Cal Newport is a little further in the future. After over a year of working mostly outside the office, if anything, it has brought me greater appreciation of the workspaces that I’ve had …