Underestimating the power of a fresh start

Today was a fairly poorly-considered start to the year. Instead of having a ready-to-use check list of all the things I want to do differently, I treated it as any other day.

Failed attempt to sleep in – kids had other ideas. Attempts a Christmas present jigsaw puzzle that proved too hard for the kids. Lots of time to myself, mostly spent working on sermon prep: a necessary thing to complete but not something that will have a long life after I preach (it’s not destined to be a book, for example). Grazing in the fridge instead of eating more deliberately.
As a result of the sermon prep, I didn’t do much exercise today, so I’m not starting the new year with any fitness momentum as such.

But I cooked dinner for the kids. And the jigsaw puzzle was a map of the world, so I improved my underdeveloped knowledge of geography. I did some bible reading (some for the sermon, some to keep my Greek up to scratch).

Onward and upward.

reflections on being given a CD for Christmas 

Never mind who gave it to me, or what it was: this is more about changing media consumption habits. A cartoon on the topic of “what drew me to vinyl” started me down this rabbit hole. 

We’ve seen with the slow closing of video rental stores the future of a business whose chief point of difference is moving around physical representations of digital information. There needs to be a significant value-add, or the market will eventually move to digital delivery, for its significantly lower cost and greater convenience. 

To open a Christmas present in 2015 and see a CD is to see that someone spent the time tracking down a physical artefact for you, to have thought about the packaging and the contents, and make that selection. To have wrapped it and arranged it under the tree. All of these steps of taking time are missing from the “share this with a friend” of digital gifting. 

But how quickly we forget the points of difference. To listen to the CD, I looked for my external CD drive (none of the computers in the house have a working internal cd drive) plugged it in and put the CD in through iTunes, where the cddb database immediately recognised it, and added in all the metadata and cover art. I was then able to sync it to my iPhone, the only device I really use for music listening anymore, despite having better audio quality available elsewhere in the house. 

And so it wasn’t until 24 hours later that I even thought to look at the booklet that came with the CD: so much metadata (track titles and timing, artist information and copyright details) are available in a more accessible way through the digital infrastructure that surrounds a CD. 

Sometimes the new methods bring a lot of improvements. 

audio book: The Martian

This XKCD cartoon first made me interested in the book.

I was wondering whether or not to keep my Audible subscription, and this book popped up on the recommended list. Maybe I’d been spending too much time thinking about left-brain puzzles, but I really enjoyed this book: the structure is fairly predictable, but the author places you in the middle of these situations, in the mindset of people who work so hard to fix them.

If you have an engineering bent, and don’t mind some cursing, it’s worth a listen / read.

apple TV: Casino Royale, Quantum of Solace, Skyfall

Stan: Casino Royale, Quantum of Solace, Skyfall

With the upcoming Bond movie Spectre, there are all manner of Bond related promotions in progress. On Netflix-competitor Stan, there’s current access to all the Bond movies, so I thought I’d revisit the Daniel Craig Bond movies to see how they stand up. Casino Royale is from 2006, and it stands up surprisingly well. Having movies with the same character over such a long period of time shows the difference between concentrating on technology, and on story and character interaction. Surprisingly, Quantum of Solace was more enjoyable than the first time I saw it, and Skyfall was not quite as good as I remembered it, though it’s great to watch Javier Bardem tearing up the screen.

Stan, on the other hand, seems to have its problems: there’s a lot of buffering, and stopping content part-way through with problems loading the content. Overall, Netflix has been the best streaming experience on the old Apple TV.

movie: Bridge of Spies

Movie: Bridge of Spies

I went into this fairly spoiler-free, having not heard of the historical person the movie was based on, and only watching the trailer briefly, and seeing this Tom Hanks / Jimmy Fallon piece.

Spielberg is in good form here, even if the absence of a John Williams score (and indeed the lack of music overall for the first several scenes) makes a tonal difference. Hanks does a good job in something that is at the same time cinematic, and more a stage play than a movie. And this is very much a story about a bunch of men: if this movie passes the Bechdel Test, I don’t remember the qualifying scene.

If you’re a Spielberg fan, or enjoy a well-told historical thriller, it’s enjoyable fare, but probably doesn’t need to be viewed on a giant screen.

Audible: I, Partridge: We need to talk about Alan

Audible: I, Partridge: We need to talk about Alan [a fictional autobiography from, and read by, Steve Coogan’s character Alan Partridge).

If you’re at all familiar with the work of Alan Partridge, you’ll know what to expect here. A man so narcissistic that he can narrate the birth of his son, and insert anecdotes about how his parking was running out, and so it was a bit inconvenient.

Crass in places, it is nonetheless a very funny listen. Points to Audible for putting it in their “guaranteed good listen” collection.

The problem with an Audible book is the impossibilty of highlighting. This book has a lot of phrases I’d like to revisit, but there doesn’t seem to be a way to mark phrases (there are bookmarks, but it’s not quite the same thing).

Side projects

I’ve had a chance to look through some of the projects I’ve been aiming to start over the last while. A video from Gary Vaynerchuck talked about the 7pm-2am window to work on other projects, starting something big. At the moment, I’m pouring that energy more into my main job: there will come a day when that settles down and I’m able to try some other things, but for now, I need to make my peace with keeping the side projects on hold.