Day: 15 February 2014

sunday 2 – after trip to Madrid, relaxing on the sofa at the end of day listening to Broadcasting House and Val McDermid quotes some interesting things about masculinity at the “being a man” festival, from Grayson Perry ends with “the right to be vulnerable, to be uncertain, to be wrong, to be intuitive, the right not to know, to be flexible and not to be ashamed”.

sunday 9

listening to point of view by Adam Gopnik, some interesting quotes about social media/technology:

“Like so much modern media technology, it creates a dependency without ever actually addressing a need.”

“… all the really great revolutions in modern times have involved transportation more than information.”

“The urge to belong to our age is more powerful than the need to use our time efficiently.”

“Knowing that the future will laugh at us, we still cannot take part now in the laughter without being alienated from our age, and that is a sad thing to be.”

friday 14 – düsseldorf

long trip on train up to Düsseldorf and back, left a small valentine’s card for my 3 “graces”, plus plant pot and few small pressies as I leave the flat at 5am for the taxi to the main station.

Long delays on way back, train late, find myself standing on the platform in the rain, contemplating life and work, there’s an interesting piece of graffiti on the track before getting into the main station, “No Surprising News” (tell your friends in the O of No!).

Get back at 10.30pm, katie a bit later from the Valentine’s party. Eve has left a wonderful card:

saturday 15 – guitar class was interesting, getting some good suggestions for varying song accompaniment, there is more to it of course when one combines the different rhythms across 4 bars, typically a song would be 4 bars and 4 lines, so typical options would be:

std rhythm x2 loch rhythm x 2

std x 3 loch x 1

std loch std loch

loch std std loch

etc

ballad rhythm x 3 loch x 1

ditto

for the rhythm names/remembering/teaching them, use:

standard, for 1-2+3-4+ pattern:

schweins-braten-schweins-braten or:

schweins-braten-kalbs-leber

fish-chipsand-mush-ypeas

fish-chipsand-tar-tarsauce (works better imho)

for the loch, 1-2+ nix +4(+):

welt-kriegist nix für-unszwei(drei/vier/etc)

get these patterns really embedded now for songs with 4 lines, each 4 bars etc.

sunday 16 – nice quote about finding the extraordinary:

Do not ask your children

to strive for extraordinary lives.

Such striving may seem admirable,

but it is the way of foolishness.

Help them instead to find the wonder

and the marvel of an ordinary life.

Show them the joy of tasting

tomatoes, apples and pears.

Show them how to cry

when pets and people die.

Show them the infinite pleasure

in the touch of a hand.

And make the ordinary come alive for them.

The extraordinary will take care of itself.

from William Martin, The Parent’s Tao Te Ching: Ancient Advice for Modern Parents

monday 17 – getting some books for Sabs’ referat on Cubismus, so handed her the books I have on Picasso and Leger.

working from the office at hallbergmoos and take the first bus to the s-bahn in order to get to the airport for my flight at 4.40pm.

good flight, early arrival and got back for about 9pm, walking through the park to abbeyfield, staying overnight there.

tuesday 18 – working at home, then go out for beers at wetherspoons for some nice silver king bitter from osset brewery, meeting up with steve and pete; then onto woolly sheep for tim taylor’s landlord, nice evening which turned into a bit of a fraught discussion about scottish independence at the end

wednesday 19 – saw a nice email signature quote:

“The world suffers a lot, not because of the violence of bad people, but because of the silence of good people.”

and get a suggested vitamin pick-me up:

worked during the day and then back to abbeyfield, then went to the railway to watch the second half of arsenal v bayern, it was a homely atmosphere and hasn’t changed a bit inside apart from wifi – online with thecloud (sky, spit) and a brilliant pint of tetleys

nice evening overall – one direction winning at the brits awards ceremony so eve will be happy and bayern mauled arsenal, 4x as many passes and shots on goal, ending 2 v 0.

thursday 20 – had seen andrew marr on jonathan ross earlier in the week and it was interesting what an amazing reception he got, also that he mentioned he had met many similar people struck in their prime by a stroke (in his case aneurism) and the key difference why his life was moving forward now was a commitment to physio which he could afford, which the bbc supported and which unfortunately many people cannot afford.

friday 21 – working from number 11, then go to wetherspoons with margaret’s family and have a meal with them all, again back on the silver king bitter with jamie, wander up to mum’s.

saturday 22 – the usual flying visit on the 9am bus from skipton bus station and visited manor house, first impressions, more positive than this of course:

mabel – frail but still flickering;

jack – thin and cold.

the took next bus from chatburn to clitheroe and visited 11 bright st, following points about the recent repairs carried out:

general: no key left or couldn’t find it, bit messy: 2x coffee cups lying around, paint across backyard, discarded silicone cartridge, in front bedrooom sarni carton, empty crisp bag, coffee cup;

new radiator downstairs – tidy and accurate, not cleaned up where the pipes go thru from front room behind the jamb to living room, ie. not sealed in – can’t turn controls on radiator itself but maybe not supposed to;

bathroom – looks very tidy job at first sight, but – back board to bath toilet side needs replacing (which we can do), silicone sealant a bit patchy in quality and no silicone between tiles and shower curtain, no holder for shower (we can do), leak at connector from shower head to mixer tap, shower rail needs removing;

lights on stairs – at first sight looks excelllent and accurate, better than i could do from sizing / placing point of view

back windows – sturdy tidy job, looks excellent from inside and outside;

repair to wall/crack in lintel – wall a lot better, have to say i didnt look at the lintel;

back garden – couple of dandelion plants developing, it might make sense to dig these out asap.

meter readings:

electricity – 16737 (eon!)

gas – 6083.6

then got bus back from clitheroe to skipton, lunch with mum (actually on the “top” ladies’ table as they hadn’t laid a place for me, but it was ok) then a big session decorating the bathroom at 11 duckett.

did some shopping for mum, getting back late, rushing and spraining my knee carrying the heavy loads.

sunday 23 – writing up some of the things which caught my eye in the newspapers:

FT w/end of 22/23 Feb with a lead article about the widening of the middle class from “über middle”, bankers and doctors to “cling-ons”, engineers, architects and academics, which as well as being a major issues in parts of london, is also is redefining the social landscape in oxford (it’s no longer full of academics) – then a couple of letters which caught my eye related to what we talking about on tuesday evening:

“Critically, research left out pensions” about the public v private pensions debate and that any real comparison of earnings should take into account the whole package of benefits, incl. pensions which they quote for bankers could easily represent 50% additional salary. Clearly where the private-sector person has to buy an annuity (with declining values), the public-sector person is getting an increasingly valuable final salary pension. He suggests that “the sooner every public sector employee is provided with a statement of total remuneration per year … the sooner they, and we, will have a better understanding of the true level of reward for such jobs.” I imagine doing this, some fairly humble professions soon go into 6 figures in the public sector. So turning to the poor old private-sector employee:

“It’s simple – abolish annuity purchase” about the pensions minister fiddling instead of acting to deal with those with private pensions having to buy annuities from insurance companies and getting ripped off in the process, even saying that the “annuity market is rigged against pensioners”. The govt solution is more regulation, but the letter calls for abolition of the requirement to buy an annuity, quoting Ireland as having gone down the route of letting pensioners spend the “pension pot” as they wish (and Germany is this way too, you do what you want with it). Must admit from reading around this topic, I thought the obligation to buy an annuity had been removed.

Call me old-fashioned but I still maintain, that whilst your public person is of course needed, bright and works hard etc, they are not “creating” (new and taxable) wealth in that sense, or in the modern jargon, you’d hardly call doctors or teachers “masters of the universe”. When the mess of public v private pension is unravelling in 20 years time, the uk will have in addition to its already high income and NI tax rates, swiss-style purchase tax rates on declining polish-style wage levels.

Going to get some books and do some research and “planning” .. eg. amazon has a couple of good books, from Which and FT on pensions.

monday 24 – an expression came up in the weekly team call,

“better the devil you know than the devil you don’t” / von zwei Übeln wählt man besser das, was man schon kennt

Reminded me of:

“the devil is in the details” / der Teufel steckt im Detail

“the grass is always greener on the other side of the fence” / Die Kirschen in Nachbars Garten schmecken immer ein bißchen süßer.

helping eve with her physics homework about speed and acceleration, so i set up a small oval track and we play with the trains a while, explaining about why the train moves and saby joins in about when we discuss if you have magnet and current you get movement etc.

tuesday 25 – still going thru newspapers:

facebook alternatives – diaspora or freundica

wednesday 26 – still looking at education

Ramsey Musallam: 3 rules to spark learning:

• curiosity and questions drive learning and are the background to the material, should not be after the material

• trial and error

• reflection on what works/doesnt work

and of course, what started me looking:

Ken Robinson with his 3 tips for an education system:

• must recognise diversity – that we’re all different

• that we’re naturally curious and that learning has to take place, otherwise the teaching has no sense

• that we are amazingly creative

thursday 27 – just caught the headline in last night’s abendzeitung and it seems that they are still looking for the murderer on the isar from 28 may 2013:

http://www.abendzeitung-muenchen.de/inhalt.kripo-weitet-fahndung-aus-isarmord-7400-handynutzer-muessen-zur-polizei.365d6cbc-6a1f-432c-bd79-b14cfd38a658.html

friday 28 – pizza for tea and a nice bottle of merlot

reading an interesting article by thomas l. friedman about “how to get a job at google” in the NY times international weekly in the SZ supplement 28.02.2014, he says there are 5 “hiring attributes” they look at and good grades are not the only factors:

• cognitive ability (not IQ but learning ability, to pull/sift pieces of information together and think on the fly)

• emergent leadership, not traditional leadership, but stepping in and leading when the occasion demands it and critically, when the moment demands it, relinquishing power when the moment requires it or the situation changes

• sense of ownership and responsibility, to step in to solve any problem and then step back and embrace better ideas of others when appropriate

• intellectual humility – without humility you are unable to learn and learning from failure, if you never “experience” failure then you dont know how to learn from that and commit the fundamental attribution error – if something good happens it’s because of me if something bad happens it’s the fault of someone else

• “expertise” as such is a just content knowledge, but someone who has high cognitive ability, innate curiosity, a willingness to learn and emergent leadership skills without the “content knowledge” will most of the time arrive at the same answer as the expert, but when not arriving at the same answer, could discover something very significant with high value.

Nice summary:

“The world only cares about – and pays off on – what you can do with what you know.”

And for innovation:

“it also cares about lot of soft skills – leadership, humility, collaboration, adaptability and loving to learn and re-learn.”

and going through old NY times, this summary again from friedman in the SZ supplement 17.01.2014

“if i had a hammer” about the second machine age (taken from Erik Brynjolksson’s and Andre McAfee’s book of the same name) where it’s all about getting smarter and faster, the first machine age being the industrial revoultion and now the new implications:

“our generation will have more power to improve (or destroy) te world than any before, relying on fewer people and more technology”

with implications for work:

“labour is so important to a person’s identity and to dignity and to societal stability” … “consider lowering taxes on human labour to make it cheaper relative to digitial labour, that we re-invent education so more people can ‘race with machines’ not against them” … “foster the entrepreneuship that invents new industries and jobs”

Summary:

“We’re in a technological hurricane reshaping the workplace – and it just keeps doubling.”

and going back to friedmann from 20.09.2013

“when complexity is free”

he discusses how GE see a shortened feedback loop from design with 3-d cad software to production with 3-d printing to re-design which is revolutionising aircraft parts manufacturing for example

how challenges can be posted online with awards for the winners, plus the internet of things with sensors measuring and broadcasting performance data captured to improve efficiency

concluding, the world of work changes:

“when everything and everyone becomes connected, and complexity is free and innovation is both dirt-cheap and can come from anywhere”

or this counterpoint about our online identity, by evgeny morozov, author of “to save everything, click here: the folly of technological solutionism”, writes in the FT 15.10.2013 about the sharing economy (sharing stuff like apartments, washing machines or hooking up taxi drivers with passengers) with:

“the erosion of full-time employment, the disappearance of healthcare and insurance benefits .. transformation of workers into always on self-employed entrepreneurs who must think like brands.” The sharing economy amplifies the worst excesses of the economic model: it is neoliberalism on steroids.“ best examples of coordinating this sharing economy are peers and taskrabbit.