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Weekly Wrap 244: Cloudy sky, cloudy mind, kinda

Sydney skyline from Camperdown: click to embiggenMy week of Monday 2 to Sunday 8 February 2015 was exhausting — but as you can see, the productivity levels started returning to something approaching normality. Slowly.

Podcasts

  • “The 9pm Sleepless in Canberra”, being The 9pm Edict episode 35. Yes, a new podcast appeared just one week after the previous one. Amazing. It still took 11 hours to produce, though. I must fix that.

Articles

5at5

There were three editions of 5at5 this week, on Monday, Tuesday and Friday. You might want to subscribe so you receive them all as they’re released. Subscribe. Just subscribe.

Media Appearances

Corporate Largesse

The Week Ahead

Monday will have pretty much ended by the time this gets published. It’s likely to have been a day of pottering around after very little sleep, and planning for the rest of the week.

Tuesday and Wednesday both see day trips to Sydney to cover the APIdays conference at Australian Technology Park. “Liberate then Innovate”? I feel sick already. Late Wednesday afternoon I’m also covering a seminar on “Risk-based approach to Privacy” being run by iappANZ, the International Association of Privacy Professionals ANZ. These will be long, exhausting days — in part because I’ll have to do the long commute both days rather than staying in Sydney, thanks to cashflow constraints. Wish me luck.

Thursday and Friday are writing days, I’m guessing, turning those two hectic days into words for money.

The weekend is unplanned.

[Photo: Sydney skyline from Camperdown, photographed from level 6 of Rydges Camperdown Hotel on 5 February 2015.]

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Weekly Wrap 243: Wattle, delays and fatigue

Random wattle: click to embiggenMy week of Monday 26 January to Sunday 1 February 2015 didn’t quite go to plan. Everything was still slower and more liquid than I’d wished. But such is life.

I won’t go into too many details. Some of it is on my Twitter stream, and if you really want to investigate then you can drill down into my tweets for January.

Podcasts

  • “The 9pm I can’t believe it’s not January”, being The 9pm Edict episode 34. The first seven minutes or so were an interesting psychological journey to produce. I have deleted the original audio file of that music loop so that I never have to listen to it again.

Articles

None. But that feature for ZDNet Australia was filed on Thursday as planned, and should appear on Monday or Tuesday.

5at5

There was only one edition of 5at5 again this week, on Friday once more. You might want to subscribe so you receive them all in the future. Subscribe. Just subscribe.

Media Appearances

None, although I did get a few requests, which I turned down.

Corporate Largesse

None, because I cancelled my planned trip into Sydney.

The Week Ahead

Let’s have another go at returning productivity to some semblance of normality, shall we?

Monday is mostly about catching up on blogging, administrivia and the endless communications backlog — although I’m getting better at just deleting things.

On Tuesday, I will be updating a certain ebook and, if the cashflows work, getting it online so people can buy it. On Wednesday, I’ll be writing a column for ZDNet Australia, I think.

Tuesday will be a day of more administrivia and planning. On Wednesday, I’ll be heading to Sydney for a mid-morning media briefing by Deloitte Touche Tohmatsu, as well as a haircut. I’ll report on same for ZDNet Australia. The briefing, not the haircut.

On Thursday, I’ll be heading to Sydney again for a lunchtime briefing by VMWare, as well as several errands. Somewhen in there I’ll knock out a column for ZDNet Australia.

Friday through Sunday is unplanned, but since there’s quite a bit to catch up on, I suspect it’ll end up being quite busy.

[Update 3 February 2015: Edited to add a second trip to Sydney, and other minor schedule changes.]

[Photo: Random wattle, photographed at Bunjaree Cottages on Australia Day, 26 January 2015.]

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Weekly Wrap 242: Insomnia revelations, and more

Section of data collected during a sleep studyMy week of Monday 19 to Sunday 25 January 2015 continued the unproductive period, as my intestinal troubles went through their final stages, and then after that I really couldn’t be bothered putting in the effort.

Given that the early part of January was so exhausting, Monday through Wednesday ended up being mental health days. This lack of productivity will now haunt me for the next two months. Such is life.

On Thursday I discovered something interesting: that the cause of my endless insomnia is actually severe sleep apnoea. It’s probably also responsible for a large chunk of my depression. A sleep study showed that I was experiencing a disturbance to my respiratory functions every 90 seconds through the night, roughly, and doing rather a lot of loud snoring. So that’s something to take on board. There’ll be more to come on this soon, because I’ll be starting a treatment program next week soon.

Articles

None. But I did start work on a feature for ZDNet Australia that’ll appear next week.

5at5

There was only one edition of 5at5 this week, on Friday. You might want to subscribe so you receive them all in the future. Subscribe. Just subscribe.

Media Appearances

None.

Corporate Largesse

None. But the PR industry will be returning to its usual levels of largesse in the coming week, I suspect.

The Week Ahead

The main theme will be returning my productivity levels to some semblance of normality, and wrapping up all the things that need to be completed this month. This week also sees me based back at Bunjaree Cottages in Wentworth Falls, after my sojourn in Lilyfield since late December.

It’s Australia Day on Monday, but despite the public holiday I’ll be working on the ZDNet feature. That work continues into Tuesday. On Wednesday I’ll file that feature, and then head into Sydney for a lunchtime media briefing by Check Point Software, Dimension Data and L.E.K Consulting, followed by an appointment with a sleep physician to start the treatment program.

On Thursday, I’ll be writing my usual column for ZDNet Australia, and on Friday and/or Saturday I’ll be producing an episode of The 9pm Edict podcast, finally.

The weekend is unplanned, mostly, but I’m hoping it’ll be a quiet one.

Update 27 January 2015: Updated to reflect the cancellation of Wednesday’s trip to Sydney.

[Photo: A section of the data produced during the sleep study, showing disruptions to airflow and snoring. Yes, I was the patient.]

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Weekly Wrap 241: Extended gut symptomatics, apparently

My week of Monday 12 to Sunday 18 January 2015 was another unproductive one, thanks to the intestinal problems continuing. Or maybe it was a new one arriving. Either way, it was terrible.

I don’t think I’ll even bother putting a photograph on this post. It’s late enough as it is.

That said, this seems to have been the week that the Australian media returned to work, because I did four spots in total.

Articles

5at5

There were only two editions of 5at5 this week, on Monday and Tuesday. You might want to subscribe so you receive them all in the future. Subscribe. Just subscribe.

Media Appearances

Corporate Largesse

None.

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Weekly Wrap 240: Technology, little sleep, a belated possum

"Come at me, bro!": click to embiggenMy week of Monday 4 to Sunday 11 January 2015 was very, very, very annoying. Not only did the server migration take up far too much of my time and ruined my sleep patterns, I ended up with a nasty intestinal problem for a few days. Not happy, Jan.

As I mentioned last week, I may or may not write up the server migration problems. I’m not sure that any real lessons were learned. I’m just thankful that it’s something that only has to be done every few years, because it took about 47 hours all up.

But it did screw up my productivity. No articles written. No podcasts produced. Sigh.

5at5

There was only one 5at5 this week, on Tuesday. You might want to subscribe so you receive them all in the future. Subscribe. Just subscribe.

Media Appearances

Corporate Largesse

None.

The Week Ahead

It’s going to be a busy one. Monday through Wednesday I’ll be sorting out my work for the new year — including getting the subscription for The 9pm Edict podcast back on track, reviewing some interview recordings, preparing an ebook, and sending story pitches to editors.

On Thursday, I’ll be writing for ZDNet Australia, and then at 1615 AEDT doing a spot on ABC News24. On Friday, there’s a “webinar” [ugh!] at 0600 AEDT, and then I’ll be producing an episode of The 9pm Edict podcast.

I daresay I’ll have a social life in there somewhere too, perhaps on the weekend, which is as yet unplanned.

[Photo: “Come at me, bro!”. A brush-tailed possum invades the Chirgwin residence at Lilyfield on 3 January 2015. Rather than being persuaded to leave, he decided to take me on. Technically this image belongs to last week’s Weekly Wrap, but I’m not too worried about consistency.]

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Weekly Wrap 239: The new year starts with some chaos

Sydney skyline, 30 December 2014: click to embiggenMy week of Monday 29 December 2014 to Sunday 3 January 2015 was a strange mix of relaxation and stress. Relaxation during the New Year break, and stress because the server migration I was doing started to become a complete pain.

Since this is being posted a week late, I won’t bother expanding on all that for now. I may or may not issue a series of whinges in relation to the server migration.

But I will mention that on 30 December I migrated from Bunjaree Cottages near Wentworth Falls to Lilyfield in Sydney’s inner west, there to spend most of January. If you need to catch up with me in Sydney for some reason, this is the month for you.

Articles

5at5

There were three editions of 5at5 this week, on Monday, Tuesday, and Friday. You might want to subscribe so you receive them all. Subscribe. Just subscribe.

Media Appearances

Corporate Largesse

None.

[Photo: Sydney skyline, photographed on 30 December 2014. I seem to recall that it was a very hot day that day.]