My week Monday 1 to Sunday 7 April 2019 was a curious one. I spent a lot of time reading, and watching the bin fire that is Australian politics, but little came out of it.
Continue reading “Weekly Wrap 462: Controversial laws and a great big insect”Weekly Wrap 388: Laksa, laziness, and lovely conversations
My week of Monday 30 October to Sunday 5 November 2017 was a curious one. Two days represented a great surge forward, then the third I slept the entire day. What is going on?
In case you haven’t noticed, I seem to operate on a cycle of busy weeks interspersed with quieter weeks, at least as it might seem from the outside. This was obviously a quiet week, both for health reasons and because I was collecting some material for future writing — including a wonderful conversation about cyber diplomacy.
Still, that was one of the biggest random waves of energy levels. I think I know why, and it’s a good thing, but here is not the place.
Articles, Podcasts, Corporate Largesse
None.
Media Appearances
After a long gap I’ve finally posted the audio from a couple of my radio spots. Just follow the links.
- On Tuesday evening, I spoke about trust, chatbots, and the uncanny valley on ABC Melbourne.
- On Friday afternoon, I spoke about Trump, Twitter, and employee revenge on ABC Adelaide.
The Week Ahead
On Monday, I’m writing for ZDNet, then reviewing the story pitches for the next issue of DirectorTech. On Tuesday, I’m writing another thing for ZDNet.
DirectorTech is that sort-of SEKRIT editorial project I was working on over recent months. The first issue of the subscription-only newsletter was emailed on 15 September. The next will be on 28 November. It’s aimed at the corporate market, but it’s possible we’ll have some other subscription options by then.
On Wednesday, I’m putting together my next crowdfunding campaign, for The 9pm Edict Summer Series, which will probably be announced on Thursday. It’s more than a year since my last concentrated ask-for-money burst, and the gods know my budget needs some input. There’s been changes in the crowdfunding landscape since then, though, so this campaign may work slightly differently from previous ones. The details should be announced on Thursday night.
The week will end with some more writing on Friday.
Remembrance Day is on Saturday, though I haven’t decided how I’ll commemorate the occasion this year.
Further Ahead
The next episode of The 9pm Edict podcast will be recorded on Thursday 23 November at 2100 AEST. As has become traditional, it will be streamed live via stilgherrian.com/edict/live/.
You can help support this podcast with a one-off contribution. Any contributions made until 2130 AEDT during the recording will count towards The 9pm Edict Summer Series, and will earn whatever the rewards end up being. You’ll be able to up your contribution to meet that pricing. Stay tuned for the details.
If all goes well, there’ll be another episode of The 9pm Edict before the end of the year, plus another Public House Forum episode much like the last one.
Much of the next few weeks will be about writing, and then making podcasts over summer. I haven’t locked in anything else specific for the rest of the calendar year. Please feel free to make some suggestions.
[Photo: Chicken Laksa being lunch at the MaMa Laksa House in The Grace Hotel, Sydney, photographed on 1 November 2017.]
Weekly Wrap 242: Insomnia revelations, and more
My 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.]
Links for 04 November 2008 through 09 November 2008
Stilgherrian’s links for 04 November 2008 through 09 November 2008, gathered via Twitter and spat onto the page with love and some lemon juice and garlic:
- McDonald’s partners with earthwave to provide Australians with “Family Friendly” internet services | LinuxWorld: A company called earthwave has scored the deal to provide Australia’s McDonald’s stores with “clean” Internet links. That’s more than 720 locations.
- How to nap | Boston.com: A nice overview of how to take effective nap breaks. I’d have congratulated Boston.com on using a good wide-screen format too, but discovered they’ve done it with images rather than live text on the page. Still, it’s good material.
- What’s your profit : pain ratio? | Bad Language: Very apropos for me this week: an article pointing out that some clients simple aren’t worth the trouble.
- Best advice I’ve heard all week | Wired Blogs: A reminder that humans are really very bad at assessing risk.
- Tanner eyes web 2.0 tools | Australian IT: Australia’s federal government says it'll trial online public consultation through blogs and other social media tools. Good luck, guys, because the first thing you’ll have to learn is how to have an authentic conversation with people, rather than just parroting the party line.
- Bush: “Our Long National Nightmare Of Peace And Prosperity Is Finally Over” | The Onion: Written when George W Bush was inaugurated in 2001, this is a scarily prescient piece of satire. Well worth a read today.
- Barack Obama’s acceptance: the transcript | Crikey: The full text of Barack Obama’s acceptance speech. Very powerful writing.
- Not Quite Art | ABC TV: The official ABC website for Marcus Westbury’s series Not Quite Art including full downloadable files of all episodes of series 1 and 2 (provided you’re in Australia).
- The next President of the United States | The Big Picture: Boston.com provides yet another glorious photo essay: this time it’s images of the president-elect of the US, some bloke called Barry.
- Australian Internet Censorship | halans.com: Another powerful analogy to explain why centralised Internet censorship is wrong.
- 6 Nov 2008 – Liberation Day | Microsoft Australia: The Australian launch event for Microsoft’s Azure services platform. I blogged this live previously, and will soon write a more reflective post about it. This page now includes the video of Steve Ballmer’s speech.
- Blog censorship silences free speech around the world | Worldfocus: Thirteen/WNET, the respected PBS station in Boston, blogs about Internet censorship censorship and surveillance around the world, including a link to little old me.
- What Ray Ozzie didn’t tell you about Microsoft Azure | The Register: A nice discussion of the problems Microsoft will face selling its new platform Azure when compared with Amazon’s EC2 and Google’s App Engine.
- 750,000 lost jobs? The dodgy digits behind the war on piracy | ars technica: A nice discussion of where the numbers for “what piracy costs us” come from. This is American rather than Australian, but the points are still valid.
- DVD pirating costing industry $1.7b: Debus | ABC News: Australia’s Home Affairs minister Bob Debus parrots the DVD industry’s claim that illegal copying (which they call “piracy”) costs $1.7B. The bogeyman of “child pornography” is raised to make it sound even scarier.
- “Mankind Is No Island” | One Plus One Equals Three: The winning film in the Tropfest New York short film competition, shot using a mobile phone and found typography in Sydney and NY.
Links for 30 April 2008
Here are the web links I’ve found over the last few days, posted a bit later than I’d intended. Cope.