It's about time

Introducing Time, Craig Callender. Finished 04/05/08.

This was a fun little sprint through many aspects of time, from how it has been thought of centuries past, up to today's theories around entropy and infinitely repeating universes. It was fun to read this in parallel to the Fabric of the Universe, but I'm not sure how much sense it would have made had I not done so. The ilustrations were simple - a good thing, see below - but, as is always a danger with these brief, introductory books, not enough time was spent properly grasping an issue: the book is packed with interesting stuff, but our 'why?' and 'how?' questions remain unanswered.

This page from it caught my eye, "All You Zombies":

Here's the wikipedia entry on All You Zombies, a review of the short story from the Heinlein Society website, an incredibly complicated timeline diagram, as well as the actual story itself, for you to enjoy at your leisure.

Music videos are ace

Looking at this got me thinking.

TED Talks Jakob Trollback: Rethinking the music video (video)
"What would a music video look like if it were purely directed by the music? Not driven by a concept, nor by a desire to build an image, but purely as an expression of a great song?"

Ok, so it didn't get me thinking about how to transform audio into a new, autogenerative, semi-autonomous, visual expression of celebral, celestial sound, but rather:

"I wonder if there are any good Metallica videos on YouTube."



And from that the next thought was:

"That's all well and good -- love the way they make their guitars and that snare drum snarl and growl -- but what was it like in the good old days? Where's Slayer..."



"...and Megadeth?"



It's mad that Megadeth and co are still going for it. Makes me feel old just thinking about it; god knows how old they must feel.

Anyway, from reminiscing about the old times, and the other stuff we listened to in the sixth form with fellow twitterer-er @xbaz, including such cool old skool stuff as this:



I somehow came across this:



A-one and a-two and a-chicka booma chick!

Wonderful stuff. Truly what music videos should be all about.

Some links

Been ages since I've written anything here - far too lazy to write anything other than the 140 over at Twitter. So whilst you wait for me to locate and self-apply a inspiration-motivation-injection, here's some links:

• BBC NEWS World Asia-Pacific China admits Tibet monk protests
  "Chinese officials have acknowledged that Buddhist monks were protesting in the Tibetan city of Lhasa this week. "In the past couple of days, a few monks in Lhasa have made some disturbances in an effort to cause unrest," news agency AFP quoted him as saying
• Tracking technology in the corridors of learning Technology The Guardian
  "The sensor data is collected in a central database and then passed on to applications such as Google Calendar and a Twitter widget called RFIDder"
• Mango Languages - Home
  "Whether you're learning how to order a pizza or ask when the game starts, Mango immerses you in real, everyday conversations in 12 different language courses."
• Analog life clock takes 84 years to complete one sweep - Boing Boing
  "Kevin Kelly (who has a life countdown clock on his computer desktop) would probably like Bertrand Planes' clock, which has a year hand that makes a complete sweep of the face every 84 years."

Lots more here. Hey, why not subscribe? It'll be fun! (Just noticed that my work-place IT system has decided to block access to my del.icio.us rss feed, declaring it Adult Material, whilst quite happily letting me view the proper page itself. Doofuses. (Doofii?))

Programming For Continuous, Enjoyable Improvement?

NLP in 21 Days, Harry Alder and Beryl Heather. Finished 9/2/08.

Ok, so it took me a little longer than 21 days to read this, and I think it was worth it if only for the fact that I now have a better understanding of what NLP might be about.

The first part of the book was more useful than the rest, more grounded, with its slogans - or presuppositions - like, 'The map is not the territory' (or is it the other way round?), 'A person is not his or her behaviour' and 'The meaning of a communication is in the response it gets'. I liked its emphasis on tolerance, on trying always to see things how others do. (Did you catch that? My use if the word 'see' just then? I should probably used the word 'experience', instead of so quickly identifying myself as a visual thinker, one of the NLP modalities. I think that's the term.) I got a lot from the idea that our experiences make filters that stand between us and the 'real world'. We think we know how things really are, but that's just how they are for us. And we're all different - some of us are visual, some aural, some more touchy-feely.

The more advanced stuff about matching and pacing, and installing anchors and so on - not sure if the authors should really be taking all that too seriously. It's as if they overheard two neuroscientist-types discussing how the brain works, heard one say to the other that it was "kind of like a big computer, sort of", and rushed off to create a bizarre school of therapy based on this one out-of-context sentence, with its crazy notions of 'installing' 'programs', 'setting' 'anchors', 'copying' behaviour patterns to replicate them elsewhere etc etc. "Programming for continuous, enjoyable improvement."

If only they'd stuck around long enough to hear the other neuroscientist-type reply with: "Well yeah but, not really though, eh? That'd be fair too simplistic, you doofus."

Another book read. Happy now?

Happiness Paradox, by Ziyad Marar. Finished 23/1/08.

Not so much a self-help, path-to-bliss book (I've read more than my fair share of those, to no avail) as a calm, studied reflection on the concept of happiness -- historically, philosophically, economically -- and its underlying problem, namely The Paradox. This being the argument that to be happy you need to answer two competing, seemingly self-conflicting questions, 'what do I want?' and 'how should I live?'

The main thrust of the whole book is the view that to be happy we want two things. We want to be able to do whatever the hell we want, we want to be free, creative, unrestrained, free from responsibility and criticism. And yet we also want to be liked, to feel justified, to be applauded by people whose opinions we care about, to be cheered, not jeered.

Happiness equals having both, it seems. But how is this possible? To have either one stops you getting the other, surely. As I said above, this isn't a self-help book, so there's no easy answer, no 10-step program. But the path to follow seems to be one that gets you to where you want to be only once you stop wanting to get there. A paradox.

Good fun, though. Reminds me of that buddhist line about suffering being caused by desire, so one's natural reaction is to desire being free from desire. Don't worry about wanting this, or not wanting that. Just start where you are and simply 'be'.

Next, NLP in 21 Days, by Harry Alder and Beryl Heather. Then, Think, by Simon Blackburn.

Bang hiss flappaflappaflappa ... and stop

Twittering and Facebook-status-updating helped pass the time whilst stuck in the middle of nowhere waiting for Mr AA and his bag of spanners.

'Them' or 'Us'?

So then, my list of books read this year continues. I can add the second!

January

• Invisible Cities, Italo Calvino (1st)
• The English, Jeremy Paxman (4th)

Another book started in 2007, but it all counts. Whilst I enjoyed the book, I'm not sure I saw myself in it all that much. Lots of good stuff on the British v the English thing, on class and the countryside, a nice essay on the weather and house-buying/apartment-renting, but you're left wondering if the PaxMan cares for the English all that much. He has little time for the country's detractors, those that think England's going to the dogs and life was so much better in the good old days, before Europe, before immigration, before television etc etc, but as he notes himself the English, in his book, are them, not us. Not sure he wants to identify that closely with them. Not sure I do too.

Anyway, talking of books, online bookshelves - remind me again why I keep coming back to them?

• www.anobii.com/people/terrym
• www.shelfari.com/terrym
• www.librarything.com/catalog.php?view=terrym&shelf=shelf

Not sure. Passes the time, though these sites will never reflect all the books I have. But maybe they could just do those from now on. But then, isn't that what I'm here on this blog? Whatever.

"Cancel"?

Found one.

Resolutions, again. I know, I know

(Just overheard some sport lecturer type discussing the topic 'competitive pride'. A nice, chewy phrase for me to mull over in different contexts. What might that mean for me, an office worker with procrastination issues, and how I approach my work? Who might my competitors be? Do I take enough pride in my work? What kind of race is this? Am I pacing myself right? Why don't I want to win?)

Anyway, I wanted to think out resolutions, and what mine might be for this year. I'll have to check what I've written on this before - there's bound to be loads of resolutions and promises made, only to be forgotten about and broken.

So, in that tradition then, here's some more to start one month and let slide the next.

1. I've bought the book 'Learn German in 3 Months'. I fancy having a go at something tricky but useful and practical, and also, with the book's 3 companion CDs, something to do in the car to and from work every day. I like the idea of tearing down the A64 barking out strings of nonsensical German vocabulary.
   
   
2. To get properly fit, using this Grauniad 16 Week Army Fitness Programme and its collection of training booklets, free each day this week. On second thoughts, maybe I should start more modestly and just resolve to collect those daily training booklets. That's a big enough fitness challenge I think.
   
   
3. To get into some good habits at work. I like the idea of Seinfeld's "don't break the chain" technique for embedding new habits and routines.
   
   
   1. delete more e-mail
   2. share and delegate more
   3. get the most important task done first
   4. batch inbox clearance every afternoon
   
   I think the main thing is to stop reading all those productivity blogs and feeds all day, on how I can be more efficient. Step one for me is just turn all that crap off and get on with it.

Wish me luck.

Does self-hypnosis really work?

I'm coming to the conclusion that I need to hypnotise myself into thinking that some areas of my work are really fun and interesting and that I should be eager to learn and understand more about them.

Tasks and projects land on my desk, papers comes in to read, reports needs writing, and I just can't seem to engage with it all, or be interested in any of it. I may as well be asked to sell mortgages or something. I think this is because I find it all too difficult -- if I don't know how to do something, and do it really well (which I think is part of the problem), I can't imagine myself finishing it. So I don't start it. I know that all I need to do is break it up, take the first step, and not worry about the end just yet, or even how good the result is, but because I see these tasks as difficult, or liable to leave me vulnerable to criticism (that's another key point), I put the work off -- or rather prat about deferring it and making myself feel busy by tracking it all in stupid next action lists -- in preference for tasks I enjoy doing, and know I can do well, leaving all that difficult stuff to the very last minute.

This creates anxiety and stress, as well as rushed, poor work. This all gets blamed on these areas of my job I dislike, reinforcing my views about how unfair everyone is being in making me do these things in the first place.

Options, then.

1) Suck it up, fuxsake. Do the difficult work I don't like, and stop thinking that I need to enjoy every part of my job. Just get on with it, make a start.

2) Set up a personal development plan, complete with reading list and practical examples, and become an expert in these areas I don’t know enough about.

3) Look for another job, with tasks that better match my skills and interests.

4) All of the above. Happy new year.