It's my old friend Dan's fault, this one. Back in the 1990s, when he and I were sharing a house in Dalston, we shared the living room with a ginormous pair of 1970s speakers that he'd picked up a few years previously, second hand. They weighed a tonne, they had tweeters in little cages sitting … Continue reading #SAE February – Kevlar Speaker Cone
This week I have learned: how to make gyozahow to build a snowmansometimes surprising outcomes come soon after disappointment.that the kids have probably had their fill of home schooling too.the all-time best TV theme is The Professionals.at the end of the day, a website is just a route in to a set of services.maps versus … Continue reading Weeknote 519 – launched
If you are old enough to remember a time before ubiquitous GPS, you might remember web services like Multimap or Streetmap (or even earlier installed software like Autoroute). These tools could allow you to plot a route between two places, and then print off a map and a list of turn-by-turn instructions. If everyone were … Continue reading Maps vs Lists
This week I have learned: the value of sitting down and looking at the actual dataan awful lot about the Cambrian Mountainsthat there are map people and there are list peopleI'm just about staying on top of things with Microsoft TasksI need to explore more with Sharepoint ListsDescript might be life-changingI love a well-timed question … Continue reading Weeknote 518: Balancing
It's a bit over four years now since Chris Weston indulged me with a request to work together on a podcast. Having been involved with student radio in my university days (a really valuable introduction into audio production which helped massively), there had been an itch to be scratched. 170-something episodes, 100-something guests and a … Continue reading How we make WB-40
This week I have learned: occasionally you'll get an insight that totally changes how you approach a thorny challenge. Had one of those this week.I'm positively negative.I'm impatient.I flit between thinking I've become a misanthropic hermit and really, really missing people.Get your legal people and their legal people in the same meeting. Lay people trying … Continue reading Weeknote 517: the thick of it
This week I have learned this week: How to use SignalThere's no such thing as "just" an ERP upgradeIT doesn't save money. Stopping spending money saves moneyIt's going to be a long three monthsBut at least we have World Cups to see us through Next week: getting some consensus on focus The last few weeks … Continue reading Weeknote 516 – back to it
As I continue to dig through the legacy systems in my organisation, yesterday I stumbled across an interesting piece of paradoxical software development, something that is probably common in many organisations. A piece of code set up to save money that has ended up costing more than it ever would have saved. (For the more … Continue reading Saving cost?
I've been tinkering with electronic music since my teens - at first a Roland TR505 drum machine and a Casio CZ-101 keyboard. And then in about 1987 I managed to swap my keyboard for a Roland TR808. I can vividly remember heading to Watford Junction station to pick up the package from the Red Star … Continue reading #SAE January – TR808 Buttons
2020. Oh where to start? Well, let's just say that I guess most Corporate "2020 Visions" didn't turn out quite as they were planned in 2015 or 2017 or whenever they were cranked out. What can we learn from this year that kept on giving? Well, first of all that whilst it's utterly untrue to … Continue reading Yearnote 2020