Category: personal

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Week 52 at work

This week marks the end of my first year in my role and the start of the next year! This week I got up to:

  • agreed in principle that phase two of the website project should focus on our education offer and sat with fffunction so that we can get an estimate
  • attended a half day workshop on online shopping platform Shopify which I wrote about earlier
  • set out a new workflow for internal requests for design work and immediately got swamped with requests
  • Met with a Microsoft researcher and University students about working together on an interesting prototype
  • Attended a half day workshop hosted by HLF and National Archives about digital and archives!
  • Heard that we have been successful in our Nesta RnD fund for the arts project with aardman and the University of Bristol!
  • Took Friday off

I need to write an end of year wrap up…

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Week 50 at work

I’ve taken the second half of this week off to enjoy the Le Mans 24 hour race in France. But I managed to:

  • Setup 301 redirects for mashed.org for next week
  • Respond to an foi request 
  • Agree July as our launch for an online shop
  • Finish our end of year report 
  • Suggest my workplan for the next few months 
  • Tinker with my process for getting stuff done 
  • Clean up our public digital roadmap on trello 
  • Review and improve our seo efforts with the new website 

 

 

 

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My computer Setup

Professionally I’m normally referred to as the “IT guy” and people often think i have every new gadget. Yet the truth is that I own relatively few toys, preferring tools that I will use loads and are value for money. I REALLY fear buying a device or tool that proves to be useless and effectively a waste of cash.  I started to list my items and figured I may as well share them here. Interestingly in recent months i’ve been spying on friends and family gadget collection and i’m really average and far behind true nerds!

Devices

  • 2.4 GHz macbook with 8GB RAM (secondhand but from 2011? used to replace the below)
  • 2.4 GHz macbook with 4GB RAM (2009) that I now keep at work to get things done when I hit the IT services wall on occasion!
  • Raspberry Pi – affordable computer that I tinker with
  • Kindle Paperwhite – for reading ebooks and looong reports
  • Kobo touch
  • HTC One X mobile phone
  • Nike running watch and heart rate monitor
  • Nexus 7 tablet
  • Apple iPad 1 (secondhand) for testing

Software and tools

  • VLC Media Player – used to watch all videos
  • Mozilla Firefox Browser (my browser of choice for the addons – screengrab, Web developer toolbar, firebug, )
  • Google Chrome Browser – used for testing
  • Filezilla FTP – transfer web content
  • Coda 2 – code editor
  • 1password – for managing all my passwords and serial numbers and ESSENTIAL
  • Spotify – useful for streaming music
  • DoubleTwist – music sync for Android
  • evernote – for writing and storing personal and work notes
  • Trello – used for all my to-do lists
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Reading list 2014

Last year was my first attempt at keeping track of the books I read during the entire year. Twelve! I thought it was going to be much longer than that. In November/December I picked up and failed to complete three books. Yet I read tons online which I think has a role to play in this low number.

We’ll see how I fair this year.

  1. Semple, Euan. Organizations don’t Tweet, People Do – A Manager’s Guide to the Social Web. Wiley, 2012. Print and finished Friday 10th January 2014.
  2. Halvorson, Kristina. Content Strategy for the Web 2nd edition. New Riders, 2012. Kindle and finished 18th January 2014.
  3. Krotoski, Aleks. Untangling the web – what the internet is doing to you. Faber and Faber, 2013. Kindle and finished 3rd March 2014.
  4. Hsieh, Tony. Delivering Happiness – A Path to Profits, Passion and Purpose. Business Plus. 2013. Kindle and finished 3rd April 2014.
  5. Boag, Paul. Digital Adaptation. Smashing magazine, 2014. Kindle and finished 22nd June 2014
  6. 37signals, REMOTE: Office not required, 2014. Kindle and finished 11th July 2014
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Curiosity

Today I was being schooled by Stephen Gray about current practices for digitising 8mm and Super 8 film. I was enthralled by the media format and its history. Now, nearly 50 years since its release,  we use modern techniques of film capture to “see” what is on all those shiny reels from the past.

There is so much to discover in this huge field of “digital” and I hope I never lose this sense of curiosity.

 

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My reading list for 2013

Another year, another list of the long form books I have read. 2013 is the first year that I have my own personal Kindle (dedicated digital book reader for anybody reading this after about 2015) and it will be interesting to see if I get more read and also “where” I read. I also have a stack of print books that could see me through the next couple of years.

  1. Chimero, Frank. The Shape of Design. 2012  [kindle] – finished 5th January
  2. Bjarnason, Baldur. Knights & Necromancers 2: Loot, kill, obey. 2012 [kindle]  – finished 9th January
  3. Stephenson, Neal. Reamde. 2012 [kindle] – finished 29th  January on London underground
  4. J-Zone. Root for the villain. Rap, bullshit, and a celebration of failure. Cambria Heights, NY, Old Maid Entertainment, 2011. [kindle] – finished 4th February at home
  5. Kawasaki and Welch. APE: Author, Publisher, Entrepreneur—How to Publish a Book, 2013 [kindle] – finished 15th March
  6. The Standardistas. The Craft of Words. Five Simple Steps Publishing Ltd, 2013 [Kindle] – finished 15th March
  7. Wurz, Julia. SuperEgo. 2013 [kindle] – finished  12th April
  8. Guillebeau, Chris. The $100 Startup. 2012 – finished 1st June
  9. Ries, Eric. The Lean Startup. 2011  [paperback] – finished 11th August
  10. deWitt, Patrick. The Sisters Brothers. 2011 [paperback] – finished 15th August
  11. Hammersley, Ben. Now for then – how to face the digital future without fear. 2013 [kindle] – finished 17th September in Bordeaux France.
  12. Allen, David. Getting Things Done. 2002 [Kindle] – finished 30th October