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I'm Back! Productivity discussion with Daryl Cook

"Well hello there, It's been a long long time. How ya doing, I guess I'm doing fine. It's been so long and it seems that, It was only yesterday. Ain't it funny how time slips away?"

So let's get back to this blogging and podcasting thing, starting with some Productivity, Technology,and Life, with my mate Daryl Cook.  Just the raw sound to listen to, no intro, no music, let's just get it done.  And no show notes!

Have a listen and tell us what you think, what you'd like to hear about.  Should we go back to The Productivity Show?  Expand to other subjects?  What do people want to listen to?  Do they want to listen!!

Click here to download the interview mp3

Take Me Home Country Roads

Visited my childhood last week.  Back to the country roads of Cheshire (nr Manchester, England).  So good to be back home (I keep expressing joy with song titles or lyrics!)

I'd started blogging/writing about my childhood in 2002, so it was good to revisit the writing in reality, 9 years later.  How was it?  Did reality warp or destroy the memories or writing?  I'd been warned that going back to London and Manchester, from Australia, things would appear much smaller than in my mind's eye.

In fact, on the whole things were the same or larger, such as the road in our street where we played football as kids.  What most struck me in going back to Handforth and into the The Valley behind our house where I played out my childhood, is the march of nature.  Nature is relentless, people aging, buildings and structures under threat from 50 years of nature knocking.

It's amazing how the acres of my green grass childhood are now overgrown with new and thick vegetation.  Rivers have changed courses over those 50 years.  And other parts have remained unaltered. Even the 1960s graffiti has survived. 

I can feel a novel inside me, set in the 60s with my childhood memories as the background rather than the theme of the novel.  But I don't yet know what I'd like to write about as the main them of a novel, with this childhood 60s stuff in the background.  A Kestype novel perhaps, Kestrel for a Knave?

I can't explain, just how green and beautiful Cheshire looks on a visit, after 9 years of living in Australia.  I'm happy to be living in Melbourne, a city near the sea (ok, Bay), but Cheshire sure looks lush and green.

Oi Ingerland! No!

Ingerland Football Team. Let’s face it, we don’t have the players, or they don’t perform.  So let’s change it.  Let’s go back to basics, until a generation comes along that can play as a team and have a few world class players. 

No one likes us, we don’t care, we are Ingerland.  We don’t need some fancy foreign tactics our English players don’t or can’t understand  How many English players have been successful abroad?  British players (and managers) don’t do tactics.  They pick players and some vague formation.  You can count on one hand British players and managers who can talk football tactics (Strachan, Shteeve McClaren, Woy?, Bobby Robson? Terry Venables) and most of those have managed abroad.  So an Ingerland Football Manifesto then.

1. 4-4-2
2. Goalkeeper.  You will be big and tall.  You will give your defence confidence either by your great shot stopping and cross catching (Van der Sar or Mark Schwarzer, or by the force of your personality, even though you might be useless (Grobbelaar).
3. Full backs are either foraging wingers (Ashley Cole), or mean nasty thugs sitting deep (Stuart Pearce, who could attack and take a free kick and penalty!).  If you can do both you are world class, my son.
4. We will have one tall centre back (Jack Charlton) who heads things and goes up for set pieces, and one fast centre back who can pass (Bobby Moore, except he wasn’t that fast).
5. You will be a right winger with a right foot who can cross the ball, regardless of if you can beat a man or not (Beckham has never beaten a player for pace!).
6. Left winger ditto. 
7. If you’re not a good crossing winger, we will revert to wingless wonders with a midfield that can score goals and rotate going forward (David Platt, Martin Peters, Paul Scholes).
8. Midfield.  We will have one defending, tackling, distributing midfielder (Barry, Hargreaves), and one skilful midfielder with a great engine (Gerrard, Alan Ball, Bobby Charlton, Paul Gascoigne).
9. Up front we will have a big hard centre forward (Crouch) who can hold the ball up and head, and a fast skilful forward (Rooney) who will drop deep and then run through the centre with the ball.
10. When we are moving the ball out of the back, either the skilful midfielder (Gerrard) will take control, or the fast skilful forward (Rooney) will drop deep and pass and run (give and go, in any direction of his choosing). 
11. Rooney is free to roam, and will be a nightmare to mark (Think Beardsley, Think Sheringham).  We will never make our fast skilful forward our primary (and only) source of goals. 
12. We will not hit long balls with a new World Cup ball we haven’t used for at least 6 months.  If we find any Johnnie Foreigner introducing a new ball to the World Cup we will let our xenophobic media know about it months in advance.
13. The team will lead itself on the field and be self adjusting using this system, with less reliance on the manager. 
14. The manager will pick the best player in each of these eleven 4-4-2 positions.  He will not introduce anything too complex for an English player’s brain, other than a pre-match and half time pep talk.
15. The manager can only make substitutions at half time or up to 20 mins after half time, because what’s the point in throwing some poor sod on with 5 mins to go when you’re 2-0 down.
16. We will mark zonally but we will press the player with the ball anywhere on the pitch, and not jog back slowly as if it’s someone else’s job to press.  And when we get good at closing players down, we will put two players on the man with the ball.
17. We will be a nightmare to play against, and teams will fear us, because they know they’ve been in a game, and we press them, our fullbacks don’t take any nonsense, and our centre back and centre forward are the biggest nastiest meanest (but not necessarily fastest) bastards out there.
18. You get in the team because you can do one of those eleven 4-4-2 jobs, regardless of how you’re playing for your club, and because every time you’ve pulled on the England shirt you’ve played well for your country. 
19. We will have no room for players of great skill or many goals, if they don’t or can’t to it for Ingerland.
20. If you’re the second best right footed winger in the country, you’ll have to wait your turn, you ain’t playing on the left wing.  You should have stuck at it in your academy days, learning to cross with your left foot.
21. Our manager will be Jack Charlton who we’re bringing out of retirement.  If things get really tough he can play centre back again.
22. When we’re ready for some Fancy Foreign Manager, we will re-appoint Steve McClaren, long before he’s in his 70s and everyone calls him Uncle Shteeve.
23. We will be known as the team of No Divers.  We may not win anything for 20 more years, but we won’t be falling or diving like some big shoed clown (Heskey).
24. Our Academy will teach only one thing to our new talent.  For 3 years you will be playing on your weaker foot (oh, and taking penalties).  Or better still, you can’t join the academy unless you can play with both feet.
25. We will no longer label an English player as world class until they’ve won something, like err, the World Cup.
26. Abnormally sized footballers are scary to play against, so any very tall, thick trunked legs, sharp elbows, ability to stay upright and not fall over like Bambi on Ice (Heskey) will be welcome in the team
27. Until further notice, we are Ingerland, we don’t care, no one likes us, we play hard 4-4-2 rigid football, because we haven’t got the players with the skill or bottle to do it any other way. 
28. We don’t need some fancy foreign manager because we don’t have any fancy foreign players with enough fancy foreign skills to understand what the hell the fancy foreign manager is going on about.  We will wait another 20 years until we can host a World Cup.
29. If 4-4-2 and Jack Charlton doesn't reap any success over the next 20 years, we will revert to 2-5-3 like on most Table Footballs (or Foosball).
30. Youth teams and Academies will be given 5 years to produce more than 2 Ingerland players, and if they don’t achieve that, they will be closed down forever.

Building a team is very simple.  You pretend you’re the opposition looking over at England.  Who do you not want to see over there.  Stuart Pearce, Viv Anderson, Bryan Robson, Paul Gascoigne, Alan Shearer, Gary Lineker.  Who will you laugh at when you see standing over there try to keep warm, Michael Carrick, Sean Wright Phillips, Rooney playing up front, Frank Lampard, Emile Heskey. Ashley Cole is scary if he’s moving up the pitch.  Rooney is scary running towards the goal, with the ball (not without the ball, or his back to the goal). Joe Cole is scary because he can keep the ball and do things with it.

Think about it, when has international football been fun to watch, ignoring the all time great sides?  Ireland under Jack Charlton (check out the Ireland teams of ‘90 and ‘94 about the same as Ingerland 2010!), and the Aussie team with the exception of that Germany game.  It can sometimes be dire stuff, but you know what you’re getting and the limited skill is allowed to shine.

England could become the most two-footed, fittest, pressing team in the world. that’s better than hoping for players of guile and skill in some new fancy academy grass roots stuff up, Trevor Brooking will no doubt instigate post England 2010, and post Capello.

Keith Moon

I was sitting at a food court table this morning, 55 Collins St, and prior to the record store opening, there was a The Who DVD concert video playing through the window, which caught my eye.  Watching Keith Moon is hypnotic, something about the guy, the way he plays the drums, his exuberance.  He died aged 32!!  Holy Shit, that’s young.

Beauty is in the eye of Nativisim

Just thinking aloud.  I was amazed in listening to Bill Bryson’s A Brief History of Everything, one theory is that babies are born with an ability to recognise 400-600 language sounds, and they lose most of that recognition when they start to learn their mother language, bringing their recognition down to about 50 sounds.

In other words, babies are born with mass language recognition – Nativism or sometimes called Innatism.  I’m not sure what the difference is, but Wikipedia is a good place to try to explain it!

So, this set me wondering about beauty and who we find attractive.  I was wondering if we have an inbuilt beauty recognition system that becomes refined when we’re born, and just like language (if that theory is true) we have a library of “attractive” and then refine it down. The reason I’m thinking this, is some of the people we find attractive look absolutely nothing like other people we find attractive.  I mean how are Jennifer Aniston and Angelina Jolie even closely related other than having Brad Pitt in common!!

And this library we may have inbuilt in us is cross race and cross cultural.  We can all mostly agree on an attractive Japanese, Chinese, African, South European, North European etc, but they’re all incredibly different.  Ok, individual people may have individual preferences, but the magazine covers seem to settle on the same 50 people who all look different. Admittedly “White”, but you know what I mean!

I can see someone who takes my breath away with beauty and attractiveness, but where did that come from?  My childhood and teens?  Did I build up a pattern of 8-10 types of women I find attractive?  Can I composite those images together?  I don’t think so. Have you ever seen a composite person built from the pictures most people rank as attractive.  That composite doesn’t look that attractive!!

Could it be that just like language we come with an in-built 100+ attractive faces, and we refine them down, instead of culturally building them up from birth?

Mouse v Elephant

Note to self.  Always buy a medium size mouse. I’ve just replaced my Logitech LX8 which has suddenly stopped working, with a larger Microsoft Mouse 5000.  Things I like about the Logitech is it’s not too small, not too big, on//off and reset buttons, but I kept nearly losing the USB transceiver, because it doesn’t have a snap-in bay on the mouse. The LX8 is one of the few mouses that’s comfortable for me without a mouse pad.

The Microsoft 5000 mouse does have a snap-in bay for the transceiver, and a great smooth wheel.  It felt really good to use in the shop, but it’s wider and slightly higher than the LX8 that I’m used to, so not quite as comfortable for me, but I’ll bet it’s great for others to use. I hope my wrist doesn’t keep hurting whilst using this new mouse, otherwise I’ll have to buy another LX8!!

Things I like

I thought I’d do a recap on things I like right now, instead of the slight blogging bias towards whinging, complaining and ranting! It’s easy to write about the things I like, I just look out across my table/desk and see what’s lying around and closest to me;

Podcasts – I’m loving listening to Adam Carolla, Fighting Talk, Danny Baker, Sportsweek, 606 Football Phone-in, TWiT, Jonathan Ross, Desert Island Discs, and where has Christian O’Connell gone?

Audio Books – WoW!  Audible audio books, the two I’ve listened to recently are fantastic, The Outliers read by Malcolm Gladwell, and A Short History of Nearly Everything, by Bill Bryson, which I’m certainly getting my money’s worth on that audio book!

iPhone – Yes, easy to use, this is my first phone which gives me web and email access, some of the apps, audio books, maps,  access to everything

Keyboard – 15 bucks for a Microsoft keyboard.  Excellent.

Sansa Clip – My portable, cycling, walking, on the train, mp3 podcast player.  Excellent.

My Job – Loving the job.  Not easy on some days, but it’s something I can really get my teeth into.

Piano – My 6 year old son has cleaned me out of every simple piano duet I know, in less than 2 months.  Playing piano duets with your kids, a dream come true!

Using old stuff – I’ve resurrected my old Samsung LCD screen, it’s nearly 9 years old but going strong, as a second screen for my netbook.

Cheapo Copy Aftershave – The alcohol works a treat inside my shoes!!

And finally, Ergonomic Cycling HandleBar Grips!!  I can’t explain how much better my riding position is, being able to rest the palms of my hands on these grips.

“When the dog bites, when the bee stings, when I’m feeling sad, I simply remember my favourite things, and then I don’t feel so bad!!”

I Hate iTunes Part 2

I’m can’t decide if it’s iTunes or Apple I hate!

I updated my iPhone to the latest software release yesterday.  The first issue is iTunes updates, which seem to load the whole software of 100MB+ every bloody time, except it doesn’t always complete the download or complete the update, so I burn several hundred MB attempting to update iTunes several times.  If only iTunes updated through a browser just like every other bit of software that actually does work.  But, NO, Steve knows best.

And then we have the actual iPhone update software which is 200MB+.  I didn’t have time to download all of the update, so I paused it.  Dream on. Why bother pausing a software download when it won’t let me complete the download, but keeps starting from the beginning.

Next complaint.  You’re never quite sure what iTunes is doing, or if it’s doing anything.  There’s complete confusion and inconsistency with feedback on what’s happening.  Sometimes it in the grey window at the top, sometime it’s a pop-up, and sometimes not at all.  And iTunes is so damn slow.  I’m never quite sure if clicking on the menu options  on the left column is actually achieving anything.

And then to cap it all, whilst updating my iPhone, the phone froze.  That pathetic screen with iTunes and a USB cable.  No matter what I tried, nothing would work.  iTunes wouldn’t recognise the iPhone, my laptops wouldn’t recognise the iPhone, and the iPhone was completely locked and wouldn’t restore.

Called Vodafone. They just got me to try what I’d already tried.  They told me to go to a Vodafone store.  Went there, and bizarrely my laptop suddenly decided to recognise the iPhone, but couldn’t revive it.  So I was sent to the Apple Store.  Daunting.  100+ sheep all fingering various white objects in some kind of hypnotised marketing trance!  If you’re going to buy a PC, laptop, Mac, or bike, I think you probably need to take the thing home for a week.  Fingering the keyboard, clicking a mouse, or staring at a screen doesn’t quite cut it for my road test.  It’s a bit like buyers who squeeze the brakes in a bike shop, to get the measure of the bike they’re buying!!

In spite of the 100+ people I was guided to my Apple queue, and after a short while my iPhone was plugged in and reset.  The great thing about queuing is meeting someone there with exactly the same problem i.e iTunes took several times to update, iTunes froze the iPhone so it wouldn’t work, the only solution is to queue at the Apple store. I wasn’t alone.

The good bits are, Chris at the Apple store got my iPhone working again, and though I lost all my data, iTunes did manage to upload everything back to normal.

Jeez Steve Jobs, if iTunes is a measure of what Apple and Macs are like, then I’m not going there.  Software can be messy, so I don’t need an application to pretend it isn’t messy by telling me what to do all time, or not telling me anything that’s happening.  Most of the iPhone users are PC and not Mac aren’t they?  So I for one am losing confidence with Apple, even though I love my iPhone.  I really dread the next software upgrade on my iPhone.

Now, having said all that, the iPhone freeze might have been my fault.  I started the iPhone upload and popped out for 20mins.  My laptop might have gone into standby, which stuffed the Synch.  So I wonder if Bill could get his software to recognise something more than a keyboard or mouse movement, before going to sleep.  You’d think a software upload or a sync would count as keeping the laptop awake. No.

I Hate iTunes Part 1

iPhone great.  iTunes shit.  Or at least that’s how iTunes seems to have been designed, to make the great iPhone experience miserable. I’ve started using a new laptop.  It’s not unreasonable is it Mr Jobs to at some point to replace my old laptop with new laptop, Steve?

So why is it such a miserable experience filled with fear, trying to then connect my iPhone to iTunes on a new laptop?  Why did I live in fear for weeks, with connecting my iPhone to a new laptop and risk losing all my data?  Why does iTunes run so pathetically slow on XP?

Why do the messages on iTunes tell me you’re going to lose everything.  So here was my biggest fear.  My iPhone is synched with Google Contacts.  If a new iTunes which has no contacts, then wipes my contacts on my iPhone, won’t that then synch with Google and wipe all my contacts in Gmail?  No one could tell me the answer and I couldn’t seem to find out much by googleing it.  The best I could do was back up my contacts from Gmail, and hope for the best.  I can’t remember which bits I clicked in iTunes, but everything seemed ok with my contacts and they were safe and sound on both my iPhone and Gmail.

However!!  Half my apps stopped working.  The icons remained on the iPhone but just as each app was loading, it stopped working.  This gave me hope, because it seemed that the software was all there on the iPhone, and it just need something to tell it to work again….iTunes!

I think what I should have done before anything else on a new laptop with iTunes, is to click on “Store” and then “Authorize Computer”.  But nobody tells you that when you connect your iPhone to your new laptop with iTunes.  I must have synched before I authorized the laptop, and hence lost some of my apps, let alone all the music and audiobooks, which I was expecting anyway.

So why Mr Steve Jobs, does iTunes not take a lead from the iPhone?  Surely, I want to keep what’s on my iPhone, and not have it destroyed by iTunes.  You’ll learn your lesson soon Steve, because unless you change your ways, Google and others will kick your ass with mobiles that don’t need an intermediary such as iTunes, and will update direct from the Internet or mobile network.  I knew what I was taking on with an iPhone and iTunes, but I think the timing is good, to sit and wait for 2 years to see what Apple comes up with and what Google will compete with.  If Android/Nexus improves over the next 2 years, I’ll switch.

Why do Apple fan boys put up with this, and it hardly encourages me to “Get a Mac”.  The iPhone in isolation and when kept away from iTunes is fantastic, but I’m sick of Steve telling me how I want my music and podcasts to be stored, and what’s the obsession with album covers?  If I wanted album covers I’d go buy the vinyl!!

Happy Australia Day – Time for a New Flag

What makes Australia, Australia? What has the Union Jack on the Australian flag got to do with modern Australia?  Not a lot.  A heritage and a respect for building and defending the country, but it also hides indigenous guilt.  I think it’s time for Australia to stand up and be an independent country of the world, honour the past and build for the future.  And changing the flag is a statement of intent.  Changing the constitution and becoming a Republic is more complex and may take a little longer, changing the flag declares our intent for the future. 

Look at the new and old Canadian flag.  The Maple Leaf flag is beautiful, symbolic, strong, iconic. 

 

Before I lived in Australia I thought it was a progressive push ahead type country.  I got that impression from Australia’s sporting prowess.  But in fact it’s quite a conservative country set in a post colonial hangover.  The hangover cure is a new flag!

My favourite, is this flag. Past – the blue and Southern Cross.  The culture, Boomerang and Aboriginal Art, Green and Gold, and I like that the curve looks like a part of the West Australia coast with the coastal sand and land.  It’s not a simple flag that any kid could draw, nor does it have the simple lines and colours of traditional flags, but I like the look of it.

Here are a few more designs taken from FlagsAustralia;

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

And of course there are these two flags;