I had a busy week with many moving parts that required a little patience and organisation. As someone who struggles with personal organisation and procrastination at the best of times, I was quite surprised with my ability to successfully organise and execute all the required bits within the constraints that were self-imposed. If you know, you know.

Next week looks to be no less busy, and I’m going to be going between many projects over the week.

I started my participation in the ARIN Fellowship with the first meeting, and we’ll meet again this week. I’m looking forward to my participation and feel that it is something I can develop over the coming years.

I managed to keep up with the UNCTAD training I’m currently doing, a course on international trade statistics on services. Clearly, I’m interested in digital services statistics and how they are captured in official statistics systems. The course is really interesting, but very dense and quite dry. A challenge. So far, my results have been good, and I’m over the average score at the moment. I have three more modules to complete the course, taking the next three weeks. I’ll need some good planning to keep studying during a busy period.

Reading

I finished iRobot reasonably quickly, and I quite enjoyed it. I haven’t purchased the second book in the series yet, but I think I’ll do it soon. I’ve tried to keep to a routine of non-fiction and factual texts in the morning and during the day and novels in the evening. I have an anthology of Coupland books to read, but I haven’t got into it yet.

I find that with a lot of books, particularly novels, I get frustrated at the start, then suddenly I’m all in on the story and can’t stop reading it. There are only a few novels that I haven’t had this feeling with. The moral of the tale is to stick with it until you get over the edge. I rarely give up on a book, although it has happened.

Of note

I’m thinking a lot about three subjects at the moment for professional and personal reasons: colonialism, cybersecurity and artificial intelligence.

I’m not someone who is binary in my thoughts. I find things are always much more nuanced than most would think. Not only that, there are contradictory positions that we as humans are capable of holding in our heads simultaneously. For example, I don’t think Sam Altman is a particularly trustworthy or benevolent person he presents himself as. But, ChatGPT, when used correctly, can bring useful benefits.

Over the coming weeks, there is plenty of time to think deeply about this and other subjects.

Have a great week.

August and September are an odd time as there is a big lull in activity, particularly economic activity. I’ve been fortunate to have had several training slots fulfilled that have helped me keep the machine turning, as it were.

This lull has recently started turning around to a much busier outlook over the coming months. I’ve been in the position to turn some work down as I wouldn’t have been able to properly do the work to the high standards I set for myself.

With some luck, I’ll have a steady flow of work for the coming months.

Reading

I finished iRobot as predicted and nearly finished A World Transformed. I have a couple of days coming up where I can spend time reading, so I’m going to put some time towards that. I’d started Walled Culture and Cory Doctorow’s The Internet Con but not quite got fully into them as yet.

I’ll set aside some time to read those over the coming days and weeks.

Of note

I’ve had two interesting observations and thoughts over the last couple of weeks: one about Apple and the other about Microsoft.

With Apple, I’ve started to see a pattern emerge with the way they present products that, at heart, are probably founded on good intention, but in execution, are either excruciatingly out of touch with reality or are so tone deaf that it in itself, distracts from the message. One is the sustainability and carbon-zero initiative. I called it out immediately, not because I’m a specialist or an expert on the matter, but because it is easy to find out with a bit of research. The other is this message that only Apple products can save or improve your lives. It’s BS and always has been. The reality is that for a number of years, Apple has been hitting it out of the park on innovation and usefulness of its products, which is why I have been using them for so long. Lately, the reasons to upgrade are meh at best. And coupled with the fact that they purposely make it more complicated and expensive to repair, it shows me that they no longer have my interests at heart. They have share price and market perception at the forefront of decision-making.

I don’t know if this is the start of the end of Tim Cook, but it does feel like it to me. I’m keeping a keen eye on how things develop.

The second observation was how Microsoft, specifically Satya Nadella, seems to have bet the entire pot on AI. Again, to clarify, they’ve been developing AI for many decades, and they have gotten literally nowhere with it, just like everyone else in the industry. Then ChatGPT came along. Nadella shrewdly moved to cut a deal with Open AI, and now that engine is starting to show up in everything. Whether or not it is a tested benefit and whether or not it is a net good, who cares? Ten billion dollars means that it has to work. I don’t think it will. What is also starkly apparent is how other projects are starting to see cuts and corner cutting. One might say this is to pay for the Open AI deal. That would be speculation, but that is precisely what I’m speculating. Microsoft Conferences are cheap affairs now, and their announcements are so duct-taped together that it’s embarrassing. Panos Panay left abruptly, and now we know why: cost-cutting a fantastic product line.

Like Tim Cook, I think this is the start of the end for Nadella.

Enjoy your week.

It’s been more of a getting-back-to-my-routine type of week.

I had a lot of outstanding work that I had let go of before leaving for a few weeks, and that work had become more urgent and more important, so I set time aside to work on it. I managed to progress well, but a few things still need to be done.

I had two full days taken up by training, something that I really enjoy and judging by the feedback I get and the feedback from the training company that I work with; I am good at that job. I try to build a relationship with the people I train, and I try to make it fun and instructive. The best way I have found to do that is to use an active teaching method. That is, getting the people to work on tasks, case studies and just generally use the thing they’re being trained. I find it makes the day go quicker but also gives the trainee practical and hands-on experience that is put to use immediately. My trainees often start working on problems and difficulties in their day-to-day working lives instead of the case studies. Honestly, I have no problem with that, as they are just as good, if not better, case studies to work on during the training.

I applied for the ARIN Fellowship program a while back and thought nothing further of it. ARIN, if you don’t know, is the America Registry for Internet Naming, and each year, they open a fellowship program to develop and reach people interested in the policy development process and better understand topics such as Internet Governance, Internet Number Resource Policy and other topics. I was selected, and through some good fortune on my part, I will be travelling to the conference in San Diego. I’m really looking forward to participating and developing sustainable participation on my part over the coming years.

It has been a while since I last travelled to the US, but the old routines are starting to come back. I have been lucky enough to travel 2-3 times a year for over a decade to different cities, but I’ve never been to San Diego, so I’m looking forward to discovering it a little, even if I won’t have a lot of free time.

Newt week will be a bumper week again, with two full days of training lined up and, most likely, the purchase of a new printer. My Canon inkjet printer shit the bed and is too expensive to repair based on where I live. And to be fair, I never liked the fact that the ink cartridges were expensive and almost impossible to find here. I have chosen an HP printer using the relatively new ink tank technology. It should be nothing cheaper to run in the long run and last longer than the crappy print heads in the Canon. I guess time will tell.

Reading

I’m nearing the end of a couple of books that have been on the go for a while and ones that I stopped reading for a bit as I spent some time away from home. I’ll likely finish them both in the next few days or so, so I’ve started looking for other books to pick up.

In the true tradition of how my brain works, rather than picking a book I have already purchased, I decided to buy a new book (The Internet Con - How to Seize the Means of Computation by Cory Doctorow) because it was on sale. To be fair to myself, I tend to do this and often store books for later reading whilst taking advantage of sale prices.

Of note

Apple had its (most important?) keynote this week, where they outlined the next iPhone and Apple Watch models. The keynote was a very well-put-together presentation, which was unfortunately marred by a silly and frankly patronising skit with “Mother Nature”. It was well-acted and told a good story, but it was vacuous in detail and skirted over a number of realities. For example, Apple touted their first carbon-neutral product, the new Apple Watch. This is an achievement, and I don’t want to take away from that entirely. Still, it’s best to understand what that really means as it is just calculated on carbon offset credits, which we all know can be obtained financially, fraudulently, and by other means. And no, I’m not suggesting for a moment that Apple has done as such, but it would be nice to clarify the details behind the carbon-neutral rating!

Additionally, in an interview on CBS Sunday Morning with John Dickerson, Tim Cook answered questions about Apple’s continued use of Twitter. Honestly, I can’t see any justification for them to continue advertising and spending millions of dollars. And I’m holding Apple to a higher standard precisely because Apple asks to hold it to a high standard. I think this is a mistake from Tim Cook, and I think this will blow up in his face over the next few days.

Have a good week.

With no notes here, you can probably guess that I have not been around for a while. I took an extended break and have been out of the country for a month. I’m back now and wanted to share some things I had been doing without getting too personal.

I took a bit of a holiday and tried disconnecting myself from the internet and work. I largely succeeded but inevitably did a little work while I was away. This is probably my longest time away from home and work. Honestly, I wanted to get back, but there is a slight anxiety about what I’ll find once I’m back. To no avail, of course, as things carry on with or without you, and nothing is that urgent.

It’s a lesson for me, and I need to consider it in the future when thinking about holidays.

I’ve never been one to take holidays. I’m unsure why; it just didn’t work out that way. There’s nothing in particular that I can pinpoint; it just didn’t happen. I haven’t taken a proper holiday in many years, and since I’ve been working as an independent, it has been more challenging to do so. COVID-19 didn’t help matters either.

So, what have I been up to?

I left my home island to spend ten days in Paris. With lovely weather and a personal distraction (of the sports kind), I had a great time and got to spend time in parts of Paris that I don’t usually visit.

After that, I flew out to a different island. Again, for sports reasons. (You’ll excuse the brevity; I prefer to keep some details private). I spent over two weeks there, taking some time for myself and setting up things for the next year or so. So, it was a bit of a holiday/organisational visit.

Having spent around a month in a different timezone, it can be hard to adjust once you’re back in your “normal” timezone. I’ve adjusted pretty quickly and am pretty much back to normal, despite waking up a little early still, but nothing too bad.

Next week will be busy, and I can share a few new things I’ll be doing.

I’m looking forward to the week.

Reading

I not only spent time away from work but also from reading. I did a little on the plane back and forth. 9 hour and 4 hours flights give you enough time to read. So, I continued reading iRobot. Christ, the book is so different from the film with Will Smith. It’s a travesty and makes watching films like this impossible for me. All the nuance, the subtlety is lost, replaced with action, guns, shooting, fighting and other bs that puts bums on seats. I hate it.

Of note

There is nothing to report here, as I have been virtually offline for a month. I guess it is of note that despite disconnection, things are as they were.

Enjoy your week.

Via The New York Times:

The subscription plan is a response to European Union policies and court rulings to restrict Meta’s data-collection practices.

I say go for it. We might find out what Social Networks are really worth then. I suspect not a lot.

2 September 2023 — French West Indies