The long tail

I’ve been thinking about gettting customised playing cards for a while for next year’s Canasta Cup. Trying to find someplace that will do them in small enough quantities has been a bit of a challenge.

Surely, I thought, I can’t be the only person who has this sort of need.

enter Moo.com a specialist short-run printer in London who ship all over the world.

Now the dilemma is – do I get myself some personal ‘blog cards‘ as well?

Surely technology would never hurt one of its own kind…

Well  – it did…

A couple of weeks ago I applied for a job at the same place a friend of mine works. Didn’t hear anything – no big deal.

Then today I’m involved in an email conversation with the friend – we’re trying to sort out a lunch date for later in the week.

My phone rings “XXX work” says the phone. I think “Good call XXX we’ll sort this out faster by phone than email. So I pick up the phone and sing merrily “Ye-es?”

A *very* confused voice says “Umm – can I speak to Lindsay please?”

That’s right – it was a total stranger calling to invite me to an interview.

I guess it could have been worse.  But I’m seriously considering deleting the friend’s work number so it can’t happen again

I want one….

I use my personal MacBook for work. It’s one of the really nice things about working for a small business where I am the most technically capable person by miles. No-one cared in the slightest that I brought in my own laptop, configured the network to let it on, and fixed up the Active Directory stuff while I was there.

I’m now happily working on a 13.3 inch MacBook in an otherwise totally Windows environment. It’s neat.

But – where my MacBook was plenty powerful enough for what I was using it for at home (like the rest of the world – email, YouTube, web stuff) It’s groaning a bit under the strain of what I do at work (multiple sessions of Photoshop, Dreamweaver, Flash) So I’d been considering upgradng to a MacBook Pro for a month or so – but held off until the announcement yesterday.

In the words of Bomberman “MISTAKE!”

Because before I was prepared to wait until I had the cash together to upgrade but now I want one RIGHT NOW!

And the breathing into a paper bag and counting to 10 isn’t helping in the slightest.

Programming and Communications – it’s all language.

I was thinking last night about my tinkering with programming, back in my youth.

(Seriously, I remember writing a really involved Zork-like game entirely in BASIC – I obviously had way too much time on my hands!)

For a number of reasons, now lost in the mists of time, I didn’t do IT at uni opting instead for journalism. But I realised last night my playing with programming had probably actually really improved my communication skills.

When you’re interacting with a computer it will do *exactly* what you ask it to do. It won’t second guess what you really meant, and if you don’t phrase your request in exactly the right way it won’t do anything,

Essentially the burden of communication is entirely on you. You have to figure how to phrase what you want to say in a way that is meaningful to the machine. You have to use a language it will understand. You have to make sure it has all the background knowledge it needs to understand your request.

This is largely true when communicating to a large group. You have to phrase things in ways that are meaningful to the audience. You have to make sure you use language they willunderstand. You can’t assume they have the background knowledge they may need to understand what you are telling them.

Which probably explains why nearly all the really good communicators I know are also good with technology, and why the truly great programmers I know are also pretty reasonable communicators.

The world is a poorer place…

The man I think of as my Godfather (despite my, my parents, and his athesim) passed away last week. He, and his wife Elizabeth, are those rare people who are naturally kindly and generous, blessed with a keen sense of humour and a finely honed sense of the ridculous.

The Scotsman has a lovely obiturary, which made me smile, as I rememberd Kenny saying cheekily, “Let joy be unconfined” when something went his way.

He one of the world’s genuine treasures, and the world is poorer for losing him.