My Hero 2017

..best in Tournament! 

The above was the end of 2016 and below was the beginning.

Merry Christmas

Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year. Jetzt ab nach Fort Myers .....
(Vielen Dank Thomas und Steffi)

The other person...

Me, this year !

The other person is always right.

Always right about feelings.
About the day he just experienced.
About the fears (real, unreal or ill-founded) in his life.
About the narrative going on, unspoken, in his head.
About what he likes and what he dislikes.

You'll need to travel to his place of 'right' before you have any chance at all of actual communication. 

Make Change Happen

By Newt Gingrich.

I learned these principles from working with President Reagan on dramatic change in the 1980s and then leading the Contract with America with its deep changes (welfare reform, the only four balanced budgets in your lifetime, the largest capital gains tax cut in history, etc.) The principles I learned working with Reagan and applied as Speaker seem to be universal for those who would enact deep, profound changes.

They are:

1. The “normal” will try to convince the leader to be “reasonable”.
2. Solving symptoms feels satisfying and is an easy substitute for solving the real, underlying problems.
3. The urgent drives out the important.

President-elect Trump should get up every day and begin by looking at his own campaign promises. He owes his presidency to the people who believed in him, not to the courtiers and schmoozers who had contempt for him as candidate but adore him now that he is going to be president. “Reasonableness” will be the death of Trumpism. The very essence of the Trump candidacy was a willingness to set out new policies, new goals, and new toughness that was “unreasonable” to Washington but made perfect sense to millions of Americans. President Trump should “unreasonably” insist on draining the swamp and changing policies. This is why he was elected.

Second, there will be so many symptoms of problems that a president could satisfyingly spend every day focusing on little problems that require little solutions. While that approach will yield many small satisfactions, however, it will not produce the profound changes that are needed. Peter Drucker warned of this tendency to allow surface symptoms to attract our attention. In The Effective Executive (a book every Trump appointee should be required to read), Drucker wrote that great leaders look below the symptom to find the real problem. 

President-elect Trump and his senior team have to acquire the habit of asking of every situation “Is this a symptom, or a problem?” If it is symptom, they must take some time to look for the real underlying problem. When they solve that problem they will have solved orders of magnitude more symptoms.

Third, Washington is a city in which the urgent drives out the important. Senator Jesse Helms first taught me this. He saw me on the street one day early in my career and said, “Young man, remember that this is a city in which the urgent drives out the important. Your job is to get up every morning, place the important at the center of your desk, and work on it until the urgent overwhelms it.”

As I thought about Helms’s rule and watched President Reagan, I realized he had developed an antelope-and-chipmunk theory of leading. Lions know that they cannot afford to hunt chipmunks because even if they capture them, they will starve to death. Lions have to hunt antelopes and zebras.

President Reagan was a lion. He wanted to accomplish big things. He knew that meant he could not get bogged down by tiny problems (chipmunks). President Reagan got up every morning and reminded himself of his three antelopes: defeat the Soviet Union, grow the American economy, and renew American civic culture so we would be proud to be American again. When President Reagan entered the oval office, chipmunks would come running in. Some federal chipmunks can be $10 billion or more. Reagan would listen patiently and say “You are a fine chipmunk! Have you met my chief of staff?” Jim Baker became the largest chipmunk collector in the world.

If you call ..

Für November und Wolfgang!

Donald Trump wins, why?

After the sucess of UKIP and Brexit in the United Kingdom, the success of Donald Trump was surely no surprise?

Millions of American blue collar workers yesterday voted against an establishment that is simply oblivious to working class people. There have been decades of industrial decline, the export of jobs, the destruction of any hope that blue collar people might still aspire to the American dream. The gap between the richest and the poorest has grown wider and wider, corporate America has acquired previously unimaginable wealth while working people have worked longer and longer hours for low wages. The financial crisis forced the country to struggle with debts caused by rich bankers. Hillary Clinton, being part of the establishment, offered no radical analysis of the economy Is it any surprise that Donald Trump was able to win the support of all those angry people?

As the UKIP voters were derided, as the Brexit voters were derided, so the Trump voters have met a similar wave of abuse, “Dumb” and “stupid” being the most frequent terms. Perhaps those who are dumb and stupid are those who for more than a decade have ignored the growing sense of alienation, those who preferred to think that the anger would simply fade away. If liberal values are to be preserved, then it will need a reformed persuasive political analysis that re-connects with lost communities.

Someday

Mein Wunsch! (Smile) 

For example to reference U2 once again there’s the enigmatic “Uno, Dos, Tres, Catorce,” which some fans view as a cryptic scripture reference – If you know how to find your way around in the Bible, look up the first testament (uno), the second book (dos), the third chapter (tres) and the 14thverse (catorce).
Specially for you, Reg!

Hillary and Donald

I’m just a little bemused over the whole Donald Trump thing. 

But perhaps it’s none of my business. I'm Irish but live in Germany. As a member of the EU I think free movement of people and goods are both good and beneficial things, I want to work and play across the continent without encountering unnecessary bureaucratic barriers, I like my DAK European Health Insurance because I think the idea is very civilised, I like the protections granted to the people by an international regulatory body that reigns in the worst ideas of each new government, and provides welcome oversight of our leaders because I don’t trust any of them and prefer that they exist as small fish in a big pond, not big dictatorial fish in a small pond. And, finally, as a student of history I appreciate the fact that Europe has been quite peaceful all these years and that closer union between the member states helped that peace prevail. 

Hillary is a text-book politician of the kind we’ve had in Ireland and Europe for some time now. She lies, she manoeuvres, she cheats but so what? It’s modern politics. We in Old Europe don’t have the luxury of voting for people who are pure in word and deed. We don’t even subscribe to such fallacies any more. We deal with the situation as it is and make the best choice we can, with our eyes open and few illusions about the messy business called governance. We do not demand that our politicians be pure, we just hope that they are competent.

I mean no disrespect to the USA. Many of Mr. Trump’s “mistakes” have turned out to serve him well. Hillary’s interests appear to be mainly concentrated on personal gain. We’ll just have to see. 

Vision or Goal?

Almost everyone knows the importance of vision for a leader. The problem is most leaders don’t properly articulate a vision. “Unity,” “growth,” or “a brighter future” are not visions. Nor is some financial target to be delivered by the year 2020. The latter is a goal, the former is nothing more than nice words and will not inspire action.

A true vision paints a clear picture of what the future could look like if everything goes well. It is an ideal. And for it to inspire people to act, that vision has to describe a future that would benefit an outside population. It is not simply a reflection of a company’s aspirations (“to be the biggest,” “the best” or “the most respected,” for example).

Bill Gates and Steve Jobs talked about The Revolution, a time in which individuals would have the power to stand up to The Corporation. The personal computer was the tool to advance towards that vision. It was a vision for the people, the future users.

Too many leaders think the plan is more important than the vision. The reality however, is the complete opposite. A plan is uncertain, changeable and sometimes flawed. It is the vision that must be immovable, fixed and inspiring.

When the fire goes out

In Sebastian Barry’s novel, A Temporary Gentleman, Jack McNulty, protagonist and narrator of the story, sits in a house in newly-independent Ghana and writes a memoir of his life. It is not a happy tale, there are more regrets than happinesses, there are chances lost forever, moments that will never be redeemed, hurts that cannot be healed, but McNulty never drifts for long from a mood of optimism:

Our greatest trouble and our saving grace is that we have a soul. Time may seem like a great flood dragging with it all the debris of the past and catching you at last running through your own fields. Where there was once a great fire may seem only an ember now in the palm of your hand. But the ember is the soul and nothing on earth can rescind it.
-Sebastian Barry’s novel, A Temporary Gentleman

Our greatest trouble? That sense that life can never be entirely abandoned, that our failures and wrongdoings remain with us?
Our saving grace? That opportunity remains for failures to be corrected, for wrongs to be righted?

And indeed that we have a soul. (She too, I would hope.)

Without Jack McNulty’s ember, without a soul that cannot be rescinded we live lives of very little meaning and hope.

Not writing

Last Friday it was twenty-eight degrees in the shade, or thirty degrees, if one was to believe the car thermometer, but it always exaggerates. Rewe was an attractive place around which to meander for an hour or so, not to buy much, but to enjoy the air conditioning. Browsing DVD's and car cleaning kits, neither of which would normally be of much interest, passed some minutes. Then I saw the large book selection.

It is over forty years since I developed an aspiration to become a writer, not a famous writer, not a wealthy writer, it would be enough to be able to write bad novels, making just enough to get by. A regular money flow that would enable the purchase of a small cottage somewhere, a place within walking distance of a village which had a bread shop and a cafe. 

The flaw in the plan was the inability to write in any way that might earn an income; writing commercially is an extraordinary skill, to be able to write the sort of fiction that people might buy really is a rare talent. Of course, there have been ideas for plots and characters, some storylines that might have been developed, it’s just that when the words are typed, they fall apart, sentences become badly formed, paragraphs have to be forced into shape, there has never been a complete page. Bad novels required considerably more ability than anticipated by someone who would have casually dismissed such literary efforts.

Perhaps the attractions would quickly have paled, perhaps one winter would have been enough. Anyway, without the freedom a writer’s life might have offered, a life in the countryside never became a possibility, though one can still dream.

What Programmers really mean...

“It’s a non-trivial amount of work” = I won’t be able to copy and paste
“This is a temporary solution” = This is a permanent solution
“I’ll be finished by Monday” = I won’t tell you which Monday
“Do you want it done fast or do you want it done right?” = It will be neither
“Just report a bug” = I have no idea what you’re saying right now
“We can’t test that” = We can but we won’t
“I fixed the bug” = It started working again and I have no idea why
“I can’t realistically estimate that” = I don’t know how estimates work
“I don’t think users will care about that” = I have dinner reservations at 8
“This is an Alpha release” = It doesn’t work
-Thanks to Murphy.

Planning for the Future

Planning for the future is not just some idea from the modern world, it is what Jesus tells his followers they must do in Saint Luke Chapter 14. He tells them they must be as sensible as a builder constructing a tower or a king facing a war.

“For which of you, intending to build a tower, does not first sit down and estimate the cost, to see whether he has enough to complete it? Otherwise, when he has laid a foundation and is not able to finish, all who see it will begin to ridicule him, saying, "this fellow began to build and was not able to finish.” Or what king, going out to wage war against another king, will not sit down first and consider whether he is able with ten thousand to oppose the one who comes against him with twenty thousand? If he cannot, then, while the other is still far away, he sends a delegation and asks for the terms of peace.”

Like the builder and the king in Jesus’ teaching, we at perbit need to sit down and think.

Amazon AWS baut Vorsprung aus

Amazon owns the cloud computing market so thoroughly, and is so far ahead in market share and features, that it's "game over" for other contenders, much the same way that Google owns the internet search ad market today.

 

Most people see the cloud as a race between market leader Amazon, Microsoft, and Google, with other players like IBM also in the mix.

Werner Vogels, Amazon CTO says the others are years behind.

 

"If you look at other cloud providers in the market, there's quite a few of them still sort of in the phase where AWS was five, six years ago — in 2010 — at the moment we were still much more focused on the infrastructure side of things than the sort of rich collection of services."

"This is not a winner-takes all market," Vogel says. "I think given the changes we've seen in the last 10 years it's hard to predict which are the players that will be left in 10 years from now, or who will be the main players in the market. I definitely think AWS will be there and have a prominent role in that world."

"Do I think there will be less and less data centers over time?" Vogels says. "Yes, absolutely."

Poppy wins

Cats are faster runners than humans:

Not today though, maybe tomorrow. (She knows best!)

What have we become?

Every day, we change. We move (slowly) toward the person we'll end up being. Are you more generous than the you of five or ten years ago? More confident? More willing to explore?

Have you become more brittle? Selfish? Afraid?

Grumpy and bitter isn't a place we begin. It's a place we end up. Do we intentionally choose the optimistic path? Are we eagerly more open to change and possibility?

Every day we make the decisions that build a culture, an organization, a life. Since yesterday, since last week, since you were twelve, have you been making deposits or withdrawals from the circles of supporters around you?

People don't become selfish, hateful and afraid all at once. They do it gradually.

Wat haste jemacht mit dein’ Leben?

Am 16. August 1956, so lese ich im Filmlexikon, wurde in Köln  „Der Hauptmann von Köpenick“ mit Heinz Rühmann in der Hauptrolle uraufgeführt. Ich bleibe deshalb daran hängen, weil für mich in diesem Film eine der besten schauspielerischen Leistungen geboten wird, die ich aus dem Kino kenne.

Der Schuster Wilhelm Voigt ist nach seiner Haft bei seiner Schwester und deren Mann Friedrich untergekommen.  Nachdem er von einer Beerdigung zurück ist, sinniert er mit seinem Schwager über das Leben und sagt:

 „Und denn, denn stehste vor Gott, dem Vater, ….und der fragt dir, ins Jesichte: Willem Voigt, wat haste jemacht mit deine‘ Leben. Und da muss ick sagen: Fußmatten, muss ick sagen, die hab ick jeflochten im Jefängnis. …. Det sachste vor Gott, Mensch. Aber der sacht zu dir: Jeh weck, sacht er! Ausweisung! Sacht er. Dafür hab ick dir det Leben nicht jeschenkt! Sacht er. Det biste mir schuldig. Wo is et? Wat haste mit jemacht?“

Ich habe diese Szene schon oft gesehen. Rühmann spielt sie so intensiv, dass ich bis heute immer einen Kloß im Hals verspüre und am liebsten in den Film hinein klettern möchte um den kleinen Mann an den Schultern zu packen und zu sagen: „ Nee Willem Voigt, so ist Gott nicht. Der gibt dir deine Chance, auch wenn dein Leben bis heute völlig verkorkst verlaufen sein sollte. Der lässt dich nicht fallen, du hast die Chance auf deine Aufenthaltserlaubnis.“

Ja ich weiß, dass das reine Glaubenssache ist. Und die Bibel hat zahlreiche Belege für den strafenden und richtenden Gott, aber genauso auch für den verzeihenden und gütigen. Von einer Grundüberzeugung komme ich nicht los: vor Gott ist der Mensch mehr wert als die Summe seiner Leistungen. Und wenn ich davon ausgehen kann, dann fällt es mir leichter, mein Leben in die Hand zu nehmen und etwas daraus zu machen. Davon entbindet mich nämlich auch der Glaube an den gütigen Gott nicht, den Vater, der den verlorenen Sohn in den Arm nimmt und wieder in sein Haus führt.

Wilhelm Voigt verlässt das Haus seines Schwagers mit den Worten: „So knickerig werd ich nicht vor meinen Schöpfer treten. Ick werd noch wat machen mit meim’ Leben…“
Ist vielleicht auch gar kein so schlechtes Motto für uns all, jeden Tag.
-Wolfgang Drießen

Not many saw Pokemon coming..

Marc Benioff posted something on Twitter that's worth quoting.

"No one I know predicted the @Pokemon/AR phenomena. That's what I love about our industry: You never know what's next."

That's right!

That's like something I used to say as the web was first taking root in 1996. None of the titans of the software industry saw it coming. They're never as smart as they imagine they are.

Orange is the new black

.. wird immer besser, ich kann Season 5 kaum erwarten.

"Nearly every moment of the fourth season of “Orange Is the New Black” feels refracted in a small sequence in the finale, a bubble of joy floating up through tragedy. In a flashback, Poussey Washington (Samira Wiley) is visiting friends in New York, and ends up taking an F train to Dumbo, blissful and exhausted. Sitting next to her, a white guy with dreads plays a steel drum. An Asian mother falls asleep; when her little boy opens her wallet to take some cash, Poussey catches the eye of a middle-aged man in a turban. They smile, sharing the secret. Poussey watches Wall Street suits offering a flask to two girls, then gazes at an older black woman reading Michael Chabon, an interracial couple kissing, a pregnant woman, some jocks.

For anyone who lives in New York City, this is a familiar vision of cosmopolitan heaven—a weave of strangers, open and curious. The city that Poussey gets lost in isn’t perfect. She’s a young black woman, and when her phone is stolen, and she asks for help, white men brush her off. But, for a few hours, her life is full of jittery serendipity: she meets a drag queen named Miss Crimson Tide; she sees a dopey Roots cover band; she goes to a club where participants follow instructions that flash on the wall (Kiss, Dance, Share); she ends up hitching a bike ride from a fake monk who’s a member of Improv Everywhere. It’s hell to watch, though. The subway car is the inverse of the justice system that will swallow Poussey up and, years later, kill her."

And the season manages to end with the individual. In the finale’s last shot, set on the Brooklyn pier where Poussey will soon be arrested, she smiles at the camera, breaking the fourth wall. It’s as if she were taking her place in the show’s opening credits, a montage of the faces of real-life ex-prisoners, staring at us.

-by EMILY NUSSBAUM, New Yorker.

The problem with complaining about the system

...is that the system can't hear you. Only people can.

And the problem is that people in the system are too often swayed to believe that they have no power over the system, that they are merely victims of it, pawns, cogs in a machine bigger than themselves.

So, when the system can't hear you, and those who can believe they have no power, nothing improves.

Systems don't mistreat us, misrepresent us, waste our resources, manage poorly, support an unfair status quo and generally screw things up -people do.

If we care enough, we can make it change.

Make AWS easier. please

Everyone says we should teach kids to code, what if instead we made it so that the machines they're using didn't need so much coding? Amazon really has something good with AWS, the way we should all be doing computing in the future, but now it requires people to know too much to get the simple result most people will want. 

I'm a longtime user/customer of Amazon Web Services, going all the way back to the 2006 when they rolled out S3, their basic storage system.

My websites are S3 buckets. I have an 3 EC2 instances that run my apps and Insight. I use Route 53 to manage domains. 

I probably would use more of their services, but they're so damned hard to get started with. Which is a shame because once you've climbed the hill, they're not that hard to use.


Typically I have to approach a product several times, often over a period of months, before the clutter gets out of the way, and the steps-to-start reveal themselves. When I look at the docs, I can tell right off that I now have to learn a lot of extra concepts before I get to Hello World. Usually it takes a few approaches over months before I break through and discover how to use one of these toolkits. There are so many concepts they use that I don't understand, that's why I have to approach and re-approach. Most of their competitors are no better, by thhe way.


They really ought to fix this. 

Interesting Quotes

Quote of the Day:

Everyone is a genius at least once a year. The real geniuses simply have their bright ideas closer together.
-Georg C. Lichtenberg.

And

Everyone’s life is similar, an accumulation of chances and random occurrences producing outcomes no-one expected. Which explanation of events is true?

Tom Stoppard’s,

Life is a gamble, at terrible odds-if it was a bet you wouldn’t take it.

or Shakespeare’s?

There’s a divinity that shapes our ends,
Rough-hew them how we will.


Faith suggests Shakespeare has got it right; free will means Stoppard has to be true.

My new Smartphone

I had planned on keeping my iPhone 4 as long as I could. 

I was an original Siemens Mannesmann D2 and then Vodafon user. Once I got my iPhone however I never used my Siemens "Knochen" again. Literally. Never used it again. 

Until last week I still used the iPhone 4 but it has become very slow and quite unreliable. And I must use iTunes to get new stuff onto the phone, and that's even worse.

So for some time I have believed that Apple could be replaced, for me, by a phone that was somewhat elegant, hardware-wise, and had software that was as easy and reliable as it should be, 8 years after the iPhone was first introduced. You expect a certain amount of bugginess at the outset, but over time the glitches should be out and the product should become part of the background, the focus being on what you use the product for. The iPhone resists that. Every time they come out with a new version of iTunes or iOS it works differently and I have to find a new set of workarounds. 

Please just give me a device that's reasonably nice and Just Works. And for father's day, Stephen did. As a long time AWS user, it just had to come from Amazon:

Time to change?

Probably. 

Bono and Eugene Peterson

Bono joined Pastor Eugene Peterson to chat about the Psalms for a short film for Fuller Studio, a new e-resource by Fuller Theological Seminary. Filmed April 2015, the almost 22-minute documentary debuted on Youtube today. The conversation took place at Peterson's home in Montana ahead of U2's launch of the Innocence + Experience tour.

Bono references his earliest memories of the Psalms, the violence in Dublin in 1974 captured in "Raised By Wolves," and his affinity toward the psalmist. Bono said, "The psalmist is brutally honest about the explosive joy that he is feeling and the deep sorrow or confusion, and it's that that sets the Psalms apart for me."

Fitting that this appears here today on Reg's birthday, Happy Birthday Reg.

Keeping in touch

A revolution in human society has taken place with barely a word of comment. Older people might complain about young people inseparable from their smartphones, but the complaints are unheard, ineffectual. In ten years time, it will be hard to imagine what life was like before the smartphone revolution. Even now, there are moments when it is an effort for me to remember what life was like before the world became accessible from a device in my pocket.

It would demand a shift back fifty years for me to be sixteen or seventeen again, how did we stay in touch? It was difficult. Regular contact was with those from your own village or those you met at school; it was face to face conversation. Telephone calls were made from boxes and demanded penny and shilling coins. Many people did not have telephones, so they could only be called if they went to a public phonebox themselves, which meant the call had to be pre-arranged, and if pre-arrangement was necessary, it was much easier to say whatever needed to be said when you met someone, rather than trying to arrange a call, which, anyway, was expensive when you had only a few coins in your pocket. The other way of communicating was writing letters, but a letter posted on a Friday would probably receive no answer until Tuesday, it did not make for lively conversation.

To be honest, I would have loved to have grown up in the age of smartphones, in an age when the world’s information is only a google search away, in an age when conversations with friends need never end, in an age when no-one is cut off, when no-one has to be isolated.

In forty years time, Joyce will probably laugh remembering the primitive devices we had in 2016. We can no more imagine the world in 2056 than teenage boys with long hair and flared trousers could have imagined the smartphones we have now.

A mark of genius

I just remembered a story about Sir Thomas Beecham. The world renowned composer was rushing across a hotel foyer when he met a distinguished woman he felt he should have recognized. He bade the lady a good day and went to get into the lift. As he was stepping through the lift door, he remembered the woman had a brother, so he leaned out of the lift and said, “By the way, what is your brother doing these days?”

“Oh, he’s still the king” replied Princess Victoria.

True genius comes with a true humility, people so caught up with their field of expertise that they do not worry about trivial priorities of the materialistic world – the photographs of Albert Einstein also illustrating how a true genius displays an indifference to the sort of values many now regarded as important.

Focus is a choice

The runner who is concentrating on how much his left toe hurts will be left in the dust by the runner who is focusing on winning. Even if the winner's toe hurts just as much.

Pain, even when real, is also a matter of perception. Most of what we think about is.

We have a choice about where to aim the lens of our attention. We can relive past injustices, settle old grudges and nurse festering sores. We can imagine failure, build up it's potential for destruction, calculate its odds. Or, we can imagine the generous outcomes we're working on, feel gratitude for those that got us here and revel in the possibilities of what's next.

The focus that comes automatically isn't the only one that's available. Of course it's difficult to change it, which is why so few people manage to do so. But there's no work that pays off better in the long run.

Your story is your story. But you don't have to keep reminding yourself of your story, not if it doesn't help you change it or the work you're doing.

The runway gets shorter..

Life is like a plane taking off down a runway. As you get older, there's more runway behind you than in front of you. It's inescapable. You see it when celebrities you admire, who are your own age, die. Like David Bowie or Johan Cruyff.

When you see a picture of Harald Schmidt and he looks old, but happy -- and when you're writing about it you pause because you can't remember the name of his funny partner.

There's not so much time left. That's so true. 

What's also true is the great song that The Supremes sang in the sixties. You can't hurry love. It's a game of give and take, somehow between the two forces, life happens. And then you take off for the skies.

Germany and Greece now

Greece is becoming a “human skip” into which the EU is happy to dump countless refugees. It is like a giant Gaza Strip, teeming with people who want to move, but are not allowed to. And what is the cause of Greece’s problems? German policy over which the Greeks and the rest of the EU have no influence.

Germany wants the rest of the EU to take it's “fair share” of what many EU countries see as Germany’s migrants. Germany invited them in, so many European countries are saying: “You deal with them, they’re your problem.” This division is particularly stark between the central European, former communist countries and Germany.

Immigrants, by definition, compete with the poorest local people in the job market, in the housing market and for access to health and schools. This is a fact. Economists tend to miss the central point. While the economy might get workers, society gets people.

But for the relatively wealthy, immigration is a boon. There are more taxi drivers, more cleaners, more shop assistants, more nannies; in short, the service economy, the one that services the relative wealthy, booms. The relatively wealthy don’t have to worry about immigrants pushing up rents because the immigrants can’t afford to live in posh areas, so they compete for housing not with the relatively wealthy, but with the relatively poor.

Immigration is a class issue, and the richer you are, the greater the luxury you have to pontificate about immigration because either you are not affected; or if you are, you are affected positively. It is completely unclear how the experiment will end that the German chancellor has forced upon the European Continent.

Retired?

I thought I was retired. I thought retired people were bored. I recall being bored for half an hour once, in (I think) 1967. Whatever the opposite of bored is, I am. Bootstrap isn't going to help with that.

Roll with the changes!

Maybe Handball...

... instead of Football? Got my official T-Shirt today anyway, the day before my 9th birthday. Looking good! 

Happy leap year day everybody!

I can see clearly now, or soon..

Here I am in the Augenklinik in Tuttlungen 20 minutes after my successfull eye operation last Tuesday. Thanks to the team that took such great care of me, especially to Dr. Mathey for his steady hands and June for the ambulance service. It's nice to have it over and done with. 

The official term for what took place is "pars plana vitrectomy with membrane peeling".
Sometimes, as a result of immune system response to protect the retina, cells converge in the macular area as the vitreous ages and pulls away in posterior vitreous detachment (PVD). Usually it occurs in one eye first, and may cause double vision if the image from one eye is too different from the image of the other eye. The distortions can make objects look different in size (usually larger = macropsia), especially in the central portion of the visual field, creating a localized or field dependent aniseikonia that cannot be fully corrected optically with glasses. Partial correction often improves the binocular vision considerably though. In the young (under 50 years of age), these cells occasionally pull free and disintegrate on their own; but in the majority of sufferers (over 60 years of age) the condition is permanent. The underlying photoreceptor cells, rod cells and cone cells, are usually not damaged unless the membrane becomes quite thick and hard; so usually there is no macular degeneration. Surgeons can remove or peel the membrane through the sclera and improve vision by 2 or more Snellen lines. Usually the vitreous is replaced at the same time with clear (BSS) fluid, in a vitrectomy. There is no good evidence for any preventive actions, since it appears this is a natural response to aging changes in the vitreous 

So make sure you have your eyes tested before you're 60 so that you can still climb trees with your grandchildren, right Joyce?

  

When we were "fab"

David Frost makes the introduction, Paul looks soulfully into the camera. You think, what a ham. Then he opens his mouth and out comes Hey Jude. A beautiful memory, for this old child of the sixties at least.

Selling Kunst again

Starting to work on a new Website for Gerhard Messner raises the old question of how much influence the customer should have on the design. There are few illustrators who have a more recognizable look (and a longer productive career) than Milton Glaser.

Here's the thing: When he started out, he wasn't THE Milton Glaser. He was some guy hoping for work. The best design rule, then, is that you can't give the client what he thinks he wants.

You have to give the client work that you want your name on. Work that reflects your vision, your contribution and your hand.That makes it really difficult at first. Almost impossible sometimes. But if I ignore this rule because the pressure is on, it will never get easier.

So, Bootstrap it is!

Bowie and Buckley

This interview with William F. Buckley, which I saw in the movie Best of Enemies, about his adversarial relationship with Gore Vidal, really made an impression on me. That it is possible to reach a point in life where you're so tired, so out of ideas, that you wouldn't go back and do it again. 

Here's the beginning of the interview.

Rose: Do you wish you were 20?

Buckley: No. Absolutely not. No. If I had a pill that would reduce my age by 25 years I wouldn't take it. 

Rose: Why not?

Buckley: Because I'm tired of life.

It's such a contrast to David Bowie's last statement about his life. He says better hurry up to express what you have to say because you'll find time runs out before you're finished. 

I go back and forth on this. There are still a lot of things I'd like to do that I'm pretty sure I won't get to do. I am disappointed in the way some things have turned out. I also am at times somewhat tired of life but I have many more moments when I'm not. 

I think as you get older you have a bit of Bowie and a bit of Buckley. You go back and forth. I think eventually, if you live long enough you do get tired of life, the repetition, the roles we're expected to play, whether they fit or not. The endless arguments that never get resolved. The pointless will of human beings. 

PS: If someone offered me a pill that would make me 20, I'd take it!

(Many thanks to Dave Winer for finding the words.)

The first fifteen minutes

Learning something new is frustrating. It involves being dumb on the way to being smart.

Once we get good enough (at our tools, at our work) it's easier and easier to skip learning how to do the next thing, because, hey, those fifteen minutes are a hassle.

Learning to use the new fax machine, or a different interface on the voice mail or even, yikes, a new version of Excel. (I confess that I dropped off the Office train in 2010.)

And so we get in the habit of giving a half effort, not really reading the instructions, shrugging our shoulders and moving on. The professional in us that was always eager to find tools that added leverage becomes the complacent coaster, defending what's on the table as 'good enough'. 

The problem with evaluating the first fifteen minutes of frustration is that we easily forget about the 5,000 minutes of leverage that frustration earns us if we stick it out.

Yes, Isaac Asimov typed all 400 of his books on a manual typewriter. But I'm glad Cory Doctorow has a laptop.