elliot.my

  • I have zero interest in a video of some rich twat giving a University commencement speech.

  • “Accountability sinks” – A Working Library°

    In The Unaccountability Machine, Dan Davies argues that organizations form “accountability sinks,” structures that absorb or obscure the consequences of a decision such that no one can be held directly accountable for it. Here’s an example: a higher up at a hospitality company decides to reduce the size of its cleaning staff, because it improves the numbers on a balance sheet somewhere. Later, you are trying to check into a room, but it’s not ready and the clerk can’t tell you when it will be; they can offer a voucher, but what you need is a room. There’s no one to call to complain, no way to communicate back to that distant leader that they’ve scotched your plans. The accountability is swallowed up into a void, lost forever.

    Being unable or unwilling to follow a chain of decisions and their outcome – and not hold decision makers accountable – is one of the biggest creators of bad businesses.

  • Dr Pepper just doesn’t hit like when I was a kid.

  • The article I linked to about Japanese clutter mentioned the Collyer brothers° who were hoarders who died in their home – one after being trapped by the rubble, the other of starvation.

    They were born in the 1880’s and died in 1947. And it got me thinking about how far back certain mental illnesses go.

    Some I’m sure are caused or exacerbated by our modern world. But surely some mental illnesses were present in tribes, say, 30,000 years ago. Did any of them get depression, ADHD, hoarding, PTSD, OCD, or eating disorders? Which ones are inherent in our make-up?

  • I’m listening to The National’s album “First Two Pages of Frankenstein” (Spotify link).

    I’ve never listened to their stuff before. Just one song: ‘About Today’ (Spotify link), that I discovered via it being in “Warrior” (2011).

    There was a profile of the band I bookmarked though. I didn’t bother reading the article – it was too long and I’m not that interested. But it said their new album was good. So here I am, checking it out.

    It’s okay. I probably need to give it a second listen, as I’ve had it on in the background as I read and write. But currently it’s a 5/10. The songs are too dull and too similar. Oddly enough, the best song on the album is the one with Taylor Swift (Spotify link).

  • Exploring Are.na. I couldn’t get my head around it when I first signed up in 2022. I’m still struggling, but I think I get it now. It’s the thinking persons Pinterest?

    I’m not a huge fan of its design. It feels very 2012 to me – with its heavy use of Helvetica and whitespace. It just doesn’t inspire my creativity.

    But feel free to follow me on there. You never know, I might find a use for it.

  • Talking of Japan, I’m a big fan of Japanese ambient music (Spotify playlist). And I noticed whilst looking at Haruka Nakamura’s albums that some of them are official soundtracks for manga comics.

    I didn’t realise that was a thing. And I’m still not 100% sure how it works. Are you meant to read the manga whilst listening to the music? If so, I love it. What a beautiful idea.

    1.86.0-TZPVOLRPBYUP57Q2DTET6RSXD4.0.1-5

    I was listening to the soundtrack for “Look Back“. It’s a lovely little album (Spotify link). Especially the last song ,‘Light song’, which is beautiful.

  • “The life-changing magic of Japanese clutter” – Aeon°

    The world still turns to Japan for things; it also turns to Japan to rid itself of them. There’s only one problem: Japan isn’t anywhere near as tidy as outside observers give it credit for.

    […] While treatises abound on Japanese simplicity, minimalist design and culture, precious little is written about the nation’s masterfully messy side.

    A long read on how Japan isn’t the minimalist paradise Westerners often think it is.

    To be fair, as a Westerner, I do associate minimalist interiors with Japan. But I also associate incredibly maximalist spaces with it too. It’s either one or the other, in my mind.

    Why can maximalist spaces be worthwhile?:

    Cosily curated Japanese clutter-spaces are different [to modern minimalism. There is a meticulousness to the best of them that is on a par with the mental effort poured into simplifying something: a deliberate aesthetic decision to add, rather than subtract – sometimes mindfully, sometimes unconsciously, but always, always individually. Clutter offers an antidote to the stupefying standardisation of so much of modern life.

    The article mentions the photobook “Tokyo Style” by Kyoichi Tsuzuki that showed a Tokyo “startlingly unlike the rarefied minimalism that the world had come to expect from Japan. Tsuzuki’s photos were a joyous declaration to the contrary, celebrating the vitality of living spaces filled with wall-to-wall clutter.”

    Many of the photos in the book do show anti-minimalist spaces. But some don’t. Including the cover, which I’d say has many minimalist cliches like a bed on the floor, just a couple of plain t-shirts, and just one form of entertainment – music in this intance.

    The article mentioned ōhsōji, “an annual year-end tidying-up emerged as a popular ritual among the masses, a ‘big cleaning’ to ring in the New Year.”

    I like the sound of that and adopt it as a tradition. Post-Christmas is when a home is at its most messy and cluttered. Apparently ōhsōji is done between Christmas and New Years day.

    I think I’d prefer to do mine in January. I like that those days between Christmas and New Years where the house is strewn with wrapping, presents and half-eaten food. I wouldn’t want my ōhsōji to be too early. January 1st is the best time, for me.

    If you go to Studio Ghibli’s offices in the leafy western suburbs of Tokyo you’ll stumble upon the “immaculately designed and managed facility replica of the director Hayao Miyazaki’s workspace. It is a glorious mess. Heirloom-grade wooden shelves, overflowing with bric-a-brac and thick tomes, line the walls.”

    In searching around for the highest quality copies of the images above 👆 I stumbled upon this random which. I like it and it does give off a somewhat similar vibe to Miyazaki’s workspace.

  • Just discovered that ⌘ + S will save your draft in the WordPress editor. Good to know.

  • Morning all 🍂

    UK-folk, don’t forget to get yourself into some woods in the next few weeks — the leaves are looking gorgeous. They’re even managing to give some autumnal life and deep colours to this drab industrial estate.

    My Saturday agenda:

    • 📖 Read
    • 🪑 Ikea
    • 🥾 Walk
    • 🍿 Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers

  • “Speed matters: Why working quickly is more important than it seems” – James Somers°

    The obvious benefit to working quickly is that you’ll finish more stuff per unit time. But there’s more to it than that. If you work quickly, the cost of doing something new will seem lower in your mind. So you’ll be inclined to do more.

    […] Time is especially valuable. So as we learn that a task is slow, an especial cost accrues to it. Whenever we think of doing the task again, we see how expensive it is, and bail.

    That’s why speed matters.

    […] The prescription must be that if there’s something you want to do a lot of and get good at—like write, or fix bugs—you should try to do it faster.

    That doesn’t mean be sloppy. But it does mean, push yourself to go faster than you think is healthy.

    […] Being fast is fun. If you’re a fast writer, you’ll constantly be playing with new ideas. You won’t be bogged down in a single dread effort. And because your to-do list gets worked off, you’ll always be thinking of more stuff to add to it.

    I have a tendency to try and perfect things and do them too well. ‘Good enough’ is something I need to say way more often.

    I’ve known that for a while. But what this article made me realise is that if I am faster – and tasks are less arduous – I might be more likely to start tasks. And struggling to start tasks is something I severely suffer from daily.

    I’m going to start right now, in fact.

    I have blog post I drafted earlier. I’m not going to perfect it. Instead I’m going to set myself a 15 minute timer and get it published.

    Update: I did it.

  • I’ve been considering writing a “Working With Me” document for some time. But I always feel like it’s a bit… much.

    I stumbled upon this persons one on GitHub and I rather like it.

    It’s simple and to the point (no pun intended). And gives a good overview without going into the weeds.

    If I ever do write my own I think I’ll follow their 👆 lead.

    Update: In fact, I’ve created a generic template for it, based on his (I hope you don’t mind Andy). The .md file is here.

  • The permalink structure for the posts on this blog are like: https://elliot.my/1234.

    I like it because it’s short. And this blog is for short posts. It works.

    However, the number comes from the post_id. And it just doesn’t feel very resilient if I have to backup and restore this blog on a new server, for example. In my head the post_id will be different.

    Apparently it won’t be an issue though. It’s stored in the blogs WordPress MySQL database. So if I can restore the blog and its posts, then I can restore the post_id‘s too. So I guess I’m comfortable with that.

    However, if I can’t restore the blog automatically due to some sort of awful data loss, and have to restore more manually I might be in trouble.

    Because if the structure is like https://elliot.my/2024/10/18/title-of-post it’s fairly easily to manually recreate, as long as I know the date and title of the post.

    Or let’s say I want to move this blog off WordPress onto Hugo. Hugo will easily create URLs that match, again going off the date and title.

    But with https://elliot.my/1234 I’m going to have to manually tell it what the permalink is.

    I’m probably worrying about nothing. It’s unlikely I’m going to ever manually restore this blog. If I do, I’ll probably have bigger things to worry about.

    The post_id still makes me nervous. But I’m going to keep using it, as I like the short URLs.

    One more thing. The post_id isn’t really a post ID. Every media upload and post revision/draft has a post_id too.

    My last blog post had an ID of 433. The one before that 430. As I’d obviously hit ‘Save draft’ a few times.

    A concern I had was how quickly the number would climb. If it’s the four hundreds after 28 posts and 8 days, what will the number be in 1 year? Or 5 years?

    Assuming a similar pace:

    • After one year: around 20,000.
    • After five years: around 100,000.

    I think having a six digit ID after five years is fine. I mean Twitter has 20 digits or so.

  • List of individual rocks – Wikipedia°

    The following is a list of notable rocks and stones.

  • In a world where every ‘An Update on Your Subscription” email I get is about a price increase, it’s nice to get a decrease for once.

    Having said that the email reminds me that I must cancel my subscription. Uber One remains an indulgence and it encourages me to get Uber Eats.

  • A generation gets their John Lennon moment (kind of). “Liam Payne, former One Direction singer, dies aged 31”.

  • Terminally ill could end their life if two doctors and a judge agree – The Times

    A judge and two doctors will have to agree that terminally ill patients can be helped to end their lives under a proposed law to be introduced on Wednesday.

    I am for assisted dying. As long as reasonable safe guards are in place, people should be able to end their life if they so wish.

    This bill is just for the terminally ill who have 6-12 months to live. But it’s a start.

    The bill is expected to pass.

  • I envy people who can be productive in a coffee shop or office. My ideal working condition is a a dark, windowless pit devoid of light and people.

  • Cheating alleged after men’s world conker champion found with steel chestnut – The Guardian°

    The winner, 82-year-old David “King Conker” Jakins that he used a steel conker to win.

    This is his first time winning the competition, after 47 years of trying (since 1977).

    To be honest, after 47 years I’d be tempted to cheat to win too.

    The chap who lost in the men’s final against “King Conker” said:

    “My conker disintegrated in one hit, and that just doesn’t happen … I’m suspicious of foul play and have expressed my surprise to organisers.”

    I love stories like this.

    And I’m pleased and surprised to see it get attention from both Hacker News and Sky News (video).

    Update, 22 October 2024: He’s been declared innocent. The trial of the century is over.

  • Dave Winer has been talking about how he’s hooked up his WordPress blog to Mastodon.1 He raved about the possibilities it opens up. But he was light about how to do actually go about setting it up.

    It seems like you need to:

    • Install ActivityPub WordPress plugin.
    • Click the checkbox of ‘Enable Blog-Profile’ in the settings of the plugin.
    • That’s it? After that it seems like it just works. For example, you can follow this elliot.my blog by searching @blog@elliot.my in Mastodon of other ActivityPub sites. Here’s the profile on Mastodon.cloud and Micro.blog.

    I’m hoping this post will show up!

    Update: this is me doing an update to see if it gets picked up by the Fediverse.

    Update 2: it only bloodly works! Not only the post – even the body of the post appears! But also the edits. The edit I’m writing right now I’m sure will be picked up.

    Update 3: Mastodon updates when I update here, but Micro.blog doesn’t. Oh well.

    1. Or more specifically ActivityPub. ↩︎