I’ve worked as a contractor in the IT industry for several decades and I’ve often noted the parallels between the contracting world and the acting world. Even more so since IR35 started to affect actors and TV presenters as well as those of us in the IT industry.
As a contractor you are recruited to work on a project with other contractors and it may be for a month or a year, or longer. You become good friends working together but eventually the project comes to an end and you move on. You may meet up again with one or two of your colleagues on a future project, or you may never see them again. If you do conferences and speaking engagements you may run into someone you worked with once, or not.
With acting you are hired for a TV show or movie and you work on it until it is complete, cancelled, or your role comes to an end. You move on to other shows or movies and may run into other actors that you have worked with before, or you may never work with them again. If you do conventions you may run into other actors that you’ve worked with before, or not.
I see you
Many many years ago I went to a Commodore Amiga scene party. My friends and I were setting up when I heard someone mention that a particular graphics artist well known in the scene was sitting at a nearby table. At the time I was an aspiring graphics artist myself and admired his work. I went over and introduced myself. I may have gone a little fanboy on him if I’m honest.
I returned to my friends and one asked “Who was the guy in the wheelchair you were talking to?”. I turned around and looked over and sure enough he was sitting in a wheelchair at his computer. I hadn’t even noticed. Not that it mattered. All I saw was talent and I wanted to meet the guy.
I recall this event now and again as it serves to remind me that the physical stuff doesn’t really matter. It’s all about who you are inside and what you can do with what you have.
Road rage and wing mirrors
I enjoy driving. Especially out on country roads away from the major roads, towns and people. Lately though I’ve been encountering aggressive drivers. People driving angry, not realising that they are taking their anger out on other road users, using their vehicles to intimidate and cause accidents.
On one occasion a young lad tried overtaking me illegally but didn’t make the overtake and got real angry as if I had somehow slighted his manhood. He followed me home aggressively driving, mimicking trying to swerve into me or rear-end me to try to make me crash. I slowed but he refused to overtake. I had a forward-facing dash cam but not rear and I think he knew that.
He became really dangerous and the police became involved but it was my word against his as the police will do nothing without dash cam footage as proof. How have we got to the point where people can use their car as a weapon and unless you have video footage nothing will happen to them?
On another occasion an oncoming driver in my lane took out my wing mirror but it was night time and my dash cam only caught their headlights. I learned the hard way that in such circumstances insurance companies will claim against you. Even though it was not your fault, insurance companies need someone to claim against so they penalise you for making a claim. They will repair the damage but they will class it as a fault on your insurance history and will increase your future premiums.
It seems that the only way to combat these scenarios is to fit 360 degree dash cams with night-vision and anti-glare technology. Either that or take public transport.
Under and over qualified
I’ve been applying for jobs recently and I’ve received several “Sorry but you are over / under qualified for this position” responses. That is if I do get a response at all.
I recently applied for a role where several friends worked and were encouraging me to apply. The work looked interesting but the rate was far lower than what I usually command and I could do the work in my sleep as I was way over-qualified for the position IMO. Imagine my surprise when I heard back “Sorry but you are not qualified enough for this position”. My first thought was, wow, really? WTF? My second was to become somewhat irritated by this. If I was honest with myself I didn’t really want the position but I still put in the effort when applying.
I dwelled on this (for far too long IMO) and it wasn’t until I spoke to a recruiter friend that I was finally able to let it go. They said that telling the candidate that they are under or over qualified has become a standard response where the client has provided no feedback or has given this statement as their standard response. Some sugar-coat it by saying something like “Unfortunately you have not been short-listed at this time as we felt there were other candidates with more relevant experience”. Whereas the truth is usually something like “There were other candidates with the skills and experience we needed that were willing to work for less money”.
Just remember it’s just a game. Try not to take it personally. If you do get feedback, chances are it’s all BS anyway.
Journaling
I was introduced to journaling many years ago and just kept doing it out of habit. You can write anything, it doesn’t have to have structure or purpose. Just write down random thoughts and musings (like I do here). It can have a therapeutic effect. I find it relaxing and a way of decluttering my mind. As I empty my thoughts onto the page I find that I feel much better afterwards. My brain generally works non-stop thinking about things and coming up with ideas and if I don’t do something with them it becomes cluttered and I find it hard to think about anything else. By emptying these thoughts out onto the page it frees up my brain to think about new things.
Although journaling does not need to be productive, sometimes it can be as a side-effect. For instance some of the things that have come out of my journaling are:
1. Jobs / tasks I need to add to my to-do list.
2. Article ideas.
3. Ideas for talks or events.
4. Subjects I’d like to learn more about.
5. People I haven’t thought about in a while that I should really reach out to.
6. Books I want to read, TV shows I want to catch up on, movies I’d like to watch.
7. Places I’d like to visit.
And the list goes on. Journaling can be both cathartic and a way of being productive at the same time. Why not give it a try?
Lamenting on customer service today
Depending on how old you are you may remember a time when you knew each member of the team that worked at your bank and they wanted to keep you as a customer and would rectify any problem no matter how small. Or when you received bad service at a large store even online you would receive great customer service to rectify the issue?
I can recall the early days of Twitter when there weren’t that many of us on there. I posted a tweet about a particular issue I had with a product one time and within the hour the company was in touch asking how they could resolve the issue to my satisfaction. Today you’d be hard pressed to be able to reach a human. You are more likely to encounter chatbots running on a pre-configured algorithmic loop, or AI of some sort. If you do manage to reach a human they probably don’t work for the company and are following a script delivered in broken english from a country far far away.
In the search for cheaper products and services, and larger profits, quality has suffered and when you want to complain there is no person to complain to.
You could use OSINT to reach the CEO and try complaining that way. I tried that once and he said he’d resolve the issue asap then behind the scenes got his PA to tell me to go away. One face for the publicity another for the actual service. We care, we care a lot.. about our profits and shareholders.
Remembering computer fairs
I saw an advert on FB recently for a local computer fair and it took me back twenty years to when I used to be a frequent visitor to them. I’d buy everything I would need to build a desktop PC from scratch and I would assemble it immediately when I got home. I’d haggle over each and every component umming and ahhing over specifications and budgets. Those were the days.
Today I prefer portability. Either a laptop or a bluetooth keyboard to turn my smartphone into a laptop. Something that I can slip into my backpack and set-up anywhere. Desktops seem so.. retro. Bulky, heavy, taking up too much space and not portable at all.
Still, it was enjoyable, albeit briefly, to recall the fun I had going to computer fairs and building a PC from scratch all those years ago.
The life of an SD card
I’ve purchased many SD cards and USB sticks over the years and I have a few thoughts on them.
You can shop around, do your research, and then buy cheap or expensive ones but regardless of what you buy you will still usually encounter the following:
1. The specs may not be as advertised. It may be slower than advertised for example.
2. It may be a fake. Even if bought from a legitimate source it may still be fake as there are so many of them about.
3. It may just die for no reason and you can’t return it if it has your private data on it so you are out of pocket.
4. It may need resizing on one OS and then fixing for use with another. Especially if being used to install or upgrade an OS like Linux.
5. It may corrupt your data, especially large files.
Smaller cards, especially microSD cards, die quickly in Kindle devices and dashcams. It’s something about how they are mounted and continually written to that just causes them to expire.
I go through SD cards and memory sticks fairly often. I have yet to find a make or model that can last years.
Some thoughts on procrastination
Have you ever noticed how easy it is to avoid doing something that you keep telling yourself you really need to do? Yet for some reason you find yourself doing unimportant chores or mindlessly surfing YouTube. Each day you beat yourself up for not doing the thing that you tell yourself is really important to you but you just keep finding reasons not to do it. Why do we procrastinate so much? Is it because we are afraid of the task in question? Maybe it’s just too hard or scary? Rather than avoid it why not think about it, not do it, but think about it. Do you really want to do it? Why not?
For me I wanted to be the best lead guitar player in the world. I even own several guitars and associated equipment but I never play them. I had music lessons as a teenager, and I still know a few chords and riffs. But I never play. Occasionally I’ll pick one up but I’ll soon put it down again. You see, I like the idea of being an amazing axe man, but I have no passion for it when I really think about it. If I did I would be picking up a guitar every chance I got. It’s like I don’t want to let go of this dream I had as a kid, but part of me knows I have no real passion for it and the adult me doesn’t want to upset the child me.
Unlike wanting to be a Speedway rider (another childhood dream, which I am now too old to be) I still have time to master the guitar as age is not a restriction. Yet I continue to procrastinate. I think it’s time to let that dream go and focus on what is important to me, what I am passionate about, and how I really want to spend my time. It may even reduce the procrastination.
Maybe.
Musings on buying a laptop
I’m often asked how I purchase a laptop. What sort of things I consider. So I thought I’d jot them down here:
1. First I need a minimum spec as a starting point. You can get this by looking at the software or games you want to run as they publish the minimum and optimum PC specs they require. Do you want to run virtual machines? How many?
2. Once I have a rough idea of the spec I look at screen size and case. Do I want a small compact laptop that I will dock at home/office so I can use external monitors and peripherals, and it takes up less space when travelling? Or do I want a big screen?
3. Next I look at battery life and the battery itself. Is it replaceable and is there a market for third-party batteries for that range of laptop?
4. Next is the manufacturers themselves. I opt for ones I’ve used in the past and trust such as DELL or ASUS.
5. And lastly I’ll look to buy from a reputable source that I trust with a good return and repair service.
When buying a laptop spec you need to take into consideration the processing power (Intel/AMD, speed, number of cores), the amount of memory (8GB, 16GB, etc), the amount of hard drive space and whether it is solid state (no moving parts so less drain on the battery), the battery life and replaceability, and screen size. You may also wish to consider the amount of ports and type of ports it offers but you can get adaptors and splitters to enhance those.