Upgrading your car

future car

I’ve been thinking about upgrading my car. I don’t mean the mechanics or body. I mean the in-car electronic systems.

Let me explain. The year my car was released the manufacturer saw fit to install an SD card reader with an upper storage limit that was only a few MB above the current version of the TomTom navigation and head unit software. So the original owner was unable to upgrade the software without replacing the SD card reader. So the in-dash navigation unit keeps referring to turns and roundabouts that are no longer there.

Looking into the upgrade options, I could replace the SD card reader at considerable cost, then pay for the latest TomTom software for my head unit, which is now considered old tech. Or I could replace the entire head unit with a third-party Android unit avoiding the need to pay TomTom anything.

In addition to the head unit, the security system is also considered out-dated and even hackable. Like a Samsung mobile the manufacturer of my car abandoned support after several years and after realising there was a serious security flaw that could not be fixed cheaply. So they just fixed it in the next model.

And don’t get me started on the sound system, AC, and in-car illumination.

Upgrading modern cars feels more like upgrading your PC, only way more expensive and complex. And I’m not even talking about electric cars!

With age comes experience

I’ve been thinking about experience vs age.

Whilst looking for work I find myself reading a great many job adverts, and I find it amusing that companies looking for skilled individuals will list a lot of desired skills with the minimum number of years experience against each one, followed by words such as ‘junior’ or ‘graduate-level’. In other words they want someone young and cheap, but they are not legally allowed to say that.

The problem is that in order to obtain these required skills and experience another dimension must be taken into consideration: time. You see, what generally happens as you acquire 5+ years in a given skill is that you age. And given that some skills are linear whereby you progress from one set of skills to another, you tend to age more.

So with age comes experience and the longer that you are in the game acquiring skills and experience the older you get. So if you want someone that is highly skilled with lots of experience, you have to accept the fact that they will not be young nor ‘junior’.

Digital Minimalism

There’s an almost OCD quality around the art of minimalism. Owning only the fewest of items necessary to deliver the quality and experiences you desire from life. Everything in its place and position. Feng shui’d to perfection if you will. A tidy desk / room / office / house is a tidy mind as they say.

I’ve been thinking about minimalism recently, but in terms of the digital world. I hate clutter. I mean I really hate it. Things have to be tidy and in their place, and this goes for my devices. My laptop and tablet desktops need to be organised and de-cluttered. The amount of apps installed must not be excessive. The amount of data on my hard drives should not be more than is necessary to allow me to complete my work and to entertain me. Anything else should be backed-up to secure storage.

Many years ago when working for a large corporation, one of my tasks was OS-hardening. This involved taking a working solution and performing a deep-dive into the operating system of each server with a view to reducing its footprint. By that I mean reducing the amount of hard drive space needed in order for the system to perform the required tasks to the agreed requirements, securely. That meant removing all unnecessary applications and files, streamlining the OS down to the bare minimum, thus reducing its footprint. This reduced the need for large storage media, sped up install and backup times, and reduced the attack surface.

Although I no longer perform OS-hardening these days, I still have this almost OCD compulsion to continue to optimise all my devices, reducing the amount of apps installed to just enough to perform the required tasks, and to keep the data on the devices to a minimum. It can be very cathartic at times, and it keeps my devices from running out of storage space and from draining the battery too quickly.

I call it digital minimalism.

Acting Contractor

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.

journalling

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.