arbitrary user

Jonathan Endersby, Recovering Technologist

Archive for category Philosophy

Learning Photography

Dec 4

Posted by arbitraryuser in Philosophy, Photography | No Comments

This started as a comment on Joe’s blog post about one of the courses at the Cape Town School of Photography. I do not consider myself a good photographer by an stretch of the imagination, but I do have fun and right now I’m happy with that. One day when I live on a farm I’ll get past step 3.

I think the best way to learn is to:

  1. Learn the absolute basics of photography – Buy a book on photography… If the book pre-dates digital it’s a good thing!.
  2. Figure out how the basic photography concepts map to your camera.
  3. Take lots of pictures. Set yourself goals like “Today I’m going to take pictures of straight lines” etc.
  4. Repeat step number 3 for 6 months to a year.
  5. Consider going on an advanced course but it must be a *photography* course, not a DSLR course… Aspiring writers don’t go on MS Word courses, neither should you.
  6. Try and find people on websites like flickr whose stuff you really like and examine it in depth… figure out exactly what it is about a certain photograph that you like. Try remember that stuff next time you’re taking photographs.
  7. Start critiquing your photographs. A tiny bit of over exposure, slightly off composition etc. If you can, get other photographers to do the same for you… unfortunately you might not agree with what they have to say… everyone has their own style.
  8. Apply the critique and tighten up your technique.
  9. Ask yourself the question: Am I trying to be a photographer or take photographs that capture something, say something, do something?
  10. Do whatever it is that makes step 9 a reality.

Murray and Goethe

Nov 9

Posted by arbitraryuser in Life, Philosophy | 5 Comments

Until one is committed, there is hesitancy, the chance to draw back, always ineffectiveness. Concerning all acts of initiative (and creation), there is one elementary truth the ignorance of which kills countless ideas and splendid plans: that the moment one definitely commits oneself, the providence moves too. A whole stream of events issues from the decision, raising in one’s favor all manner of unforeseen incidents, meetings and material assistance, which no man could have dreamt would have come his way. I learned a deep respect for one of Goethe’s couplets: “Whatever you can do or dream you can, begin it. Boldness has genius, power and magic in it!”

- W. H. Murray

ps. I’m engaged :)

Let The Police Eat Cake

Jun 14

Posted by arbitraryuser in Life, Philosophy, Service | 1 Comment

A few months ago we had some hassles in Obs with criminals stealing car wheels. Eventually it was happening almost nightly. The Neighbourhood Watch (I’m a member, how responsible of me!) started ramping up their patrolling and putting pressure on the police to catch the guys. Within a few days a sharp eyed policeman spotted something trying to hide next to a car with a wheel spanner in his hand. Within minutes they had 4 guys in custody… I was out on a patrol at the time, ironically one road up from where the guys were eventually caught. That night at the Woodstock police station I promised to organise some cake for the police to say thanks.

I pinged a few of the more active neighbourhood watchers and a few agreed to help out financially… Then I though about Charly’s! If you want awesome cake you have to go to Charly’s, but it’s not cheap. I mailed Charly’s and asked if they’d be willing to give us a discount for a good cause. To my surprise they said they’d give us cake for free!  This was brilliant. We used the additional funds to buy other stuff like samoosas and coke etc. To our absolute surprise, when we went to go and collect the cake they had even decorated each one with a police theme!

All in all a nice little party (we actually had two parties to cover both shifts). A big thank you to Charly’s and the other ONW members who helped out.

cake_burglerP4160050cake_detail

The coming revolution…

Dec 17

Posted by arbitraryuser in Aggregate This, Life, Philosophy, Tech | 1 Comment

The internet, for all it’s vices, has made the world an incredibly small place. I buy books from Seattle, business cards from London and storage space from San Diego. I chat with friends in New Zealand, India, Finland and Joburg on a daily basis. At ground level the online economy seems pretty stable. Online businesses are lean, mean, fighting machines forged in the dot-bomb furnace. Compared to the sumo wrestling auto industry we’re Ethiopian long distance runners. (Enough with the analogies now)

The offline world however is in a crisis, big corporations are falling over on a weekly basis… most of them failing due to fat cat, short sighted management, while others are just innocent victims of the carpet bombing that is this economic train wreck.

Then I read things like this. George Oates, one of the key people and designer at Flickr, got let go by Yahoo, who bought flickr a few years ago. It’s not so much the fact that they let George go, but rather they way they did it… Basically getting her manager to call her while she was overseas and read a message to her from a scripted “cheers” letter. Her blog post about the ordeal is brutal. Within 14 hours of the call she had lost all her privileged access to all that was flickr; something that had been the centre of her life for many many years.

George’s story is the logical conclusion of the ‘corporatised’ world that we’ve all bought into… and I think the world is starting to see the folly in supporting a system that can turn around and kick you out when you least expect or deserve it.

I have this sense that people are starting to dislike, and distrust, big corporations. In the 50′s and 60′s corporations were the saviours of the failing economy, hell, if you could work for a corporation you were sitting pretty… Working for a corporation meant you had a stable job and even though all you got for 50 years of service was a hundred dollar watch (who needs a watch when you’re retired anyway?), you were happy to have had the job.

But the world is different now, for whatever reasons people expect more from life than just ‘having a job’. We want to have fun, be challenged, enjoy working, laugh, be successful and get home on time to have make supper for our smiling kids and watch 30 Rock on Tivo.

So where does this leave the workforce? Well, the internet is making *not* working for a corporation easier and easier. Now days your small print shop in a side street of London can turn into an international brand with customers from Tibet to Texas, but, most importantly, that small print shop doesn’t need to become a overweight corporation in order to carry on being successful. It’s the long tail global customer effect. Hell, you could sell clothing for conjoined twins on the internet and still swing a profit.

Perhaps more interestingly though, the internet has made running your own company a lot easier. Re-read that last sentence. The internet has been around for almost a gabillion years now, but it seems like only in the last 5 years has the promise of “running an online business from your garage” come true.

Perhaps the supreme irony of the situation is that Yahoo itself was once a small company that got big, and in turn bought up flickr, the blood, sweat and tears of a small team, most of whom have subsequently left Yahoo or been fired. How different life would have been for all those people who gave birth to flickr, if they’d just stayed a small team who focused on being the best and staying happy while doing it…

Corporations have been holding the workforce hostage… but the distributed client base and self organisation of the internet is starting to make it harder and harder to not start your own thing, or join a small company with big vision.

Similarly customers are more and more looking for micro providers, buying local produce, supporting up and coming manufacturers and looking to identify themselves as unique by buying products that weren’t made in batches of a million. Perhaps it’s the inherent knowledge that the companies that are producing t-shirts in batches of a million are run by the same kind of people that will fire you from the very company you helped start and feel nothing while doing it.

You’re a person… let the machines be the robots. The revolution is coming, and it won’t be televised, it’ll be broadcast.

Is not doing evil good enough?

Dec 11

Posted by arbitraryuser in Aggregate This, Observation, Philosophy | 1 Comment

Number six in Google’s “Ten things Google has found to be true” is “You can make money without doing evil.”

I’m not saying that running an ad like this is evil, but it certainly isn’t good.

Does Google have a moral/ethical responsibility to censor its advertisers?

Function vs Creativity

Nov 9

Posted by arbitraryuser in Aggregate This, Philosophy | No Comments

I could go on a bit about how we spent the weekend being all domestic; doing garden work, making jam and oat cookies, fitting new bathroom fixtures and an extractor fan, but I won’t. Because none of those things matter really.

What matters is what you do, not what you have… and yes, installing an extractor fan is important, but it’s not the kind of “doing” that matters.

Compare “installing a mould reducing extractor fan” to “pouring bright coloured paint onto a large canvas”:

One is pure function while the other is pure creativity. I don’t want to get stuck in a trap of functional “doing”. I need to find some other thing to “do” with my life or little johnny will become a duller boy.

ps. The place is coming along beautifully… And I’m really enjoying the process.

Funny Moment from my Life #5694

Oct 30

Posted by arbitraryuser in Aggregate This, Life, Philosophy | 2 Comments

Just came out of a meeting and noticed a new comment waiting to be moderated on one of my blog posts.

It was from a post about property that I wrote a while back. The comment seemed legit enough, a little off topic, but still legit… Then I noticed the url that the poster had used… it pointed to a joburg based property company’s website. I viewed their site and noticed that their SEO was being done by a South African SEO company… Funny that… Lets look at the poster’s email address domain… oh look, owned by the SEO company.

So I called them and asked to speak to the girl who’s name was used… I told her what had happened and asked her, very nicely, whether she thought that sort of thing was ethical.

You’ll never guess what she said.

“No, it’s not ethical“… She sounded ashamed and admitted to not wanting to do that kind of thing, but not having a choice.

“I hope you find a better job soon” I sheepishly suggested…

I’m not going to pretend I could ever understand what kind of situation she’s in that she feels she has to continue working for a bunch of spammers, but I sincerely hope that she gets out of there fast. Allowing your integrity to be eroded is not a healthy place for any decent human being to be in… and she sounded like a decent human being.

Just a quick thought

Oct 30

Posted by arbitraryuser in Aggregate This, Life, Observation, Philosophy | 3 Comments

A friend of mine has this boss who works till 9pm most nights. She’s doesn’t have kids and she’s married to a guy who lives in Joburg. She has achieved a lot. She is an achiever. She earns a fat salary. She drives a nice car. People know her name. She’s actually a nice person too.

Now she wants my friend to work late as well. My friend isn’t happy about that.

It all depends on what your priorities are. There are no wrongs and rights here.

On saturday I’m going to remove the kitchen door that has swelled slightly and plane it down so that it doesn’t scrape on the floor any more. For some reason that is a priority for me.

On saturday evening I think we’ll end up sitting on a couch and drinking champagne (it’s the day we move in after all)… That time, with just the two of us, is a priority for me.

The difference of course is that when I’m 70 years old I’ll have the memory of that evening we sipped champagne and that day I fixed the door on my very first house. I’ll also have all those evenings where we talked rubbish while cooking supper together, watched inane tv shows and played with the cat.

I guess what I’m trying to say is that I’d rather have those memories than a fancy car and a list of people who know my name, but I respect any person’s decision to focus on those things.

Years ago I worked for a large travel company. There was an old lady who worked there… her job, for the previous 25 odd years, had been to travel the world and write about her adventures. One night at a company dinner she was telling us stories about all the incredible places she had been. Another woman of similar age said to her, “Oh, I wish I had lived your life, it sounds so amazing!“… To which the jaded traveler replied rather seriously “I would trade you my entire life for one week with a loving husband and children!“.

I think I was 19 at the time… Those words continue to haunt me… and guide me.

If you want real people don’t make them wear a uniform.

Oct 9

Posted by arbitraryuser in Aggregate This, Life, Philosophy | 6 Comments

We get invited to quite a few media things… Normally I don’t need to worry about what I wear. I have some smart stuff and some casual stuff. My “Beware of Squirrels, They’ll Steal Your Nuts” shirt was stolen, and that was the most “out there” thing I owned.

But now we’re invited to some or other launch and they’ve stipulated their dress code as “Elegant Casual, Jackets for Gents“.

This sort of thing makes me so angry I can not tell you…. and I know it’s really dumb that it irks me, but it does. I don’t wear jackets…. It’s just not me… but yet they want *me* to go…  so I have to dress up like someone else in order to fit into their stupid fancy dress party.

The world is a fascinatingly diverse place; Why on gods green earth would you want people to hide that diversity by all dressing the same? Hell, I only ever go to these things because of the interesting people, now I’ll have to actually *talk* to them in order to find out whether or not they’re boring-jacket-wearers.

over and out.

ps. You just know that some stinking-rich couldn’t-give-a-fuck-billionaire is going to rock up in shorts and a t-shirt.

The Internet – Don’t Broadcast Yourself

Sep 30

Posted by arbitraryuser in Aggregate This, Philosophy, Where is the love? | No Comments

The internet is about 2 way communication. A company that “broadcasts” but doesn’t enter into a dialog runs the risk of alienating their customers and appearing authoritarian.

Recently a bit of an online dispute arose when a local representative from a security company failed to adequately respond to some criticism from members of community mailing list that I’m on… not only did he fail, but when the pressure got too much he just disappeared and stopped responding to the list members questions.

Then a few days later the regional GM of the security company wrote a response, but instead of joining the list and posting as himself, ie. embracing dialog, he chose to ask one of the list moderators to post the email on his behalf. That undermines the dialog since no one knows whether he will ever read the replies.

While he did address some of the issues and make promises to meet with community, his email generally  felt a lot like something between a press release and damage control. It was impersonal and failed to address all the complaints.

However, my biggest criticism of the communication was the GM’s suggestion that people submit their issues or complaints in writing directly to the local representative instead of airing them on a public forum and asking for public response.

This is where I get up on my angry horse and start shouting. That’s the “old way”… this is the “new way”. In the “old way” you could tell each customer who complained “We’re sorry you had that experience but no one else is having a problem so it must be an isolated incident“… The “old way” isn’t going to work any more, and the more companies try and push people back to the “old way”, the more they’ll think you have something to hide.

The good news is that a company who embraces the “new way” can reap the rewards. If you respond on a public forum to one person’s issue you’re actually communicating with the entire group in a personal manner, and they all walk away thinking you’re a good guy who answers their questions and deals with their issues, even if you weren’t actually responding to a question they asked.

It remains to be seen what the fallout from this issue is, but it certainly isn’t having a positive effect on the company’s sales… especially since I need to decide which security company to use in a months time.