Women in the work of Francis Bacon

This is a terrible title for a good article of the women that Francis Bacon painted: Sex Scenes: Francis Bacon’s Bohemian Muse, Lesbian Bartender and Artist/Model – GARAGE

Besides the article, the close up photos are worth viewing: you can really get an appreciation for Bacon’s brush work in the photos.

Senior Citizens Are Replacing Teenagers as Fast-Food Workers. Some thoughts.

Worth reading: Senior Citizens Are Replacing Teenagers as Fast-Food Workers – Bloomberg.

Some thoughts:

  • the reasons to hire older workers for fast food places is also true for other work as well.
  • the notion of retirement needs to be rethought. People are living lives well past traditional retirement ages, and some people retire involuntarily decades before they die.  Additionally, many of them cannot afford to not work all that time. Having work and an income in their later years makes sense.
  • Good work is uplifting. If you can find good work as you get older, you can find a way to make your later years more worthwhile.

 

How art can make us more confident


According to this, art can make us more confident by providing us with stories and representations of people with characteristics we share that overcome similar obstacles that we run up against. After all….

Confidence isn’t the belief that we won’t meet obstacles. It is the recognition that difficulties are an inescapable part of all worthwhile contributions. We need to ensure we have to hand plenty of narratives that normalise the role of pain, anxiety and disappointment in even the best and most successful lives.

I agree.

The image is an extended version of the work highlighted in the article. Like the Stations of the Cross and other works, they illustrate the difficulties of a way of life, and by making us aware of them, allow us to best prepare to meet them and overcome them.

What You Can Control

While this article, What You Can Control at The Simple Dollar, is financially oriented, it really contains wisdom you can use in general. While this wisdom is obvious once you read it, most of us lose sight of this from time to time. Go remind of yourself of it by reading the article.

While I recommend reading the whole article, but here are some points I pulled from it:

  • You can’t control the actions of others
  • You can control how you respond to the actions of others
  • You can’t control natural forces
  • You can control how you prepare for the possibility of natural forces
  • You can’t control big expenses, especially unexpected ones.
  • You can control how you prepare for those unexpected expenses

Also:

When it comes to things completely outside of your control, it’s not very beneficial to you to exert time, energy, emotion, or focus on those things.

Finally:

In general, actions based on emotion in response to something you can’t control are awful choices.

Two good interviews with Jerry Seinfeld

These two interviews appeared in the New York Times in October and August and I was impressed by both of them, especially the first one below:

Seinfeld is smart and insightful and professional. He knows comedy and stand-up well and he’s thought a lot about it.

Stratechery: a great site you should read

First off, what is it? It’s this, via the About section of the site:

Stratechery provides analysis of the strategy and business side of technology and media, and the impact of technology on society. Weekly Articles are free, while three Daily Updates a week are for subscribers only.

Recommended by The New York Times as “one of the most interesting sources of analysis on any subject”, Stratechery has subscribers from over 85 different countries, including executives in both technology and industries impacted by technology, venture capitalists and investors, and thousands of other people interested in understanding how and why the Internet is changing everything.

Everything I’ve read on it has been insightful and in depth, including this piece on IBM and the acquisition of Red Hat.

OpenShift vs OpenStack: what’s the difference?

From OpenShift Origin vs OpenStack – Red Hat OpenShift Blog:

OpenStack provides “Infrastructure-as-a-Service”, or “IaaS”….

The OpenShift hosted service provides “Platform-as-a-Service” or “PaaS”. It provides the necessary parts to quickly deploy and run a LAMP application:

Concisely:

  • OpenStack = IaaS
  • OpenShift = PaaS

Slow Radio is a thing and a very good thing

I learned about Slow Radio here: I Listened To Slow Radio For A Week, And Here’s What Happened – HelloGiggles.

What is slow radio? According to that piece:

… it’s basically programming that moves at a very casual pace. It immerses you in sound to help you stay grounded in the present.

Is slow radio music, meditation, a catalog of sounds, or a podcast? The short answer: Yes. When you turn on slow radio, you won’t find any one thing in particular. One episode, you’ll get lost in ambient nature sounds. The next, you’ll hear slow-paced conversations about music. After that, you’ll take a trip through a soundscape on a bustling street in Japan.

 

Sound good? The BBC link to it is  here.

North, or advances in smart glasses since Google Glass.

Companies keep trying to make smart eyewear happen. First Google. Then Snapchat. Now there’s another company making a go at it. IT Business magazine has details on North, the company trying to make it happen here.

I think these are a big improvement on Google Glass. Is it enough? I don’t believe so. I think greater miniaturization needs to occur, such that there is very little difference between the shape of “dumb” eyewear and the shape of “smart” eyewear.

Meanwhile, we are getting closer to that time when there is very little difference. Stay tuned.

What the Internet is (and what it is not)

This is what the Internet is:

The internet is the wider network that allows computer networks around the world run by companies, governments, universities and other organisations to talk to one another. The result is a mass of cables, computers, data centres, routers, servers, repeaters, satellites and wifi towers that allows digital information to travel around the world.

The Internet is a network of networks. Much of what people believe the Internet is actually runs on top of it: the Web, social media, email, gopher, what have you.People often say “I liked the Internet when..”. They are talking about the platforms they use on the Internet. Things popular on the Internet now — hello Facebook! — will be a relic in the future.  Technologies running on the Internet come and often go,  but the Internet itself is relatively constant and changes slowly.

The quote highlighted above is from this article: What is the internet? 13 key questions answered | Technology | The Guardian. It’s a good introduction to the Internet at a basic level.

Taking a tiny home for a test drive

If you ever thought about living in a Tiny Home, here’s your chance to try them out before you buy one. Simply rent one of the ones listed here:  Tiny House Rentals for Your Next Getaway (Apartment Therapy). There is a range of places and styles and prices for them.

I have thought of living in one myself, but wondered if I could manage. This could be one way to find out.

Photo courtesy HomeAway

Sara restaurant in Toronto has a cool way to deal with cell phones at restaurants

According to blogTO, the tables are of a ….

…Design by ODAMI and MiiM (that) incorporates innovative tabletop cubbies with heavy, spill-proof lids designed to stow your phone at the beginning of the meal. Servers remove the lid at the end to remind you to return to your phone, and emerge from the period of serenity Sara offers diners.

Nice restaurant, great idea. For more on it, see:  Sara – blogTO – Toronto

Some thoughts on my new Amazon Fire 7 8GB FireOS 7″ Tablet for $59 at Bestbuy.ca


I saw this in Best Buy the other day, Amazon Fire 7 8GB FireOS 7″ Tablet With MediaTek MT8127 Quad-Core Processor – Black : Android Tablets – Best Buy Canada, and after reading some reviews and other articles (see below), I decided to get one. The $59 price tag had a lot to do with this.

My first thought was to try to use it as much as I could out of the box without making modifications to it. I set it up according to instructions, which were simple. I think you really want to have an Amazon account/userid to do this. I did and so things went smoothly.

The Amazon Fire has a modified version of the Android OS, which means it’s like an Android tablet, but not exactly. Likewise, Amazon has an App store, which is a limited version of the Google Play App store. You can get a number of apps from the Amazon App store, but not everything you can get on the Google Play store.

I wanted this device mainly as a place to consume media. Good news is it runs Netflix, Twitter, Instagram, Facebook, Mail, Texture and a modified version of YouTube.  I was especially interested in Texture, which allows me to read magazines like New Yorker, Bon Appetit, Wired and others. I have been trying to read them on my phone and the experience was poor. On the tablet, the experience was much better, and the resolution was good. Likewise, YouTube videos are better on the tablet than the phone.

Downsides?  First the device is slow compared to my iPhone 6. You notice it with things like Twitter and Instagram. You don’t notice it for things like Texture because there is more reading time and less scrolling.  It’s not terrible, but it is noticeable if you have a newer device. If you have an up to date phone or tablet, you will notice this.

Another downside is the limited number of apps, especially media apps. I could not get the New York Times, Guardian or CBC app for it. It comes with the Washington Post, not surprisingly.

The browser that comes with it is slow. You cannot download other browsers without hacking the device.

One upside is you can get quite a few apps working for it. I downloaded Remember the Milk (for todos), Simplenote (for notetaking), WordPress (for blogging), Dropbox and more. I mainly want to use it for media consumption, but those things make it better.

To summarize: for $59, I think it is a great device for media consumption and basic functionality. If that’s all you want, I think you’d be happy with it. I’m glad I got it. Some reviewers said it is better to get the Fire 8 or 10, but for the money, I think the Fire 7 is surprisingly good.

P.S.Originally I was going to hack it to make it more like an Android tablet, but for now I think I’ll leave it as it is. If you did want to hack it, here’s some links to articles along that line:

P.S.S. This is not sponsored content.

The internet says: follow your passion. But what if you have no specific passion to follow?

You can find many places on the internet where you are encouraged to Follow Your Passion. One such place is here: Why Following Your Passions Is Good for You (and How to Get Started) – The New York Times

Love to cook? Love to write? If those are your passions, then the internet wants you to follow them.

But what if you don’t have specific passions. The NYTimes piece has an answer for that too:

No passions? Cultivate skills instead
While hobbies both enrich our lives and can turn into rewarding careers, those of us who don’t have a particular obsession aren’t hopelessly out of luck. Instead, cultivate skills that will give you a leg up in your field. We all carry a “toolbox” to work in the form of specific abilities that make us better at our jobs. Some experts say leveling up on some of these will improve your job satisfaction more than initial enthusiasm ever will.

It’s easier to improve yourself in an area you are passionate about. But taking pride in your skills and your qualities and working to hone them is worthwhile. If there’s not an area you feel a strong passion for, at least improve in the areas you can.

Passion is a strong word. So is pride. If you can follow your passion, follow your pride and be justly proud of the things you are good at.

What you need to accomplish extraordinary things

I liked both of these articles:

  1. A Lone Man Spends 53 Years Building a Cathedral by Hand | Colossal
  2. Janitor secretly amassed an $8 million fortune and gave most of it away

Both men accomplished significant acts of creativity and generosity without having much resources. In both cases, the things they had in abundance were

  1. drive
  2. dedication
  3. faith

They didn’t have a great amount of money or genius or things that people think you need to accomplish extraordinary things.

Alternatives to Cloud White: two other Benjamin Moore white paints to consider

If you want an off white paint for your interiors, you can’t beat Cloud White from Benjamin Moore. However, if you do want to consider alternatives then these two articles agree that you want to look at either White Dove or Simply White, also by Benjamin Moore. These two pieces also go into detail as to when you want to use them (e.g. trim, kitchen cabinets). Before you start painting, check them out:

    1. Colour Review: Benjamin Moore 3 Best Warm White Paint Colours
    2. The Three Best Off Whites By Benjamin Moore – Warline Painting

How to take your git skills to the next level

One way is to read this: How to become a Git expert – freeCodeCamp.org. There’s a lot of good pages on how to get started on git, but if you are joining a software project, you may be expected to know more than the basics. You may be required to know the kind of things that piece talks about. Of course you can ask people on your team for help, but why not get as much skill as you can first and then ask better questions? There’s always something new to learn when it comes to git and software management: learn as much as you can by yourself and increase your skill set and your value to the team.

How to make french fries at home with this amazingly simple recipe

This recipe is amazing:  easiest french fries – smitten kitchen.

I have always been intimidated by the idea of making fries/frites at home. It turns out it could not be easier if you follow that recipe. It’s really a case of set it and more or less forget it.

Some notes:

  • I used corn oil because of it’s high smoking point. You could use other oils too.
  • I used a Dutch oven to make the fries.  It keeps the oil from splashing over onto the oven or burner.
  • I found a potato the size of a baseball feeds one person. A potato the size of a softball feeds two people.
  • I used Yukon gold potatoes.
  • I put big flaky salt on the fries right after I fish them out of the oil.
  • Regardless of how long the recipe says, remove the fries when they are a brown gold colour. It could be 20 minutes but it could be less.
  • Serve hot!

 

The Beatles / White Album Box Set

Likely only for hardcore Beatle fans, this box set of the White Album promises to be the White Album on steroids. Rolling Stone has plenty of detail on it, via White Album Box Set: Exclusive Preview of Unheard Beatles Archives – Rolling Stone. It even has a description of one of my favorite odd pieces by McCartney:

12. “Can You Take Me Back?”
The snippet on Side Four that serves as an eerie transition into the abstract sound-collage chaos of “Revolution 9.” Paul toys with it for a couple of minutes, trying to flesh it out into a bit of country blues—“I ain’t happy here, my honey, are you happy here?”

Like “Her Majesty”, it’s a sketch of something, but inserted in such a way as to make the whole album something more original. It’s always haunted me.

 

What makes a house a home? IKEA has the answer (no, it’s not a new Billy bookcase)

(

This is a really good study put out by IKEA: IKEA Feeling Of Home Study – Emotional Needs At Home | Apartment Therapy.

According to the summary piece in Apartment Therapy, what makes a place feel like home are:

  • privacy
  • comfort
  • ownership
  • security
  • belonging

It makes sense. Sadly, those are feelings that people may not have towards the place they live. People struggling to pay rent, or sharing with others, may not feel like they have privacy or ownership or security. People always moving lose that sense of belonging.

It’s a good thing to read, and a good thing to contemplate about your own living space. Here’s hoping you have all those feelings about where you live right now.

 

Finding your way with maps (via @austinkleon)

Austin Kleon has a great piece here on the importance of maps, and not as a means of getting around: Finding your way with maps

I love maps too. Especially hand drawn maps. And ancient maps.

I worry that our phones may be ruining hand drawn maps. When I used to take my son to hockey, I would draw my own maps to get to various obscure rinks. Later, I found out about Waze and it was so superior I stopped drawing my own maps. It’s too bad: it would be fun for my son years from now to have those old maps (which I never kept).

This is a map too.

It’s not really about how to get around. It’s a map showing the relationship between things. In this case, the organizations and their computers that made up the Internet in 1969. It does something old maps do: they show us the two dimensions of space and the one dimension of time.

Read Kleon’s piece. You’ll want to go look at maps afterwards, and you’ll be glad.

The state of meetings

I’ve had this saved from some time ago but I want to post it for two reasons: The Modern Meeting: Call In, Turn Off, Tune Out – The New York Times.

One reason is just as a placeholder for how work is now in this time period. I will be happy to go back in five or ten years from now and see how much has changed.

The second reason is that no matter what happens in five or ten years from now, people who work in offices will always struggle with meetings. There is no solution to effective meetings: there is only managing your time and how best to be effective in the time you are working and meeting. If you work with people, you will have meetings. Nowadays you have too many meetings and you need to manage them and your time as best as you can.

Once meetings were hard to schedule. There were no digital calendars, no videoconferencing. You had to call or talk to someone and arrange to meet them, they would write it down on a piece of paper, and then physically show up and have the meeting. You likely worked with a limited number of people. And even then, even though they were hard to set up, meetings were a pain. Meetings will always be a pain. If they weren’t occasionally useful, no one would ever have them.

But meetings are occasionally useful. Sometimes they are essential. As long as people work together, there will be meetings. If you are working on many different things with many different people, you will have many meetings. Try to be as effective as you can in them. For those holding the meeting, don’t expect so much of people: get what you can and then end the meeting.

Everything you need to know for sheet-pan cooking can be found here

Everything you need to know for sheet-pan cooking can be found here at this page: How to Make a Sheet-Pan Dinner – NYT Cooking

It’s a comprehensive review on how make any meal using a sheet-pan. If you are a fan of cooking that is easy like slow cookers then you want to check this out.

How to guides are great for people who like to come up with their own recipes. It’s also great if you are trying to use up various ingredients in your fridge.

The weather is getting cooler. It’s time to start using your oven again. This guide will help with this.

Do you want to read more women writers but need suggestions? The Hay Festival of Literature and the Arts has your back

How so? Here is a list of one hundred books by great women authors on a wide range of topics, including graphic novels like Persepolis. Hay Festival of Literature and the Arts – #VOTE100BOOKS. 

Regardless of the voting and which book gets the most, it is safe to say that everything listed is worth seeking out.

It’s unlikely even well read people haven’t read all these. If you find you want to read more women, you’re bound to find things on that list.

The crumbling and outright destruction of “brutalist treasures”

If you are a fan of Brutalism, you will want to visit this: Attack the blocks: brutalist treasures under threat – in pictures | Cities | The Guardian

You might want to even visit them, because for some of them, their days are numbered.

I imagine that in the next 50 years, the number of Brutalist buildings currently existing will be significantly reduced. That would be a shame. Brutalism gets knocked hard, and I can see why. But worse than Brutalist building are boring buildings from all different architectural styles. I’d like to see those go first. The world could use good Brutalism in their cities. Here’s hoping it doesn’t undergo severe decline.

How economic hardship traumatizes people individually and as a culture

This piece, Opinion | Still Haunted by Grocery Shopping in the 1980s – The New York Times, by a Brazilian economist highlights the emotional scars that economic hardship has on a person. Key quote for me was this:

Research has found that children living in poverty are at increased risk of difficulties with self-regulation and executive function, such as inattention, impulsivity, defiance and poor peer relationships. It takes generations until society fully heals from periods of deep instability. A study in the early 2010s showed that Germans were more worried about inflation than about developing a life-threatening disease such as cancer; hyperinflation in the country ended almost 100 years ago.

Not only does it touch people individually, but you could make the case that it gets embedded into the culture. Germans are still worrying about inflation! Indeed, I remember my mom telling me how the Great Depression affected her mother to the point that she adopted behaviors she could never shake, not matter how much she had in the future.

Economics can seem dry, especially when people focus on numbers. But those numbers paper over how people are really affected. What is the emotional impact of high (or low) unemployment? What do we see happening in the culture when housing becomes unaffordable or work impossible to get. The numbers are an essential part of the story but they are also just the start of the story.

 

Why does this not surprise me? Jacobin Accused of Reneging on Wage Deal

The owner of left-wing magazine Jacobin stiffs his workers for his play to take over other property.

In his bid to take over the historic British left-wing magazine, The Tribune, Jacobin publisher Bhaskar Sunkara is being accused of reneging on wage deal by employees of the paper, who kept the publication alive during struggling times. Tribune was once the home of such greats as George Orwell and has since become the leading publication associated with the influential Momentum faction within the Labor Party.

For the details, see this: Jacobin Accused of Reneging on Wage Deal in British Takeover of Tribune Magazine – Payday Report

Do you know someone who wants to learn how to code? (Maybe it is you!)

Then this is a good page for them to go to: How I Learned How To Code Using Free Resources | Home | Bri Limitless. 

There’s plenty of good links to information, and they are all free. I can vouch for a number of them, such as Codecademy and Coursera.

One problem people run into is: why should I learn to code? One obvious answer is to learn a set of skills to help them gain employment. Two other reasons I have:

  1. build a website to promote yourself or any future business you might have.
  2. automate things you do on your computer

For #1, being able to build a website is a great way to promote yourself and show yourself to the world. As for #2, that’s the main reason I still keep coding. There’s lots of information I want to process, personally and professionally, and coding is the best way to do that.

Regardless of your reason, if you want to learn to code, check out Bri Limitless’s web page.

How to grow gardens in the desert? Jordan has an answer


How to grow gardens in the desert? If you are the country Jordan, you use a combination of salt water and sunshine. Lots of both. To see how this engineering miracle occurs, see: BBC – Future – How to use seawater to grow food – in the desert.

It’s a great story, well told. Here’s to it scaling up in the future.