You wake up in a strange room, you remember that you are a serial killer, you have killed countless people. Indeed you are surrounded by the paraphanalia of a serial killer, bloody knifes, photos of corpses, the whole room is splattered with blood.
Do you
(a)continue your life as a serial killer
(b)stop killing people
(c)immediately go to the police and confess to your crimes.
You wake up in a strange room, you remember that you are not a serial killer, you see a jury of your peers before you. You chose option (c), they congratulate you on your high moral standards and release you back into the community where you will live for another hundred years.
A thoroughly entertaining book about self help with a scientific perspective that attempts to answer the challenge of providing you with real techniques that you can understand in less than a minute to make yourself happier.
Not only that, reading the book manages to make you feel happier, it is light and positive with just the right element of challenge. Like having some helpful older relative offering you some decent advice.
There is an exercise towards the start that takes a while to complete, but it is definitely worth working through, and does not require a major investment of time and energy.
I was really excited to get it as a Christmas present, and it was perfect reading fodder for a lazy and largely sofa bound Christmas break. It is brim full of architectural conjecture, full as only something drawn from a blog can be. The author shoots off on a myriad of conjectures, moving cities, floating cities, weather as a weapons. These are conjectures, sketching out possible futures, possible fictions.
Manaugh seems to care more for buildings than for people, but he is a warm and witty writer. This book is good company.
All in all the book is an attractive and enticing package, well illustrated throughout, episodice and endearing. Even if you are familiar with the blog, the book is a much better book than you might imagine, being much more than just a collation of blog postings. It hangs together well and reads smoothly.
In a vague attempt to do something productive over the extended Christmas break, I moved all my computer passwords onto 1password, a password management software doohicky. This jinxed Rapidweaver that I use for updating my website, so that took a wee while to fix. Also it has been just unbelievably cold lately, so I have been feeling pretty lethargic. However starting to get back into a more productive routine now. Hence a quick rash of blog postings today.
Christmas now seems like an age ago, it was a fine chance to catch up with my reading, I now have four books on the go, which is really a couple too many, so I will try and slim things down to just reading the two books. Also caught up with my RSS feeds. The whole place was inches deep in ice, or on a bad day slush, so it was just the sort of time for sitting on the sofa not doing terribly much.
It does not actually feel much warmer now, but at least the inch thick layer of ice has finally gone. Getting back to work was a bit of a shock to the system, and suddenly the weekends seemed to last about a nanosecond. Finally feel like I am getting back into a bit of a routine.
Day off on Friday getting the central heating looked at, hopefully getting the central heating fixed. Being at home waiting was all the excuse I needed to watch the Apple Keynote. Steve Jobs looking skeletal explaining why the iPad is the future of computing, without full application of the reality distortion field. Part of the problem with the presentation was that the price was actually the killer, the iPad at £1000 is a duff product, at half that it is possible, at anything under that it is incredibly tempting, but a device like that really does rely on the "it just works" factor. If it does "just work" then it should sell by the shedload, if if has all sorts of glitchy annoying doohickery then it won't. Also a bit wary of the way you have to buy absolutely everything off iTunes. Might be looking at buying an iPad or two for the family when they come out.
Also rewatched the recent BBC Arena documentary about Brian Eno. He came across as a rather genial soul, incredibly smart, pottering about with his various interests. Despite being an Art School graduate I did not get the impression that he had a strong visual sense, if I had his money and time I would be living in something that looked like John Lautner's Scottish holiday home. Also more likeable in person than he might seem in the written interviews. I suspect that his interests and enthusiasms simply exhaust people, it did look like Paul Morley was stiffling a yawn at one point.
Other news, I've installed bumptop, a desktop interface thing. There was a TED talk about it years ago, and it has now finally come out on the Mac. Most people seem to think that it is pointless eye candy. I actually quite like it. It allows you to create a virtual 3D desktop, so there are various walls around your desktop. So you can pin things to the wall, or leave stuff in the middle to get done. It does seem to slow down loading, but I like it, and will probably stick with it. The various OSX interface tweaks like Expose, Spaces, etc left me cold, I never quite got my head round them, and Quicksilver is a bit too hardcore. I like simple visual metaphors, so I know where I am with Bumptop.
Back at work, getting busier and busier, but also starting to get the hang of what I am doing, so not so bothered wondering whether I am actually doing anything of any use. Enjoying the work, and getting to know and like my work colleagues even better. The extra travelling and extra hours just trying to make progress are slimming down the time that I have not at work, but I'll try and rationalise a few commitments over the year so that I find a decent balance.
Finally, been listening to the LSTN series on the Urban Outfitters websites (different UK and US versions) being particularly struck by the following which does stick in your head,
I know that big business is attempting to personalise the service that they can offer. So I get a personalised screen every time I arrive at Amazon, and a wishlist that I can publish to the world.
But micro businesses are taking this to a whole new level. We got a cheery postcard from the person we rented a holiday cottage from this year, when my wife orders from eBay retailers she gets a cheery postcard with her order, when I order shareware I can email the developer with questions or suggestions, I can comment on Redbubble and the designer of a teeshirt will amend it to reflect my comments.
The classic split used to be that a business was a commodity business or it was not. Perhaps there is a split between the micro business with micro business standards of service and the macro business with macro business standards of service. If you cannot make a compelling case that you are offering a high quality service at either the macro or the micro level, then perhaps it is time to start looking for a new business to be in.
Maybe it is just me, but for some reason when I do something digital I always feel that it is somehow less worthwhile than something that is less digital.
So an email not worth as much as a letter, reading a website is not worth as much as reading a newspaper, organising a computer's hard drive is not worth as much as tidying up a room, sorting out my webpage is not worth as much as fixing a cupboard.
There is a certain satisfaction to be had from posting a real letter, but I suppose we had better get used to living in a virtual world.
This is my blog. There is no end of random stuff here that I have written over the years. My collection of stories about imaginary cities, called 101 Quiet Cities is now available on Kindle. I'll post new stories here from time to time.
