Tag Archives: work

Old Favorites Resurfacing, Purposeful Work, Music, and a Very Chill Sloth

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This entry is part 91 of 100 in the series Today's Tidbits

Busy and stressful day (which ones aren’t, right?) so the bulk of the feed is just kind of distraction and nostalgia.

Good news is, some of that nostalgia is for creators that are putting out new work for the first time in a while. Faith No More announced it’s first new album in 18 years and Flight of the Conchords may be coming back to HBO after being gone for far too long. Oh, and the director’s cut of Nightbreed is starting to get advertised in places (my copy is already pre-ordered).

Amid all that an article about how doing purposeful work leads to better everything all around. I don’t find that all that difficult to believe. When I was both excited and engaged with my work, when I felt it had a clear, distinct, and necessary purpose, everything went more smoothly. Not flawlessly, mind you, but the bumps didn’t feel quite as disruptive and there was a much cleaner sense of accomplishment when all was said and done.

These days, since I’ve kind of lost all sense of purpose (also still trying to find it or something similar, so don’t worry too much), I’d much rather be spending my days (and nights) like the sloth you’ll find in the feed. Just kind of laying back chowing down on.. stuff.

Anyway, here’s the feed…

Innovation Squashed, Bigotry from the Bench, Hacking Hackers, Science Rap, and Work-life Balance

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This entry is part 53 of 100 in the series Today's Tidbits

As I mention frequently (perhaps too frequently), my own natural flow doesn’t fit exceptionally well with the standard 40-hour work week setup.

I’ve also said for years that we’ve become victims of our technology instead of masters of it.

Instead of allowing our advancing technology to give us modest gains in both free time and productivity, we’ve instead gone whole-hog for productivity at all costs. Creating a culture of utter consumption and quest for profit above all else.

This is unhealthy. It leads to people being continually unsatisfied–as they are regularly manipulated by advertising and cultural pressure to have more, to consume more, and to be conspicuous as hell about it. It’s devoured our culture and contributes stress beyond belief to our lives.

How I think it should have gone? Technology should have, at least in part, freed up more time for everyone to explore the things that interest them. Yes, progress would have been slower, but it also would have been deeper. And, I think, the modern world wouldn’t seem so shallow, trite, and cold as it often does.

We’d have more patience with each other (since competition and one-ups-manship wouldn’t be quite so big a part of our lives). We’d enjoy ourselves more (because we’d actually have time to).

Anyway, those are shorthand thoughts. The article in today’s stream (which I know I’ve posted before in years past, since it’s from 2010) says it all better (and if you click through to the comments, there’s another article there that goes even deeper).

Enjoy what free time you have and don’t let the machine grind you too much on your way through…

https://www.facebook.com/kierduros/activity/10152121073215981

Tarot History, Takei Respect, DRM Woes, Work Tunes, Illusions in Motion, and Comic Book Stuff

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This entry is part 50 of 100 in the series Today's Tidbits

Hopefully, after today’s utter insanity and stress, things will fall back into a more “schedule-friendly” rhythm at work. We should be past the point where a project that should have ebbed has continued to flow… right over top of a new project that was planned to start in the down-time.

In the feed, there’s what I consider a nice story about the insistence on DRM (Digital Rights Management) has come back to bite the company that insisted upon it in the ass. Seems a publisher that vehemently insisted Amazon only sell it’s ebook editions with DRM in place, is now in the sticky situation where it’s no longer happy with Amazon’s terms and charges, but can’t pull out without more or less using it’s entire customer base–because they’re locked into only being able to read the books on Amazon readers… because of the DRM.

Even more “fun” is the tidbit in the article that mentions Tor Books, which dropped DRM from it’s ebooks a couple years back. Ostensibly, DRM is in place to prevent piracy. Well, it seems that since dropping DRM, not only has Tor not seen an increase in piracy, they’ve actually seen an increase in sales.

Same thing happened when Amazon really jumped into the MP3 game… challenging iTunes by offering DRM free downloads. That may not have been a clear-cut victory, but Amazon’s music sales aren’t too shabby.

DRM has always treated legitimate customers like criminals and done little to nothing to deter, let alone stop, actual criminals. In most cases, it seems that it’s created more who break the law–by stripping out or otherwise circumventing the DRM so they can use their products freely.

People pirate stuff because they can’t get it legally in the form they want to make use of it. This is a lesson you’d think everyone would have learned when Napster was the biggest thing. People went there to effectively steal music because there was no legal way to get it in that format.

Ebooks are popular because people love the format. It’s bad enough that there are so many competing formats (which offer very few differences when it comes to the actual content… outside of which device you can use to read them). Adding serious DRM to them does nothing but open the door for things like a content producer getting screwed over by their DRM provider.

Maybe this time around, companies will learn.

Probably not.

Internet Shenanigans, Poverty, Artful Words, Militarized Police, and the Unauthorized Saved by the Bell

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This entry is part 49 of 100 in the series Today's Tidbits

Totally crazy day at the office. No real time for anything other than meetings and nose-to-the-grindstone work. Mostly due to projects falling off schedule… due to people getting us stuff late and technology conspiring against me.

Oh, and did I mention that I didn’t even come close to getting to sleep on time last night… in part because of a totally awesome thunderstorm that powered through the area? Fantastic lightning. Some of it was even green. Spooky cool.

Of course there was an extra-early meeting today. And I ended up working late just so I could actually cross something off of my list.

My brain is kind of fried and I’ve got one more day of this dog and pony show before the weekend hits.

Here’s what passes for the feed today…