Productivity
🙂
I’m nearly done integrating the tags from the Nirvana import into my databases. Once that’s finished, I’m going to take a break from the productivity project to take care of some life maintenance tasks that’ve been piling up, and then I’ll come back for the Evernote import.
Nature
🙄
After much waiting and procrastinating and researching and packaging, I finally shipped the binoculars I got for Christmas to be repaired. They’re on their way to the UK for collimation, and maybe when I get them back, I can use them to take some better nature photos.
People skills
🙂
Emotional Intelligence by Daniel Goleman gave me a practical and scientific framework of emotional skills to hone and reminded me I have a whole lot to learn about the brain. And Goleman joined the chorus of authors making the welcome case that relating well to others requires tending to your own emotions.
Getting to Yes by Roger Fisher, William Ury, and Bruce Patton whetted my appetite for principled negotiation. Along with other books in this project, this one starts to solve a problem I have in many areas—how to implement my ideals in effective ways while responding with integrity to the derailing forces other people are bringing into the situation.
Programming
🙂
Composing Software by Eric Elliott introduced me to elements of a functional approach to software design. Since I was mostly listening, many of the topics whizzed by me, but a few caught my attention—abstract data types, his take on OOP history and characteristics, object composition, transducers, code style, TDD, and decoupling.
TV
😎
Russian Doll is an odd show, but it’s made a home in my head. It’s the smart kind of soft sci fi that uses its reality-bending powers for narrative good, pressuring its characters into grappling with their issues.
Fiction
🤔
The Player of Games by Iain M. Banks roared to an interesting finish, which mostly made up for the long, slow start and some unlikeable characters. I kind of want to live in The Culture, which is like the Federation if it were run by superintelligent AIs.
Are you watching Rings of Power? House of Dragon?
I haven’t been watching either of those. Have you been enjoying them? I’ve been out of touch with so many things. It was weeks before I even looked up what House of the Dragon was. I still need to finish watching Game of Thrones, so it’ll probably be a while before I get to that one. I did watch a Daniel Greene review of the first couple of Rings of Power episodes. It sounds interesting.
I don’t have HBO Max, so I’m not watching House of Dragon. I watched two episodes of Rings of Power. While I can’t say for sure that I’ll watch more of the series, I know some people who seem to be enjoying it,
Oh yeah, that’s my other problem. I don’t have HBO Max or Amazon Prime. Maybe someday.