Weeknotes 2022 #30

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Weeknotes #30 – Watch, Listen, Read

I’m almost halfway through my 4-week sabbatical already! I had some wonderful things planned but this week but in reality it’s been a huge Pain in the arse.

Every cloud has a silver lining though. Being forced to rest has offered me the opportunity to do some long overdue catching up on my todo lists and tinker with some things I set up a while ago.

Listen

I started off the week by listening to Tom Prior on the d.MBA podcast talking about positioning and pricing yourself as a freelancer. Tom introduced the concept of value share which was really interesting and something I hadn’t heard of before. He also talked about the importance of the words you use to position your experience and value in order to win the work you are passionate about.

This theme was also also echoed in the conversation between Fiona Macneill and Andy Parker in the latest episode of The UX Coach. Fiona is one of the most passionate UX/LX practitioners I know and their energy is captured perfectly. They share some really fascinating frameworks and models for evaluating and measuring professional development. I loved the approach for finding a career that reflects your passion and strategies for getting yourself unstuck along the way. Also the data-science approach to scanning relevant job keywords for your LinkedIn profile is absolute genius!

Watch

I don’t usually get a chance to watch webinar talks during the week so I was happy to be able to join the insightful conversation between Ryo Sampei and Aldrich Huang on global UX research, ethics and cultural differences. There was so much useful insight to digest and consider in my own practice. I’m really looking forward to more of the same great content from Spectrum Tokyo. I was also really impressed with the production and effort to converse in English rather than Japanese. 🙇️ ありがとうございました！

The Parry family have been watching a lot of sci-fi recently. We picked up the first 4 seasons of Red Dwarf on DVD a while back and have been watching a few episodes each evening. As it seemed like a good pairing, we also opened up our Futurama boxset and have been enjoying some fun with the crew of Planet Express.

I’m also really taken by the Anime Den-noh Coil my son is watching on Netflix. The depiction of an imperfect future is on-point with AR/MR glitches and technology kludges. It has some impressive sound and character design. I particularly like the Searchmaton, a cute but menacing robot that would fit well within The Backrooms folklore.

I re-watched one of my favourite films, Shin Godzilla. This time the dubbed version so that my son could keep up with the fast-paced dialogue. I found it helped fill in a lot of the gaps I usually miss when reading the multi-layered subtitles. It’s a superb piece of satire with an awesome monster design.

Read

Aleksandra Melnikova shared a really thought provoking post about what makes research challenging for participants with diverse needs and questioned how we could make research more inclusive.

Nikki Anderson wrote a terrific post highlights the importance of recognising the symptoms of burnout in ourselves and others. Her advice for changing mindsets, creating healthy boundaries and offering support is as relevant today as it was at the start of the pandemic when the article was originally written.

I really enjoyed reading about the conservation and renovation of Stockwell Skatepark. The park looks absolutely stunning and I love how they honoured the history of the site, not least going the extra mile to add the icon red pigment to the concrete, creating some really unique and creative ways of blending the new and old parts of the park. It’s definitely made it on my London skate tour list. A work of art!

Tinkering

Having some time on my hands, I’ve been putting Obsidian through its paces and I’m really impressed with how performant and intuitive it is. I was previously using Roam Research but became frustrated by its dependency on an internet connection and degrading performance.

I was having a hard time deciding on a folder, tag or mixed approach to files I stumbled upon Nick Milo’s ACCESS framework. It echoed some of the data structuring I had already put in place but added some really interesting concepts too.

I’ve also been having a play with with the Dataview and Templater plugins. So far they’ve been intuitive and adds some powerful functionality to the app.

Since it‘s the school holidays I’ve been keeping my son entertained by helping him build his own website. He now has his own Github account and has been learning the basics of semantic HTML and Git. We’re taking a content-first approach before adding any CSS or JS. It’s been interesting teaching someone programming decision making through the lens of accessibility. I love that he finds it so fascinating.

Random

Joining up the dots of programming, conservation, Japan the Long Now Foundation posted a video of the importance of maintenance referencing the Ise Grand Shrine.

Cassie has released a cool had for coding, just make sure you keep the cutesy chitchat to a minimum, yeah?

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