frandroid

We've got COVID and I got caught up in a round of layoffs. :(

What have you finished reading:
12 Bytes by Jeanette Winterson.
Well, I'm finished with it because the library threatened to fine me charge me $20 for "losing" the book. So much for "we don't fine users for lateness anymore." It wasn't sustainable but they should have just kept the old lateness system.

What are you reading:
Build: An unorthodox guide to making things worth making by Tony Fadell.
I'm a big sucker for startup dudes' stories. I can listen to Steve Jobs for hours, though I'm not really a Youtube person so I don't. Anyway, I listened to that dude's interview on the a16z podcast recently and he seemed interesting, and he's the guy behind the iPod, the iPhone and the Nest, so I thought I'd get his book.

I'm just into the second of six sections, but what strikes me here is that by the time he got to the iPhone, he had tried to make a portable computing device 3 or 4 times before since the early 1990s. This really contrasts with most other accounts of the iPod/iPhone, which are very much "we took one look at the market and figured out how to make it better".

This is much more a collection of advice for people who want to accomplish great things in their life. It's anchored in the tech/VC world, but it seems like a good general life/work advice book. The chapter I just finished was titled "Assholes", i.e. how to deal with them at work. (That advice was not particularly insightful, though decent.)

Anyway, so far it's reminding me to focus on what I want to do, and to deliver on what I need to do. Both things I struggle with.

I'm procrastinating way too much, but I finally bit the bullet and bought a 27" 4K monitor. Way too much money... and it's bloody worth it. So gorgeous, so much space. I basically have it split in 2 screens so with the laptop, I'm back to my office's 3-screen setup.

The air currents around the skyscrapers here make the snow go more sideways and even upwards than what gravity would usually command. Looking out the window, with the neighbouring dark tower as my landscape, I feel like our office has been immersed in a giant pint of Guinness, only we don't get the meal-in-a-glass effect.