Category
Work
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09.19.04Smart & Gets Things DoneInteresting article about interview technique in one software company. Our goal is to hire people with aptitude, not a particular skill set. Any skill set that people can bring to the job will be technologically obsolete in a couple of years, anyway, so it's better to hire people that are going to be able to learn any new technology rather than people who happen to know SQL programming right this minute. Some points which are equally valid in other industries.
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07.06.04EejitsI work with fools. That's the name of the site. Obviously.
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07.05.04Just say no to default Powerpoint bileBeyond Bullets. Here are words I never thought I'd see myself write, but this is an interesting blog about using powerpoint to communicate in business. Please, won't someone save me from the text zooming across the screen one line at a time and the clickity camera noise?
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12.03.03ManeaterDon't eat people, Have you gone clean out of your mind? I won't eat people, What's the matter with the lad? Don't eat people, He keeps on repeating, Eating people is bad. But people have always eaten people, What else is there to eat? If the Jou-Jou had meant us not to eat people, He wouldn't have made us of meat. Flanders & Swann, The Reluctant Cannibal from At the Drop of a Hat There's been a lot of talk about cannibalism in the media the last couple of days, most of which can be explained by this German man, currently on trial accused of killing, dissecting and eating another man ...
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09.12.03The paradox of privacyIn the early days, we jumped when journalists came near. We salivated at the chance for a quote, a link, a soundbite: official recognition by the real world. This blogging lark, covered by real media. We had arrived. We longed for the frisson of excitement caused by seeing our name (or URL) in the paper, hearing our voice on the airwaves, seeing our site design screengrabbed for an illustration. I'm X, as referenced on these sites, this radio programme and that broadsheet article. I exist and am real. Here is proof. These days, we're more likely to turn down offers to ...
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02.05.03Ch’alla: Case StudiesThis sample of interview subjects were selected from 29 individuals who participated in 41 interviews. Obviously, as mentioned previously, some interviews stand alone, and others form part of a series conducted with the same subject. All these interviews were conducted over a period of fourteen months in the deparments of La Paz and Cochabamba, Bolivia. Of these interviews, almost a quarter were recorded on magnetic tape, the remainder being scribed during or after the event. The following three subjects belong to the former group. I have chosen these three women as case studies since they seem to represent a fair ...
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02.05.03Ch’alla: Ritual and Identity in BoliviaThe Ch'alla is one of the most common rituals in Andean life. It can be seen in all parts of the Andean region where there is a significant settlement of Quechua or Aymara people, although it is most common in the central Andes (that is to say, the highlands of Peru and Bolivia). Hans van den Berg gives the Spanish translation of the Aymara word Ch'alla in his Diccionario Religioso Aymara as 'aspersion [sprinkling]' (van den Berg, 1985:48). He goes on to define the term thus: En muchas oportunidades los aymaras realizan la ceremonia llamada ch'alla. Consiste en derramar un ...
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01.01.03On Visual MemoryAt one point, a few years ago, my friends used to poke gentle fun at me for always drawing maps using the objects on the table: "So imagine that this salt cellar is me, and that ashtray is the corner of the road...hand on, can you pass that fork? Ok, that fork is the zebra crossing, and the mug, I mean the bus was going along here like this..." My listening friends would start to chip in usefully: "What's this pepper pot?" "How about my lasagne?" "Can this glass be a bus stop?" and so on. Smart arses. But I can't help it: ...
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01.01.03WatchingWho needs Big Brother, when real life is so much more random and various? From my office window, I can see quite clearly across the road to the roof of another office building. Every day for the last week or so, there has been a man sitting up there, six floors above the ground, on the corner of the building. Perched on the protective guardrail with his legs dangling over the edge, he seems to be singing, or perhaps talking to himself. He swigs occasionally from a bottle of water, and plays with his hair. Every day he sits up there ...
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01.01.03On TeachingAfter three months living in La Paz, someone in a bar convinced me to take a job with the Centro Boliviano Americano, teaching English as a Foreign Language for a couple of days a week. Research was going slowly, so it didn't take much to convince me at all. The interview for this position basically consisted of a brief chat with the principal of the CBA, a formidable Boliviana with a degree from some midwestern college and an accent to match: "Oh, are you English?" "Yes..." "Right, you can start on Monday." In at the deep end, teaching four classes ...
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