On not retiring
Kind of a personal landmark, I guess: today I reach so-called ‘retirement-age’, where I’m supposedly meant to kick back, relax and walk away from all of the stresses of a lifetime of work. Hmm… no chance of that happening, is …
Category: The Outsider
General notes on being an Outsider in many different ways
Exact Lives Save Change
Exact Lives Save Change. Or it might have been Exact Change Saves Lives. Something like that, anyway. Yeah, it was definitely one of those nights – y’know, such as, in this case, I might have gotten to sleep for a few …
When I’m Sixty-Four
I opened the Chrome browser for a new web-search yesterday, and this is what popped up: Google have my date-of-birth, of course, linked to my GMail account. At which point I finally remembered, “Oh, yeah, it is my birthday, isn’t …
Idea-parenting
I’d often wondered why I always seem to have such a visceral response to hearing a woman say “I don’t work, I’m only a mother”. What do you mean by “only”? – why would anyone deride it so? And what do …
Two words
There we were, my colleague and I, discussing the possible merits and value for me of going to yet another conference. This time business-architecture rather than ‘enterprise’-architecture, and reasonably-priced too – unlike so many conferences these days. Looked good. Yet …
On (not) changing the world
Back on the ‘no more arguments‘ theme, there were a couple of responses I received that, although nominally private, were so apposite and to-the-point that I really do need to reprise them here. (Because the messages were private, I’ll paraphrase them …
Pre-emptive defence
I’m about to embark on a shift in direction or emphasis, to much more of what I’ve previously described as Really-Big-Picture Enterprise-Architecture (RBPEA), applying enterprise-architecture/systems-thinking principles and practices to concerns at much larger scopes and scales – all the way …
On ‘Why Smart People Get Depressed’
Why do smart people get depressed? And what can we do about it? That was the theme, and title, for a brilliant recent article by Henrik Mårtensson (@Kallokain). In the subsequent Twitter-conversation, Henrik asked us for our opinions and experiences …
Let it go
Let it go? Actually, I can’t. Or won’t. Or don’t know how. Or maybe it won’t let me go… Something, anyway… Right now I’m in the somewhat embarrassing position of being hooked on a Disney movie. Or, to be precise, one …
Embracing our inner weirdness
Easter. In the Christian calendar at least – and in the pagan one that preceded it – it’s supposed to be a time of rebirth. Yet rebirth of what? And into what, or whom? If it’s a more personal form …