Problem with my mobile. Use email for the next couple of days.
Feb. 9th, 2014
Work trip to Germany
Feb. 9th, 2014 03:03 pmWork trip to Germany was quite good. The travelling was easy, as was spending three days in the company of people from work (one from my office, one from one of the German offices).
I coped in Germany only speaking a few tourist phrases, although I need to get better at sometimes jumping into conversations when I know the people speak English, but don't automatically switch to English when I enter the room.
I managed to spend a couple of hours walking around the old parts of the town and looking at the river, and to go to a couple of different places for meals, since most places had some vegetarian dish, but not a very interesting one.
For the first time I had to ask myself what's normal to put on expenses. I have to keep reminding myself that my time is valuable to work, and that if it's worth sending me abroad at all, it's not worth saving a few extra pounds by being extra frugal. But I have to force myself not to think "oh no, surely that's just gratuitous". I think work clothes you don't have any other use for, and meals when you're away from home are the normal standard? And beer with meals when it's cheaper than the water?
The work itself was generally a success, we did everything we intended to, and didn't screw everything up, and I've a good idea of what we want to achieve. But it still feels like banging my head on a brick ceiling that 90% of what I say we need to do is dismissed, I think I should persist with the last 10% but I'm not sure. I'm not sure how much I'm bad at sounding like I know what I'm talking about, and how much I should better have figured out which decisions were taken several months ago but I wasn't told about.
The factory was really interesting. It's like a tutorial in best practices, eg. most of the furniture is on wheels and COULD be anywhere, but there are strips of tape on the floor showing where it SHOULD be. It's about half robots and half people. And people have to ride bikes around when they're going round the whole thing.
I coped in Germany only speaking a few tourist phrases, although I need to get better at sometimes jumping into conversations when I know the people speak English, but don't automatically switch to English when I enter the room.
I managed to spend a couple of hours walking around the old parts of the town and looking at the river, and to go to a couple of different places for meals, since most places had some vegetarian dish, but not a very interesting one.
For the first time I had to ask myself what's normal to put on expenses. I have to keep reminding myself that my time is valuable to work, and that if it's worth sending me abroad at all, it's not worth saving a few extra pounds by being extra frugal. But I have to force myself not to think "oh no, surely that's just gratuitous". I think work clothes you don't have any other use for, and meals when you're away from home are the normal standard? And beer with meals when it's cheaper than the water?
The work itself was generally a success, we did everything we intended to, and didn't screw everything up, and I've a good idea of what we want to achieve. But it still feels like banging my head on a brick ceiling that 90% of what I say we need to do is dismissed, I think I should persist with the last 10% but I'm not sure. I'm not sure how much I'm bad at sounding like I know what I'm talking about, and how much I should better have figured out which decisions were taken several months ago but I wasn't told about.
The factory was really interesting. It's like a tutorial in best practices, eg. most of the furniture is on wheels and COULD be anywhere, but there are strips of tape on the floor showing where it SHOULD be. It's about half robots and half people. And people have to ride bikes around when they're going round the whole thing.
Any project -- civil engineering, software engineering, social, etc -- can suffer from a tipping point where one part of it is complete where people stop being grateful it's as good as it is, and start resenting it for not being finished.
If you write a software app, when it's just started, it's obviously fairly ad hoc. At worst, people say "I can't figure it out". But after you fix all the obvious shortfalls, it gets to where people can use it fairly trouble free for a couple of hours, and then suddenly hit a brick wall where they can't do X, or it doesn't work with software Y, or they do Z and it suddenly crashes. And they ask "why doesn't it work"? And the answer is "I haven't had time to examine the hundreds of possible situations people might use it in and make it not just functional but work seamlessly out-of-the-box in all of them yet". But that's little comfort. A better question might be, why does it LOOK as if it should always work?
Similarly, imagine playing bridge with someone. If they're a complete beginner, you're lucky if you can bid legally, let alone coherently, and you just take it as it goes. But once they've mastered all the basics and got reasonably consistent, it's possible that the exceptions surprise you more, because you've subconsciously started treating them as an expert, even though you know that even if they know a lot of things in theory, they've yet to practice every possible combination of them.
If you write a software app, when it's just started, it's obviously fairly ad hoc. At worst, people say "I can't figure it out". But after you fix all the obvious shortfalls, it gets to where people can use it fairly trouble free for a couple of hours, and then suddenly hit a brick wall where they can't do X, or it doesn't work with software Y, or they do Z and it suddenly crashes. And they ask "why doesn't it work"? And the answer is "I haven't had time to examine the hundreds of possible situations people might use it in and make it not just functional but work seamlessly out-of-the-box in all of them yet". But that's little comfort. A better question might be, why does it LOOK as if it should always work?
Similarly, imagine playing bridge with someone. If they're a complete beginner, you're lucky if you can bid legally, let alone coherently, and you just take it as it goes. But once they've mastered all the basics and got reasonably consistent, it's possible that the exceptions surprise you more, because you've subconsciously started treating them as an expert, even though you know that even if they know a lot of things in theory, they've yet to practice every possible combination of them.
Life of Pi
Feb. 9th, 2014 04:19 pmOverall
I finally saw the film of Life of Pi.
It was indeed very beautiful.
I am interested in the book, it seems to have had more on the philosophy, but I'm not sure if I want to read it.
Random comments
It's nice to see another film using 3D to try to convey something artistic, rather than just "OMG Sharks!" (although I watched the DVD so the 3D scenes were a bit wasted).
One comment I made was that "love" may or may not be a measure of a "soul", but I think animals totally experience love, just maybe not cats so much :) Although it seems to me in the film the tiger never showed much affection when they were in the boat, other than not eating him, so I'm not surprised it ran off, but I'm not sure if it was *supposed* to show affection, but that just wasn't clear, or if the affection was supposed to be only in the mind of Pi and the viewer (which would make a lot of sense).
I like the idea of multiple religions. It's something I've often thought, but rarely seen suggested.
"Which story do you prefer"
The message at the end seemed to be "You should absolutely believe this story, just don't think it's true." That's a message which I like about many things. E.g. "it will turn out OK in the end" may sometimes be a good message for soldiering on, if giving up can't help. Or e.g. "Sam responded to a phishing email and lost all his/her money", whether or not it's true, not responding to phishing emails is a good idea.
And I think it's a case where the inconsistency of human brains can work for you: eg. keep at the back of your mind what you really want, but most of the time, just construct a narrative which is effective, not necessarily true.
The danger is if the narrative also leads you to do/think things which are turn out badly. E.g. you keep trying when you should give up, because you think it will always turn out ok. Or e.g. you think phishing emails are much more dangerous than they actually are.
But Life of Pi suggests that message applies, at least for Pi, to believing in God. I feel quite conflicted about that. On the one hand, I think there may *be* many benefits of pretending to believe in God, even if you don't think it's factually true as such. On the other hand (a) it seems offensive to many people who think it *is* factually true to say "it's not true but I'm going to believe it anyway", it seems like not taking what they say seriously and (b) I think there are also many risks of thinking it's true if it actually isn't.
I finally saw the film of Life of Pi.
It was indeed very beautiful.
I am interested in the book, it seems to have had more on the philosophy, but I'm not sure if I want to read it.
Random comments
It's nice to see another film using 3D to try to convey something artistic, rather than just "OMG Sharks!" (although I watched the DVD so the 3D scenes were a bit wasted).
One comment I made was that "love" may or may not be a measure of a "soul", but I think animals totally experience love, just maybe not cats so much :) Although it seems to me in the film the tiger never showed much affection when they were in the boat, other than not eating him, so I'm not surprised it ran off, but I'm not sure if it was *supposed* to show affection, but that just wasn't clear, or if the affection was supposed to be only in the mind of Pi and the viewer (which would make a lot of sense).
I like the idea of multiple religions. It's something I've often thought, but rarely seen suggested.
"Which story do you prefer"
The message at the end seemed to be "You should absolutely believe this story, just don't think it's true." That's a message which I like about many things. E.g. "it will turn out OK in the end" may sometimes be a good message for soldiering on, if giving up can't help. Or e.g. "Sam responded to a phishing email and lost all his/her money", whether or not it's true, not responding to phishing emails is a good idea.
And I think it's a case where the inconsistency of human brains can work for you: eg. keep at the back of your mind what you really want, but most of the time, just construct a narrative which is effective, not necessarily true.
The danger is if the narrative also leads you to do/think things which are turn out badly. E.g. you keep trying when you should give up, because you think it will always turn out ok. Or e.g. you think phishing emails are much more dangerous than they actually are.
But Life of Pi suggests that message applies, at least for Pi, to believing in God. I feel quite conflicted about that. On the one hand, I think there may *be* many benefits of pretending to believe in God, even if you don't think it's factually true as such. On the other hand (a) it seems offensive to many people who think it *is* factually true to say "it's not true but I'm going to believe it anyway", it seems like not taking what they say seriously and (b) I think there are also many risks of thinking it's true if it actually isn't.