Pantagruelism, n. [‘The philosophy and practice ascribed to Pantagruel; extravagant and coarse humour with a satirical purpose. Also, more generally: coarseness, vulgarity.’]
There are some truly great words in the English language. Via Oxford Dictionary.
The thing about writing content for the largest possible audience is that you must write intentionally for the majority of readers. As the audience grows, you have to write content to that is simpler and plainer. The largest number of people will now include a majority who are not seriously engaged with you as a person or what you stand for and your content must be easy to consume.
For technology blogging, this means writing dumber and stupider content that appeals to a large technology audience. If you want a “large audience” then write about introductory topics that every new engineer needs to learn. Write about passing the lowest vendor certification, write about dumb everyday things that people should know.
But if you want to the best audience in technology, you want to target the people who make decisions, who initiate projects, the people who are advisors, investors or executives. These people have skills and motivation to work in senior roles. Reading about the basics has no value. They want analysis, perspectives and/or deeper knowledge. Its not enough to write “6 Things That Will Change Your Technology”.
These people make choices that change the market, spend the money, influence colleagues and workmates.
These people are busy and often rely on trusted sources for information and advice. They don’t have time or energy to read dumb content for a large audience.
These two approaches are radically different. If you write for page views then the path leads to low intensity, low brow, low value that people can easily consume or ignore. If you publish for influence, then you write about real information about high level topics that are harder to read, you publish topics that are of value to smaller audience but who have real influence and impact.
And, frankly, writing dumb content isn’t interesting. But it took me five paragraphs to say that.
Damn.
mediatization, n.[‘ In Germany under the Holy Roman Empire: the action of reducing a prince or state in position or power (see mediatize v. 1a); the condition of being mediatized. Now hist.’]
"Media is the plural of Medium" -"1. That which lies in the middle, or between other things;intervening body or quantity. Hence, specifically: (a) Middle place or degree; mean.(b) (Math.) See {Mean}. (c) (Logic) The mean or middle term of a syllogism; that by which the extremes are brought into connection.
medium |ˈmiːdɪəm|noun (pl.media or mediums)1 an agency or means of doing something: using the latest technology as a medium forjob creation | their primitive valuables acted as a medium ofexchange.• a means by which something is communicated or expressed: here the Welsh language is the medium of instruction.2 the intervening substance through which sensory impressions are conveyed or physical forces are transmitted: radio communication needs no physical medium between the two stations.• the substance in which an organism lives or is cultured. these cells are grown in a nutrient-rich medium.• a liquid (e.g. oil or water) with which pigments are mixed, with a binder, to make paint.3 a particular form of storage material for computer files, such as magnetic tape or discs.4 the material or form used by an artist, composer, or writer: oil paint is the most popular medium for glazing.5 (pl.mediums) a person claiming to be in contact with the spirits of the dead and to communicate between the dead and the living.6 the middle quality or state between two extremes; a reasonable balance: the song soon discovers a happy medium betweenthrash and catchy pop.
Endurance.
Sustained effort no matter what happens..
Patience, persistence, failure, success - no matter what happens you just keep going. Aspects of enduring effort.
Motivation, winning & success are transient ephemeral moments of commitment.
Endurance is timeless success.
It is everyday execution & just simply showing up to win.
I have a new favourite word: quass, v
intr. To drink copiously or in excess; to quaff.
The Oxford Dictionary “OED Online Word of the Day” has popped out a doozy today:
Without comment when a group of Engineer who are strong on using Social Media for sharing and learning.
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Was catching a quick shifty after work at a local bar and noticed this sign above a doorway. The doorway led to a basement area with a bar and large number of smelly hippies and their ukulele’s.
“Better Than It Sounds”
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We drive around Network Field Day in a Limo.[/caption]
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Healthy goodness[/caption]
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Greg & Ethan have Beer ahead of #NFD5. We don’t meet more than twice a year. [/caption]
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The limo driver rolled out the red carpet at Juniper for #NFD5. I’m wearing the wrong shoes[/caption]
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Chatting with Pete Welcher from Netcraftsmen. Life Goal reached and starry eyed me :)[/caption]
Looking forward to the release of this album.
via Philter - The Blossom Chronicles - Snippet teaser - YouTube.
Sign outside a pub exhorting you to come in but pointing out it’s 22 yards to next one.
I loved this recitation of the Dr Seuss’s final book “Oh, the Places You’ll Go!”
You'll come down from the Lurch with an unpleasant bump. And the chances are, then, that you'll be in a Slump. And when you're in a Slump, you're not in for much fun. Un-slumping yourself is not easily done.
A very disturbing photo of me trying to the hit the bell with the mallet at a festival. You couldn’t plan to take a photo like this.
I’m commuting to London regularly and travel through Paddington Station to catch the train. Yes, where Paddington Bear comes from.
If you are lucky/unlucky to be passing through the station on a Friday evening between 1930 and 2130 you will be serenaded a wonderful anachronism of English life - THe Paddington Railway Band.
It was originally a staff band until privatisation, formed in the 1920’s by employees of the Great Western railway company. It was a company brass band, employees would play to customers passing through the station. In the 1920’s brass bands were enjoyed by many people, and the band members had a social life that included travel and friendship after the end of the Great War.
There was attempt to stop it in 2010 but the corporate idiots were told to stand down.
Listening to “Land of Hope & Glory” or “Pomp & Circumstance” as people rush by is quite a surreal experience, and people will applaud and donate money to support the band — which is most un-English but shows that they are appreciated.
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Ken Robinson talks about ways to adapt modern education to move from an industrial, “one size fits all” education that forces conformity and convention to an “organic” system that creates an environment for the student to flourish and grow in their own way - like a farmer creates the conditions for crops to grow but doesn’t force them all to be the same size or weight.
I’m a passionate believer in decentralised education having experienced far too much socialist nonsense in previous jobs- “no child left behind” and “all students are equal” is complete bunk. Even in teams of IT people, it takes as many low skilled, low motivation individuals to do some work, while the motivated and learned people work in other areas.
Inspirational Sunday viewing - humour, warmth and genuine insight. A must watch.
I think the Flip was killed because Enterprise customers turned away from Cisco. People like me openly laughed and denigrated Cisco for “playing with toys” instead producing better products. And that cost more money, way more money, in lost sales at 65% gross profit margin than any consumer/retail product will make.
When you drop a billion bucks in revenue (as Cisco has) then you lose $400 million odd in profit because customers aren’t taking you seriously.
The Cisco Flip wasn’t killed by the iPhone 4 or smartphones in general. Or any other cameras. At least, smartphones weren’t the only problem - I’d guess that Cisco had more designs under way, but they didn’t execute well to bring them to market - at least, no worse than Canon or Kodak.
But losing that revenue is core business. That hurts.
That’s why they Cisco threw it away and didn’t bother to sell it. A $540 million mistake that needed to be over so as to stop the bleeding in the core business.
This also doesn’t bode well for the Cisco Cius tablet. It’s also a consumer product dressed up as an enterprise device. So far, I’ve not heard a single person who has touched and seen one say anything positive about the product. And it’s been around the place for a long time.
When you train your employees to be risk averse, then you’re preparing your whole company to be reward challenged - Morgan Spurlock - The Greatest TED talk ever SOLD
Created a Textexpander shortcut: v12n -> virtualisation. Because my fingers are sorry little stubs from getting the spelling wrong all the time.
And it’s correctly spelled “virtualisation”.
With SizeUp I can drive the window size and placement on OSX completely by keyboard. Still astonished by this 2 years after I bought the software.
I wrote a long review about it OSX:Sizeup Review if you are interested.