Pete's December 2021 update
Writing, naming bunnies, and crushing on Tom Hanks
A few months ago I went to the bottle shop and asked the guy for a recommendation for a local gin. He talked me through a few amazing-sounding gins that I’ll have to go back for, but in the meantime I saw this label and decided I wanted it in my life.
PSA: Cloth masks were a stop-gap measure. Surgical masks protect other people from you, not you from them. Get yourself some N95 masks. Some Covid masks are better than others. I know – I’m the Mask Nerd
Highlights and insights
Startups: Coached 4 startups. Made my first angel investment, and gathered a group of potential angel investors to share my knowledge with.
Facilitation: Ran another innovation sprint for Zip, this time with an NZ partner company. It went really well and gave me a much-needed confidence boost to end the year.
Writing: I finally started writing again. I’ve worked out a structure for a cut-down version of the book — a guide to winning a startup weekend or hackathon — to be the first publication. My goal is to get the first draft done in the next week before going back to work. My biggest thing right now is finding the right voice for the writing.
Downtime: It took a few weeks but I finally feel like I’m relaxing and recovering from a year of working very hard on multiple things.
Learned two words I hadn’t encountered before: florilegium and pusillanimous.
Florilegium is the Latin version of the Greek “anthology”, a compilation of excerpts from larger written works. Wikipedia says “The word is from the Latin flos (flower) and legere (to gather): literally a gathering of flowers, or collection of fine extracts from the body of a larger work.”
Pusillanimous means lacking in will or courage, and there’s a whole post about the (lack of) link between pusillanimous and pussy thanks to a recent US President’s off-the-cuff insults.Got my favourite parking fine: $12. It was my last day of work for the year. I had parked in a 2-hour spot. I was supposed to have a meeting, then go and run some errands, then come back to run a workshop. But I was exhausted and couldn’t be bothered and just plum forgot I was supposed to move the car. And when I came back to this little slap on the wrist it made me laugh. $12? Worth it. If I’d paid for all-day parking it would have been $8.50
My previous favourite parking fine was on Prince Edward Island in Canada. The fine came with the usual option to contest the fine etc, but also the option to just pay it and get a $10 discount. A great incentive to shut up and take responsibility.The house is slowly coming along. Our new floors are in; new ducted heating system is in; we’ve mostly finished painting (indoors); the skylight has been replaced and patched and painted; and new blinds have been installed. Second-bathroom and laundry are still bare walls and concrete, waiting for tradies to fit us into their schedules (assuming no outbreaks / lockdown…). That will be protracted and noisy and messy. For now it’s nice to have a few weeks of peace.
And I get to actually set up my office for really reals!Garden tidbits:
We were visited by kākā (birds) at 10pm one night.
A magpie has started visiting our yard.
We named the two rabbits that live in our garden: Stewart (Stew) and Willow.
We got 6 cubic metres of firewood delivered and piled it (not very stably) in our woodshed.
Our tap is under a lot of pressure (literally) so the hose and trigger keep flying off when we water the garden.
We are eating things we grew: peas, lettuce, rocket, fennel, broad beans, oddly-shaped carrots, a few strawberries, many blackcurrants, giant herbs, bulbous cucumbers.
Chocolate: When all the tradies were finally done and out of the house, we set aside the day to make chocolates for the first time in 2 years! I’d forgotten a lot of technique, and didn’t have some of the equipment we used to, but everything worked out fine. Having a larger kitchen to work in was such a pleasure.
Sleep: Since stopping reading my phone (or Kindle) in bed I’ve mostly been sleeping excellently. Audiobooks and podcasts have been sending me gently into a sound sleep for the past ~4 months.
Started thinking about 2022 and what I want to be, do, and work towards.
Read / watch / listen
This newsletter has become slow Twitter for me. 😆 I have a thought to share? Eh, it can wait until the end of the month.
[Watch: 5 minutes. Joyful] WeRateDogs’ The Dogs of 2021. Perfect.
[Listen: 35 minutes. Insightful] The Science of Quitting on A Slight Change of Plans podcast. I loved Annie Duke’s perspective on quitting: “what distinguishes great poker players from everybody else is mainly quitting. They quit a lot more. So they're just very good at cutting their losses.” Quitting isn’t something I’d really thought about that much, even though it ties in perfectly with the lean startup (and my) obsession with ‘failure’. Thanks to Megan for putting me onto this podcast.
[Watch: 6 minutes. Oh no you didn’t!] Black Jeopardy skit with Tom Hanks in a MAGA hat, from 2016 pre-election. I love how Tom Hanks throws himself into comedy and characters like this. (For example, read this oral history of the Halloween-themed David S Pumpkins skit from the same show.)
(My thought this morning: Do you think Tom Hanks’ autograph just says ‘THanks’?)
[Read: 8 minutes. Weird] The Kanjira Framework. The future of music AI. I don’t really know how this ended up in my feed; I’m kinda glad it did. It’s a weird piece, posing as a tech company’s media release for the year 2056, and sharing the cool things you can do with music thanks to their technology.
"But what percentage of The Doors fans have been patient enough to tolerate an annoying keyboard solo for almost five entire minutes so that Jimmy would reach the mic again, exhausted from jumping around on the stage for a “you know that it would be untrue…?” This is where the Kanjira handle, Leveller, steps in, and from its early development days, it was a controversial newsworthy subject for all transparent tabloids. From the early prototypes on, it gave artists and bots the shiver of historical manipulations. It served a simple purpose: Fix an error in my song!"[Watch: movies and TV] Some movie and show recommendations, only some of which contain Adam Driver
Tracks (2013): A wonderful Aussie film in which a young woman walks from Alice Springs to Broome in the company of her dog and camels. [Netflix]
Money Heist (La Casa de Papel): A very intense, character-driven heist series. From memory season 3 was a bit crap but it sets up the final two seasons. [Netflix]
Don’t Look Up (2021): I had low expectations going into this but had a great laugh. If you know it’s a farce you’ll have a good time. I know the obvious metaphor this movie is associated with, but I think of it as what if the movie Armageddon was set in the real world right now? The most I’ve ever liked Leonardo DiCaprio or Cate Blanchett, who were both brilliant in this.
School of Chocolate (2021): Thanks to Rach for putting us onto this one. A Masterchef-y reality show but with professional chefs taking on chocolate-related challenges. [Netflix]
Killing Eve: Late to the game on this one but what an awesome series! [Not on Netflix; I bought this on Google Play to avoid the ads on our local streaming service.]
[Listen: Audiobook series. Books for ears.] Dream Park is the first novel in the series, by Larry Niven and Steven Barnes, described as cyberpunk murder mysteries. Set during immersive Dungeons and Dragons-like games enhanced by actors and holograms and futuristic technology, plus a murder to solve and some cool twists and turns in the later books. (Like the second book, where the tech is used for ‘fatbuster’ games.) The audiobook narration is solid. It’s weird that this hasn’t been made into a movie or TV show — especially in the age of Squid Game, 300, Westworld series, and a new Matrix movie. Hop to it, Netflix!
And that wraps up a year of writing monthly updates! It’s been useful for me so I’ll keep doing it. 🥰
To understand the chicken joke, one first must know the classic joke form, “Why did x do y?” — Melissa Balick, Do You Actually Understand the Most Common Joke in the English Language?