Weekly note for 25 August 2023

One note for the whole week as I haven’t been working. Instead, had a week at home having fun with the family. However, I did occasionally look at a computer, hence the below.

So Twitter/X finally took Tweetdeck away from me, which has made the site a bit less useful. However, I still get way more use from it than any other social site, with the possible exception of LinkedIn, which for people like me is the real winner from the Twitter/X meltdown, I think. Bluesky seems to be picking up members, but it is still very quiet. Mastodon remains Mastodon.

Am back on a Mac now, as my daily driver, and it’s lovely. More on that in a proper post. But one change as a result is that I am now writing these notes in the venerable MarsEdit, which is a great improvement on Simplenote and means I can hit a button to publish them, and not have to faff around copying and pasting.

Fab work by Tewkesbury Council, going live with their new – WordPress powered – website.

Catching up on the weird world of LLMs“. Great resource from Simon Willison.

Alan Wright’s blog is chock full of brilliantly useful articles, like this one on splitting product teams.

How the iMac saved Apple

Daily note for 17 August 2023

Two days in a row out of the house! First time that has happened in a while. Today, I am knackered.

“Digital proof: where one service ends, another begins” https://www.dxw.com/2023/08/digital-proof/

“Team memory, organisational sharing and serendipity in distributed workplaces” https://emilywebber.co.uk/team-memory-organisational-sharing-and-serendipity-in-distributed-workplaces/

Been watching a lot of films at home recently. Finally saw Dunkirk last weekend, and thought it was ok. Seemed very disjointed to me. Then over a few weeknight sittings, got to the end of Heart of Stone, on Netflix. Gal Gadot as Tom Cruise in a Mission:Impossible type thing. Entertaining enough, but hard to care for any of the characters that were still alive at the end.

This looks a great online event about data stuff: https://lu.ma/roots-of-data-for-ngos

Daily note for 14 August 2023

I’ve just ordered myself a new Mac Mini. Having been working on a fairly clunky Windows all-in-one machine for a few years, am looking forward to getting back on the Mac full time.

I just find the apps available on the Mac to be higher quality and more useful than on Windows, where the experience always seems to fall short somehow.

I’ve long been looking for a decent Evernote replacement. Keep It looks like a potential winner, especially now I am returning to the Mac ecosystem: https://reinventedsoftware.com/keepit/

Is there a more consistently brilliant thing than In Our Time? This one’s about the film director Fritz Lang: https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p0fy7kcp

I heartily approve of this message: https://twitter.com/katebevan/status/1689587674535940096

Daily note for 9 August 2023

“Why I no longer believe in Content Design” https://uxdesign.cc/why-i-no-longer-believe-in-content-design-e71aeb5f060c

I wrote a quick and snarky post about Cipfa’s recent report about blockchain: https://da.vebrig.gs/2023/08/09/cipfa-claims-blockchain-is-a-promising-solution-for-the-public-sector-i-disagree/

“Why does PDF content persist when it sucks so much, and how can you get rid of it?” https://lapope.com/2023/08/07/pdfs-vs-web-pages-whats-better-for-users/

CIPFA claims blockchain is a ‘promising solution’ for the public sector. I disagree.

CIPFA have published a report entitled Exploring blockchain technologies for collaboration and partnerships [PDF warning].

The very first statement of the executive summary is problematic.

Blockchain technology has emerged as a promising solution for collaboration and partnerships, providing a secure and transparent way for multiple parties to interact and transact without intermediaries.

Has it? I’m not sure myself.

Anyway, they include a helpful decision tree to help you decide whether you should use the blockchain or not:

Which I am happy to simplify for everyone:

All snarking aside, I think this is a massive waste of time, money and attention for everyone concerned.

Across the public sector, technology and digital budgets are being salami sliced away, leaving organisations facing critical levels of risk and failing to grasp the opportunities that better investment in these areas would unlock.

What would be really helpful would be some practical advice around fixing that problem, not farting around with blockchain.