Jenga!
Good timing or what?
Talk, talk, talk
The government has launched yet another energy policy consultation and Ashley Seager hit the nail on the head: why more talk? I’ve lost track of the number of energy consultations and white papers since Labour came to power but I’m pretty sure I’d need both hands and feet to count them.
The end of Computer Modern?
Well in short, no, but hear me out.
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Thinking Rock and GTD
I’ve got another post up at AcademicProductivity.com, this time about the Research Assessment Exercise and evaluation. The response to the first post was really encouraging so I’m going to try and contribute regularly when I can.
Being part of a productivity website does make you look a bit more closely at your own productivity. In the past, I’ve found it fairly easy to juggle all my various tasks but recently I seem to have a lot more going on. So after poking around on the web, I decided to try the much vaunted Getting Things Done system.
It turns out that I was doing most of the steps anyway but finding Thinking Rock has made a big difference. It’s a software package that manages the workflow aspect of GTD and it has two big advantages for me. One, the data file is small and the software cross-platform so it’s easy to sync home and work. And two, once you start using it, it becomes the place to look for your to-do list (which is the whole point). No more bouncing between diary, Outlook, emails etc.
Thinking Rock doesn’t help with the goals and planning parts of GTD but at least you won’t have to worry about your task list.
Carbon scenarios launch
Last night was the launch of the Stockholm Network’s Carbon Scenarios, a project I’ve contributed to over the past few months. The event was well attended and there was some good discussion afterwards; the three – slightly depressing – scenarios seem to have really struck a chord with people. You can download the full report from the project’s webpage.
The thing with scenarios is that they are tools to help you think about how a set of issues might affect your particular area of interest. As Hardin Tibbs (one of the panelists) said, think of the scenarios as a set of first-order policies. You then need to figure out as many second-order policy responses as possible and test them against these situations.
I tried to do this by interpreting what the scenarios mean for cities. You can download my crib notes here but as they always say with government press releases, “check against delivery”.
Hewlett-Packard covers Radiohead
This is crazy (and beautifully filmed too). The fun starts about 1:30 in.