Last week I started work at the Department of Immigration and Citizenship, working in the web applications group (ie. lots of PHP coding). I’m enjoying the work, but didn’t realise how little time I’d have in the evenings (especially with Aikido 3 nights a week). I’d love to be able to be paid based on my output, not on the number of hours I’ve spent at work, since that’d give me a “finish your work and you can go home early” incentive. Has anyone heard of that happening within the Australian Public Service? I doubt it, but it’s worth a shot

Back in the day (am I old enough to say that?) I used to do light and sound work at high school and a few of my friend’s church events. This basically involved setting up and running the lights and sound equipment for events from the mundane (school assemblies) to the spectacular (a massive party in Rod Laver Arena).

Apart from the odd wireless mic, every device out there is going to need at least one cable. For a decent set up, that adds up to a lot of mic cables, speaker cables, power cables (regular and 3-phase), data cables, and so on. As a newbie, one of my first experiences of reverse coiling was being let loose on a tangled mess of cables at the end of a night, and spending a good half-hour coiling them up. BUT, there’s a trick involved:

If you take a cable and coil it up the regular way, then uncoil it by throwing it across the room, you end up with cable that still has a twist in it, which will kink up and generally be annoying. There’s an elegant technique that lets you avoid this, known as reverse coiling… which I’ll describe shortly, once I’ve fixed image upload on wordpress. Stay tuned!

Update: Reverse coiling illustrated

“I wouldn’t give a fig for the simplicity on this side of complexity; I would give my right arm for the simplicity on the far side of complexity.”
– Oliver Wendell Holmes

I think this quote highlights a very important point. It’s easy to say simplicity is great, and it’s easy to create something simple. But to make something simple and valuable first requires you to examine the breadth and depth of the subject in all its detail before you can identify the simple solution that covers all the bases that matter. If you’re making something simple, how much complexity did you deal with before you focused in on your simple solution?

This week I’m in Sydney at the Aiki-kai winter school. I’m also testing out the pre-publish feature of wordpress, so with luck this post will appear on Thursday, even though I’m writing it on Sunday. I’m not going to write much not because I have to pack, but if you’re interested, check out the wikipedia page for more information on Aikido, and Aiki-kai Australia for information about dojo locations and the like.

Report on ACS Young IT conference in Adelaide - Day 1, 30th May

Preparing For a Leadership Role by Stephen Kowal

A definition: Motivating (inspiring) a person or people to achieve a goal, while helping those people achieve their goals.

Every position is a leadership position, but not every person is a leader. You can choose whether to lead within your role.

Understand your values and other people’s values, then you’ll know what is needed to inspire yourself and them.

Your performance, not your role is what determines your success. Do whatever you’re doing now with passion, even if you don’t like it.

Luck doesn’t exist - instead, there are always causes for something happening.

Questions: Stephen gave $50 (!) to the person who asked the first question, but only $2 to the person who asked the second question, because “being second isn’t nearly as valuable as being first”.