May 2012
1 post
1 tag
On Facial Expressions
As I traveled back from Belarus last week I glimpsed a photo of a gorilla in a magazine.
I recognised the gorilla’s facial expression as one of anger, and noticed that we share a great deal of similarity with other primates in how we signal emotions through facial expressions. This got me thinking:
Why do we share facial expressions with other primates?
How and why do emotions get...
April 2012
1 post
How To Think
“The map is not the territory.” Be mindful of what is.
Concentrate without distraction.
Hold opinions without gripping them.
“Invert, always invert.” Impose faces on reality and then ask them contentious questions. Interrogate topics from perspectives of distinct cultures, and reframe in diverse contexts.
Use metaphor to sense patterns and generalisations in nature.
...
January 2012
1 post
5 tags
RESTful Web Services correctly inherit and use...
There’s been a lot of buzz on RESTful Web Services [1] and yet there are still far too many developers that believe they may implement it by simply using a Rest class provided by their favourite framework.
I wonder if this has been helped by the obtuse or long-winded articles that are out there on the web and so here is my attempt at explaining the concept as concisely as possible:
...
December 2011
8 posts
Empowerment
Groups often create feedback loops. At their worst they represent a mob that snuffs out any individual intelligence within. At their best they’re greater than the sum of their parts.
It has been shown that the collective intelligence held by a group is (a) positively affected by having a large number of socially-sensitive members whom are able to accurately read each other’s emotions,...
Team Leadership
In order to motivate groups to take ownership, be creative and produce their best work, we must align individuals into a team vision [1].
In concrete actions
In a stand-up meeting every morning [2]: What did you do yesterday?
What will you do today?
Are there any impediments in your way?
In an email every few days: What tasks currently exist? Who is doing what?
Show the fundamental...
Meaningful Communication
Take a look at the hundreds of emails you received today: how many of them are helpful? Have you ever been to a meeting without an agenda or in which 80% of the discussion wasn’t relevant to you? Emails and disturbances make people less productive than if they were smoking pot [1]. At any opportunity you have, take yourself and others out of this.
In concrete actions
Keep the number of...
Hiring Tech Talent
“Fast-growing companies at large scale do enormous amounts of college recruiting. That’s because the quality of the pool is much higher than the pool of out-of-work programmers… not because young people are smarter or better programmers but simply because the candidate pool includes a cross-section of skills, whereas the candidate pool of out-of-work programmers is biased to...
How To Drive Change
Finding the will to effect intent into action is difficult. The philosophy that works for me is: protracted belief, thought and action.
The best approaches to change are highly iterative and prolonged. You should act on what you believe, and you should believe in what you have substantiated with thought. If you are not in this for the long haul it’s unlikely you’ll ever be able to...
Passivity is the worst submission. →
Passivity is the worst submission because it is submission without individual intention to life itself.
Could a past socialite at school be at a... →
Socializing too deeply early on at school is often a disadvantage in later life; the most successful people are those with strong raw talents that learnt to socialise out of school.
I also wrote this earlier this year. I had been reading too much John Holt.
Enhanced Autodidactism for the Chronically Lazy... →
I wrote this earlier on in the year. I also wrote a follow-up here; transaction analysis of human behaviour is ridiculously geeky but a very smart twist on time management.