Category Archives: Productivity

Pen based Productivity Tools – The Chronodex 2018

27 Wednesday Dec 2017

Posted by in Productivity, Tools

≈ Leave a comment

Tags

,

ChronodexIts good to see that Patrick Ng has released the first part of the Chronodex for Jan to Jun 2018. Now in its 6th year of production. Still a favorite of mine due to its design and ease to use.

This is primarily meant for the Midori Traveller Notebook system, but it can be used without.

There is still a place for journalling using a pen rather than a blog post as discussed here No Batteries Required: My Personal Journal.  I’m now on Journal 22 and still going strong with those daily entries.

Link to downloads:

http://scription.typepad.com/blog/2017/12/scription-chronodex-weekly-planner-jan-jun-2018-released.html

 

Digital Mindset – Millennial Mentor

22 Friday Dec 2017

Posted by in Digital, Productivity, Tools

≈ Leave a comment

Tags

, , ,

Mentor

As we head towards the New Year and think about our New Years resolutions try setting one to have a Millennial Mentor.

Mentoring is traditionally thought of as top-down or older-younger mentoring, but this barrier is being regularly being broken now with mentoring working as an equal arrangement and skills learning.

Millennials coming into businesses are growing up with the latest trends and technology, and it is second nature to them. For those who are of an older generation, its often a learning path to get up to speed with the latest trends and technologies.

For some people their mentors are at home in the form of a family member, for others this could be a Millennial who is in your business.

A conversation on twitter I was having around Digital Mindset   Replying to @Max_Hemingway – Talk to a millennial – my son said last night ‘gosh mom, you had to learn this stuff…I don’t even think about cuz I grew up with it in my hands ‘

This can be a two way mentoring setup with you learning about the latest trends and technologies from today’s young people, whilst they learn business skills and how a business could adapt and use the trends and technologies.

You may already be mentoring and your mentee could become your next mentor.

 

Having the Right Digital Mindset

04 Monday Dec 2017

Posted by in 21st Century Human, Digital, Innovation, Productivity, Social Media

≈ 6 Comments

Tags

, , , , , , , , ,

Digital BrainDigital is used as a title to cover the current business and computing era. Being Digital is about having the right mindset. There is no magic course or exam that you can take that will pronounce you as being “Digital”. Its how you apply yourself against the changing landscape of business and technology.

There area many areas that could be included to help shape your Digital Mindset, however for me these fit into six main areas:

  • Business
  • Technology
  • Social
  • Personal
  • Application
  • Learning

The Digital Era is enabling “A Growth Mindset in the Age of Abundance”.

Business

The business area covers the skills and thinking that are needed in your workplace and what you need to succeed. Businesses are being constantly challenged in the way that they operate today and look forward to tomorrow against what their customers demand, the market wants and competition are doing.

There may be a number of business processes that are in place that have been there for a while and are expensive to change constrained by a number of factors. This has meant that the processes haven’t grown. The changes that the digital era is bringing helps to remove these constraints and costs, allowing business to rethink how they achieve these processes. With the constraints being removed through innovation and advancements, with costs coming down, how can you change/transform these processes to meet the market challenges of today. What can you change/transform/automate?

Technology

The technology area covers existing, new and emerging technologies in your life. What you use in everyday life and what you could use or imagine that would help you complete tasks and achieve goals quickly and efficiently. Defining which technologies you should be using and learning will depend partly on what your job role is and the road maps and trends for the industry/sector. The aaS (as a Service)  economy is providing the ability to consume technology at a faster easier route with an abundance of choice of service to go with. The need for a growth mindset is key to navigating a direction and path through this and making decisions on which technologies best meet your needs. The key is to understand and keep up with the trends and technologies.

Social

The social area covers how you interact with the rest of the world, including your work and family life. Reading everything that is going on Social Media is literally “drinking from the fire hose” – so much happening you can get easily swamped with noise.  Building a Personal Knowledge Management System is one way of keeping in touch with what is happening and trending on topics that you are interested in on Social Media. Setting yourself a series of Social Media Rules will help define when and what you should put in the public domain and when not to.

Personal

The personal area covers yourself. Ensuring that your health is good and you are living life to the full or best you can helps. Eating well and keeping fit help keep the mind fresh and positive.

Understanding that change is happening everyday and we need to embrace this with a positive attitude and work through the ambiguity that it presents. A blog post by Richard Branson recently wraps this up nicely “You can’t control what happens to you but you can control how you react”

Fear of failure is another area that often lets us down and stops us from trying things, however we can learn from our mistakes so it is important to experiment and innovate. Doing small things and trying them – Theory of small bets – allows you to fail fast if things don’t work and keep any cost/consequences small. “Successful entrepreneurs don’t begin with brilliant ideas — they discover them.” ~ Peter Sims

Application

The application area covers how you apply these mindset areas into your everyday life using method that are well documented such as Agile and Design Thinking. The key is choosing the right method for the situation you are in. Using aids to help you may be one way of doing this – Playing a game with innovation and thinking.

Learning

One of the biggest areas is learning. Keeping your skills up to date with the latest advancements in all the areas above. You should be looking to do 50 to 60 hours learning a year as a minimum (some professions require higher number of hours). Learning is easier with the internet through online courses, videos and podcasts allowing it to be undertaken at anytime. Re-enforcing your learning through explaining it to someone else or blogging about it is part of  The Nature and Cycle of CPD.

There are arguments for and against learning to code, however having an understanding of what is going on in the coding world helps with today’s advancing technology.

 

Further Reading

Twenty First Century Digital

 

 

Automating leaving a geolocation area

11 Thursday May 2017

Posted by in Automation, Productivity, Tools

≈ 6 Comments

Tags

, ,

mapFollowing on from my blog about Accepting automation and safeguards, in this post I will demonstrate how easy it is to set up a recipe from IFTTT (If This Then That) to use the location service to send a text to someone when I have left a Geolocation zone.

There are other automation tools you can use on your mobile such as Tasker, Zapier and Automate, however for this example I have chose IFTTT.

The actual configuration of this task is very easy using either the web or mobile tool.

Using the tool in this example, I chose the recipe ingredients that related to my mobile. In this case an Android phone.

The interface takes you through an the process by clicking the relevant icons and entering some simple information. I have flow charted the process below:

IFTTT

You can install the application on your mobile and sign in so that it knows about the tool. Its also important that when using location recipes that you also turn on the Location/GPS function on your device.

This set up uses Android, IFTTT, Google maps and the GPS function of the mobile. These should be kept up to date with any updates that come out on a regular basis.

The text message itself can contain a number of parameters “I exited an area {{OccurredAt}} via Android {{LocationMapUrl}}”  which did put some context into the text message.

{{OccurredAt}} provided a date and time

{{LocationMapUrl}} provided a location in google maps

You can remove these from the message if they are not needed.

There are lots of sample recipes and ones created by others that you can reuse, or the site has the ability to create your own.

(originally posted at https://maxhemingway.com/2016/02/19/ifttt-sms-when-exiting-a-location-recipe/)

 

10 Books I’d send to my younger self

10 Wednesday May 2017

Posted by in Productivity

≈ 3 Comments

Tags

clock-407101_1920In H.G. Wells “The Time Machine”, the Time Traveler comes back from the future to take 3 books from a bookshelf in their study to return to the future. The reader (or viewer of the film) is left guessing which 3 books have been taken from the bookshelf and how they will shape the future.

Thinking about this the other way, I have been considering which books I would send back to my younger self to read to help my career earlier than when I actually read them. I have expanded my choices to 10 books rather than just 3.

As in “The Time Machine”, I’ve chosen books that are on my bookshelf that I would pick up and hand back to myself. Some of these may be considered a bit dated, however I have chosen books here that helped shape my thinking through the years, rather than the Sports Almanac (Back to the Future reference).

Time paradoxes aside – here is my list;

If you had an opportunity to send 10 books back to your younger self, what would you choose from your bookshelf?

Top 10 Books

 

Accepting automation – Do we need safeguards?

09 Tuesday May 2017

Posted by in Automation, Open Source, Productivity, Programming, Security, Tools

≈ Leave a comment

Tags

, , , ,

CogsThere are many and apps available to help us automate basic tasks on our mobiles and computing devices. When choosing these tools, we often read reviews and then download the app, run and set up, then let it run its tasks accepting that it will carry out our requirements. But what happens when there is an issue.

I have a simple IFTTT (If This Then That) recipe running on my mobile phone that sends a test message when I leave an area set up in google maps using Geolocation and GPS to look at my location. A standard recipe for IFTTT.

Today whilst sitting at my desk the recipe triggered saying I had left the area, however I am sat in the middle of my geolocation fence which extends for about 1 mile around to allow some local area travel. The net result is the person who got the message thought I was on my way home, when in fact I was still at work.

Solution to my problem:

The issue with this recipe was caused by the Android operating system and the phone type causing some wonkiness with the location. I fixed this by ensuring all the packages are up to date, rebooting and using another app called GPS Status to assist with ensuring my GPS is working correctly and has the right the location. Also ensuring that the GPS is set to high dependency. The downside may be the drain on the battery with the extra services – I will monitor this going forward.

The main thing this points out is how we accept and then use an app/tool and expect it to work, but not consider the what ifs, such as what if the app triggers incorrectly. Should I have set any safeguards in the recipe or built a counter app.

No harm done in this case as it triggered a text message, but what if this had done something different such as put the heating on, turned on a kettle, opened the garage door, turned something else off? This could be reversed using another recipe to turn things off if I’m within the geolocation fence.

So, what can you do to ensure that your apps/tools and related apps/tools are reliable:

Research – review and research your app. Have there been any issues with running something similar.

Secure – Think about the security of the app and what you can do to protect yourself.

Update, Update, Update – keep the OS, Apps and related apps up to date. In this instance, Android, IFTTT, Google Maps.

Plan – for the what ifs. Allow a reverse control if needed such as turn off the kettle, close the garage, turn on the alarm.

Experiment – Dont be afraid to experiment to get the automation you require.

Safeguards – Think about any Safeguards you may need to build in such as a counter app.

Voice Assistants and The Letterbox Problem

16 Sunday Apr 2017

Posted by in Digital, IoT, Productivity, Security, Tools

≈ Leave a comment

Tags

, , ,

microphone-338481_960_720There are lots of voice activated tools and services now available from software on your PC and in your car to physical hardware you can place around your home. These devices are becoming everyday occurrences, “Alexa, whats the weather”, “Siri, recipe for  Chocolate Cake” (too many to list).

The two main ways to control them is via a button press then speaking such as my car to get it into a listening state, or they are always in a listening state awaiting a set of specific interaction commands, such as the applications name. There is at least a turn of listening mode.

However with all these devices and software, there is a distinct lack of security around voice recognition and lack of interaction security. For instance a recent incident where a TV show caused a number of Dolls Houses to be purchased.

We are busy connecting these devices to all sorts of home automation to make it easier to do things, but how many stop to think of what I term as: “The Letterbox Problem”. This is where you have automated your home to a level that includes things like your lights, powered items and your house alarm. As you walk into your house you can say voice commands to turn on lights, put the kettle on and turn off the alarm. The Letterbox Problem happens when someone has the ability to literally shout through your letterbox and activate or deactivate items in your house. To a would be thief, turning lights on and off will check to see if anyone is at home first before going for the alarm.

There is a security challenge here is to ensure that a level of voice recognition and security controls are in place. Voice recognition by itself is not good enough as I’m sure you’ve heard an impressionist mimic a celebrity on a TV or Radio show.

I would like to see a form of two factor authentication on a voice system so it can be sure its me before it carries out the task. Voice may be one of these, but something else like a token code or app on the phone may be a solution.

There a number of basic steps you can take at the moment to help protect yourself such as:

  • Think about the systems you are connecting the voice device to. Can it compromise your security if anyone else uses it.
  • Use the mute button on devices or turn of listening mode when not in use.
  • Keep the devices updated with the latest patches and firmware.
  • Use good password security practices on any sensitive systems you use (ie Bank Accounts, Paypal etc).
  • Use strong passwords on any associated accounts to the voice assistants, (ie Amazon, Google, Apple etc).
  • If your system allows it, clear out its cache and old activities on regular basis so they can’t be replayed against you.
  • Don’t have a system listening when the TV or Radio is on, especially when your out of the room. You may end up with a new dolls house.

 

Site Reliability Engineering by Google

03 Friday Feb 2017

Posted by in Digital, Productivity, Programming, Tools

≈ Leave a comment

Tags

, , ,

learnHaving read this book previously its good to see that it is now available from Google on-line for reading/reference. The book itself is a collection of articles and essays on how Google run and maintain their computing systems by their Site Reliability Engineers.

The book can be accessed at  https://landing.google.com/sre/book/

List of the Table of Contents showing the articles and essays in the book.

Table of Contents
Foreword
Preface
Part I – Introduction
Chapter 1 – Introduction
Chapter 2 – The Production Environment at Google, from the Viewpoint of an SRE
Part II – Principles
Chapter 3 – Embracing Risk
Chapter 4 – Service Level Objectives
Chapter 5 – Eliminating Toil
Chapter 6 – Monitoring Distributed Systems
Chapter 7 – The Evolution of Automation at Google
Chapter 8 – Release Engineering
Chapter 9 – Simplicity
Part III – Practices
Chapter 10 – Practical Alerting
Chapter 11 – Being On-Call
Chapter 12 – Effective Troubleshooting
Chapter 13 – Emergency Response
Chapter 14 – Managing Incidents
Chapter 15 – Postmortem Culture: Learning from Failure
Chapter 16 – Tracking Outages
Chapter 17 – Testing for Reliability
Chapter 18 – Software Engineering in SRE
Chapter 19 – Load Balancing at the Frontend
Chapter 20 – Load Balancing in the Datacenter
Chapter 21 – Handling Overload
Chapter 22 – Addressing Cascading Failures
Chapter 23 – Managing Critical State: Distributed Consensus for Reliability
Chapter 24 – Distributed Periodic Scheduling with Cron
Chapter 25 – Data Processing Pipelines
Chapter 26 – Data Integrity: What You Read Is What You Wrote
Chapter 27 – Reliable Product Launches at Scale
Part IV – Management
Chapter 28 – Accelerating SREs to On-Call and Beyond
Chapter 29 – Dealing with Interrupts
Chapter 30 – Embedding an SRE to Recover from Operational Overload
Chapter 31 – Communication and Collaboration in SRE
Chapter 32 – The Evolving SRE Engagement Model
Part V – Conclusions
Chapter 33 – Lessons Learned from Other Industries
Chapter 34 – Conclusion
Appendix A – Availability Table
Appendix B – A Collection of Best Practices for Production Services
Appendix C – Example Incident State Document
Appendix D – Example Postmortem
Appendix E – Launch Coordination Checklist
Appendix F – Bibliography

Digital Tools- Voice Activated Assistants

20 Friday Jan 2017

Posted by in Digital, Innovation, Productivity, Tools

≈ 2 Comments

Tags

, , , ,

blogger-336371_640Does the Voice Activated Assistant have a place in the business?   Yes it does. There are lots of voice activated assistants available to help us with our daily tasks. Some are built into mobile devices and some are purchased as specific items. The key is that they all respond to commands and can interact with other devices in our lives.

These devices are already within most business today, but may not being used to their full potential.

“<Insert Name of Assistant> turn on the lights” – providing that the assistant has been linked to the lighting system it will turn on the lights as requested.

Voice programs and activation have been around for along time, but have only recently become more mainstream with the advancements in the speech algorithms and technology to recognise the various dimensions and variants of the human voice. Also the ability to respond in a human voice. Brings back memories of playing around with Dr Spaitso (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dr._Sbaitso) or watching the film War Games and wanting a talking computer “Would you like to play a game….”.

The biggest market at the moment is the consumer market with devices such as the Amazon Echo being used to connect a myriad of devices and services to build a connected home. There are a number of other assistants out there on devices that can do the same, such as Siri, Cortana, AVIC, and Google Now on the market. There are lots of others available as well.

There are also lots of projects and wishes to have an AI Assistant similar to J.A.R.V.I.S from Marvel’s Iron Man. Such a project is being carried out by Mark Zuckerberg. https://www.facebook.com/notes/mark-zuckerberg/building-jarvis/10154361492931634/

For some having devices around that are constantly listening can be a security issue, however in the main having a voice activated assistants are becoming more common place in every day lives.

“Google says 20 percent of mobile queries are voice searches” http://searchengineland.com/google-reveals-20-percent-queries-voice-queries-249917. This figure will be higher including all the assistants.

This trend is already seeing businesses building web based services to be voice friendly and allow access to data by looking at the type of natural questions someone may ask. Typically a voice search will take longer than a typed search as there is an additional processing step around the voice translation to search, however this is speeding up with the advancements in the programming and algorithms used.

Another example of a business application for voice assistants is where an operator is working with their hands and needs to get a part delivered or get answers to a question about the task they are doing.

In an office the assistant could be used to raise a ticket on the help desk AI, which in turn will try to solve the issue before raising a ticket for a human operator to assist.

Voice has been around for a long time and the future will see it mature to be a more personalised assistant with the ability to interact by recognising the user and have the ability to be called different names, removing the current standard activation names. Linking voice, business systems, data science, AI and machine learning will see a future of being able to ask natural language voice questions to the device about the business/data and obtain a natural language response from the system.

 

 

 

Chronodex 2017 (Jun-Jun)

23 Friday Dec 2016

Posted by in Productivity, Tools

≈ Leave a comment

Tags

,

ChronodexThe first half of the 2017 Chronodex has been released by Patrick Ng.

Available at:  https://app.box.com/s/rcthk406yjp0obd3263nwsphk53h4nyk

There is still a place for a manual diary and journalling using a pen rather than a blog post as discussed here No Batteries Required: My Personal Journal. I am now on my 19th Journal and still going strong.