Found This Week #12
In this week’s post: Toyota i-Road, Gnome Ann, Deep Learning, Elon Musk’s Master Plan II, how to think about work and Jason Bourne!
Each Friday I share some of the best things I encounter, from the internet mostly but also from real life! Hopefully what I find interesting will also be interesting to you :-)
Photo of the Week
It’s been a busy week, the first in a long time that I didn’t take a photo. As a result, I’m cheating a bit and including this photo of the Helix in DCU I took last week, which is the epitome of weather in Ireland :-p
The Toyota i-Road
Toyota have built an electric car/motorcycle hybrid called the i-Road which they have been openly trialling in Grenoble and Tokyo for the past two years.
It moves like a bike but with the safety of a car apparently. Check out the video filled with incredibly photogenic and enthusiastic non-asian people zooming around in the thing.
It looks like it would be very fun to drive, even if it does remind me of Wesley Snipe’s car in Demolition Man ;-p
Gnome Ann
I forgot to include this in last week’s post. Such genius deserves to be shared, repeatedly.
Want To Learn About Deep Learning?
Then you’re in luck, Machine Learning Mastery have a handy post listing the best free online university courses available with some tips on how to progress through the learning content.
Elon Musk’s Master Plan, Part Deux
This week Elon Musk released his updated master plan, which includes a fully automated terrestrial transport future for the masses. For such an awe-inspiring and ambitions plan, it’s a pretty short read. The best thing is all this is actually happening now. The 6th Day here we come :-)
Our Emails Are Safe Again!
Following on from Privacy Shield described last week in Found This Week #11, apparently our emails stored by U.S. companies in Europe are now safe from the U.S. Department of Justice. Microsoft has won a federal appeals court decision stating that the U.S. Government cannot force the company to turn over customer emails stored on servers outside of the U.S.
Bourne Is Back!
The new Jason Bourne film is out this week. I re-watched the previous 4 Bourne films in preparation. They hold up well. I can’t wait to see the new one. Here’s a great interview with Paul Greengrass and Matt Damon in The Guardian about it. Incidentally, here is what Matt Damon had to say about his Team America appearance.
Using VR To Treat Vertigo
Mark Cuban published his fascinating story about using his Samsung VR setup to emulate vertigo therapy with successful results.
Thought of The Week: Find The Work That Only You Can Do
In the past few year, I’ve gone through a mindset change in how I see work. For the most part I’ve always loved work. For years I was a happy web developer, building software day in day out. I then followed one of the natural career progression paths in the software industry and started managing projects and teams. In each job however, I would go through the same cycle; start and get settled, complete a big project or sustained period of work, re-evaluate and see a lack of progression opportunities. Eventually I would leave the job for the next challenge. At then end of each cycle I was left evaluating my skills and pondering my next step.
This unfortunately meant trying to figure out which HR recruitment pigeon hole I could fit in. Recruiters would tell me despite my many years of software development experience, because I had been project managing in the most recent years, I was at a disadvantage in not having “active development” experience. They would then tell me that despite successfully delivering national level projects, I was at a disadvantage in not having a project management certification. I couldn’t win and it was very frustrating. I was left scrolling through job sites trying to figure out how I ended up between two job stools and trying to decide which stool I should concentrate on. And therein lied the problem, I didn’t want to choose. I love building web software and I love managing the process to take a project from start to finish. Sadly, none of the job specs I could find listed all of my particular set of skills together so I decided to go out on my own and consult. Or rather I couldn’t see another viable option at the time and decided to give it a go.
I’m two years down the consulting road now and have been lucky enough to work on a range of projects, all of which include project management and software development in a variety of different ways. Looking back on my decision, or rather my perceived lack of options at the time, I think the problem was with how I viewed work. I was looking to fill a pre-defined requirement within the system by doing a square peg, round hole match between the job specs out there and the work I could and wanted to do. (It’s also worth mentioning that job specs are never a true representation of the job post on offer, but that’s a rant for another day).
I’ve since learned to turn this view on its head. It is possible to define your strengths and provide value by packing these into an offering for clients. In doing this, I can now offer viable solutions to requirements rather than a checklist of skills on a job spec. It is also fertile ground for progression, learning and improvement, which prevents me from getting “career bored”.
This week I read an excellent article by Taylor Pearson describing 4 Strategies To Find Work Only You Can Do. I really identified with this piece because it verbalised the career journey I have engaging with for the last two years, I just didn’t know what to call it. (I’m aware of the irony there, in saying I didn’t/couldn’t fit into a category so I rebelled agains those categories and now I’m happy that I have a category to put myself into, but hey, I need something to say when my family ask me when am I going to get a job :-p).
The article chronicles some of the shining lights in the “build your own career” space like Kevin Kelly, the founder of Wired, and Scott Adams, the creator of Dilbert. The strategies described in the article are practices that help you go against the grain and in this find the areas where the masses haven’t occupied, allowing you to thrive there.
(HT to this month’s a16z newsletter which included the article.)
Cool Thing Of The Week: The Cyanometer
This is an art installation in Ljubljana by artists Martin Bricelj Baraga which takes images of the sky and translates the data into one of 53 shades of blue. It is intended as a measurement of air pollution and all of the data is openly archived online.
See you next week :-)
About Me
I’m a web consultant, contract web developer and technical project manager originally from Cork and now based in Swansea, South Wales. A lot of my work is done with clients in Ireland & the UK, where I offer strategy, planning and technical delivery services. I also offer freelance CTO services to companies in need of technical bootstrapping or reinvention. If you think I can help you in your business, check out my details on http://darylfeehely.com.
