Weeknotes 3

8 March 2019

Happy International Women’s Day! I am constantly impressed by my sister Esther’s tenacious work campaigning for equal access (she is a wheelchair user). She recently gave evidence to the UK Parliament’s Women & Equalities Select Committee. What a badass.

Ok, on with the weeknotes:

1. I’ve been working on a bit of a design refresh of this website. There are still various tweaks I want to make. In particular the work page doesn’t really say what I want it to say. But I decided it’s ‘good enough’ and will continue refining things next week.

   I’ve also set up an email newsletter, so that if anyone wants to follow along with these weeknotes, then there is now an easy way to do so.

2. At my leaving drinks from Up (see weeknotes 2), Chris told me about a couple of articles written by Xavier Shay:

   1. Why I Quit A Six Figure Job
   2. Quitting A Six Figure Job: One Year Later

   Given I’m in the situation where I just quit a job, I found it quite interesting to read about Xavier’s experiences.

3. On Tuesday I had coffee with a designer and an iOS developer who I met through an EnergyLab event. We had a good chat about our what we want out of our working lives, what ideas we have, and so on. It was inconclusive but there was quite a bit of common ground so maybe we’ll collaborate in the future?

4. Also on Tuesday, I discovered that there is a Makerspace at the Kathleen Syme library just around the corner from me, and went to do an induction. I don’t really have a specific intention with this, but I think it would be cool to play around with making physical things a bit. And I was generally impressed that there is such a well-equipped space, open to the public to use for free, just moments from my flat.

5. Also on Tuesday (a lot happened on Tuesday), I went to a Prototypes and Popcorn event about bio-design and generally the end of the world as we know it. It was interesting and somewhat depressing. Given it’s an event aimed at designers, it’s not really the sort of thing I’d usually go to, but meeting people who aren’t exactly like me is something I want to do more of.

   I heard a nice quote there:

   There are no passengers on spaceship earth. We’re all crew.

   Marshall McLuhan