Producing Various and Sundry

Time Management is a Lie

Writer, and fellow GTD fan, Terri Huck passed along this thoughtful piece by Oliver Burkeman about the modern obsession with “time management.” It’s a great read, as it goes back into some of the origins of what is now something of a cottage industry on making us ever-more productive. The article delves into the origins of time management — which goes back way more centuries than you might, at first, imagine, and moves forward to today. It…

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Various and Sundry

Recommended Reading: The Long Tail Wags

Vox’s resident media prognosticator, Todd VanDerWerff, picked up on something in the CW’s recent renewal announcement: renewing low-rated Crazy Ex-Girlfriend may represent a new way of evaluating –and valuing– TV shows in today’s media landscape. All three of my longtime readers will recall how I am avidly interested in the future of TV. For those of us non-full-time filmmakers, knowing all the viable paths to sustainably scratching our creative itch is of intense interest and constant…

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Various and Sundry

For the Love of Spock: Let This be Their Last Battlefield

This is the 27th entry in a surprisingly long series of posts about Star Trek’s future and its fandom called Crisis of Infinite Star Treks. Let’s start with the pleasant updates, shall we? I finally had a chance to see Star Trek Beyond and enjoyed it immensely. Okay, maybe I didn’t quite like it as much as these folks did, but I see where they’re coming from. It was delightful Star Trek, balancing plenty of action…

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Various and Sundry

Don’t Forget to Breathe

Someone I’ve known just shy of 20 years, Tricia McCauley, has died. This is hard. You can do remembrances for people who inspired you from afar or mentors who were decades older than you. And although I have lost friends and peers around my age, this is different. She went missing late in the afternoon of Christmas Day. Most of us found out through social media the following day, Monday, when she hadn’t checked in…

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Raves Various and Sundry

How I Sort My Favorite Films

This past weekend I had some free time. What do project managers do with free time? Make lists! Specifically, I decided it was time once again for my biennial Favorite Films sort. (you can find posts about the favorite film here). Creating a list of favorite films has been something I’ve been doing since at least the late 80s, but my current method is something I’ve been doing since 2012 and have found easy –and not…

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Various and Sundry

Security Theater and the Future of the TSA

I suppose I should have posted this with Thanksgiving and the start of the holiday travel season, but hey, delays are to be expected with the TSA, right?Dylan Mathews over at Vox argues that the eliminating the TSA may, in fact, save lives. And if that’s too dry, you can always check out Adam Conover of “Adam Ruins Everything” as he debunks the security theater of the TSA. Man, I’m glad I don’t have to travel…

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Various and Sundry

Recommended Reading: Apple’s Growing Pains

I’m always interested in the evolution of organizations, both how they change as they grow and how they respond to changes in the wider world. So when it involves Apple, arguably one of the most influential companies on the planet, I was definitely interested. Matthew Yglesias’ article in Vox notes a fundamental approach to Apple’s structure I was not aware of: that their structure is more akin to startups that group people functionally by expertise…

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Various and Sundry

Cable Defeats Cord Cutters?!?

On my Twitter feed, I frequently use the hashtag “#futureTV,” because I’m borderline obsessed with how TV is transforming, both in terms of how it’s getting made and how it’s being viewed (or “consumed” if you want to be extra biz-speaky). So this past holiday weekend, while our Netflix connection seemed to strain under the weight people travelling to Stars Hollow, I re-read Todd VanDerWerff’s piece in Vox about how Netflix –and cord cutting in…

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Various and Sundry

Crisis of Infinite Star Treks: Once and Future Fans

This is the 26th entry in a surprisingly long series of posts about Star Trek’s future and its fandom called Crisis of Infinite Star Treks. Short version: It’s been a while since my last entry in this series. An article by Molly McArdle in GQ about Star Trek fandom spurred me to reflect further about the current state of Trek and Trek fandom. Here in the Northern Hemisphere, Fall is in the air. And here in the…

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Various and Sundry

Registering to Vote, 2016 Edition

One area where I am very partisan is that citizens should be able to vote and have their vote counted. Besides my general Capra-esque take on civic duty, I served as an election official for a number of years (i.e. one of the people who check you in and staff the voting machines). In part because of those experiences, I was very happy to see today’s Google Doodle: It takes you to a tool which…

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