Thanks to The Wikiman I am aware of a thing : another internet version of one of them foldy things we used to make at school. Like a moth to the energy-saving lightbulb, I am compelled to complete...
Location: Yorkshire.
Current gig: Academic Liaison Assistant (an assistant librarian).
Current mobile device: an LG mobile telephone (second generation) with a qwerty keyboard.
Current computer: a Lenovo laptop (Intel, 6GB RAM, Windows 8), plus peripheral keyboard, mouse and monitor.
One word that best describes how you work: Fitfully.
What apps/software/tools can't you live without?
The Opera web-browser. Also on my quicklaunch toolbar at home are Oolite, Spotify, Corel Photo-Paint, XChat, Eudora, SeaMonkey, Notepad++ and Foobar, some of which show my age and my willingness to embrace change, though not all are essential to my existence. Before I made the error of buying a 64-bit computer, I also had a 16-bit copy of the OED to hand too. Windows is another bit of software I've come to rely upon a great deal (running Classic Shell these days, necessarily), and I spend a considerable amount of time in Microsoft Office.
What's your workspace like?
I am rather messy. Papers everywhere. I'm currently at home, sprawled out on the settee, keyboard on my lap, mobile phone by my side, bottle of coke and tin of biscuits in near reach. On the coffee table are:
1x roll of gaffatape
1x Royal Opera House ticket (used)
3x bottles of nail varnish
1x steel ruler
½x adhesive fabric for putting inside evil shoes
1x pair of scissors
1x pen
2x AA batteries (spent)
1x ring
1x hair grip
1x ear-phones
1x sunglasses
1x badge from Library Camp
1x nail file
2x coasters (pads in my vocab)
1x mug of water
1x wireless dongle
1x microSD to SD adaptor
1x monitor
1x laptop computer
What's your best time-saving trick?
Shortcuts. Make shortcuts to documents and use "Recent..." folders. Self-plagiarise instead of repeating work. And remember that few things have to be "perfect", they just need to be "pretty decent". It also helps if what you're doing's fun, of course.
What's your favorite to-do list manager?Shortcuts. Make shortcuts to documents and use "Recent..." folders. Self-plagiarise instead of repeating work. And remember that few things have to be "perfect", they just need to be "pretty decent". It also helps if what you're doing's fun, of course.
I use the one in Outlook. It does the job adequately.
Besides your phone and computer, what gadget can't you live without?
Plumbed water and electricity are pretty essential to my lifestyle. Oven, fridge-freezer, washing machine, shower... The telephone is less essential (very presumptive of you, that), and I use it more as a clock / portable Twitter device than as a telephone. Aside from my computer, I'd say the lamp that's illuminating me is currently the most essential bit of tech in this room.
What everyday thing are you better at than anyone else?
Being half-decent at things. I think I'm a bit of an all-rounder, probably specializing in computery stuff. My general knowledge used to be pretty good too, but less so now.
What are you currently reading?
Salway - Roman Britain; Cooper - Appassionata; Nabakov - King, Queen, Knave; Grand - Babs the Impossible. I'm not generally a big reader, especially of fiction. Mostly I read history books.
What do you listen to while you work?
If I'm really hard at work, music can be a distraction. Otherwise, music is good. Verdi tends to be my default option at work, or maybe some Mahler or Shostakovich. I am currently sitting in silence but only cos I forgot to put Spotify on earlier. Instead I shall now fire up Foobar and open the playlist that is just the entire musical contents of my hard-drive at random. First up is a MIDI version of Creep by Radiohead [fastforwards] the right channel of a noise piece I made, entitled "Lynch" because it sounded like the sort of sound you might hear in the background of a David Lynch film [fastforwards] The Chromatics - Cosmic Radio Show [fastforwards quickly] Gainsbourg & Bardot - Comic Strip... As you can see, playing my hard-drive is a little too fraught with trouble for working porpoises.
Are you more of an introvert or an extrovert?
Introvert, mainly. Except when the mood takes me. I'm an only-child. At school I could be quite zany, with all the horror that implies, but I lost some of that after I left university and failed to sell records for a living. Once I get to know people I start to come out of my shell. Alcohol helps this process slightly. I'm trying to come up with a better method.
# A MIDI version of one of my own compositions [fastforwards] Michael Hurley - Hoodoo Bash #
# A MIDI version of one of my own compositions [fastforwards] Michael Hurley - Hoodoo Bash #
What's your sleep routine like?
I like my sleep. At one point, in the days before a proper job, I got a bit too much sleep and started getting sleep paralysis of an afternoon's lie-in. That's how much I like sleep. I try to avoid getting out of bed until the Sun has had chance to warm up the world. My natural sort of pattern tends to be to sleep from about 3am to about 1pm, but working life has intervened. I currently get up at about 7am and go to bed at about 10:30pm, except at weekends when I try to approach the preferred behaviour. Sleep is important to me. I enjoy it a lot. Dreams can be brilliant entertainment.
# Pink Floyd - If #
# Pink Floyd - If #
Fill in the blank: I'd love to see ______ answer these same questions.
You. But only if you want to.
# Heddy Lester - De Mallemolen (Eurovision '77 version) #
What's the best advice you've ever received?
Oh, the usual "life is for living" stuff, I guess: get stuck in and enjoy it. Can't point at anyone specifically. I expect the best advice I was ever given was something I failed to act upon. The advice to go to library school would have to be pretty high in the list (thanks to Karl (my ex-boss) and Anna (former work-colleague / former History teacher) for that).
# Danny Elfman - Theme From Black Beauty #
# Danny Elfman - Theme From Black Beauty #
Is there anything else you'd like to add?
I've not really talked about "How I Work", which was the point of the exercise. I should like to add that.
# Off-air recording of Five Live Drive (2008): Jane Garvey interviewing a little boy about a hamster (radio palladium) #
Leonardo Da Vinci had a bit of a reputation for starting great works, getting bored and moving onto something else before completion to his or his sponsor's satisfaction. I aspire to such greatness: my hard-drive is a graveyard of abandoned projects.
# Unlistenably crusty recording of Pulp - The Boss [fastforward] Marais and Miranda - What is an Animal? (What is a Plant?) #
When being paid, however, I operate to different rules. I tend to add things to a To Do List (a recent development to save me juggling calendars), prioritising the more urgent demands and interspersing with contrasting activities if available so as to thicken the plot. It's worked so far.
# Carlos Paião - Playback (from Eurovision '81) #
Some of it... a lot of it is intuitive. I don't sit and analyse my workload. There is no complicated mathematics (if task x takes two weeks and task y takes three days etc). The sense of a deadline and the safetynet of flexitime can help, but I've moved on from the last-minute Saint Monday mentality of my undergraduate days.
# Nico - Ari's Song #
Still, I don't usually get properly stuck in to a project until I can begin to feel a modicum of urgency (like starting an essay with a couple of weeks rather than a couple of months)... I prod at it and poke at it with a little too much leisure, making too much of a fuss; developing too many vested interests in bits I might later have to dismantle. As such I prefer to get heavily stuck into a project, work through it quickly, and get it done.
# Spirogyra - The Furthest Point #
Unless it's something that really really fascinates me, in which case I will lovingly explore layer after layer of it (as was the case with a recent LibGuides project). It's this type of project that comes too close to playtime and runs a risk of being abandoned before satisfactory completion when something else shiny catches my eye. Spirogyra are singing...
# Off-air recording of Five Live Drive (2008): Jane Garvey interviewing a little boy about a hamster (radio palladium) #
Leonardo Da Vinci had a bit of a reputation for starting great works, getting bored and moving onto something else before completion to his or his sponsor's satisfaction. I aspire to such greatness: my hard-drive is a graveyard of abandoned projects.
# Unlistenably crusty recording of Pulp - The Boss [fastforward] Marais and Miranda - What is an Animal? (What is a Plant?) #
When being paid, however, I operate to different rules. I tend to add things to a To Do List (a recent development to save me juggling calendars), prioritising the more urgent demands and interspersing with contrasting activities if available so as to thicken the plot. It's worked so far.
# Carlos Paião - Playback (from Eurovision '81) #
Some of it... a lot of it is intuitive. I don't sit and analyse my workload. There is no complicated mathematics (if task x takes two weeks and task y takes three days etc). The sense of a deadline and the safetynet of flexitime can help, but I've moved on from the last-minute Saint Monday mentality of my undergraduate days.
# Nico - Ari's Song #
Still, I don't usually get properly stuck in to a project until I can begin to feel a modicum of urgency (like starting an essay with a couple of weeks rather than a couple of months)... I prod at it and poke at it with a little too much leisure, making too much of a fuss; developing too many vested interests in bits I might later have to dismantle. As such I prefer to get heavily stuck into a project, work through it quickly, and get it done.
# Spirogyra - The Furthest Point #
Unless it's something that really really fascinates me, in which case I will lovingly explore layer after layer of it (as was the case with a recent LibGuides project). It's this type of project that comes too close to playtime and runs a risk of being abandoned before satisfactory completion when something else shiny catches my eye. Spirogyra are singing...
"We, who started off so wide eyed / Never doubted success / But we were foolish to undertake such a mammoth task"
...which is a little defeatist if you ask me, but presents a cautionary tale. So far I've been chewing my morsels sufficiently, and at school my party-piece involved seven Highland Toffee bars and a single mouth. Back then I had the good sense not to step up to eight. People, know your limits!
