My flickr site passed 10,000 views and I didn’t even notice.
The amazing thing is that the graffiti pictures continue to be the ones most viewed – but by whom?
For anyone who hadn’t noticed: All of the pictures I post here are hosted on flickr. If you click on the picture it will take you to the flickr page for that picture where you can perform all sorts of flickr goodness.
tags: flickr
Last night I put some thought into how I might fulfill my goal of being able to remember peoples names and then it struck me:
“Graham you dimwit you can’t set yourself a goal of remembering people face, names and roles when 99% of the people you interact with are faceless individuals who you very rarely ever meet”.
So I’ve modified my objective to de-emphasize the face bit. But that might not be so important as I can normally remember faces, it’s names and roles that I forget.
I’ve decided that I am not going to get anywhere with this brain thing unless I have a goal to focus on.
My first goal is going to be this: developing a technique for remembering the association between names, faces and role for people I come into contact with.
Remembering names is a popular issue and there seems to be a lot of techniques already so this should be attainable.
I’ve chosen this goal for a number of different reasons:
I’m still working on the basis that brain strength is something that it is possible to build.
I went out to the gym this morning before starting work. I don’t shower at the gym, so got back wonderfully sweaty and just a little smelly (I seem to be sweating a lot more than I used to).
On arriving at home, I jumped into the shower for a wash. When I got out of the shower I put on clean clothes. This wasn’t a special occasion, putting on clean clothes is something I do quite regularly (too regularly for the washing machine sometimes).
We have a saying in our household: “You can tell how good a day it’s been by the state of your clothes”. Muddy clothes symbolise a great day. We are fortunate to be able to make such a statement. We don’t worry about messy clothes because they can soon made made clean again.
Just before we went on holiday our washing machine broke down and we had to rely upon the generosity of friends. Our friends were wonderfully generous, but it was still a hassle.
Now we have a new washing machine (7Kg load, no less) the hassle has been reduced significantly, but I wanted to remind myself that this situation is a luxury. So many people live in situations where such luxury is only a dream.
I was watching Imagining the Tenth Dimension yesterday with intrigue. The intrigue didn’t so much come from the idea or concept, but rather the method of communication. This site tries to convey a very complex scenario by using diagrams, animations and voice.
Having started to research our leaning styles a little in order to understand a little more about brain polarization I was intrigued by how others would interact with this site. I (as a right-brained person) found myself primarily following the diagrams and animation. Do left-brained people focus more of the voice? Is the concept easier to understand in words than in diagrams?
As an IT Architect I regularly come across issues which have multiple dimensions, because they have multiple variables. I have often tried to portray these problems as diagrams and often struggled, the diagrams becoming too complex for many people to understand Trying to explain the multi-dimensional problem in words is also problematic. This issue is often made worse by different people wanting to understand their dimension, and not being too bothered about the other dimensions. I have often found myself writing documents which repeatedly say and illustrate the same thing, but in different dimensions representing different members of the audience of the document. I’ve also used PowerPoint as a mechanism to constrain myself to a single slide for each dimension and hence each audience. This constraint actually helps to remove the desire to explain every other dimension.
If we want people to engage with something we need to show a dimension that’s relevant to them and not to confuse them with the totality of all of the dimensions. Showing all of the dimensions might not be enough though, we might need to show all of the dimensions in a way that is relevant to people with different learning styles.
tags: Architecture, Thinking
One of the things I love about being on holiday is that I reconnect with how big the sky is.
It helps, of course, when you are sat on a beach where the sky seems so much bigger anyway. Sometimes it’s like the sky and the ocean are merged together to form a single complete continuation. Sometimes though the ocean reflects the sky so that it forms a funnel.
While we were in France we saw some fabulous skies. 
One day we went out to Chateau de Dinan which is a huge rock formation sticking out into the Atlantic. It’s only connection to the mainland is a huge stone arch. It’s like it is defiantly saying “attack me if you dare”. There is nothing between these rocks and America, other than Atlantic Ocean. As I looked out the sky felt huge.
Another day we went to Quiberon. Quiberon is a peninsula that sticks several miles out. As we traveled that day the sky was low and it was raining. 
Our hopes of a good day weren’t high as we sat under the shelter of the car’s estate boot for lunch. The sky certainly wasn’t big then. Being true Brits though, we stuck with it. It was still raining when we decided to go swimming despite the cold and the rain. As we entered the water the rain stopped and the sky started to expand and grow. At one point a huge black cloud stretched out in front of us like some huge space ship inspecting the small planet beneath it. At others the sun broke through to reveal the true expanse of the sky.
The other night Sue and I were out late in the Lake District with friends (that’s another story). The Moon was up and the stars were shining. 
We decided that there was still adventure to be had and things to be seen so we headed up Kirkstone Pass to be as far away from light as possible. The Stars and the Moon gave another view of the vastness of the sky.
When I was younger the vastness of the sky used to make me feel small and insignificant. When I became a Christian I saw the sky differently, I saw that the vastness of the sky was a confirmation of God’s great love. God could have chosen to completely disregard this tiny little planet in the middle of the vastness of universes, but He didn’t. God chose to send Jesus to this earth for this people. That makes this earth and this people massively significant.
One question that has popped up about brain orientation has been it connection with hand orientation. I’m left handed and appear to be right brained. The people asking the question are right handed, and having done the tests appear to be left brained.
It seems that the dominant point of view on this is that left-handed people have a tendency to be right-brained. It also appears to be a lot more complicated an answer than the simple, left or right question.
I’m starting to thing that the brain orientation issue has been over-simplified a bit and I need to go back to some basics in order to answer the fundamentals of the questions.
This is my 100th post into this blog. I have found it a real blessing thinking about blessings. Every time I think I might be running out of things to say another flourish arrives.
I don’t get many online comments, but I know people are reading these posts because they tell me how much they like them. Those comments are themselves a blessing.
Looks like I’m not the only one thinking about the brain. The BBC has a programme running tonight “How to Improve Your Memory”.
They are focusing on memory – which I think is important, but I don’t think it gets me closer to answering my questions.
How do you view the experiences of your life – do you think of them as extraordinary, ordinary, or plain dull.
I’ve always regarded myself as quite ordinary. I was born, I went to school, I got a job, I got married, I had children, I get older. Nothing too extraordinary there.
Recently I have found myself in situations where someone has been describing something wonderful that they have just discovered. I have been polite, I have smiled and listened, but inside I have been thinking something quite different. Inside I have been saying to myself that this wonderful thing that they have discovered is obvious.
Other person: “Graham did you know that (insert something interesting)”
Me (outside appearance): Smiling and listening politely.
Me (inside): “Well obviously”
Is this because I tend to interact with people who are a little slow on the uptake? On the contrary I talk to all sorts of interesting intelligent people, people who amaze me most of the time.
Why are these things obvious to me then and not to them? Because my experience has been extraordinary. There is no-one in the world who has had the same set of experiences that I have, not one. There is no-one in this world who has seen what I have seen, not one. There is no-one in this world who has thought about a situation or an experience in the same way as I have, not one. My experience is extraordinary.
Each individual experience might occur millions of times throughout the planet, but no-one has had the same set of experiences as I have.
Every one of these experiences has contributed to who I am. These experiences make me unique.
Your experiences make you unique too.
That uniqueness means that we should look at ourselves with a sense of wonder. That uniqueness means that we should look at each other with a sense of wonder. Things that are unique are special.
I have recently been re-reading a book called The Grace Awakening by Charles R. Swindoll. Today I read these words:
“Variety honours God, predictability and mediocrity bores Him. And if there is proof that He differences, take look down the long of fame in church history.”
and
“He [God] wants each one of us to be unique…an individual blend and expression unlike any other person. That is by His design. There is only one you. There is only one me.
Uniqueness is good. Uniqueness is wonderful. Uniqueness is a blessing.
I suffer with a problem that I think many people suffer with – comparison. I compare myself with others. Is my career going as well as theirs? Do I have this thing that they have got? Am I as fit as they are? These comparisons traps me into a desire to be just like someone else and detracts from my uniqueness. It’s a trap, a snare. My uniqueness makes me special, I don’t need to be like anyone else.
I need to learn that I am unique and that my uniqueness is a blessing – I suspect I’m not the only one.
Well it was fun doing a couple of tests (here, here) on what type of brain I have. It was also interesting to see that they weren’t at all conclusive other than to prove that I don’t have a completely left oriented brain or a completely right oriented brain. I suspect if I did though I would be dead.
The problem with these two tests is that they don’t actually answer the important questions:
It’s no use knowing that you are right-oriented if your brain is actually a load of mush and you can’t do anything about it.
Where do I go to find the answers to those questions?
Holiday’s are great times to do something different. On this holiday I did two things which were different for me. The first one is the boring sounding one, I read a business book rather than a novel – The World is Flat by Thomas L. Friedman. The second was spending lots of time on my daughters Nintendo DS playing Dr Kawashima’s Brain Training. While these two things might not sound like they have too much in common – both of them focus on the brain and specifically the use of the right side of the brain.
In the knowledge businesses the brain is obviously a very important asset, and understanding it could help us to look after it better.
Much scientific research has gone into understanding the brain. It would appear that the two sides of our brain have different roles. The left side of the brain is apparently responsible for thinking things through in a linear way helping us to understand things sequentially. The right side of the brain processes things holistically, it’s about the big picture. The right side is also the side which is the creative side.
The web is littered with information.
In The World is Flat, Friedman argues that all of the left brain activities are the ones ripe for automation by IT systems, or for Outsourcing to other cheaper countries. The people who can see the whole picture and deal with concepts (the right brain people) will be the ones that will be invaluable. This type of people are the ones who will be the versatilists.
The Dr Kawashima game is focussed on exercising the brain – both left and right.
This has left me with a few questions, some of which I think it’s about time I knew the answer to:
No answers yet, but I’ll let you know how I get on.
Graham Chastney 