Category: Uncategorised

LM Studio Experiments

I have been experimenting with LM Studio over the last few days. This is a tool that allows me to run large language models locally on my computer, making it ideal for when I’m travelling or spending time somewhere with a slow or unreliable internet connection. It’s cross-platform (Windows, Silicon Macs and Linux), and has so far worked on every machine I’ve tried it on, although not always with the default settings.

There are a number of different runtimes and language models to choose from, with the smallest ones working on a laptop with 8Gb of RAM, and the large ones requiring a very powerful computer to get the best out of them. I’ver tried them on my work and home computers to do the sort of thing I use Copilot and ChatGPT for, and the experience is comparable, especially when using some of the larger models.

Ideally the software wants a decent graphics card and lots of RAM. The latter I can provide it with, but on my desktop computer it initially failed to work because it was trying to use my old and slow graphics card which is nowhere near good enough for this kind of tool. In this scenario it was just a case of telling it use a different runtime (CPU llama.cpp), and then everything started working as expected.

It’s also worth mentioning that the Linux version ships as an AppImage, which means it needs Fuse v2 to run. Newer distros will need to install libfuse2t64 to get it to run in the first place, but after that everything should just work.

In a world where AI is the future, but privacy is important as well, I think tools like this are definitely worth spending some time with.

Songs of a Lost World

Yesterday was the release day for the new album by The Cure. I used to try and pick up their albums on release day when I was younger, but don’t think I have managed to do so since Wish as very long time ago.

My first thought is that this record is really good. I keep trying to compare it to other Cure albums, and the best that I can do is that it’s a bit like the best parts of Disintegration and Bloodflowers. There isn’t a bad song on it, and I think it’s something I’ll come back to for many years.

If you like The Cure you will love this. And if you like music in general it’s definitely worth a listen.

In the evening there was the album launch concert, which took place at The Troxy, but was also broadcast live on YouTube which meant I could watch it without all the logistical challenges that a concert in London presents. It started with a performance of the whole new album, which is what I expected, but was then followed by a 2+ hour set of old favourites and a few things I wasn’t expecting (such as a whole segment dedicated to songs from Seventeen Seconds). It reminded me how important this band were to me when I was growing up, and how much time I have spent listening to their music. I think this lineup is probably the best ever; although it’s not too different to who was on the stage in 1989 when I last saw them play live.

Everyone looks older, but they still sound great, and these songs definitely stand the test of time. I think the new ones will as well, and am hopeful that the rumours of one more album before they retire are true.

New Music

It’s been another good week for new music. I try and listen to a few new things every Friday whilst working, and this is the selection I chose yesterday:

I’m already familiar with all three artists, but it’s always good to hear new music from old favourites.

Data mining my working life

I’ve been collecting statistics on all sorts of aspects of my working day for a while now. I record how long my meetings last, who they are with, how much time it takes me to get to them, and also track how much time I spend on courses, at conferences, and engaged in any social activity that takes place at lunch time or straight after work. By collecting data I can hopefully spot trends (like attending far more meetings than usual), which helps me with planning my time, maintaining work life balance, and ensuring that I factor in recharging time between events that are likely to leave me feeing quite drained.

As I’ve been in my new role for four months now I thought it was worth trying to do some sort of comparison of things that are directly comparable (number of hours spend in meetings, average number of people at meetings I attend, that sort of thing). My hypothesis is that I seem to have more time for task based work than I have for a while, but I want to see if that’s actually true. I also want to try and devise an formula that will allow me to calculate the amount of mental energy any given week might require, and thus plan recharging activities appropriately.

To do this I started by listing all the activities I partake in that cost me energy (as an Introvert that’s anything involving other people). The list I came up with was:

  • Meetings involving me and one other person. I don’t find these particularly draining in general, and one to one conversation is actually my most comfortable medium for synchronous communication.
  • Meetings involving multiple other people – I find these quite tiring, especially if I’m chairing them or otherwise having to talk quite a lot.
  • Running training or coaching sessions. These can be quite tiring because I’m centre stage and talking for the duration of the session, and there may also be the added energy drain of having to field questions.
  • Attending courses, conferences or workshops. These generally involve meeting new people and taking in new skills and knowledge in an environment that generally doesn’t suit my learning style. This can be quite tiring, although sometimes I find group work exercises quite energising if it’s the right group.
  • Recruitment activity (interviews, recruitment exercises). One of my favourite activities, and although it tires me it’s always worth it.
  • Running events. Something else I enjoy, although sometimes I am far more into the planning, organising and evaluating of an event than anything else.
  • Social events that take place at lunch time or after work. These were recorded to see if there was any sort of correlation with other activities.

I have in no way done a full analysis yet, but from half a day spent plugging the data into Excel and Nvivo a few trends leap out straight away:

  • I spend about two working days a week in meetings, and have for most of the last few years. My monthly average never dips below a day and never rises above three days.
  • I work from home on average one day per fortnight, and only do planned work during this time. I’m much more likely to mark a task as finished during one of these days than any other day.
  • Travel time to meetings takes on average 5 minutes more in my current role. My commute is also 10 minutes longer. Using that extra time for thinking and ideas generation probably offsets the extra time spent walking though.
  • The average number of people in meetings I attend has risen steadily throughout the reporting period.
  • There is a definite correlation between the number of people at a meeting and whether I’m the organiser or not. Meetings I organise are generally with one or two other people; meetings I’m invited to average at least three people more. This is starting to even out a little over the last month or so though.
  • The opposite is true for social events taking place on week days, in that the larger the event the more likely it is I’ll have been involved in organising it, whereas meetings with one other person seem to be almost never initiated by me. There is probably a learning point there somewhere.
  • The key difference between my previous role and the one I’m doing now is that I don’t have direct reports and I do a lot less recruitment and training (both as a trainer and as the person being trained). That’s why I have more time to do everything else.
  • The amount of weekday socialising I’m doing has increased significantly over the last few months, and the activities I’m undertaking have diversified (although the majority is still food/drinks with one other person or a small group).
  • Most of my social activity is planned, rather than spontaneous.
  • There is a definite positive correlation between running events and socialising with people involved in the event afterwards. Even though both activities tire me, it’s rare to find one without the other.
  • There is a definite negative correlation between attending training sessions and social activity. The period in 2016 where I was juggling ILM5, Lean Six Sigma, and a bespoke training program was the period with the least social contact.
  • I leave the office more at lunch time now, and spend time between meetings in a coffee shop or quiet part of campus if it’s not worth going back to the office. I expect this will increase as the weather gets nicer.
  • I leave the office 15-20 minutes later than I did in my previous role, but my actual average working day duration has not differed significantly for years. The difference is down to the slightly longer breaks I’m taking, and the fact that my commute is longer.

There is a lot of food for thought there, and I’m starting to work out the energy requirements of the various activities (and combinations of activities) I undertake. My next step is to try and put some numerical modifiers against each activity so I can do a proper calculation, but that’s a job for another day.

How I use social media

I started this as a bit of an FAQ for strangers who try and get me to connect with them on Linkedin, or who want to post guest content on my blog, but I thought it was actually worth putting together something that articulates who I choose to follow and interact with on social media, and what criteria I use to make decisions around this sort of thing.

First things first, I have a number of communication channels that I use regularly. I have a public blog and Twitter account, locked Facebook and Google+ accounts, and two email accounts (one for work, one for everything else). I also have Linkedin profile that I largely use for tracking my professional network, and writing nice things about people I know who are engaged in job hunting, but that I don’t really use for communication as such.

I’ll start with my public social media. I’ve maintained a blog for the best part of 10 years, and anyone is welcome to read it, subscribe to email alerts, read it through an RSS reader, or consume it in any other way. What you won’t be able to do is leave comments (I turned those off years ago), or write content for my blog (because it’s mine and it’s part of my public internet presence so I want it to reflect me).

My Twitter account is also public, and I’m not choosy about who follows it, but I’ll generally only follow people back if I know them, I’m interested in the sort of content they post, or I’m interested in having actual conversations with them over social media (Twitter mentions and DMs are the only synchronous online conversations I regularly engage in). I will initiate connections, and often follow accounts that look unloved in the hope that I can help people I like see the wonders of Twitter (and thus talk to them more). I also cross-post to Twitter every time I write a blog post, and am happy to engage with people about the content of the blog post via Twitter. Twitter is also where to look for music recommendations, random snippets of life, occasional banter, and sporadic requests for social contact. It’s also the one place I’ll still post when I’m neglecting everything else (140 characters helps with this).

I suppose Linkedin classes as public social media too, although I use it in a very different way. I occasionally cross-post work-related content from Twitter, but I mainly maintain it to track my professional network, endorse and recommend people I know, and to do anything else I can think of to help other people with their job hunting and career progression. I’ll connect with anyone I’ve ever known professionally, anyone I know personally whose area of interest overlaps mine (so people who work in Universities, or are interested in psychology or personality, or work in IT, or are involved in any sort of people, project or service management), and anyone I don’t know who looks like they might be a useful addition to my professional network (although I never initiate these connections). I’m a lot pickier about people in recruitment and sales, especially if I don’t know them. I also tend not to initiate connections with people who are direct reports or where I am perceived to be more powerful than them in an organisation (although I’ll happily reciprocate invitations if they come in). That’s not a hard and fast rule though – it very much depends what sort of personal connection I’ve already got with the person. I’m also quite sporadic with using Linkedin, and have not done any endorsements for about 3 months (I need to fix that soon).

I use Google+ to communicate with a specific (fairly large) group of people I’ve known for ages. Most of the friendships predate G+, and have followed me through the IRC, Livejournal, Facebook, and Buzz days, and I suspect anyone else would regard my account as being unused, as all my content is locked. I initiate G+ connections a lot, and check the site several times a day (although I have email notifications turned off globally), and while I’ll accept requests from anyone I know, I don’t promise to post anything too interesting.

I’ve used Facebook for a long time, but these days I only really cross-post from Twitter, comment on what other people post, or use it to organise my social life with groups of people who don’t use G+ or Twitter. My friends list is a weird mix of family, friends, colleagues, and people I’ve not seen for years. I’ll generally accept requests from anyone I know (including people I know through work), although I’m fairly bad at initiating requests unless I’ve identified someone who I want to connect with and it looks like Facebook is the only option. I also have notifications turned off, and rarely use the IM function, so it’s not the best method if you need a quick response (weirdly, that’s probably still email).

I like email a lot (if you really don’t have my address then it’s somewhere on this site I’m sure). I try and maintain inbox zero, although I am quite discerning about what I’ll reply to (I get a lot of email), and a lot of what I get actually gets converted to a Trello card if it requires me to do something that takes longer than about five minutes. Before there was social media I used email a lot for socialising – now I find that doesn’t happen unless I know the person really well or the topic of conversation is confidential, but I’m not against using email for social contact if that’s what someone is most comfortable with.

One day I’ll sit down and consolidate my social networks so that they represent everyone I know (for someone with such a clear preference for introversion I know a lot of people), but that day is not today, and I suspect that it’s a job I’ll not get round to for a long time. In the meantime I hope this blog post gives people an idea of what they can expect if they choose to engage with me on social media.

Burnout, work-life balance and stress triggers

I’ve been meaning to write about this for a while, but a couple of conversations over the last few weeks pushed it to the forefront of my mind again. What I want to talk about here is burnout (and what it looks like), how I try and maintain work-life balance, and stress triggers and how to mitigate them. What follows is a what works for me, but hopefully there is something there that would be of use to other people too.

Burnout

I’ve not had a traditional 9-5 job for a while, and I do tend to gravitate to roles where the work is never done, and where it would be easy to work significantly longer than is sensible. Jobs like that do lend themselves to the potential of burnout, and I’ve both suffered from this myself and seen it affect other people.

Wikipedia says “Burnout is a type of psychological stress. Occupational burnout or job burnout is characterized by exhaustion, lack of enthusiasm and motivation, feelings of ineffectiveness, and also may have the dimension of frustration or cynicism, and as a result reduced efficacy within the workplace.”

Burnout often starts to affect the balance between work and what goes on outside of work. In my case how it usually manifests is through exhaustion, and through not wanting to do anything in the evenings or at weekends, and I can generally trace it back to times when I’ve worked long hours, felt unappreciated, or have skipped lunch breaks several times in a week. It’s hard to spot sometimes, but once I do notice it I find it’s quite straightforward to come up with an action plan to get a bit of work-life balance back.

Work-life balance – how to get it back

Things I’ve found that work are:

There are some things that related to my role, but that I’d never get round to if I prioritised them purely on importance/urgency. Some of these things are really enjoyable, allow me to use different skills and work with different people, and make me feel a whole lot more positive about the rest of my work. If the rest of what I’m doing isn’t going well, or is including too much of the same kind of task, then including a few of these types of activities make the day a whole lot more bearable.

I use my morning and evening commute to draw a line between work and non-work most days each week. My commute consists of two periods of walking (20 minutes and 10 minutes) with a 20 minute train journey in between. This gives me blocks of different sort of time to listen to music, read, and think about what I need to achieve during the rest of the day (be that at home or work). I also find the physical act of walking invaluable, as it’s probably the only point of the day where I’m not sat in front of a screen of some sort.

Occasionally I need to work in the evenings. That’s not a bad thing if it will make the day ahead easier or make me feel more prepared. But if I do have to do it, then the next day I make sure I reward myself with a long lunch (ideally with company), or an hour off at a different time of the day to walk around campus and order my thoughts.

When I work from home I work at least an hour longer because I don’t have to factor in my morning commute. I therefore spend the last hour of my working day doing something that is in some way related to personal development, such as updating my achievements log, learning about something new, or opening a blank document and reflecting on how things are going, what’s blocking me, and what actions I think I need to take to get things back on track. These internal brainstorming sessions often produce insights that probably wouldn’t have come up if I’d been in the office.

Stress triggers

I know what my stress triggers are now. It’s something I was particularly interested in when I did my MBTI practitioner training, and they are pretty much exactly what my MBTI profile says they should be:

  • Being bombarded with facts and details
  • Having to adapt to changes in my usual routine, new places, different ways of behaving
  • Encountering obstacles in the outer world – traffic, equipment failures, interruptions, flight delays
  • Extraverting excessively; having to interact with individuals and groups
  • Coping with crowds. noise, confusion, chaotic environments
  • Dealing with incompetent people, illogical systems
  • Being criticised professionally, having my competence attacked, not being recognised

If I’m feeling tense or a little burned out then I’ll look at this list and see if it explains things. It usually does, and it’s a lot easier for me to rationalise the way I’m feeling. It also helps me formulate my reaction to what’s going on, as it’s possible that if I react based on how I’m feeling then I’ll over react compared to someone of a different personality type, and so I try and bear that in mind when I’m talking to other people about things that are on my mind.

MBTI theory says that the following things should help me if I’m feeling stressed:

  • Spend time alone recharging in a quiet, calm environment
  • Engage in positive Sensing activities that accomplish something useful, such as cleaning out closets, sorting photographs, fixing things
  • Take steps to lighten my schedule and sticking to my commitment to do so
  • Step back and use logic to analyse the situation
  • Get closure on some lighter, more manageable tasks
  • Remind myself that it will pass

Based on that I think I’m doing the right sorts of things to manage periods of stress. Most of what’s listed above works well for me, and is usually enough to get my equilibrium back.

Of course, different people respond to stress in different ways, but knowing what works for me has been really useful.

Using Homebrew on macOS

Homebrew is a package manager for command line tools on macOS. It can be installed by issuing the following command:

/usr/bin/ruby -e "$(curl -fsSL https://raw.githubusercontent.com/Homebrew/install/master/install)"

Packages can be installed with brew install <packagename> and updated with brew update.

Packages I generally install on a new Mac are:

  • wget – for command line downloading
  • imagemagick – for image manipulation
  • mas – for command line updating of (non-Apple) App Store software
  • youtube-dl – for downloading youtube videos for offline viewing

Once you have homebrew installed then it’s possible to script a software update solution that includes all Apple software, all non-Apple software, and everything installed through homebrew. It’s not quite as good as a Linux package manager, but it’s getting there.

The current script I use for this is:

#!/bin/bash
echo "updateall v.1.1 for macOS"
# Run this as a normal user. Your admin password will be asked for if required.
# Update all Apple software (requires admin password at this point)
sudo softwareupdate -i -a
# Update all software installed via Homebrew (as a normal user)
brew update
# Update all other software
mas upgrade
echo "The script has now finished running."

Films I’ve watched recently

2017 is going to be a year of watching films, largely because of the wonders of Cineworld Unlimited membership, but also because I watched far too few films in 2016. The following are the ones I watched in the first month of membership:

Rogue One

I wasn’t sure how much I would enjoy this. I’m a huge Star Wars fan, but I didn’t know how much I wanted something that was set in the same universe but didn’t contain any of my favourite characters. As it turns out I think it’s my fourth favorite film in the franchise (after Empire Strikes Back, A New Hope and The Force Awakens), and I’ve already added the DVD to my wish list as I’d quite like to watch it again when I’m not dying from some sort of chest infection.

Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them

I saw this straight after Rogue One (about 10 minutes after in fact), but it was enjoyable enough and entertained me without making me think too much. At the time that was a welcome distraction, but I suspect I’ll never watch it again until I binge watch the whole series at some undefined point in the future.

Passengers

This is a film that seems to divide opinions. Personally I liked it, and I thought it provoked some interesting moral discussions. There are things I would have changed, but the basic premise is an interesting one, and I’m not sure most of the negativity I’ve heard about it is justified (which I can’t really expand on without major spoilers).

Assassin’s Creed

I’m really not sure about this. It was ok, but probably the only example this month of something that I’m glad I didn’t really pay to see (two films a month covers membership). I also thought it was far too loud, and I found my dislike of loud noise getting in the way of my enjoyment of the film.

La La Land

I usually don’t like musicals, or films that feature a romance between the two main characters as a major plot. Passengers cured me of the second one, but La La Land pretty much dealt the killer blow on both. I love this film, and I can not only relate to both main characters, but I actually liked the music quite a lot as well. Probably the best film I’ve seen this month, and something I will definitely come back to.

Lion

“Based on a true story” explains a lot of what puzzled me about this film, and I’m sure that if it wasn’t based on a true story then a lot of things might have happened differently. That said, I really enjoyed it and while it was nothing like the trailer, it was a pleasant enough way to spend a Sunday afternoon and certainly managed to provoke a genuinely emotional reaction at times.

That’s more films than I watched in the whole of the year before (certainly at the cinema), and I’ve already got quite a long list for the next 11 months.