Managing for efficiency and effectiveness

The latest module of my ILM5 training was called Managing for efficiency and effectiveness. I was a lot more comfortable with this as a subject than budgetary control, and my main learning point was that I was on the right track with a lot of the things I’m already doing, and that the way I organise myself and my time is fairly efficient and effective without me needing to make huge changes to how I work. I found it useful to compare the material in the session to research I’ve already done into Lean IT and Lean Six Sigma, and I’ll be doing further comparison once I’ve gone through Lean Six Sigma Yellow Belt training which starts tomorrow.

The only mildly uncomfortable thing we covered was around feedback, and as part of the assignment I’ve got to ask people I’ve managed, supervised or otherwise lead to feed back on my management style. I wrote some questions yesterday, made them into a questionnaire this morning, and will start sending it out to people tomorrow. I’ve never been particularly comfortable asking for feedback, but it’s something that I think is very important as I think that regardless of how self-aware I might be, I’m always going to have blind spots.

As well as writing an assignment based on this feedback, I’ll also be starting the main phase of my final project, which involves planning and executing a major change in the workplace. The work I’m going to be doing is related to Lean IT, and making the flow of work through a system as efficient as possible by optimising working processes. I’m hoping to start the serious work on this in the next couple of weeks, and will be presenting the results at a talk in June (which I’ll probably repeat a couple of times for my team if all goes well).

Building a media centre with a Raspberry Pi and OpenELEC

My project for the Easter vacation has been to build a media player using a Raspberry Pi and Open ELEC. Setup was fairly straightforward, but I thought it was worth writing up anyway – especially as I’m probably going to make further changes to the setup as I find new features to add.

Hardware

I went with the new Raspberry Pi III, which is plenty powerful enough for this project. I also used a 16Gb SD card (the largest unused one I currently have), and a case that looked like it would handle being jostled around in my bag. The device also requires power and HDMI cables (which I already had), and a keyboard/mouse/monitor/ethernet cable for setup.

Software

OpenELEC is one of the installation options on the NOOBS image, so I simply downloaded that, copied it to the SD card, and installed it from there. It requires a network connection to install, but is a lot easier than having to copy the image using dd. I went with the default options in all cases, although it’s worth noting that if you enabled ssh access then it’s not possible to change the root password at all, so you’ll need to disable it after setup (not that setup, or anything else, requires shell access).

Once installation had finished the device booted into the default Kodi interface. A web-based remote could be accessed by browsing to the device’s IP address, and it could be accessed as network based storage from all of my computers. Then it was simply a case of dropping some media files (movies and music) into the respective folders and testing that content could be played. I copied across some MP3, MP4 and AVI files, all of which played fine.

Addons

The original plan for this project was that I’d end up with something that could play movies and music on my TV, and that could handle storing a small amount of content locally so that when I end up in a hotel room with a few hours to kill I have something interesting to watch. The solution I’ve built ticks all those boxes, but I was curious to explore what else OpenELEC could handle.

After exploring the interface and available software for a little while I found channels for Last.fm scrobbles, BBC iPlayer and TED talks. All of these installed and worked fine. Adding iPlayer started me thinking about other free to view TV channels, and at this point I remembered that the last edition of Linux Format had an article on using a Pi Mini for a similar project, and that there were instructions for adding a whole host of other services. Their instructions for adding ITV player were as follows:

Navigate to System > File Manager. Select ‘Add Source’ followed by ‘’, enter http://www.xunitytalk.me/xfinity and select ‘Done’ followed by ‘OK’. Hit Esc then choose System > Settings > Add-ons > Install from ZIP file. Select xfinity from the list of locations, select ‘XunityTalk_Repository.zip’, hit Enter and wait for it to be installed. Now select ‘Install from repository’ followed by .XunityTalk Repository > Video add-ons, scroll down and select ITV. Choose Install and it should quickly download, install and enable itself.

This worked fine, and also gave me access to a lot of other channels that I could add.

There are a lot of things I’ve not explored on this device yet, but at the time of writing I’ve got BBC and ITV channels (live and catchup), TED talks, and a variety of locally stored media. Music I play scrobbles to Last.fm, and I can drop new media onto the device from my computer. I figure that all I’ll need to travel with is a power cable, a HDMI cable and a small mouse (all of which I already have), and I should be sorted. I also tested a trick I’ve used before which involves sharing a wifi connection via ethernet on my laptop to get the two devices to talk to each other long enough to add/remove media, which might also prove useful.

Software I use

Software I use that I feel is somewhat noteworthy includes:

  • Evernote – I use this on every device I own, mostly to take notes in meetings and training sessions, and then to revise/reflect later. A lot of my notes are now photographs of whiteboards, which Evernote handles very well.
  • Atom – A text editor that handles Markdown well, and can preview and export to PDF. This pretty much handles all of my writing/blogging work within one application. I’m currently writing this post in Atom. I also use Pandoc to convert to PDF, HTML and/or .docx if required.
  • Trello – I’ve just started using this for my to do list, and it’s a good way to visualise the planning and execution of any task based work.
  • Keynote – For presentations. I wouldn’t say I’m a power user, but I can throw together a half decent presentation now.
  • Dropbox – Cloud storage and synching software to ensure I can access everything everywhere.
  • IFTTT and Buffer – To automate as much as possible. Between them they handle a lot of the seemingly clever things in my digital life, and explain why I seem to be able to post to social media sites at times when I appear to be elsewhere.
  • NVivo – As a lot of the data I work with is words rather than numbers this is proving somewhat invaluable. I use the Mac version, but should get round to exploring the Windows version soon as I understand it has some different features.
  • Virtualbox – Because no-one needs as many physical computers as I had before virtualisation was a thing.

I’m always happy to talk about any of this software and how I use it to be productive.

New Music : March 2016

I’ve been very busy with the day job this month, and therefore finding new music has taken a backseat. Most of these were things were chosen/recommended by people who are not me, but I still think it represents a great snapshot of music released in March 2016. The Iggy Pop record in particular is excellent, and I don’t think anyone was expecting him to ever make anything so good again. I’m also very pleased with my Rough Trade album of the month for March, which is the debut album by Unloved. It’s difficult to categorise, but well worth a listen.

Unloved – Guilty of Love
Iggy Pop – Post Pop Depression
Primal Scream – Chaosmosis
Richmond Fontaine – You Can’t Go Back If There’s Nothing To Go Back To
The Range – Potential
Underworld – Barbara, Barbara, We Face An Uncertain Future
Max Richter – Sleep (Remixes)

I now own all but the last three on vinyl after a little splurge this week, and I don’t think I’ve listened to much else this month.

Command line software updates on OS X

A while ago I blogged about the script I use to update my Ubuntu machines. Today it’s the turn of Mac OS X.

#!/bin/bash
echo "updateall v.1.0 for OS X. This software will upgrade all your Apple/Homebrew software."
#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
echo "The script has now finished running."

This assumes you’re an admin user (and know your admin password), and that you already use Homebrew to manage command line packages. That’s certainly how my machines are set up, as I find it’s easier to have the same set of command line tools on all my machines regardless of OS. I also find this a quicker and more reliable way of updating multiple machines on patch release day, and it can also be run as a scheduled job through Apple Remote Desktop for the brave at heart.

This one needs saving as a file called updateall. You can then make it executable (sudo chmod -X updateall), copy it to /usr/local/bin, and then run it by typing updateall in a terminal window.

New Music : February 2016

Lots of interesting music to showcase this month, including a Bowie tribute, a strong debut from Sunflower Bean and the second album from DIIV. I also can’t get enough of the Yorkston/Thorne/Khan record after being introduced to it earlier this month, and I’ve found myself listening to a few of James Yorkston’s earlier albums as well.

Sunflower Bean – Human Ceremony
Jherek Bischoff and Amanda Palmer – Strung Out In Heaven (not on Spotify playlist)
Yorkston/Thorne/Khan – Everything Sacred
Guy Blakeslee – The Middle Sister
The Besnard Lakes A Coliseum Complex Museum
DIIV – Is This The Are
Wild Nothing – Life of Pause
She Makes War – Direction of Travel (not on Spotify playlist)
Animal Collective Painting With
The Fall – Wise Ol’ Man (e.p.)
Field Music – Commontime
Amanda Palmer – A Mother’s Confession (not on Spotify Playlist)
Steve Mason – Meet the Humans

Further reflections

I attended the second module of my ILM5 training last week, which covered budgetary planning and control. This is an area of work where I don’t have a great deal of experience, but one which I feel I’ll need a decent grounding in if I’m going to move any further in my organisation. The content was about as dry as I expected, and I think I’m going to have to do a lot more reading and research before I submit my assignment next month. I’ve devoted the whole day to ILM work today, and as well as this reflection I’ve created documents for each assignment (with headings and sections derived from the question structure) and have also had a first stab at writing the first half of the assignment related to last week’s workshop. I’m not completely happy with what I’ve written, but I think it’s a good enough start that will probably just need editing down and re-ordering during my second pass at the assignment which I need to schedule in for some point next week.

Since I wrote my last reflection (on innovation and change) my team have moved into a different part of the organisation, and I’ve already started working on the program of change that will most likely form part of my assignment. I felt that the changes were easier to deal with because of having the underpinning knowledge, and that I was leading change from a position of strength. I’m hopeful that next time I look at a budget I’ll draw some of the same confidence from my studies, but I think I just have to accept that this is the area of the program that is furthest from my comfort zone, and that it will likely take longer to integrate into my normal working practices.

New Music : January 2016

January has been a month overshadowed by the death of David Bowie (amongst others), but has also seen the release of some outstanding records, including a few my long-time musical heroes of mine. The new records by Tortoise and Shearwater did not disappoint, and the Jesu/Sun Kil Moon record is a particular treat that reminds me a little of the Sun Kil Moon/Album Leaf collaboration from a couple of years ago.

The full list for January is:

Hinds – Leave me Alone
Bill Baird – Earth into Ether
David Bowie – Blackstar
Daughter – Not to Disappear
Shearwater – Jet Plane and Oxbow
Howes – 3.5 Degrees
Eleanor Friedberger – New View
Tortoise – The Catastrophist
Jesu & Sun Kil Moon – Jesu/Sun Kil Moon

Innovation and Change

I’ve just started studying for the ILM level 5 in Leadership and Management, which is likely to take up a fair bit of my time over the next six months. One of the things I’ve been asked to submit is a learning log, which details everything I’ve learned (and want to learn) and how it feeds into the work I’m doing. I also have to write reflections on each module in the program; starting with the Change & Innovation module I studied in December.

Innovation is a straightforward one for me. It’s my natural way of thinking, I value innovative ideas, and I tend not to discount ideas just because they don’t fit into the established order. It probably helps that I’m not the greatest fan of blindly accepting the status quo, and am always looking for ways to be more efficient, more effective, and just better at things. Based on this I suppose it could be surmised that I’m also good at dealing with change. For after all, isn’t change is just the end product of innovation; the idea given form and unleashed into the world?

The fact is I’m a lot less comfortable with change than I am with innovation. I like my changes to be incremental and subtle, and while I’m quite happy to find myself doing almost wholly different work five years after starting my current job, the thought of changing everything that I do in one fell swoop scares me (and would have scared me even more five years ago). Yes, it’s exciting, but it also means devising new routines, new patterns of activity, and new workarounds for things that I find sufficiently uncomfortable that they affect my productivity and general happiness if I’m forced to do them too often.

2016 is going to be a year of change, and I’m going to be documenting as much of it as I can. I actually think it’s going to help the change process, as well as forming part of what I’m being assessed on.

Creating static websites with Pancake

I’m always looking for new ways to make web content available easily, and Pancake is one of the best (and easiest) I’ve found.

The basic concept is that the application creates a directory in Dropbox, and anything in that directory is hosted as a website. It can handle Markdown, HTMl, plain text and a few other things as well, and has a decent default CSS that makes it easy to get a decent looking website online without having to code anything. There is also a web-based editor which looks useful.

I’ve made a few web pages using this technology, all of which have been written in Markdown using Atom as a text editor. So far I’ve created a basic home page, an example of a blog post (using content copied from this blog), and a page I made as part of the /now movement.

It’s straightforward to do, and all you really need is a Dropbox account.