Celebrating Design

Saw handles

2011-12-20T06:17:00.003+11:00

While going for my lunchtime walk the other day, I noticed a stack of bric-a-brac piled out the front of someone's house with a large 'FREE' sign on it.

Making the assumption that 'FREE' referred to the stuff, and not the sign, I picked up 2 old Disston handsaws.

If you've ever spent money on a handsaw from any hardware shop these days, one thing you'll notice straight away is how blocky the handle is.

Henry Disston - quite apart from being a fascinating bloke to read about - made great saws. And a key part of a great saw is a great handle. Almost all the old saws have them.

The two saws I picked up both have apple handles. Apple wood (yes, from apple trees) makes great handles. The oldest saw of these two, which I date somewhere between 1878-88, is both comfortable and elegant.

As Disston's descendants carried the business on, the handles slowly lost their elegance and their comfort.

It is a lovely thing to be able to pick up a saw - even a rough one - 120 years after its birth, and feel a bond with it. A good saw feels like an extension of your arm.

I'm looking forward to restoring this one, cutting new teeth, and pressing it into service.

Tools to build a new tomorrow

2011-12-15T06:05:00.010+11:00

The world is full of designers. People who get paid to engage their brains and hearts to take concepts, understand their parameters, imagine possibilities, and translate them from mind to paper or screen.

Design is part of the basic package of what we, as human beings, do. It's a key part of how we make stuff happen in the world. From music, to buildings, to cars, to kitchenware, to urban planning, to making a sandwich, it's what we do.

Except when we don't.

Probably around 1/3 of the clients I currently work with are paid to design. I love walking into the workspaces of designers. It causes you to ponder about the measure of the people who create stuff there.

One observation I've made in the last 4 years is that many of the people we work with excel at making 'hard stuff' - landscapes etc. But a qualification in design doesn't necessarily mean you design strong processes - or as I heard one designer call 'the soft infrastructure'.

My contention - and I've said it often in recent times - is that what a lot of designers don't design well are conversations that help us achieve outcomes. A friend who is an industrial designer insists otherwise. He says design tools are the designer's working tools, so of course they bring design processes to their exchanges; they cannot do otherwise.

With the greatest respect, I cannot agree. My contention is not universally true - we get to work with some wonderful exceptions - but the trend is plain enough.

Yes, they know the language of project management. Yes, they can navigate council through the D.A and C.C. phases. But this is different to designing the conversations requisite to good outcomes that preserve intent, and utilise the best of each party for the good of the project's end users and owners.

Our passion is in finding the right questions that would help to drive the process forward while keeping the voice of intent alive.

Most often these are the exchanges that don't make the official register. They are the 'between the gaps' conversations, the links between silos.

We need to harness those gaps for the good of the project. And to do that we need a set of good conversational tools to carry us forward. This is a key part of a toolkit for tomorrow.

Small decisions

2011-12-08T06:50:00.006+11:00

Motivational speakers.

There -- I just polarised my readers.

I'm leary of motivational speakers. They make life's problems sound so predictable, and easy to solve. Just follow these 12 steps ...

My boss left something on my desk recently; an audio book titled 'The Slight Edge' by Jeff Olson.

The slick presentation style was nearly enough to result in an early 'bust off'. The sweeping generalisations made me cranky. The simplistic and formulaic approach of 'Do this, and these things will follow' annoyed me.

But I pushed through. I'm glad I did.

What Olson 'sells' here is the 'slow way to success'. It was his basic premise that kept me listening: that achievement in life was not about 'lucky breaks' or windfalls, but about discipline in making small decisions well.

Decisions like, "Will I eat the cheeseburger or the salad? Will I get up early or sleep in? Will I walk for 20 minutes today, or will I drink a beer and chat on the phone? Will I read a good book or watch television?"

At some points he feels way too dismissive of the choices of others, too ready to make value judgements. But his big idea has stuck with me, and has impacted on my decisions.

Failure in life does not occur in one bad decision but in 10,000 small decisions. So it is with those who build lives that we applaud. It's an exponential curve thing.

Olson has observed a pattern here. The book is the result of watching 'how it is' in the world. Small decisions, deliberate decisions, each day. Moving steadily in an upwards direction, no matter where you're starting from.

The packaging did not appeal -- nor did quite a few of the ideas. But the core idea stuck. And it's been worth the listen for that.

Grateful

2011-11-22T06:09:00.002+11:00

For the past year I've had the privilege of serving on our local school's P&C.

They are a very committed bunch of people, and are responsible for so much of the good that happens in our school community.

Meaningful actions have been driven by caring and considerate thought or concern. It's been great to be a part of.

We have a wonderful, dedicated principal whose actions demonstrate that he cares about his staff and teachers very deeply. We have staff who turn up day-after-day, often dealing with the complaints of ungrateful parents, and still faithfully carrying forward the job of educating kids.

And then there are the other parents in P&C who dig deep to get other things over the line. School banking. Uniform shop. End-of-year concert. Building repairs.

The savour for me this year in P&C has been the way we have been thinking about the question of engagement. It's been exciting to watch the conversation unfold. To have the P&C wrestling hard with such questions is a rich space to be in.

There is much to be grateful for. We get to have a say in the shape of the future. We get to form something, to think, talk, create something for the kids. We get to work alongside amazing, dedicated staff to do this. I am grateful.

Consider it [visually] noted

2011-11-17T06:05:00.010+11:00

Last week was my first attempt at sketchnoting a conference. It was an ideal conference to try my hand at sketchnoting as the content of the sessions provided plenty of scope for pictures and mental play. This was always likely to be the case, given it was the annual conference for Green Roofs Australasia.

I'm happy with my first attempts at sketchnoting, but I see a lot of room for growth. That's okay -- there's plenty of time for learning and improving.

It would be really nice to be as good as these guys one day (I think Eva-Lotta Lamm's notes are especially awesome), but in truth, I am the only person these notes need to matter to.

(It has largely been the impact of a 27-year-old book that has led me down this road.)

Q.A. as a living process

2011-10-31T06:09:00.003+11:00

There's a good chance that the car sitting in your driveway owes a lot to W. Edwards Deming. Deming was an American statistician largely responsible for the overhaul of Japanese industry from 1950 onwards. He helped to shift the perception that the Japanese were only capable of producing rubbish to the realisation of American car manufacturers that Japan had stolen the limelight from Detroit.

I've travelled in several American / Australian cars in recent times, and while it is probably inflammatory and a broad generalisation, my experiences lead me to the perception that Americans and Aussies are very capable of producing crap. Once I got onto Japanese cars, I never looked back.

Deming came to represent a whole philosophy of manufacturing. One element I note today is his belief that Q.A. is best offered as a living process. That is, instead of pouring resources into paying for exhaustive inspections at the end of a production process (with a range of acceptable tolerances), build in continuous improvement ('kaizen') into each process and verify quality improvements through statistical sampling.

Deming believed that while cost of manufacturing went down, quality and production could go up. How? Very simple: careful observation of what happens in planning and production, coupled with a culture of 'every participant is a designer', allows the sources of problems to be identified and corrected early in the process. When your only means of catching non-performance is the factory loading dock, then correcting mistakes becomes costly.

Most processes surrounding quality could be put right if people were given the space to resolve them. Deming saw the biggest problem here as management, not the people doing the actual work of manufacturing. These were cultural problems that needed to be resolved through a fresh approach to managing people, their willingness to work well, and their ability to do so. If you got the question of 'people' sorted out, then the 'quality' question had the space it needed to resolve.

Companies like Toyota have inculturated Deming's whole approach. (He was emphatic that for his thinking to work, his whole system had to be adopted, as it is a package.) And as a result we have better cars, microwaves, televisions.

While Deming was widely known and respected in Japan, he did not come into prominence in his home country until he was in his 80's. Once Americans realised what he had done for Japan, he quickly became flavour of the month, and began running 4-day workshops all over America and the world. He wrote books, he consulted to large companies, he supervised post-graduate students.

He continued to do this until his death at age 93. Interestingly, he never felt that his philosophy was embraced in his home country to the extent it had been in Japan. People wanted to 'cherry pick' his methods.

And that is why I can tell within 20 seconds of the driving experience that a car is a Chrysler and not a Subaru. When a door lining falls off (true story) then it is confirmed.

For an overview of Deming's life and his thinking, you'll probably enjoy this paper.

Life's a beach

2011-10-26T06:02:00.002+11:00

David Jones, thank you for sending across the wonderful gift that is this video of Theo Jansen discussing his Strandbeeste.

There is something both elegant and clumsy about Theo's creatures -- on his home site he has a short clip involving one teetering and then falling over -- but there is such drive behind the inventions.

We like the notion of 'living on' after we're gone. We have discovered many different ways of achieving this. What is nice about Theo's creations is that they will continue to scuttle about through the sand dunes of Dutch beaches after he is gone.

They will not simply follow predictable patterns of motion. Theo, through his 'living' designs, will continue to playfully (and surprisingly) impact the lives of others.

Nuts!

2011-10-17T06:03:00.010+11:00

You'd like to think it's not every other day that you find yourself an unwilling disciple of children's play equipment.

But twice in this last week I have been humbled by kids' stuff -- first, by a bicycle and then by a scooter. And I am contrite.

I used to work with someone who would say, "Experience is a tough teacher: she gives you the test first, and then she gives you the lesson." So damn true.

Test one: The handlebars on my eldest son's bike were loose. I decided to tighten up the headset, but then realised I didn't have a spanner large enough to tighten up the large nut on the collar.

This is embarrassing to admit, but I dug around through what I had and came up with a pair of multi-grips and ... a whopping big set of Stilsons.

You probably think it is impressive that I have Stilsons in my toolshed. You probably think it is less-than-impressive that I chose to use them to loosen off the locking collar. But I was desperate. It wasn't pretty.

It only took a few weeks for us to realise that the handlebars were still loose. This time I knew better: I asked my boss if he had a large shifter in his workshop. He did.

I tackled the headset with a combination of large shifter and multi-grips. The shifter held. The multi-grips slipped under pressure. I bent back a thumbnail and swore. Finally, I got it all loosened up, and then tightened it to a tension I was happy with.

The handlebars still moved. More swearing. Then I noticed the little nut on top of the stem at the base of the handlebars. I grabbed a little socket out of my box. Ten seconds of tightening, and the problem was fixed.

I felt like an idiot. The fix was there right under my nose all along. All the fooling about, and big tools and damaged paint was needless. A small socket was the answer.

Test two: I noticed that our scooter had two plastic screw covers that weren't sitting down properly. A quick inspection caused me to believe that the person who fitted the nuts-and-bolts had put them in the wrong way.

I pulled them out (fiddly), turned them around, and retightened. And the covers still did not fit. Then I realised that the fix was a lot simpler than I assumed: the covers simply needed to be spun around (hard to explain, even with a photo). The nuts-and-bolts were right the first time around. So I had to undo them and turn them back around again.

In both cases my poor diagnostic work forced me to rush to a solution that was no solution at all. In both cases a lot more time and energy was wasted than was necessary.

A taxing read

2011-10-12T06:11:00.002+11:00

"We have long had death and taxes as the two standards of inevitability. But there are those who believe that death is the preferable of the two. 'At least,' as one man said, 'there's one advantage about death: it doesn't get worse every time Congress meets. -- Erwin N. Griswold, 34th United States Solicitor General

I have just finished reading a paper delivered by some of the crew at Second Road on how they worked with the ATO to help the organisation rethink its relationship to law, politics, and its clientele: Aussie taxpayers.

It makes for an interesting read, and is a fascinating test case for what can happen in the most analysis-driven of organisations when a design approach to problem-solving and future-casting is adopted not for a one-off workshop, but as the persistent model of thinking.

If accountants and taxation lawyers can work this way (in a culture of co-design), anyone can. It fits with what Lietdka and Ogilvie have posited about the 'discipline of design'. Quoting Larry Keeley of Doblin: "Creating new concepts depends a lot more on discipline than on creativity. You take the ten most creative people you can find anywhere. Give me a squad of ten marines and the right protocols, and I promise we'll out-innovate you."

If you live in Australia and pay taxes (the two seem to be mutually exclusive for some people), then the paper is well worth the read -- if nothing else, it builds your empathy for those on the other end of the tax form / BAS.

If you work in an organisation where you think, "There is no way a design thinking approach could have anything to offer us or our clients", the paper is worth a read.

The story offers a nice interplay between the role of individuals (both outside and inside the ATO), the value of persistence, and the importance of good ethnographic work mated to a strong design process.

Edges of Opportunity

2011-10-07T22:31:00.004+11:00

"If design were simply a matter of solving problems, much of design activity could be eliminated and along with it would go much of the value of design.

David Pye has brilliantly debunked the notion of 'purely functional' design. He illustrates the presence of the human touch in all design including that which is supposed to be very objective such as structural design.

We also observe that design problems are not static; they change with time and are changed by the way we perceive them; a client may come to an architect with the problem of adding a room to the back of his house but the architect may expand the client's understanding of the problem to include energy consumption in the entire house or the impact of an addition upon the use of backyard space.

The designer looks for opportunities while working with problems; he seeks not only the application of known solutions but the invention of new solutions which extend human experience and delight.

One of the keys to inventing is the ability to see analogies between design problems and design solutions."

-- Norman Crowe & Paul Laseau, Visual Notes for Architects and Designers, (New York: Van Nostrand Reinhold, 1984), p.32

A personality but no name

2011-10-05T05:56:00.003+11:00

We have just returned from 4 days of hangin' with friends in the northern Victorian town on Wangaratta.

Monday provided an opportunity (what fantastic weather!) to make our way over to Beechworth, a half-hour drive away.

We spent the best part of the day lugging around strollers and provisions for 5 kids (it looked like a sort of amateur Andean caravan, without the llamas).

Beechworth wears its history loud and proud. From Lake Sambell's nod to the town's history in gold (this spot is a true picture of beauty from ashes), to the remaining lock-up in the Police Paddock and the old courthouse (where Ned Kelly was committed to stand trial for the murder of Thomas Lonigan), its present-day 'face to the world' is distinctive because of its history.

There are things that can be said about Beechworth that cannot be said of any old town. The town's history (well-researched, recorded and published by the local people) have become a foundation for its positioning into the future.

If you have ever spent any time looking at the mission and vision statements of companies or public entities (local councils come to mind for me), you will notice how many of these statements about 'Who we are' / 'What we do' are generic and abstract. You could engineer a simple template with a series of positive assertions, and 'Just add your organisation's name in place of X'.

The following comes randomly from a particular local government website:

"Council is committed to overseeing the continued growth of the City and ensuring high quality of life for residents and visitors. This role is guided by Council's Vision and Mission Statements.

OUR VISION: A vibrant city of lifestyle and opportunity.

OUR MISSION: To manage and promote X’s diversity, lifestyle and opportunity through innovation and excellence."

Such statements tell us next-to-nothing. It's when you start to dig around in the organisation's policy and strategy documents -- particularly those that have been formulated well around good demographic work, and not simply focus groups -- that you begin to uncover the unique personality of the organisation and its challenges and hopes ... and how it would measure 'success'.

But many organisations struggle to express this in any meaningful way in their most public statements. It seems instead that many of us resort to picking up The Big Book of Mission and Vision Statements and labour hard and long (often with extended argumentation and consultation) to develop a series of statements that sounds like ... everyone else's.

We find it hard to say what is uniquely 'us' and what this offers the world. But we do know that if a vision statement is going to pass muster it should contain words like 'excellence', 'hard-working', 'innovative', 'honesty', 'integrity', 'world leader'.

I wonder what would happen if you got a group of politicians and business people together and asked them to craft a vision statement for Beechworth? Would the story of the place (its personality) come through, or would 'Vision Statement' mode kick in? I wonder ...

Looking backwards into an uncertain future

2011-09-30T06:01:00.006+10:00

It's budget time in our business; time to look to an open future and dare to put some numbers up against it.

When it comes to prognosticating about tomorrow's joys or woes, our society's mainstream media seems to have an obsession with two social sciences: psychology and economics. It is the psychologists with their analysis of human behaviour, and the economists with their analysis of financial trends that become the prophets.

We seem to draw comfort from putting numbers on the future -- especially when faced with great uncertainty. Those numbers seem to have additional value to us if they are accompanied by either $ or %.

One of the ways that we do this is to look to the past. We examine past trends. And then we play with some 'But what if?' market scenarios, and offer our picture of the future.

A future that is bequeathed to us from analysis of the past fails dismally to serve us well. A public educator captured the heart of it when he said to me in an email last week: "It always amazes me ... that we turn to economists to help us determine what tomorrow's world will be like (if they really knew then why are they so wrong so often?)"

Analysis is most useful for telling us something about where we are, or have been. But looking backwards is a very limited tool for moving us forward. I'm not talking about being attuned to the ebb-and-flow of history -- even economic history -- but I am wrestling with the idea the economists aren't particularly good prophets, and that if their vision of the future becomes our vision of the future it is quite an impoverished (pun intended) picture to be carried forward by.

We started going through our numbers yesterday. You can see how stimulating it was for one team member who was already feeling a bit under the weather:

When you sit down to forecast budgets for the coming year, it is important to look back at past customers ('The best source of new business is old business') and buying trends. But there is a profound feeling of helplessness about casting numbers into the future.

It is one reason that it has been so good to be part of a business that has chosen to not reduce its picture of the future simply into a set of numbers. That would be crushing.

The future is more than a set of backwards-oriented numbers -- though they have a place in the dialogue (and so we have our budgets for 2012).

The conversation around budgets works smarter when we are having conversations about the possibilities for the future (and not simply about $$$), what our clients are aspiring to, and what sort of future they are imagining. Then we become engaged as 'authors', not simply as 'readers' of past numbers and trends.

We can speak to an open future with more intelligence (and hope) if we reframe our conversations around 'design' questions (complemented by a rich anthropology and some good, road-tested business sense). This then provides a context for good economic commentary, instead of having economics as the frame, and the supposed 'all-seeing eye'.

And before I sign off this morning: TB, we'll miss you. You have been a valued team player. DJ was right when he said last night that you have 'honed your craft'. You are a craftsman, mate. We cannot speak of the strengths of our business without talking about what you have given to it. We'll miss you. A lot. Go well, and with our blessing.

Designing a future

2011-09-28T06:01:00.002+10:00

When have you been part of designing a future?

We can't sit down together and design the past. It's spoken for. Our opportunity lies before us.

We could leave the future to analysts or dreamers.

We could leave it to haphazard use of tools like brainstorming or kinesthetic modelling or sketchboarding. (All useful tools, by the way.)

Or we could engage it as a design exercise ... we engage it as designers. We rise to the task of looking at and speaking to the future through the disciplined use of the tools of design.

When designers become slaves to their tools, we're in trouble.

When we end up in a storm of wonderful creative activity, but lack the discipline to harness it, sort it, test it, change it, use it, we run the very real risk of ending up disillusioned and even cynical.

But the future is too pregnant with possibility to give up on. Designers need hope. We need to know that out of the chaos can come order.

Occasionally, it happens serendipitously. For the most part it reflects intent and discipline. (And probably spends a fair measure of its time 'tacking' back-and-forward across those trajectories, constantly shifting and correcting, working with the wind and flow, working the tools.)

A home among the gum trees ...

2011-09-26T06:01:00.006+10:00

On Mondays and Fridays (and occasionally other days) I work from our office in the Blue Mountains.

Lunchtimes provide the opportunity to get out for a walk, which I usually tend to do. My walk normally takes me through a short patch (several hundred metres) of fairly isolated bush track.

Walking through there the other week, I was enjoying the solitude, and the company, of the tall eucalypts and bunched up turpentines. I've walked this track many times, but as I trudged along this day, I noticed something about 30 metres downhill off the side of the track: the form of a tree house. I've got no idea how long it had been there.

The structure is fairly basic, and almost invisible, but there it is. Some people would decry this sort of construction, but I rejoice: a kid is learning to build, and he / she is doing that utilising natural forms.

Yes, the trees will suffer a bit. Some groundcovers or shrubs will probably be trampled to death, and an ant or two will likely die. And it will all look a bit messy. If kids are like other builders, there will probably be some detritis strewn around the site after the job is done.

But so much will be gained! Richard Louv offers a fairly exhaustive breakdown on pp. 80-83 of his book, Last Child in the Woods on what the exercise of tree-house building offers a child. And much of the learning is in trial-and-error.

This 'home among the gum trees', 6 metres up, is a piece of grounded learning. Once a place of noisy construction, it becomes a place of solace among the treetops. But it only becomes that through intent, thoughts about design, bent nails, pieces of wood cut too short, problem-solving, ant bites, and sweat (and probably some tears).

How sad that we see so few tree houses these days. What have we done to our kids?

If your work were a house ...

2011-06-20T21:42:00.006+10:00

Recently I've been working back through Dick Bolles' What color is your parachute? This has become a fairly precious book to me. Though it purports to be a guide 'for job hunters and career changers' to me it is much more: it is a tool of deep value to help you know yourself, and to map the contours which are your life story, and your life passion.

In other words, it's the sort of book that people either snort at and walk away from, or it is a book that 'runs deep' with you.

I don't agree with Bolles' every premise. (I find his splitting of life into 'spiritual' and 'secular' especially aggravating, and at odds with his overall direction.)

What Dick Bolles does exceptionally well is ask good questions. Provocative writers do this, even if their prose contains no question marks. They make you look deep, look fresh, stand back, stand close, listen, puzzle over.

The power of Bolles' questions is not in analysis. His best questions are connected to emotions, to stories, to longings, to feelings. His is less a wisdom of lecturing than it is of pondering, of wondering.

If you are crazy enough to pick up a pen (or in my case, pencil) and a notebook, and give some space to musing with Bolles, I don't think you'll ever look at life the same way. (Certainly, at the very least, you could never look at your work the same way again.)

There are some big questions here that deserve long, slow consideration. What I am choosing to do with them is answer them in various ways: some with written answers, others with pictures or maps or physical creations.

I took his question, “What is the one thing, more than anything else in the world, that I would love to do?” and recast it as “What do I yearn to build – to build into, to build with?”

I then flicked through my copy of Beaver's Another 100 of the world's best houses and marked up the houses that I felt had a resonance with my response to this question. I decided to treat my work as a space that is built for others, a place for friends, a haven for the weary or the world-worn or down-trodden. I remembered my naming of several years ago as 'one who rejoices in the laughter of friends'.

I was looking (subconsiously) for places that could make people feel 'big' on the inside, and yet warm and secure. Places where conversation would flow as easily as silence. Places that were a shelter from the pounding elements, and yet in harmony with the wildness, having deep resonance with their surrounds whether the eye is looking from the outside in, or from a window outward.

So helpful. And not that helpful in the end.

2010-07-31T16:26:00.003+10:00

Satellite maps give us instant access to a level of realism that is unimaginable for those of us who grew up on dad's manky old copy of Gregory's or UBD (or Melways for you strange southern people).

Satellite mapping can be really useful for helping you identify the exact location you're trying to get to. I use it a lot - normally either Google Maps or NearMap (if you want extra detail in suburban areas).

Satellite maps are also useful work tools. If you're an urban planner or an engineer or an architect (or, presumably, a Feng Shui consultant), you're going to find satellite maps a real asset.

Except when they become a liability. This seems to happen when people become overly dependent on them for information, and discard other useful, more traditional, resources.

Like topographical maps, or site visits.

We are working with some clients on tree planting work in greater Sydney area. I was onsite with the contractor last week. From above, the site looks like this:

The problem occurs at point 'X'. This is where several axes converge. There is a lot of grade across this site, and it all slopes down to this spot.

On a heavy clay site, you suddenly have planting holes that fill with water. Not so good for most trees (some will cope with it, but the species planted only has moderate tolerance for this).

The designer of the planting is friendly and accessible, which is a plus. Unfortunately, they didn't get out on site much. I asked the site supervisor on what basis they had planned out the streets. His answer: they used satellite maps. (I can only take his word for it.)

Perhaps even using a feature like 'Street View' (Google Maps) would have helped here, and given an appreciation of the slope on the street.

Sadly, an above view did not tell the whole story in this case, or even enough of it to be truly helpful.

Conversational flocculant

2010-07-14T22:56:00.005+10:00

Dispersion is a distinguishing feature of so-called 'sodic' soils.

When a clump of sodic soil (a clay material) is placed in a beaker of water and stirred, the colloids disperse and discolour the water. If you've ever owned a chlorinated swimming pool you'll also be familiar with the milky cloudiness that can become more prominent over time.

The addition of gypsum to sodic soils causes the dispersed particles to clump together, and so it is possible to have structure emerge where 'slumping' has been the trend beforehand.

Last week, our business re-explored its approach to 'strategic conversation'. With the expert assistance of one of the our former associate directors (also one of the most gifted strategic conversationalists around), we began to dig deep into the stories of people within our business in the creation of new meaning, and directed action informed by those acts.

Strategic conversation allows us to walk into confusing and complex situations, to look at what is going on, to look at where we are at (and want to be), and to see crystallisation emerge out of cloudiness, meaning emerge out of apparent noise. I put it to Dave that his toolkit functions in many ways as a 'conversational flocculant'.

Dave's art is not to tell people the solution: his art is to help them see what is already there, to look it at it in fresh ways, and to hypothesise ways forward as they work together, reading their surrounds with wisdom, patience, love and resolve.

A puzzle becomes a window

2010-07-10T20:52:00.017+10:00

(David Jones, Mark Strom and Jim Ireland will all realise in this post their own influence on my thinking, the fruit of conversations and reading. With all of its simplistic shortcomings, I offer it with a grateful 'nod' to each of you. I would welcome your critique of the ideas, either in comment here, or via another medium.

My admiration for each of you grows daily as I realise the complex and confusing situations that you have learned to navigate -- and even thrive in. Each of you has influenced our own personal journey through some pretty 'hairy' space! Thanks, guys, for all that you give. A lot of people are grateful for your companionship through the 'trail-blazing'!)

In a recent post I talked about what we have been observing in how our four-year-old, Caelan, solves jigsaw puzzles. He has continued with his new 500-piece puzzle, working with the same methodology.

At the same time as he has been problem-solving a fairly vast territory for a four-year-old, his old man has been trying to solve a puzzle of a different kind.

Without going into too much detail, there has been a business situation which has been both fun and perplexing to navigate. There are multiple parties involved -- many of whom have been unknown -- and a lot of information hidden (or at least unseen). It also involves the interface of several levels of government, the not-for-profit sector, and the business community. Without question, it is the most complex and confusing project I have yet had to navigate.

Caelan's 'puzzling' has become a window on working in a situation fraught with complexity and confusion.

I note his ability to quickly scope for a solution. When there is a lot of material to get acquainted with, and a vast territory to cover, it is important to identify the major features of the landscape first. Grabbing at random pieces which lack 'chunky' detail provides no context, and attempting to create a boundary (edge pieces) tells you very little of the conversation / features going on within the edges (or beyond). The picture is a lot more than the edges or random noise.

Those in our business who have been puzzling through this situation have had to locate the major features of the puzzle in a fairly short time frame (the scale of the project, the intent, the timing, the places, the specifications; the designers, the clients, the contractors, the project managers, the suppliers). For the benefit of the business, and the benefit of our clients, we have worked to find the right questions and tease out the main connecting features. This gives context to our actions, and intent to our conversations.

Caelan does not get bogged down in secondary detail. Complex and confusing situations can disorient us, and cause us to lose sight of the most important questions and objectives. There are many secondary issues to distract us, and prevent us from seeing what there is to be seen. These secondary issues can also stifle our capacity to scope quickly if we insist on using secondary (or tertiary) information as a means of bridging between the main features of problems and solutions. We can end up dying of thirst trying to reach the next oasis by insisting on counting the grains of sand as we go.

A ‘map’ (i.e. the lid of the box) is a useful thing to have, but that does not mean it should be followed slavishly. Sometimes you cover more territory more quickly by working with gut instincts and an eye for patterns. Working from someone else's pre-determined pattern (painting by numbers) also leaves you more inclined to fill in masses of secondary detail simply because you can. Our attempt to scope quickly can thus be stymied. Working instinctively may also lead us along a different, potentially wiser, knowledge pathway to that which is determined when the path is laid out before us in a dogmatic fashion. There is also the benefit of seeing with a fresh set of eyes.

When you’re small, you sometimes need to get up and walk around the puzzle to ‘see’ what you’re looking for. Not every piece of a conundrum makes sense from one standpoint; things can be hard to locate. Sometimes you need to get up and move, see the whole puzzle from another perspective, view the dislocated pieces from the opposite angle, and with a different play of light. It’s also helpful to stand back occasionally and quickly move your eyes over the whole -- it serves to verify and critique the 'scoping' you undertook / are undertaking. Perhaps (for example) you identifed and pieced together a major puzzle 'fractal', but wrongly located its place in the whole.

An eye for fine detail can be a blessing. Two shades of black might look the same to one set of eyes, but another set of eyes notes a subtle but important difference (i.e. things that appear to be of similar nature may not be, and they may belong in vastly different sectors of the problem / solution).

The challenge and the solution are both broadly fractal in nature. But not everything we encounter in this project is. The secondary and tertiary ‘noise’ seems to function less as something that can be completely known and named in itself. The puzzle could still be something meaningful (albeit diminished)without the 'stuffing' between the major features, but it would be much less meaningful if all we had was secondary noise and no features / anchors / bases.

Caelan will sometimes begin a puzzle he has done before in a different place, and will ‘build’ it around different features. A sameness of approach to every situation is no virtue. Even having a couple of different heads working over the same problem, probing together for worthy questions, will unearth different points of entry and different knowledge paths to get us to a solution. This is not a linear process, and there is more than one way to scope and navigate successfully. Sometimes there is even redemption in what appears to be a poorly-chosen path, and fresh possibilities are opened to us as we leave the highways and hit the bush tracks.

We persevere because of a conviction about the worthiness of the enterprise. There is a reason why we do not and cannot rest content with a mountain of scrambled pieces when there is intelligence and beauty lying latent and ready to reward our efforts. There is creating work to be done, and it is good!

Lastly, when you can’t find a piece, it’s okay to ask for help. Problem-solving in a worthy enterprise isn’t about preserving the sanctity / glory of any one ‘problem-solver’. We work together as we see the different parts, and getting to a working vision -- a way forward -- leaves little room for ego.

Where's the noise?

2010-07-06T13:53:00.006+10:00

Broad generalisation: organisations which are contentedly discontent don't make much noise. It isn't in their interests to make noise for fear of some sacred sleeping hound being aroused.

(Undercurrents of noise may be found among genuinely discontented people within such organisations, whose discontent may be the fruit of caring and longing for things to be different.)

With the exception of people who seek out our business because of a result they want to achieve, it is not unusual for us to deal with client organisations that are contentedly discontent. We have pursued them with a view to generating potential business (among other things), and they have fallen squarely within our aim.

Just the other day I started to 'map out' a bit of how such an engagement might look. I learned a couple of things doing this exercise, and offer you one such partial window of the map below.

Firstly, using Microsoft Paint as a mapping tool is a poor decision. (Recommendations for a PC-based program, anyone?)

Secondly, when you actually start to map out conversations which centre around what people value and what it would look like for an organisation to move to 'a better place', you realise these conversational processes are not linear (you're not dealing with a software development-type 'waterfall model').

Even when the complexity and reality of the to-and-fro, cut-and-thrust, hypothesis-and-testing of a conversation is realised, the dimension is never simply '2D' -- it is 'history' / 'story' and organisational tiering that calls for something more 'topographic' in nature in our mapping. Perhaps the creation of multiple intersecting maps would assist? ( David -- looking forward to what you have to offer in this space.)

Thirdly, trying to trace the lines of such an engagement made me realise how little I understand of the client's world, and how dialogue, discontent-and-content, agitate in their own space. Their own conversation is largely invisible to us. However ...

Fourthly, our engagement throughout the course of attempting to build business with them tells me that the urgency which we bring to the situation is not theirs -- and we are talking about contentedly discontent organisations here. While the first dialogue with a client will likely provoke a conversation in our own business, followed by the creation of a fresh hypothesis, and the applying of that hypothesis in the next conversation, there is often the perception that the same process of analysing and creating has not taken place within the client's world.

While we may be 'sounding for life, and pushing for movement', the [potential] client organisation may just as open to inaction as to action (though talking about action may be perceived as having almost as much value as action, or may itself be judged to be 'action').

The realisation came to me as I looked at my poxy, 2-dimensional map. One thing it tells me is that the dialogue between an agitator, and a contentedly discontent organisation is heavily weighted to one side (unless the 'passive' organisation perceives a real threat to its passivity from the agitator organisation, and animates its own dialogue to shut the conversation down -- self-preservation can be a powerful motivator).

I'm still not quite sure what can be entirely deduced from this heavily top-weighted map. Is this the nature of agitator organisations engaging with contentedly discontent organisations? There is no question that locating a caring, genuinely discontented person in the organisation could make the process look quite different (as least as I perceive it, rightly or wrongly).

An agitator organisation persists with a pointless exercise if the contentedly discontent organisation perceives it to be nothing more than a noise-making irritation, and a disruption to the status quo.

This may, in the end, be as much an indictment on the foolishness of insensitive agitators as it is on the laziness and care-less-ness of passive organisations.

Tools to win favour with a difficult child

2010-07-03T21:00:00.011+10:00

Perhaps one of the funniest episodes in Blackadder Goes Forth sees Captain Edmund Blackadder (Rowan Atkinson) awaiting execution for disobeying orders from his superiors.

As Blackadder waits in his cell, he is visited by the cheerful but simple Private Baldrick (Tony Robinson), bearing a sack of goods (disguised as a picnic lunch) and [the usual] 'cunning plan'.

The sack contains an escape kit, as Baldrick has surmised that Blackadder's appearance before the firing squad in less than 24 hours is otherwise inevitable. Of course, Baldrick's idea of a useful escape kit differs somewhat from Blackadder's. Blackadder begins to rifle through the sack:

Edmund: Let's see, what have we here? A small painted wooden duck.

Baldrick: Yeah, I thought if you get caught near water, you can
balance it on the top of your head as a brilliant disguise.

Edmund: Yeeeesss, I would, of course, have to escape first. Ah,
but what's this? Unless I'm much mistaken, a hammer and a
chisel!

Baldrick: You ARE much mistaken!

Edmund: A pencil and a miniature trumpet.

Baldrick: Yes, a pencil so you can drop me a postcard to tell me
how the breakout went, and a small little tiny miniature trumpet
in case, during your escape, you have to win favour with a
difficult child.

Baldrick's 'cunning plans' pivot somewhere between the absurd,
the insane and the peculiarly plausible. As Blackadder unpacks
the remainder of the kit, the 'logic' of Baldrick is further
unpacked.

The inclusion of a Robin Hood outfit is ludicrous to Blackadder
but makes perfect sense to Baldrick ("I put in a French peasant's
outfit first, but then I thought, 'What if you arrive in a French
peasants' village and they're in the middle of a fancy dress
party?'").

There is both madness and brilliance to be found in Baldrick's
plan. The obvious tools for a prison breakout won't be found
here.

But what if Blackadder did have to 'win favour with a difficult
child'? What if he did turn up in a French peasants' village
and they were in the middle of a fancy dress party?

It got me thinking about organisations and how they problem
-solve. There is often a laziness to our problem-solving, an
'A or B' / '0 or 1' / 'On / Off' approach. The capacity to be flexible
problem-solvers, to walk around a situation and view it from
many different angles, to realise that if we can only come up
with one way out of a problem then we probably aren't working
that smart, leaves space for the Baldricks of our world.

We may be used to looking for a Swiss passport or a hammer in
our escape kit, but difficult children are not charmed by Swiss
passports.

Insanity may lie the way of a Baldrick-style 'cunning plan', but
that is not to say there is no logic to it. Sometimes wisdom
appears in the garb of foolishness (and, yes, sometimes
foolishness appears in the garb of foolishness).

Sometimes the 'obvious' solution falls short, and it is the painted
wooden duck that delivers the goods.

A little piece of sanity

2010-06-29T22:09:00.009+10:00

Sometimes a little corner of sanity is all that is needed to stay afloat.

I don't cope well feeling surrounded by chaos. Life is a bit chaotic at the moment. We've had nearly two months of non-stop sickness in the house, and life gets a little furry around the edges.

The front garden has been a saving grace, even in small doses. Most days, that means taking 30 seconds to pull out any little weeds or grass shoots.

When we started living here 2 1/2 years ago, it looked like this:

Now, with a couple of removals (mostly agapanthus and kikuyu!), and some new additions (Grevillea, Kangaroo Paw, Paroo Lily, Gazanias, Dianellas, Emu Bush) over the last few years, it's headed in a fresh direction:

Whenever I head outside to take out the garbage or recycling, I seize the opportunity to soak it up. It's a nice little piece of sanity!

Puzzling out a solution

2010-06-24T14:17:00.008+10:00

Most people do jigsaw puzzles the 'normal' way.

Not our four-year-old.

Most of us pour the pieces out, look at the lid of the box, sort the pieces into little piles (edges and distinct colours / patterns), look at the lid of the box, and assemble the puzzle -- constantly referencing the picture on the lid of the box.

Not Caelan.

He doesn't seem to believe in the value of an absolute image to aid the assembly process. He will start the puzzle with some concept of what he is aiming for (a world map, a forest scene, a truck), spread the pieces out, and then just start assembling them based around colour / pattern (from what we can tell). All this time, the lid of the box is lying idly who-knows-where.

He is also guided by shape. Once he has mastered a puzzle (that is, can assemble it competently picture-side up), one of his little tricks is to reassemble it upside-down -- and he doesn't do this by looking at the pictures on the obverse, but by the shape of the pieces. (This gets a little harder when the puzzles get up past 100 pieces.)

It is an intriguing process to watch, and he is generally able to assemble puzzles quite quickly (he has just started the same process again with a new 200-piece puzzle this morning). Where as most of us are essentially using a tightly (slavishly?) self-referenced replication process, he is using an interesting combination of creative and interpretive skills.

For him, if the visual cue is right, the next key is shape and fit. If the fit is wrong, then he hunts for another piece.

As a friend has expressed it (from within the world of strategic conversations), he appears to be using less a process of building from a set of specifications (though in the end, the whole thing can only go together one way), and more a process of building from within available parameters and intent (aiming for the creation of a tree or a whale or a car).

The process is fractal (thanks again, David), as Caelan seeks to solve the puzzle by turning it into a series of mini-puzzles (he will work on a section, find some level of resolution in it, and then begin work on another section, until eventually the completed sections butt into each other).

It will be interesting to watch how this way of dealing with puzzling situations is applied in other life circumstances where there is more than one way for a final solution to 'lock together' ...

Many miles? Or a set of rushing rapids?

2010-06-20T20:11:00.005+10:00

The significance of some friendships is the fruit of many miles on a long road. The significance of other friendships lies in one crossing of a rampaging river in a howling storm.

There is a small coterie of clients who forged a friendship with my boss many years ago through some tough circumstances (that I know almost nothing about). If my boss finds out I'm off to see one of them, he will say, "Say to Barry, '[Insert boss' name] says "Don't mention the war."'"

I always try to pass those kinds of greetings on. They are simple words that testify to the significance of a friendship forged long ago. The hearer of the words inevitably smiles, and the friendship is, in some odd way, rekindled - however many years it has been since the two friendly parties have actually spoken. And even if it only 6.30am on a frosty morning standing on the 17th tee.

It's been about 2 1/2 years since Cara and I embarked on, what seemed to us at the time, a terrifying and bold new direction. The process of coming to the point of making that decision saw new people arrive into the unsettled terrain of our lives. They were, some of them, people we had to learn to trust quickly as we co-navigated unfamiliar space. We did not have many miles on the road with them, but we quickly had a friendship forged through a river crossing. There were also others there through that crossing who had been there all along (you know who you are), and their friendship has meant the more for it.

Perhaps some of them would estimate the value of our friendship differently to how we see theirs. All I know is: 3 years since meeting some of these folks, I will still drop them a friendly line every now an again when I'm out-and-about with some time to kill. And I would go to the wall for these people.

The obvious

2010-06-19T13:51:00.004+10:00

I haven't logged a new entry here for a very long time.

Has a lot happened in the intervening period between the last post in January and this one?

Perhaps. But when you don't sit down and consider life in retrospect it has a way of passing you by very quickly.

The blog was, in the past, a good discipline, but more than that: it was a window. It was a way of looking afresh at what was around to see the patterns, to have an eye for the design evident in everyday living, and even to bear witness to the chaos.

Exercise keeps us from becoming flabby. This blog has, in the past, exercised my heart and mind, kept me looking for the patterns, often making me aware of shortcomings of my own through paying attention to what is to be seen and heard (Proverbs 8:1-5). It was a reflective mirror, and a lens.

The discipline of keeping the blog daily back in 2008 was good for my heart and mind, but probably not so good for my family. In this season of life, brimming with the presence of three young boys and one industrious wife, there would have been an ironic foolishness in keeping a blog on design while failing to invest time in my family. So the blog embarked on a long slide into slumber.

Other things have been dusted off or newly discovered, particularly the enjoyment of playing music and singing with the boys. And climbing into our ceiling to install insulation (DON'T ASK!).

And in all of the joy of daily life with our boys in our little neighbourhood, in a rewarding job / industry and in the grace-imbued company of our house church gathering, I miss my blog. Blogging on design is good exercise. It makes me more attendant to life's patterns.

This isn't about a new resolution, or even a statement of intent. It's just to note 'what is': to detect both the flabbiness and the longing. (Sighs and smiles, with a small sense of achievement.)

Walk the line?

2010-01-21T21:07:00.004+11:00

A client has this sign prominently displayed in his staff meeting room:

This is in a public organisation. Every time I talk with him, I know he means business in dealing with childish behaviour in his organisation, helping people to grow up and mature. He is passionate about the capabilities of his operations team.

His goal in managing his staff is apparent: if his team is able to 'live into' operating 'above the line' then the work of managing becomes less about firefighting and more about identifying brilliance and creativity and persistence and finding ways of setting them free.

I'd like to think my current workplace has a pretty strong 'above the line' culture. There's pretty limited tolerance for B.S., a healthy respecting of opinions, and the ability for fresh ideas to rise above rank.

Of course, patches of 'below the line' behaviour occur. But if you've lived long enough in an 'above the line' culture you know how miserable a place it is to let your organisation live for too long in the choking, 'victimised' environment that is 'below the line'.

Perhaps you've been in organisations that have moved from 'laying blame' and 'justifying' to 'taking responsibility' and 'exercising accountability'. If so, enlighten us: what were the tipping points? And what did you notice about the organisation's output before and after?

The detritus of design

2010-01-09T16:57:00.006+11:00

The art of sculpting is about removing just enough material to 'reveal' the finished form. Any act of taking a 'blank' and chipping something new out of it leaves behind traces of what once was - and the deeper the artisan carves, the less the original piece looks like the original piece: unless he is simply creating a miniature version of the original!

In one of my first posts on this blog, I spoke about my dad's buckets of bibs-and-bobs, buckets of leftover pieces that rest patiently waiting for the glorious moment when they will be revealed as the successful ingredients of a solution.

The pieces in these buckets all began life as raw materials before being fashioned into something humanly useful, before being consigned to life as 'odds-and-ends', waiting to become useful again, but probably not in the same vein as their original application.

There are some materials, however, that end up on altogether different trajectory, moving from being humanly 'useless' as raw materials straight through to becoming landfill.

If you've ever undertaken any form of construction (be it a house or a bookshelf or a quilt or a sock puppet), you know that trimmings and leftovers are par for the course.

I guess their usefulness, if any, is in serving the construction of something new.

One of my birthday presents as a young kid was a plastic model of a fighter jet. Opening the rather plain cardboard box, I was greeted with several 'slabs' of parts moulded out of plastic, waiting to be snapped out of their frame and glued into place. I took special pleasure in getting to work snapping all the pieces out of the frames - and it was quite a few pieces.

Only at assembly time, and under my father's watch, did I learn that these pieces of framing plastic formed a reference point for construction, now made all the more interesting without their presence. Though they were always destined to be left out of the final product, they were nevertheless included by the manufacturers, and were to aid the construction process.

Following the completion of the job, they were designed to be discarded. These are the sorts of pieces that would never have found a place in my dad's buckets, unless he had a hunch there was something potentially useful about them.

One of our clients is is the process of building a rigorously eco-friendly home. He tells me that when he was in the building game, most new house projects finished up with 16-24m3 of waste.

His ecohome, nearing completion, has no more than 2m3 of waste. That's because all those pieces of timber and tile and gyprock which are so readily discarded on building sites, he kept. And sorted. And stacked. So when the builders needed a short piece of timber for some framing, instead of chopping into a new length of lumber, they would go to to the offcuts stack, and usually find what they were after (and often with a lot less trouble than sawing into a full new length).

Where timber or brick or gyprock became too small to be useful, it was chipped and used as aggregate or backfill etc. In the end, very little has been wasted.

It seems to me that every construction, indeed, every conversation, has its share of detritus that remains at the end -- or is it the end? Perhaps the germ of a thought that did not pass muster to move us forward this time will be just the piece we need for next time.

Perhaps not. Perhaps it will pass beyond memory or text or photo and be lost. Perhaps it will serve as 'framing' now and 'structure' later, or 'structure' now, and 'framing' later. Or 'structure' now and aggregate later!

Perhaps what we have created is, in some sense, truly something new. Or perhaps that pile of shavings on the ground around us is the trimming down of 'yesterday's big (old) idea' making way for 'yesterday's big (old) idea, trimmed for fat and rebadged as today's idea and downsized, but still yesterday's model nonetheless - with a little tweaking'.

There is a place for all this. I just find myself pondering occasionally what became of all those shavings or biscuit crumbs scattered along the way of our 'creating'.

Sometimes when I look at what I have made today, I find myself staring into a likeness of an image of yesteryear's conjuring. And sometimes it makes me weep. And occasionally, it makes me smile. Debris has found a new home, and is no longer debris. Its place in the odds-and-ends bucket may (or may not) now be occupied by yesterday's now-disassembled structure.

Strung out on good value, man

2010-01-07T21:28:00.002+11:00

Well, hello.

Anyone here?

My brain attempts to move into gear ... squeak, squeak, crrrunchh!

Things are a little dusty around here, I must say. This is what happens when you leave the house locked up over a long break.

The grass grows, the spiders move in, windows gets stuck, the electricity gets disconnected ...

So maybe, just for tonight, I will sleep on the blog porch. Perhaps tomorrow, the blog lounge.

But hey. I did get a cool guitar for Christmas. Sorry, we got a cool guitar for Christmas.

The boys have been showing some interest in music lately. They have a little toy guitar, and in recent weeks Elisha has fallen very much in love with this tiny red, four-stringed monstrosity.

Whenever I have been dragging out my guitar to play some songs with the kids, or with the church family bunch, 'Sha goes for 'Old Red', and joins in the action, strumming and singing along (if mantra-like repetition of the word 'La' counts as singing).

I think he must have been watching some videos of live performances of The Who because he takes to the instrument quite physically, swinging it about. He also seems to like 'kissing' other guitars with it. And these are not gentle kisses either. He will sneak up on you while you're playing and smack 'Old Red' into your vintage Maton.

Which he has been doing. I finally decided enough was enough. It was time to grab another guitar that (a) could get a little beat around without anyone caring too much and (b) would be small enough for the boys to learn on, if that's how they are inclined.

After cramming several decades' worth of reading time on various fora into a few short weeks, I came up with the instrument of choice: the Art & Lutherie Ami. This is what they call a 'parlour guitar', and it's the sort of thing that's right at home with a rocking chair, a shotgun, a wife named Bobby Jean, some missing teeth, and a porch in Mississippi. It's a rockin' little blues acoustic guitar.

Dang sweet lil thing too. When it arrived from America, I was itching to get into it - boy, was I excited! What I saw blew me away. Hand made in French Canada, solid Western red cedar top, cherry sides and back, silver leaf maple neck, rosewood fingerboard, lifetime warranty. Sweeeeet. And extra sweet when it was only $350 delivered to the door.

Maton is enjoying some recovery time in his case behind the lounge. Ami is a friend (pun intended) who happily tags along wherever the ride is headed, and whoever the company is (even if it's our own little Pete Townshend with his red terror).

I guess maybe one day the boys will get to play this guitar. It was, after all, bought for them. But I'd like just ten more minutes alone with Ami. Just ten. I promise. On the porch.

'Playtime' and building a great business

2009-10-31T21:19:00.004+11:00

The Lee Valley tool company makes great quality, well-priced, innovative tools. Period.

Over the years I have bought several of their handplanes, and assorted other paraphernalia, and their stuff and their service rocks.

Rob Lee and his crew give us everything we love about Canadians. They've taken old world quality and infused it with new world ingenuity. They've taken old style service, and somehow managed to maintain a stunning standard among customers all over the world. They have promoted gifted individuals, and yet always kept the 'top end' of the business wide open to the ideas of the masses. They have taken handtools to a new level, and yet not forgotten how to have fun. (Their new product releases every April Fool's Day capture this.)

This cool little shoulder plane is also a great example of the spirit of ingenuity and play. It is stunningly good value for the machining and tooling involved. And since this baby was launched only a few days ago, woodworkers across the various fora have been buzzing with excitement.

But it's like this every time Lee Valley release a new tool now. They know how to build the excitement so it's just like Christmas morning with a bunch of six-year-old kids. Except it happens more than once a year.

Lee Valley is a business that woodworkers love to deal with. What more could you ask for? Great quality, great fun, great service, great people, great knowledge, great accessibility, great value. They have decisively nailed a winning formula.

A thick wad of reward

2009-09-29T20:57:00.003+10:00

How many loyalty cards can a person physically cart around on their person?

It seems that every time you buy another espresso, or donut, or bag of groceries, or book or tank of petrol, someone is trying to reward (and build) your custom with a little piece of plastic or cardboard.

I used to collect loyalty cards too readily. The situation was pretty desperate: for years I even carted around a Spotlight card - how much use do you think a 25-year-old male was going to give that one?!

One day I realised that I had such a fine collection that even when the opportunity came to use one of them, I would inevitably forgot to dig through my stash to find it. It was a bit like the problem of owning the Entertainment book: one would inevitably find the vouchers that could have been used well after the moment had passed.

So there was the reward of loyalty to urge future patronage: a wallet full of punched and marked cards.

These days I only keep one coffee card, and it's stuck to my pinboard in the office. If I'm going to keep any loyalty card, it's got to get used at least once a fortnight.

English as she is spoke

2009-08-12T21:14:00.005+10:00

This four-minute high quality documentary captures our perception [sometimes?] of those we regard as outsiders to our own language and culture.

It also offers some interesting commentary on how we perceive language being taught and learned, and how it actually functions.

"You speak English well!"

If it puts a smile on your dial, you might also enjoy this more slapstick one from Micallef (who has employed the mechanics of this gig in several other skits over the years).

In the face of a child

2009-08-10T21:12:00.002+10:00

Sometimes a moment takes you back to your childhood.

Caelan has been wanting to go fishing with me for a long time. We finally got to wet the lines the other weekend up at Forster.

His excitement and his interest reminds me of my own excitement at my dad taking me fishing as a little 'un up at Forster.

Sometimes as you look into the face of your child, you see your own reflection. In a moment, your childhood returns.

The sum of the parts

2009-08-06T21:44:00.006+10:00

I wonder if you've ever tried to sell anything on eBay.

It amazes me how similar items can sell for such different prices. Sometimes it just seems to be a question of timing - the right / wrong people find / don't find your item at the right / wrong time.

But I'm pretty convinced a lot of it has to do with the quality of your descriptions. I used to move a bit of stuff on the 'Bay and got pretty decent prices for it - on one occasion selling a secondhand item for considerably more than it was worth new.

I worked with a few simple principles on eBay:

1. Be completely honest. If the item's not rare, don't list it as rare. If it has faults, point them out. Some of my listing titles have included the words 'NOT rare', 'Common as mud', 'More common than mud' - and I got great prices for all those items. Honesty is attractive to buyers. This also applies to postage - don't rip people off.

2. A listing is nothing without good photos. Give each listing at least 4 focused pictures, being sure to present as much detail on the item as you can, especially in areas where buyers are looking for detail. A lightbox, or a backdrop that contextualises the item, might be of assistance. An 'action' shot like the one above is good to include - it opens people's minds to the possibilities of what they could do with the item.

3. Give the item a really thorough description with the best grammar and spelling you can muster. If you can demonstrate a little technical knowledge of the item, that also helps.

4. Tell the story. People are curious, and love to know the history of where the item has been, which celebrity owned it, and which side of the American Civil War it fought on. This is the non-tangible, non-spec side of things - but it makes a difference, and adds to the character and uniqueness of your item. Stories give context to raw data.

5. Start the bidding low. This gets things moving. If you've got the above ingredients right, you'll get a sale and it will probably be at a price you're happy with anyway.

6. Finish items at a time when people are likely to be home. Most of mine finished in the evenings, and the bidding always heated up in the last ten minutes. Evenings were kind to me - not many people would feel comfortable bidding in front of the boss at 11.15am!

What are your eBay tips for success? Can you sharpen up these points?

Any flavour, so long as it's vanilla

2009-08-05T22:22:00.002+10:00

Funny the things you never notice until someone else points them out.

I was listening to two blokes on ABC Sydney this morning discussing the blandness of modern car design. One of them made an interesting observation: when you get a street parked full with bland modern cars, you get increasingly bland streets ...

When everyone pitches in ...

2009-08-03T22:20:00.003+10:00

Back from a short break - we had a couple of wonderful days with the family up at Smith's Lake (20 minutes' drive south of Forster).

I admit it's been hard to switch back into some sort of normality.

We shouldn't have stayed in the house we stayed in. I mean, we didn't deserve it.

By the time we split the costs between seven adults it cost us each around $33 per night. This gave us a massive house with a spectacular view over the lake and ocean, the world's most insane spa, a great kitchen (and top-shelf coffee machine), and about a million bedrooms and bathrooms.

When we all pitch in, it becomes amazingly affordable. On our own ... out of reach. And strangely - I think it was the more enjoyable to have a house like this full of people and energy and bubble. So everyone wins. Great house, great location, great company, great price.

Can't argue with that.

When did you realise ...

2009-07-28T21:06:00.002+10:00

... you were onto something?

How long did it take for you to see that you were seeing something?

... to name a pattern, to speak into the darkness, to say, "Come forth!"?

How did you feel when others didn't see the same - and laughed? When others joined with you, and wondered about what could be ... how did you feel?

When you were way out of your depth, when you wound up in conversations that you felt like you had no right to be in?

When did you realise ... how much of it was grace?

A simple buzz

2009-07-27T21:41:00.002+10:00

Simple things. Kids. Ice cream. Messy ice cream. Smiles all 'round. Sticky fingers and chocolate beards. Sugar hit.

Doesn't get much better.

Behind closed [roller] doors

2009-07-26T21:23:00.002+10:00

Closed doors leave our imaginations free to wonder / wander.

We know that doors have a way of hiding what really is, preserving all along the veneer of normality, or wealth, or tidyness that is conveyed from the outside.

When we open doors and look inside, the veneer doesn't always (or often) correspond with the internal reality.

These guys in Germany offer a nice critique of that with a pretty special piece of silliness. They take the biggest door in the house, and offer their take on "I wonder what's inside?"

Of course, we are all still left wondering what really is inside behind their veneer-upon-a-veneer!

For the want of a really good question

2009-07-25T22:14:00.006+10:00

Many occasions in life will see us engaging in the hunt for 'the right answer'. From the time we were in kindergarten we've been trained to expect that a question posed anticipates an answer supplied, and a learning goal achieved.

Finding answers can be tough; but not as tough as trying to find the right question.

Social change strategist Fran Peavey speaks of questions as being like levers set to work on the lids of paint tins: some questions are a 'short lever' and may just manage to pry the lid off; other questions have the capacity to not only open the tin but to get in there and really stir things up.

Questions are not made good by volume, but by their ability to stir us into deeper realisation and unsettledness. The best questions for agitation are not questions where the questioner already knows the answer, but those where the answers are yet to be discovered in an act of co-creation engaging various parties around the table.

As Peavey says, "People need to come up with their own answers. Questioning can catalyze this process. Don't be disappointed if a great question does not have an answer right away. A powerful question will sit rattling in the mind for days or weeks as the person works on an answer. If the seed is planted, the answer will grow. Questions are alive!"

Oh that we lived into this reality more often! Many times we find ourselves beset by a barrage of questions, yet strangely comforted that the inquistor knows the answer, and will lead us to it if we cannot find it ourselves. It starts at school, and is a method most educators never tire of.

"What colour is the car, Suzie?"

"What is 6 x 2, Todd?"

"Who were the signatories to the Treaty of Waitangi, and on what date was it signed? Why is there a perception that the bilingual nature of the Treaty favoured Pākehā?"

"Why should you use a registered fitting station to secure your child's car seat restraint?"

"What behaviours does the Apostle Paul say believers must exhibit in v.9? Why must they act this way?"

"How can you tell if a person has been physically or psychologically abused? What are the signs?"

"So I've presented you with these two options, and it's now for you to make the choice: which one fits your personality type?"

These are questions with short leverage. And that's okay if you're only after data, zeros and ones.

But occasionally a really good question will come your way. And it will stir at you and niggle you until something in your life changes. We are starved for want of good questions (especially the unaskable questions: "What would it take for someone here to ask us a question that may completely unhinge us -- and even the questioner?").

What are the questions that have changed your life?

A guide to not killing the enjoyment for others

2009-07-24T21:40:00.004+10:00

We get through our fair share of fermented grape juice at our place.

Wine is one of those areas where there's a lot of snobbery and pretence. Our knowledge of wine is limited, but we're always willing to learn.

This article impressed me as one seeking to escape from the snobbery without dumbing down the enjoyment of good wine. It's kind of a 'walk around it and appreciate its many facets' approach.

A good wine is enjoyed all the more when we take just a few minutes to see it, breathe it, smell it, let it linger, savour it. In other words: camp on it, and engage your brain and senses.

The upshot of this article is: tasting and enjoying wine doesn't have to be hard or snobbish. As we enjoyed a nice Kiwi Sauv Blanc this evening it repayed just that little bit of extra time to stop and appreciate it.

Finding a teacher who can teach

2009-07-23T21:39:00.003+10:00

Music lessons can really suck.

It's not always the question of students being lazy - sometimes it's the issue of teachers who don't know how to work with the student they have in front of them.

I had four music teachers in my life; three of them never got it. They spent all their time trying to force me and my sisters into music theory, scales, and Grade 2 piano books.

It worked for sister number 2, but not so well for sister number 1, and not at all for sister number 3.

But now it's the family baby (no. 3) who can improvise so readily. She can hear a tune, and have it to keys in no time. As for me, it wasn't till I got to my second guitar teacher that I found someone who quickly worked out that I wasn't going to play hours of chord progressions or scales: he celebrated my improvisation, and sought to work backwards from it, recording and writing it down as I experimented and settled on things.

He was the smart teacher. Twelve years with the piano expert has left me with little more than some recollection of where I might find middle C. But my guitar teacher knew how to work with kids who didn't follow the pattern of the curriculum.

Wherever you are, Lars, I love you, man.

Going by the board[room] ...

2009-07-22T21:53:00.004+10:00

Too many things in life go unquestioned.

I'm convinced one of them is the boardroom meeting.

This institution / ritual has been with us for ... a long time. It's part of our DNA; it's what we do. Birds fly south in winter. Ants get busy before rain. Businesses have meetings.

Just out of curiosity, have most of the substantial changes in your business / organisation been driven by what came out of formal meetings?

How often have meetings captured the best of what your people are capable of? How often have meetings opened a window into the brilliance and giftedness of the company's people?

How often have meetings aired with honesty (and grace) the real problems you face? (As opposed to tip-toeing around sensitive issues, afraid to name them for fear of repercussions?)

How often have meetings allowed for the honesty of complexity while driven by the need to generate consensus (and expeditiously at that)?

How often do meetings deliver for your organisation what we believe (and hope) meetings are supposed to accomplish?

I think meetings have a usefulness, but I'm still trying to decide just what that usefulness is. We've just had two days' of meetings, and it felt good and impassioned, and we talked through some pretty weighty stuff (and got some bonus beer and tucker thrown in for the trouble).

And I'm still left wondering what meetings are all about. Educate me.

Skilled for the onwards and upwards

2009-07-21T21:52:00.003+10:00

Life is constant upskilling.

It seems we're always being prepared for one task or another through a process of training and trial.

We simulate reality in all sorts of ways. Nothing's quite as good as the real thing, and eventually training ends and we launch into 'the thing' itself.

I wonder how long it will be till plastic bars bolted onto a wooden platform become tree branches or rocky outcrops?

Footprints in the sand

2009-07-20T21:05:00.003+10:00

Recently, while waiting for a client to get to our meeting, I was left in a tea room with a copy of a book on tracking Australian animals and birds. Through lots of photos of footprints and scats the book taught you how to identify what had trafficked through your local area.

Life is full of footprints. Wherever we go, the marks of our presence are left behind. The tracks of others are left for us to follow, to read, and to learn from.

Whose footprints are you following? What are you learning from looking at the footprints around you?

Finding a sweet spot

2009-07-19T21:38:00.004+10:00

Different places bring out different things in people.

We took the boys down to Wollongong today. Caelan, who is usually cautious, seemed to relax quite a bit and got his feet (and most of his clothes) very wet.

Elisha, who looks for any excuse to run wild, did just that.

You only have to put young boys in the presence of water and sand and they undergo a sort of primal transformation. It is a great place to watch their inhibitions melt as they run along the water's edge, play with sticks and shells, throw sand (usually at the faces of other unfamiliar kids), chase seagulls, and plonk down on the beach in the sopping wet pants.

We shared some of those lovely uninhibited moments with our boys today. Free time spent at the beach brings out such different sides of their personalities to time spent in the loungeroom.

Sun, sand and surf are a licence to frolic and innovate and explore. Elisha had his first experience of sand running through his toes as his little feet sank into beachsand (you don't see much of this out near Mt Druitt). His little face was full of all kinds of interesting expressions today as new possibilities for play emerged.

Deep inside me, I feel a little bit of that urge as the waves lap and the seagulls screech.

Good designs can be timeless ...

2009-07-18T19:26:00.001+10:00

... but this is a little bit wrong.

Hitting the sack vol. 2

2009-07-17T21:42:00.003+10:00

Yes, back to my favourite 4 sqm in our whole house.

It's a real smorgasboard in 'bed land' these days: pocket springs, Bonnell springs, foam boxes, memory foam, latex, down etc.

Beds just ain't a hessian mat on the floor anymore.

The choice is somewhat overwhelming. All you can hope is that the design that does it for you now will still be delivering for you in 5 years' time.

Our last bed was a massive disappointment and its innards basically collapsed within a few years. When we got rid of it two weeks ago, it had more in common with the topography of the the south island of New Zealand than with the mattress we bought back in 2002.

Do you have any golden tips on choosing the right bed? One slightly greasy salesman kept saying to us, "Just leeesen to your buddy."

That's all well-and-good in the first instance, but what if your 'buddy' is telling you that the mattress you bought 3 years ago is not what it was when it left the shop floor?

Beckoning springs

2009-07-16T21:53:00.002+10:00

Two weeks ago we bought a new mattress. This is good.

Comfy, supportive ... everything a good mattress should be (Sleepmaker 701).

Without further ado, I am going to find that mattress right now and melt into it. Bliss.

See you in the new day.

Tales in the tailings

2009-07-15T21:24:00.003+10:00

What do the 'leftovers' in your neighbourhood tell you about the place?

Driving into Singleton this morning I was greeted by this massive pile of tailings.

The client I met with told me how much the mining companies have impacted the life of the town. Some of the mining companies donate significant funds back into the community as well as employing local people.

The tailings, the railway tracks, the payloaders ... they all tell you about the town and its character.

Our neighbourhood has very few 'leftovers' - but just down the road there is an old paddock and a rusty barbed wire fence.

What is now medium-density housing was once a thriving farming area. Just the other day a client was telling me that he remembers learning to drive on a farm out here.

In a previous suburb we lived in the style of houses said it all: a place largely settled by returned soldiers who bought their blocks, build a simple garage, and lived in it while they built their own fibro homes.

There are tales in the tailings. Having your eyes open enriches your understanding of where you are, and what has made it what it is.

What sorts of memories will you leave?

2009-07-14T21:15:00.003+10:00

How do you imagine yourself being remembered?

When someone says your name in 80 years' time, what would you like them to recall?

What is it that contributes to how a person is remembered?

What is it that you think you'll be remembered for? Is it a lifetime of patterns, some singular achievements, or some crazy one-off event (like eating 15 cheeseburgers in 5 minutes)?

Fox in socks

2009-07-13T21:51:00.002+10:00

A Dr Seuss tonight I read
I read it to my son in bed.
My son in bed was wearing red
In bed and red while daddy read.

(It's true actually - he was wearing his bright red jammies.)

Dr Seuss it drains me so
My brain gets tired; my tongue won't go
My tired eyes boggle; my brain gets goggled -
But have you ever snoggled a Zoggle?

(Okay, my head's hurting now.)

Spare the grease, spoil the BBQ

2009-07-12T20:50:00.002+10:00

Too much TLC can spoil just about anything.

If you're too soft on your kids, you ruin them. If you always keep your plants in nursery conditions, you never harden them off. And you can be too kind to your BBQ as well.

Yes, for years I went through an almost religious cleaning ritual with my BBQ. After each cooking session, I'd be out there scrubbing it down, and getting just about every speck of grease off it. No yucky sticky pieces of six-month-old charred pineapple on my grill.

But you know something about grease? It's a rust inhibitor. Amazing. Grease on = no rust. Grease off = equals rusty sausages next time you fire it up.

Today was ridiculous. We had house church at our place and burgers for all. But it's hard to cook up a feed for a crowd when you've only got enough non-rusted space to do 3 hamburger patties at a time while the rest of the BBQ radiates its magnificent heat across acres of rust.

So I've been forced to abandon my much-loved rituals. My attempts to preserve this meeting place of metal, meat and fire ended up assisting the decline of my BBQ - there are now literally sheets of rust to be chipped off each time.

So tonight I raise my tongs to all those greasy, sticky, dirty old BBQ hotplates out there. I've learned my lesson: keep it mean.

A heart torn by three tiny leaves

2009-07-11T21:47:00.003+10:00

Got stuck into the front lawn today. One of the nice things about kikuyu is that it really does shut down in these cooler months and gives me a few weeks' break between mows.

Today as I trimmed and slashed I was forced to admire the tenaciousness of the white clover (Trifolium repens to most readers here, I'm sure). Even though I hit it last year with MCPA and bromoxinil, it's back with a vengeance this year.

It's one of those plants whose appearance I both love and dislike (the bees are madly in love with it), but whose nitrogen-fixing qualities I (and the rest of the lawn) appreciate. So maybe I'll be a little kinder to it this year. We'll see.

It's one of those things that is aesthetically a little off-putting, but is in every other way beneficial (a bit like brown bread or orange juice with the chunks in it).

What do you think? Mercy on the clover? Or doom, death, and destruction?

Stepping across unconventional stones

2009-07-10T21:19:00.002+10:00

Kids with an adventurous spirit have a way of getting to where they want to be.

Unconventional forms of assistance are by no means unacceptable. You don't need a step-ladder for climbing - heck, if trampling over toys, crawling along the back of the lounge, clambering up on the coffee table, gets you where you want to be then why not?

What do you clamber over, jump from, scramble through to get to where you need to be?

The best stepping stones aren't always purposely designed that way.

Do you dig it?

2009-07-09T21:28:00.004+10:00

If you don't know anything about these, then perhaps you should learn.

You never know when your three-year-old might ask for one.

Going, going, gone

2009-07-08T23:03:00.003+10:00

Cordless gear is great.

Over the years I've appreciated the flexibility and excellent battery life out of some good cordless drills (if you know tools, blue Bosch and Panasonic).

I've also had a decent run out of laptop batteries. Over the years most of the laptops I've owned have had Ni-Cd or Ni-mH batteries in them. I have always been careful to cycle batteries, and to not leave them plugged in too long. And so I would often still be getting up to two hours' use out of a five-year-old battery.

Not so this time. On my present laptop the battery is Lithium-Ion. The big plus: it recharges so quickly, and is cool with being 'topped up'. The downside? It doesn't have the longevity of the other guys.

These lithium batteries are apparently good for about three hundred cycles, and then the chemistry ain't so crash-hot anymore. And that's what's happened here. The nice long runs of 2 or 2 1/2 hours have come to an end. Quite abruptly. We're good for about 15 minutes now.

I knew there had to be a trade-off for the convenience and power! Has anyone else made this discovery? I think I'd almost rather go back to the Ni-mH days.

What's over the hedge?

2009-07-07T20:25:00.006+10:00

What's over the hedge?

Is this a barrier? Or an invitation?

Does it command silence, or feed speculation and wonder?

Is it a feature in itself, or does it add definition to some other feature?

What I like about a natural hedge like this versus a Colourbond fence: it offers partial glimpses and flashes of light and colour. Colourbond says absolutely "This is where your space ends." This isn't quite so cut-and-dried.

Green overheads ahead

2009-07-06T20:32:00.004+10:00

A roof is a roof is a roof. Except when it's a goat paddock.

A look at some of these roofs is a bit of a blast from the past. But it's the way of the future.

The City of Toronto is leading the way here. If you live anywhere near the heatsink that is western Sydney, you'll be saying 'Bring it on'!

And more trees - as opposed to this highly selective piffle.

The tradesmen's entrance

2009-07-05T21:00:00.005+10:00

We hang out with some pretty crazy friends.

I guess this kind of works when you're not exactly on an even keel yourself.

Crazy friends are good - lots of raucous laughs, some tears, great food and wine, some pretty full-on conversations, and the reminder that it really is good to be alive.

We were with a mob of them this afternoon / evening, for our six-weekly catch-up of FOCG (I will only tell you that the first two words are 'Friends of' and the last word is 'Grace'. You'll have to die wondering what the 'C' part is).

Anyway, somewhere in the conversation someone introduced the concept of the tradesmen's entrance. We were talking about the pretentiousness that surrounds properties, and indeed whole cities: we put our best foot forward, and hide all the rumblings - the dirty laundry, the sewer, the hot water system, old broken furniture, the fire escape, the long grass - out the back.

Sydney's no different. We live less than five minutes from suburbs like Bidwill and Shalvey - and Sydney's no different.

And our lives are no different. People who encounter us in a state of readiness find a neat and orderly front yard, newly cut green grass, and a big ... driveway.

But the tradies go down the side, and come around the back. They know where things are really at. They know what work needs to be done. They see - horror of horrors - what we don't want the whole jolly neighbourhood to see.

Our lives are no different to the games we play with our houses and our cities. Best foot forward, people.

And heaven help you if you encounter a 'tradesman' - someone who decides not to enter your life through the well-advertised front door, but down through a side gate and into the messy rumblings of the dingy, seedy back of your personal apartment (where dirty laundry is the nicest of what's there).

Most people - most, most people - will never see down into that part of your life. But there are eyes that see - you know that, don't you?

To lead - what does it take?

2009-07-04T20:48:00.008+10:00

'Leadership' is a word with a lot of baggage loaded into it.

Mark Strom has made the argument before in his 'Leading Wisely' lecture series that we perhaps do well to boil the subject matter back down to a simple verb: 'to lead'.

So much discussion about 'leadership' ends up in lists of 'The 12 qualities of', 'Studies of famous leaders', 'The irrefutable laws of' etc. So little of it ends up being about the simple human activities of leading and following.

I've begun reading Ron Carucci's Leadership Divided. It's a very interesting read. Without saying any more, I wonder which attributes resonate with you when you think about the times you have been led well - or have led another person yourself in a way you think was effective.

Is it always the same attributes that come into play?

Can a perceived strength in one circumstance become a perceived failing in another - and vice versa?

Toot toot chuggah chuggah!

2009-07-03T22:07:00.004+10:00

The Wiggles play on high rotation in our household, especially between the hours of six and eight in the morning.

But the world of The Wiggles doesn't end when the videos stop. The imaginary world of coloured skivvies, ditsy pirates and purple octopuses continues.

This is not a cardboard box; it's actually the big red car. Sadly, the big red car is now part of local landfill. But not before the two little adventurers went for some Wiggly car trips in it.

You've got to love the way that kids find something which bears (to the adult mind) only a vague resemblance to something else that they know and love, and then live out a whole world of adventures in it. And most of the time it's with the simplest things.

Gratifying

2009-07-02T19:54:00.005+10:00

Cara is a fan of The West Wing and is gradually watching her way through the various episodes.

Presently, she's in Season 3. During the episode she was watching last night, I heard the following exchange between Toby Ziegler and newly-named U.S. poet laureate, Tabatha Fortis.

Tabatha: I like crossing off lists - it's very satisfying. You like lists?

Toby: Yes.

Tabatha: You like crossing things off?

Toby: I'll let you know if it happens.

Later in the evening I finished a short-ish book by Tim Keller, The Prodigal God.

It's nice to finish things.

It's gratifying to cross things off. Sometimes when I have a lot of tasks to do in a day, I write a list. I cross them off as I go. Occasionally, I remember things I've already done, and add them to the list, then cross them off immediately. (Okay, that's just a little too obsessive, I know.)

Finishing things is gratifying. But what about starting things?

A friend said to me recently that his gift isn't in finishing things; it's in starting them. For him, starting things is gratifying. Seeing others build on them is also gratifying. When I look at how he's wired, and what he's contributed to over the years, it makes sense.

I guess there is a gratification that comes with completing something, and a gratification that comes with starting something as well. But what about the middle bit?

Thomas in flames

2009-07-01T20:06:00.004+10:00

I don't quite remember how I happened across the work of Leo Kim.

Leo took that series beloved of every young boy, and came up with his own episode titled 'Thomas Tank Mad Bomber'.

Leo must have known he was on to a big hit: boys (big and little) love trains. And explosions.

Personally, I think the Thomas series was always begging for a good explosion. You only ever had to watch an episode or two of the original to recognise that here was one seriously vindictive shedful of steam engines. A sudden malicious flame-burst was only ever a toot-toot away.

While the episode itself is worth the watch (gotta love the droll humour that follows after 1:30), even more fascinating are all the 'making of' videos that Leo has done to showcase the challenges of film-making with model trains on a shoestring.

It's clever stuff. Even if Leo is Victorian.

Where the fun's really at

2009-06-30T20:46:00.003+10:00

Adults think they know what kids want.

Kids know exactly what they want.

A playground full of equipment designed by adults for kids to play on.

And a bubbler designed by adults for people to drink from.

Where do think the kids spent most of their half hour at the local park?

And no, it didn't end dry or tidy. But they did discover a new way of having loads of fun - no play equipment necessary.

(By the way, if you want to see a really 'smart' park, next time you're passing through Blayney stop over and let the kids loose on Heritage Park - it's a park that stands up even without the play equipment.)

Getting my feet wet. And dry.

2009-05-30T20:53:00.005+10:00

In the last week or so we've had the news of North Coast flooding. I was in Grafton the day before the big event, and thankfully made the trip back home before all the action happened.

When you live in a city like Sydney, you can quickly lose perspective on the realities that other people face in terms of the weather.

You only have to hop in your car and drive a few hours north or west to see it. From Grafton in flood last week, to Canberra in drought this week, I'm reminded how limited my perspective is.

Sometimes you don't have to go all that far from home to see things very differently. When you get there, the difference is obvious.

But somehow when you're at home, you can't see it. Homes flooded, and paddocks drought-parched - and here I am, dry and safe with a green lawn in the Sydney suburbs. It all seems so far away.

When more is less

2009-05-17T14:26:00.006+10:00

During the week one of my meetings was with the manager of a Paulownia plantation.

Paulownia originated in China, and was naturalised in Japan centuries ago. It is widely used for the building of furniture and fine cabinet-making, especially in the marine industries (the timber at its best is straight-grained, strong and very light).

As the 79-year-old manager of the plantation drove me around, he explained some of the lessons they'd learned along the way.

One of the main ones was: don't plant the trees too close together.

It would be easy to think that jamming as many trees as possible onto the site would make the exercise more profitable. But it's not so.

When the trees are too close together two things happen. Firstly, there is competition in the canopy as the trees compete for light. And as a result, the trees end up with winding, bendy trunks (which translates into shortly harvested lengths, and less straight grain).

Secondly, the trees don't grow as big. In fact, the final difference in terms of timber yield would be over 100% - the big difference being in the thickness of the trunks.

Sometimes less is more.

Rough and not-quite-ready, but what the heck!

2009-04-26T11:36:00.007+10:00

While catching up with a pair of landscape architects on the south coast the other week, I couldn't resist the temptation to get a snap of their main worktable.

This wasn't some sort of attempt to give the studio an 'arty' edge; it was the reality of trying to get work done in the middle of a renovation.

This simple affair hadn't even been given the 'once over' prior to installation; this door which appeared to have had long exposure to the weather showed all the signs of being picked from the rubble heap and dumped on two trestles. During our meeting I discovered a rusty nail sticking up on my side of the table (next to the dead lock).

A pristine, precisely-manufactured desk is imbibed with no inherent ability to generate productivity. Conversely, some of the finest art has been produced on some fairly rough-and-ready work surfaces (if in doubt, survey the photos of famous British chair bodger, Jack Goodchild, at work in his Naphill workshop).

Chris Schwarz over at his Woodworking Magazine blog recently held a competition for the roughest workbench ('Most Pathetic Workbench') his readers could find. The photos - and his descriptions ("the thing that looks like a small mammal") - are worthy of five minutes of your time. Schwarz does make the comment that you don't need a great bench to do great work, although it probably helps.

I'm guessing that the landscape architects I met with the other week still haven't upgraded that work table; I'm sure they will one day. But in the meantime, they'll get on with churning out thoughtfully designed landscapes.

Back to front

2009-04-19T12:41:00.003+10:00

A few weeks ago, I attended a conference up at Boomerang Beach near Forster.

The first afternoon of the conference gave participants the option of being involved in any one of several different field trips. The 'learn-to-surf' trip felt a little ambitious to me after a late night, and so I opted for the National Parks and lighthouse tour.

The Sugarloaf Point Lighthouse has been automated for several years, and so there is no active keeper onsite. Nevertheless, the keepers' huts have been restored by the NPWS and are available as holiday accommodation (bargain hunter's delight at only $4000 per week in the summer).

The huts are situated at the bottom of the headland, with the lighthouse up above. As we prepared to walk from the head keeper's hut up to the lighthouse, our guide asked, "Can you guess which side is the front of the hut?"

It was a good question. One side faces out to sea, another side faces down towards the trail by which you enter the property, another towards the cottage next door (with a trail between them), and one side up looks up the hill towards the lighthouse. Which side is the front?

This side, apparently. And if you walk into the house, you'll find that the layout reflects that.

Bumper to bumper

2009-03-21T21:48:00.004+11:00

Why is it always so much easier to break something than it is to fix it up?

Can you think of a single thing that's easier to fix than it is to break?

Dinner for two?

2009-03-15T16:53:00.002+11:00

I wonder when the two-place dining table was invented?

It's a great principle - especially when you've got two people to work with it.

Not quite so affirming or memorable when you're on your own ...

Ideas have consequences

2009-02-21T19:57:00.001+11:00

So does where you park your car ...

Yesterday's standard

2009-02-17T22:01:00.004+11:00

I just picked up this Wahl Eversharp mechanical pencil.

There are scores of these things available over the internet. The Wahl company began production of these pencils around 1915, and had sold over 12,000,000 by 1921.

This model - referred to as 'Gold-filled' (gold-plated) - is still surprisingly common. Back in the day there was nothing especially out-of-the-ordinary about this sort of pencil.

The standard of finish and quality of machining is high - this is a piece of writing art; functional but aesthetically pleasing. 'Henry' obviously thought it nice enough to not be in a hurry to lose it.

Now I compare it with my day-in, day-out Faber-Castell. Functional and sleek ... but I'd doubt someone will score this pencil in 80 years' time and wonder at its quality and design.

Ah, yesterday's standard!

Taking a shot at Cupid

2009-02-14T21:02:00.002+11:00

Happy Valentine's Day!

Pictures of Cupid appear around the place at this time of February.

The obvious design question revolves around the machinery of love, or the history of archery.

What makes love work is a little bit too big for me to tackle tonight, so here's a nice little running history of the story of bows and arrows.

In case you're wondering, Cupid is normally seen armed with a recurve bow (compound bows and cross-bows coming onto the scene long after his innovation).

If you choose the white pill, Neo ...

2009-02-13T20:14:00.006+11:00

... your clients will appreciate some minty freshness.

Before I walk into a meeting with a client I always do two things: turn off the mobile phone, and pop a Tic Tac or two (I say 'or two' because according to the ads they effortlessly tumble out of those little plastic boxes in twos).

My boss is a big advocate of the breath mint. He was put onto it by a former minister who told him, 'Never decline a mint when one is offered you.'

I would rather be in the place of offering myself a Tic Tac than getting into a meeting just after coffee and having a client force some mints across the table to me.

As it happens, the Tic Tac is due this year for the embarrassing cards and the special party with long speeches: the humble minty sugar bullet turns forty in 2009.

I wonder if anyone still has an original packet? It's not just the Tic Tac itself that is fresh; the box design, with its classic integration of the living hinge, is pretty cool and timeless - a nice design.

The Tic Tac is brought to us by Ferrero, the same people who blessed the world with the 'Rocher' (and also with that source of novelty plastic toys that every parent dreads the assembly of, the Kinder Surprise).

Here is a nice little article on the Tic Tac; only thing missing is an 'Ode to Tiny Pellets of Deliverance'.

That little 18g pack loaded with 1.9 calorie white wonders lasts a surprisingly long time. They don't feel like a lolly - they are, instead, a business accessory. Perhaps I should be claiming them as a business expense (Russ??).

Is there a small familiar 'work accessory' you enjoy occasional indulgence in? (Perhaps we should just take various forms of caffeine as a given.)

Recovery from discovery

2009-02-12T20:03:00.003+11:00

Don't act all shocked on me. Yes, I am back for the third evening in a row. Who knows? This could be habit-forming! Perhaps not. But maybe. I dunno.

Moving along ...

How often has the act of discovery put you in a bind?

You stumble across some hidden gem - perhaps it's the $50 / night accommodation you found in *******, Tasmania. Or it might be the stunning $4.50 'Titanic' burger that was unveiled to you in ********, in rural northern NSW. Perhaps it was just the pleasure of spending some time one-to-one in the company of a Jimmy Watson trophy winner, and indulging in his delicious port at the cellar door in ****** ***** in Victoria.

And so you see the bind.

You want to tell someone else about your discovery, but you don't want to spoil it. You want to be able to discover it again, finding it just as satisfying as the first time you discovered it. There is a longing for the discovery to remain unspoilt.

I guess it's probably a form of selfishness, often disguised with half-convincing justifications.

Of course, when you do share it with other people, and they 'taste' of your discovery, there's that wonderful moment that they share their delight with you. And if you never share a discovery, you don't have the pleasure of those conversations.

And perhaps the little burger joint in Inverell, or the Graeme Miller winery in Dixon's Creek, or the ladies who manage the manse accommodation at Stanley will think that no one loves them and decide to shut up shop ...

Perhaps the best way to keep a discovery alive is to share it.

P.S. Many thanks to Dave & Erika for clueing me up on where we could buy copious quantities of **** at truly amazing prices. We have stocked up with several cases since! The Murray Valley Ch@rdonn@y which worked out at around $2.45 per bottle delivered is amazing. The $4.65 Sh!r@z was also stunning value.

"It's a bit didactic" AKA "So obvious it hurts"

2009-02-11T20:00:00.006+11:00

There is a sounding board in my life called Cara.

The Greek word behind the name means 'joy'; just occasionally the name means 'ouch'.

We sound a lot of stuff off each other: ideas, art, photos, music, kids, wine, the pronunciation of 'bolognaise' (all in no particular order). Nothing is safe.

The other week I legally downloaded a free album ('Nobody's Cool') off the website of the (now defunct) Californian band The Arrogants. Several songs on the album grabbed my attention straight away. They were the simpler songs on what is a fairly Cranberries-ish (is that a word?) album. Their lyrical intent arrested my attention.

The songs 'Why T.A.N.G. is my favorite band' and 'Nobody's Cool' are songs that tell us to keep it real. There's really no such thing as a rock star or some super breed of human being that carries more dignity and value than the rest of us. You cut us, we all bleed.

I played the songs to Cara, hoping to impress her with the 'in your face' approach the band took to the issues. Her response? "It's a bit didactic." Ouch.

It's too straight-up, too obvious. And I think she's right.

'Why T.A.N.G. is my favorite band' attempts to be a cool song, but what it actually does is explain / rationalise parody. In so doing - in telling us why T.A.N.G. are a cool band, and how they critique the music industry, and what's wrong with the music industry - the song actually labours a point that T.A.N.G. makes with ease.

Ironically, one of the band members of T.A.N.G. is a band member of The Arrogants (the lead singer's husband).

The telling of truth can be a delicate matter. There is, unfortunately, a trend afoot to make truth somehow slippery and evasive or unknowable, and this borders on deceit.

On the other hand, we see those who can only tell truth by taking everyone out the back of the woodshed for a talking-to.

Emily Dickinson gave us that line: "Tell all the truth but tell it slant." Eugene Peterson has prodcued a series of lectures on the parables of Jesus using the title, 'Tell it slant'.

This is not about making truth slippery; it is, instead, about reading human beings well as we engage in the business of truth-telling.

Sometimes the court jester has more success in making truth apparent than the lecturer. There is a way of telling truth that comes in under the radar, that comes not straight at our armour but with a glancing sideways blow instead. And it strikes us hard and deep when and where we least expect it.

Jesus did this with his parables. T.A.N.G. apparently did it with their songs. And The Arrogants manage to take a slant telling of truth, and give it to us straight. A bit like someone producing a film called 'This was Spinal Tap: the documentary behind the mockumentary'.

(That said, I have been enjoying the album; it was hard to argue with the price.)

When words ... run out

2009-02-10T21:07:00.002+11:00

Sometimes it's really hard to know what to write.

Sometimes words seem so inadequate.

For joy, for sorrow, for grace, for compassion, for bewilderment, for hope, for forgiveness, for walking into darkness, for pressing towards light.

We are able to 'feel' far beyond the boundaries of words.

A good year for a classic

2009-01-19T21:12:00.007+11:00

2009 is a good year to read a classic or three.

For those who pay some attention to the people whose books moulded Western history, you may know this year commemorates the five-hundredth birthday of John Calvin.

Sadly, Calvin is not present to celebrate with us (he has a prior engagement he is attending to), but he has left us with many books which - like him or loathe him - have contributed to the moulding of Western society.

None of Calvin's works does this more so than Institutes of the Christian Religion. I have read probably half this work before, and have decided that 2009 is a good year to reimmerse myself in this classic. I'm following this reading plan, and finding it very manageable.

Every evening - like a toddy before bed - I imbibe in a little Calvin. That is normally followed by a page of two of Darrel Martin's The Fly Fisher's Craft: the Art and History (see my previous post).

During lunchtime at work, I share a salami sandwich with Luther. Many years ago I digested quite a good chunk of that work he regarded most highly himself: On the Bondage of the Will (1525). And now I'm plodding my way through it again.

If you ever want to encounter passion in a writer, you'll meet it in Martin Luther. He's so bold, so brash, so rude. He gets away with a lot - probably as much as Jerome who referred to Pelagius as 'that fat, bloated alpine dog'. Yeah.

On the Bondage of the Will is incisive, careful writing, but so jolly entertaining too. Seeing as I was dipping back into Calvin again, it seemed only fair to let Luther in on some of the action too.

As Luther writes in response to Desiderius Erasmus' On Free Will (1524), he drops you straight into the action in the introduction. If you know even a little about Reformation history, you'll note his outrageous sense of humour:

"[I and others long before me have refuted your assertions on free will such] that it seems even superfluous to reply to these your arguments, which have been indeed often refuted by me; but trodden down, and trampled under foot, by the incontrovertible Book of Philip Melancthon "Concerning Theological Questions:" a book, in my judgment, worthy not only of being immortalized, but of being included in the ecclesiastical canon: in comparison of which, your Book is, in my estimation, so mean and vile, that I greatly feel for you for having defiled your most beautiful and ingenious language with such vile trash; and I feel an indignation against the matter also, that such unworthy stuff should be borne about in ornaments of eloquence so rare; which is as if rubbish, or dung, should be carried in vessels of gold and silver. And this you yourself seem to have felt, who were so unwilling to undertake this work of writing; because your conscience told you, that you would of necessity have to try the point with all the powers of eloquence; and that, after all, you would not be able so to blind me by your colouring, but that I should, having torn off the deceptions of language, discover the real dregs beneath. For, although I am rude in speech, yet, by the grace of God, I am not rude in understanding. And, with Paul, I dare arrogate to myself understanding and with confidence derogate it from you; although I willingly, and deservedly, arrogate eloquence and genius to you, and derogate it from myself."

Tell us what you really think, Luther!

So it's a good year for a classic. Which means when I'm done with Luther, I'm going to have to hunt down another classic ... any suggestions? Some Shakespeare? Plutarch? Gibbon? Wordsworth?

What recommend ye?

The right timing for something special

2009-01-11T20:10:00.003+11:00

You all have one, I'm sure: something that you put away for a special occasion - but you're never quite sure when the occasion is special enough to bring it out and use it.

So it is with new fancy notepaper, a luxury perfume, that ball of wool that was handed down to you from your grandmother, handspun by her as a young woman.

Apparently, everything has a season, and a season is appointed for everything under the sun. The challenge is reading the season. Or maybe it's reading the object and trying to work out which season it is.

When is the season right - when is it special enough - for the lavish act of using something special that will not be replaced? And when you use it, will its use in fact be lavish? Or is it to be savoured, drawn out, lingered over? Is the joy of the moment to squander it lavishly, revelling in the luxury, or to delay, to mete out steadily?

Our wine rack has accumulated a few 'special moments' over the years. We recently opened a bottle of wine that we were given to enjoy for our fifth wedding anniversary. We have had this bottle since our wedding, and I'd been eyeing it off, waiting for the opportunity to share this 11 year old cabernet with my wife. The moment arrived: we popped the cork and ... it was corked.

So it goes. Sometimes the item is right - even the season is right - and then oxygen goes and gets in the way. Sometimes things can become so precious to us - their 'ideal day' so ideal - that their season is never realised, and they pass their peak into uselessness, or supersede our days and pass into the hands of another where they languish in obscurity.

Sometimes you take something precious in your hands, look at the company around you, realise that it may never get any closer to the ideal day than now, and then recklessly dive in.

But how we long for retrospective vision! We long to know if this is the moment. But we can never know. It is a 'gut' thing ... we hunt after a hunch ... and then we take the prize in our hands, and the 'moment' in the other, and we bring them together.

Perhaps we judge the moment of meeting to be a success if we remember the moment, the friends, the atmosphere, more than we do the thing itself.

I've never regretted opening my favourite cabernet, or using my favourite 'saved up' birthday card, for such an occasion. Sometimes the season is no longer an 'if only' or a 'maybe next year', it is now.

Long-awaited answers to 'Celebrity lookalikes'

2009-01-03T22:24:00.003+11:00

Okay, after days of tense silence, it's time to withdraw my offer of a free case of premium Belgian beer, and put the answers on the table.

Elisha is giving us his best Donald Sutherland.

And Caelan lets go with an almighty 'Crikey!' to honour the departed Croc Hunter.

You can all go back to normal eating and sleeping patterns now. Life's normal programming has resumed.

Cracked forward view

2009-01-03T21:33:00.003+11:00

We've well and truly tipped over from 2008 and into 2009; or as some of you know it, from the International Year of the Potato and into the International Year of Natural Fibres.

This blog has often played with the theme of reading patterns. While some of that means observing present concurrent phenomena, most of the time it means reading the past and making sense of the present from what we find there.

At the conclusion of one year and the opening of the next, people typically 'take stock' and try to gain perspective.

In a way, this photo summarises my experience of standing at the start of January, looking forward and looking back. The view behind is much clearer and more complete than the tiny glimpse in the bottom left-hand corner which is 'the road ahead'.

Yes, it is inevitable there will be some continuity with what has gone before: after all, as the picture reminds me: 'Objects in mirror are closer than they appear'. The year past is not all that far behind. Nor the year behind it. And some of what was set in motion then rolls over into now and tomorrow.

Last year was an amazing year. A new job, new house, new suburb, new friends, new baby. It was a year with surprisingly few regrets, and many surprising discoveries. Experiences of truth, kindness, grace that could not have been anticipated.

It was a year of discovering strengths and weaknesses that I didn't know I had. In many ways, it was a year of fumbling and bumbling, trying to pick the way through some unfamiliar territory. It was a year of gut instincts and prayer, mistakes and little victories.

The forward view is limited, cracked. The present - let alone the future - is hard to see well. We see in a mirror somewhat more clearly than we do through a window.

Yet neither is seen with fullness of perspective. For that we wait for more than a new year; we wait for the revealing of the One who completes all, and who sees all - without cracks or omissions.

Celebrity lookalikes

2008-12-30T13:26:00.004+11:00

Do you ever have that experience of walking along the street and almost doing a double-take because you think you've just passed a celebrity, only to take another look and realise that it isn't actually Adam Sandler?

The human mind has this amazing capacity to pick the resonances.

Occasionally, however, it's just a momentary look that does it.

Can you tell which actor Elisha is channelling in this photo? Post your guess in comments. Caelan also offers his homage to a celebrity now deceased. Any guesses?)

(If no one has guessed it within a few days, I'll post the answers. But I think Elisha's is an easy one. Clue: it's mostly in the wild eyes and eyebrows.)

Honouring a history of deception

2008-12-29T21:18:00.007+11:00

I'm generally a big fan of books as gifts. Especially good books.

My brother-in-law - a farmer by trade - has the knack of picking really good, deeply interesting books.

The gift he and my sister gave to me this year is typical of his ability to choose well. It is a book that honours a long history of deceit: The Fly-Fisher's Craft: the Art and History.

There is nothing simple about deceiving a trout with a fly. And yes, it is an art - I've tried my hand at it a few times, most memorably with my father on the Snake River in Idaho in 1985, and I can verify that whatever it was I did with the flyrod, it was not art.

Wetting a line is a bit of fun, but I have a heap of respect for those who've mastered the art of deceiving a trout; it was my uncle who first aroused my interest in the field, and he knows the art.

My respect for those old guys with straw hats, whippy rods and handmade floats who chase luderick is somewhere in the same league.

There is a long and honourable history attached to both - especially the pursuit of a trout with hand-tied flies - and this is a history that I am certain will fascinate me.

Here is a history of deception that rewards only the most attentive, the most observant, the most patient. It's a history worth honouring.

An idea fed and watered

2008-12-18T21:22:00.005+11:00

Occasionally a humble seed germinates. And you don't even know it till after the event.

Many moons ago, I purchased a pair of hiking / outdoor joggers from my fave house of [cool yet strangely daggy] Melburnian fashion, Rivers.

I love Rivers - did I mention they're a favourite of mine?

Anyway, I bought the joggers. Loved them. Roamed all over the countryside in them. (They're still going strong after five years.)

There was a weak point in the design, however. Water passes very easily through suede leather.

My love for this clothing chain (which has provided short-sleeved button-up semi-casual shirts to almost every thirty-something man in Australia) led me to think and to act - both extremely rare courses for me to pursue, I know.

I was visiting a Rivers store in Bowral one day about four years ago, and began discussing my joggers with the staff, saying how comfortable they were, and how they could be improved. They assured me that Rivers HQ was interested in my feedback.

They gave me a sheet of paper and asked me to diagramme out my proposal for the improved shoe, and to make some notes on it. This I promptly did. They then it was faxed off to Victorian HQ. End of story.

Until about three weeks ago. I was cruising around Rivers in Launceston (those of you who shop at Rivers will understand this phenomenon of turning every holiday into an excuse to cover off as many Rivers stores as you can), and noticed the shoes you see in the photo above.

I almost did a double-take: these were my shoes. This was my design - the significant improvements I'd suggested had been incorporated into a new, revamped model.

It was really cool to see one of my ideas actually birthed into something tangible by someone else. The seed had germinated without my knowing, and was already a tree by the time I found out. Simultaneously weird and cool.

Now if they would only offer me a free pair ...

There's a fine line ...

2008-12-16T20:32:00.003+11:00

... between discipline and addiction.

Things have gotten a little flaky around here lately - perhaps you've noticed.

Since returning from Van Dieman's Land, I seem to be going to seed. It's hard not to when everyone around you appears to be selling out to the inevitable mañana attitude that accompanies the orgy of Christmas parties and long lunches at this time of year.

When I was in the pattern of blogging daily, it was ocasionally hinted at that my ~~obsessiveness~~ dedication bordered on compulsion. My retort was always that it was a discipline for me to blog daily, and not an expression of some high-dependence dysfunctionality whose crack cocaine was a nightly entry.

I trust the laxity of the last week has established the facts of the matter. So I now return to the discipline of blogging - for tonight at least. We'll see how withdrawn I'm feeling tomorrow night.

Is there some sort of behaviour that has a place in your life which some would consider addiction or obsession, but which you regard as a discipline?

Christmas among the nails, glue and sweat

2008-12-08T20:40:00.006+11:00

We wish you a hand-made Christmas
We wish you a hand-made Christmas
We wish you a hand-made Christmas
And a AA-battery-free New Year

A few years ago we finally drew a line in the sand with Christmas spending. We felt it was getting out of control, and that it was also loaded with the potential to become a festive competition.

It was at this time that we began to explore the realm of home-made Christmas presents. It's now become a bit of a ritual in our house: panic sets in around the start of December when we discover that there's a pile of presents to make, and no elves to execute the work (just two dumb bunnies).

It's normally a combination of arsty-crafty (painted and glittered this-and-that for the kids) through to recipes in a jar (if you're a friend, you've been warned) through to wooden productions (stools, bowls, chopping boards etc.) through to gifts of time (our gift to you is that we come around to your place with two screaming children and eat your food - for a whole day).

So how do you keep it fresh? Does anyone else out there do the home-made present thing? We try to make sure our presents aren't entirely useless (unfortunately no one in the family will give us an honest opinion on that one!), but we want our Christmas gifts to be creative and fun too.

So if you're digging through old boxes, visiting the craft store, warming up the pottery wheel, chopping down trees, eyeing off unused birthday presents - throw us some suggestions. How do you make it creative?

Pushing through the pain

2008-12-07T21:16:00.006+11:00

This evening a small gathering of friends was treated to a classical guitar recital from two accomplished musicians.

It was delightful. From Paul Simon to Django Reinhardt to Bach, these guys sparked musical energy off each other and whetted our appetite for more.

A couple of years ago - on a whim - I purchased John Williams' CD El Diablo suelto (loosely translated - 'the devil is free'). It's an album jam-packed with twenty-eight tasty Venezuelan morsels. The more I've listened to it, the more I've loved it, appreciating its complexity and attention to detail.

Many moons ago I took up lessons in classical guitar, but it has sadly amounted (eighteen years later) to about 12 chords and one expensive guitar.

It was tiresome, and frankly, quite boring. As a fifteen-year-old I could see no translation between Eric Clapton and Carlos Santana and having to sit in a pooncy, uncomfortable way with a nylon-stringed guitar covering my teenaged groin.

As I sat there this evening, wowed by the talent of these men and blessed by their music, I couldn't help thinking that maybe it would have all been worth it.

Maybe it would have been worth pushing through the uncomfortableness, and the poonciness, and the endless scales, and daggy tunes. I mean, there must have been a time when Django could only play Smoke on the Water (or its equivalent - whatever that was in 1930).

I guess the reality is: no one gets much good at anything without practice and without pain. And you can't build a monument on a pile of flimsy nothing. There is no guitarist that thrills and delights others without a lot of personal discipline, boring scales, and pain.

And how grateful I am that these guys were willing to weather what I was not. Grateful - and blessed.

Love this guy too, by the way. Sure, he looks like the local imam, but his playing is a kind of funky fusion of Tommy Emmanuel and Michael Hedges (and there was a stunning talent taken away too soon).

Putting a sock in it

2008-12-06T21:20:00.006+11:00

If you’re talking to me, there’s every chance I’m not listening.

My boss and I sat down for an annual review yesterday. Lots of positive stuff came out, but one fairly big 'black mark' also got flushed out: I don’t listen well.

People who’ve known me for a long time know this already. I think I knew it already – deep down – but perhaps hoped that no one noticed. Or something silly like that. But apparently my boss notices. So does my wife.

Is what I have to say really so compelling that it must block out the ability to hear others? Is it really so important that it must be heard?

Perhaps you remember the brief exchange that takes place between Marla and the Narrator in Fight Club when they connect with each other at a therapy group for cancer sufferers ...

Narrator: When people think you're dying, they really, really listen to you, instead of just... Marla Singer: - instead of just waiting for their turn to speak?

Ouch.

I was chatting this afternoon with a wise friend who has done a lot of consultancy work in some pretty challenging places. I asked him what opens a conversation up after it has become locked down. His reply was immediate: “What liberates a locked-down situation is people being listened to.”

When I read the parables of a certain Nazarene carpenter, I am reminded of the culpability of those who have ears but don't listen.

It is fine to think of oneself as an observer of patterns or designs. But it is folly to think anything of wisdom can be truly grasped without the willingness to really listen (and I think it is a question of the will; poor listening does not make me a 'victim' of bad genetics or entrenched habits).

I guess I'd better shut up now.

Designed too well ...

2008-12-05T20:37:00.003+11:00

A problem you run across occasionally ... a superjumbo that's too quiet.

I seem to remember Lexus having a similar criticism leveled at them a while back.

Is there a piece of equipment etc. in your possession that is executed so lavishly that it actually becomes a drawback?

(An example: as a woodworker I am aware of a chisel company that polishes its premium chisels so highly (and in doing so rounds off the sharp corners) that a lot of woodworkers opt for their basic model instead - they find it an easier chisel to 'tune up' for use.)

Wine-ish wisdom

2008-12-03T21:19:00.008+11:00

Last week, as our holiday drew to a close, we travelled with a friend up the Tamar River (near Launceston) to check out a few wineries. The area has wonderful cool-climate wines, and is especially well-known for its pinot noirs.

The first little winery we dropped in on was Goaty Hill.

I never expect to find stunning value-for-money at a cellar door - that's not why you go.

Occasionally, you'll stumble into some cheap bin-ends, but really, if you want cheap alcohol, go to Dan Murphy's. Or crash someone else's party. Or marry someone Italian.

It was our first tasting of the morning, and Tony offered to take us through the wine list. Our friend recommended we accompany the tasting with the cheese platter - which we did.

Talk about great value! Twelve bucks for a platter loaded down with premium crackers (Tony offered to give us more if we wanted them), quince paste, lovely sweet dried pears and peaches, and locally-produced cheeses (blue, double brie, and smoked cheddar). The photo above was taken when we got about halfway through the platter.

It was divine. 10am on a Wednesday morning, watching the kids play on the grass near the vines, sipping a fruity riesling, and chipping away at the local munchies - three adults soaking in the pleasure of the experience for the measly sum of twelve bucks. It felt like robbery - and not only because of the price of the platter (which is apparently about to go up ... still worth twice the price anyway).

Tony was the perfect host (we were the only ones there). Friendly (not all vintners are), non-pretentious, courteous, chatty, and non-intrusive. Nothing was too much trouble for him. It was a pleasure to relieve him of a couple of bottles before we left.

You see, the great value went well beyond the platter. It went into the enjoyment of the whole experience.

You come up here to northern Tassie and you get to sit in this wonderful, wonderful vineyard, hanging with people you like, being served by people who love what they do (and who make you feel important), and enjoying great wine, great local food, a delightful view, and pleasant background music. You savour this kind of moment. You fall in love.

In a recent interview with Andrew Denton, Jerry Seinfeld was talking about his 'three rules of life' (bust your ass, pay attention, and fall in love). He expanded a bit on 'fall in love' ...

SEINFELD: 'Fall in love' wasn’t, isn’t really a romantic love; it kind of gets back to a George Burns thing ... one thing I did get from him is if I get a really good cup of coffee I like to just go, you know, what, just hang on a second. (LAUGHTER) This is a fantastic cup of coffee. (LAUGHTER) Isn’t this a great, and I’ll ask everyone, isn’t this great coffee? Cos you know, it’s not always great. This one is great, you know. (LAUGHTER)

And that is one of the things that I really did learn from him. And why I had such respect for him is that I will stop and make that moment, you know, you will enjoy life more if you do that. You know, you get a great parking spot, just go… (LAUGHTER) Hold it a second, I mean look at that spot. (LAUGHTER) I mean it’s, we could have been blocks away and we’re right here. (LAUGHTER)

ANDREW DENTON: See, that to me is wisdom.

A peaceful exterior

2008-12-02T20:28:00.007+11:00

Hard to believe that these calm waters have claimed numerous lives over the last 150 years.

A walk around the village of Stanley, surveying its monuments and graves, tells a story of savage waters and human tragedy. The stories of children, wives, fathers, mothers drowned off this part of Tasmania's coast is truly heart-breaking.

Everything here can change so quickly from tranquility to tempest. This is a tenuous, a volatile, peace.

It's a pattern we see duplicated across so many areas of life.

Today's stability is tomorrow's uncertainty. We've seen it on the share market recently. We see it in relationships. We experience it in the car that has run like a dream for 15 years, but wouldn't start this morning.

We walk into this pattern so many times across our decades, yet it almost always seems to throw us. The severity of the contrast can make it the harder to deal with.

What are the 'millponds' of your world - those things which look so dependable, stable, safe? And what would you do if tomorrow morning your millponds turned tempest?

On being a keeper

2008-12-01T19:46:00.005+11:00

Transmission resumes.

After a lengthy (and I will say it, enjoyable) hiatus, my daily blogging ~~addiction~~ discipline kicks back in.

Today was my first day back at work. The out-of-office autoreply came off the email, and my voicemail no longer lists seventy-five survival options that allows clients to cope with life in my absence.

If any doubt remained, I guess this blog entry tells the world that my parousia is no longer imminent but realised.

Re-entry.

I was half-tempted, I admit, to allow my blog to lapse.

Two weeks in obscurity turns into two months and into two years before anyone even bats an eyelid. Finally, at your fiftieth wedding anniversary celebration, a concerned friend asks, "Have you been posting any blog entries lately?" Life is like this.

After a dramatic evening of screaming children and a bolognaise explosion in the kitchen (which successfully splattered the kitchen and dining room floors, the dining chairs, the fridge, almost every cupboard and drawer in the kitchen, the rubbish bin, the spud bin and even the ceiling), blogging was about the last thing I felt like doing.

Yet the fingers itch and pull of the little plastic keys is irresistable. This is because I do more than blog at convenience or when something interesting turns up (though there's not a thing wrong with either of these modes of blogging); I am the keeper of a blog.

I like to tend, poke, prod, agitate, stir, feed, play with, lounge with - even sup with - my blog.

George the horse - or as I ought to call him (and I know it's a 'him' because Caelan pointed that out for all of us) 'George, watchman / watch-horse and keeper of the home paddock, Stanley' - reminds me of this home truth. Every time we go to Stanley, he is there, watching.

I have a little field to guard, a turnip-patch to keep and to till. Celebrating Design tugs at me to exercise an instinct that sits deep inside the heart of humans great and small: that urge to shepherd, to renovate, to cultivate. To camp on something and build there a mansion (or at least a measly, cobbled-together cairn).

Tonight, I dawdle up the stairs of my own private lighthouse, flickering flame on lighted wick, and once again place the fire to the lamp. The art of 'keeping' begins again.

Off the air

2008-11-13T06:26:00.002+11:00

Last night the internet died. Again. As it is wont to do.

A harbinger of doom, reminding me of the reality of the next few weeks - no daily blogging. That's right, dear RSS feed reader: no more daily blogs for November.

We're going away to a remote island where once only Britain's finest we sent: the wee isle of Tassie.

I wish I had the discipline of Tim Challies to trek high-and-low looking for mobile internet reception, but I don't. I'm going on holidays and I'm going to enjoy it.

And attempt to live without my daily fix.

Arrrrrgggghhhhh!!!

A nerdish act of adulation

2008-11-11T19:09:00.003+11:00

If you think of politicians as being more than two-dimensional, you'll appreciate this.

Not sure what practical use this image will have (perhaps the US Army will microdot every weapon with it?).

But it's cool and it's clever anyway. Don't hold your breath waiting for their version of Dubya!

Hook, line and sinker

2008-11-10T20:24:00.002+11:00

A friend and I were out fishing this evening, and talking about what makes a good fisherman.

It's definitely not those who just read books and fishing magazines. And it's more than someone who occasionally seems to luck into fish.

It seem to be a combination of right time, right place, right place, right tide, ability to think like a fish ... and intuition.

Good fishermen seem to possess a 'X' factor that you can't invent or buy. Can it be learned? I don't know. Maybe.

Evidently, based on this evening's catch (for me, a big fat nothing), it's not a gift I possess.

Pieces of paradise

2008-11-09T20:43:00.004+11:00

Where's your little piece of paradise?

Where's your shelter from the storm?

Where's your sunshine on a cloudy day?

Where's your acre of calm?

What is it that calls you there?

What is it that drives you there?

What is it that keeps you there?

What is it that drags you from there?

How did you find this oasis in the desert?

Why did your eyes and your heart rejoice?

When did you tell another of this secret?

Who do you love to take there with you?

Will Stelvin put a cork in it?

2008-11-08T21:12:00.005+11:00

For quite a while now debate has raged around the controversy that is Stelvin caps.

I believe that once and for all this test (and its outcome) settles the question.

Wine that is sealed with a Stelvin cap (now commonly called the 'screwcap') is now deemed worthy of consumption by the masses.

It will be fascinating to see where this whole debate sits in ten to twenty years' time. I was stunned even the other day walking through Dan Murphy's looking at the bottle tops, and could almost hear the sighs of relief from the ancient cork trees of Portugal.

I gotta admit it though: I still miss the 'thwuck' of pulling of the cork on a Coonawarra Cab Shiraz, and doubt that it will ever be surpassed by the sound of unscrewing a Stelvin cap (which is audibly more like a pixie cracking all his knuckles).

Grabbing a bargain

2008-11-07T22:18:00.003+11:00

Garage sales.

Yes, we're in the process of pulling together the wider resources of the wider family for a garage sale.

Why do we get pulled in by garage sales? Is it in the hope of finding that hidden gem for next to nothing?

Everyone loves the idea of bagging a bargain. And I guess garage sales are the home of the bargain. They can also be the haunt of those vendors who can't pick the difference between priceless and worthless.

Many moons ago we used to love getting up early on a Saturday morning and going for a drive around the local suburbs to check out the garage sales - always in the hope of jagging a bargain. It never seemed to hurt too much to part with a few dollars here, a few dollars there, all in the name of a bargain.

Let's hope the bargain-hunting spirit is alive-and-well tomorrow morning as people rummage through and banter and barter. Somehow, I don't think the garage sale will ever go out of fashion.

It's all relative

2008-11-06T21:06:00.004+11:00

I was out with a client today looking at what he and his company have sought to achieve to remediate their site.

They have made consistent efforts to revegetate the area over the last few years. But as I toured the site with him, my sense of disappointment was very real: the revegetation work appeared to have moved so slowly with patchy growth and most of it fairly slow.

But it's all relative. As the client described to me what the site was like before their work, and even what the surrounding bushland was like (even though it was undisturbed like their site), it was obvious that this was a solid advance.

Advancements are all relative. If they'd been working in a lush paradise the results would have been very disappointing. But given they're working in a veritable wasteland with no topsoil, rough-as-guts subsoils, high exposure and little rainfall, it's actually a pretty good step ahead.

Sometimes we forget this, don't we, as we quest for advancements that meet our own expectations? Sometimes we forget that achievement has to be measured in relation to what was there to start with.

The stories in the scars

2008-11-05T20:52:00.004+11:00

I wonder what stories this fig has to tell - the scars indicate that it's had its fair share of scrapes with storms, competitor plants, pests and arborists.

It all adds character.

It's no different with people: so often, the stories are found in the scars.

And yet in the healing of the scars comes strength, character and beauty.

Arrr, me hearties!

2008-11-04T20:58:00.004+11:00

Boats seem to hold a certain fascination for human beings.

Maybe it's the thrill of riding something as untamed as the ocean. Perhaps it's the feel of wind and saltspray on your face.

Maybe it's marvelling at the way technology has been employed in boat design (who could forget innovations like that infamous Lexcen winged keel?). Or alternatively, how the basics of boating have remained constant for thousands of years.

We're off to Tassie late next week, and it's always one of the nice things about going to the Apple Isle: the boats. Especially the traditional wooden boats - they really grab your attention with their simple beauty and skilled craftsmanship.