Gregory Pittman

Friday Finds (2021.03.12)

I’ve started using an RSS reader again like we did in the mid-2000s. Maybe I’ll keep this up and maybe I won’t, but here are a few items I found interesting this week.

A good leader knows they don’t know everything, including some of the details of the jobs of the people they lead. Julia Evans offers insight on how to help our managers help us.
I’ve recently rebuilt my entire music library, much to the boredom of the Micro.blog community where I cataloged many of the decisions and much of the process. One of the questions: lossy or lossless? This ABX test helps you decide whether you can actually hear a difference between lossy audio files and lossless audio files. Listen to the reference (X) and choose which test sample, A or B, sounds the same as X. I got 64% correct. That isn’t a lot more than even chance, but enough to, at least in my own mind, retroactively justify my decision to go with lossless files.
Lou Ottens, the inventor of the cassette tape, died this week.
Apple has denied Parler’s request to return to the App Store. After the US election in November, I dipped into Parler just to see what it was all about. It was everything you’ve heard about and more. I’m not one to deny free speech, but this was probably a wise decision from Apple.
Zenkit offers up competition for Roam and Obsidian, but with a significant advantage over the other two: a native iOS app.
Yet another reason to stop using Amazon for books and music. I just wish there were a strong alternative.
There’s still a Blockbuster store. Apparently, it’s alive and well during the pandemic. And speaking of Blockbuster, Netflix will soon air a documentary on the rise and fall of the movie rental chain and will feature that lone store.
“This is not a month; this is going to be months.” The pandemic has hit everyone hard without question, but the arts will take much longer to get back to normal than just about anything else. I’ll have more to say about this tomorrow, but I’m not sure where I’ll put it yet: my personal site (probably), my microblog, or HEY.

I’ve maintained a personal library of music files ever since I’ve owned a computer. For the last several years, though, I’ve been using streaming services to listen to music simply because it was easier. As a professional musician, I was happy that the artists received a little extra support from me. I had purchased a lot of the albums I was listening to, so they got their cut from that, but they were also receiving a cut when I streamed their work. It was a win-win for everyone involved.

GTD’s Horizons of Focus

In their September 22 episode of the Nested Folders Podcast, Scotty Jackson and Rosemary Orchard discuss the GTD Horizons of Focus. This is something I thought GTD didn’t cover very well when I first started learning the system back in the early 2000s. Coming from Stephen Covey’s system, with its heavy emphasis on roles, I was glad to see David Allen include this higher level of planning. (Perhaps I just missed it the first time around. That’s entirely possible.)

Singing in the Age of COVID

As we await the results of the Colorado State University study on the role of singing and playing wind and brass instruments in the spread of COVID-19, there is a study available now that gives us some potentially important information.

Necessary and Meaningful

Meta-leaders craft the unifying mission for an array of different constituencies. They build a compelling narrative and create conditions that animate shared values, motivating goals, and each participant’s view of himself or herself as a necessary and meaningful contributor. Meta-leaders know that optimal progress does not happen on its own. Someone must see the opportunity and engage others to see it as well.

You’re It: Crisis, Change, and How to Lead When It Matters Most by Leonard J. Marcus, Eric J. McNulty, et al. https://a.co/8b4CNO0