[views from the car]

Driving home from uni I always catch myself marvelling that I'm here. In Edmonton. Living and working back in Canada. It feels amazing. And, as many of you know, I'm seldom without my camera, so I find myself nabbing shots when at a red light or waiting my turn at four-way stop.

 

 

 

 

 

[going paperless = a tidier desk]

Time for some procrastinating after all my work today...by procrastinating I erm...mean work. Because, everyone knows that tidying up one's work area is really part of the job description and...a tidy desk means more work gets done which has nothing to do with procrastination...


1) What do I do with the myriad of business cards I've collected from conferences, meetings, interviews and general travels (you'd be surprised who one can meet on the train out of London). Ah ha. I'll send my clutter cards over to shoeboxed and because it is now mashed with evernote, it means I'll be able to folksonomize all my cards...hey, tagging business cards, that'll make them way more searchable.

2) Next, looking around I see my desk has a lovely collection of receipts; train tickets, that ever-necessary coffee in the morning from the station shop, museum tickets etc...I think my receipts or pixily will be able to help. Interesting with my receipts, seems that they're partnering with shops so that receipts begin as digital copies rather than paper in the first place. This is how pixily works:

3) Ok. So papers on my desk are disappearing...but what about all those wires. Ugh, mouse wire, keyboard wire, web cam wire, camera cable, power cord, external hard drive cable, speaker wires, headset cables, printer, scanner...the list goes on. I think I'll be ordering the nice blue cable turtle from, hurrah, a uk company. So this doesn't really help me use less paper...but it does help with the digital tidying.

4) Some fiction books that I won't read again, an unopened box of Christmas crackers (don't ask) and some photo frames are going to my local freecycle site. Most already off to good homes.

5) Of course, what desk would be complete without a few old mobiles scattered around? With all my important information (i.e. my memory) in my snazzy pink blackberry, I can send my old mobiles to envirofone and even make a bit of cash in the process.

6) Online banking means no more silly paper statements messing up my lovely and now visible desk!

7) I'll be using remindr to, wait for it, remind me to do things like return those pesky library books that have been sitting on my desk, all used and ready for the bookshelf. I can also use remindr when little kitty needs to be combed (trying to keep fur balls at bay), bring in the laundry, return that dvd or pay the newspaper bill...I can get reminders to my mobile, via twitter, e-mail or gtalk. Excellent stuff.

8) Instead and jotting notes while I talk on the 'phone, I'll add my scribblings directly to a google doc or perhaps if I'm driving, I'll add my voice notes (hands-free of course) as a memo to spinvox.

9) So I'm addicted to my lovely pink leather filofax (how old school, I know) and I get a good overview of my time because I can flick though pages and see weeks and months at a glance. However, a useful online tool is google's calendar where I can let friends and family add their info too so it becomes more like a community calendar. There's an app. for my blackberry too so I can sync the two, perfect.

10) Though most of my communication is done online, there are times when I need to send physical post. Handily, the Royal Mail now lets me buy stamps online which I can then print out. So, no more books of stamps sliding to hide indefinitely under my keyboard.

11) Those cds that I used to love now sound soooo 2001...I'll be sending them to music magpie. They also accept dvds and games.

That's so much better now...

[cnn fires blogger]

"As far as CNN knew, I was a valued employee, albeit one with almost no say in the day-to-day editorial decisions on American Morning. This held true even as I began contributing columns to the Huffington Post, giving my writing more exposure than ever before.

Then, last Monday afternoon, I got a call from my boss, Ed Litvak.

Ed, seeming to channel Bill Lumburgh from Office Space, informed me of that which I was already very well aware: that my name was "attached to some, uh, 'opinionated' blog posts" circulating around the internet. I casually admitted as much and was then informed of something I didn't know: that I could be fired outright for this offense. 24 hours later, I was. During my final conversation with Ed Litvak and a representative from HR, they hammered home a single line in the CNN employee handbook which states that any writing done for a "non-CNN outlet" must be run through the network's standards and practices department. They asked if I had seen this decree. As a matter of fact I had, but only about a month previously, when I stumbled across a copy of that handbook on someone's desk and thumbed through it. I let them know exactly what I had thought when I read the rule, namely that it was staggeringly vague and couldn't possibly apply to something as innocuous as a blog. (I didn't realize until later that CNN had canned a 29-year-old intern for having the temerity to write about her work experiences -- her positive work experiences -- in a password-protected online journal a year earlier.) I told both my boss and HR representative that a network which prides itself on being so internet savvy -- or promotes itself as such, ad nauseam -- should probably specify blogging and online networking restrictions in its handbook. I said that they can't possibly expect CNN employees, en masse, to not engage in something as popular and timely as blogging if they don't make themselves perfectly clear."

[...]

"When I asked, just out of curiosity, who came across my blog and/or the columns in the Huffington Post, the woman from HR answered, "We have people within the company whose job is specifically to research this kind of thing in regard to employees."

Jesus, we have a Gestapo?

A few minutes later, I was off the phone and out of a job. No severance. No warning (which would've been a much smarter proposition for CNN as it would've put the ball effectively in my court and forced me to decide between my job or the blog). No nothing. Just, go away.

Right before I hung up, I asked for the "official grounds" for my dismissal, figuring the information might be important later. At first they repeated the line about not writing anything outside of CNN without permission, but HR then made a surprising comment: "It's also, you know, the nature of what you've been writing."

And right there I knew that CNN's concern wasn't so much that I had been writing as what I'd been writing."

[google: sounds like a dream job]

I've just been reading (Analytics Evangelist) Avinash Kaushik's latest *introspective* post on why it rocks to work for google.

Wow. Besides the amazing looking food and collaborative spirit there are "zen" rooms, happy and helpful tech-support and green initiatives.

(image from Avinash Kaushik)


I wonder if the IOCT will consider creating a zen room....hrm....

nb. I'm sure Kaushik's post is a personal reflection but I bet that post is doing some (positive) marketing wonders (it worked on me anyway!).

[to-do list]

Today I have:

• Written next week's post for Frontline Books
• Researched the Creative Industries in the U.K.
• Written "sexy" (or sexyish) copy for a conference on creative industry
• Read my usual blogs
• Answered (or at least attempted to) work e-mails
• Completed tasks relating to work e-mails
• Finished presentation for Tuesday's Transliteracy Colloquium
• Began work on paper to be submitted for the Multimodal Narratives conference collection
• Read two papers on multimodality and learning
• Checked train times for my EARLY trip up to Leicester on Tuesday
• Wrote 1.5 pages of chapter 4! woo hoo!
• posted to my blog

I still have to:

• Write chapter 4!!!
• Read - well, loads really!
• Answer other e-mails
• Write 2 papers
• Create 2 presentations (more on those later)
• go food shopping (that's sooo boring)
• and way too many things to actually list here