Self-Referential

Edited highlights of the last couple of weeks or more. There’s a war on, and I’ve a few relatively well informed opinions… but so does everybody else it seems. I say relatively because the online dIsCoUrSe is horrible, misinformed, and over-simplistic. If you want to watch one thing to understand why this is happening at all then I recommend this video from the Real Life Lore YouTube channel. A very 2022 war More personally, my favourite sports team, in the space of 24 hours, has either traded or cut two of their best players - leaving no players from their Super Bowl victory of just over eight years ago. Similar to the Russo-Ukrainian War, I’m cautious of spending time on more commentary when there’s so much of it online already; I’ve all sorts of half-formed thoughts on apparent issues with the team - how it treats its players and how it plans ahead, when there’s so much expertise and money on hand… another time perhaps. Photo by Otto Greule Jr/Getty Images Even more personally, I GM’d a role-playing game for the first time in decades. While I facilitate or co-facilitate exercises or megagames, running a small game is much more difficult. Thankfully the one page RPG The Witch Is Dead gave me all I needed, and the game went reasonably well - the pacing was variable and the experience was a little obtuse for the players playing animals in a human world, but it reached a spectacular conclusion and the players mostly had fun most of the time I think. Definitely something to keep to hand should the need ever arise again. Barely one page of rules and a lot of imagination As always, looking back I realise how much media I consume, and I find it useful to look back and consider what I did or didn’t like, and what made me think. In no particular order… future work thought exercise Severance is intriguing, maybe makes no more sense five episodes in that it did at the start - and will either be a wonderful spark or will give me a new found understanding on why so many were disappointed in Lost; I’m particularly enjoying the world it’s in, which appears to be our own, but without familiar anchor points. More adult themes, but cartoon peril, The Owl House is delightful, recommended if you’ve children, or just want to watch something with a magical theme and endearing characters. To enjoy it you’ll need to have some empathy for people not like you - I’m guessing this blog isn’t often read by teenage girls; the same applies to the film Turning Red - which is similarly well made, and well paced, and certainly accessible if you’ve got a little empathy to flex and interested in seeing someone else’s experience of the world. Meanwhile nostalgia quilt Picard is very… very something… I won’t be surprised if we forget to watch it every week - not for you unless you’re a trekkie, the trailer tells you far too much, but is fair warning. If you’re interested in video game design then hbomberguy’s three and a half hour treatise on the game Deus Ex: Human Revolution is extremely well argued and edited, easy to watch in a single sitting - and with insights if you’re in an obviously related profession like game design, but for me the analysis stretches to any creative endeavor, or even to related disciplines like general project management. “science fiction action horror film” Underwater was good but not great - but far better than its online ratings would suggest; unfortunately I suspect it’s a one-off, when actually it would be interesting to see where creators would go with this if it was positioned as a franchise. I finally watched MoneyBall, being a big fan of sports analytics and the kind of insights that approach can generate and the myths it dispels - I’m only really familiar with this from the NFL side, but I did particularly like the clash of computer based analysis against the comments of the agents on prospective players. And lastly, the recent series not the older film, High Fidelity is very well executed which makes it even more puzzling that so few episodes were made, if you like smart dialogue and cool characters, and a surprisingly effective breaking of the fourth wall, make the most of it. Inexplicably just the one series Everything else I’ve been doing is designing incident response exercises for work, or just trying to make my life more organised. Still.

Edited highlights of the last couple of weeks. I finally made time to attend an online meeting of Liminal again, a provider of and example in and experiment with Collective Intelligence. As usual thought provoking conversations and quite weird challenges… for example, think of your two favourite things, then split into randomised pairs and mash one of your favourites with theirs to come up with something new. That was quite forced, a little uncomfortable, but also different, which makes it stimulating. As with analytical red teaming, for all sorts of reasons I think there’s all sorts of benefits in engaging in, and thinking about, collective intelligence… but also I think most organisations that need it won’t be willing to try it, choosing to fail slowly in known ways. obligatory graphic alluding to complexity As per my last weeknotes my disappointment at the lack of innovation was shared by a couple of people attending that Liminal meeting too. I see no way to improve this situation except through persistence. ...

The edited highlights for me over the last twenty days or so. I’m still catching up on email and Twitter bookmarks and other backlogs or overdue business development. I still think I’m “winning”, but also it’s all still still taking much longer than I envisioned… you’re familiar with Hofstadter's Law aren’t you? Looking at everything I’m working through, even when “necrobumping”, it all feels too interesting and useful just to declare a total “inbox zero” to start again. Especially as I’m working and thinking in varied areas, so I’ve no strict criteria to judge what I should or shouldn’t concentrate on. ...

Highlights from the first few weeks of January I finally missed writing up a week of weeknotes, so here’s what I’ve been doing for the last couple of weeks or so… I watched Eternals … well, I liked it. I think I’m far less critical of the MCU than most because of how much time I’ve invested in the stories while having read so few of the comics, and who I tend to watch the films with. Also I’m more intrigued by how the film-makers keep such a large universe coherent, than in finding plotholes or other issues. I tend to overthink, relative to other people, a lot of the time, but counter-intuitively I find Marvel films relatively relaxing. ...

Edited highlights of week 1 of January 2022 Putting together more thoughts around a series of impasse-breaking strategy cards, to prompt people on stratagems to deal when they’re stuck. I’m probably going to use tarot as inspiration for the format and layout of the cards, while being very conscious of all the negative connotations that comes with. I’m inspired to do this by attending Cardstock and especially working with Indy Neogy on some ideas. I believe Brian Eno's Oblique Strategies is one of the OG decks on inspirational cards, along with the work of Marshall McLuhan A particularly interesting discussion on helping another company write a paper and presentation, and maybe some game design too. I would say a “failed” catching up, but I’m slowly working through a backlog of people to contact and things to read and ideas to get down… I don’t think I’m winning yet, but no longer feel like I’m losing. Some concentrated thinking around a planning game, where between five and ten players are given a role in a fantasy context, with a set of resources and aims, and given a short deadline for a plan to conquer the Dark Lord’s forces. I think these kind of games can be really engaging and revelatory; but convincing stakeholders before the event, and participants during the event, to take away abstract lessons from a fantasy scenario can be a challenge. I lost a few more times at Tharsis. I’m wary of games that make me feel stupid, especially with my increasingly personal emphasis on strategic decision making and problem solving, and I find Tharsis exasperating. We’ll see, hopefully there will be a victory screenshot on here at some point soon… In space no-one can hear you sigh disappointedly at your dice roll This presentation from Eva Summerfield of Unusual Systems was an interesting watch - mainly for me because someone considerably different to me, in age and cyber security industry experience, had come to roughly the same conclusions on issues with the industry in a much shorter space of time. In particular this presentation is worth your time, as is are BSides rookie tracks in general… and also check out this presentation by my occasional co-conspirator James Bore on future threats from bio-engineering. Through various means I watched A Time To Die, Fast and Furious 9, and Matrix 4 in the same week… more or less. As very short reviews I’d describe them as “involving but perplexing”, “fun but undemanding”, and “better than expected, and thought provoking” respectively… and also it’s useful to think of if and when I’d rewatch a film, which is “rainy bank holiday, as is traditional for Bond films”, “channel hopping when I should have gone to bed”, and “yes” probably applies. Sometimes you just lean back in your seat, stop thinking too much, and enjoy the ride...

Edited highlights from my previous week I finished Passenger to Frankfurt by Agatha Christie, a surprise “Jolabokaflod” present. I wrote up my thoughts here, it was a weird and entertaining ride of a book. Appropriately for the time of year, I finally watched some more MST3K by viewing their interpretation of The Christmas That Almost Wasn't. As Twelfth Night has only just passed I think, do take a look if you want a seasonal introduction to the, er, oeuvre/method of MST3K and RiffTrax…. “It’s like watching a movie with your funniest friends!”. ...

My previous week: Teams and teamwork was a bit of a theme last week… this week, due to NFL scheduling shenanigans, the team I follow played twice in the same week. The Seattle Seahawks lost both games, taking them out of playoff contention for the first time since I started following them again “full time” back in 2012. It’s been interesting to dip into “Seahawks Twitter” and similar commentary while analysts hypothesise as to why the team is so bad this year; especially to see in another arena how several smart people I trust all have different but well supported opinions. Personally experiencing poor service from several suppliers, and the same at work but from customers. Nothing really to be done about it, it just seems unnecessary and doesn’t benefit anyone involved - I mention it here because that kind of unnecessary friction in life wears me down more than I feel it should, but I don’t know what to do about that. Not much else due to Christmas… which I enjoyed. Thanks to Santa, for dealing with the above friction, I now have access to a Giant Stress Brain. I watched the live action version of The Last Airbender, having finished the excellent Nickelodeon cartoon series earlier in the year. And also because I’ve a definite interest in bad films. I found the film interestingly awful on how it just didn’t work and why - I think there were poor choices all around in plot and pacing and direction and dialogue… I don’t think I know enough to comment on sound design or cinematography. But most notably, the key capability of element bending in the cartoon was astoundingly badly handled in the film… in the cartoon it just worked, in live action the actors would perform a tai chi like set of moves, and there would be element bending happening, but the connection between the two only worked a couple of times throughout the entire movie. They’re not videos I’ve watched myself, but if you want to see it dissected I trust Hello Future Me to do so by reputation alone. earth bending... apparently

My previous week: Looking back on the previous week, I only realised that “playing as a team” was a common thread through the most significant and/or interesting events when I was putting together this weeknote. I watched a presentation by CrowdSec a “free and open-source collaborative IPS”. I need to experiment with the software, but I was impressed by the team behind it, and their approach to making something like this work while also keeping one eye on the business model. I’d be interested to hear from anyone using it, or with strong experience in how well crowd sourced threat intelligence works out. I took part in a couple of playtests of the Minimator game - operated as part of the work of the Research Institute of Sweden. This is a well put together game, probably aimed at policymakers, to explain basic concepts in how cyber defence and zero day markets work. There’s a lot of work gone into the game, and still a lot to do; but there’s definitely something in this and I’m optimistic about what the project will achieve in future. I was a sounding board for someone working through their career options, and they highlighted how much leading and being part of a team meant to them. I realise that aspect of work probably means more to me than I expected, my involvement in PlaySecure being the most obvious… but increasingly I find myself pushing to work with others before I’ve a fully formed idea. This has led to some promising concepts, but there’s also been many times that hasn’t worked at all after auspicious starts. At some point, but only after something has paid off, I should work out my “completion percentage” on ideas. Separate from that team based theme though, I watched Vivo; a delightful film, well paced, engaging, suitable for children if you’re up for “adult themes” and some definite peril. Not quite at the level of Hamilton... but still... definite peril...

My previous week: Various tribulations with online stores. Maybe I’m getting old and weary, but it seems harder and harder to just pay for something and then get what you paid for; or to trust any of the online review sites, which are obviously being gamed. I attended the National Cyber Deception Laboratory’s symposium. This was a good day, with some useful and quotable points of view - I expect to blog some summaries of different presentations as they go online. I’ve always been puzzled and frustrated why cyber security, as an industry, doesn’t engage with deception more, hopefully this event is the sign of a change in approach. I attended, and kind of helped run, and spoke at, the Enterprise Circus, which operated under the PlaySecure brand. This was a lot of fun, and I think like main event back in March 2021, it got a few people thinking something new. As always the aim is to just try something a little different, rather than just being yet another conference saying the same thing. A different approach to video call backgrounds

My previous week: I attended a really interest critical thinking exercise by Sara Penrose Optimisation Training. Myself and several others just brainstormed through how to design a driver’s cab for a truck. The ideas went in all sorts of directions, and it was really illuminating to see how creative people could be given the time and space to work together, and also how that innovation was down to process rather than some kind of innate quality. I learnt a lot, and was struck by how much “path dependence” there is in the design of truck controls - from the steering wheel to the gears to the pedals all being based on outmoded mechanical systems, to “paperwork” still being made of paper. I stepped back from a few things, trying to catch up on a lot of older email and other messages, while also implementing systems that make it easier to filter out the signal from the noise in future. I think I had some success, but also this is a process I’ve been trying to do for years and years. Spent an enjoyable evening just playing Animal Crossing and realised it’s one of the few things I do that I don’t try and turn into something productive. Having turned many of my interests into presentations, and with an increasing interest in the commercial production of game-based exercises, this is one thing I just do. Making the most of the new tripod mode I developed an innovative photography style in the game which… well… it makes me laugh. Mostly my massive head A new contact got in touch to discuss some business ideas. This is particularly promising, but often I make contact with similar “ideas people” who are “time poor” and so our conversations are interesting but not profitable. We’ll see… I helped someone think through their career options, I think mainly by just given them space to think, and helping them apply their consulting skills to their own situation. I’m more the catalyst than the reagent. Another interest that I’ve turned into a presentation… the Seattle Seahawks had the Seahawkiest of games so far this season, “sloppy but thrilling”.