🖋️ LongForm
Want to reduce the noice and just focus on things with a little more meat - the this category is for you. Like so much on this site we have a ‘WIP’ as i take some out - and put some in - but safe for at least starting in 2026.
🎥 The Family Plan, 2023 - ★★★½
Generally like a nice Wahlberg movie .. no exception .. in fact one of his better ones. It’s a formula .. sure .. aren’t they all? But overall .. YES.
🎥 Heart of Stone, 2023 - ★★½
It was alright. I try out Gal Godot outings from me to time because I clearly am missing something. Whatever it is I continue to miss it!
🎥 Asteroid City, 2023 - ★★★★
Yes it’s Wes Anderson, so you kinda know what you are going to get … except you don’t. To me seemed a lot more intricate than his precious outings.
🎥 Oppenheimer, 2023 - ★★★★½
Not sure I can add anything more to reviews than you already know, other than I didn’t see it in IMAX, I wish I had.
🎥 Living, 2022 - ★★★★
Lovely .. and one of those ‘little’ films … and Bill Nye … c’mon .. why are you still here?
🎥 BlackBerry, 2023 - ★★★½
I know most of the story, but like to cross check that knowledge with what the film delivers, new stuff, look into … blah blah blah ..ok I generally like these kinds of movies … royal epics aside .. it didn’t disappoint. It is what it is.
The Tetris story I knew a lot less about … enjoyed it more … because I didn’t know the story(?) or just a better story and movie(?) … I suspect the latter.
🎥 The Water Diviner, 2014 - ★★★
Another ‘little” movie .. and to prove I don’t automatically like them … this was alright, but .. yeah .. no. It was a while back when I watched it.
🎥 What a Life!, 2023 - ★★★★
… and I didn’t even hear the dialogue! Watched it on a plane, the audio system was so crapped out and dodgy … thankyou Quantas … that I mainly watched stuff on the iPad. Accidentally discovered this scrolling through … subtitles .. so I just watched and read the subtitles. Glorious. Another one of those ‘little’ films. Need to find it again and listen this time.
🎥 The Killer, 2023 - ★★★★
He - ‘somebody’ loves The Smiths. I don’t … but it didn’t stop me enjoying the film, because Fassbender is that good.
🎥 The Unlikely Pilgrimage of Harold Fry, 2023 - ★★★★
Lovely. The story broke in a couple of places ... but I didn't care. Lovely. One of those ‘little movies’ that I LOVE.
Work Backwards
There’s an old joke about ‘Henry’ getting lost in the narrow lanes of Devon, England and needing to return to London. He spotted a farmer on the side of the road and pulled over, admitting to the farmer that he was lost and was looking for directions to get him back to London.
“London!” … replied the farmer … “… well if I was going to London … I wouldn’t be startin’ here.”
It’s an old one. It’s a funny one and like all good humor is rooted in truth.
I had a great call with Steve Cook of The UNdaunted the night before last and over the course of multiple hours we covered oh so much .. and will save those stories for another time.
Except this one.
Discussion included the old chestnuts; change, transition and transformation.
People who work in this world know the Current State / Future State model (or as we used to call it in Group Partners … Current Reality / Future Vision). Steve and I agreed that a big stumbling block is people starting at the current state - and wanting to know the steps to take to get to the future state, more often than not with an end result of ‘It’s too hard’. … ‘It doesn’t work’.
Result? They give up. Worse? It fails.
I would argue that ( and to paraphrase my friend John Caswell ), they are attempting to ‘solve the wrong problem really well’.
Moving from Current State to Future State is not easy if you are attempting to solve the problem with the same thinking that got you there. Instead imagine … visualize (Now you know why we say ‘future vision’) the best outcome and then engineer backwards. It’s not the same.
Back to our farmer.
Current Reality - Lost in Devon
Future Vision - Safe in London
All he was doing was highlighting the limitations of ‘linear thinking’, which in three steps might well have the driver lost again. Instead visualize London
- “You know how to get there from Bristol .. right?”
- (confirm a basic level of knowledge)
- “And you know how to get to Bristol from Exeter?”
- (drilling down to get to more detail)
- “Oh .. you used to live in Exeter?”
- (additional information unpacked by asking questions)
- “Then you know Chagford?”
- (reaffirming assumed knowledge to make the next step as simple as possible)
- “Of course you do .. well … Chagford is only a couple of miles away .. you need to head back to the church …”
- (restatement of the problem, simplification of the actual ask)
At a stroke the driver’s challenge is significantly reduced and very manageable.
Is Your Flagged Message Count Not The Same As The Actual Message Count? I've Got A Fix.
Back in the day, there used to be a ‘Mail on Mac’ problem where the flag count was NOT the same as the actual message count. The fix was to delete the plist - and it would magically reset.
‘Back in the day’ suggests the problem might be a thing of the past. Sorry - it isn’t.
It’s the ‘deleting the plist’ that is a thing of the past … at least for this bear - who has not been able to find it. And if you cant find it … you can’t delete it. Meanwhile the count variation has been getting worse.
Yesterday I spent some time trying to work out how to fix it.
SUCCESS.
Seems like ‘all’ you do is disconnect your Mac Mail from ‘The Cloud’ … ‘let a bit of time pass’ … whatever the hell that means … and reconnect - and all will be well.
Not Wrong. That’s what I did and voila. Fixed.
Two Caveats
In my particular case
-
I replaced ‘let a bit of time pass’ with ‘reboot mac’.
-
I didn’t worry for the first two hours after rebooting that most of my email is missing - but by then I had moved into panic. So switched on the ‘mail connection doctor’ and enabled ‘show detail’ … and indeed it was buzzing along - left it over night and today all back and flag count fixed. (Apparently I have a LOT of archived mail in my cloud).
A Where’s Waldo Update
Been a busy year.
I am just this week completing the final trip to close the loop.
January : New Zealand / Honolulu stopover/ LA
February : LA
March : LA
April : LA / Palm Desert
May : LA / Palm Desert
June : Palm Desert
July : Palm Desert
August : Palm Desert
September : Palm Desert / LA / UK / Poland
October : UK / Paris / Portugal
November UK / LA / Palm Desert / Sydney, Oz stopover/ New Zealand
December : New Zealand
Sadly the Sydney/Oz will not register on my ’🖇️ Where’s Waldo ’ live post, due-to the self imposed rule of not just ’no stop overs’ … but a minimum two nights. Next time. This was actually the first time ever in Oz. (Hard to believe)
Logged With Apple
“Truly disappointed that you have chosen to block Busy Contacts from accessing my email. It used to work and you blocked it in Sonoma.
MY EMAIL
MY CONTACTS
MY COMPUTER
but YOU chose to block it … surely the choice should be mine?
Truly galling that you continue to allow access to calendars, which has about 1% of the use.”
Naming Coventions Of A Different Kind
Whilst I don’t believe that naming a child ‘Sofía Fernanda Dolores Cayetana Teresa Ángela de la Cruz Micaela del Santísimo Sacramento del Perpetuo Socorro de la Santísima Trinidad y de Todos Los Santos’ is in any way a good idea .. I also don’t believe that any government should be allowed to force the parents into shortening it.
That said …
First name … Sofía Middle Names … Fernanda Dolores Cayetana Teresa Ángela de la Cruz Micaela del Santísimo Sacramento del Perpetuo Socorro de la Santísima Trinidad y de Todos Los Santos
.. might cause havoc with the Spanish computer systems … so I do understand!