I struggle to focus on my work, for the same reasons most people grapple with: we are surrounded by seemingly never ending distractions (social media, email, phone calls) and it’s difficult to focus on a project without interruptions. I also find that my mind is distracted and wants to escape from being ‘tethered’ to a [...]
The case for building my own computer
Men’s hobbies tend to fall into one of two broad categories. There are extroverted leisure time pursuits, often related to sports, gaming, grilling meat or drinking; and more introverted activities, often related to material things, such as woodworking, model building, photography, stereos and the like. Some men develop very detailed relationships with their things, even [...]
9/11 Memorial
First, we have to go through the security theatre. The long lineups are partially for crowd control (you don’t want the wait to seem too long, so it’s best to break up the line into a few smaller ones), partially to ensure that authority is appropriately represented, showcased, visually asserted. The tone is friendly, the [...]
Review: Jawbone UP
Three weeks ago, I bought a Jawbone UP. It’s a movement-tracking bracelet that can be plugged into your iPhone (or Android device) once or twice a day to transmit your activity to a mobile app. (You can also download your tracking data as a CSV spreadsheet by logging into the UP website and ‘crunch’ it [...]
What I’m up to
I’m taking the spring and summer off (from paying work) this year. My relationship with my former employer ended recently, and I decided to be a free agent for a while. There were many motivations for this decision, but most importantly (and like most people) I had not taken substantial ‘time off’ from employment in [...]
How to estimate a project (using Microsoft Project)
Almost anyone who works in an industry that sells services will sooner or later be asked to create an estimate. Most people have limited skills in this area: they’re trained to perform some kind of specialist work like software development or report writing, while estimating is typically left to specialists. Where there are no specialists [...]
How to attend a meeting
If you want to learn about facilitating a meeting, there’s no shortage of advice for you. On the web, in books and workshops, you can learn how to break the ice, encourage interaction, paraphrase contributions that aren’t clear, play devil’s advocate, use humour to diffuse a tense moment, publish an agenda beforehand, and so on. [...]
Best new music of 2012 – Classical
It’s now February, so obviously this post comes a bit later than I had originally anticipated. I will not bore you with the usual excuses, but I did discover something interesting after I posted my yearly summary of the best non-classical music: over the holidays, I happened upon a seemingly endless number of other 2012 [...]
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About
Carsten Knoch
Software and services professional, attentive music listener, vision enabler, instigator, reader of books and the web, vegetarian, affordable audio hobbyist, thinker, writer, blogger, tinkerer, Internet dweller since 1992. Human being since 1970.
More about me on the About page.
I blog about music, technology, business, vegetarian food, politics, culture and life.
Explore my blog's themes on the About this blog page.
