I’m a pretty good sketcher of words and ideas, but a terrible completer of posts: making sure that the ideas make sense and connect properly, trying to get the wording and the feel right, trying to draw conclusions and lessons from whatever experiences or thoughts I am trying to describe; sometimes even deciding which service to post things on (a ridiculous situation, in all honesty) - that’s all hard work, and sometimes I just don’t feel that I have the energy to complete it.

As a result, my pool of drafts begins to overflow and prevents me from really finishing.

So, in the spirit of draining the pool and refreshing my perspectives, here’s a dump of my most current drafts, cross-posted on Blogger and on my Micro.blog instance!

Rethinking which services I should keep, and why, is something for another day.

A review of Umberto Eco’s The Island of the Day Before

created 2023-09-06

This is a most typically Umberto Eco book, of an unknown, uncertain narrator reconstructing the putative, fragmentary notes of a shipwrecked passenger of a sailing ship, weaving them into an improbably rich, thoughtful, infuriating and nebulous narrative.

Had I not read Six Walks in the Literary Woods, Eco’s talks on his theories of narration, including the constructs of the Model Author and the Model Reader, had I not already re-read The Name of the Rose and Foucalt’s Pendulum, I may well have given up on this book.

Is Agile agile?

created 2023-09-28

I remember years ago reading about an almost unbearably enlightened concept in project management called Agile. I wished, as we trudged along those familiar, well-worn yet somehow always overgrown, brambly and muddy paths through gates and past millstones - sorry, milestones - towards yet another similar product launch in the automotive industry, that we could put those paths behind us and start afresh, be agile.

The name itself was glorious, tantalising, joyful, even, bringing to mind fleetness of foot and unbounded creativity with the goal of bringing something new and fresh to the world.

That, I had to admit, didn’t seem to very closely describe the world I worked in. With Agile’s origins in infinitely malleable software, I knew I would never personally experience agile project management. Herding recalcitrant parts into vehicles was always going to be an uneasy fit with agile methods, I was sure.

I would never experience agile; until I suddenly did, at my new company in a new industry - and I have some thoughts I’d like to share.

No, agile is not agile

What I can say, after five cycles of sprints, workshops, reviews, retrospectives and planning is: the method never for a moment felt agile.

In our short training course we learned how we could achieve a goal even within the constraints of stupidly and very artificially short development cycles. Rapid feedback loops would trump planning and design (which always leads to trial and error anyway).

But the way I experienced our agile project was remarkably rigid. We brainstormed a load of User Stories against an equally brainstormed set of OKRs (Objectives and Key Results), which formed the “Backlog” (even though they weren’t at that time uncompleted or delayed, which is my usual term for items that are in backlog), then dumped a load of them into the first Sprint.

That Backlog was in one sense the Prologue to the whole project, and our very own, self-defined Millstone.

Now, of course we weren’t totally naive about it: we knew which User Stories represented basic functionality and which would naturally come later, once these basics were sorted. But a number of difficulties with our systems meant that we got bogged down even at that early stage and the prospect of closing off User Stories in an acceptable and documented fashion diminished day by day.

And then, suddenly, it was time for the Sprint Review, for the Retrospective from that Sprint and planning for Sprint 2, with the Backlog looming like some Godzilla of Not Done, no paradigm of agility.

We were able to add User Stories as other issues cropped up, and we did in the end discover that some User Stories were irrelevant or completely incapable of being completed with the systems we were working with: these were ultimately tagged with “Won’t Do” rather than Done.

But that initial setting of User Stories set our path in just as rigid a manner as the traditional “Waterfall” method, and I even began to think that the Waterfall has some benefits like repetition of tasks and documentation for each milestone, ensuring that they mature with the project, rather than being looked at once, documented and dumped.

What did I learn?

This is a key question for any initiative and is built in to the Agile method in the guise of the Retrospective.

At work I - with the team, of course, it couldn’t be any other way - recently completed my third ever sprint review, took part in its corresponding retrospective (the cool kids say just “retro”), and planned for the fourth sprint, by reviewing and prioritising the backlog.

To put that into context, I am now - finally! (I can no longer write “Finally” without thinking of Vaughan William’s A Sea Symphony) - involved in my very first “agile” project, and I’m at least getting used to the jargon. But, is it as good and as efficient and energising as I imagined it to be, back when I was on the outside, jealously looking in?

From the confines of automotive industry projects and the traditional task-and-milestone mills that were our project styles, I would hear and read of some distant enlightened lands of agile project management: from where I stood, agile appeared desirable, enjoyable, more efficient, “better”: today I wonder if this is really the case.

As with any , including training that included the agile manifesto, descriptions of sprints, retrospectives, workshops and all of those good things - or at least a variant (the purists would no doubt say ‘deviant’) of it - at work, and I have some issues with it.

I’m also somewhat distracted by the vocabulary, especially the notion of the word “backlog.”

Before starting the project, the word backlog felt wrong to me: it implies work that behind its planned completion date and is building up through some form of bottleneck, whether this be . Before kick-off, backlog is prolog(ue)

This Guardian opinion piece on the British NHS, or [this search]([NHS backlog site:theguardian.com) for articles containing the words “backlog” and “NHS” in the Guardian, or this article referring to the backlog of asylum applications in the UK really give a sense of what I mean

Now that we’re a sprint in, and we see what we had collected as “to-do’s” and did and didn’t complete in that first sprint, we see the collection of unedited “User Stories” that really does act as a mass to be reduced. A backlog, perhaps, but also a mountain of ice cream needing to be eaten spoonful by planned spoonful

User Stories are not tasks

Project Management is a technology, a process, a human-made artefact, which also enforces a lot of documentation (that most people in the world won’t read)

Engineering engineering

created 2023-10-14

really for my Literally Engineering engineering blog

I tumbled literally not engineering into the New Year 2023.

Now working again, a confirmed escapee from the automotive industry, I find myself contentedly and, by my own reckoning, at least, gainfully installed in the engineering community of a medium sized company making sensors for industrial applications.

I also find myself wondering whether I might still actually be literally not engineering.

Information wrangler

My new working environment, beyond the desk, the chair and the coffee machine, is digital. I no longer handle parts or discuss testing in the lab. Instead, I deal almost exclusively with data and information: electronic representations of real, or potentially real, things (sensors that other companies buy), and with “non-things” like methods, guidelines, specifications and communications.

Through this last point, clearly I do deal a great deal with the very real, the occasionally thoroughly perplexing and frequently enriching interactions with my colleagues and other humans in all their complexity.

In this combination, my role combines both forms of knowhdge characterised by Aristotle that I’ve been focussing on, techne and phronesis, which refer to making (in the original sense of the crafts) and practical politics respectively.

Aside from the physical handling of parts both new and old in my previous job, is this any different?

In one respect, no, it’s not very different: the technical drawings that I used to produce, or, better, have produced for me) are informational representations and intentions of something that should ultimately end up being made, manufactured, turned real. But my current position puts me at at least one remove further from our final product. I help to ensure that our data and (data + meaning + truth or accuracy = ) information ends up in the right form and location, with sufficient accessibility and searchability that it is useful to those colleagues of mine who do work on products that will ultimately be manufactured, sold and put to constructive use in industry and society.

Gotta role with it

My position currently consists of three main roles: representing mechanical engineering in our company’s new PLM initiative, updating and managing our design guidelines, and, closely linked to those, managing our CAD systems, methods, and - surpise! - data (servers, databases, etc).

This new working world of mine has an expanded ontology compared to the previous one, in that I now also have dealings with two additional domains, electronics and software. These, too, work mainly informationally (electronics schematics creating the general logic, plus the software and firmware that tame the chips).

These domains can be seen as models for my own new sense of engineering, if engineering is what it is that I do. They construct “devices” that work according to particular rules and logic, to meet certain goals, within a largely technical domain.

They make use of tools and consider ways of testing their output against predetermined requirements and - that word again - constraints (price, availability, approvals, maturity, etc).

In total, this set of roles raises the question for me: what of that is engineering?

Intriguing devices

If electronics and software can be considered as “devices”, then so could the objects and elements that I work on: the outputs of my work are not physical but logical devices of varying complexity, that need tweaking, tuning and, occasionally an overhaul or complete replacement.

To be able to do any of that, I need to understand their mechanisms, weak points, inconsistencies and failures - just like in any engineering context.

I can consider as actually being secondary to their actuality in the engineering environment as actually being secondary to their actuality in the engineering environment.

Infra-engineering

Like infrared or infrastructure, infra-engineering is my imagined term for the work done “below” engineering, to support it. Foundational engineering , we could call it.

of what I do is engineering? This is where my uncertainty regarding the definition of engineering itself requires that I attempt to break things down into sensible components to see if, during reassembly, any parts or subassemblies look like engineering as I understand or have experienced it.

A more philosophical stance

One attraction of where I now stand in the engineering landscape is that I can view the whole more philosophically than before. I can use the term “ontology” in both the technical, “PLM” sense of listing out the parts that we have, and in the more philosophical sense of “what are we dealing with here, exactly?” This would include discussion of our beliefs in PLM entries representing physical products, those entries including thumbnail images of CAD models of those components ; or, indeed, considering CAD assemblies as mere containers for the components, plus positional relationships.

It can all get me back to the very beginnings of this blog, considering the writings of Gilbert Simondon , and his considerations of concrete and abstract parts.

Outputs

Perhaps the clearest way of investigating the essence of my work is to ask what I will be “producing.” For a “true” engineer, the product would be clear: designs and specifications according to which items could be made and sold to a market.

Rather than items that can be sold onto a market, I am helping to design the environments in which our engineers work. My customers are my own colleagues, the engineers - and they can be demanding! In addition to designing that environment, I’ll also be documenting it and specifying how these colleagues will work: I have to define both the path and the handrails / safety railings for it.

That sounds very bureaucratic, I’ll admit. But here, too, is a question: are bureaucracies engineered?

Outputs:

• A realistic, understandable and internally marketable (acceptable) system and structure for storing and linking engineering data with other and with non- engineeing data.
• Workflows
• Administrative constraints and guardrails
• Specifications
• An organised knowledge base
• Installed, tested and approved software
• Tested and approved methods for working with that software
• so, whilst I no longer deal with labs, I certainly deal with testing: I write (or at least imagine) test scripts, and I record the results in text, screen shots and screen captures.

A digital Dewey

The obverse of outputs is of course the inputs that I need to consider. Now, since I’m not personally generating much of the data, but figuring out how best to organise and present it, like a digital Dewey for libraries, my inputs are the platform that we must tune to our needs, representative data for testing, and in Agile project management speak, User Stories and challenges, known issues and ways of working, that need to be selectively reimplemented or optimised, or bypassed, with the new systems.

There’s a train of thought that the administrations, procedures, methods and laws of modern society are themselves forms of technology. And technologies are engineered.

Here, I am still defining and specifying how our CAD engineers will work, including fruitfully constraining choices in terms of things like material selection, design for injection moulding and the like. These outputs will be the design guidelines and standards to which our engineers should or must adhere.

On the PLM front, I’m helping to define the form of engineering data and collaboration on that data within the confines of a pre-existing PLM structure.

Tools and methods

Graphing and flow charts, procedures and guidelines

Ways of thinking and interpretation

Thinking as an engineer who does rather like to minimise bureaucratic effort. Lifecycle and maturity states. Drawings and metadata. Relations, links and causality.

Knowing what we need to prove, our affordances

Handling our CAD data, our releases, reports - and the network of components, assemblies that ultimately lead to products being sold on the market.

Action and agency

In this role I do quite a lot. Testing to understand the limits and constraints of our systems.

How else would I describe it?

If what I do at work is not engineering, then what is it? Luciano Floridi refers to philosophy as conceptual design… So, could what I am doing at work, as well as here, in this post, be referred to as philosophy?

Or a chemistry of engineering: picking the atoms of information and turning them into valuable molecules, rigid crystals or flexible polymers of information that undergird the products that we make.

Perhaps I’m operating as a lawyer of technical information, determing what’s “right” in engineeringly “legal” ways.

The classic analogy for this sort of work is to the architect: someone who, combining innate, but trained, aesthetics with technical understanding and realism, creates - in combination with a vast range of experts - a new structure that can be used by many people over time.

Design engineer

I am a designer of engineering methods. The basic software elements are already present, the systems made available by companies larger than our own. But we need to select the

… and I didn’t get further than that (yet)

Jeptha (a Handel oratorio)

created 2023-10-31

Last Saturday, on the 28th October, I sang in my second Bachchor concert in the Peterskirche Heidelberg. Once more in English, though notably less heavy than Vaughan Williams’s A Sea Symphony, this time we were singing Handel’s final oratorio, Jeptha.

Wikipedia, with its patience of multitudes, has a much more informative [summary on Jeptha](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jephtha_(Handel) than I could presume to write, so I won’t go into the details here.

We had an excellent young lineup of soloists, including an emerging talent in the English tenor Gwilym Bowen , who sang the title role.

I did end up wondering about the political implications of the message contained in the story of Israel’s victory.

Employment (and) agency

created 2023-12-04

This time last year, in December 2022, I was coming to the end of my employment at Cooper Standard. The company was doing what alert companies do, reconfiguring the business to focus on growth areas, and my expertise in threaded fasteners and coatings was no longer considered to be of sufficient value to retain in an increasingly plastics world. Some discussions on timing and payout later, I was to leave at the end of the year.

It’s interesting to look back on that time of wrapping up: calling key contacts to let them know that I’d be moving on, reminiscing on fun and challenging times, wondering what gardening leave would be like; and, of course, digging out the CV to give it a good old refresh, and starting to wonder what I wanted to do next.

Even with the buffer of gardening leave, hope and expectation were tinged by uncertainty. What sort of industry would I end up working in, and would I be able to hold to certain standards (no military, no fossil fuels, for example) indefinitely? How big a commute would I accept, having been able to cycle to work for all those years? Uprooting the family wasn’t really a consideration, but the idea did lodge itself at the back of my mind, along with that other associated mental paraphernalia of leaving a position without having a new one already lined up - including starting the unemployment process in time, in - gasp! - Germany*.

That combination of hope mixed with unease at the directionlessness I was faced with (my pending gardening leave may have felt enticing, but it still led nowhere), held a certain diffuse meaning that it’s worth reflecting on now.

The value of work is grounded by predictability and security. If these are lacking, as they are in so many areas like the arts, or catering, or fixed-term contracts, and for those brave enough to set out as consultants, then you’re permanently on shifting ground, seeking balance, always having to stay alert for new opportunities and less able to switch off, to reflect and - in the extreme case - to appreciate the good things in life.

Fundamentally, it’s about having agency, being able to decide your own path, in your own time, on your own terms, resulting in Action - taking Hannah Arendt’s interpretation of the word - in which a person has the opportunity to show who (rather than “what”) they are.** Merely enacting (carrying out) jobs doesn’t suffice for action in this sense, which is why so many jobs can be unsatisfying, even when they are settled on a baseline of security.

Now, writing this in the luxury of a secure position, in which both I and the role(s) I have at Pepperl+Fuchs are developing, and with the buffer of time behind me, I can admit that the timing of my leaving Cooper Standard was right for both parties - sometimes inertia sets in and we don’t quite reach the threshold for action, requiring an external impetus to get us going again.

How should I summarise this post, then? What’s its moral? Just to make us aware again of who we are in the working world, to be appreciative of security, to be wary of dulling ourselves, and aware of all the other factors that play a role in our decisions, especially, of course, the people and society we live in.

* The Arbeitsamt turned out to be an excellent institution, proactive and leaving me to my own thing in the right degrees, and remarkably uncomplicated, once I got the hang of their website!

** This perspective taken from one of my favourite philosophical books, Back to the Rough Ground, by Joseph Dunne, chiefly about forms of technical and practical/political knowledge.

I’m a pretty good sketcher of words and ideas, but a terrible completer of posts: making sure that the ideas make sense and connect properly, trying to get the wording and the feel right, trying to draw conclusions and lessons from whatever experiences or thoughts I am trying to describe; sometimes even deciding which service to post things on (a ridiculous situation, in all honesty) - that’s all hard work, and sometimes I just don’t feel that I have the energy to complete it.

As a result, my pool of drafts begins to overflow and prevents me from really finishing.

So, in the spirit of draining the pool and refreshing my perspectives, here’s a dump of my most current drafts, cross-posted on Blogger and on my Micro.blog instance!

Rethinking which services I should keep, and why, is something for another day.

Well, the pun will: this enjoyable concert with the Bachchor Heidelberg last night, singing the Weihnachtsoratorio (Christmas Oratorio), or - to give it its full name - the Oratorium in Festum Nativitatis Christi from C.H. Graun, was simply a delight.

It's a charming piece dotted with not too challenging yet still interesting chorales and fugues for the choir, amongst the usual mix of arias and recitatives from the soloists telling and reflecting on the nativity story.

Our conductor for this concert was Jörg Halubek, whose website and photos make him look grander and more arrogant than he actually is.

All in all, a light, happy concert bringing good cheer, if at least temporarily, for those who had to drive out of a packed centre of Heidelberg.

I went swimming today with my daughter, happy to be back home after a week-long training course (which I should write about) near Stuttgart, to spend time with her. I am not a good swimmer, but, with the pool being fairly empty today, I managed to snatch 30 minutes in the “Schnellschwimmerbahn” (the lane reserved for fast swimmers) to work on my… OK, to try to create even the slightest bit of a semblance of endurance.

After those 30 minutes I went to the bathroom and, on the way back, I encountered one of those extremely trim gentlemen who, so utterly focussed on their sport, seem to forget about mere bobbers like me: he scowled past me twice in and out of the showers, and then found a lane to his liking. In the pool, he was indeed fast, a swimmer of such speed, apparent endurance and efficiency that I can only dream of. But with that totally understandable focus on technique and power, on his own body, he seemed to consider other bodies as hinderances. It’s how he made me feel, anyway.

That stance (floating pose?), I will admit, is something I can be accused of, too, since there really are swimmers slower and older than me, who do seem to take up room and enter into my swum furrow. It’s a sense of irritation and entitlement that feels justified but, upon inspection, isn’t really. So when I do feel that sense of irritation about the slow swimmers, I should take it upon myself to see their position to me as being in the same relation as mine to that über-swimmer (who, just as is always the case on the Autobahn, will find himself the “hunted” by other, younger, fitter, faster swimmers) - to recognise their efforts, to embrace the obstacle as a swimming challenge, and to smile.

And the best way to forget about all of that? Splashing and diving with my daughter, totally annoying other “proper” swimmers, whilst we’re at it. We don’t mean it that way, honest!

My new OP1-field track is up, after a bit of a break with orchestra and choir: this way to OP1-3PO on.soundcloud.com/s4kbG (no Star Wars associations at all, I promise! ;-)

Last Friday we played our thankfully final Musikfreunde concert of the season, and on Saturday evening I sang in my first Bachchor concert in an age.

This rapid turnaround between disparate concerts highlighted the contrast in musical depth between the predominantly folk-music based Hungarian-Romanian programme of the Musikfreunde concerts and the deep, varied, admittedly occasionally borderline excessively romantic, though more often incredibly powerful and moving A Sea Symphony by Ralph Vaughan Williams, that blowy bellow containing depths and multitudes

At the end of the Sea Symphony concert I felt a warm sense of satisfaction that stemmed from both the largely successful performance and from the music itself, which was in sharp contrast to my distinct lack of any feeling beyond relief that the Musikfreunde concerts were over (even after the first one).

I have to admit that another contrast was apparent: the sheer gulf in quality between the Musikfreunde and the Heidelberg Stadtsorchester was amazing to experience, with their dynamic range from tense pianissimi to overwhelming fortissimi complementing their poise. What really got me, however, was the controlled power of the beautiful, short brass chorale in the 2nd movement, at Section “O” . Its fleetingness was part of its charm (I’m not a great fan of brass bands overall), as was its somehow very British form of pomp and solemn grandeur.

Indeed, the second movement - On The Beach At Night Alone - is my favourite, with its powerfully warm, threatening, quiet introduction matching the contemplation of death, leading to that triumphal recognition of eternity, the universal and salvation.

I am looking forward to the summer break from live music, to give my overloaded ears a rest, hopefully to let the tinnitus recede at least a little - and to get back into my small electronic music and 3D printing projects. More on those soon, I hope…

Last night was the second and final of our Heidelberg concerts, like the night before in the Johannes-Brahms-Saal in the Musikschule. It was at least significantly cooler (though still hot enough to sweat copiously whilst playing), and the air blowers kept running, but I had some concentration and energy issues.

These were no doubt associated with me going directly from a three-hour choir rehearsal to the setup rehearsal and then concert, with only a Bretzel and a few vegetables to keep me going. Healthy eating, perhaps, for someone enjoying a leisurely day in a sun lounger, but for playing… insufficient. I was glad of the availability of “Hungarian” biscuits to get my sugar levels up during the interval.

I mentioned yesterday how I didn’t really get on too well with this semester’s programme. There’s one piece - OK, I’ll name it, the Rhapsodie Romaine by Georges Enescu - that grates more the more I play it, and another - all right, it’s the Verbunkos Suite by Rezsö Kókai - that I don’t play in, but find dull, pointless and repetitive beyond belief to listen to. There are no doubt some aspects of it that make it theoretically interesting, such as a general build up of orchestration as a story becomes more complex… but the piece doesn’t work for me.

It’s this sort of thing that makes me pity and respect the professional concert musician all the more: surviving the repetition of concert after concert playing the same thing, whilst maintaining the control and pride to keep the standards high (no doubt tinged by fear of losing the gig (aka, job)).

My last trombone teacher did say how he envied me being able to play the instrument as a hobby: I could cycle up and down levels of playing as required, whereas he needs to maintain a high standard almost permanently, whatever the temperatures.

Last night I took part in the first of two concerts with the [Musikfreunde Heidelberg](Programme – Musikfreunde Heidelberg (musikfreunde-heidelberg.de)) in the Johannes-Brahms-Saal of the Musikschule in Heidelberg. Our conductor has long maintained a cycle of focussing on a conductor in the winter semester (last winter was Rachmaninov), and a country or a region in the summer: this summer’s theme is Hungarica!, which includes Hungary and Romania, with composers like Bartók, Kolály, Farkas - and lots of dances.

Whilst some of the music (Bartók’s Romanian Dances, with their genuinely cool baselines, especially) is genuinely appealing, I admit I do find a lot of the music rather tiresome, especially with all the repeats! Yes, those are perfect for dances, but for listening and playing, it’s a bit much, and gets a bit samey.

In the overheated concert hall last night (the passive air cooling system broke down, and apparently the technician measured temperatures of 48 °C in the hall), it was sapping. At least the cycle home in the edges of a thunderstorm was refreshing.

Hopefully tonight’s concert will be more bearable: we have another outing next weekend in Bad Rappenau, but I’m at the point now where I’ll be happy to have the concerts behind me, so I can return to my own music as Halledr, at my own pace…

… yes, with repeats.

I drove to work at my new job for the first time on Monday and it was indeed around 15 minutes quicker than my usual bike-train-bike commute - but it was miserable. Stop-start, drivers with different priorities and etiquettes, the concentration required, the noise. And then, the classic traffic jam on the way back which negated the time advantage, whilst maintaining all the downsides of the morning’s commute in.

Nope, I genuinely prefer the train, and the little bike sections make all the difference to how I start the working day.

I’m currently reading “Galileo’s Error” by Philip Goff, basically an introduction to the intriguing theory of consciousness called panpsychism, which proposes that consciousness (in whatever form) is present in everything: gluons and bosons have a corresponding “particle” of consciousness. We humans appear to have exceeded a critical level of conscious integration, rendering us “conscious”, in the sense of having an awareness of self.

(I deliberately avoided writing “self-conscious” there, for obvious reasons!)

Anyway, I’m not far enough into the book to discuss the theory in any great depth, but I did find myself, during a break in today’s rehearsal, “seeking” my consciousness. It still could be an “illusion”, but that’s what philosophy is for: to explore!

My second OP1-field track is up on SoundCloud:

soundcloud.com/halledr/o…

Some decent chords, but a bit of a mess in the end. Next one should be cleaner!

Now that I have gained a few weeks' experience in commuting to work by bike and train, I am rediscovering for myself the… well, if not “joys,” then at least the variety of waiting.

As I see it, there are various modes of waiting. Today’s, as I jot these first notes whilst waiting in the morning sun for the delayed S-Bahn to Mannheim, is of calm reflection, in which I feel inspired to reflect and to write. I feel affection for my fellow waiters and travellers-on-hold: the bearded guy with a folding bike who often boards the same train as me; on the opposite platform a business lady in a red coat, another, older, less formally attired lady stopping and starting, pulling a large suitcase behind her in an apparent search for shade: all exuding calm and waiting patiently, in their own ways - at least, as I perceive it.

Away from my “inspirational” example of the station platform, there is the nervous-distracted wait before doctors appointments, tests or exams, or - (I can’t even imagine) - before battle; and there is the bored-distracted wait, where you can’t start what you want to, either because you don’t have what you would need for that task to hand, or you don’t feel like you have the time to start and then to switch contexts back to what you were actually waiting for.

Impatience during a wait can also be exacerbated by hunger and temporarily becalmed by snacking or drinking.

Of these, this one the first one, from this morning’s is the one I like the most. Observing and writing, before the editing, feeling comfortably awake and mildly creative, fulfilling a duty to do whilst also, especially in the case of a blog, preparing something for others to while away some of their own time, too, hopefully waiting, but not bored.

Waiting is emotional

There are other modes of waiting, clearly, each with their own set of emotions: the desperate, hectic stress with the same cause - late departures - as my meditative acceptance, but with perhaps more riding on the time than just a later start at work: missed meetings, a task just bursting to be started, or, later in the day, a concert or a date missed.

There’s also the less frantic, but innerly turbulent, distracted, unconcentrated, unfocussed, unproductive wait on a busy platform, tainted by secondary cigarette smoke and incessant announcements in that indistinct but overdriven fashion of station audio systems that all prevent you from reading or listening to your podcast.

Waiting is nearly always uninfluencable

It’s worth pointing out that waiting doesn’t have to be stationary, either. The travelling, semi-active wait on the train, bus or plane can be equally frustrating, even if everything is on time. You have no influence on outcomes, only on the occupation of the mind. It’s the same as a driver, too: you can feel as if you’re in a bit more control, but that, too, is limited: the best that can be said for driving is that you’re occupied.

If you do end up in a pit of frustration at waiting, it’s nearly always because you simply can’t do anything about it. The train will come when it comes, the traffic jam will clear when it clears, whatever you do, however much you fret or rage.

It feels strangely horrible to write this, but zen or stoic reflection can help dampen these feelings, and the (in the original sense) epicurean search for finding joy in the things and people around you, that share the universe’s atoms and matter, can help to redirect some of that “energy” to more pleasurable modes, as long as you catch yourself early enough

In some instances you can cycle though modes by focussing your mind with some form of meditation, or you can try out various activities to settle things down mentally again. I personally find it nearly impossible to filter out other noise or conversations, so anything involving language doesn’t work so well for me, but if it works for you, then listening to podcasts or music, jotting notes or reading, perhaps gaming on some device or other, on simply becoming more aware of your surroundings, by people-watching, studying the architecture, and so on, can all help to shift you from your frustration. Headphones are for me no guarantee that I won’t have my reverie disrupted by announcements or other conversations, but by putting you in a new environment, they can help.

Make the wait an experience

I suppose the corollary of this is to remove as much passivity from waiting as possible and to turn it into an experience: be aware of your surroundings and of your emotions, find interest and appreciation in as much as you can, and turn it all into part of your story, your life.

Uploaded my first track to SoundCloud in an absolute age: wanting to simplify my music making, and to master a new instrument, the OP-1 Field from Teenage Engineering. Here it is!

on.soundcloud.com/dMEqk

Last Thursday was the Ascension bank holiday in Germany and on Friday I had a company-enforced bridging day. This time, the local schools had chosen not to allocate one of their moveable bridging days to the Friday, meaning that I had the morning to myself whilst the others were at school.

I read (continuing my sci-fi run, on which more below), enjoyed a coffee (Tricolate brew), listened to some podcasts (The Rest Is Politics, and some of Drilled, about the oil industry) and did some housework (the kitchen). It wasn’t a particularly constructive morning, but it was pleasant.

That book, The long way to a small, angry planet, by Becky Chambers, which I finished, was an interesting one for me, with a very different tone to what I usually go for. It is much lighter, with much silly - but believable, realistic - banter between the various species and characters, which is often lacking in sci-fi. Here, it clearly positions the crew of the Wayfarer as a typical, mid-to-low-level, galactically useful (they run a hyperspace tunnel borer) but “unimportant” team, rather than ever-serious but humourless leaders, plotters or heroes. The big topics that it contains - speciesism, populism, modding and hacking biologies, aggression and love - rather obviously reflect back onto current societal issues, but are handled - in keeping with the overall tone - with that lightness that I initially found grating, but which I was able to grow into as the book developed. Overall, it was fine, but I didn’t find myself splashing out on Chambers' next book in the series. Another time, perhaps.

On Sunday we visited the Deutsch-Amerikanisches Fest at the Heidelberg Airfield. This used to be a huge deal back in the days when American barracks were dotted throughout the city. Now, it just felt like any old fair, though the roller coaster and the Ferris wheel were good. But, it was (like the [Street Food festival](Sebastian Abbott - Curmudgeonly at the Street Food Festival (micro.blog)) from last week) way too loud for my tastes. We didn’t feel like sampling the food there, either, so headed home for a light lunch.

I have to admit, though, the small but fine collection of old American cars was pretty cool, with some fantastic design elements - though they are a stark reminder of how far cars have come since the 1960s.

We had our own barbequeue with friends later in the day.

The final topic that naturally keeps bubbling up in my mind is of course work, and the impending assumption of responsibilities in my role in the Smart Innovation team. I’m continuing to build my network, tuning my antennae to internal political hotspots and learning how the various teams deal with challenges. Slowly and surely, and well supported by my boss, I’m getting prepared for full immersion over the coming months. For now, though, the culture still looks like a great fit, and I’m still motivated to really get going soon.

Things are beginning to pick up now in my third week at work. I’m still a long way from being a fully productive member of the engineering community here, but I’ve been slowly building up my network, meeting the important “node” people, picking up signals regarding the politics that I’m only just skimming the surface of right now, and am starting to gain confidence in the key IT systems that I’ll be working with.

I’m typically at work two or three days a week, and the commute - by train and folding bike (writing that the other way around would raise a weird second alternative to consider: by folding bike and train…) - is beginning to feel normal, even though there are regular frustrations with dear old Auntie DeeBee (DB, Deutsche Bahn). I had been prepared to drive to work by car, but found that the strike action that had threatened my rail commute had been called off, resulting in a renewed public transport rush to the station to catch the only slightly delayed - but running - train.

Once on the train, though, it was fine: I could read, gaze out of the window - the typical upsides of having someone else take care of the major kilometers, and then switching to the bike for the niggly station-to-desk portion of the trip.

Went to the Heidelberg Street Food Festival today with the family. I didn’t think much of it: all variants of tacos and burgers, some veggie and vegan stuff, but somehow not very diverse, and - the opposite of real street food - all very expensive. And the music was way too loud, too.

Call me a curmudgeon, but I prefer to savour my food in peace, without protective ear plugs whilst still having the peace of mind of knowing what’s in it (my FODMAP intolerance is a real nuisance in this context).

Still, there were options you wouldn’t really make at home all that often, and the cheesecakes were very good!

Orchestra rehearsal today (Saturday) - this season, there’s not much for the trombones to do, apart from stay alert and count the bars rest, to hit the right notes at the right time with the right force. We are the goalkeepers of the orchestra, and the rest of the team is keeping things away from our zone for now.

Just finished watching Villeneuve’s version of Dune on Amazon Prime. I now understand what I missed by not watching it on the big screen, but I’m really happy to have finally seen it at all. From what I’d heard about the Dune novels (which I’ve not up to now read), I’d expected more from the story, to be honest: in the film it felt like a checklist of simplified good-bad politics, treachery, a battle, some chasing and a challenge. But the visuals, the ships and craft - especially the jump gates and the ornithopters… oh my, they’re fantastic: the casting is excellent, too. The Herald of the Change was a very striking figure, and Atredi’s assistant was just right, too.

Looking forward to seeing the 2nd film on the big screen (as long as I can find somewhere showing it in English)

Back in February I posted about the challenges of being between jobs. Now, following a sequence of online first and in-person second interviews and a remarkably tough choice between two very different offers from very different companies, I’m just a few days (including a bank-holiday weekend) from starting my new job at Pepperl+Fuchs. It’s an exciting prospect, producing an intriguing mix of thoughts, feelings and excitement that I would like to just briefly reflect on here.

On a purely practical level, the nerdy part of me is most interested in the commute. I’m genuine in wanting to continue to avoid using the car to get to work, having commuted by bike for much of my career. Cycling directly to work is alas no longer a regular option. I tried the ride the other day, and it took me an hour and a half to get there. The route along the river is actually quite pleasant, but while I’m sure I’ll be able to improve the timing, it’s still long. My main mode for the initial phase (and, I presume, long term) is combined bike and train. Indeed, I recently splashed out on a Brompton folding bike, which I’ll use to cycle to the local regional train station, take the train to the other side of Mannheim (to Mannheim Hauptbahnhof… and beyond!) and then cycle the rest of the way to work from Mannheim-Waldhof station. I’ll have to see how I get on with public transport again, especially for the homeward journey, where I’ll typically want to get back as quickly and as predictably as possible. I also got it into my head that getting an electric moped along the lines of the Silence S01, also available in Germany as the SEAT MÓ (yes, from the car company), would be an option. It looks like a particularly efficient and effective mode of personal transport - and perhaps even not just a little bit fun… though I will have to upgrade my driver’s licence for it.

With the commute behind me, it’ll be time for the main event, arriving at and starting work. The first day will be intense but largely administrative - meeting colleagues (so many names to remember again!) but also getting set up into the company HR and IT systems, getting my laptop and phone (to work: nerdy-me also interested in, but also prepared for the disappointment of the equipment I’ll be given), installing stuff, setting my first login passwords, finding my desk and the coffee machines… all that good stuff.

What’s really tinglingly exciting in my head now is imagining how the the job will develop, in particular the question as to whether l’ll I be able to mould my projects in the way that I imagine them now. Every so often I’ll catch myself more than just imagining, more borderline fantasising about impressing the team with my excellent ideas, my pertinent and assumption-busting questions, nobly warning them of “gotchas” to avoid that I’ve experienced or considered in the past, agreeing on energetic but realistic plans, and gaining recognition from them and from upper management as being a seed element for an agile, motivated and productive new engineering culture.

As I say, it’s a fantasy, and it will be tempered by good old every day problems and challenges, from IT glitches and limitations, all the way to the inevitable odd, suspicious, cautious, sceptical and otherwise challenging characters from around the organisation - politics! - which, if treated with respect and their views taken into account, can all lead to much better solutions - for this company - than anything that I could have come up with alone.

This is what gives me hope: the knowledge that I do tend to be able to work well with all sorts of people, that I can call upon sufficient experience and awareness to feel but not be overwhelmed by, say, exasperation at a stickler for rules and regulations, or a negative mindset. I’m also looking forward to getting to understand the company, the market - there is life outside automotive! - the technologies and their niggles and problems that I’m sure I’ll end up getting involved in, no matter my original role.

It’s exciting to look ahead, but also to look ahead to again reflecting back on my career so far and this peculiar phase of gardening leave and - for one month only, at least - official unemployment that will very soon be behind me. Where did the time go? What did I do with it? All those questions can be happily set to one side for now, for reflection at a later date, on a well-earned weekend or vacation…

The last day at work before the holidays back in December 2022 was also my last day of work at the company that employed me. Officially, I'm on gardening leave, so still on the payroll (though magically off headcount), until the end of March. The justification for letting me go was the increasingly common one of needing to reduce overheads to try and return the business to at least a vaguely profitable level in Europe. Similarly to Ford's announcement in Europe, expertise (residing in just a few, but perhaps expensive, engineers) is being retrenched into other regions. I won't write more on company politics and strategies, as I'm not at liberty to do so, but I can talk about how it affects me.

Nebulous ahead

I have only now realised in this episode that I have two more boundaries: surgical instruments (because I really can't cope with the idea of cutting bodies, even if those operations are rather more life-saving than the military instruments I want to avoid), and junk, trinkets, anything that just "is" without having a purpose beyond being purchased and perhaps being beautiful or funny for someone.

The limits are also pretty clear: I'm not an electronics engineer, nor do I program software. I have no experience in biotech (a particular speciality of Heidelberg). So if any company from such fields were to take me on, it would be through acknowledging and appreciating my general engineering skills, rather than anything directly product-related.

Project management? I've done it, can do it, but I don't love it as a career. For me, a project management role could be an entry into an interesting field where I have no product experience, which I could gain in parallel to managing projects, without causing too much havoc - after which the company would recognise my abilities and give me a more technical role. Hopefully potential employers will read this after they've hired me (I love the job, boss, really!)