Issue 2 - team management, 1899, and chainsaws
A possibly weekly email on what's been going on in my brain
27 November - 3 December 2022
Dark, grey, and cold, a perfect week to go back to work? Here's a reminder of the retrospectively lovely autumn, taken on my newest lens: the teeny-tiny 27mm f2.7 which makes my camera feel like a point-and-shoot.
image goes here John
Managing
I’ve been a team lead at work for over a year now, but the increase in company size has necessitated the creation of a Senior Management Team for dealing with higher level “business” things like utilisation rates, profitability etc. Spreadsheets, numbers, and acronyms. I probably couldn’t have asked for a softer intro to management as all of us on the team are largely learning as we go. Shifting away from the automatic defensive mindset of “stop being mean to my developers!” will take some getting used to. Meanwhile, some of “my” developers are metaphorically shoving crayons up their nose and chewing on electrical cables in glorious acts of self-sabotage. Some things never change I guess.
1899
I’m a huge fan of Dark - a German-language time travel series on Netflix, so when 1899 was announced with a lot of the same production team on board I was hugely excited. Having now seen it, I have Thoughtstm.
The series reminds me a lot of Richard Kelly’s subsequent film after directing Donnie Darko: it has the same fingerprints in the writing, but the loosening of constraints (whether in budget or creativity) took away the sharpness. 1899 doesn't (yet) have the hard edge to the plot that Dark did, and while the ending was entirely fitting and thematically spot on, by its nature, it still feels like a rug pull. For a while I wondered whether Jonathan Nolan and Lisa Joy were involved, so clear are the parallels between the recent Westworld‘s themes and 1899‘s (and saying any more would spoil things).
If the capricious programming moguls at Netflix deem this worthy of a second season I would not be disappointed, but thus far it isn’t as easy a recommendation as Dark is.
Anime
Anime seasons are fickle things, sometimes packed with dross, other times sparkling with gems hidden or plain. This one has a few stand outs, but the one that’s had the largest groundswell of hype is Chainsaw Man. It’s pretty much what it sounds like.
The latest episode, number eight, was spectacular. Hold-your-breath and grip-your-pillow great. There’s a lot going on to make it that good (direction, pacing, animation etc.), but my thoughts always turn to the writing. Chainsaw Man‘s moment-to-moment plot is swift and peculiarly told, but critically I think the episode worked so well because it has capital c Consequences and the series thus far has demonstrated it has the structure and the ability to support them.
Other series, anime or otherwise, are either so serial that the impact of any decisions last an episode, if that, or feel the need to build up, say, the death of a character with stirring music, noble intentions, and teary eyed mourners. There can be comfort in that, and really interesting stories can be found in genre restrictions, but the unexpected and consequential can have a huge impact. Compare with something like early Game of Thrones (you know, when it followed the books) or The Good Place and you get the idea: a story told serially, not just serial stories.
Which is to say Chainsaw Man is great so far. Weird and gross and deviant, but still good.
YouTube watches
- Why Japan's internet is weirdly designed - a follow up to a widely shared 2013 blog post the conclusions aren't ground breaking and in my opinion don't go deep enough but the editing is fun and the methodology is interesting
- Why Finland joining NATO checkmates Russia - there's a lot of hyperbole (drink every time the narrator says "DOMINATES" like a budget Unreal Tournament announcer) but it's interesting from a geo-political perspective; I found this channel's earlier video on Why Russia is invading Ukraine really helpful for putting the conflict into a birds-eye perspective
- USB4 is a glorious mess - I continue to only have a vague grasp on modern USB standards/modes, see also DP Review's video on USB power for photographers
- World's hardest jigsaw vs. puzzle machine - "If at first you don't succeed, lower your expectations until you do", Stuff Made Here is always interesting and the length of time between his videos really hammers home how complex the problems he's tackling are
This was hand-crafted by John.