Work-ish
I’ve been checking out various suppliers of: wait lists; referral lists; landing pages; digital product distribution. There’s a lot of choice and a lot of cross-over. It doesn’t make it easy to decide. The suppliers all offer something slightly different and with different price points, so I really need to have at least a vague notion of what I’ll need when and to support what size audience. Of course, there’s no end of people offering up their opinion on which is best.
Q4 is nearly with us, which means I’ve been wrapping up clients’ (and my own) Q3 strategy reviews. Because I take a ‘continuous delivery’ approach to strategy, there was not much that I didn’t already know; it’s more about getting the final numbers locked down.
I use Weekdone to manage strategies - I like its relative simplicity. You can pull metrics (for KRs or KPIs) in from a Google sheet, which is useful. For Q4 I’m looking to further automate matters by having n8n and AirTable update the Google sheet periodically.
N8n now has ’native data tables’, which means you can hold data or state within the automation, rather than off-lining it to secondary storage (Google file or sheet, for instance). I’ve not yet used it, but can see how I might update a couple of my workflows to make use it. My only concerns, currently, are (a) I would still want to off-line the data by way of a back-up, (b) data sovereignty - not a problem with the data I’m currently automating, but would need further research if I were dealing with more sensitive or personal data.
Writing
I wrote a couple of posts for The Ode Map, but didn’t get much creative writing done. I have a couple of poems in draft but struggling to get the rhythms right within the ridiculous constraints that I’ve set myself. I may just have to abandon them (or shelve them for now, at least) and push on with other ideas.
Interesting
I made a couple of field recordings - one of the coffee machine and another when the wind was particularly strong and rustling the trees - and created some interesting sounds and rhythms in Life. It’s given me some thoughts for some songs.
I listened to (amongst others):
- GLO (Girl Life Online) - Stealing Sheep
- Random - Various Artists [An album of Gary Numan song re-interpretations]
I watched a lot of tv. Mostly nostalgic. Must not read anything into that 😂. Of note:
- “Endless Night”. I watched this and I don’t know why, because it always makes me feel uneasy. I think it’s because it’s not a classic Christie ‘whodunnit’ - it was written as a psychological thriller, narrated by the killer. I think the fact that the TV adaptation chucks Miss Marple in (no famous detectives solved the case that Christie wrote in 1967) is what makes it a little wonky.
- “Time Bandits” (1981). Not as funny as I remembered it, but still better than last years’ Apple TV+ remake.