GRIZZLY PEAR

written snapshots

Category: Notes

  • A few books on Leadership

    The other day I came across a request for leadership books on a forum and here are four that came to mind

    “Leaders eat Last,” by Simon Sinek, was a really nice overview of leadership from a biological and evolutionary lens. The basic thesis is that humans are biologically motivated to form groups via several chemicals, some of which emphasize personal achievement and others which emphasize group cohesion. Our society has gone out of whack favoring individual glory and the book is a polemic for balance. I am not a big fan of his “Start with Why Book” (it felt like a pamphlet dragged out to book length) but I thought this one was excellent.

    “Leadership Pipeline,” by Ram Charan and Stephen Drotter, is a great overview of the different levels of leadership in management and the different challenges and mindsets required to succeed at each level. With seven levels, most of them won’t apply to one’s specific position, but it’s really useful to see the overall set to contextualize one’s own challenges.

    “Extreme Ownership” and “Dichotomy of Leadership”, by Jocko Willink and Leif Babin. These books could be read individually but I think of the pair as an single work. It’s an easy read with a mix of stories from their military service and in the business world, with practical lessons to consider throughout the book, both as leaders and for one’s own individual mindset and performance.

    “Tribes” and “This is Marketing”, by Seth Godin. I’m a huge fan of Seth’s Blog, but not as much of his books. But still he is a great provocateur and these two books deal directly with leadership. Well “This is Marketing” doesn’t exactly deal with leadership per se, but it sets a framework of how we are trying to improve the world in such a way that I consider it a leadership book. And “Tribes” is a good book on dynamics in the digital age and pushes one to take advantage of the opportunities we have in front of us.

  • Coco, Lee Unkrich & Adrian Molina, 2017, and Wreck it Ralph, Rich Moore, 2012

    After having milked the Studio Ghibli library dry (my favorites remain Whisper of the Heart, Pom Poko, My Neighbors Yamada, and Spirited Away), we’ve come back to exploring domestic fare.

    Of those that we’ve seen recently, Coco and Wreck it Ralph have stood out because because they are more than their premises. It’s more than just “a boy’s hijinks in the world of the undead,” or “what if arcade characters had their own lives off-hours”.

    Like any popular film, these movies have both contain rollicking wild stories, but they also go deeper, genuinely touching on kernels of family and belonging.

    We’ve already watched both of these movies a couple times, and I’ll be curious if they hold up in a few years when the boy grows up and we get to watch them anew.

  • Making Mash for the Little Guy

    When it comes to feeding our son I’m useless, but my wife has come up with a nice system for making baby food.

    Because of the miniscule amounts being cooked, we have a separate electric induction hotplate. Induction is much faster than the usual radiant heat, and the controls are immediately responsive, like gas.

    Along with the hotplate, you’ll need to get an induction compatible saucepan, but given that you’re cooking little people quantities, you might have to get a little one quart saucepan anyways.

    Once the food is cooked she uses the handheld immersion stick blender to turn it into a big gooey little soup, which is spoon fed to the little guy.

    It reminds me of the garage apartment in Berkeley that I lived in after graduation. The kitchen was a little counter with a mini fridge, toaster oven, and hot plate. A big boy kitchen in miniature, I didn’t even have room for a rice cooker. The last fifteen years would have upgraded this neat little collection of gadgets with an airfyer, induction cookplate, and instapot.

    Even so, that little guy would have made some awful food, cause fifteen years ago, I didn’t have the skill, experience, or energy to make decent edibles materialize.

  • Creating a little friction

    I’m not yet ready to delete my twitter or facebook accounts.

    But I have started logging out of them on all my machines. (The phone apps were deleted a long time ago.)

    That doesn’t always stop me from logging back in and going down the rabbit hole. But occasionally it does.

    I never turned on Amazon 1-click because spending money should never be that easy. I need to take that same stinginess to how I waste my time.

  • Saving Mr. Banks, John Lee Hancock, 2013

    After the kids went to sleep, we watched the movie with Tom Hanks and Emma Thompson where Walt Disney cajols the P. L. Travers into selling the rights of Mary Poppins for the big screen.

    It’s a nicely done movie, with great A-list actors.  But mainly it was nice to watch a movie with weightier themes and a little bit more ambiguity than what one gets with children’s fare as Mrs. Travers wrestles with her difficult childhood.

    Then again some children’s movies aren’t as light as they may seem to children. After all, we just watched Mary Poppin a couple weeks ago.  Behind all the song and dance numbers, the film’s primary theme is the shortness of time we have with our children.  The threat barely veiled in that movie, at least for adults.

  • Cliff Stoll on Numberfile

    One of my favorite video series on the web is Cliff Stoll on Numberphile.

    Part of it is the subject matter, topology is totally mind twisting and I’ve always had a fondness for old technology, especially after my days in San Jose.

    However, I think it’s mainly about him.  He is just so joyful; he is enthusiastic, curious, and a bit impulsive.  This force of personality is also rooted in a deep interest in science and reality.  It’s this balance that makes it one hell of a joyride on the screen.

    The fun question for me is how to channel this dynamic as a client.  Exuberance doesn’t matter much if the client doesn’t have the basics down (firm decision making and holding the team accountable to high standards, setting up the conditions of success)  But beyond the basics, I suspect being a client who is excited about the project does get that extra 1% out of the team.  And if it’s gonna take ust as much effort to be dour, then why not, right?

  • Aladdin, Ron Clements & John Musker, 1992

    I was watching Aladdin with my daughter and I realized that architects are like the genie in the bottle.  By definition, this profession literally creates the world around us.

    But we are also bottled up by the constraints of circumstance and the limitations of our client. While tackling one technical problem after another, we can’t forget that we are the big silly blue genie with ridiculous power!

    The hard part is getting the client to wish for it.

  • Laughlin, Nevada

    In the fall of 2000, I took a landscape studio and was introduced to the classical form of the labyrinth.  Unlike modern maze puzzles, the labyrinth is a continuous route that leads you to the center and walking this wound up path has been used by monks as a form of meditation.  It is an intriguing form, which is why it has survived through history.

    Fast forward seventeen years later and I spent a good chunk of last autumn working on an RV park along the Colorado River out in Laughlin.  The project was sited on a property that was previously slated to be condominiums with several structures already installed on site.  Like that ill fated project, this one fell through and was shelved late in construction documents.

    This past Friday, we took a day trip out to Laughlin.  Unfortunately the casino strip is unremarkable, aside from the ability to buy a lotto ticket across the river.

    However I was finally able to conduct a belated site visit (finally saying hello to an online friend in person). Plus we found a little grassroots land art feature, the Laughlin Labyrinths. So I finally had a chance to walk a few labyrinths in person with our daughter. 

    In both cases, it was good to take these places out of the minds eye and live them in the fullness of reality.

  • Steamed Bread, 24 November 2018

    It looks like wee will be veering into steamed breads for a bit.  My wife prefers them and I like them well enough. Plus, being steamed, it’s no big deal to freshen them up by steaming them again, when they literally become freshly bread all over again!

    The yellow one was a cornmeal batter that my wife wanted to try out, from a recipe online. My daughter and I mixed up the ingredients in the kitchenaid mixer bowl and we quickly realized that we should have just mixed it in the steaming bowl because this thing was a really slack batter!

    80g all purpose flour (Central Milling)
    100g cornmeal (Arrowhead)
    80g water
    40g starter
    35g sugar
    1 egg

    After having poured out the batter, I felt it a shame to waste the kitchenaid bowl on nothing, so I went ahead and made a steamed bread of my own, wanting to test out a recipe with a nice elegant ratio of “5 flour : 3 water :  1 starter : .25 sugar” . 

    240g all purpose flour (Central Milling)
    60g whole wheat flour (Montana Wheat)
    180g water
    60g starter
    15g sugar

    In all I think they both came out nicely and while my wife is interested in playing with different flours, I’m most likely going to just stay on the path I was previously headed, working in more and more whole wheat flour to see what I can max out on…just now steamed.

  • Mary and the Witch’s Flower, Hiromasa Yonebayashi, 2017

    I woke up thinking about the animated movie Mary and the Witch’s Flower, which was done by a group of Studio Ghibli alumni.

    The drawing style of the movie was classic Ghibli in its look and feel, as was the story with a strong girl as the lead in a fantastical world.  In fact, it was based off of a story by Mary Stewart, who had also written the story behind Howl’s Moving Castle, which is a very good movie by Ghibli.

    Unfortunately however, there was something missing in this effort.  Or rather, I should say maybe there was too much thrown into this effort.  It hit all the classic Ghibli beats, but it just didn’t hold together tightly as an experience.

    I wonder what was the missing piece of the puzzle.  I wonder if it because they didn’t have big headliners on their team, like directors Miyazaki or Takahata, or if it was someone outside of the limelight who held a quiet influence over the studio process.

    What is the magic ingredient that takes excellent craftsmanship and shapes it into greatness?