Thomil's Random Ramblings

So, yeah, remember back in late December 2021, when an Oculus Quest 2 arrived on my doorstep ? That device has seen surprisingly frequent use in my household. I’ve been using it for meditation exercises, gaming, indeed, my all-time favourite, Cities: Skylines just launched for Quest 2 a month or so ago, even some movies, and I’ve been doing so on an almost daily basis. However, as generous as my employer was when he sent out the device, it wasn’t just meant as an entertainment device. Indeed, Lord Zuckerturd himself envisions the Quest 2 and the “metaverse” as a productivity environment in addition to being an entertainment space. And I know from company communications surrounding the launch of the Quest 2 at work that my employer had intended it as a collaboration & productivity tool as well.  Yeah, that clearly didn’t work out as intended! By the time the last devices arrived at their owners’ doorsteps in early 2022, work from home mandates were being lifted left right and ce...

As I look back at my professional life so far, all twenty years of it, there’s been one underlying if somewhat unspoken expectation that underpinned all of it. That is that you should work as hard as you possibly can, not just in your day job, but that you should ideally also have at least one side gig to be successful, one that you invest just as much energy and time into as in your day job. Sleep, recreation, a social life, pastimes, all these are seen at best as unwelcome distractions or weaknesses, and at best as equally unwelcome necessities to get inspiration and energy for your job.  Thankfully, this mindset didn’t extend within my family, back when I still had a family, but still, it was always present in many of my jobs. This attitude has a name, “Hustle Culture”. This term refers to a mindset that extols hard work to the detriment of all other aspects of life in order to “make it big” as early as possible, whether that’s by quickly rising up the career ladder or rapidly a...

Given Apple’s penchant for subtly changing the size of their devices with new iterations, a new iPad invariably means a new set of peripherals. Whilst the Apple Pencil 2 does not warrant a blog post of its own, and neither does the Smart Folio, the keyboard that I ended up getting has turned out to be quite the surprise. Let’s be real for a second, the iPad mini 6 as a standalone device is NOT designed for typing. The on-screen keyboard takes up way too much real estate on the screen when in landscape mode and trying to use split-screen at the same time is just an exercise in futility and frustration. Believe me, I’ve tried! And whilst Apple Pencil 2 is a great device, I just haven’t found it suitable for the type of long-form writing I tend to do. This is all the more true since Scribble, Apple’s handwriting recognition feature, does not seem to work with the likes of Microsoft Word or OneNote, or even Notion, which are my go-to productivity tools.  So, due to the fact that there...

With the lifting of COVID restrictions picking up pace across the world, aspects of normal life have begun to return as well, something that has done wonders for my mental health. Whether it’s working from an actual office, something I now do for four days a week and have been since January, or the disappearance of masks from public life here in Ireland, things seem to be almost back to normal. But how has travel been affected? Well, earlier in the year I had the chance to find out.  A full on team meeting had been arranged for one of the four regional teams I’m looking after at work. Since we’re talking about the German team, it had been decided to host it in Munich, and it was scheduled to be a big event, with even some senior leadership expected. I was asked to attend as well and so, with less than a month’s notice, I found myself with flights booked from Cork to Munich and back via Amsterdam with my favourite airline, KLM. The only apparent downside was a twelve-hour layover du...