Work

This was written for <a href="\" target="\&quot;_blank\&quot;">www.mapsmagazine.co.uk</a> so focuses on the playing side of things, might write something in more detail at some point, dunno... Had a lot of fun and some great times, met some great people...

The gaps between my personal posts gets longer and longer, I'm going to try and take more time to do a few more things that I want to do over the coming weeks and months, been spending far too much time doing things for work or to achieve something, and not enough frivolous fun, so here's a blog post about not a lot in particular...

Landing the opening slot is a daunting and unenviable task for any band, doubly so when you're an acoustic act at a rock gig, you have to work extremely hard to even get the audience to acknowledge your existence, let alone actually listen to you. Sacha Ion's unique voice with its equal measures of vibrato, warble, screech and heart-felt gentility performs a good job of gaining the interests of at least some of the small crowd slowly building at Ding Dong tonight; she earns respect and hopefully some fans.For a debut gig, Nights at the Abattoir are brimming with confidence, ability and great songs, their peculiar blend of Gothic Glam rapidly winning over the hearts and feet of the audience. Aside from the incredibly bubbly (and possibly drunk) keyboard player and the dapper vocalist, the bands guitarist seems to be in a world of his own, the stage lighting even marking him out differently. Discordantly soloing over everything or indulgently descending into messy sonic pools of layered effects, most of the time it doesn't really work or sit well over the good fun and straight forward gutsy stomp of the rest of the band, but at times he finds his own moments of genius, pulling out a solo or lick that compliments the song beautifully.Schvendes take to the stage ably assisted by a sound man who seems to accompany just about every medium sized WA band, and short of a few early technical problems work together to produce a set where you hear every breath, every cello string bowed, every delicate bass note and ringing guitar chord. A mesmerising set ensues, Schvendes are a band that doesn't have to do or say a lot between songs, and in fact they're best staying silent to savour the adoring silence of the audience as they are absorbed in the show. Perhaps an occasional change of pace would be welcome; emotional lifts are needed at some points in the set as the dour melancholic material can sometimes be a little too much. However the set ends on a high note, so just as it's time to leave the audience and send them home, the band ensure that your memory of the night is generally a happy one.

This week was another week where various elements kept pointing me towards a certain way of thinking, again, I'll just go through the week and ramble a bit...

Applecore<br>Broken Door<br>Commercial crap<br>Cat flap<br>High crime<br>Sign of the times<br>Night clubs<br>Seedy pubs<br>Rubbish bin<br>Collecting tin<br>Bus stop<br>Bent cop<br>Run down school<br>Drunken fool<br>Paedophile<br>Give us a smile<br>Traffic jam<br>Bang bang<br>Road work<br>Office jerk<br>Broken homes<br>Millennium dome<br>Drug dealer<br>Office cleaner<br>Broken bottle<br>Full throttle<br>Boarded up shops<br>Office blocks<br>Social life<br>Beaten up wife<br>Dodgy bloke<br>Being broke<br>Sick on the ground<br>Too much sound<br>Political shit<br>Hypocrite<br><br>City life, don't you just love it<br>

As a cyclist you encounter so much stress, grief and abuse you at least hope that when you enter a bike shop you will be greeted by a friendly and supportive face. However even this isn't always the case as some cycle shop staff can be rude, patronising and unfriendly, especially to new and keen cyclists. So what a refreshing change it was when I set foot into Human Powered Cycles in Brunswick, not only friendly and approachable, but also passionate and with a big heart, lets have a few words with them.<br><br><b>Top Maintenance Tips</b><br>Keep your bike regularly maintained, oil the chain and wheels, keep all moving parts clean and basically just keep an eye on everything.<br>Make sure your light's batteries are not running out, especially on your back light as you may not always notice it's strength. On a related issue, don't buy two back lights to save money, this will confuse other traffic and could endanger you.<br>When adjusting gears don't rely on playing with the High and Low adjusters on the gear cluster, try adjusting the gear wire instead.<br><br>If you want to learn more about cycle maintenance then conveniently Human Powered offer some very competitively priced classes and rates for their own work, even providing courtesy bikes whilst yours is being fixed.<br><br><b>Top Riding Tips</b><br>Get a bike that fits you properly!<br>Don't hug the kerb and keep weaving in and out between packed cars, stay out in the road and stick to the same spot.<br>Don't ride timidly, assert yourself and be confident.<br>Obey the rules of the road, if you don't know them, learn them.<br><br>Human Powered's business has been sufficiently successful over the past seven years that they have been able to fund a program for recent Immigrants, providing bikes and cycling lessons, a quite unique scheme that you can help with by donating any old bikes you no longer require.<br><br>I asked the guys what they thought of some of the current issues that affect cyclists in Melbourne.<br><br><b>Why do you think that so many motorists in Melbourne are so 'bad' and have so little respect for Cyclists? </b><br>I feel that unlike many European cities motorists in Australia have priority, if they hit a non-motor vehicle then the victim is in the wrong. Perhaps this leads the attitude of motorists here, they feel they are always in the right. Generally most motorists get annoyed with pedestrians and cyclists because they slow them down. At the same time I dislike certain cyclists who abuse the rules of the road, annoying other users doesn't help, it will simply lead to more motorists disliking cyclists and treating us all with disdain and mistrust.<br><br><b>Do you think that if Cyclists paid a road tax we would be treated with more respect and get better facilities? </b><br>This is actually somewhat of a myth, the tax that motorists pay mainly goes into accident prevention / cure and then general administration costs of the tax. Cyclists have very little impact on council property and we pay for this with rates anyway. In fact, encouraging cyclists is in the interests of councils it leads to less wear and tear and increased health benefits.<br><br><b>What would help the future of cycling? </b><br>More education for all road users and more promotion of cycling as a viable and positive method of transport, both of these would hopefully lead to a change in attitudes.<br><br>Human Powered is a great self sufficient operation like so many in the inner suburbs, right down to their wonderfully informative website, their workshop computers running Linux and Bees in the backyard on the banks of the Merri. They are soon moving to commercial prosperity, hopefully it wont change the nature of the business.<br><br>38 Harrison St<br>Brunswick East<br>90296504<br><br>Soon moving to :<br>563 High Street<br>Thornbury<br><br>On the 1st December, drop by for opening specials!<br><br><a href=https://www.humanpowered.com.au target=î_blankî> www.humanpowered.com.au </a><br><br>The guys at Human Powered Cycles are so nice they've also offered anyone who mentioned Aduki a 10% discount.<

I've been having some thoughts recently on the paths that many open source projects seem to follow and who they are really designed for, the developer or the users?

&nbsp;<p class="p1">What can the non-profit sector learn from from the tech sector and vice versa?<p class="p1"><span style="line-height: 1.538em;">Two sectors that are traditionally diametrically diverse, one moves slowly and is resistant to change, the other moves quickly, keeping up with trends and developments, constantly evolving to meet new needs and requirements.<ul><li class="p1"><span style="line-height: 1.538em;">However in the changing global landscape, both need to be more efficient, different, offer extra value and change their ways of working.</li><li class="p1"><span style="line-height: 1.538em;">What can each sector learn from the other? What are some work practices that could benefit each?</li><li class="p1"><span style="line-height: 1.538em;">We look at some practical examples of each sector to lead a valuable discussion.</li></ul>

Three presentations tonight, followed by usual natters at the lovely Last Jar afterwards.

This was a great session with a myriad of conflicting opinions and points of few, that always sparks a good debate :)</div>&nbsp;</div>First up a great set of introductory resources for startup founders from Scott Handsaker, with a lot of new initiatives arriving in Melbourne. His slides will be available on the <a href="https://www.meetup.com/Lean-Startup-Melbourne/events/160212272/" target="_blank">event&#39;s meetup page</a>.</div>&nbsp;</div>Secondly was a very constructive talk on outsourcing that actually gave some great constructive advice on best practise in this sometimes thorny field. Advice covered finding, briefing and using outsourced workers as well as more details on creating a brief, making sure they follow it and how to evaluate their work coping with time differences and other infrastructure and culture differences. Finally, in a nice positive twist, the speaker recommend being generous and encourage to your workers.&nbsp;</div>&nbsp;</div>Final came a panel with a mixed bag of local and international entrepreneurs, Susan Wu, Leni Mayo and Brendan Lewis. They discussed the Melbourne startup ecosystem and how it compares with others around the world, especially in the UK and US. Here&rsquo;s a few tidbits I garnered and remembered to write down.</div>&nbsp;</div><ul><li>People only look for success, not necessarily actions when weighing up the impact of startups and/or a city. Connections and support for these startups are equally as important.</li><li>Those individuals and organisations who are successful should give back.</li><li>London had been a recent case study of government encouraging growth through backing and legislation, but London scale is vastly larger than Melbourne.</li><li>Melbourne&#39;s lack of size and geography makes us look more outward, also our lack of plan B if you fail, there are no massive employers Like Google or Apple who will value you.</li><li>Australia is too full of safe investors, non risky investing.</li><li>Lean and tech startups aren&#39;t the only startups in Melbourne, there are many others participating in different scenes such as medical.&nbsp;</li></ul>

So, we're coming up to our first month living in Leipzig (and Germany), so I think I can now start to give some initial impressions. Especially as now we are moving out of 'Holiday' mode and into 'Work' mode.

I guess most of its stylistic inspiration comes from Kurt Vonnegut and to a lesser extent surreal dark British comedy such as Douglas Adams. It is about the end of the world, but that isn't the point, it's just a vehicle. The fact that the world is ending isn't relevant, it's merely a surreal vehicle to explore elements of the human condition. Wow, that last sentence sounded pretentious!

I am currently open to opportunities for full-time and part-time work. Ideally with an enterprising startup or with a larger agency or internal development team.

After some polishing, planning and technical tweaking the text version of my work of fiction is now online.

My plan for 2015 was to spend another few months working on my various projects and then start looking for new full-time work opportunities. In the past month I made a few casual enquires to get an idea of what might be out there and ended up getting quite a few offers very quickly. Many of these I considered but weren&#39;t compelling or different enough (from past work roles) to be worth putting a hold on my own projects.

One Day the World Ended is designed to be an open source and collaborative work of fiction. Most of this will come later when I have more material ready, but <a href="https://github.com/ChrisChinchilla/One-Day-the-World-Ended-Jekyll" target="_blank">the code of the website is on GitHub</a> and you're more than free to issue pull requests if you want to.

This Weekend I have been thinking about excellence, or what does it mean