Wonders Untold

A blog about life, arts and culture

Of life, arts and culture.

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A change of scenery

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I spent today working from my new ‘office’.

I’ve signed up for a subscription that entitles me to several days a month working from my choice of beautiful office buildings in Amsterdam.

It’s a nice way to experience different work environments. This is one of the benefits of the hybrid work culture ushered in by the covid pandemic.

Some days I work from home. Other days I go to my company’s offices. And now, I have a third option – I take my pick from any number of well designed, unique, Amsterdam buildings.

Today, I worked in a building on one of Amsterdam’s most beautiful canals. I was shown to a nice, private office where I worked undisturbed for the whole day. The wifi was excellent, and so my video meetings went smoothly. There was a coffee machine close by, also stocked with decaf capsules. (A plus point in my book, as that is the only ‘coffee’ I drink.)

All told, a lovely day at work. Looking forward to many more.

In praise of Notion templates

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Three cheers for whoever invented the software behind Notion templates, in particular the button that allows you to create your own templates.

I’m a massive fan of this feature. One way I use it is to create a weekly goals sheet, which sets out all the things I want to achieve in any particular week.

My goals sheet has different categories relating to my personal and work goals, and also shows how these tie into my quarterly goals. As this is a document I fill in every week, I have created a Notion template in the form of a questionnaire. At the start of every week, I simply click a link, and a brand new questionnaire automatically appears. I then fill this in with my goals for the week.

Without the ability to create a template, I’d have had to create this questionnaire from scratch every week. I’m glad I don’t have to do that, and can simply focus on filling in my goals for the week.

Notion is an amazingly versatile app, and the ability to create templates does wonders for creativity. Five golden stars for this incredible feature.

Madoff on Netflix

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Currently watching the Bernie Madoff documentary on Netflix.

I’m on the second episode, and, so far, I like the series.

It is well made, if a bit slow in the storytelling. Great video and camera footage, does a good job in complementing the narration. They’ve also included a lot of footage of Madoff’s testimony during his deposition. Astounding stuff.

Ridiculous how easy it was for Madoff to get away for many years with such a massive Ponzi scheme.

And it appears that lessons have not yet been learnt. Recent happenings at Theranos and FTX clearly prove that point. One wonders how (over and over again) it is possible for people to commit fraud on such a large scale, and go undetected for such a long time. And we can be sure that there are more cases, yet to come to light.

So what does this say about our regulatory agencies, about the robustness of our financial systems, about our willingness to suspend disbelief when something looks too good to be true?

So much damage caused by the greed of fraudsters. Sympathies for all who have suffered from this.

Writing apps – 2022

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I’ve experimented with writing apps for as long as I can remember (e.g. see here). Not all of them stick, though. Many are downright unusable, some do not fit my workflow, and a lot tend to be quite distracting – e.g. cluttered with unnecessary features.

But there are some that I have used consistently, and which continue to serve me well. Here are my best writing apps of 2022:

  • Ulysses
  • RoamResearch
  • Drafts 5 (on which I am typing this post, actually. I can also send my posts to the blog from there.)
  • Notion (this app is all things to all men. I use it for several things, including as a writing app.)
  • Apple Notes
  • GoodNotes 5 (I don’t use this one as much as I did in the past, but it’s still useful for taking handwritten notes while doing research.)

I’ll be carrying on with these apps in 2023. I don’t suppose I’ll be replacing any of them. Taken together, they meet all my writing needs. I’m also not looking to add another app to the list. Unless someone comes up with something truly revolutionary. I can’t imagine what that would be, but let’s wait and see.