Author: Nick

I'm a father, husband, son. I love reading, drawing, writing, being active, having a beer or a glass of wine with my wife, and am curious about everything.

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What I learned last week

What I learned last week (#84)

Self portrait illustration
Self-portrait

Last week was moving week! That being said this week’s update will be a little shorter than normal. Moving house is a lot of work, and we’re lucky to have the option to do it so no complaints about it being “hard” as such. Normal life stops while you are in-between and there was not much time for reflection, but I re-learned that I/we are pretty good at moving and I don’t expect this to be anywhere near the last.

Some reminder learnings for myself for next time:

  • Write more descriptive descriptions on moving boxes, at least on one side
  • The stuff I pack first or last tends to be the most important – either I really want to be sure what I’m packing is safe and well-organized (so I do it first and best) or I can’t live without it (and I end up hand carrying or packing last). I should look hard at the stuff “in the middle” and try to get rid of half of it
  • Money spent on a good moving company is money well-spent

Here are some other things I felt worth sharing from last week.

Book excerpt I enjoyed:

“I hate the expression ‘don’t reinvent the wheel.’ What rubbish! If the wheel hadn’t been reinvented, we’d still be using stone wheels.” (James Whittaker, Career Superpowers)

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What I learned last week

What I learned last week (#83)

Book excerpt I enjoyed:

I only began to enjoy studying after I got through the educational system and became a so-called member of society. If something interested me, and I could study it at my own pace and approach it the way I liked, I was pretty efficient at acquiring knowledge and skills. The art of translation is a good example. I learned it on my own, the pay-as-you-go method. It takes a lot of time to acquire a skill this way, and you go through a lot of trial and error, but what you learn sticks with you.” (Haruki Murakami and Philip Gabriel, What I Talk About When I Talk About Running)

Quote I’ve been thinking about:

Nothing diminishes anxiety faster than action.”

Walter Anderson
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What I learned last week

What I learned last week (#82)

Quote I enjoyed:

Creativity is intelligence having fun.

Albert Einstein

Book excerpt I was thinking about:

“The famed American writer and activist Maya Angelou once said, “I’ve learned that people will forget what you said, people will forget what you did, but people will never forget how you made them feel.”” (Esther K. CHOY, Let the Story Do the Work)

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What I learned last week

What I learned last week (#81)

Quote I was thinking about this week:

The enemy of life is middle age.

Orson Welles

Another from Orson that might go with the above:

I started at the top and worked my way down.

Orson Welles

What’s in a winglet:

The idea of turning a wingtip up (or down) dates back to the 19th century. In 1897, English engineer Frederick W. Lanchester patented the placement of end plates vertically at the tip of a wing to control wingtip vortices.

Generally only visible in high moisture conditions, clouds, or fog, vortices appear as twisting ribbons of air behind the wing, almost like mini tornadoes turned sideways. As air flows over the wingtip of a conventional airplane, it tends to roll upward from the high pressure area under the wing to the low-pressure area above it. At speed, airflow over the tip of the wing is also forced backward. This backward flow combines with the upward roll from under the wing to form a vortex.

They may look cool, but they’re a major drag, literally. Vortices cause lift-induced drag, lowering the efficiency of the wing.

https://www.popularmechanics.com/flight/airlines/a32972180/winglet-history

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Art

Drumsack Farm Painting

Painting the landscapes outside where we live, as well as a bit of the inside, over the past month has been a fun way to get back into more regular watercolor painting.

With the latest one, I spent more time on it and worked sporadically over the course of several days. It was good just to have a piece out on the table that I could sit down and work a little on as I felt like it. It’s also kind of essential with watercolors in some sense as you need to allow for drying time in between sections, depending on the look you are going for. I’m sure this process annoyed the crap out of my wife and kids but hey, it was worth it. 😂

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