admin Creativity, Design, Writing

Narration: Fate of the Nameless Child

In October 2020 my flash-fiction “Fate of the Nameless Child” was published in Australian zine “Antipodean Sci Fi“. Now, hear it come to life in my narration of this story in Nuke’s radio show at the link below.

Photo credit: Cedric at https://www.pexels.com/@cedricinshape and Freestocks at https://www.pexels.com/@freestocks

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A bit of background on the story.

“Fate of the Nameless Child” began as a longer piece of work several years ago; a multi-chapter, multi-perspective narrative and commentary on how people fear the unknown ‘thing’, the unknown ‘one’. Themes of attempting to understand, contain, destroy are explored more deeply in the original.

I shopped it around to several publishing houses to no avail; some lovely feedback on the tone of voice and the themes in the longer form piece, which I am sure I will publish here one day so you can appreciate the full story and more of the characters who only get a passing mention in this version.

Who is the nameless child, and what is their fate?

Alistair, October 2020

p.s. Read my previous piece “Fallen Angel” also published by Antipodean SF.

admin Creativity, Design, Inspiration, Uncategorized

Phones In Space

Found this paper this morning and was fascinated. The word ‘innovation’ is often overused – don’t get me started on the word ‘strategy’. This is innovative, and clever. To build a functioning satellite for $USDS3,500 by reusing a smart phone and wiring it together with some pre-built componentry is a brilliant concept.

Phonesat 1.0 – Note the yellow tape measure segment being used as a radio antenna.

I’m not sure where this initiative went since it was launched (intentional pun) but it appears to have shut down around 2017.

Hyperlink to the paper is HERE and other information is at their website at THIS LINK.

admin Creativity, Design, Leadership, Strategy

Incremental Design and Problem Solving

via Kyle Wendland on Twitter

The video below, courtesy of the Brick Experiment Channel, caught my eye as a nifty example of iterative and accumulative design problem solving. This is not constrained to the tangible world. In systems design, a problem with a basic starting point which is responded to with a simple and effective solution often spawn a series of step-up demands and higher complexity problems over time.

There can be a few reasons for this, such as:

By design – an iterative/incremental approach to problem solving beginning with a ‘minimal viable product’ (MVP) which is tested, released, and then informs subsequent design in a conscious, methodical and step-wise fashion

By evolving requirement – the subsequent problems did not present themselves until the initial problem had been resolved due to evolution of the system itself

By naivety of requirement – the clients of the solution did not realise they had additional problems to solve or believed that the initial problem to be solved was the only one

By low capability awareness – the clients of the solution were not aware that the problem was able to be solved and therefore had not applied resources to solve it

By status quo bias – the clients of the solution were emotionally anchored on the current system, despite inadequacies, and so avoided attempts to solve the problem

Courtesy of Brick Experiment Channel on YouTube
admin Creativity, Design, Writing

Writing: Fate of the Nameless Child

My latest piece of flash-fiction “Fate of the Nameless Child” has been published by Australian zine “Antipodean Sci Fi”. Narration to follow soon!

Photo credit: Peter H at https://pixabay.com/users/tama66-1032521/

—

A bit of background on the story.

“Fate of the Nameless Child” began as a longer piece of work several years ago; a multi-chapter, multi-perspective narrative and commentary on how people fear the unknown ‘thing’, the unknown ‘one’. Themes of attempting to understand, contain, destroy are explored more deeply in the original.

I shopped it around to several publishing houses to no avail; some lovely feedback on the tone of voice and the themes in the longer form piece, which I am sure I will publish here one day so you can appreciate the full story and more of the characters who only get a passing mention in this version.

Who is the nameless child, and what is their fate?

Alistair, October 2020

p.s. Read my previous piece “Fallen Angel” also published by Antipodean SF.