November Favourites 2020
Table of Contents
- November Favourites 2020
- 🍿 My Favourite Movies of the Month
- 📺 My Favourite Shows of the Month
- 🖥 My Favourite Websites & Reads of the Month
- 💪🏽 My Favourite Lifestyle Change of the Month
- 🤔 My Favourite Realizations of the Month
- 🎨 My Favourite Arts & Crafts of the Month
- 🎥 My Favourite YouTuber of the Month
- 🎬 My Favourite Videos of the Month
- 🎸 My Favourite Music of the Month
🍿 My Favourite Movies of the Month
A Few Good Men
Back to the Future
Dick
A Quiet Place 1
Dark Skies
I Spy
Rickie Rich
Apollo 13
Diana: In Her Own Words
My Cousin Vinny
📺 My Favourite Shows of the Month
The Queen's Gambit
The Crown - Season 4
🖥 My Favourite Websites & Reads of the Month
At the beginning of this month, I was really interested in the idea of using website design as a storytelling aid. I came across these two great examples of engaging storytelling through UI:
💪🏽 My Favourite Lifestyle Change of the Month
"How to make today great" and "How I could have made today better" reflections
During the first half of the month, I found that my days were riddled with a lack of motivation and energy. So, I decided to incorporate a proactive approach, which has made some major strides in solving the problem. I've started a habit where, every morning, I write down a list of things that would make the coming day a success in my eyes. I set it up so that I have two recurring items: 1) that I'll be able to complete most/all of my to do list, and 2) that I'll have consistent energy and motivation throughout the day. On top of those two, I also choose to include anything unique to that particular day ahead, including things that are out of my control. I found that including some things that are outside of my control gives me more insight into why I feel a certain way towards the day I just had. Speaking of nightly reflections, I've also added a new question that I like to answer at the end of each day, which is "how could I have made today better". Adding this habit to my nights has allowed me to recognize some recurring negative themes that affect my days, so that I can tackle them head on.
🤔 My Favourite Realizations of the Month
- Questioned the need to memorise the names of quote sources
This month, I wrote a blog post about the strategy I've used to memorize over 200 quotes and counting.
While describing my process, I came to the realisation that I've spent an unnecessary amount of effort memorizing the names the people I was quoting. I decided to use the blog post as an excuse to question why I feel the need to memorise quote sources, and I was able to come to the conclusion that, for my purposes and potentially yours, memorising quote sources is a waste of effort. Here's the snippet of my post that explains my rationale:
My primary argument for memorizing the quote and the name of its source: It feels right to give credit where credit is due. Counterargument: My guess, is that it feels right because of two possible reasons: 1) School has conditioned you to fear the consequences of not citing your source. In which case, it's helpful to recognize that you're not in school anymore and, unless you plan on using a quote in a published work, you're neither helping nor hurting the quote source in anyway. By knowing the quote, you can always hunt down the source later, if you want to find them, but the extra burden of memorizing their name could impair your ability to memorize the quote itself. 2) You feel that quoting someone without giving them credit is not fair to them. In which case, you should consider how many unattributed quotes and idioms you already know. Unless you make an intentional effort to track down the etymology of every quote and idiom you already know, then what's the point in starting now. Especially, if you've never experienced the need to research/struggle to find out the sources of the ones you already know. Not to mention, that you rarely know for sure where the inspiration trail of a quote ends. I wouldn't be surprised that if you trace back the source of a lot of the quotes out there, you'll find that a lot of them are adaptations of even older quotes. This is also a good argument for why you shouldn't feel the need to preserve a quote word for word. Response: But what about something like poetry? It's an art form and wouldn't neglecting to cite your source be to plagiarize their work? And it's not just limited to poetry, a lot of quotes come from things like books or comedy sketches, which required someone else's thoughtful effort toward wording. Counterargument: There's something to be said about not knowing the name of a source and claiming the quote/poem as your own versus not knowing the source and admitting that you don't know the source. I'm pretty sure that it can't be plagiarism if you don't claim it as your own creation.
One really interesting perspective I gained by watching this roundtable discussion was when Hugh Jackman talked about how he used to call himself a perfectionist, until one day he asked himself when the last time he put something perfect out into the world was. He realized that calling himself a perfectionist was often just a cooler way of saying insecure.
🎨 My Favourite Arts & Crafts of the Month
Something I've really come to enjoy this year is combining my new crafting hobby, quilling, with elements of storytelling. I've been posting my creations on Instagram and this month I went back to revisit my work over the past several months. In doing, this I recognised a pattern, where a lot of my stories revolve around my quilled creations commiting crimes and other heinous acts. So I've decided to gather all of them up and turn them into a series that I'm calling Crooked Quills.
🎥 My Favourite YouTuber of the Month
This month YouTube was generous enough to recommend one of Billiam's videos, which flung me into a nostalgic rabbit hole of some of my favourite shows and trends from childhood. The videos that brought back the most memories were his Scooby Doo series, and his videos on Angela Aneconda, Neopets, Lilo & Stitch, Cardcaptors, and spy gear.
🎬 My Favourite Videos of the Month
- Some studies show that anywhere from 33-60% of the population is struggling with the skills required to read graphs (graph illiteracy)
- Six of the seven most visited stories in The Washington Post's history have ben graphics
- A graph has five ways of misleading you:
- Poor design
- A good graph design needs to strike a balance between simplicity and accuracy
- The design choices should complement and not exaggerate
- Dubious data
- If a graph doesn't have a known source, it's just a picture
- To avoid falling for bad data, you need to make sure that the data source exists and that it's credible.
- Insufficient data
- Concealing uncertainty
- If a graph's source exists and is credible, then you need to make sure that the data and the graph are telling the same story. That means, making sure that the graph isn't cherry-picking statistics or burying an important point in a forest of irrelevant numbers.
- Suggesting misleading patterns
- "Don't read too much into a chart, particularly if you are reading what you would like to read."
"This desperation is a desperation of connection to other humans, to community, to support systems, to life, to the rest of the world, and a reminder that you exist, and it's not shocking that they would risk their safety to be on TikTok, to have that level of human connection."
- Norman door:
- A door where the design tells you to do the opposite of what you're actually supposed to do.
- A door that gives the wrong signal and needs a sign to correct it.
- Norman doors are named after Don Norman, professor of psychology, cognitive science computer science, vice president of advanced technology at Apple, and the writer of The Design of Everyday Things (original title: The Psychology of Everyday things)
- The two basic principles of human-centered design:
- Discoverability: the ability to discover what operations one can do with a product
- Feedback: A signal of what happened
