Philosopher and historian by training, Operations Manager by pay cheque, and a doctoral candidate at Macquarie University researching Edmund Burke on authority and the implications for leadership.
Online Accounts
My site, like my research, is loosely divided into the major topics of leadership, philosophy, history, politics, business and technology. In many ways they are usually highly interconnected with any categorisation being akin to Wittgenstein’s notion of:
taking up some books which seemed to belong together, and putting them on different shelves; nothing more being final about their positions than that they no longer lie side by side
Reading
Most of my reading is for various research projects, but there are some recommended books from my various pleasures and interests.
Books for Pleasure
Any of the Sherlock Holmes Stories by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, though the novels of The Hound of the Baskervilles and The Sign of Four are masterful
- The New Annotated Sherlock Holmes is a highly recommended edition for anyone wanting to know more about the historical setting of the stories
J. R. R. Tolkien
P. G. Wodehouse
Oscar Wilde
Stephen Fry
Books for Interests
Niall Ferguson
Andrew Roberts
Steven Pinker
Yuval Noah Harari
Daniel Kahneman
Tom Holland
Nassim Nicholas Taleb
Hannah Arendt
Michael Burleigh
How I Do Computing
This section is modelled on Richard Stallman’s How I Do Computing page. Great format for covering tech interests from a leader in the GNU movement.
While my privacy interests favour Linux, the practicalities of life necessitate pairing this with a Windows environment. My Windows PC is a home built desktop (AMD RYZEN Threadripper 1920X, Corsair Cooling, Nvidia GPU and plenty of RAM).
However, my personal operating system of choice is Linux-based. I currently use Pop!_OS with Typora for my focused writing environment and LibreOffice paired with Zotero for my research projects.
Privacy
Perhaps it is a creeping presbyopia, in which life seemed to afford a greater privacy in the past. Perhaps it is an increasing awareness of the intrusive nature of advertising and data mining. Whatever the cause, I have become a strong privacy advocate and try, difficult though it is at times, to Restore Privacy… with some Privacy Tools it can be done.
Recommendations
Firefox for browsing – modified and tweaked for privacy
DuckDuckGo for search
Signal for messaging
- Threema gets an honourable mention
ProtonMail for email
ProtonVPN for VPN
Tresorit for file storage
- NextCloud gets an honourable mention for those willing to manage their own service
Mastodon for social posting
- While I understand the pull of the world’s biggest social network, Stop Using Facebook has some compelling arguments if you haven’t seen them…
PixelFed for social imaging
WordPress for blogging
For those looking for a Google Docs / Office.com replacement and don’t want to manage a NextCloud instance: CryptPad has a great suite of tools.
A Sovereign, Open and Healthy Web
This section is inspired by Ru Singh philosophy of an ‘Open and Healthy Web,’ Aral Balkan’s conceptualisation of the ‘Small Web,’ and the burgeoning IndieWeb project. The prime principles of which are:
Your content is yours
When you post something on the web, it should belong to you, not a corporation. Too many companies have gone out of business and lost all of their users’ data. By joining the IndieWeb, your content stays yours and in your control.
You are better connected
Your articles and status messages can go to all services, not just one, allowing you to engage with everyone. Even replies and likes on other services can come back to your site so they’re all in one place.
You are in control
You can post anything you want, in any format you want, with no one monitoring you. In addition, you share simple readable links such as example.com/ideas. These links are permanent and will always work.
This represents a reform of the global digital network to promote the adoption of individually-owned and controlled sovereign spaces.