When I have work that does not require my full concentration (or when I'm doing things like cooking), I love to listen to podcasts. Especially my favourite one - Escape Pod. (Part of the reason why this is my favourite is that it's how I discovered podcasts, and especially fiction podcasts.) There's always a long list of podcast episodes lined up on my phone so I can enjoy them offline; most of them are fiction podcasts, though I do have a few nonfiction ones (about history, philosophy, and bouldering. Yes, it's a weird mix.)

Recently, there was a story that I liked even better than I like most of their stories - "Martian Chronicles" by Cory Doctorow. It's a longer story, so it comes in two parts, and I loved both the story itself and the narration (by Adam Pracht, who does a splendid job). So if you have some time on your hands (or on your ears?), and would like to fill it with a good story - I'd recommend listening to Martian Chronicles.

It happens every year - and this year, yesterday has seen another blogiversary. I started this thing in 2008 - so: Happy eleventh birthday, little blog!

Now... how does one celebrate a blog's eleventh birthday? Apart from having coffee and some cake, or something in that general direction?

 

It's the time of year when things start to finally slow down a bit - which is a very nice thing after the rather hectic time that October and November somehow always turn out to be.

So I'll be setting this week aside for maintenance work. Which includes looking through my stock, making decisions about new orders and re-orders, re-packaging and re-shelving things, trying to find new and better ways for troublesome spots or not-so-perfect temporary solutions, getting some paperwork dealt with, things like this. There is already some progress from when I started on Friday, and I've spent most of today taking stock and re-organising things. It feels nice in some way to be able to finally take the time to do this, though I do have to tell myself now and then that yes, this is work and yes, this is necessary as well as doing other, more obvious stuff.

Next on the list: finishing to sort through the "to-be-sorted" stack of papers that has accumulated on my desk. I've also started on this already, with some success (though there is still a good stack left to be taken care of in the next days). The cat, of course, is helping - she is always happy to inspect empty boxes, or to lie on a chair and supervise my work. (Ah, where would I be without my furry overseer.)

Do you have a time of year for taking stock and sorting? Does it also happen to be towards the end of the year, or do you find yourself doing this in spring, or at some other point in time? Or are you so organised that you don't need to do this, but have things taken care of bit by bit as they come up?

You've probably been getting just as many mails and special offers about Black Friday as I do. Lots and lots of offers... for discounts.

Sometimes, these discounts are so high that I wonder how this can be possible. Either it means that the vendor is having a huge margin with the normal pricing, so there's still some profit left after the discount, or it means there's no profit anymore and it's more or less an advertisement stint, with the intention of getting the customers to buy other things as well (possibly believing that the prices have to be just as good in every case, which they cannot be, or else the shop won't survive).

Black Friday has become more and more of a thing in Germany in the past years, and I'm not really in love with the thing. At all. I can totally understand giving discounts on goods that have been sitting in your stock for ages, taking up space - you'd want to clear those out as a merchant. (As a customer, I totally enjoy those, by the way. If something delights me that happens to be from last season... well, I couldn't care less that it's not the current season's colour, or whatnot!)

I also get giving discounts for large amounts of the same thing (and yes, if you are planning to order a heckton of something from my shop, you can always send me a message first and ask about the price, and I'll see what I can do).

When it comes to random temporary deep discounts, though... I don't get it. When I calculate my prices, I try to go for a profit margin that makes sense for running my business, but is still fair to my customers. Sometimes, because the raw materials are expensive, or because there's a lot of costs involved in the making of the product, the things I offer do end up with a relatively high price tag - I can't help that, and it usually means that I can only have small amounts of these things made, and that there's a certain risk of me sitting on them for a long time. (Which means storage space, and capital tied up - also something that has to be considered when setting a price.) That said, my pricing policy does not leave a lot of room for price reductions. So that's one reason why I won't do something like "half off everything for Black Friday!".

As a consumer, I'm also somehow miffed when I buy something, then find out a little bit later that said thing is now offered for X percent off. Yes, I know that's just bad luck, and since the price I paid has obviously not killed me, I could just ignore it. However, it still leaves some kind of bad feeling for me - and it will mean that the next time I need to buy the thing again, and it's not urgent, I might wait until it's discounted again, or I might look for it somewhere else, now knowing that it could be available for a lower price. Maybe I'm the only one weird in that way... but I wouldn't want to cause this feeling in my own customers.

I'm also not really in love with the idea of trying to get people into a buying frenzy on a specific day, or weekend. Most of us in the western world - myself included - buy more things than we really need anyways. We're not living in a world of limitless supply, though, and getting new things all the time is not going to be sustainable forever. So having a day hyped up to make people buy, buy, buy... it doesn't seem like a really good thing to me.

What do you think? Is Black Friday a thing where you are? If so, do you enjoy it? Are you happy with the deep discounts for no apparent reason? Or would you prefer to have lower, stable prices all the time?

In case you're looking for something to let your artistic self out to play, the Rijksmuseum is inviting everyone to participate in the Rijksstudio Design Award. This competition is open until February 27, and you can submit your piece, inspired by the collection of the museum.

There will be a Public vote winner and a Design Award winner, as well as a young Talent (aged 21 and under). You can read more about the award, and find the info for your submission, on their webpage.

It's time for some random links for you again (in hopes of getting my huge number of browser tabs diminished into something remotely sensible looking) - so here you go:

A new method for baking bread in minutes - researchers in Vienna are baking bread by sending electricity directly through the dough, which is looking especially good for things like gluten-free breads. You can read more about it here (in German).

If you put things on the Internet, chances are that someone else will see them and maybe feel inspired by them. Or... "inspired". There's also a chance that the idea might be taken and something entirely different made from it. Like in this case:
Bernadette Banner has made a dress reconstruction for herself, and the image of this has been used as the basis for a knockoff, sold very cheaply. So she bought a knockoff of her own dress, and made a long video about this:


If you prefer to read things to watching videos, you might want to go and browse the OpenAccess books at the OApen Library - for example the archaeology section.

There's also a bit of information online about Viking Age brocaded tablet-woven bands, as the teaser to a paper being presented at NESAT 2020.

Finally, here's something about giving media interviews as a scientist. I've been interviewed a couple of times now, and it's always exciting, and a little bit scary as well - but being well-prepared, as the article also states, definitely helps a lot.

You've probably been half expecting this after Monday's post - it's time for me to take some time off the blog, because of... things. Exciting things. Conference-y things.

I'll be travelling to the Knitting Symposium at the TRC in Leiden, where I am utterly delighted to be part of the panel discussion. Once I am back here, I will go straight on to the European Textile Forum, and after that, experience tells me, I will be totally knackered and will need a few days to recuperate, and then there's my Gran's Birthday coming up (she is turning ninety-eight!) and I will be home for that.

So... expect blog silence here until Monday, November 18.