A Year On Micro.blog
It’s been a year since I’ve signed up to Micro.blog and written my first post, and the only regret I have is that I didn’t do it sooner.
The reason for joining was to write more; to focus less on the blogging engine and more on the blog itself. At the time I have only posted seven times over a period of 9 months. In the last year, that post count has risen to 222. I guess I can call that objective achieved.
But the biggest reason for staying, and one I wish I knew sooner, is the fantastic community here. Having such a great bunch of people online is quite rare now, and this has quickly been my favourite place on the internet. We truly have something special here.
Thank you all for being such awesome people.
I’ve got to get into the habit of writing more about what I’m doing. I never think about it at the time because it always seems like a distraction. But I always regret it later when I want to revisit something, and nothing about it is written down, and all I have to go on is my memory. Conversely, on those rare occasions when I actually had something about it written down, I’m always happy that I did.
Trying my hand at logo design for something I’m working on. I’m aiming for something that looks like a mix between a bookmark, the letter D, and something to suggest synchronising stuff. This is probably the best I’ve got so far.
Start of new project: organising solar panels for my house.
Finished reading: The Sentinel by Lee Child (yep, I’m a Jack Reacher fan). 📚
Genius me set myself a reminder on Friday to “update the doco”. The reminder has just shown up, and I have no idea what “doco” I was referring to.
Why I like developing in Go vs. something like NodeJS: my development setup doesn’t randomly break for some weird reason. When it does break, it’s because of something I did explicitly.
Credit to Vic. DHHS for including more information about the origin of new Covid-19 cases alongside the daily tally. I appreciate that this feedback from the public has been taken onboard. I can imagine it means more work, but it really helps with peace of mind.
I’m seeing more and more apps these days being designed as the software equivalent of catalogues, and I’m finding it quite distasteful. This is not so much ads: I understand that developers need to make money some way. It’s more things like “featured articles” in Maps on iOS, or news articles in search results (if these were ads, they should be disclosed as such).
I’m using your software to achieve a goal here, not simply to browse around.
When it comes to organising things, whether it’s a large transition or simply the events of my day, I tend to be quite rigid in my scheduling. I make sure to plan ahead, and ensure that the things that need to happen do so in the intended order. There is a time for everything, and everything is to happen on time. Any deviations from this and I get anxious.
I know some people, both friends and family, that are the polar opposite to this. No need for a set scheduled, just show up when you’re ready. Things happen when they happen, and if they’re delayed or out of sequence, so what? We’ll eventually get by in the end.
I wish I had a bit more of this attitude.
I wonder if part of my indecisiveness in making large decisions, such as changing jobs, has a lot to do with the need to make everyone happy. I know that’s not always possible, you can’t please everyone. Maybe the best approach is to minimise the damage.
I was feeling a bit under the weather yesterday so I got a Covid-19 test. In July 2020, when I last had a test, it took me 5 days to get the results. Yesterday, I got the results in 9 hours (it was negative). Really impressed by how well testing improved over the last year.
Working On The Weekend
I’ve saw a Tweets last night saying that the best thing a young person can do to help their career is to work on the weekend. The implication there is that being the one that “puts in the extra hours” can seem, in the eyes of your employer, like you’re the hardest worker there, that you’re committed to the project and the job. This could lead to bonuses, promotions, perks, a reputation, you name it.
I’m always sceptical when I see advice like that. Coming in on the weekend on a voluntary bases might be good for your career, but is it actually good for you? Are you doing yourself any favours spending two additional days a week creating value for someone else?
What about the things that will create value for you? That can help you be a more rounded person? Things like learning a new skill, starting a new side project, socialising, taking up a hobby. When will you have time for that? Not to mention just fricken resting, which is really not as valued as it should be.
My feeling is that you already work for someone else 5 out of 7 days a week. By all means work on the weekend if you want to, but make sure you’re doing it for yourself.
I’m wondering if Slack should add a feature which, on demand, will roll-up the last several messages in a thread or channel, delete them all, and replace it with a single message saying “Nope, we were wrong here.”
A walk in the rain, with no one else around other than the currawongs. Fair bit darker than what the photo suggests.
I feel like the only person in the world that prefers to catch up on the WWDC keynote by reading the Ars Technica liveblog over watching it.
Only took 5 failed CI builds today before I realised that there may be something wrong with the code I wrote.
For anyone who needs it, here’s a Tampermonkey script for hiding the trending topics and recommended topics/people from Twitter’s sidebar.
Congratulations to Ben Thompson on the announcement of Passport. Looks to be a very promising tool for creators aiming to make a living on the open web. All the best to him in this endeavour.
It’s a bit of a shame that we couldn’t be using something like NFC for checking in to venues, rather than QR codes. The user experience would be much better: just tap your phone. This is quicker and less annoying than opening the check-in app, waiting for the splash screen to go away, tapping “Check In”, positioning the camera, etc.
Sure, establishments will need to buy NFC tags, which are not as cheap as printing a QR code. But I’m betting that the simpler check-in experience would mean more people would be doing so, making it easier for contact tracers to get on top of outbreaks and letting these businesses open up again.
I imagine people want to do the right thing. Make it convenient for them to do so.