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Manual Work is a Bug

This is another interesting article about automation, and how it slowly incurs time costs by waiting for the right time to properly tackle the automation, rather than piece-by-piece.

Recommended read: Manual Work is a Bug https://queue.acm.org/detail.cfm?id=3197520

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Do-nothing scripting: the key to gradual automation

This is a really interesting way of approaching automation in a gradual way - make the documentation in code, then take that code and slowly iterate over it until you have a fully automated solution. I like it - obviously we always want to have the final product, but it's a good way to get there slowly

Recommended read: Do-nothing scripting: the key to gradual automation https://blog.danslimmon.com/2019/07/15/do-nothing-scripting-the-key-to-gradual-automation/

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Re-framing how we think about production incidents

This is a great post by Shubheksha and talking about the right way to talk about production issues.

Having a blameless culture makes it easier for new/junior engineers getting started with working on production systems, and makes everyone more comfortable working on things where they know they won't get the blame pointed at them.

I've found that, at work, diagnosing issues in our staging environment has given me such a great experience - it's been great to practice dealing with production-like issues in a non-production environment, as it gives you that time to breath, experiment and learn, as well as giving me much greater understanding of the end-to-end system.

Recommended read: Re-framing how we think about production incidents https://shubheksha.com/posts/2019/04/re-framing-how-we-think-about-production-incidents/

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How we respond to incidents

As I've said before, I'm a big fan of how Monzo handles their production incidents because it's quite polished and transparent

Recommended read: How we respond to incidents https://monzo.com/blog/2019/07/08/how-we-respond-to-incidents

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Quitting my job has been the best thing I've done for my career

This is a really interesting post. Only the other day, Anna and I had been talking about how it'd be interesting to work 4 days a week, or even part time. It sounds like it'd be a great opportunity if you're able to financially cover it

Recommended read: Quitting my job has been the best thing I've done for my career https://www.joshuahu.io/blog/quitting/

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The PGP Problem

This is a really interesting article about the flaws in PGP - I don't have enough security backing and understanding to argue it, but it sounds legitimate. It's a surprise this isn't being talked about more if it is as bad as it is

Recommended read: The PGP Problem https://latacora.micro.blog/2019/07/16/the-pgp-problem.html

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Get your work recognized: write a brag document - Julia Evans

This is a great idea, which I believe I've seen Julia mention in the past, and I definitely agree that this can help with making sure you remember what you've done! In a previous job we had 'monthly status reports' which were an overhead at the time, but when leaving the job (as my placement year was up) I was able to look back at all the stuff that I'd achieved.

I like to get microfeedback from colleagues, so throughout the year I'm getting bits of feedback on things I've worked on, so for 6-month checkins I've got lots of evidence.

Recommended read: Get your work recognized: write a brag document - Julia Evans https://jvns.ca/blog/brag-documents/

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IndieWeb Summit 2019, day 1 - fluffy

What a great writeup of some of the happenings at IndieWeb Summit! This looked like an awesome event, and although I was unable to make it in person this year, I'm definitely planning on it next year.

There were some great sessions that I'm still catching up on, and will be interested to see what folks produce off the back of their conversations there.

Recommended read: IndieWeb Summit 2019, day 1 - fluffy https://beesbuzz.biz/blog/3785-IndieWeb-Summit-2019-day-1

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How am I? - Carol Gilabert

This is a very interesting post by Carol. I very much empathise with this - my mind is almost always in the 'on' position (as anyone who knows me and the frequency of my blogging).

Be it at work, at home, trying to get to sleep, or having a massage, I'll be thinking. Likely it'll be projects-related (be they work or personal) and it means I'm not able to enjoy the other things.

In a couple of weeks Anna and I are off on holiday, so I really hope I'll be able to switch off a little, as we've decided we're not taking laptops...

I obviously have some work to do to make this possible to start switching off and not always thinking about what's next.

Recommended read: How am I? - Carol Gilabert https://carolgilabert.me/blog/how-am-i

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Debugging the .gitignore file - Kennard

I've not had to debug that many .gitignore files in the past, but it's great to know how I would do it in the future

Recommended read: Debugging the .gitignore file - Kennard https://blog.kennard.dev/2019-06-19-git-debug-gitignore/

 Note

I've just removed categories as a thing from my website. I'm still using tags on all the content, but categories no longer exist. This is for a few reasons:

  • categories are not Microformats2 markup-able (as we can't distinguish between tags and categories, it's just p-category which we use for tags)
  • categories in the site are not currently hierarchical - although they may be defined as such, they're not presented like it
  • categories are not any more meaningful than tags, as they're almost always the same, or a reduced set, compared to the tags

So we may as well just remove support for them, as they serve exactly zero purpose.

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TL;DR Legal - Software Licenses in Plain English

This is a resource I've used time and time again for getting straight-forward explanations of Free and Open Source licenses - I shared it in chat.indieweb.org the other day, so I thought I may as well share it here, too

Recommended read: TL;DR Legal - Software Licenses in Plain English https://tldrlegal.com/

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Untangling the IndieWeb - David Yates

This is a great post by David recounting the 'levels' of IndieWeb capabilities, in a way that makes more sense to those who haven't been as involved in the community, and want to know how to relate to more common points of reference, like social media.

Recommended read: Untangling the IndieWeb - David Yates https://davidyat.es/2019/06/24/indieweb/

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Discovering the IndieWeb - Craig Burgess

When I was promoting the last Homebrew Website Club on Twitter ( https://twitter.com/JamieTanna/status/1138339357121744897 ), a friend of Craig's tweeted to mention to him about it. We then spent a couple of days talking about it - and boom, Craig is now running his own Homebrew Website Club on 18th July ( https://getdoingthings.com/homebrew-website-club-barnsley-1/ ).

Last night Craig posted this great post about joining the community and with some great explanations for newbies. Welcome, Craig!

Recommended read: Discovering the IndieWeb - Craig Burgess https://getdoingthings.com/discovering-the-indieweb/

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https://monzo.com/blog/2019/06/20/why-bank-transfers-failed-on-30th-may-2019/

This is a really interesting read from Monzo about a recent incident they had. I really enjoy reading their incident management writeups because they show a tonne of detail, yet are stakeholder-friendly.

It's always interesting to see how other banks deal with issues like this, and what they would do to make things better next time.

Recommended read: https://monzo.com/blog/2019/06/20/why-bank-transfers-failed-on-30th-may-2019/ https://monzo.com/blog/2019/06/20/why-bank-transfers-failed-on-30th-may-2019/

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"here's a thread about how words matter in business using Disney as an example" - Justin Garrison

This is a super interesting thread from Justin Garrison about the importance of words, using Disney as an example. It's always amazing to see examples of how these seemingly small changes can make huge differences.

Recommended read: "here's a thread about how words matter in business using Disney as an example" - Justin Garrison https://twitter.com/rothgar/status/1139968357438857217