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
Why I Have a Website and You Should Too (12 mins read).
A persuasive look at the many reasons why you should have your own website, and some of the benefits it will bring you.
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/
Croatia 2019 Summer Holiday (7 mins read).
Some of the highlights of an amazing holiday with Anna in Dubrovnik, Croatia.
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/
I will be attending PHPMiNDS: The Politics of Tool-Shaming on
This is going to be a very interesting talk - there is so much of this around (I'm guilty too) and it'll be good to hear some more about it from James Seconde
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
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/
Why Your Talk Wasn’t Picked for NDC
Recommended read: Why Your Talk Wasn’t Picked for NDC https://medium.com/@dylanbeattie/why-your-talk-wasnt-picked-for-ndc-9f19366d8a43
The worst distractions are the ones we love: An interview with author and habit coach James Clear
Recommended read: The worst distractions are the ones we love: An interview with author and habit coach James Clear http://blog.rescuetime.com/james-clear/
The story behind our open source efforts
Recommended read: The story behind our open source efforts https://murze.be/the-story-behind-our-open-source-efforts
I will be attending Nottingham AWS Meetup on
Exciting to have another meetup re-start, as well as this being a very interesting topic
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
Can 'Indie' Social Media Save Us?
Recommended read: Can 'Indie' Social Media Save Us? https://www.newyorker.com/tech/annals-of-technology/can-indie-social-media-save-us
Is High Quality Software Worth the Cost?
Recommended read: Is High Quality Software Worth the Cost? https://martinfowler.com/articles/is-quality-worth-cost.html
Recommended read: Indieweb principles https://sizeof.cat/post/indieweb-principles/
I will not be attending Homebrew Website Club on
Unfortunately I won't be able to make it as Anna and I have plans that night - but please do go ahead and meet!
I will not be attending Cyber Nottingham - July Meetup on
I've decided to attend Homebrew Website Club instead
I will be attending Homebrew Website Club on
Visualising My Posting Habits (2 mins read).
Adding the capability to my site to enable visualisation of how often I post content.
A Reflection on Four Months of Gousto (11 mins read).
Looking back at the last four months of using Gousto to prepare meals for dinner.
Being Celebrated in the 2019 Tyk Community Awards (1 mins read).
Announcing my win in the 2019 Tyk Community Awards for my blogging efforts.
DDD East Midlands: Speaker Workshop (18 mins read).
A writeup of my notes from the awesome Speaker Workshop run by DDD East Midlands.
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/
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
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
Tricking the tricksters with a next level fork bomb - Vidar Holen
A sneaky and interesting way to trick someone into running a fork bomb, even if they know it may be one!
Recommended read: Tricking the tricksters with a next level fork bomb - Vidar Holen https://www.vidarholen.net/contents/blog/?p=766
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/
Rendering Webmentions using Client Side JavaScript (2 mins read).
Replacing my server-side rendered webmentions with client-side rendering.
I will be attending Tech Nottingham on
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.
I will be attending Speakers Workshop on
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/
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/
I will be attending NottsJS: SVG + JS on
I'm super excited for another chance to see Terence Eden speak! He's always brilliant, and most definitely knows his stuff.
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/
Force a Refresh of an Emby Library in Kodi (1 mins read).
How to force an update of an Emby library from Kodi.
Notts Techfast: What do testers even do all day? (6 mins read).
A writeup and some thoughts about Dan Caseley's talk at Notts Techfast.
I will be attending DevOps Notts on
After the previous iteration of DevOps Nottingham died a death, it's exciting to see a new one starting again!
Recommended read: https://shubheksha.com/posts/2019/06/a-few-things-i-wish-i-knew-before-i-started-working-as-a-software-engineer/ https://shubheksha.com/posts/2019/06/a-few-things-i-wish-i-knew-before-i-started-working-as-a-software-engineer/
Talking about the IndieWeb at OggCamp 2019 (1 mins read).
Announcing my talk at OggCamp 2019 about the IndieWeb.
I will be attending Homebrew Website Club Nottingham on
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/
"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
I will be attending Women In Tech July 2019 - No Time To Spare: Spark, Tinder, Breeze on
One year in WiT! - Women in Tech York
This is a nice look back at the first year in Women in Tech York - great to hear and looking forward to many years to come!
Recommended read: One year in WiT! - Women in Tech York https://www.wityork.org.uk/blog/one-year-in-wit
https://medium.com/@skpodila/why-do-i-care-c2ef43a25837
As with 'You Guys', this is another great view into why using inclusive phrases are incredibly important.
Recommended read: https://medium.com/@skpodila/why-do-i-care-c2ef43a25837 https://medium.com/@skpodila/why-do-i-care-c2ef43a25837