I love to learn and teach others, I'm always looking for new ways to improve myself. I'm a big fan of the leanweb community.
The idea for Ant.FM came from me switching from listening to music on the free Spotify (with ads) to listening to music on Youtube. Youtube provides most music ad free, but requires me to re-visit the web page to select the next track. I wanted to build a site that can queue up youtube video’s and play them one after another. Whether it is the full album, top tracks from an artist or a playlist…
Over the past two decades, there has been growing evidence that gratitude is not only good for team morale but has positive benefits mentally and physically for the person delivering the subjective self-assessment. Saying “thank you” reminds us that we would not be where we are without the effort of others. People tend to focus on the barriers they face, but by fostering a cognitively aware team…
Using the docs it can be difficult to spot the syntax to find an element with a class. Here is how you refine your search to the elements with my-image class. img = soup.findAll("img", { "class" : "my-image" }) Further reading: Beautiful Soup Documentation
Hi my name is Ant and I have work at Canonical the company behind Ubuntu for over 10 years now. All of which I worked in the office. For the last 7 years I have been a manager of a mix of in office-based and remote team members. Unexpected challenge over the last 12 months We used to hold company get together called Sprints within Canonical. In which, a large portion of the wider company would all…
Once a specification of a new feature has been designed and agreed. This work needs to be broken down into small pieces. A practise I describe in my post about specification documents . Once the tasks are broken down and listed is time to estimate these tasks. The temptation here is to estimate by time. For example, this should take me two days. Therefore, two points? Or it might take a week, is…
Modern appreciation systems in workplaces normally involve an application for someone including written justification. This reduces the chance of someone being appreciated when it becomes time to submit the form. If the appreciation is rejected? As this system is gated by applications then some will be rejected and would demoralise the person applying could lead to them becoming less likely to…
It was a pleasure to attend the Red Bull: Tech to Track event in Milton Keynes. This event showcased some of the remarkable engineering which is undertaken in Milton Keynes Red Bull factories. The team is constructed of ~1400 people making F1 the largest team sport in the world. The level of attention to detail in a cutting edge field is inspiring to witness. As an Engineering Director, I am often…
I have been grappling with the desire to improve my 1:1 meetings recently. As a manager, I want 1:1 meetings to focus on the needs of my reports and not be a status or progress report of their current work. But I don't want to burden anyone with preparing an agenda and no-agenda meeting can cause anxiety. So here are some areas I will try and touch on each week. Wellness : Are you safe and well?…
As of date of writing which was 2016. While working on the Juju GUI project, I was reviewing a pull request when I spotted there were no prefixes on box-sizing. I thought I should check if they needed it before asking the requester to add them. In doing so I was surprised to find that there are a lot more CSS features with global support than I originally thought. So I trawled through the chasms…
So I think we all have handy tips and tricks we have picked up over the years so I thought I would write them down and show you. I fully expect no one to learn something but you never know. 🤷♂️ Google Meet ctrl + d - Toggles the audio on/off ctrl + e - Toggles the camera on/off If you focus on the audio button, you can hit space to toggle the audio on and off. Mattermost alt + [up|down] - This…
There's a question I ask in almost every engineering interview, usually treated as a formality: "Why are you looking for a new opportunity?" The textbook answer is often vague about growth, new challenges, or expanding your skill set. But when you ask enough engineers and actually listen to what they say, a different pattern emerges. Beneath the polished phrasing, the real answer is almost always…
The practise of software design, even the addition of a small to medium size feature to a web interface should start with deep and calculated thinking. This thinking needs dedicated time. Defining a summary It's important to begin with a clear and to the point summary of the project. You and your team are not the only people that my read this document. Upper management might dip in to understand…