Most software engineering managers (including myself) start as software engineers themselves. Being technical means they can always jump back into work or better understand a plan devised by someone on the team, both of which I do routinely. However, managers need to learn when it makes sense to continue applying some of the same techniques that got them here and when they need to change their…
If you're wondering where all of the hobby content (RPGs, board games, miniatures, books, etc) went from this site, I decided to split my hobby content off into a separate site called Wandering Referee . I still plan to post about my hobbies, but I wanted to have a dedicated space for it that was separate from the more personal and career-focused content here.
I really like how Mark Manson took the various repeated ideas around self-help and ranked them from least helpful to most helpful. At the risk of spoiling it a bit, the number one thing you can do is something I've recommended to my team before: Doing anything when you don't want to do the thing also has robust positive effects. And if you were too intimidated or too scared to do the full thing,…
If you're wondering where all of the hobby content (RPGs, board games, miniatures, books, etc) went from this site, I decided to split my hobby content off into a separate site called Wandering Referee . I still plan to post about my hobbies, but I wanted to have a dedicated space for it that was separate from the more personal and career-focused content here.
A fundamental part of being a good manager is showing up as a human. That means caring about your team as both employees and people. How was their weekend? How's their family? What vacations do they have coming up? These questions go a long way, but if they come out mechanical and inauthentic they'll do more harm than good. There's a fundamental requirement here as a manager that you both care…
A quick tip today to get me back into writing a bit. On a recent ATP podcast , Marco Arment mentioned a great productivity tip for those distracting iOS apps like Instagram: [...] if you hide any app and require Face ID for it, it will go into [the Hidden] folder. The only way to get to it is to go to the App Library; it won't show up in search, you won't get any notifications for it, your phone…
A Raycast extension for browsing and searching your Apple Photos library directly from the command bar. You can search the 24 most recent photos in Apple Photos from Raycast, just like screenshots. You can paste right to your active app from the selection.
A Discord bot for managing a book club rotation. Randomizes who picks the book each month, tracks book picks with Goodreads integration, and sends mid-month reminders. The /pick command lets the book chooser pick their book or the admin to set a book for someone else. Every month a reminder is sent to the current chooser and next month's as well. The /schedule command shows the upcoming schedule…
A Raycast extension for monitoring and controlling Prusa 3D printers from the command bar. The Prusa Raycast extension allows you to look up the status of your printer. In addition to status, you can open the PrusaConnect Dashboard and Print Files. A Menubar option allows you to always see the progress of your current print in the menubar.
I'm a big fan of board games. My collection no longer fits in the two bookshelves I have, it sprawls into the closet next to our game room. One of my favorite genres is engine building. This is the idea that you start with basic means of doing something ---exploring ruins for instance---and build up your capabilities and efficiencies over time. Therefore an action at the beginning of the game…
I’m not the first person to write that headline, nor will I be the last, but it’s pretty clear that people forget (or never knew) that RSS is a thing. If you haven’t heard of RSS feeds before, they stand for Really Simple Syndication, which may not tell you what they do. They’re XML feeds with content from a website. They can be created statically or generated from an application (e.g. Wordpress…
First, some preamble: I very much enjoy RPGs and I'm always finding new ones and reading them to see if I want to run them. My kids are almost always willing subjects to try out systems as well. I recently decided that I want to use RPGs to help teach math and my kids have been running around the house playing Star Wars, so the old West End Games Star Wars D6 RPG seemed like a perfect choice. The…
I make an add-on for ExpressionEngine called Subscriber . It’s a pretty simple little add-on: when a visitor fills out a form on your website they’re added to a newsletter list either automatically or based on a selection they make. Developing Subscriber has been pretty simple. I have a directory (and therefore repository) for Subscriber and a directory for my test site. I'll work almost…
Disclaimer: All Amazon links are affiliate links. I've been seeing a lot of chatter about safety razors on Twitter lately, men who are either tired of the constant expense of disposables or cartridge razors, or maybe they want some change to their morning routine. I've been shaving with a safety razor for roughly five years now and throughout that whole time, I've probably spent a total of $340 on…
Head down, fingers tapping and teeth gnashing, that's how you'd find me if I was working on someone else's code. I want to rewrite it. I mean, it's awful just look at it. There are no comments and there are ternary operators where they shouldn't be and they aren't used where they should be. And to make it all worse, the code is littered with tons of inane variables like temp and iter . At some…
Do I need to buy this? Are there alternatives? How long will this last? These are things I think about when buying anything. Questions fly through my head when I start to think about buying something. It's been trained into everyone by our society and whether you like it or not, the vast majority of people approach stuff this way. One time when my then-fiancee (now wife) and I met my parents, my…
We all read for different reasons, some of us read to wind down and strip back the problems of our day. Others read for inspiration. But I want to talk about the people who are reading to learn, more specifically the people who are trying to improve. These folks see themselves as lacking something, imperfect in some way. They're constantly striving to find the next book, the one that'll help them…
Seeking advice is addicting and can become a proxy for action. [...] Be suspicious of lists, advice, and lists of advice. That comes from someone I highly respect and is a great suggestion for people who are stuck on self-help books and list posts. I've been hearing this pretty loud and clear for the past six months from a couple of people and yet, I've ignored it. Book purchase after book…
In my career, there are plenty of folks with plenty of opinions and they all can build their own soapbox. One thing that comes up time and again is the idea of good versus perfect. I've seen many people who claim that perfection and the best possible outcome is the only way to go. Others claim that in our attempt for perfection we sidestep good and barrel towards top heavy and unpolished. Where do…
My attention is a fickle sort, it flits back and forth between topics on Philosophy, Psychology, Business, Design and Programming. The idea of being genuine has seen a sort of resurgence in all of these topics recently and I don't completely understand why it ever went away. It seems that we've pushed genuineness aside in lieu of higher profitability, quicker results or some other batch of snake…