The new Magic Keyboard with Touch ID is neat. But I recently picked up the full-width, space grey version (and a matching trackpad) after drooling over them since the introduction of the iMac Pro. Loving the look and a giant keyboard feels luxurious, now.
Stay safe, Toronto.
The backyard is beginning to bloom.
I know I’m a bit late to it, but Ted Lasso really is just a lovely show. Lots of heart and genuine chuckles. Feels like an antidote to my mood as the stay-at-home order and other restrictions continue to pile on.
I often have people newer to the tech industry ask me for secrets to success. There aren’t many, really, but this secret — being willing to do something so terrifically tedious that it appears to be magic — works in tech too.
Each time I finish a Zoom call and it asks, “How was your experience?” I have a deeply existential moment.
In case anyone was wondering what I think about on my runs (squeezed in another 12 km, tonight), it’s management, apparently.
And it’s worth saying: You will mess up, at some point. How you react will decide if you earn the loyalty of your team or find yourself alone in the fog.
And it is a craft, with a distinct set of skills to learn and develop. What you did previously is only one ingredient. Having a reputation as a prolific coder might buy you some initial trust, but it’s the decisions you make on Day 40, Day 100, and Day 365 that matter.
Done well, management has the opportunity to drastically improve someones’s happiness, income, job prospects, and quality of life. Done poorly, you can cause real damage. You owe it to your team to treat that responsibility with care and invest in your craft.
I’ve been updating my bio in a few different places and the sentence, “I believe in management as a tool for improving lives,” fell out of my brain. I haven’t been able to get it out of my head since. People don’t leave companies — they leave managers.
This app will show you what Indigenous land you’re on
[…] the kind of mapping we undertake is an important exercise, insofar as it brings an awareness of the real lived history of Indigenous peoples and nations in a long era of colonialism.
The best days always end with a swing at the park.
Excitement is a fleeting moment, not a steady state
Truth is, every day work is rarely exciting. Most work is pretty mundane. Even work on meaningful things. The most profound stuff is built one mostly boring brick at a time.
After a 4-week break, I shook off the rust with a quick 5K around the neighbourhood. It’s lovely to run in warm temperatures at sunset, again. Looking forward to ramping up the distance and speed in the weeks to come and logging some kilometres this summer.
Spotted on my nightly walk with The Kid. Always enjoy folks having a bit of fun.
I know they aren’t everyone’s favourite, but I really enjoy checking out someone’s /uses page to scope out new tool/gear ideas. Figured it was high time I set up one of my own.
Why All My Servers Have an 8GB Empty File
This is really smart. I employ a similar technique when it comes to my calendar and making sure I always have a little margin.
Customizing my blog’s look & feel has required switching back and forth between light & dark modes. As a dark mode devotee for the last few years, I can’t remember how I ever functioned without it. So bright!
Almost every photo I take lately is of The Kid and I firmly believe in not sharing those until he can make the choice to do so himself. Instead, here’s a photo of my new glasses. I’ve been told they really complete the “Dad” look.
None of my distant relatives will get into arguments on The Face Website about whether or not the stuck boat is making a nuisance for lots of people. I like that.
Now that Ulysses has launched Micro.blog support, I’ve been giving it another try. It was my writing app of choice back when I was writing the Monday Mailer1, but it fell out of use for a few years. Might be time for a second look.
After almost a year, I’m slowly working to bring my blog back to life. I’m also back on Micro.blog, which is just as lovely as it’s ever been. As I restore old content, it’s been interesting to reflect on March 2020 and where my head was at.
My blog is a digital garden, not a blog
Just like plants in the garden I’ve got posts that are in various stages of growth and nurturing. Some might wither and die, and others (like this one you are reading) will flourish and provide a source of continued for the gardener and folks in community that visit.
QB64 is a modern extended BASIC programming language that retains QBasic/QuickBASIC 4.5 compatibility and compiles native binaries for Windows, Linux, and macOS.