bookmark_borderFive for Friday – February 17, 2023

Here, as expected, are a few things I found interesting this week.

That’s it – thanks again for reading. See you next week.

bookmark_borderFive for Friday – February 10, 2023

Someone asked me recently how long I’ve been doing FfF posts. I wasn’t sure, so I had to look it up. The answer is “over five years”. First one of these was in October, 2017 – boy how things have changed since then. But the five random things from my browsing history continues this week…

  • We may as well lead with a good one, and something that I’ve kept open. The Hidden Toll of Microstress.
  • I’m a sucker for insightful articles on Psychological Safety, so this one on Work as Imagined vs Work as Done pushes a lot of the right buttons for me.
  • I’ve done weekly summary emails off and on in different flavors over my three…fuck…decades in software dev. Sometimes they’re awesome, and sometimes they’re awful. This article on Why You Should Send a Weekly Summary Email is some good food for thought on the subject.
  • I feel like the world is now filled with people playing with chat gpt, but with very few of those people actually getting value from it. I’m tired of people “breaking it” and showing how it’s wrong, so I want to highlight at least one article that shows how people are using it to help them.
  • Because you need this. Spaghetti-fy your code right from VS Code.

Thanks for reading – see you soon.

bookmark_borderFive for Friday – February 3, 2023

My dog decided that 4:30am was time to be awake. Now, she’s asleep again, but I’m still up. Fortunately, Friday’s are on the light side as far as meetings go, so I think I’ll make it.

Thanks again for reading – see you next week.

bookmark_borderFive for Friday – January 27, 2023

Like last week, this week has had some ups and downs. In between the long days and questionable decisions, I found (or was sent) a few links that I liked.

  • In an almost regular feature of FfF, I’ll start by sharing my favorite article on avoiding burnout this week. How To Make 2023 Your Year of No Burnout
  • This article – When Your Feelings Conflict with Your Leadership Role – hit home with me. A lot to learn here for a lot of us.
  • I watched the first two episodes of The Last of Us on Sunday. I didn’t think I’d like it, because I generally don’t like movies based on video games, but holy shit is it good.
  • If you’ve already seen the first two episodes, you should read more about in this all-to-real article on The Cordyceps fungus in this sort of haunting article (thanks Molly for the link)
  • I saw the new Avatar movie recently. While the plot and story are…ok, it’s definitely worth the experience in IMAX 3D. It’s also cool that it’s nominated for an Oscar in visual effects (which are made with Unity W?t? tools)

Thanks again for reading – see you all next week.

bookmark_borderFive for Friday – January 20, 2022

This was…not one of my favorite weeks. Other than a few long walks with the dog, I’m taking a light weekend to see if I can get my head back on straight. Here are a few things I read this week you may find interesting.

Thanks again for reading – have a good week.

bookmark_borderFive for Friday – January 13, 2023

It’s Friday the 13th. I’m not sure what that means, but we’ll see how the rest of the day goes. Here are a few links I found this week that are worth sharing.

That’s it for this week (for this blog, at least). As usual, thanks for reading, and have a safe weekend.

bookmark_borderFive for Friday – January 6, 2023

Happy New Year everyone! It was great to have a break, but I bet you can’t wait to see what bits of the internet I’ve uncovered for you.

Or you’re here to see if I’m going to get people on linkedin angry at me again. Either way – here are some links to things I’ve enjoyed recently.

  • Speaking of Linkedin, a colleague of mine shared a great post this week on how she managed our planning process for 2023. She makes it sound easy, but from the front lines, she was a jedi master of organization and cat herding.
  • A lot of companies are trying to get people to come back to the office – but it’s just not happening. This article on how Remote Work Is Poised to Devastate America’s Cities is on point, and something I’ve been thinking a lot about.
  • Will Larson (author of An Elegant Puzzle and Staff Engineer) shared his thoughts on Measuring an engineering organization
  • I’ve been playing with Whisper from OpenAI for voice transcriptions, and it’s sort of amazing. It doesn’t separate speakers (as far as I can tell), so I can’t quite use it for AB Testing Podcast transcriptions, but it’s still pretty cool.
  • Finally, a fantastic article on Things they didn’t teach you about Software Engineering. Especially remember this – (and replace “code” with any aspect of software delivery) – Code is secondary. Business value is first.

Thanks again for reading – see you next week. Don’t forget to check out my old-school opinionated blog posts on substack

bookmark_borderFive for Friday – December 16, 2022

Last FfF of 2022 while I take a few weeks off to rest and recover before starting it all over again in 2023.

Thanks again for reading, and I look forward to more sharing next year. If you missed the note last week, I want to start blogging again, an want to pre-rebuild a community first – so sign up here if you want to read longer form opinions and rants. I added an introductory post last week, and will start delivering regularly in 2023.

bookmark_borderFive for Friday – December 9, 2022

Back for another week of random links. I’ll skip linking to interesting chat bots, because maybe a chat bot wrote this post…

But probably not.

That’s all for this week – thanks for reading.

Oh – and if you missed it on twitter, I want to start blogging again, but want to pre-rebuild a community first, so sign up here if you want to read longer form opinions and rants – you know, like the old days.

bookmark_borderSix for Saturday – December 3, 2022

Friday got away from me again. Between World cup soccer and budget exercises, my brain blew up. I feel a bit better today, and have a few interesting posts to share.

Time to go watch some more soccer – have a great week.