It’s Fat Bear Week! 🐻 Go and “vote for the bear you believe best exemplifies fatness and success in brown bears.” #fatbearweek

Yeah I can read about something but how can I _really_ learn what it is? This was the question that struck me during a morning walk and this piece is an attempt to answer it. ilonaborsos.com/en/posts/jak...

Heard this arrangement of "The Times They Are A-Changin'" at a choir concert last spring. It's beautiful.

If you assign a deadline, give a reason. Deadlines drive behavior, and if you don't share the reason for a deadline, you might be driving the wrong behavior.

📚 "This is Lean, Resolving the Efficiency Paradox" by Niklas Modig and Pär Åhlström. Slim book, concisely defines "Lean" beyond "what Toyota does". Encourages deliberate choices and ongoing improvement. Excellent read, despite some (translation?) clunkiness in wording. #booksky #lean #agile

📚Radio Free Vermont by @billmckibben.bsky.social A craft beer tour of Vermont hidden inside a climate fiction tale of backwoods local government, community, potential (inadvertent) secession, and biathlon. Quirky, silly, fun to read, yet thought-provoking. Good for fans of Parks & Rec or NPR. 🎙️

Had way too many tabs. I still have way too many tabs, but now at least they're organized. Window 1: email, two current-but-small projects (~15) Window 2: to-read (~100) Window 3: job search (and a few related to marketing my manager coaching biz, ~10) Separating contexts to help my brain. 🧠

"If you're remote, ramble." Never tried having a personal ramblings channel for each team member like @stephango.com suggests. But I have noticed remote teams are more effective the more they share—and yes, ramble—in public. It avoids isolation and keeps the humans connected.

Here's a great list of ideas if you feel like you're too engrossed in that little glass rectangle in your pocket (or...the one you're staring at RIGHT NOW 😜). Bonus idea: a friend of mine has started inviting people to have lunch at his house. "Come on over, let's make some sandwiches."

I’m just cheering for a good 🏈 game…wait. No. That’s a complete lie. I’m cheering for the Cyclones to beat the Hawkeyes. Go State! 🌪️🌪️🌪️ #cyclones #cyhawk 🦡

📚"Murder by Memory" by @oliviawaite.com, random library pickup. It's a cozy murder mystery novella set on an interstellar ship. New bodies are available to passengers when needed—so how (and why?) did this murder happen? Fun premise, interesting setting, well constructed, quick read. #booksky

Finally wrote that little shell script to automate that slightly tedious manual step in a task I do a few times a week. It's already worth it. That task is so much less annoying now.

📚I'm Afraid You've Got Dragons by Peter S. Beagle Charming fantasy tale of a beautiful princess, handsome prince, a dragon exterminator, dragons, and an evil wizard. Funny yet deep, subversion of the genre yet conventional. Hints of a big world, but tight and focused. Very enjoyable read! #booksky

Cross-country running is the only high school sport I’m aware of that results in athletes and spectators being sweaty and tired for the same reasons. 🏃‍♂️🏃‍♀️🏃

📚Exit Strategy by Charlton Pettus. Tough situation ➡️ despair ➡️ disappearing. Then things start to get wild. Page-turner, fast-paced thriller, but lots of graphic icky/gory/cruel stuff. Some plot gaps, some unresolved issues, and some of the characters were not well constructed. #booksky

📚August = Biography Month at MPL. My basketball-loving son handed me the bio of his favorite player: Giannis by Mirin Fader (@mirinfader.bsky.social). Great research, thorough, very readable. Covers hardships and highs equally well. Spoiler: Giannis becomes a good basketball player. 🏀 #booksky

If your team has difficulty communicating—or remembering—the communication/collaboration maturity model in this article from @another.rodeo is worth a read.

📚Interstellar Megachef by Lavanya Lakshminarayan (@lavanya.bsky.social). Despite the sprinkle donut on the cover, a fairly heavy read. Good for foodie technocritics interested in sociology, probably. Enjoyed it. Loved the ambiguity and "anything could happen" feel of the ending. #booksky

This feels like a spot of good news www.sciencedaily.com/releases/202...

📚 Hum by Helen Phillips @helencphillips.bsky.social (second opinion; my wife read it for a grad class and disliked it) Perceptive and likely prescient dystopian novel about humans, tech, and who the tech serves. Thought-provoking, worth a read. BUT very unsure if I liked or enjoyed it. 😵‍💫 #booksky

The full schedule for LoopConf (London, 25th September) is now out. I'm sharing a stage with some amazing people. I'm also working on some fun things for my talk - which is almost going to be a mini conference-within-a-conference! You can get £50 off a ticket with code “ROSS50”. www.loopconf.com

📚 Space Oddity by Catherynne Valente (@catvalente.bsky.social), sequel to Space Opera. Liked Opera? You'll like this. Must read Opera first. Oddity explores the absurd galaxy and its species. Weird, confusing, absolutely beautiful ending. 🦡 And a badger named Douglas. 🦡 Very enjoyable. #booksky

📚 "The Point" by John Dixon, random library grab. Rebellious teenager with mutant powers ends up at secret West Point training program in lieu of jail, then...crisis! Quick read, exciting enough, a bit formulaic at times. (Seemed a bit of a YA take on The Rook by O'Malley.) #booksky

📚 There's a sequel to "How Rory Thorne Destroyed the Multiverse"! Picked up "How the Multiverse Got Its Revenge" by K. Eason (@svartjagr.bsky.social). Much different feel from the original, but still an enjoyable read. Book 1 took place over months (and years). Book 2, a day or so. #booksky

Wrote about something my gym knows about managing work that I see ignored by a shocking number of managers. TL;DR: Keeping people busy is not as good as "follow the work" and focusing on priorities.

📚📚📚Three Jennifer Lynn Barnes books, Hawthorne universe. - The Grandest Game - Games Untold (I was told I needed to read it here "because of Prague") - Glorious Rivals Grandest Game and Glorious rivals: solid Hawthorne books. Games Untold: short stories. Uneven but fun. #booksky

PSA: Store-bought pita bread can start to mold inside, and it can be hard to see. If it’s near or past the sell-by date, it’s worth checking for interior mold before you get too excited about your lunch idea.

Space Opera by Catherynne Valente (@catvalente.bsky.social), random library grab because of the absurd disco-ball-Saturn cover. 📚 To prove we humans are sentient, we need to not come in last in an interstellar Eurovision-style contest. Weird, wordy, fun, Hitchhiker's Guide-style. #booksky

"How Rory Thorne Destroyed the Multiverse" by K. Eason (@svartjagr.bsky.social‬), random library pickup. Large-scale political maneuvering, treachery, and interpersonal maneuvering. Plus a clever take on computer hacking (minor aspect, ok for non-geeks!). Really enjoyable read. #booksky

I get why companies use noreply email addresses. I really do. But I wonder what that’s doing to our sense of (dis)connection. Our sense that it’s all transactional and about me. Our feeling of being alone. Instead of Mr Jones at the corner store, it’s [email protected]. Impersonal.

"This Will Be Fun" by E.B. Asher, random library pickup. 📚📚 Quirky, fun, cozy. Definitely not a "real" fantasy novel, but an oddly-inspirational exploration of friendship and what it means to live life instead of expectations. Definitely silly, but I'm glad I read it. #booksky

The distinction between disposable code and durable code is insightful, and so is the notion that disposable code can eventually become durable code. Also has stuff about AI-assisted coding. 😄 Recommended reading.

Side project! I built a Stream Deck plugin to control Zoom. Then I made a video about it. Not as polished as MuteDeck, but a fun project to create. GitHub link: github.com/mattschouten...

July's genre at my public library: horror. Grabbed "The Soul Stealer" by Graham Masterton from the 📚 table. It's horror, so lots of bad things happen. Kept my interest reasonably well despite the awful and some flaws. Short summary: badly behaved Hollywood dudes x Native American magic. #booksky

📚"I'm Starting to Worry About This Big Black Box of Doom" by Jason Pargin, random library pickup. Dark humor, ridiculous premise, insightful commentary about social media and "truth". Pace was uneven, but start and end were both good. How hard could a cross-country road trip be? #booksky

Working on some audio processing code. If I need a variable name for the instantaneous amplitude of a sample, how bad is it if I go with "samplitude"?

A thought experiment: you're hiring. A candidate walks in that can produce 10x what a good employee can produce in a week—in a single hour. But if they work more than an hour a week, productivity goes negative. Do you hire them? How much do you pay them? And how much do you expect them to work?

📚Chilling Effect by @valerievaldes.bsky.social 📚- random library pickup. Kidnapping, organized crime, an amorous fish-faced emperor, plot twists, wisecracks, strong female space captain. Very Firefly feel. Quirky, fast-paced, will read the sequel. A few slow parts, overall quite fun. #booksky

📚The Village Library Demon Hunter's Society by CM Waggoner 📚 Starts slow. Gets ridiculous. Decidedly non-literary, and lots of fun. A 63-year old librarian realizes she's solved way too many murders for her small town, and goes looking to figure out why. Excellent big reveal at the end. #booksky

"Jira for kids asking parents things" Mark Jaquith made this and it's very good. I love that it needs no login and... is the data in the URL? It doesn't seem to POST any data. Very good if so. parentrequest.com

Activating another process on MacOS seems unnecessarily complicated. Seems like it should be simple. Instead I use three different approaches (in a loop to give me a better chance of success), and it finally seems mostly reliable. Am I missing something? #macos #programming

I read "Theory of Constraints" by Goldratt. Good info, difficult read. Don't read it until after you've read The Goal. And maybe other Goldratt books too. It won't make sense. It constantly refers back to The Goal. This one is not a business novel, just nonfiction. #booksky #theoryofconstraints

Read "All Ears" by Stuart Gibbs, FunJungle #9 (middle-grade series). Elephants, this time. Fun and fast paced. Like usual, several plotlines intertwine throughout the book. Great series for anyone who likes animals and mysteries, aimed at ages 8+. (Started reading them w/ my kids. Got hooked.)

"Everything Eventually Connects: Eight Essays on Uncertainty" by Sarah Firth was random graphic novel #2 for June. Mix of pondering the universe, mundane life, and memoir. Thoughtful and quirky. Color pictures, some very detailed. Good read, funny, interesting. Used the medium well. #booksky

Picked up The Last Lecture (the book), which is a companion to Randy Pausch's last lecture. Quick read, gives a bigger view into his life. Upbeat in the face of death, good life lessons, and very sad. Would not recommend reading without having watched (and enjoyed) the lecture. #booksky

📚"A Wizard's Guide to Defensive Baking", random pickup at the library. Y'know how wizards can make lightning or fireballs or control water? Mona is a bread wizard 🍞🧙‍♀️. Fortunately, she works at her aunt's bakery. Fun read, aimed at late middle or early high school readers. #booksky

Library reading challenge theme for June: graphic novels. Not my usual, so grabbed "Freedom Hospital: A Syrian Story" from the table. Yasmin runs Freedom Hospital in a town in Syria in 2012, smuggling in supplies, trying to make life better in what's becoming a war zone. #booksky

Trying to understand a bug in a program. Add some debug logs. Not seeing them. Add more. Not seeing them. Add a zillion. Still not seeing them. Restart everything. Still not seeing them! Turns out the build process was also broken, so, uh, I wasn't running the new versions. 🤦‍♂️🤦‍♂️🤦‍♂️

Read Joy of Agility by @joshuakerievsky.bsky.social. Unusual and excellent take on the topic of #agile. Short stories with a summary and "moral" at the end, rather than long explanations. All organized around six agile mantras. It's an approach that's attested by folk wisdom worldwide! #booksky

“Autonomy without safety isn’t freedom” - in SRE, building products, or org design. Tight feedback loops and solid guardrails are your friend. Good insights from @busrakoken.bsky.social in this post on Platform & SRE Mindset.