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So many feed readers, so many bizarre behaviors

So many feed readers, so many bizarre behaviors:

So many feed readers, so many bizarre behaviors

It’s been well over a year since I started serving 429s to clients which are hitting the feed too often. Since then, much has happened, and most of it is generally good news.

I’ve heard from users and authors alike of feed software. Sometimes the users have filed bug reports and/or feature requests and have gotten positive results from the project (or vendor). Other times, the authors of such software have gotten in touch, did some digging, found a few nuances of how their libraries work, and improved the situation.

Some of them are trying but are still not quite making it right.

Here’s some of what’s been going on.

[Facinating how we keep looping around…]

Shop notebooks… with advice from Matt Kenney

I have no religion when it comes to shop notebooks. Not a type, nor paper or tech. But use “some thing” because not having anything at all will be a problem.

Your workflow will determine how the next step occurs. You may be prototyping something, and so there’s no notes to guide you. But at some point you will get to “nice” and you’ll want to build it “for real”. That would be the moment to take detailed notes. If you are working in CAD or a drawing app, it might be worthwhile to print out shop drawing and scribble some additional notes as you work. Etc. But these “sources of truth” are very helpful when questions and problems arise.

If I had one rule (snicker) it would be that your scribble paper, notebook, etc. assuming it is atoms not electrons should be graph paper. It was invented for just this sort of thing, take advantage.

Matt Kenny suggests the following…

  • Be as detailed as you possibly can. The more detail, the less work you’ll need to do to make sense of what’s written down.
  • Write in simple, clear statements and equations. A shop notebook is not a Faulkner novel or a Fields-Medal-worthy mathematical treatise.
  • Write down: dimensions, notes about materials, things you discovered that made construction easier, problems you encountered and how you solved them, and anything else that’s important to you.
  • Clearly identify which piece of furniture a note belongs to. A year from now you probably won’t remember.
  • Do not worry about how it reads or looks. If it makes sense to you and you can go back and make sense of it a month later, that’s all that matters. You will develop a style, organizing principles, etc. as you continue to work and fill up notebooks.

Everything all the users know and more

Scripting News: Monday, April 3, 2023:

A sense that because I work for the company that made the product, I know everything all the users know and more. It’s the same fallacy that applies to Silicon Valley billionaires. You have to step into a new perspective to love the product, one that has nothing to do with who you work for or how validated you are by reporters and the public.

[I made a similar point recently. “Just because some process or thing works for you doesn’t make you an expert.” ]

Exterior Sign in White Oak: Finished | David Fisher, Carving Explorations

Exterior Sign in White Oak: Finished | David Fisher, Carving Explorations:

After a lot of research, consultation of folks with exterior sign experience, and personal testing, I went with the artist acrylic paints above, although other very good brands would work as well. These pigments are all from the larger list recommended by Martin Wenham in his book. I’m trying to learn more and more about color theory and practice and Martin is a master. I mixed the brownish color from the first three, and the green from all four. Professional artist colors like these list the specific pigment used, along with the opacity (vs transparency) of each color. Notice the opacity square for each of these pigments is a completely black square, meaning very opaque/solid. Also, all of these pigments have the highest lightfastness rating, so they will be naturally resistant to fading. I thinned my mix just a touch with an acrylic medium to the consistency I wanted to work with.

[Well done!]

The ability to build

The ability to build – by David Hoang – Proof of Concept:

They’re not dogmatic about tools and methods
Building is about the output and making it exists in the intended environment. Though I work for a company that focuses on no-code tools, I love code and programming. Whether you choose to use a graphical user interface (GUI) like Webflow or write code in a text editor, the end desired output is a website to share on the internet. Great builders also rightsize what’s needed. They’re not going to spin up a full React app that a static site can accomplish.

They understand assembly points
Seasoned builders have a tendency to creat their own systems that are reusable, such as a design engineer constructing a UIKit or an entrepreneur building a Standard Operating Procedure (SOP). As you get comfortable with building, you’ll recognize patterns and assembly points—the important functional considerations of what you’re constructing. Understanding this allows you to understand the important mechanics that you need to get right.

They start, and start fast
Start so fast the speed of your building velocity surpasses the noise of people vocalizing about building. The same way rapid sketching aides you in refining an idea, building the initial scaffolding of an idea gives you the ability to identify the assembly points that need to be refined.

[Well said.]

Collaborating away

Collaborating away:

Ideas like the shower. Ideas like our pillows. Ideas like commutes. Ideas like walks. Ideas like the morning, or late nights. Ideas like daydreams. Ideas like you doing something else so they can surprise you.

Ideas aren’t contained. They aren’t located. They don’t reside. They’re nomadic.

They aren’t something you control — they bubble up, they arise. You don’t get to have them when you want. They come to you.

[Yesss!]

Teach

Teach Woodworking – or Else – Lost Art Press:

Finally, I try to learn from my students. Even a first-day woodworker can teach me something because they are coming at it with fresh eyes. Or without preconceived notions.

[Lots of truths in that list no matter what you are teaching. And while I know everyone categorizes certain types of knowledge I believe this applies to everything. You can always teach what you know, regardless of topic, but I do make one request. Only teach what you know by doing. If you can’t practice the thing you’re teaching (lots of topics leap to mind) then maybe it requires some level of certification. If you’re not a surgeon, maybe trying to teach surgery is a, er, um, less good idea.]

21. Prototyping to learn

21. Prototyping to learn:

There are a lots of decision-making steps along the product-development path. Those of us in the software industry who were influenced by Kent Beck et al talk about “spiking.” It means trying to build just enough of something to expose the unknowns that we would have missed otherwise. It’s not unusual to spike two different approaches to the same problem to see the difference in their characteristics.

[snip]

These examples only scratch the surface. The big idea is to think of prototyping not as a single costly effort to build and verify a single guess, but as a way to learn, to uncover what we don’t know — to find the best way forward for the unanswered question at hand.

[Public prototyping also takes place… like with Constraints and Creativity. I did some prototyping privately, but there’s so much more to learn about the choices that sometimes it makes sense to do them publicly.]

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A hundred things I learned writing my first technical book “Data-Oriented Programming” | Yehonathan Sharvit

A hundred things I learned writing my first technical book “Data-Oriented Programming” | Yehonathan Sharvit:

Usually readers stop reading after reading the middle of the book. If you want them to read the second half of your book, you need to find a way to hook them.
A possible way to hook your readers is to tell a story.
Inspiration is not linear. It’s OK to stop writing for a couple of hours.
Motivation is not linear. It’s OK to stop writing for a couple of weeks.

[Solid list. Excellent stuff]

Contraints & Creativity Podcast

Contraint: The state of being restricted or confined within prescribed bounds.

Creativity, the ability to bring into existence something new, whether a new solution to a problem, a new method or device, or a new artistic object or form.

A podcast. Soonish!

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