Weekly Thing #76 / Oct 20, 2018
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Weekly Thing
Join over 1,000 subscribers to the Weekly Thing by Jamie Thingelstad! Each Saturday morning, you will get my thoughts on technology, leadership, productivity, culture, privacy, and anything else interesting. I add commentary combining my decades of experience leading teams and building technology. I also include my personal writing, what I’m currently into, and a photograph of the week. There is even a fortune at the end! 🥠 A friend once described the Weekly Thing as a “direct feed from Jamie’s brain.” 🧠 There are no ads, your email will never be shared, your privacy will be protected, and it is free. Subscribe now and positively impact your journey with knowledge, insight, and perspective! Here is what others have to say. 🙌 “I’m a better person and leader because of the Weekly Thing!” — Jenny “I look forward to reading what you are digging.” — David “I don’t find the interesting links you share anywhere else!” — Andy “It’s a perfect start to every Saturday!” — Phil
Weekly Newsletter from Jamie Thingelstad
Issue #76 / Oct 20, 2018
I just got back from seeing the Foo Fighters (https://foofighters.com) play one of the final shows of their Concrete and Gold tour. I’ve seen the Foo’s play a few times now and it’s always a treat to see them. Every time I’m struck by how much they just love music. Dave Grohl (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dave_Grohl) seems like someone that is all consumed and in love with his craft. Taylor Hawkins (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Taylor_Hawkins) has a grin ear-to-ear every time he’s on stage. Seeing them tonight you got the sense that they would have liked to have just kept playing. Once I saw them play for over 2 hours straight and we’re ready to keep going. The passion they have for what they do is incredible.
They show this passion not just in the actions during the show, but the immense interest in the music itself. Tonight they played “Breakdown (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qNxfPAF1frM) ” by Tom Petty (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tom_Petty) during the encore, in remembrance of his birthday tomorrow. Grohl has taken to making movies about music, and even talks on it.
Seeing the Foo’s is a fabulous Rock & Roll show. It’s also an example of pure passion for the craft. It’s a pleasure to watch people do what they love so much.
Featured Links 🏅
Why We Always Switch Productivity Methods Before They Stick, According To Science (https://blog.trello.com/how-to-stick-with-a-productivity-method) blog.trello.com
I’ve talked to a lot of friends that have tried several or even dozens of productivity systems.
First things first: Take some comfort in the fact that you definitely aren’t alone. Many of us hop around and test the waters of various systems for getting our work done.
One of the best things I ever did was decide to commit to GTD (https://www.gettingthingsdone.com) as a long-term investment as well as OmniFocus (https://www.omnigroup.com/omnifocus) and not look around at other options. I felt that expertise and depth in one was more important than trying dozens of options fiddling with what might be best.
Do journalists pay too much attention to Twitter? - Columbia Journalism Review (https://www.cjr.org/the_media_today/journalists-on-twitter-study.php) www.cjr.org
This is an important and interesting question. When I read the headline the immediate thought in my head was “Yes!”. The study goes into more detail and gets deeper into the impact it would have on reporting.
“Our results indicate that the routinization of Twitter into news production affects news judgment,” the researchers write. “For journalists who incorporate Twitter into their reporting routines, and those with fewer years of experience, Twitter has become so normalized that tweets were deemed equally newsworthy as headlines appearing to be from the AP wire. This may have negative implications.” Among those implications, they argue, is that journalists can get caught up in a kind of pack mentality in which a story is seen as important because other journalists on Twitter are talking about it, rather than because it is newsworthy.
The “firehose” feed of Twitter is something that some people find uninteresting, but there are some people and professions that I think find it highly addictive and compelling. Watching an AP news feed, or a financial ticker, feels and looks a lot like watching the Twitter timeline. I count myself in the group of people that find that addictive. I tend to think journalists as a group would too.
My Weekly Photo 📷
Cascade Falls in Osceola, Wisconsin.
Cascade Falls in Osceola, Wisconsin. Oct 18, 2018 at 2:02 PM 95 S Cascade St, Osceola WI
Notable Links 📌
How we unplug: 7 ways to escape the roiling seas of modern life | City Pages (http://www.citypages.com/arts/how-we-unplug-7-ways-to-escape-the-roiling-seas-of-modern-life/494974291) www.citypages.com
I don’t think I’ve had some recommend an article from the City Pages since college, but this one has some great themes regarding ways to disconnect and recharge. Link from Tor Flatebo (https://www.linkedin.com/in/torflatebo/) .
The Observation Deck » Assessing software engineering candidates (http://dtrace.org/blogs/bmc/2018/10/05/assessing-software-engineering-candidates/) dtrace.org
Hiring engineers is a tricky thing, and it’s great to see people sharing their processes for evaluating candidates to help others get better as well.
This document is an attempt to pull together accumulated best practices; while it shouldn’t be inferred to be overly prescriptive, where it is rigid, there is often a painful lesson behind it.
Worthwhile set of concepts.
Lightroom CC 2.0: What’s new, and where is it headed?: Digital Photography Review (https://www.dpreview.com/news/6152975539/lightroom-cc-2-0-what-s-new-and-where-is-it-headed) www.dpreview.com
I jumped off of the Lightroom path when Adobe decided to make it a subscription product. The new Lightroom CC looks solid, and I like that they are doing server-side processing of images. At the same time, I still don’t feel like I have a good solution for dealing with all of my photo workflows.
How Adobe is bringing “real Photoshop” to the iPad - The Verge (https://www.theverge.com/2018/10/15/17969754/adobe-photoshop-apple-ipad-creative-cloud) www.theverge.com
It’s great to see Adobe bringing such a critical power-user application to the iPad. I have a sneaking suspicion we’ll see a new iPad Pro with a big screen demoing Adobe Photoshop at a future Apple announcement.
It turns out that Facebook could in fact use data collected from its Portal in-home video device to target you with ads - Recode (https://www.recode.net/2018/10/16/17966102/facebook-portal-ad-targeting-data-collection) www.recode.net
I absolutely love that Facebook themselves had to correct publications on this clarification.
But Facebook has since reached out to change its answer: Portal doesn’t have ads, but data about who you call and data about which apps you use on Portal can be used to target you with ads on other Facebook-owned properties.
So when you give your photos to Google and Facebook they mine brands and objects from them to advertise to you. WIth this Portal surveillance device they can watch the activity in your house to then shove things in between cat pictures on Instagram. Don’t buy one of these. And also, ditch Facebook Messenger too.
The Hidden Tribes of America - Hidden Tribes (https://hiddentribes.us/) hiddentribes.us
I found this via David Brooks Rich White Civil War (https://www.nytimes.com/2018/10/15/opinion/politics-race-white-tribalism.html) column.
But this can change. A majority of Americans, whom we’ve called the “Exhausted Majority,” are fed up by America’s polarization. They know we have more in common than that which divides us: our belief in freedom, equality, and the pursuit of the American dream. They share a deep sense of gratitude that they are citizens of the United States. They want to move past our differences.
This data on segments of Americans is interesting and well presented. It does make me wonder if this exists independent of the marketing and propaganda of politicians, or if this is the desired outcome of those programs to slice up America into groups that can be marketed to.
Vue’s Ecosystem Growth is Taking Off… Just Like React’s Did (https://zendev.com/2018/10/16/vue-growth-taking-off-like-react.html) zendev.com
I don’t think there is anything so trendy as Javascript frameworks. Remember when Angular was cool? Oi! 😬
Top 5 Contemporary Software Engineering Books – KI labs Engineering – Medium (https://medium.com/ki-labs-engineering/top-5-contemporary-software-engineering-books-8b5ca6a28e83) medium.com
I hadn’t heard of the first four books on this list. I’m intrigued by Developer Hegemony. 📚
What I loved about Paul Allen | Bill Gates (https://www.gatesnotes.com/About-Bill-Gates/Remembering-Paul-Allen?WT.mc_id=10_16_2018_10_PaulAllen_BG-TW_&WT.tsrc=BGTW&linkId=58288095) www.gatesnotes.com
A touching remembrance of Paul Allen by Bill Gates.
StartMail - Private & encrypted email made easy (https://www.startmail.com/en/) www.startmail.com
Nice to see another web-based, easy-to-use encrypted email service. This one has some additional privacy features that look great. I maintain an encrypted address at Protonmail (https://protonmail.com) which has some similar features. As an aside, it’s notable that all encrypted email services I know of tout that their servers are not located in the United States as a feature. It’s sad that our government is known to treat digital right-to-privacy with so low regard.
About static site generators (https://fvsch.com/static-site-generators/) fvsch.com
An assessment of static site generators and the somewhat miserable landscape of authoring tools. I agree with the central push of this piece. I keep finding that static site generators introduce far too much friction into my writing process. One may note that my microblog (https://micro.thingelstad.com) and linkblog (https://links.thingelstad.com) are both very active while my blog (https://www.thingelstad.com) is pretty quiet. That is almost entirely because writing for Jekyll, the static site generator I use, is too hard. Tools like Forestry (https://forestry.io) offer some hope to make this better, but the configuration is still orders of magnitude too hard.
ongoing by Tim Bray · On Cash (https://www.tbray.org/ongoing/When/201x/2018/10/11/On-Cash) www.tbray.org
I like Bray’s perspective on cash here. I tend to still pay for most of my routine, small purchases with cash. I’d add to his list of reasons the fact that as we move from real cash we devalue the expense. Keeping transactions in cash will make you more conscious of your spending, and hopefully spend less. 💸
Give Back 🎁
https://www.hackthegap.com
The mission of Hack the Gap (https://www.hackthegap.com/) is to amplify the voices and cultivate talents of underserved people in our community. I serve on the board of Minnestar (https://minnestar.org) with Jenna Pederson (https://twitter.com/jennapederson) , one of the founders of Hack the Gap, and I love what this organization is focusing on. Gender diversity in tech is a real problem and it’s far too often brushed off as some endemic issue that cannot be solved. That isn’t the case at all. Hack the Gap is creating a way for people to get into the technology industry and breaking down barriers. Donate to Hack the Gap today! (https://secure.squarespace.com/commerce/donate?donatePageId=5829347e1b631bf14c24e1a3)
Yet More Links 🍞
- GitHub Actions (https://github.com/features/actions) github.com This new feature from GitHub looks really interesting, but it’s light on details.
- How to feel happier (https://www.fastcompany.com/90246427/do-these-8-things-every-day-to-be-happier-and-filled-with-less-regret) www.fastcompany.com Eight things to improve happiness.
- Announcing Camelot, a Python Library to Extract Tabular Data from PDFs - SocialCops (https://blog.socialcops.com/technology/engineering/camelot-python-library-pdf-data/) blog.socialcops.com This could be handy if you need to pull data out of PDFs.
- birdseye: Quick, convenient, expression-centric, graphical Python debugger using the AST (https://github.com/alexmojaki/birdseye) github.com Very cool and powerful Python debugger. I think this could also be a powerful learning tool!
- Fake Followers Audit from SparkToro | SparkToro (https://sparktoro.com/tools/fake-followers-audit) sparktoro.com Tool to identify how many of your Twitter followers are fake. 23.4% for me.
- Muze (https://www.charts.com/muze) www.charts.com High-end data visualization library.
Microposts 🎈
Thursday @ 8:55 PM (https://micro.thingelstad.com/2018/10/18/foo-fighters.html)
Foo Fighters!!!
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Thursday @ 1:29 PM (https://micro.thingelstad.com/2018/10/18/we-were-here.html)
We were here.
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Thursday @ 1:25 PM (https://micro.thingelstad.com/2018/10/18/182524.html)
We had a great morning exploring the Franconia Sculpture Park (http://www.franconia.org) ! We are lucky to have great public art in the Twin Cities!
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Sunday @ 9:57 PM (https://micro.thingelstad.com/2018/10/14/did-my-first.html)
Did my first longer interstate drive with the Tesla Model 3 and Autopilot. Car drove itself without need for override south on I-35 from the edge of Minneapolis to Faribault. Display gives good indicators to convey confidence to driver as well. Impressed. 👍🏻🤖🚗
Sunday @ 9:29 AM (https://micro.thingelstad.com/2018/10/14/its-snowing.html)
It’s snowing!? 🌨😧
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Sunday @ 8:29 AM (https://micro.thingelstad.com/2018/10/14/this-picture-captures.html)
This picture captures most of what I’ll remember from yesterday’s Minnesota United game. 🤬⚽️
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Sunday @ 8:26 AM (https://micro.thingelstad.com/2018/10/14/132635.html)
We had a great time at the Minnesota Zoo Jack-o-Lantern Spectacular (https://mnzoo.org/jols-2/) last night. I was blown away by the artistry and overall experience. It is created by Passion for Pumpkins (http://passionforpumpkins.com/photo-gallery/) with 5,000 pumpkins! The big, photo style pumpkins are very cool. 🎃👍🤩
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Saturday @ 5:33 PM (https://micro.thingelstad.com/2018/10/13/todays-mnufc-match.html)
Today’s #MNUFC match wasn’t the one I would have picked to be the last of the season for me, but so be it. Looking forward to seeing everyone at the new stadium next year! ⚽️
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Saturday @ 1:45 PM (https://micro.thingelstad.com/2018/10/13/slow-start-for.html)
Slow start for #MNUFC today. ⚽️
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Saturday @ 12:59 PM (https://micro.thingelstad.com/2018/10/13/excited-for-our.html)
Excited for our final MN United game of the 2018 season, and the last one in TCF Bank Stadium. Looking for some great soccer today! ⚽️👍🏻
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Saturday @ 12:56 PM (https://micro.thingelstad.com/2018/10/13/umbrellas.html)
Umbrellas. ☂️
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Saturday @ 12:54 PM (https://micro.thingelstad.com/2018/10/13/175451.html)
Had a fun and delicious evening at Kitchen Window’s (https://kitchenwindow.com) Spanish Wine Dinner Class last night. Fun time, learned some things and nice people!
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Fortune 🥠
You’ve made it all the way to the end! 👏 Here is your fortune for this week.
Never quarrel with one’s bread and butter.
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