Every day cannot be a celebration without losing the meaning behind it. Yet I find myself consistently trying to make my days more than they are. Maybe to fend off boredom, but probably due to overstimulation. When I’m surrounded by novelty and news I tend to try to make my days more exciting than they naturally are.
We need those slow days, just like we need our celebrations. Figuring out the right balance is the hard part.
How would you react if you heard someone talking negatively about your friend when she wasn’t around? Would you ignore it and not respond? Or would you stick up for your friend and call them out? Ignoring it would be more polite and you wouldn’t cause a scene — no one wants to cause a scene.
I know what I’d do — I’d defend my friend and, if necessary, cause a scene. She isn’t there and can’t stick up for herself.
What if the person wasn’t a friend? Would you act any differently? What if you heard a gay man being made fun of by strangers just out of his earshot? Would you stick up for him?
I’d like to think that I would. I’d like to think that I’d put aside social convention and go out of my way to speak up for people that don’t have a voice — whether they can’t be heard or aren’t present to respond.
We are all one. We are all friends and we are all family. We’ve got to stick up for each other.
In a recent Mission Dharma Dharma Talk Howie Cohn talked about winter. He mentioned plants going dormant and wildlife hibernating. He emphasized that this is the season for rest.
I’d never thought of winter this way. I’d been irritated by the short days and long nights. I’d been sad when the skies were gray for weeks at a time.
But the perspective Howie shared makes complete sense. I was trying to live in a way that was not in accord with the season — I was trying to fight nature and therefore I was suffering.
Now I know to embrace this season of rest.
I like to think of the growth of our company on the way trees grow. Trees grow up some, then out some, then up some more. During adverse conditions, when it is too cold or too dry, they stop growing upwards and set themselves up for future growth. The strongest trees are those that grow the slowest.
Comparing our companies growth to a large tree helps me find patience when I feel things are moving too slowly. It helps me to think about where we are going and what our next steps are when I get frustrated.
If you’ve been reading my blog over the last year you may have thought something like “David sure does try a lot of different morning routines that don’t stick.” If so, you’d be very right. One of the most difficult things for me is finding a consistent rhythm. I doubt I’m alone in this as life is unpredictable. Getting sick or traveling or a time intensive project can throw off our rhythm.
Regardless of past failures, I’m trying a new routine but it might be better to call it a philosophy. My thought is that mornings are for doing things — for action. Shortly after you get up will be when your mind and body are least tired and they should perform at their best. My plan is to not waste that energy on consuming information or relaxing physical activity like deep stretches. Those can wait until the evening when my energy is spent.
I don’t know how long this routine will stick. I have some pretty strong habits that want me to read blog posts and social feeds in the morning. It will be interesting to find out.
I think it is a good time to look at what and how much you are consuming. I think it is helpful to look at across everything you consume, from what you buy at retail stores to what you eat to how much water and electricity you use. But I’m focused more on the media I consume right now.
I’m thinking through each media source — Twitter, Facebook, blogs, Apple News, books, and TV. How much time do I spend on each a week? How much does each distract me from the bigger things I want to accomplish? How much does each enrich my life?
I’m going to watch myself over the next couple of weeks with these questions in mind and see if I want to make changes.
Last night, for the first time in years, I woke up rested before my alarm went off. It didn’t hurt that I’d set the alarm to allow 9 hours of sleep, but a week ago I would have slept the full time.
I’ve been concentrating on getting enough sleep for only 5 days. This week my average number of hours of sleep is 8.5 while I’ve had many weeks in the past averaging under 7.
The biggest difference that I’ve noticed is that I feel sleepy more often. I don’t know if I forgot what sleepy felt like or whether getting a small number of hours of sleep puts your body into a fight-or-flight mode that doesn’t let sleepy through or ignores your circadian rhythm. But after getting a few days of good sleep I could feel bedtime approaching in a way I didn’t before.
It could also be that I’ve changed some habits. I’m trying to pace myself on work and not stare at my computer screen late into the evening. I’m limiting TV time and spending the last 30 minutes of my night on the couch under a blanket and reading.
I’ve also given myself permission to be tired and to sleep, which may be the biggest factor in the way I feel. As I wrote a few days ago, I’ve acknowledged that winter is the time for rest and internal growth so instead of fighting the early-setting sun’s effect I’m embracing it.
Flexibility is a competitive advantage. If you can adapt to your environment faster than anyone else then you have the opportunity to get a disproportionate share of the benefits. For example, companies that were setup in such a way that they were able to make a quality app when Apple first introduced the App Store were able to benefit more than people getting into making apps after there were over a million apps in the App Store.
I think there are two key components to ensuring you’ll be flexible.
First, you have to give yourself slack in your schedule. If you are working at 100% of your capacity then you have no flexibility to add something new. It also helps to have projects which you can deprioritize as business demands shift to something else. For example, we are working on a couple of internal apps that we think will be great but have no set timeline for completion.
Second, you have to ensure your tools are always sharp. That can mean many things, but the essence of it is that if you need to do something right now to capitalize on an opportunity then you can’t spend days or weeks getting yourself ready. I’ll share an example.
I have an alarm clock app in the App Store. Before the music streaming service Rdio shut down, it was the only alarm clock that would allow you to wake up to your Rdio playlists (now it uses Apple Music instead.) I first created the app a few years ago before Apple released two devices with drastically different screen sizes. When they did that I didn’t have time to update the app to work on the new devices. Then about 6 months ago Rdio changed something that required my app to act differently. Since the app hadn’t been updated for the new phones I had to do a lot more work to fix that problem before I could fix the issue that Rdio caused. The outcome was that I didn’t hit Rdio’s deadline and had to pull the app from the store while I worked on it.
Don’t be that me that lets my apps get too out of date to remain flexible. Find any ways that you can remain as flexible as possible. You have no way of knowing the future on even the next project you’ll work on. Accept that reality and plan for it.
Every time I get a new Mac, or set one up for someone else, I make some tweaks that I think Apple should include by default. I only make a small number of tiny changes because I believe in keeping the machine as close to the way Apple delivered it as possible. I won’t be recommending software to install because that software would be particular to my need and not generally relevant.
Here are my recommended tweaks, in case any of them help you.
Create Application and Downloads folders in the Dock, make them display as folders, and open as a grid.
To make these changes, open Finder and drag the Applications folder, that should be in your favorites list, down into the Dock on the right side next to the Trash. Then right click on it and make the options look like the screenshot below. Do the same thing with the Downloads folder.
Turn on tap to click on the trackpad for left click and two finger tap to click for right click.
You make these changes by going to System Preferences, then Trackpad.
Turn on three finger drag on the trackpad. This lets you move thing around on the screen, like windows or files, without having to press down to click the trackpad.
You make this change in an unexpected place, Accessibility. Go to System Preferences, then Accessibility, then click the “Trackpad Options…” button, and enable dragging as shown in the screenshot below.
That’s it! Three simple things that make my Mac experience better.
I talked with a smart guy I like and respect the other night. He is also a small business owner and he’s been doing it longer than we have. He’s a role model for us and proof that the community we live in values entrepreneurism. That’s all to say that when he gives advice it is a good idea for us to listen to it.
One thing he said the other night — and really this is advice that’s been told many times by many people over many years — was not to give anything away for free. Once you do that you are devaluing yourself and you are highly unlikely to get anything from that person in the future.
I don’t think the advice can be that generic. I take things very literally so he may agree with what I’m going to say next. I believe there are times when it is good to give away something for free. It depends on the context of your situation, but I’ve come up with 4 scenarios that I’ve come across which mostly apply to our line of work, technology consulting:
You need to learn something — The best way to learn anything is to do it on a real project. And it is easier to convince someone to let you do something for free and you’ll get educational value out of it. But you have to go in expecting that that person will never give you any money and be OK with that.
You need a portfolio — Just like when you need to learn something, you build the best portfolio with real work. When we started out all our previous work was confidential and we couldn’t include it in our portfolio so to an outsider that didn’t talk to us it looked like we had no experience. But again, go into this expecting that you will never get any money from that person. And I’d recommend doing something for a charitable organization — it will help you feel better about not getting paid.
You aren’t doing anything else — If you are starting a business and still building a client list then you’ll probably have a lot of downtime for the first six months. Doing something for free can be seen as a marketing expense. What can you do that people will see and say “I want to work with those folks!”? We’re building products that we own and providing them to people and organizations we like and hoping it will turn into something more. The best part of this strategy is that we own it still and can use it in other ways in the future.
The other benefit is that having this project helps to keep up your momentum. As a small business just starting out it is easy to get slowed down by details and getting your name out there while your motivation grinds to a halt. Having a project with a goal, even if it is for free right now, keeps you going stronger during the slow times.
You want to give back — If your version of volunteering is giving away your work for free then I think that’s great.
Looking back over these scenarios, three out of four of them only apply to people getting started in business. If that is all the work you’ve gotten in your first year then I’d be worried about your business.
But I also believe that everything you give will come back to you in some way — I’m a hippy like that. If you don’t believe that then giving away anything for free might cause you more cognitive dissidence than any of the benefits are worth. You’ll be mentally kicking yourself for doing it, which isn’t where you want to be.
I don’t remember the first time I felt like an adult. I remember multiple times that I had responsibility for pretty big things — things that felt bigger than me. I would stop and think about them for a second and marvel at being a grown up.
Last night felt different. I had a moment while driving to the ER because my daughter had a seizure. What I wanted in that moment was someone to tell me “it is all going to be alright.” But no one can tell me that. It isn’t all going to be alright. And to me that is being adult — knowing that you have no reassurances and that no one can protect you.
We had a long night but by early this morning my daughter was a drugged up and tired version of her normal self, asking for hugs and everyone to play songs for her on the piano.
If someone you work with has dropped the ball on something you owe it to them, yourself, and the organization to be honest about that. Don’t blame or be rude and don’t make it a personal attack. It isn’t about the person. But you have to say something.
Don’t soften it. Every time I have to give critical feedback I’m tempted to cushion it. Too many times I’ve given in to that temptation. “This didn’t get done right but you did great on this!” Many people teach this as the proper way to deliver critical feedback. Adding that “but…” softens it for both you and them.
Don’t soften it. Let the critical feedback hang in the air. It may feel like minutes have passed. Focus on the point you are communicating now and work through it. Don’t distract yourself with the positive things that person has done right this moment. Communicate about that one point. Telling them what they do great will come afterwards.
Looking at history, we’ve done a bad job of predicting what is and isn’t possible. In their day people believed that the sun rotated around the earth and that was the end of it. Or they believed it impossible that everything is made up of millions upon millions of tiny little things that we call atoms. Each of those previous generations didn’t quite think they knew it all, but they thought they knew most of it.
I don’t believe that we are any different today. We believe we know everything and ignore the larger everything else that we don’t fully understand. I find it difficult to approach ideas while thinking “that isn’t possible.”
This last year I’ve been getting more involved with organizations than I’ve been. I’ve also been one of two people starting a company from nothing. As I always do, I have opinions on how things should be done. These opinions aren’t set in stone — more like they are set in hot liquid metal, still waiting to be cast into their shape. Writing and sharing them helps them form stronger and I’ll share one now.
The number of members you have has a positive correlation to the impact your organization can make until a certain point. At that point, each member you have reduces your impact. That point is different for every organization because every one has different goals and members.
I’d argue the best way to figure out the right number is to work backwards. Figure out what impact you want to make and then figure out the minimum number of people you need to do it.
A little while back I had a conversation where the other person said something to the effect of “What I’m saying isn’t subjective, it is first hand experience.” I responded by noting that first hand experience is entirely subjective and clouded by every bias we’ve picked up over the years.
I try not to trust my initial thought or feeling about something. I notice it and think about what could influence me to think that way. Are my biases getting in the way of my thoughts? Why do I feel the way I do? How would I feel if I’d lived through different experiences.
Generally I find that I’m able to be more open to new thoughts and ideas. And I’m less judgmental about thoughts that I disagree with because I know the person with those thoughts lived a different life and saw different things. In a way, she is living in a different world than I am. It would be unkind and rude of me to walk into her world and try to tear it down.
A year ago tomorrow I decided to start writing a blog post every day. It started as a seven day challenge which has, with this post, turned into a year. I’m not stopping here, just recording a milestone.
One of my reasons for starting this habit was to get better at communicating through writing. I think I’ve improved but it is difficult to judge from inside my head. I don’t think I’ve gotten closer to finding my voice but I still find myself writing and choosing topics like the writers I admire.
Writing every day has forced me to think through topics in much more detail than if they were only floating in my head. That alone is worth writing every day, even if I weren’t sharing it.
When I started writing a blog post every day one of my biggest concerns is that I didn’t have anything original to say. I feared that every word I wrote would have been written better by someone else already. I feared that my words would therefore be boring and no one would be interested in them.
Recently I’ve been paying attention to some of my own behavior when reading blog posts and listening to podcasts and Dharma Talks. I’ve noticed that I don’t need novelty to find a topic interesting. What matters more is that it is a topic I’m interested in. And when I hear someone saying the same thing about a topic as I’ve heard elsewhere I don’t question their originality — instead I add their voice to any others I’ve heard with a similar viewpoint. What I don’t do is turn off a podcast saying “I’ve already heard this before.”
I’m saying this as much to myself as I am to you — share your ideas and opinions, even if you feel they are unoriginal.
I’ve recently realized that I’m not good at two things that I want to be good at — writing and podcasting. I’ve been posting on my blog irregularly but those postings haven’t been enough for me to “find my voice”. I either feel like I am a stuffy, boring version of myself or like I am imitating writers I admire.
I’ve also just started my path towards podcasting and after only a few minutes of trying to record myself without stumbling I am very humbled. Listening to great podcasts makes it all seem so natural.
I think it’s great that I’ve found things that I am not good at and that I feel very uncomfortable with both. I have a lot of room to grow.
I will only get better by doing them often. I’ll start with writing — I’m going to take the challenge and ship for 7 days straight. I really think that in the long term every day may be too often to have a blog post since I tend to skip over the long daily blog posts that I subscribe to, but for a week it will be good.
After that challenge I’ll work on podcasting. Maybe just by recording my thoughts about something every day at first but at some point I need to ship that too.
While writing this I’ve asked myself “why do you want to be better at these two things.” I hadn’t asked myself that question before writing this so there is my first reason. Trying to communicate an idea to someone else makes you question it in ways that you don’t usually do in your internal mental dialog and both of these mediums stimulate those questions.
The second reason is that we have very limited ways of transferring information from one to another and I want to get better at all of them. I believe that our biggest limitation as a species is the difficulties we face transferring complex knowledge and I hope to find better ways of doing it.
I’ve watched two movies recently, The Revenant and The Iron Giant, that feature bad people doing bad things. This is typical in movies — the audience wants someone to cheer against as much as they want someone to cheer for. In both of these movies it is easy for the audience to cheer against the bad guy without remorse.
The problem is that real bad people in real life aren’t only bad. They are human like the rest of us, a mixture of good and bad and neutral. But most of our movies don’t include those nuances in their characters and I think it is because moviemakers want to make it easier on their audience. The feeling of internal conflict isn’t comfortable and if you feel sympathy for the bad guy then you’ll get that feeling.
The problem is that movies influence our real lives. We start to make the real life bad guys into the movie bad guys which makes it easier to be angry and hateful to them. This anger and hate leads to conflict and killing.
Avoiding the nuances of real bad guys may be fine for The Iron Giant since it is a kids movie. Of course it may be worse as we shape young minds to believe that real life is clear cut. But I judge The Revenant more harshly because its creators went to such lengths to make it realistic but intentionally developed only one side of the bad guy.
Of course, maybe I’m wrong about real life. Maybe this world has real bad guys that are simply pure evil — I’m definitely not an expert on the subject. But I’ll always believe that each of us has both good and bad in our hearts.
I woke this morning straight from a dream and thinking about two technologies I want to see in my lifetime.
This first technology is virtual reality similar to what you see in the movie The Matrix. I don’t like the idea of jamming a giant spike in the back of my head, but I do think that directly connecting with the brain for VR makes more sense than trying to go through the eyes. The eyes can only process a relatively small amount of data at once and VR that shows images ignores the other senses which are just as vital as sight to a sense of reality. The main reason I want to see this technology is for learning. Like in The Matrix, I think our brains could learn much more quickly without our sensory organs slowing it down.
The second technology is a non-intrusive, always-wearable device for monitoring brain activity at the synapse level. This device, which I image would fit around the head like a headband, would monitor the electrical signals moving through the brain. The main reason I want to see this technology is because my daughter has seizures and we don’t know why. We don’t have any way of knowing when a seizure will occur or what will trigger it and constant monitoring could help with this. Also, I see it helping people that don’t suffer from epilepsy because they could see what parts of their brain are active and react accordingly. If all the stress centers are firing then seeing that might be enough to push a person to change their lifestyle.
I don’t know how practical either of these technologies are and I doubt I could have any role in bringing them to reality. Maybe life will guide me in the direction where I get to see if I can.
I think I’ve written about this subject before but it is worth repeating. The key to creating just about anything is continual forward progress. Knowing your goal and moving towards it for the first month, sixth month, first year, and tenth year. Maybe altering your course slightly as you learn more about the path ahead or the environment you’re in, but not turning around and changing direction with every whim or shiny new thing.
When in doubt about how fast you should be going, slow down. Take time to rebuild your energy so you can keep pushing forward and don’t expend it all at once.
Know where you want to go, more or less, and don’t stop until you get there.
I’m six and a half feet tall now and in the ninth grade I was six foot one. I got tired of people telling me I should play basketball so I tried out for the team. Before that I had played in my friend’s driveway a few nights a week but until I made the team I didn’t know just how awful I was at the sport.
It took me weeks to be able to make a layup. For people unfamiliar with basketball lingo, a layup is a move where you dribble the ball while running towards the basket and then jump off one foot while moving the ball towards the basket with the opposite hand and gently throwing the ball into the basket. It is the most fundamental basketball move and I could not do it. Every day in practice while the team was working together I would repeatedly try to make a layup.
Many other things seem to have come easily to me in life. When I was in the Army I was easily able to get physically fit and rank at the top of my class. And shooting a rifle in a straight line was simple as well, other than some small issues with the foxholes not being deep enough and my helmet pushing my glasses off my face.
Computers and technology have always been a strength as well. In two months I went from having never written a real program to having a fully functional app in the App Store.
It is so easy for me to look back at these things I’ve described and know I’m good at them and only remember that I’ve always been good at them. It is so easy to forget that initial struggle and to forget all the hard work — all the layups that I missed. It is so easy for anyone to say “I’m not good at this” and just quit.
I don’t remember everything I’ve ever started and failed, I remember the ones that I’ve stuck with. I remember the things that I’ve spent hours or years improving — so slowly that looking back it seems like it was always there. I got my first computer when I was 13 and became a programmer at 30. I missed a lot of layups.
Now I look forward to doing a lot of shitty writing and recording a lot of boring podcasts and then finding the next thing that makes me uncomfortable and amateur.
I’ve often said to myself “it doesn’t matter” to try to relax about something weighing on my mind, but that isn’t right. Telling myself it doesn’t matter lessens the work I do and creates barriers within myself as the parts of my brain fight — the parts that know it matters and the parts that are just trying to make me feel better.
“It will take care of itself” is much better. I can admit I care, it is obvious that I do. And I can let go. It’s not all on me, I don’t have to control it.
It will take care of itself.
Yesterday I was driving down the highway to a meeting with a client and saw a vehicle from a previous employer. I left there about 4 years ago and yet one of the programs they were implementing while I was still there is still in place — in essence, it is a debit card rewards program. My initial thought was that they are treating a tactic as a strategy and lacking any real strategy. That may be true but seeing as how I’m not part of the day to day operations it would be arrogant of me to make that assumption. But I do think it is a fun exercise to think about if I remove it from this context and think about banking generically.
I don’t know much about the state of banking today. I have done no research on the subject in years and don’t really care. But I do know my own preferences, which I can use to define at least a small segment of the market. The question is whether that segment is a sign of things to come or just an anomaly. I’d argue that we’re on the cutting edge.
In particular, my preferences are to do all of my banking online or through mobile apps. I have a low threshold for mediocrity in this functionality and if a bank can’t get it right then I lose trust in their competence with not just technology but my money as well.
I see the future of banking being mostly online with much less reliance on physical locations. Due to my viewpoint, I’d lead a bank with a strategy of buying or building the best technology and taking money from physical locations to do that.
But you might not do the same. My strategy depends on my worldview and the future I see through my biases. I could be wrong about any or all of my assumptions. Should I hedge my bets by only moving halfway towards my new strategy and staying halfway in the old one?
I don’t think so. I think you should move forward with the strategy you see but keep your eyes open to signs that you might be on the wrong path. Find ways to test your assumptions along the way, but go forward with all your effort behind it.
While thinking through this exercise I’ve realized that we haven’t done any of this for our company. We thought we saw a need and are doing what we can to meet that need without any real plan. Maybe strategy comes later.
I am awful at giving people bad news. If I were a doctor and had a patient with no legs I would tell her she would walk again.
I think being bad at bad news is natural. It’s probably the default for most people. But it gets in my way too much and I don’t want that anymore. I don’t want clients to distrust me or to work 36 straight hours because I won’t tell them that the project will take longer than we all estimated. I am an imperfect human and that’s ok.
So I’m going to admit that imperfection and face up to it and see what happens.
I don’t say it enough here but it could apply to almost everything I write — your results may vary. Why should I say it more? As a cop out? As a way of saying “well it worked for me, you must have done something wrong?” No, neither of those.
Your results may vary because you aren’t me. If you’ve enjoyed reading his blog then you may be like me in someways, but we are different in millions of ways. My point in saying your results may vary is to encourage you to decide or find out if what I’m saying works for you or if you agree with me.
We are highly social creatures. Our social nature is part of the reason that we’ve been able to build everything we have so far. But it can also get in our way when our brain indicates to us that we should be like something we’re not. For example, yesterday someone came and spoke to our morning DCYP coffee group. She was talking about fitness and taking care of yourself and brought up needing to get enough sleep. She insisted that we need to try to a full 5 hours of sleep a night.
Part of my mind immediately felt bad for not conforming to that norm. I’ve tried 5 hours of sleep a night and found it didn’t work for me — I need 8 hours. And I’m sure she meant that you need at least 5 and that it is different for everyone, but I despite knowing that I still have internal dialogs back and forth about it. I want to conform to that identity.
So I have to talk myself out of that. I have to remind myself that we’re all different and that my identity doesn’t revolve around how much sleep I get. I can still be accepted if I get more than 5 hours.
I’m sure I’ve given similar impressions through my writing here that what I talk about is what has made me successful. But your results may vary and I’ll still accept you whether it works for you or not.
I found a video announcement for the new Macklemore and Ryan Lewis album last night and immediately loved it. I have a soft spot for people being honest and real. I don’t know whether or not that was manufactured for this announcement but it convinced me. I enjoyed the whole thing, but this line near the beginning stood out the most to me:
Being comfortable is what kills artists. I haven’t been comfortable in years although it generally hasn’t been by choice. Every time I thought I’d found comfort life kicked it out from under me. Now I see that as a good thing.
Comfort is different than success. You can be highly successful and still have an itch that keeps you uncomfortable. The key is finding which discomfort is right for you.
Seth Godin said something similar on a podcast. I don’t remember which one or his exact words, but he said something to the effect of a discomfort that was bad for him was worrying about finances. As I said yesterday, your results may vary and you need to find what works for you. So Seth made sure he was comfortable in that area so he could push himself out of comfort elsewhere.
Which brings up an important point. Comfort isn’t Kryptonite that your nemesis uses on you. It is self-inflicted exposure. You can choose to be comfortable and therefore weaken your super powers. Or you can choose to push out of your comfort and become stronger every day.
I’m planning to start doing a podcast. I’ve bought a mic and a stand and I’ve been learning about everything I need on the technical side.
But niggling in the back of my mind is the question “is the podcast you make going to be any good at all?” That question leads to thoughts of what to talk about and how to ensure I don’t say “uh, umm” constantly and why would anyone listen to me, endlessly going around in circles.
What I need to do is get it out of my head. I should already know this but for some reason it feels different when it is something brand new. Iterative design is what I do when I design web sites or make apps or do anything I’m good at. You have to get that first sketch on paper before you can realistically ask “how can I make this better?”
Before you can ask that question you have to have a “this”. And having that this makes all the difference. Then you can say “the proportions are off between the thin and the thick parts” or “we need more white space to separate these areas.” Before you have the this you cannot evaluate and you cannot improve.
Just make something, anything.
I’ll record that first podcast and listen back to it. And then I’ll know what can improve.
Howdy!
On the third episode of The David Brunow Podcast I’m getting back on the horse after falling off a year ago, and this time I’m going to take things easier. I have a new, relaxed attitude towards creating my podcast and I’m drinking a scotch, neat.
On this episode I talked about the book and music publishing industries and wondered if the software industry will follow a similar path. I also talked about a new to-do system that I’m trying out.
Falling off a habit is like falling off a bike while learning to ride. You have a choice to get back on and keep trying or to say “this isn’t for me.” That’s your choice, not some foregone conclusion based upon who you are and what you are or aren’t good at.
If you get no good out of the habit, and you can see far enough into the future that you know it will never be useful, then stop falling off and move on. Otherwise, get back on. Don’t make a big deal of it, just brush yourself off and try again.
I know, it isn’t the catchiest title. And really what I’m writing about isn’t a very interesting subject, but please give me a couple of minutes to tell you about something.
That something is software. Software made by small groups of people or maybe even just one person. Us in the industry call it “indie” software.
Indie software is made by a human being just like you (although that human probably has worse posture from sitting at a computer all day) and not a faceless corporation. That human being deeply cares about what she creates. I know that because if she didn’t then she wouldn’t be able to make a living off of it. Or perhaps she doesn’t make a living off of it but instead spends her free time bringing something new into the world. That’s even better in my eyes.
Just like a small business on Main Street, indie software creators really want to make you happy. They value your feedback and will do what they can to either fix your problem or add a feature. Obviously they can’t build every feature, but they’ll care enough to take the time to talk to you about it.
There isn’t always an indie software solution to your problem — some problems are too big for one person or a small team. But I’d like to ask you to do one small thing going forward:
Pay attention to who created your software. Was it Adobe Systems, a multinational corporation with over 11,000 employees who makes Photoshop? Or Flying Meat, a two person company who makes similar software called Acorn?
A stranger walks up to you at a coffee bar, tries to sell you on something, and then lies or provides misleading information. How many chances do you give her? Will you listen to her a second or third time? Most likely not. You subconsciously set her reputation as low and won’t give her another chance. She’s coming into your brand new relationship with her hand out asking for something. And she’s building that relationship on an unstable foundation with no trust. You’ve got to be a kind hearted and patient person to give her another chance.
Let’s think through the same scenario, without the lies or misleading information. A person comes up to you at a coffee shop and tries to sell you on something. If you are honest with yourself, do you even listen to what she has to say? Or do you wait until she’s finished and politely decline? How many chances will you give that person? I doubt it would be many, if any, more than the first person.
If you have a perfect sales pitch with a 100% success rate then either of these strategies will work. But you don’t. You need more than one chance. You need to build a real relationship with the person you are selling to — going in with no intention of a sale and only an intention of forming a relationship. That takes time. And speaking of time, taking that person’s time is still asking without giving.
How many chances will you give a friend you’ve known for years? Probably still not more than a handful, but more than one.
My story is gross and embarrassing, in a gastronomical fashion. So beware that.
I’ve had stomach issues for a long time — so long that I can’t remember not having them. My issues were diarrhea shortly following each meal and some nights I would spend hours on the toilet. During my year in Iraq, my two biggest worries were getting hit by a mortar while sitting in the port-o-potty and shitting my pants while outside the base. Excursions outside the base were troubling because they got me out of my routine.
Routine is critical with a gastronomical issue. That makes traveling and adventure not so fun. Life becomes an obstacle course and you become an expert at logistics, always thinking about what restrooms are available. Public restrooms transform from disgusting places you don’t ever want to use into places of salvation.
It is hard to explain the mental state that accompanies this condition. It’s a combination of fear, a sense of brokenness and that your body is letting you down. And it’s a secret you can’t share with the world because it’s so embarrassing, especially when you have no idea why it happens. It hurts your most important relationships — my significant others have thought that I spent hours in the bathroom to escape them.
Eventually, it just becomes a sad fact of life.
I tried what I could think of to solve the problem, approaching it like a science experiment, rationally. I removed dairy from my diet, no change. Removed onions, nothing. Avoided spicy foods, nope. Went to doctors that had me shit in a cup for close examination. Ugh, that’s gotta be a tough job for them. Still no answers.
My science experiment had a fundamental problem — the human body is a very complex machine and I could never control all the variables. Maybe stress is a factor, things seemed to get worse when I was stressed out, like being in a combat zone or in the tail end of a failing marriage. But that wasn’t a direct correlation either, I still got sick when I felt stress free.
So yeah, complex machine. The complexity of this machine coupled with my general ignorance of anything more than basic anatomy and physiology meant that I wasn’t going to be able to rationally deduce a solution.
Many times I gave up. Figured it was just how I was plumbed, overly sensitive and fundamentally broken.
About two years ago I removed wheat flour from my diet, just to try it. That is a tough thing to do here in North Texas, and it made me feel somewhat un-American. But the results were undeniable. I cannot describe what a joy it is to have a solid bowel movement (and how difficult it is to refrain from sharing the good news with those close to me to avoid grossing them out). After the initial positive results I gave up pretty much anything with wheat in it, the hardest of which was beer. In addition to feeling un-American I felt un-manly, but damn it’s worth it. I experienced an amazing side effect that I never would have expected — years of constant head congestion just went away. Studies show links between food and outdoor allergies, so I assume that was the mechanism.
Fortunately, around the same time that I went gluten free it became a diet trend and it is getting easier and easier to avoid it. Still, eating food cooked by anyone else is risky, and life is riddled with land mines like broccoli cheese soup, soy sauce and barbecue sauces. I usually avoid all sauces because they are just too dangerous.
Hope I didn’t gross you out too much. And I really hope that someone else going through what I went through reads this and I can help save some suffering.
Through coincidence I’ve been watching two different things that show the way that animals behave in a pack. The first, Cesar Millan’s Leader of the Pack is about rehabilitating dogs and features Cesar’s pack as a large part of that rehabilitation. The second, Bully is a movie about the bullying problem in American public schools and features packs of adolescents tormenting individuals.
Each shows a different kind of pack, I’d describe the pack of dogs as highly functional and the pack of kids as highly dysfunctional. But are they the same thing?
At one point, Cesar introduces a dog to the pack that the entire pack shuns. The other dogs simply ignore her. Cesar attributes this behavior to the pack not liking that dog’s energy.
Is that the same thing that happens in bullying? Does the pack of kids not like that individual’s energy at some subconscious level? Is the bullying meant to bring that individual into line with the pack?
I don’t think so, but really I don’t know.
I was bullied growing up so I feel attached to this question. I still feel like an outsider to most groups despite being open-minded about many things. Am I too weak, strong, or different? Or have I always put myself in this role of outsider without realizing it?
A podcast I’ve listened to recently brought up something I think is related to this discussion. The guest on the podcast, Jonathan Haidt, was talking about how political debates in American politics are not about trying to convince the other person, or people belonging to the other party, but rather to reinforce the bonds with people within your own party. They are a way of showing how good of a member of the pack that you are.
And maybe that’s what this pack behavior in kids is all about — maybe it is just the way that bullies get other bullies to like them more. Obviously if this is true it does not make the behavior any more justified, but knowing why someone behaves a way is powerful on its own.
Yesterday I was listening to the most recent Asymcar podcast and one of the primary topics of discussion was about the market penetration of electric vehicles in the year 2040. OPEC made a claim that by 2040 only 6% of the world’s vehicles would be electric and the podcast’s host, Horace Dediu had crunched the numbers to see if that was a realistic number. Horace talked through all the factors and constraints and his most optimistic calculations were that only around 14% of the market could be electric vehicles in 2040. I’m guessing the actual number will be somewhere in the middle, so let’s assume 10%.
Something that I think we could all agree is inevitable, the adoption of electric vehicles, won’t even make a sizable dent in the market in 15 more years.
Our world may feel faster than ever before, but meaningful change takes time.
Yesterday I listened to White Privilege II by Macklemore and Ryan Lewis while driving to meet with a potential client. When I got there I walked into a room with 3 white men and was able to be comfortable. I don’t know these men very well right now and I’m sure if I get the opportunity to know them better than I’ll learn how good of people they are. But from the start I’m at an advantage by being a white man. I don’t feel like I’m doing a great job of talking through my privilege right now but I can certainly sense it.
When in doubt about a topic I choose silence. I haven’t known how to handle the way I feel about the injustices in this world. I definitely don’t want to glom onto a hashtag or event and claim it as my own when it isn’t. I have no idea what it is like to be a black man in America. I don’t even know what it is like to be a white woman.
I believe everyone should be treated fairly. And now that I think about it more, that means that sometimes we need to help some groups forward more to balance out other advantages. I don’t believe that helping some hurts others. Helping some helps everyone. This isn’t a zero sum game and we can all win. We are the most powerful nation on earth and we can show that through how we treat all our people, not just the fortunate.
I’m going to work on using my privilege in two ways. First, by fighting for inclusion. I want any group I’m a member of to not only accept all types of people but to seek out diversity. And second, by having tough conversations with people I know that don’t see their privilege.
I think it’s good to take a few minutes every once in a while and figure out who you are allowing to shape your life. As highly social creatures, we readily pick up on thoughts and habits in our environment that we may not notice in our daily lives. Fortunately, many of us have control over that environment — we can choose who we are around (both digitally and in the physical world), what we read, and the television we watch.
I explicitly choose not to let cable news have an influence on me because I don’t want it shaping who I am. I do the same with people that seem to constantly complain on Twitter, “high drama” friends that always need attention, and reality TV.
Instead, I read and listen to Seth Godin, Merlin Mann (although he can be complain-y at times at which point I have to take some time away), Joel Spolsky, Steven Pressfield, Dan Benjamin, Shawn Blanc, and Horace Dediu. I spend time with my girlfriend, close friends that provide support and that I can support, and my daughter. I try to surround myself with as much positive energy as possible.
If you haven’t in a while, think about who and what is influencing you. Consider whether you need to do some pruning.
A few times recently I’ve seen examples of people unwilling or unable to see things from another person’s point of view. That prompted me to think about that ability to “walk in someone else’s shoes” and after that reflection I think it is one of my biggest strengths. I believe it helps me be more reasonable about decisions, see more options in any given situation, communicate better with all kinds of people, and build things that appeal to more people that just ones like me.
That leads me to two questions.
First, how do I convince others that seeing things from someone else’s point of view is a good thing, a sign of a strength and not of weakness. That seeing something from a different perspective and changing your mind is not a bad thing. I don’t know an answer to this other than “lead by example.”
Second, how does a person cultivate the ability to see these different perspectives? I think the best way is providing a variety of life experiences in vastly different situations. I’ve lived the life of a poor person, a rich person, an athlete, a nerd, a criminal, a good citizen, a soldier, and a pacifist. Putting yourself in foreign situations is a good thing even if it feels uncomfortable. But even if you can’t put yourself in all those different situations right now you can still notice how other people live. Listen to their stories without needing to tell your own.
Do you feel like no one appreciates your true value at work?
It could be that you greatly overestimate your contributions. But more likely, you’re delivering too much — giving too much of yourself and providing value that isn’t being asked for.
But that’s a good thing — a very good thing — although it can cause discomfort and heartache for you. You’ve outgrown your job and it is time to move on. If you don’t get going you will either lose your will to deliver to your standards or get so angry that you burn bridges.
If I’m right and you’re as good as you think you are, it’s that time. Figure out the next step.
I don’t like having outstanding tasks that I’m responsible for doing. At the same time I like working on projects rather than little individual items like returning emails or fixing bugs. I like creating something from nothing and introducing it to the world. That feels like magic to me.
When our business is building software from nothing for clients we have to have a handful of projects all going at once so we have make enough money to survive. That reality is stressing me out a bit because I want it all done right now. I want to finish things and instead I’m making a little bit of progress across a number of different tasks but some days it feels like I’m barely moving or even moving backwards. I just want to cross it of the list and forget about it!
So I need to find a way to make this situation work for me. I think it is ok to feel uncomfortable and overwhelmed at times, which I do right now. I think that’s healthy, even. And part of my problem right now is that projects I hoped would be done months ago are still hanging around, not because I’m not working on them but because I can’t because I’m waiting on someone else.
I don’t know what the answer is yet. I’ve had to fight my finisher tendencies already because they were pushing me to build lower quality products. Luckily I have a business partner that tends in the opposite direction so we balance each other out and she is willing to say that something isn’t ready yet and I’m willing to listen to her.
But fighting my natural tendencies isn’t new and I thoroughly believe it is necessary to be successful. The first step is recognizing those tendencies.
Howdy!
On the fourth episode of The David Brunow Podcast I’m still getting back on the horse after falling off a year ago, and this time I’m going to take things easier. I have a new, relaxed attitude towards creating my podcast and I’m drinking a scotch, neat.
On this episode I talked about my recent failures in trying to verbally explain ideas to others and my struggles with getting stressed out by trying to live in the future.
I originally drafted this post in October of 2013 — over two years ago — and never shared it. Funny how I’m still thinking about the same thing:
Lately I’ve felt overwhelmed by opinion. It costs you nothing to share — it costs me in attention and anger at having your thoughts forced upon me. Being overwhelmed meant that I withheld my opinions. I didn’t want to overwhelm anyone else.
Recently I realized sharing opinions is sharing yourself. When I share things that everyone agrees with, I’m not adding any of myself to the interaction — I’m hiding. When I share my opinions I open myself up. You know more about who I am than you did.
I don’t know how to keep from being annoyed by most people’s opinions. But I won’t know if I care about yours unless you share and I listen. Then I can decide if I want to listen more.
I’ve decided to share my opinions here and on Twitter and in the real world. I’ve decided to expose myself. I hope you will listen at least once.
The source of unhappiness is wanting something to be different than it is. Like when you’re unhappy because you were expecting bacon and eggs for breakfast and got cold cereal. The problem I find myself having is that I don’t notice I’m unhappy. Because I don’t notice I’m unhappy I don’t take time to reflect on why I’m unhappy — what I want to be different than it is.
Let’s work on noticing that.
Being relatively new to my career path I find myself hesitant to share my opinion with the broader community. I think that since I am new that my opinion doesn’t count. I feel like I should sit back and listen and learn from all the very smart people and keep my mouth shut.
I need to overcome that. I need to know that my opinion is always legitimate, especially when I come to it from a position of thoughtfulness and caring. That doesn’t mean that my opinion is right, but it is always worth sharing. I can learn only so much through listening alone — I also need to test my opinions by sharing them.
Last night I was up until 4:30 in the morning working on a server migration, moving an old Windows 2003 server to Windows 2012. I started this migration last weekend and got my tail whooped — everything took longer than I expected and I ran out of weekend before I overcame all the problems that popped up.
Last night I approached the problem with a fresh mind and a new plan of attack I’d come up with over the week. But while the plan of attack got me started, I don’t owe the successful server migration to it. I owe it to realizing I was approaching the problem wrong.
Any reasonably complex system starts to feel like magic. An operating system, like Windows Server, is a very complex system. All that complexity hides causes and effects from you because there is no way to see exactly what is going on everywhere in the system. I’d gotten lost in this complexity and forgotten the power of causality. After struggling with the problem all last weekend I’d gotten lost in the complexity. I wrote off the migration failure as a sort of magic, thinking and saying “if it failed the first time it will probably fail again.” I’d lost my power over the situation because I didn’t think I could change it.
Last night I ran into problems again, some the same as last time and a couple new ones too. But this week things changed when somewhere along the way a new idea clicked. I thought “I need to figure out what is going wrong so I can fix it.” Sounds simple, I know, but it had escaped me.
First step, figure out what is going wrong. The system is too complex to see all the moving pieces at once, but I can look at individual parts. What tools do I need to do that? What information do those tools give me? How can I use that information to solve the problem? Repeat those three questions until you solve all the problems, with a little bit of thought about whether one problem could be causing another and whether you need to stay focused, or bounce between the different problems, or broadly attack all of them. When in doubt, stay focused.
My moral from this story is that I can easily fall into a trap of thinking that something is magic rather than a complex system of cause and effect. Any complex system can be figured out with enough time and energy.
Today I left the company I’ve been working at for the last three years. This last year was brutal — many sleepless nights of work, 50+ hour weeks, little to no exercise, and projects that just kept dragging on.
I found my breaking point. I’m whooped.
I’m thankful for the environment I worked in that was flexible enough for me to decide on the technologies to use and to learn. I’m thankful to have met and worked with many wonderful people. I’m thankful that I have the opportunity to decide what is next for me.
I’m a “rules oriented” person. I navigate life by following these rules — these rules make the day to day much simpler.
I’m going to start sharing these rules here in my “David’s Rules” series. This is the first — although each of these is equally important and this order is arbitrary — about apologies:
Always apologize for your mistakes. And make it a real apology — say “I’m sorry” rather than “I apologize”. “I apologize” is something someone says when they don’t really mean it.
But only apologize once for something — anything more makes your regret the other person’s problem and you don’t need that, you already did something wrong.
My title for this blog post is on the technical side but I’m going to keep the discussion high level and non-technical.
Silver bullets kill monsters.
In software development we have a fairly large and insidious monster called Cross Platform Development. This monster shows up when you want an application to work for everyone, like when you want an app that works for both Android phones and iPhones. But despite that example, this monster wasn’t brought to life by the smartphone. Before smartphones, Cross Platform Development could mean Mac and Windows, Windows and Linux, or any such combination. This problem has been around for at least 30 years and software developers have been looking for solutions for nearly as long.
I’m firmly in the “anti-Silver Bullet” camp — I believe that software development is a complex task that cannot be simplified without losing something. By losing something, I mean that to simplify software development you have to compromise somewhere else, in performance, customization, control, or design. I don’t like compromise. I also believe that humans are much more flexible than computers and they should be the part of the system that bends to make things work rather than expecting the machine to do it.
I’ll talk through the benefits of the Cross Platform Development Silver Bullet because, despite my bias, I do see definite benefits.
The biggest benefit of the Cross Platform Development Silver Bullet is that you have a single code base rather than having a separate one for every platform. This is good because it takes time and money to write code, fix bugs, and test applications. Those costs are greatly reduced with a single code base and not just during initial creation of the application but for the years of maintenance that follow. This seems like a simple concept but it is a huge deal.
Another benefit is developers don’t need to learn as many languages. A single code base will probably be written in a single language and you might also need to speak the databases’ language (although the hip thing these days is to have the database speak the same language as the code base.) a single language means it is easier to find software developers that speak that language. If you want to write native (the opposite of Cross Platform) apps for every platform right now, you’d need to speak somewhere between 3 and 5 languages minimum.
In most evaluations this would be the point where I’d share the downsides of the Cross Platform Development Silver Bullet. But it has no downsides. The problem is that it doesn’t exist. In specific, it doesn’t exist for what I need software to do. I do think there are situations where a Cross Platform Development Silver Bullet could work — situations where the compromises are OK. Let me tell you why it won’t work for me.
First, it is too risky. These Silver Bullets are code bases themselves, software written by teams employed by large technology companies. These companies can afford to have very smart people working on open source projects because it makes sense for them at the time. But what if that changes? What if the company changes its priorities or goes out of business? The code you’ve written will become useless, not immediately but over a relatively short time of months or years. You’ll have to rebuild everything. You may be thinking “it is open source, someone else will pick it up!” Which may be true, but will they be as devoted to the project as the original team? Will they be as smart as that team? What are their incentives? Again, too risky.
Second, and this ties in with the first reason, you will only be able to use the tools that the developers of the Silver Bullet give to you. If a shiny new feature comes out and those developers decide not to implement it, or worse, give you just a little control over it but not full control, then you can’t use it the way you’d like to. You may be thinking “well that’s no different than if Apple hasn’t provided the feature” but you’re wrong. It is different because other apps can use the feature and users of your app will see that. If others can do it and you can’t then you’re at a disadvantage.
Third, you will always be a little bit behind the features that native developers will get. The Silver Bullet works because people write code to make it work on multiple platforms. If a new feature comes out you have to wait for those people to write the code to enable it. And what if one platform has a feature that another doesn’t? How does that work? I don’t know, but the Silver Bullet can only solve that in two ways, either making you write that code yourself or not including that feature on either platform (I suppose there is a third way which involves adding a note in bold to the documentation letting you know that it only works on one platform, but that’s not a great option.) Again, you’ll always be behind.
Fourth, your application won’t feel right. This is the mushiest point I’ll make, but we are a mushy species. Each platform has its own design style which is one of the ways that they differentiate themselves. Each platform is motivated and incentivized to keep their style unique. That design style goes further than the way things look, it is the way they function too. The way things look is easier for these Silver Bullets to get right. But the easiest way to make the functionality right across platforms is by limiting options. This means you can’t differentiate your app as much as you might like. It also means that all apps built with the Silver Bullet start looking the same.
Do I believe that every app should be native? No. I believe you need to use a different tool for different situations after weighing the benefits and drawbacks. I don’t believe there is a one size fits all solution.
Confidence doesn’t come naturally to me. When I was young I was shy and timid and nothing changed much as I grew up. I was different enough from the other kids in elementary school that I got made fun of and bullied. My lack of confidence probably reached a peak my junior year of high school when I didn’t say more than a few sentences to my peers the entire year.
Today I’m very confident. I strongly believe I can do anything I put my mind to doing. I believe I owe my confidence to taking on challenges that tested my faith in myself and overcoming them. What do I mean by “challenges that tested my faith in myself?” I’ll explain.
Despite my confidence today I still doubt myself. When I hit trouble on a project a voice in the back of my head starts calling me names. Stupid, incompetent, a fraud, in way over my head. That’s my fear talking and it is a great sign that I’m challenging myself the right amount.
That fear can be enough to break your will and make you stop and declare failure. But if you push through it to the end and declare victory then you’ll build your confidence. After a few experiences like that you’ll be unstoppable.
My key takeaway about building confidence is that it comes from putting yourself in situations where failure is possible. You can’t fool your fear with simple tasks that you can easily overcome. You have to forge your confidence in the fire of challenges that test your faith in yourself.
We recently had a glass company come to our house to repair a broken window. Since our house is over 70 years old the repairman had to make quite a mess to remove the old, original pane — scraping away layers of whatever they used to hold window panes in 70 years ago. Chunks of that whatever were scattered across our floor.
As I would expect from a professional, he swept up the mess before he left.
In digital work it is much harder to see the mess. Useless commented out, poorly formatted, or uncalled code. CSS that doesn’t do anything or is repeated unnecessarily. Irregular naming conventions. These are the same kind of mess as the window scrapings that were on the floor of our house.
A professional cleans that up. Even though the customer or client will never see it. Even though it takes extra time that you might not have.
You are not an amateur — it’s part of the job.
A year ago I was part of a company that had grown from 2 people, with me doing most of the programming work, to 9 people in the period of a month or two. The systems we had in place for communication (email) and project management (email and Excel) failed quickly in the new environment. I’m a systems and infrastructure kind of guy so I took the lead on figuring out what we needed and the best solutions for it.
In no particular order, here are the conclusions I came to along with some notes on different options for each.
To save money we went with Mantis, a free and open source issue tracking web application written in PHP. I did some tweaking to the CSS so it wasn’t absolutely awful to look at and we came up with a pretty good workflow involving projects and versions. If I didn’t want to pay for a system then I’d definitely use Mantis again.
Fortunately for very small teams, Fog Creek Software offers FogBugz for free to teams of two people. FogBugz is great and I highly recommend it.
Being a .NET shop we debated between Team Foundation Server and Git for our source control system. I had never used either in a team environment but based upon my research I really liked the workflows available in Git that couldn’t be done with Team Foundation. We first tried hosting the Git repositories on our own server but maintaining that took too much of my time and performance was awful. After fighting with it for a few months we started paying for GitHub.
GitHub is probably the best option for a small technology company with more than two people. If you only have two people, FogBugz has source control built-in through Kiln.
I want to keep as much as possible out of the email inbox. Email inboxes easily get overwhelming and are too private — I embrace transparency and want everyone to know what is going on and group chat is a great way to do that.
I highly recommend Slack and nothing else. As a bonus, Slack is very well designed and performs flawlessly in my experience. Using it will give your team something to aim for.
Since we had a large corporate client and needed Microsoft Office we went with Office 365. I was pleased with the service and the software. The only small complaint I have is that the administration screens are a bit wonky. I’ve also heard good things about FastMail if you only need email.
Anything Google related is not on my approved list because I don’t like their business model, although their applications are quite popular.
Some may debate me on the necessity of a wiki, but I couldn’t go without one. This is the place you store everything that you will or may need to look back up again one day. I love them for documentation and training. We went with DokuWiki because it was free, open source, and had a single sign-on plugin for Mantis.
Fortunately for teams of two, FogBugz has a wiki built in for free.
A place to host your website and any applications you build for yourself. I get all my servers from CH3 Data in Austin, Texas because they care about reducing their power consumption which is good for the environment.
We got a Windows server because we did .NET development. I’d always recommend a Linux server.
I’d love to hear what I missed on this list or better options for any of the components I chose — what do you use and love?
Other People’s Expectations.
They are rarely reasonable. They don’t know what you have going on or your plans or who you are. They want you to fit in with what suits them and fits their needs. Due to our social nature they can easily creep into our heads and convince us they were always there. That they are ours.
Fight them with communication and self reflection. Sometimes you only need to reset them by expressing yourself. You can only know what is yours and what is theirs by thinking about who you are, what you believe, and what you want.
I finally downloaded Paper. Excellent app so far, even if I keep marking my page every time I try to flip it. Obviously I skipped the tutorial, opened up a notebook, and then got stuck. How the hell do I get back to the main screen?
Turns out, Paper’s pinching method to return to the main screen is very intuitive and once I took a few minutes to calm down, I figured it out. But why am I so afraid? Because I’ve been using apps that aren’t intuitive at all, and that has made me cautious. Double tapping in NetBot to see a conversation, or swiping to the right in the new Twitteriffic? It’s just weird. And the problem is that you don’t know what else might happen if you make a gesture.
So since I’m whining, I’ll provide a solution. If you say that gestures are similar to keyboard shortcuts because they are for power users, then you’re lying. Wait, I mean then we need to have similar gestures across apps for gestures to be usable for any group other than nerds. Why is command c so useful? It is the same across the system. We have one gesture that already fits this requirement - pull to refresh. Natural and systemwide. Easily discoverable. And seriously, if you are using the argument that gestures are like keyboard shortcuts, then you are deluding yourself and not making hard choices about what features need to stay and go. And that’s stressing me out.
I’m six and a half feet tall so it always felt like I was in a growth spurt as a kid. Painful shin splints became normal. I’m glad I’m past that point in my life.
As we get older and finish growing physically I think it is easy to forget that pain. We can forget that growth and pain go hand in hand. Instead of seeing that pain as natural we turn away from it and turn away from growing. We spend years being the same person we were the year before.
That might be fine for you. I’m sure it is more comfortable and stable than a life where you never stop growing. But it isn’t for me. I’ll take the pain and the knowledge that I haven’t reached the top of my potential yet. I just have remind myself that this pain is natural on those tougher days.
Today we learned that the hole in my daughter’s heart had closed. We expected this would happen — her cardiologist recommended against surgery because in most cases this issue just goes away on its own. For the last four years I fully believed that as fact.
Despite that fact, I felt a tremendous sense of relief today when hearing those words from the doctor. A burden that I didn’t even know I was carrying around was released while tears came to my eyes and a smile to my lips.
I’m interested in all the other things that are weighing on my subconscious. How do I know they are there when I can only feel them leaving? I wonder if this is something that meditation or just spending time with your thoughts can help with.
When something goes wrong in technology, like you send software out to your customers that is broken or your web server configuration breaks, you generally have two options. You can choose to restore everything to a recent known good state, reexamine what went wrong, and try again to get it right the next chance you get. Or you can find the problems that are happening now, fix them, and move forward with the new thing in place.
Neither answer is the right answer for every situation but I always try to fail forward first. Usually problems are simple enough to fix that restoring from backup will take more time. Plus, you can’t guarantee that you’ll find out why it failed the first time. Something could be different in your test environment that you didn’t think about while testing your changes.
The not-so-secret to success is to set yourself up for success. Know as much as possible about the systems you are working with. Know how they interact with every other system. Know what could go wrong. Most of all, know your fundamentals. If you are migrating a web server then you need to know how the entire HTTP stack works. Without all that knowledge you’ll be guessing at solutions rather than making smart decisions.
Howdy!
On the fifth episode of The David Brunow Podcast talk about my first experiences with the Android operating system and how I think it compares to iOS.
As usual, I get cut off by Garageband at 640 bars and end mid-sentence!
We filed the paperwork for our new business today. We are striking out on our own, full of hope, excitement, and enthusiasm. We are ready to make amazing things.
It is kind of crazy the difference that ownership makes. I’ve witnessed it in the past — moving from an employee to a manager has changed my perception of everything. Made me hopeful where I was cynical. Made the problems mine to solve instead of mine to complain about.
It is early and I fear that this joy and excitement will not last. The joy of making all the initial decisions and crafting just what we want our new thing to be. The excitement of putting everything we believe into practice to see if it really works. Emulating the companies we look up to — Fog Creek, Stack Exchange, Buffer, These Are Things, P’unk Avenue — when we can and figuring out who we are to fill the gaps.
I’m sure that tough days and long slogs lay ahead, but right now I’ll enjoy the excitement.
Another in my series of everyday rules:
This is two rules for the price of one:
Don’t get on the elevator until everyone has gotten off of it
Females enter and exit the elevator first
I’ve read before that the optimal number of large projects for a person to have going at the same time is 3. I can’t remember where I read that or I’d attribute them — maybe it was in The Mythical Man Month. Wherever it was I agree with it, 3 is a good number. Right now I have 6 or 7 going at the same time, depending on how you count them.
It is through no real fault of my own because a few of the projects have been dragging on for months requiring very little effort from me. But they still weigh on my mind because they are still obligations. They are worse than the other projects because they could come due at any time once the stars align in the right way.
That’s to say that I can’t give any good advice about keeping your workload light enough although I do hope that things will normalize more as our company becomes established and we get better at forecasting projects.
I do have a piece of advice about the opposite problem of not having enough to do. Make up work. Give yourself projects, there is always something to do. Don’t sit around waiting because you’ll lose your momentum.
When in the first steps of making something new I concentrate on two things, limiting the things that can go wrong and seeing something work. I start with the most simple situation possible by hard coding known good values. For example, if I’m logging a user into a system I won’t build the part to get the username and password from the user at the start. I’ll code a username and password that I know will work directly into the application. That means that if the logging in process doesn’t work that it is something wrong with the way I am sending the information rather than somehow sending the wrong information.
Hard coding those variables naturally leads to seeing things happen faster. I’m not building an entire user interface for a login screen just to be able to log in, I’m building one small piece of code that I get to see work within a few hours.
Before today I’d never put together the ideas of “I follow certain people because they are super smart,” and “No matter what those people talk about I always find it interesting” with “Hey, because of the Internet I can probably seek out more of the people I am looking for.” Finally realizing this has led to this post and seeking out who I might be missing out on.
First I’ll share a couple I know about, in case you are missing out on them. I’ll include what I believe are their areas of expertise and how I follow them.
My current definition of “super smart” is that they make me think in ways that I’ve never thought before. For example, Horace Dediu recently discussed the British Navy and how its dominance led to every other country modeling their navy after Britain’s. He then compared this to the auto industry and emerging countries modeling their industry after that of America’s. I’m not doing his thoughts justice but I highly recommend all the episodes of his Asymcar podcast which I have linked below. That particular discussion was in episode 21.
Expertise: Marketing, business, guiding individuals to move past the Industrial Age
Where you can find him: His blog, numerous books, and on a few recent podcasts
Expertise: Business, in particular why businesses fail or succeed
Where you can find him: His blog, The Critical Path Podcast, and the Asymcar Podcast
Just looking at this list I know I need more diversity in my super smart people. So I’d love to hear from you — who do you find super smart and generous that I should start following and where can I find them?
My daughter Emma was born five years ago today. It is been a bumpy five years with brain surgery on day 2, first 30 days or so in the NICU, blindness for the first 10 months or so, a hole in her heart that took years to close, eye surgery, a couple of seizures, and a few nights in the ER. Emma knows adversity.
You wouldn’t know it by looking at her though because the hard times haven’t gotten her down. Most of the time she is smiling, singing, playing her piano, or doing a combination of those. She’s been remarkably resilient, further proving to me that life is amazing and will find a way.
Happy Birthday Emma. You make this world a much better place.
We are a low bandwidth species and the older we get the more slowly we learn. By low bandwidth I mean that our consciousness is not able to handle very much information — therefore we cannot learn quickly because we just can’t handle anything but the very slowest trickle of teaching.
This only gets worse as we get older. We move less and do the same things repeatedly. Our bodies atrophy and our minds grow bored without the novelty of change. We accumulate stuff and grow attached to it and fight anything that might take it away — further cementing our fixed patterns of living because any change could make the whole thing fall apart.
These fixed patterns get reinforced throughout society. The old are in charge and are making the rules. Rules that fight change and progress. Rules that retain the status quo of rich, old, white men running things.
It is youth that moves our race forward. And I don’t mean the youth that the media idolizes in order to sell their agenda, like all these so called child prodigies. I mean youth as a whole. The youth that grow up with a smartphone in their hands are starting far ahead of where we did. Today’s technology will be second nature to them, just as yesterday’s technology was second nature to us. This allows their mind to work in ways that ours don’t naturally and probably can’t.
If we continue lengthening our lives in an endless quest to live forever we do so while crippling the future of our race. There will be no room for youth. Our minds will calcify and we will fight for our own individual agendas rather than for our race. Our forward progress will stop, then regress, and send us to a dark age.
I have no desire to live forever. And while I live I will strive to remain child-like — moving, learning, changing, and growing.
This is another post in my series of everyday rules:
When a man and a woman are walking together, the man should walk on the side closest to any possible danger. If they are walking down the street he should be on the side closest to the street.
Every day I have a list of things to do that is longer than the day. Part of that is because I have a handful of projects all going at once that I need to move forward on. The other part of it is that I’ve always been quick at building things and I didn’t feel like time applied to me — it was this imaginary thing that I could bend at my will.
I’m still much quicker than other people’s expectations. I’ll get a project done in a fraction of the average time. But there is a bottom limit on how long something can take that I can’t get past. At that point I have to realize that I can’t squeeze more into a day than there are hours.
This is one of the hardest parts of running multiple projects at the same time, and why padding estimates is common. One project running long can affect every other project. You can easily make up that time if you have slack. Otherwise you move forward one step at a time, pushing a little harder than normal, reminding yourself that this won’t last forever.
I don’t like feeling bad. Like when you feel you aren’t doing your best or you think you’re letting someone down. Not great feelings.
I want to run away from those feelings. I want to get out of whatever situation I’m in that I think is to blame. Maybe sometimes that is the right answer.
I don’t think it usually is. Most of the time I just need to notice the way I feel, acknowledge it, and keep going. Stay on the same course and wait to make decisions about changes.
I’ve recently become interested in trees. This interest started when a tree fell in my backyard and I had to get rid of it. I found out it was a hackberry. Hackberry trees are very common in this part of Texas and are generally referred to as “trash trees.” They are the tree version of weeds. From what I can tell they are highly susceptible to mistletoe and falling over.
Hackberries were my gateway tree. I knew what 10 of the trees in my yard were, but what were the rest? The same person who told me what a hackberry is also told me a few of the trees are elms and one was a pecan. Just today I was working in the yard and noticed another was a pecan. I can’t help but look at a new tree and wonder what kind it is.
A few weeks ago I grew curious about the tree that is growing in the middle of our porch. It is a pretty evergreen that has small cherries. I looked it up online and figured out it is a Carolina cherry laurel. Cool thing about the cherry laurel — its leaves and bark have a chemical that turns into hydrogen cyanide — a deadly poison — when damaged. Crushed leaves have the sweet smell of maraschino cherries.
It is amazing to me how dramatically learning can change my perspective. Trees have been a good way for me to notice and visualize that.
I can put all my energy into something and still get nowhere with it. I can wave my hand back and forth so fast that you can barely see it. In the perfect situation my hand pushing against the air will move me somewhere. But I’ll tire quickly and give up on moving because it obviously doesn’t work.
By comparison, taking a step is slow. You can see my foot leave the ground and set back down again. A step requires coordination and less energy in the next minute but more energy over the next hour.
I don’t want to wave my hand, I want to get somewhere. Sometimes it will feel like I’m not moving fast enough, but over time I’ll see that I’ve moved longer and gotten farther. The hard part isn’t quick bursts of energy and activity. The hard part is sustaining momentum, knowing where you want to go, and having the discipline to keep going until you get there.
I’m working to figure out what groups I want to join. Who do I want to be associated with and whose company do I want to enjoy. Who gets my precious time and attention?
I feel as though answers to these questions should be simple but they aren’t to me. If I spend time with group A will group B or group C exclude me? Do things work that way or can I find a way to float effortlessly between groups, enjoying the company of all the members of all the groups? Is this all just silly overthinking?
This conversation in my head reminds me of Jesus hanging out with those that society called sinners. He spent time with those he could help the most. Maybe that’s the way to go.
Our society is obsessed with control. We know the outcome we want and we believe we have the power to create that outcome. We want every blade of grass evenly cut. We want our kids to be an age appropriate height, weight, and learning level. We keep our houses at the perfect, comfortable temperature and we kid proof and stain proof every surface. We put lights anywhere it is dark and a smooth surface anywhere it is rough. Irregularity and the unknown are bad.
Some things we know we can’t control. When confronted by that fact we find ways to feel like we’re in control. Since we can’t control the weather we want to know every detail about it we can. Since we can’t control natural disasters or accidents we buy insurance so we feel like we can handle every situation.
Our desire for control is a rabbit hole that never ends but infinitely takes us to smaller and smaller spaces. We have so much control that we can’t move anymore. We’ve given away freedom in exchange for the empty promise of control.
We are infinitely tiny specks in an enormous, ever growing universe. We have relatively little to no control over what will happen to us. We need to find a healthy balance between letting go of our illusion of control and remaining prepared for when unexpected things happen. And when they do, we need to embrace them rather than run from them.
It takes time to figure out what you want. Before you have, you will borrow what other people want and what society wants and you will believe that is what you want too.
For the longest time I thought I wanted to be rich. And with our lottery-minded society I thought it was just a matter of being in the right place at the right time. I thought I didn’t have to do much work and I’d just be carried along.
That was about 15 years ago and I’ve been through much more life. I’ve tried wanting what other people want (and everything that comes with that) a couple more times at least and it has lead to unhappiness.
So I hope I’m right now — I hope I’ve figured part of myself out and can craft the life I want out of that.
Despite living in the heart of the Bible Belt, I’m not religious. But that doesn’t mean that I’m not curious. That I don’t believe that somewhere in the roots of religion and other forms of spirituality you can find something real, something that applies no matter the century.
I’m really enjoying learning about Buddhism. My curiosity was first sparked listening to Dan Benjamin on 5by5 podcasts Back to Work and Build and Analyze. Dan would regularly throw in small bits of Buddhism to other topics.
To add to that spark, the first time I visited my sister in San Francisco, she told me about Mission Dharma. Mission Dharma describes itself as a San Francisco sangha that has gathered in the Mission District for over 25 years. In the midst of the overwhelming experience that is that city, I didn’t absorb what she was saying.
Fortunately, my sister is a pusher. I can’t remember how many times it took, but she eventually got me to listen to one of Howie Cohn’s Dharma Talks on the website. The talk was great.
Unfortunately, the experience of listening to the talk wasn’t great. I listen to things like that on the way to work. The length of the talk doesn’t correspond perfectly to the length of my drive. And mobile Safari has a way of reloading tabs due to memory demands, which means that I would regularly lose my place in the middle of listening to a talk.
So I started making an app to solve those problems. This past December Mission Dharma gave me permission to put it on the iOS App Store.
You can find it here, for free. I hope you’ll try it out and get something meaningful from Mission Dharma’s Dharma Talks.
I have also made the source code free. Maybe you can use it for your organization. Most of it is generic, but the part that pulls the audio files from the web page is a little hairy.
If you are part of or know of an organization that is doing good in the world that could use an app like this, please reach out to me and hopefully I can help.
Visitors to your website, users of your app, and clients you’ve met with won’t remember the technical details of their interaction if they even notice them in the first place. They won’t remember that your website loaded quickly and had a good reading pattern and short lines of text that are easy to digest. They won’t remember that your app never hangs and does a great job of handling transitions so they never feel lost. They won’t remember that when you met with them you stood to shake their hand, looked them straight in the eyes, and greeted them with a smile.
They will remember how the interaction with you or your website or app made them feel.
All those details can make them feel better to a point. Past that point the technical details get in the way. A website or app focused 100% on usability will feel ugly and outdated. A client meeting based on perfect technical accuracy will feel hollow and inhuman.
Each website, app, and meeting needs a different balance — that’s the hard part.
I’ve spent the last few days driving the latest Ford Fusion. In case you haven’t noticed them yet, they are gorgeous now. This picture shows a great angle of the car, although I find just about every angle of the front stunning. 
The car is amazing to drive. It feels a lot like a BMW, from the suspension control to the steering feel to the steering wheel and other controls inside. The front wheel drive is the only clue from the driving dynamics that tells me it is a Ford.
Power is good out of the 1.6 litre turbo — it would be excellent with a manual transmission. Torque steer is noticeable, but the suspension handles turns under power very well.
I’d be surprised if this isn’t my next car.
Tonight I was confronted with an idea that I’ve never heard before — that the government should not fund programs like NASA. Those sort of programs should be funded by private interests. If they are not economically viable for private interests then they shouldn’t be happening.
My gut instinct is that this is wrong. I’m much more of the mindset that the government should pay for the things that are for the good of society but that don’t yield immediate benefit. Who knows what good landing on the moon can provide? I feel we do not know until we do.
But is this the government’s place? Is the government setting the right priorities? Should we get the fundamental needs of our society met before we spend on extravagances — feeding the hungry and educating the less fortunate? I could argue for that too.
I think my fear is in de-prioritizing science. I believe that NASA is contributing a great deal to science and I think science needs all the help it can get. But is there a way to do that without spending tax dollars on it?
I’m not a health professional but I believe that our greatest health problem over the next 20 years is our lack of movement. Whether we are sitting at desk jobs, in the car or public transit on the way to work, or on our couch at night, we aren’t moving.
Our bodies need to move to function correctly — movement is inherent to their design. When we don’t move enough our bodily systems stop working properly. Our lymphatic system, which is responsible for carrying waste from tissues all over the body, stops moving and starts pooling up. Rather than being carrying away and out of the body our tissues sit right next to these toxins which is a bad thing.
Many will say that hope is lost. That once you’ve stopped moving and your body has become unhealthy that it is irreparably damaged. I don’t buy that. Our bodies are amazingly well equipped at healing themselves, we just have to set them up for success. Start moving more today, and move deliberately. When you move think about how your blood vessels and lymphatic system will be stimulated by your movement. Find something that moves your entire body and gets your blood pumping. Take your time, build yourself up slowly over time, and don’t over do it. Be consistent over a long time. That’s the secret to success and good health.
In most ways, learning things on my own is a great thing. I avoid the pitfalls of folklore and superstition that teachers come up with when understanding events but having imperfect information, and we always have imperfect information. Making my own fresh mistakes instead of listening to others’ old mistakes can lead me to solutions that others might never try. Reinventing wheels means that I can form a better understanding of why the wheel was made the way it was. Teaching myself means that I don’t have to change my mental models to match those of the teacher.
Mental models are how we simplify our world so that it makes sense to us. My mental model for learning new things is the type of video game where the map lights up as you explore it — like what happens in map strategy games like StarCraft.
At the beginning of the game the entire map is black other than the small circle that you know which is lit up. Then as you explore the map you find out more about the terrain and where the dangers are. I find that thinking about learning in this way makes it a little less intimidating to me. It isn’t that I’m not getting it, it’s that I haven’t been able to figure out a way to get to that part of the map. Takes the ego out of it, the part of you that gets angry and frustrated because you feel stupid.
This video game mental model doesn’t hold up for one of the most important parts of teaching yourself — ensuring that you draw the right conclusions from what you experience. In the video game you explore and what you understand is what you see in front of you. There are no further conclusions to be drawn. In other words, you know what is there because you see it.
When teaching yourself what you understand is based upon the reasoning you use to interpret your experiences. The map is only as good as the conclusions that you draw about it. For example, if you are learning to program and make a wrong assumption about the way something works then you will not have seen the real map. You have to be wary of both what you think you experience and your reasoning. We aren’t particularly good at getting either right.
It is easy to get caught up in the everyday life you live with the job, group of friends, and family you’ve always had. It is easy to keep consuming the same content you’ve been consuming — the same TV shows or blogs or podcasts — and enjoy that and not seek out anything different.
I highly recommend finding something different that challenges the way you think. Not in a harsh way. On your own terms. A book with ideas that you don’t agree with or watch some video on YouTube or listen to a podcast that paints something you do in a negative light.
Make a habit of this. I don’t think I could do more than one new thing a month because it isn’t easy if you’re doing it right. I’ve started with two right now because I came across them by circumstance before I knew what I was doing.
My current two things are a video series from Anita Sarkeesian about the objectification of women in video games and a book called Searching for God Knows What about finding God.
If I take them seriously and take the time to think about them, exposing myself to these different points of view will challenge me to figure out what I really believe. It will make me find out why I believe what I do. It will give me a glimpse of what it is like to see through someone else’s eyes.
Everyone has a different answer for “what is good enough?” If you’re growing and getting better at what you do then your quality bar will go up. If you surround yourself with people that have a higher quality bar then yours will go up too (or you’ll get ejected from that group.)
If you stop growing and getting better your quality bar doesn’t stay the same, it drops. Same with surrounding yourself with people that have a lower bar. Few are strong enough to drive the rest of the group to improve quality by themselves.
Remember that quality isn’t as simple as right and wrong. Low quality doesn’t mean is wrong — whether it is wrong depends on the circumstances. Similarly, high quality doesn’t mean everything was done right.
For me, the right level of quality depends on how I want to be represented and whether I am practicing or performing. I have to ask “do I want this level of quality representing me?”
I just read Wilson Miner’s thoughtful piece on digging deep. One of my favorite things about Wilson, and super smart people in general, is that they make you think in ways that you don’t think naturally.
You have an obligation to dig deep into important problems. Another Twitter app, another way of fiddling with your email, or another technology based way of determining whether it is sunny outside is not important.
How can we use technology to reduce childhood obesity, stop food waste, end hunger in other countries, fix the education system or ensure freedoms for everyone? Important stuff in need of smart people determined to see something through.
That’s where we need to dig deep.
Many of the things that I write here lack supporting data. And sometimes that is OK — I don’t always need data to support my opinions. I will never find data to support why I think vanilla is better than chocolate.
The supporting data is what changes an opinion into a theory or a complaint into a criticism. It forces you to prove your beliefs to yourself because you have to collect and validate the data. It doesn’t allow you to hide behind lazy statements like “ask any professional violinist and you’ll know what I mean.” It also spurs conversation because it gives your audience specific points to discuss.
When I make a statement and don’t provide my supporting data it is usually due to one or more of three reasons: I’m being lazy, I’m asserting an opinion on something about which I have no data, or I’m assuming a tacit level of knowledge in my readers. I think reasons two and three are OK. As I’ve written about before I believe it is valuable to share my opinions even if they are not fully formed. Sometimes I’ll just have to say “this is how I feel about it but I’m not exactly sure why.” And we all have to assume a certain level of tacit knowledge, although I think I’ll constantly be working on the right balance.
But laziness isn’t a good excuse. Trying to prove a point with hand-wavy “facts” is worse than stating an opinion because it is trying to trick your audience and probably trying to trick yourself. Not looking up easily accessible data is not OK because based upon my experience, I will completely lose faith in your competence after you’ve told me a few things that I can quickly find are wrong.
I’m going to work harder on thinking about what supporting data I can provide for everything I do. I think that’s one of the differences that sets a professional apart from an amateur.
Sometimes it just isn’t working. I was just writing a blog post and hit a point where I had nothing left to say. Many times I’ll just cut it off and post it because abrupt endings are one of the things I do. But this wasn’t good enough for that so I threw it out.
I thought it was an interesting idea to write about but it wasn’t. I could look at it as though I wasted time on that post but I don’t. Looking at it that way isn’t productive and can only bring me down. I look at it as part of the cost of writing. Dead ends and words you’ll never share are just part of what it takes to keep writing.
A couple of days ago I watched a video created by Google to show Webmasters the tools that Google provides to help them make their sites as good as possible. The video contains tons of great information and the tools that Google provides for free look fantastic.
One of the coolest tools, and one that I didn’t know about before this video, was a tool that allows Webmasters to do A/B testing of their sites. If you aren’t familiar with A/B testing, the general concept is that each visitor will be shown a different version of your site, an A version and a B version, randomly but in equal proportions over the same period of time. So for example, over the next week half the visitors to my site will see a version A with a big green button for proceeding to the next step and the other half will see a big orange version for proceeding to the next step. The point of the tool is to see whether A or B is the better design based upon what percentage of users get to the next step for each.
The Google presenter describing this tool talked about how difficult it is to know whether a design is truly good just by looking at it. He recommends that this version of “design by data” is the optimal way to create any site.
I want very badly to disagree with this. I have a gut feeling that it is wrong but it is very difficult to argue against the data-centered reasoning from Google.
My gut says that designers will use this data as a crutch — as a way to defend lazy design that looks exactly like the design they’ve put out previously. “No, we can’t do it that way, remember we tested it.”
I think another step in the testing process needs to be added — figuring out why it works. Why does design A work better than design B? If you can’t find out why then you can’t add anything to your stockpile of design wisdom. Once you can find out why then you can iterate off of that reason to find an entirely new set of designs. You can use that data point to spark creativity rather than inadvertently stifling it.
I can tell I’ve been pushing too hard lately. I feel boring and flat and that comes through in my blog posts. I haven’t been getting enough sleep or enough variety — most of my days have been work, although I did make sure to work extra during the week so I could spend time with my daughter this last weekend.
I don’t like being in this place. I feel like I’m stuck in a cycle where I get overwhelmed and overworked every other month. I believe I need to make these sacrifices now for long term success, but I’m looking forward to stability.
I think every organization, no matter how small, needs a plan for diversity. That plan is especially important in community organizations and non-profits made up of volunteers because those organizations should be welcoming to the entire community. Leadership that all looks the same doesn’t look welcoming to me, even if I fit in.
Yes, diversity goes beyond gender or skin color. But no, that isn’t a valid excuse not to find other genders and skin colors to join the leadership. Which brings me to another point — saying “no one applied to the job that will help us with diversity” is not an excuse. Find people different than you and recruit them.
I’m watching a video series by Anita Sarkeesian about women in video games playing the role of damsel in distress. She does an excellent job of describing how that role demeans women, robs them of any personality, and rather than making the hero’s cause noble the role makes women the ball in a game between two men.
This new-to-me perspective is fascinating. I’m hoping it will be one of those things where when I see it once I can’t help but see it everywhere. While watching the videos I kept thinking about how our society reinforces this idea of men saving the damsel in distress. This is what all the classic fairy tales that I can remember revolve around. This is the model for young boys’ behavior — this is what is respected and expected by society.
But I can’t argue with Anita’s logic. The damsel in distress is the ball. Or maybe she is the trophy that you hold up high and put on a shelf collecting dust at home. Either way, the game is not about the woman. The game is just a power struggle between two men.
It is funny to look back at things I believed when I was younger. The ideas seem so foreign. For example, for much of my life I thought I could find the “higher truths” of life in music. I doubt I’m alone in this. I don’t know if it was because the music was popular that made me believe that the lyrics held so much meaning. Maybe it was the melancholy music that gave them a certain kind of gravity that I equated with meaning. Either way, I know I was searching for something and that search led to song lyrics.
I was reminded of this tonight by a Jack Johnson song. Don’t remember the name of it, but it is the one that goes “I used to think that maybe, pretty much means no” or something to that effect. Don’t know why it triggered this memory — he wasn’t the only one that held this power over my younger mind — The Counting Crows, Live, Nada Surf, Ben Folds Five, and Third Eye Blind are several more I remember.
It is obvious now that none of them knew anything more than I know now. Each was trying to find her own way just like we all are.
I think this idea is one of the ones that shapes who I am the most right now. The idea that few universal truths exist. Everything else is true for me or for you and sometimes for the two of us, but not universally so. We are all trying to find our own truths.
I believe that back doors in any security system are bad. When the system is software based, I believe that back doors are even worse. This topic is in the headlines recently because the FBI has asked Apple to create a back door for its systems and Apple doesn’t want to do that. I side with Apple to the point of getting angry after just reading about this happening. I don’t believe that perceived safety is more important than our liberties and I don’t believe in fear driving our decisions. I also think it is a gross overstep of government powers to compel a private entity to do what they want outside of a time of emergency or war.
But a lot of smart people see things differently than I do and I don’t want to ignore that. Any time smart people are heading in a direction I want to at least know why they are heading that way. I might not follow, but I want to be well informed enough to choose whether I should follow.
Probably my favorite thing about starting a company is that we get to decide the rules. I don’t like the traditional business rules — things like super-secrecy, cutting corners, maximizing profits, and pushing yourself ahead at the expense of someone else. This new company is part experiment — can our ideas of how a company should be run work in the real world?
One of my strongest principles in life is that I should approach any situation with the question of “what can I give to this” rather than “what can I get out of this.” I believe that this attitude has served me well personally. Generosity brings me joy and takes my mind away from what I want.
Our new company will follow this same principle. We will share more about exactly what that means soon and we will share what we learn as we go. It is going to be a fun experiment.
Yesterday I was fixing a form for a website I didn’t build. Another team built it sometime in the past, using HTML and PHP. My first task was figuring out why the form wasn’t working intermittently and then to fix it. Intermittent issues are frustrating by themselves but get even more so when you have no idea which parts of what are doing what actions and have to dig through the code to figure it out. Every implementation of sending email is fundamentally the same, but that still leaves a huge opportunity for different implementation choices.
This incident made me realize a part of my preference for building websites that feels contrary to my usual philosophy. Usually I want to control everything and that control generally means building components myself and keeping them on my own server. But I don’t want to build form submission components. I don’t want to run PHP or any other language on my server if I can help it. I don’t want to slow down my site with any of that complexity, and I don’t want to have to worry about the additional attack vectors that enabling a server side language or database create.
I just want a widget, that I can fully customize, that handles form submission for me. They worry about getting the client and server side validation right. They worry about the mail server and credentials and what not. I drop it into the page in static HTML or through asynchronous JavaScript and it doesn’t slow down my site or put me in a position where I’m digging through my own code in a couple of years trying to figure out what I did originally and what I broke.
It’s weird to me that I don’t care about having 100% control in this situation, and I’m not sure if I can define what is different between this and the situations where I do want control. Maybe it is because the components are simple and fully contained which makes them easy to just plug into everything else without cross contamination.
Have you ever wanted a vector representation of the state of Texas? I did, so I made one.
Please, help yourself.
Sometimes brute force is the best way to get something done. Pushing an obstacle out of the way because you don’t have the time, skills, or tools to do something more intelligently. But you will get worn out and brute force is not sustainable. For anything more than short term efforts it makes sense to grab a tool or learn the skills to do something smarter.
There is a balance and no right answer. If you fancy yourself an intelligent person then you probably don’t use brute force enough. If you think that using tools is for people who lack strength then you probably use brute force too much.
Find a good balance by weighing the situation at hand. If you need something working in the very near future then brute force is probably the way to go. That’s also true if you will only be doing this thing once. I’ll share an example.
I’ve been working on building an Android app and I have a short timeline to build it. I don’t understand how the Android UI layout system works so I’m just trying different combinations until I find one that works. It feels uncomfortable because I feel like I don’t know what I’m doing but it moves me forward and gets me where I want to be, which is having a fully functional and well designed app in a short timeline.
I also know that this won’t be my only Android app. So my next step is to learn the tools and the fundamentals of Android UI design so that I don’t have to brute force it in the future. I just don’t have time to learn it all before this project’s deadline.
As with all things there is no absolute right answer. Each situation needs to be weighed separately for the right way to approach it. Don’t get stuck in either system.
Closing the sale, making the plans, then realizing “oh shit I have to follow through on this.” I find that the first two are so much fun. Dreaming about how much you can help these other people. Then finding out that she believes you can help her too. Then making plans together — the future is wide open!
These parts are fun because you have no responsibility yet. You don’t have to deliver, after all no one sells them all. You haven’t made any promises yet. You have no commitment to her.
But then everything goes to plan and you get the opportunity you want. Embrace the fear. Feel it in your belly and go forward. It will pass. It won’t be easy and at times you may think you can’t do it and you may want to give up. But if you keep moving forward you will succeed.
The first couple of years I was making software I didn’t care about performance — about how fast it ran. I was too busy learning how to build anything to worry about building something quick. I also came into programming with the thought that computers are fast enough to fly through any code I send at them. That’s true for simple applications. But I’ve been fortune to have multiple opportunities to learn good lessons about performance. My projects got bigger and more complicated and the servers I was given to work with were 10-15 years old and they were slow and memory constrained
I’m glad I was given that situation and glad that I’ve grown. Now I see speed as a must-have feature in any application I create. Because of that I prefer tools that help me build performant applications. I shy away from frameworks and generic solutions because they add more overhead than I’d like. They have to solve more problems than I have and solving those problems slows things down. So I’ll build a static website instead of using a CMS if I can solve every problem I’m trying to solve while doing it. For this same reason I prefer to build native applications instead of using frameworks that might be easier for me but could be slower.
Speed matters — probably more than you think.
In my experience, one of the worst things about being bullied is my internal voice saying “you’re over-reacting, it is no big deal, she isn’t being that mean.” That internal voice is wrong. If you are feeling bullied then the situation is not OK. Sometimes you should tell the person that you don’t appreciate the way she makes you feel if it is safe to do so. Maybe she doesn’t know what she is doing.
But it is likely that she does and that nothing you say will make her change. It is not your obligation to make her change.
Then we have situations like what is happening to females in the gaming industry. They are receiving real life death threats because they talk about what they believe. Sending someone death threats because you disagree with them does nothing to further your cause. Calling someone names does nothing to further your cause. No matter how worthy the cause those tactics will not spread ideas or change minds.
I don’t know how to help Brianna Wu, Anita Sarkeesian, and Zoe Quinn. I wish I did just as many other people wish they did. I’m going to start by openly saying “that is not OK.”
My biggest concern when I started writing a blog post every day is that I would quickly run out of things to write about. As I’ve described before, it is easy to try to think through everything before starting it and impossible to actually think it through. Our minds just can’t look that many steps ahead and there are far too many factors to take into account.
As I’ve been writing every day I have only had a few times when I didn’t have something I wanted to write about. I won’t say that everything I’ve written is good or even that everything I’ve written isn’t awful. But most of the time I’ve had something I wanted to write about.
Along the way I’ve come up with an idea of what to do when I get stuck — I’ll start with an idea that I’ve already had and go into detail about one of its components. For example, I’ve written recently about male and female stereotypes that are portrayed in fairy tales. From this topic I could show specific situations in specific fairy tales to further strengthen my point. Or I could describe characteristics about myself that seem to be influenced by these male and female stereotypes.
Just knowing that I have a system to come up with more things to write about takes pressure off and seems to make it easier to come up with new things.
I believe that one of the most powerful things I can say is “I was responsible for this and I failed but I won’t let it happen again.” I find it painful to say, full of tension and anxiety over how the other person will respond. There is a chance they’ll respond poorly and that probability gets higher each time I have to say it. But most likely they’ll take you at your word, understand that I’m human like they are and know that humans aren’t perfect and that things happen.
Avoiding responsibility destroys trust and goodwill almost immediately and ensures you won’t be put in an important position again.
Every bit of technology is only a tool to do accomplish a goal. These tools excel in the situations for which they were designed and may possibly work in other situations, with the right amount of ingenuity.
It is better to know the right tool rather than always falling back on your sledgehammer. The sledgehammer can do many things but it is heavy, slow, and impossible for some people to use.
I believe that saying one coherent thing in a blog post means leaving or cutting out most of the detail. I picture it like this — everything I write is like a map at some level of zoom. If we are zoomed all the way into the city of Denton, Texas and describe everything in it then we will not be making a coherent point. What we write will be mostly boring. So we would zoom out a little on the map and just describe the essential things to make our point to describe the essence of Denton.
But if we zoom into a detail about Denton — maybe the animal shelter — then there is a whole new coherent story to be told. At that level of detail we have to leave out the rest of the information about the city. We can zoom closer still into the story of one of the dogs at the animal shelter and still tell a coherent story. The amount of detail corresponds to the size of the thing we are describing.
This follows onto my point a couple of days ago about finding new topics in old ones. Adjust the zoom a little and you have an entirely new story to tell.
I’ve had a bad record lately when it comes to figuring out how long something will take and scheduling the time appropriately. Everything that could go wrong has, zombie projects are overrunning my time, and I’m just not that good at estimating.
It makes sense though when you’re doing something you’ve never done before and hopefully most of your work gives you that opportunity, rather than being the same old all the time. I suppose the key is to give yourself enough slack in your schedule that you can handle overflows, but you’ve also gotta eat. My plan is to remove the sources of work that consistently lead to zombie and overrunning projects to try to have a better idea of how long a project will take. But really, a project is a lot like a living thing and sometimes we just need to take it where it needs us to go.
As a technology enthusiast it is fun to get caught up in the cutting edge technology and latest gadgets. Most of the time I live out of touch with how “real” people use and feel about the whole technology world. I’m lost in my shiny, minimalist world that doesn’t have the usual real world constraints.
Nothing has really been at stake with things I’ve designed before — I design applications that had utility beyond what they looked like so their design didn’t matter as much. My latest challenge is designing for the real people. The design is everything. A small business is at stake. Will my design do its job and connect with those real people?
This role is invigorating and surreal. If we fail a person may lose their job. But if we succeed then we could change a good man’s life. He has put his trust in us.
Tonight I realized that I’m losing faith in my ability to impact my daughter’s life. I want to encourage her to crawl, walk, potty train, and eat and drink on her own. She only spends every other weekend and Wednesday nights with me. I fear that that just isn’t enough time for me to push her forward on those things. They require consistency that I just can’t provide on this schedule.
I’m terribly saddened by this thought. I’m disappointed in myself — I feel like I’m giving up. Not on her, I know she is capable of everything she puts her mind to. I’m giving up on myself. On my ability to be more than a relative she sees every other weekend.
I’m not looking for sympathy — I’m just sharing my pain with the world. I put myself in this situation and I knew it would be hard. And I continue to have faith that I’ll be able to shape her life as she grows up — especially once we can sense each other’s souls. Right this moment is just a bit of a low point.
If something is easy then it will be exploited until it is not useful. Lowering prices, paying for ads, spamming your social media or newsletter followers, and being louder are all easy things to do. Things you’ll probably think “I should do this too, I mean why not it is free.”
The underlying problem is the motivation behind these methods, which is looking for attention. Attention is one of our greatest and most limited resources and should be protected. Our motivation should be providing value for the people that will find us valuable. Real value, not “the same with different packaging” value.
Providing value is harder. You don’t just pull a lever and ratchet up the value. But that’s the point because you can make a competitive advantage out of it, something you can’t do by lowering your price or paying for more ads.
A month ago I was getting good sleep — at least 8 hours a night — and I felt great. It had been a while since I’d gotten that much sleep and before that is forgotten how lack of sleep changes me. I’d been sleep deprived for so long that it became the norm.
Now I’m back to being sleep deprived because it has been a very busy month. Well, that and because for me sleep is the thing that gives rather than any other activities. It is amazing to be able to remember the clarity and creativity I had a month ago. I would sit down in the morning to write this blog post and something would come to me almost immediately. Now I struggle to come up with an idea and I can feel that my writing is worse.
On a recent episode of the Critical Path, Horace asserted his belief that the first year of business school is to teach students the language of business. If you don’t speak the language of the business world then you will have a much more difficult time getting your point across to other people and will quickly get lost in a roomful of business folk.
I used to think the idea of knowing the language was useless. That may be because I am good at understanding things from context clues or just because I hate giving into “common wisdom.” But looking back on some of the things I’ve taught myself, the first thing I had to learn was that common language.
Let’s take learning development for the iPhone. I had to learn what all the different controls — the icons, text, buttons, tables, etc — were called before I could use them. I had no idea what the difference was between a UINavigationController and a UITabBarController. Not knowing that is extremely limiting, especially in a time where the answers to most of your frustrations are just a Google search away.
I think I have to concede to common wisdom. Learning the language has to be the first step in learning something new.
I came up with the following while reading Ben Horowitz’s book The Hard Thing About Hard Things. I highly recommend reading the book.
He has a section in the book where he talks about setting standards for his team of product managers. Here is his original document. Below is my adaptation based upon the standards I would have in place for any software developer working for me. Note, the last two are taken directly from Ben’s list.
A good software developer assumes that the Client is an expert in their field, and that she is a very intelligent person. A bad software developer assumes that the Client does not know what she is talking about because she doesn’t understand technology.
A good software developer makes expert suggestions about technology and design options. A bad software developer tells the Client she is wrong.
A good software developer communicates clearly in a way that is native to the listener. For example, if she is talking with someone on the East Coast, she will go out of her way to provide times for the Eastern time zone. A bad software developer communicates using technical terms and jargon and expects the Client to make the effort to understand her.
A good software developer creates software that is simple and powerful for the Client to use, despite the complexities in initial development and maintenance that that may entail. The software she creates will be used many times per day, and only created and maintained a handful of times. A bad software developer creates software that is easy for her to create.
A good software developer makes opinionated decisions based upon expertise, experience and knowledge of the business and client. A good software developer owns the “how” of creating great software. A bad software developer asks for a detailed specification for every decision and stops moving forward until she gets it.
A good software developer knows that sometimes you have to incur technical debt and you always have to pay it off. A bad software developer ignores technical debt, leading to shortcuts, fragile solutions and a future of putting out fires.
A good software developer asks questions. A bad software developer makes assumptions.
A good software developer builds the best possible solution for the Client. A bad software developer builds either the easiest possible solution for herself or the funnest possible solution to build.
A good software developer adopts new technology as it makes sense. A bad software developer either sticks with the same technology long after it is relevant or flits around between new technologies like a hummingbird.
Good software developers err on the side of clarity vs. explaining the obvious. Bad software developers never explain the obvious.
Good software developers define their job and their success. Bad software developers constantly want to be told what to do.
Another post in my series of David’s Rules:
Barber shops must have a barber’s pole and be closed on Sunday and Monday.
How much does your intention driving something you do shape that thing? When you create something with the intention of being generous is a better something created than if your intention was for profit? If you take a picture to treasure yourself will it be better than one you take to show off and impress others?
More importantly, how does it shape you? Our brain constantly optimizes itself for the world around us and much of the world around us is one we create. Are you creating a worse you through your intentions?
My greatest asset is your trust. The fact that you know when I say something that I mean it. I’ll be there when I say I will, I’ll do what I say I’ll do, and if I say your baby is cute then it really is.
Keeping your trust is not always comfortable. I have to have moments when I tell you that your haircut looks awful, your home decor looks like shit, and your dog looks like it came from a trash can. Always with love and kindness, but always honest.
Trust doesn’t come overnight. Trust can’t be forced or paid for. Trust is differentiation.
Humans are far worse at survival today than 500 years ago. We can control our environment by adding light, controlling temperature, and keeping predators at bay. But we can work more hours of the day without the distractions of shivering or looking over our shoulder constantly.
The benefits of our softness far outweigh any drawbacks. Having our lower needs satisfied means we can work on our higher needs. We can be better people and accomplish greater things.
I prefer lightweight tools for the things I do that aren’t my primary work. For example, I consider building iOS apps as part of my primary work but I consider tracking my time as a secondary, although completely necessary, task. Tracking time is an overhead task — something added on to the primary task that has to get done.
I want lightweight tools for those overhead tasks. No options, no thought, fast user interface. I want to type in what I’m working on and keep moving.
Is it ego? Do I want to be liked or feel powerful or better about myself? I don’t think so — I don’t think ego would have taken me this far. I think ego would have given up after at least a year of creating and not seeing the return it wants. I don’t think ego drives me.
Is it greed? Again, I don’t think greed would be following the path I am. If greed were driving me I’d be spending all my waking hours working in someone else’s consulting firm. I’d make all the money and they’d take the risk.
It is interesting that I haven’t asked myself this question before, because I really do want an audience. I want to find the people with whom my stories will resonate. Until yesterday I had never wondered why.
I think my why is generosity. I want to be able to give to people who will be receptive of what I have to give. Generosity explains building apps for free. Generosity explains writing every day with no guarantee of any sort of return.
But maybe my why is community. Finding others who think about the same things I do and care about the world in the same way too. I’ve never been much of a member of a group. But maybe I haven’t found that group.
I’m still not 100% sure what is driving me. It is probably a small bit ego, maybe a little greed, a whole lot of generosity and who knows how much community.
Another post in my series of David’s Rules:
If you ask someone for their recommendation, for example a server at a restaurant, you must follow their recommendation. Doing otherwise is the same thing as telling them that their opinion is worthless.
I think one of the most underrated abilities is getting things done. Starting a project and seeing it to the finish through the hard times and things that inevitably don’t go right. Over the last few years I’ve found it is a rarer skill than I expected.
Today I submitted the first episode of my podcast to iTunes for review. I’m a little nervous about releasing this podcast to the world but I also know it can’t be perfect. This is the first one I’ve ever done, I will get better, and right now I’m only experimenting. I’m finding my voice and my subject matter.
This reminds me of something I used to do when I was in high school. I used to say and believe “if I only tried I’d get all A’s.” That was hiding. I was hiding from my potential and from the potential for failure. I wasn’t risking anything.
When starting something new I find it easy to let myself off the hook. But I struggle with deciding when it is hiding. When do I call myself out for not writing well enough to attract an audience? When do I face the fact that I’m not putting all of me into it — when I am subconsciously saying “if I only tried I’d have tons of people reading what I write.” Am I being true to myself or am I sheltering myself?
I don’t know how to answer these questions. What makes it all the more difficult is that there is no such thing as getting all A’s in blog posting. The only measure is through comparison which is a path to misery.
I’m going to keep going with what I’ve been doing — creating things that I think others will find valuable. And maybe I’ll figure out more later.
As a relatively new business owner I’m learning a lot and getting to see where I’m weak and need to develop skills. One of the biggest areas I need to improve is in scheduling my time and projects. I’ve felt this more than ever before in the last month as every project took longer than I estimated and spilled over into the time for the next project. Fortunately I can still deliver things on time by working more but that only works in the short term. Eventually I’ll run out of energy and burn out.
I have a new appreciation for why consulting companies emphasize limiting scope creep. Adding just one little feature can change the length of the entire project and then impact other projects. Despite my new appreciation I still believe that most limits on changes in scope mean that the final product isn’t as good as it could be. You still won’t hear me fight against implementing a good idea because it wasn’t in the original scope. The original scope didn’t know what we know now and each decision to add something must be weighed on its own.
I think the way we’ll approach the problem of overwork is by saying no to projects. The combination of wanting to help everyone and projects being hard to come by in our first year meant we’ve said yes to every project we’ve had an opportunity to do. Once we aren’t concerned with feeding ourselves we will feel more comfortable saying “sorry we’re too busy right this moment.”
I think that will be the biggest part of keeping ourselves at the right level or work. The other thing that got us in a situation of being overworked this month was projects that kept going for months while we waiting on others to do their things. Unfortunately multiple of those were ready for us at the same time which in my mind is something we can’t predict or control but just have to live with and fight through.
I’m a strong proponent of doing things the right way. I don’t take shortcuts and try to follow best practices. I do my best not to lie or even give the perception that I might be lying.
I think that’s all good — although I do struggle with some of it which is a topic for another time. I think doing things the right way has benefits that you can’t even imagine when you are doing it. Also, sometimes the hard way is the right way, but as I’ll describe later that isn’t always the case.
I don’t want to limit this solely to a technical topic, but I have a good example from software development. For over a decade, Apple’s main programming language, Objective-C, only had manual memory management. That means that developers had to do extra work to ensure that the memory was being used properly and that their application wasn’t taking up too much. Software for Windows was generally built using memory management that was handled by the system. It is called garbage collection, if you care to know. Software for Windows was easier to build because the developer didn’t have to think about something as archaic as memory — after all, memory was cheap so why waste time on that?
Of course, that thinking was back around 2005 or 2006 and desktop computers had plenty of memory. But in 2007, Apple introduced the iPhone which was severely constrained on memory — not much could fit into such a small device. And I believe that Apple doing things the right way — forcing their developers to manage their own memory — is one of the reasons that the iPhone was a success. Maybe the leadership at Apple knew how much the manual memory management would benefit them, but I doubt it. I think it was their commitment to doing things the right way that did it.
I have a different problem though, and I wonder if any of y’all share it. My problem is that I don’t want things to be too easy because then I don’t feel as talented. Sometimes, I will intentionally do things in a more difficult way for some reason. Maybe to prove to myself that I can? Maybe to rationalize to myself why my skill set is in high demand?
I’m not sure. And I don’t know that it is completely a bad thing, although I waste some time I could be making something. But I think it would be far worse if I got complacent and found the easiest possible way to do things.
So I’m going to try to call myself out on this in the future and own up to it. I’ll use best practices and what I believe is the right way to do things and adjust this foible of mine as I go.
It’s never just one thing. Success doesn’t come by following one simple rule and failure isn’t caused by a single weak link. We form opinions after our brains compile a slew of factors into a composite picture.
We hear about the success and don’t see the hard work. We try to take control of failure by blaming one person or factor. We think we like a restaurant for one reason and don’t notice the dozen other factors.
Don’t focus on one thing. Focus on systems and how it all fits together.
My favorite moments are the simplest. Laying on the living room floor with the ones I love while singing along to Taylor Swift and having tickle fights. It can’t get better than that.
Wouldn’t it be nice if during our formal education teachers and professors told you “I know you’ve been taught this before, but it doesn’t apply anymore.” Things like that rule about not starting sentences with “and” and “or.” At some point it would be great for a person in authority to finally let you know that you aren’t doing it wrong.
Unfortunately you won’t be hearing that from those authority figures. And they won’t be telling you the more important things either — like the fact that studying for tests is not the most important skill in success because life doesn’t give you standardized tests. And the fact that you don’t have to wait to be called on by the teacher to stand up and have a voice and make an impact. You have to make that decision. You won’t be given the assignment of making a difference in the world. You have to figure that out yourself.
If it helps, I’m giving you permission to stand up and connect with your world. You have permission to be yourself, find your voice, and make your difference.
It’s your turn.
I played basketball for a few years in junior high and high school. From that I know a lot about the game, but while watching a game the other day I saw the game in a way I hadn’t seen it before. I saw a system in equilibrium.
Each offensive player was guarded closely by a defensive player. The offense for each team was unable to change the equilibrium. Each time they went down the court they would pass the ball around a few times and shoot a three pointer. Something obvious became clear — the only way for change to happen is for the system to become unbalanced. One way that happens in basketball is by a player making a move to the basket past his defender and causing another player’s defender to stop him. This unbalances the system, leaving a player open.
Writing it out it seems so obvious. But despite years of playing basketball I hadn’t put it together. I thought the purpose of each play was to try to score but now I don’t think so. I think the purpose is to cause an imbalance and the score is a nice benefit of that — an instant feedback system for good work.
This applies everywhere. The way to cause change is to throw a system out of whack. This idea really helps me visualize the impact we can make in the world. Being able to see it in my mind serves as a great source of motivation.
We’ve gotten a few things wrong as we’ve gotten our business going. We’ve offered a valuable monthly service to our clients which we fully believe in but we’ve priced it too low. We know we need to make a change and now we need to figure out how to do it. We are considering a few options:
Tell our clients we got it wrong and that we’ll have to raise prices. Since we have a month to month agreement they can decide they don’t like the new price and leave.
Not change a thing for our existing clients and live with the effects of our mistake. We’ll use the new pricing with new clients and over a longer period we’ll have clients at the new price point.
Raise our prices at the end of a predefined time interval, like year end.
We’re leaning towards option #2. We prefer to keep our word on what a price will be and we don’t want to risk losing those clients or worse, damaging our relationship with them. We believe that everything we say and do contributes to how others perceive us. When it comes to what we’ve said we’ll do we want to be seen like a rock, steady, dependable, and unchanging
But we also have to consider that we are in business and have to feed ourselves. Sometimes that means making hard decisions and having tough conversations that we don’t like. We have to ask ourselves whether we are just trying to avoid that tough conversation.
This morning my daughter tried to pick up one of her toys and lost her grip and dropped it on the floor, propped up between her chair and the wall. She could have easily reached it and picked it back up but instead she leaned her body over the armrest and played with it while it was on the floor. She made things much harder on herself because she didn’t want to put the effort into slowing down for a moment, picking it up, and making the situation right.
Do you ever find this happening to you? I sure do. And sometimes I even know when I am in the middle of it but I rarely talk myself out of it. Rather than take a few possibly more difficult minutes to figure out how to set up the situation properly, I’ll bang my head against it over and over again until it relents.
Let’s take working on a car as an example. Something like removing the valve cover to fix its seal (don’t worry, no prior knowledge of automobile maintenance is necessary.) The process for removing the valve cover is to remove the bolts holding it down, remove the spark plug wires, and then pry up the cover from the head. The quick and seemingly easier way to do that is to follow my instructions just as I said. Within a few minutes your have the valve cover off and can replace the seal. But then you have to put the bolts back in and put the spark plug wires back in place. This is where the “beating your head against a problem” part comes in. You can eventually get the bolts back in the right places and get the wires in the right holes, but it may take you a while. Especially if something else goes wrong in the process and you get sidetracked onto another task. Maybe you crack the valve cover and have to order a new one which will take a week. It’s not likely that you’ll remember the layout of the bolts and wires.
So it’s much better to take your time. Slow down just a bit and take a picture of where everything goes at the beginning. Ignore that urge to dive right in just a bit. And when you take each of the bolts out, lay them somewhere in the same position as they were when they were in the valve cover. Then you’ll know where they came from and where they need to go. That’s especially important if any of them are different sizes. Just slowing down a little and exercising discipline can make the difference between a few minutes and a few days of work.
I don’t think that the stubbornness of beating your head against problems is all bad. Sometimes the exact thing you need is to keep slogging and all the setting up in the world will just slow you down. You can paralyze yourself by overthinking.
But much of the time slowing down and getting things in their proper places first is the better way to go.
The best way to build complicated things is to think of each part as a component in a system. Think about how it fits in with the other parts. Consider what happens when this part changes and find a way to make that change flow through the system.
In many ways I’m doing a great job of tuning out distractions from the outside world. I’m not letting the popular media work me up in a frenzy over silly epidemics and I’m not paying attention to Kim Kardashian’s latest who knows what. I don’t let mass media influence me very much because I carefully curate my media consumption. Mostly this is a good thing. It allows me to focus on what matters to me and avoid much of the unnecessary negativity of the world.
But I also use it to escape the anger and sadness I feel when I know about situations that I don’t feel like I can change. Like Ferguson. Like the awful inequality that blacks face in our country. Like the biases our society has against women. Everything in this world that separates humans from the truth that we are all the same and we all bleed the same blood and love with the same hearts. All these issues tear open my heart and so I shut them out of my life.
But I don’t think that’s OK anymore. I don’t have solutions to any of it but that doesn’t mean I should shut it out. If I don’t let it hurt my heart then I’ll never stumble across that opportunity to do something when it arises. I won’t be open to any solutions that may come to mind to help me stop the pain.
So I’m taking some of my blinders off. I’ll still ignore most mass media, but I won’t ignore the plight of my fellow woman and man. I’ll soak it in deeply to my soul and use it to do what I can to help others.
Yesterday I didn’t write a blog post. I’d been consistent for over a year but I got out of my rhythm and lost in work and simply forgot. Whoops.
So what now?
Start a new streak.
A professional is able and willing to perform in any situation. An amateur is not.
Let’s look at photography, which is something that I don’t know a whole lot about but I think I know enough to use it as an example.
The technology in today’s phones let anyone take fantastic pictures given the right circumstances. And because we always have a camera with us and it costs us nothing to take as many pictures as we’d like, it is so easy to find those right circumstances. But that doesn’t make everyone a professional photographer and it definitely doesn’t diminish their work.
The difference between the amateur and professional photographer is that the professional can deliver when the circumstances aren’t just right. She knows how to position her subjects so the lighting is right or how to control the aperture to brighten the picture some. She has the tools on hand — a tripod and extra lighting — that allow her to make the imperfect situation work. If she’s good she’ll get inspiration from that imperfection and her work will be even better.
I am not a professional photographer. I can rig up a temporary camera mount so I can take pictures on a delay. But I don’t know how to fix the problems I see when my subjects look too flat. I’m an amateur.
Of course there’s a place for both, but you’ll probably lean one way or the other naturally. Figure out which way and get yourself in those kinds of situations.
I lean towards generalization. It suits me. I prefer working alone or on very small teams and controlling everything.
If you lean towards specialization then you need to be on a team, probably a fairly large one.
Neither is wrong. Each has their pluses and minuses.
I’ve taken multiple classes in trigonometry and calculus and I’ve done well in them. I’ve taken a course in linear algebra and while I don’t know what that is, I know it means that I’ve learned some high level math. And that leads to some strange biases, like believing that knowing math isn’t that important.
In my everyday life I don’t use calculus or linear algebra. Until I stop and think about it, I’d tell you that I don’t really use math at all. I’d tell you that learning math is nowhere near as useful as it used to be and that computers can do that work for us now. What’s the point in learning it?
But all my knowledge of math is making me forget what it is like to not know it. I can’t think like a beginner. This is the bias we all fall into when we know something well. It’s one of the stages of learning — you start knowing nothing, then you learn more and more until you know enough to be useful, and then master it. And the master doesn’t know how much she knows.
I’ve encountered this before but I only applied the idea to software development. I tried to start teaching someone programming. He had never been exposed to any programming concepts, although he was fairly technical. I kept starting with a topic that I thought was fundamental and then finding out that I needed to go back further to something more fundamental. I found that I had no idea what the fundamentals were because I had so many layers of knowledge.
So no matter what you know, just know that you know more than you know. Find a way to share it with those that don’t.
How much do you question what you do? I do it all the time. I take it to a bad place at times — asking myself multiple times while completing a single task whether it is what I should be working on. Or I’ll take things to heart and really question myself when someone strikes out at me in a mean way. I question my intentions when I want to do things and ask myself why I did the things I’ve done.
Overall I believe that over-questioning is better than under-questioning. It fits in much better with my philosophy that there is no right or wrong in most decisions and my system of continual learning and improvement. If I don’t question myself I fear that I’ll grow complacent and stop moving forward.
But there are times that I envy people with strong convictions about everything. I imagine it would make things much easier in some ways. My internal dialog might be freed up to do something else and it would be easier to support more causes because I’d get on board and never think about it again.
Maybe that envy is unfounded. Nothing in the world is quite as wondrous once you think you’ve gotten it figured out.
I feel that many people see the world as an untapped market for technology. That so many problems could be solved if we just had the right technical solution. So much money could be made with the right idea.
But it isn’t the technology that matters. Building a successful software company is more about building a company and less about the software. Finding ways to solve problems is more about the people affected and less about the technology.
The technology isn’t the key. It is a valuable part of your toolset.
In my mind one of the most critical skills a person can have is vision. By vision I mean that the person can see a future that is different than the way things are today. The person can imagine the way that things should be or at least the way that she wants them to be.
Without vision all the technical skill in the world is useless. You will simply be a cog in someone else’s machine because you won’t know how to use your talent. But with vision your talents are amplified. One of my greatest strengths is that my vision for how I want things to be drives me to learn new things and overcome challenges simply to see my vision come to life. What I know is amplified by the drive towards my vision and nothing can stop me.
So what do you do if you don’t have vision? Start looking for things that frustrate or annoy you. Can you do anything to fix them? No? Then look for something else. Eventually you’ll find one. Can you imagine a world where that frustration doesn’t exist? That’s your start. Repeat that a few times and you’ll see new visions for the world everywhere.
If we possessed the technology to break into someone’s mind to read their thoughts, would it be OK to use that technology? I’d say no — our thoughts are private, precious, and thoughts alone cannot be criminal. But what if someone committed a terrible crime, a terrorist attack or abused a child? Would it be OK then?
I’m certain this technology to read our thoughts is coming. In the meantime, our phones are working to capture as much of our mind as possible so they can be ready for what we want to do. They read the context of the situation, like when I get in my car in the morning, and give me what I might need right then, like traffic information for my commute. Through every iteration our phones become more of a part of us (I didn’t come up with this idea, I saw it here).
Yesterday, President Obama talked about phone encryption at SXSW. During his talk he made this statement:
"And the question we now have to ask is, if technologically, it is possible to make an impenetrable device or system where the encryption is so strong that there’s no key, there’s no door at all, then how do we apprehend the child pornographer? How do we solve or disrupt a terrorist plot? What mechanisms do we have available to even do simple things like tax enforcement?" To which I’d respond “We already have this device.” This device is our mind and our thoughts have been private for our entire history. Having another impenetrable device, our phones, doesn’t change things. Moreso, it restores the natural order of thoughts being private.
So how does law enforcement work in this world with an impenetrable device? Well, they have centuries of history to look at for ideas. But I’ll go through the President’s talking points. For both the child pornographer and terrorist you look at inputs and outputs. Where does the device go? Who does it communicate with? I find the tax enforcement example particularly silly, but you enforce it the same way you do today, by requiring everyone to file documents and have penalties for not filing them.
One other small point which I’m not sure matters, but I’d be more OK with allowing mind reading if it could not be done without the person’s knowledge. Because that’s the biggest part of my fear — not knowing when people have been in my mind. A tool to break phone encryption wouldn’t leave a trace. You’d have no idea if someone had broken in.
So again, would it be OK to use mind reading technology? Would it be OK just for alleged criminals? Would it be OK for just the worst of the worst of them?
The things we want aren’t fixed — they change over time based upon environmental influences. For me the biggest influence is who I’m around. The social part of my brain kicks in and seeks acceptance through wanting or having the same things. Too many times in my life that has meant chasing material possessions. The kids I hung out with after high school wanted fast import cars so I put myself into debt trying to fit in.
Of course this social influence means it is really difficult for me to figure out what I want and at a certain point there is no way to tell the difference between what I want and what my environment has programmed me to want. I have no way of knowing what I’d “truly” want without those influences.
If you’re unhappy with the current state of your life it is probably valuable to figure out what you want. That may mean staying away from friends for a bit to let their influence wear off. It may mean stopping contact with those friends until you’ve got yourself firmly planted where you want to be. Then you may find you don’t have much in common with them anyway.
I like control. I want my tools to do what I expect of them. I want to change things to make them fit into my vision. I definitely don’t want my tools changing things on me without my knowledge.
I know that my way isn’t the only way. I know that some people don’t care about as fine grained control. And I also know that the huge variety of tools out there for people to share their ideas and themselves is a wonderful thing. But it’s not for me. I want control. I want to see the moving parts. In the tech world, we call this “owning the stack” because we have control over all the parts of the thing we are building from the server to the database to the app.
To once again apply these thoughts to photography, which I will once again admit to not being an expert with, I see it as the difference between a phone camera and an SLR. I can take awesome photos with my iPhone but I can’t take the photos I have a vision of taking, for example a picture with a shallow focal depth that has me in focus and the background blurry. It’s the same thing I want when I’m making an app — I want to control the focus, lighting, everything. The iPhone doesn’t easily allow that level of control.
The desire for control factors heavily into every decision I make when I’m building something. And one of the beautiful things about controlling everything is that I get to make all the decisions. I know the consequences of them and what compromises I must make — do I want super fast page loading or super high quality images or something in the middle? On my server, writing my code, I can control that. I can’t do that on SquareSpace. If I build a site on SquareSpace and a user says it loads really slowly for them I don’t have a lot of options to fix the problem. That’s the downside of it being really easy to build a site. And that will work great for 90% of people, but it’s just not for me. I hate giving an answer of “no, I can’t do that because of the technology I chose.” That kind of philosophy has given the tech world a bad name.
Would it be too bold to say that my desire for control is a mark of a professional? I don’t think so.
Today I was fixing the bathtub faucets that had been leaking for months and was remained of one of my particularly bad bad habits. Some water was leaking out of the hot water handle so I went back outside, turned off the water, came back inside, took apart the hot water handle, tightened something, went back outside to turn on the water, and then tested it once more.
Less water was leaking at that point but it was still leaking. But I tried to convince myself otherwise. I was wore out, tired of going back and forth to the water supply, and had other things to do. I almost convinced myself that I’d fixed the problem and that what I was seeing was just water left over from when it really was leaking. Fortunately I know I like to play this trick on myself so I look out for it and caught myself. I took everything back apart multiple times to get it right and in the end, after many trips in and out, I got it fixed.
I find myself most susceptible to tricking myself when I’m tired. I feel like I barely have the energy to do anything and want any excuse to stop. And then bad things happen. Like when I convinced myself that I didn’t need that seal on my car’s transmission that I was replacing the day before driving from Dallas to Fort Hood. By the time I got down there every gear but 4th had ground into oblivion.
I’m sure there are plenty more examples but none come to mind at the moment. I feel the temptation quite often though. It usually starts with downplaying the issue and ends when I fight through and do it the right way anyway.
I really don’t feel like writing this blog post. I didn’t feel like recording a podcast a few days ago either. I’m just not in the mood. I’m tired, I haven’t gotten much sleep the last few nights because my back has been hurting, and I’m just not in a great mood.
But I’m doing it anyway. Because I know that moods are like seasons that will come and go. I cannot rely upon them. No one could rely on me if I did.
So I shipped another episode of my podcast even though I didn’t feel like it. I’m writing this right now even though I just want to lay in bed and read. I don’t write every day because I want to write every day. From the outside it is easy to look at everyone who consistently ships generous things and assume that they are always in the mood to do so. It is easy to use that assumption to make excuses for ourselves to not ship.
Me not being in the mood tonight is a tremendous opportunity. I can tell you — while in the midst of a funk — that I’m doing it anyway.
One of the ways I think I’m different from normal techy people is that I have a strong drive to get things done regardless of any roadblocks. I see many techy people that want to explain how difficult something is, the risks involved, and how that something is out of scope from the rest of the project. That’s all important but if your goal is to ship a high quality product that reflects well upon you, which is my goal, then they don’t matter. If your goal is to make money then the “out of scope” part my be necessary but I’d argue not. We follow this philosophy at our company so we’re testing it in the real world.
We’ve been burnt a few times — greatly underestimating the scope of work which lowered my effective bill rate — by this philosophy because I don’t like saying no to ideas that will make the product better. I’m happy to say “this should be in phase 2” if appropriate but many times the product needs this feature at launch and we know it.
Despite being burnt, I strongly believe in my philosophy. It results in better products which reflect back on us, happy clients who don’t have to fight with someone about scope all the time, and a trusting work relationship with others who know “they’ll get it done and get it done right.”
Nothing and no one is more likely to ruin your plans than yourself. Talking yourself out of exercise, repeatedly hanging out with people that bring out the worst in you, listening to that fear in your head that tells you not to take the risk. That’s all you blowing yourself up.
The great thing about this is that you are the one thing that you have almost complete control over. You can make the changes you want. You don’t have to look outside yourself. Really, you shouldn’t look outside yourself, stop looking outside yourself!
Focus on what you can control. Focus on setting up the right systems and getting into good habits.
I’m looking at a lot of websites for local businesses right now and I’m surprised by how many of them don’t tell me anything about the people that work there. It seems crazy to me, why wouldn’t a small business owner want to prioritize one of her biggest forms of differentiation — the fact that she is a person who lives in the community and cares about her work? She could be the antithesis to the faceless corporation. But for some reason she isn’t.
One reason I’ve heard is that small businesses want to seem larger than they are. Multiple small business owners have said that to me and I don’t know whether to believe their anecdotal evidence. Personally, I would much rather do business with a highly qualified individual running his own business than an employee of a 100 person business. I guess size doesn’t matter to me. Let me know on Twitter how you feel about it.
Another reason I can think of has to do with website maintenance. If you have employees that leave then it could look bad to have them on your site at any point in time. And you have to have a way to easily maintain your site when that happens or things will quickly look out of date. I get that. But being able to put a face with a name makes such a huge difference on an instinctual level. And maybe that’s the problem — the fear that if someone dislikes me in their gut the moment they see my face then I’ve lost a client before I’ve even had a chance. That is scary. But I doubt that my face — or your face — would have that kind of impact on any sizable part of the population. But if a potential client can’t see me then they can only judge the text on the page. And if my competitor has a picture then my text won’t stand a chance against a human face (assuming, as I stated above, that only a small amount of the population will dislike that human face instinctually.) Back to the point about employees leaving. Yes, if you constantly have different people on your site it will look bad. But it looking bad will be the least of your concerns because if that is happening then your company is in trouble anyway because you won’t have sufficiently trained employees. If someone leaves your company every once in a while then people might notice, but they all know that people change jobs. Hell, they might have even changed jobs themselves once or twice.
So what else am I missing? Maybe people think it is hard to take good pictures of themselves to put up there? Maybe they don’t want the entire Internet to get into their private life? What else am I missing? And is any reason good enough to not have your picture there?
I’ve been feeling overwhelmed a lot lately. Every new thing is too much and feels impossible.
I have to force myself to walk away, get some breathing room or rest, and trust that I’ll be ready to go again soon.
Tonight we walked the dog to a restaurant and ate dinner on the patio. Our dog is very friendly and whenever he spotted someone he would lock his eyes on them and start wiggling, hoping that she would come give him attention. It was the “weird ones” — people who looked a little different than everyone else — that walked right up and scratched his ears.
Social conventions don’t allow for normal people to walk up to a complete stranger and pet their dog. I find that sad. Social conventions get in the way of us connecting with other living creatures even when we have only the best of intentions. Something about that doesn’t seem right.
Now that we’re starting a new company, my job duties have changed quite significantly from my previous consulting work. In that position I was mostly working on functionality and I made things look decent but not really good. The software was meant to do a job rather than convey a feeling and message.
The work we have to this point has little to no functionality. It is all about the design and making websites look good. And I have to admit that I’m struggling at this. I’m worn out half way through the day and I have to work hard to figure out what to do. It doesn’t come nearly as fluidly as programming and it’s really making me question my abilities.
Despite believing that anyone can learn anything I have doubts. Despite seeing progress in the couple of months I’ve been doing more design-centric things I don’t believe in myself. I know I have the technical skills to do HTML and CSS but I feel like layout and colors and typography and images are exhausting. I feel like I have a giant hill to climb.
Today I figured out the root of my crisis of confidence. I fear that I’ll never get good at this and that I’m wasting my time. I’m not sure how to handle that. For now, I’m going to fight through it and see what happens.
You are your likes and dislikes. Your opinions of what is good and bad. By taking on someone else’s opinions as your own you lose yourself. Your unique voice is lost.
Not fitting in perfectly is scary. In some situations it is dangerous. But it is the path to finding yourself. It is the path to happiness.
I don’t mean to say that you should disagree with everything. I mean that you should take time to consider your thoughts and feelings on a subject. And you should share your well considered thoughts and feelings. Don’t shout them at people. Share them humbly in the intention of service.
Why do you do what you do? At this very moment, why are you reading this? What do you hope to get out of it? Will it bring you closer to what you want? To who you want to be?
I feel that why is a question we don’t ask ourselves enough. We go through our days trained to avoid questions, told that we just need to do our jobs. That the answers to our questions come from someone above our pay grade.
That’s bullshit.
Ask why.
It’s not the quality of the product alone that matters. Quality is important, yes, but it isn’t enough. And it isn’t mandatory. Many things have succeeded that weren’t the highest quality option. And maybe that’s a distinction that needs to be made — quality only needs to be good enough. Otherwise you’re over serving, wasting your time and resources and making your product worse.
So what does matter? What people think about your product. How using it makes them feel.
That’s where marketing comes into play. Marketing’s job is to make you feel good about buying and using a product. Its job is to make you believe that that is what people like you — smart, discriminating people of course — do.
Yesterday I started developing a new morning habit of meditation. I’m keeping it simple so I’ll stick with it. I sit somewhere for 5 minutes with my eyes closed and try to focus on my breath while letting other thoughts pass through my mind. I set an alarm on my phone so I know when 5 minutes are up. I find that setting a strict amount of time is critical to actually following through with a habit consistently. Any ambiguity will quickly pull a new habit apart.
Everything can be copied and every day it is getting easier to do so. If you make a hit game in the App Store then someone, somewhere will make a clone mere days or weeks after. But this phenomenon — and really, compared to the world of 100 years ago the speed of copying really is like magic — is not only affecting the digital world. Through both cheap labor and 3D printing it is getting easier to copy physical products.
Of course copying isn’t new. Society has protections in place to protect against it like patents, trademarks, and copyrights. But many things can’t use these protections, like a hit game that combines simple elements in a new way or a permanent LED lighting system that uses new technology. Also, these protections don’t cross borders well so a copyright in the US doesn’t help protect against a copier in Norway.
For these situations I see two ways to protect yourself:
Build a system that is difficult to copy and in which all the components work together, or
Build a brand that is trusted and valued beyond the obvious and superficial features which are easily copied.
There is a third way to protect yourself, the primary one we are building our business on, but it doesn’t scale well. That third way is to make the business about personal relationships. When you work with us you get to work with us and no one else can be us. This means we bring as much of our personalities into the business as possible rather than creating a bland, liked-by-everyone big corporate brand. Our personalities are our protection. But this doesn’t scale well because we can only do so much in a day and past that we have to turn down work.
The leaders of the last two companies that I’ve worked for always encouraged us employees to have a sense of urgency. I’ve generally tried to be the model employee and live up to the ideals of my leaders so I bought into it. I approached each and every task with a strong sense of urgency. This also played into my tendency to ship things before they were ready and my desire to be faster than everyone else. I was that annoying nerdy kid in school who prided himself on finished the test first.
I think that any focus on urgency is misplaced. It encourages rushing. It encourages corner cutting.
Instead of urgency, advocate patience. Promote doing the job right. Know that good things take time and push people to take that extra time. Schedule for it at the beginning.
Urgency is easy and it’s becoming the default in our culture as we cram more and more into our lives. We have to rush to get it all done. Patience is now the differentiator. Taking your time is a great way to set yourself apart from your competition.
I don’t fail often. Maybe I don’t try things that stretch my limits. Maybe I just have high limits.
But recently I failed. I didn’t get what I wanted and it hurt. The what the hell am I doing with my life kind of hurt.
I think I learned something from it, and since I can’t very well share my pain, I’ll share this: the way you define yourself directly affects your happiness.
So if you define yourself as a software engineer, but you aren’t very good at memory management or pointers confuse you or those sorts of things just bore you, then you shouldn’t define yourself that way.[^1]
So how do I define myself now? I’m a guy that is good at making useful things. If I have to copy code that I don’t fully understand right at this moment to create something useful right now, then that is what I’m going to do.
And defining myself that way, I set myself up for success.
[^1]: Not being a software engineer doesn’t mean that you can’t create great software. Really, it can help you make better software.
Sometimes I get so caught up that I don’t notice anything. I don’t notice the warm, golden sun shining through the trees. I don’t notice my body and the pain and stiffness I feel from sitting at my desk for hours mostly motionless. I’m stuck in my mind, in the problems I’m trying to solve in this moment, in another world separated from this one.
But then I notice and noticing is my escape. If I have the energy — and many times I do not — then noticing is the first step towards reuniting with the world around me. My senses awaken. Colors become more vibrant and textures more texture-y. I see the beauty inherent in the world again.
This idea is so obvious now I don’t know why I haven’t thought of it before. It’s an idea for how to get going when you’re in a funk and just don’t feel like doing something that you really know you want to do.
We humans are highly suggestible. When I watch basketball I want to play basketball because it reminds me of how much I like it. Same with watching video games, people building software, and people creating video.
I’m going to try to implement a system now for those times when I really don’t want to do what I know I want to do. I’m going to watch a few minutes of video of someone else doing it first.
I don’t overwork myself because I’m put in a bad work environment. I don’t do it because I’ll get in trouble or because people will be upset with me. I do it because it is in my nature. I do it because I don’t make excuses and I don’t let the ball drop.
If I don’t like being overworked the solution is not to change my environment. It is to change myself.
Over the past fifteen years I have had 15 different addresses in three states and two countries. I’ve moved around a lot. That frequency of moving changes my mindset about things and makes everything seem temporary. No need to have a lot of things because that’s just more things to move.
It has worn on me though. It is tough to maintain friendships, to find a place you belong, and to work to improve your home when you know that it will all be short lived. I’ve built up a form of detachment from everything over the years.
I want to change that now. I’ve found a home in Denton that I love and a community that I want to be a part of. I’m ready to put down my roots and build something lasting.
Who are you in 30 seconds?
Can you share your life that quickly? Sum it all up nicely? Your likes, dislikes, passions, and prejudices? What spending a day with you is like? How you bend or break or give up under pressure?
Of course not.
After 30 seconds of your story I might know 2 things:
How much your practice your 30 second story
What you value or what you think I value
Is this valuable information? Is this a useful way to make any decision?
You should buy Pain Free by Pete Egoscue now.
I don’t move enough. And neither do you. For at least seven hours a day I sit in front of a computer. If I don’t sit there then I can’t feed myself. But the human body was not meant to be sitting all day, only exercising a tiny bit of the range of motion of our joints and muscles. Humans are meant to move.
Not moving leads to pain — mine is mostly in my back and my shoulder, but on bad days it radiates down into my wrist.
This book has helped me to escape the pain — at least when I do the simple exercises. It will help you too.
I have an awful cycle of doing the exercises, feeling tons better, stopping the exercises because I feel like I don’t have time to do them, feeling worse again and barely being able to work, and restarting the exercises. You will have the same awful cycle, but at least the book will be there for you next time.
We are great at putting the different pieces of our lives together into timelines that become stories we tell about ourselves. Stories like “I’m not a morning person, I never have been” or “Even as a kid I didn’t like to run and play so I’m just not meant for exercise.” These stories can be a great way to share information about yourself and a way to form bonds with others that have similar stories (more elaborate stories than my examples above.) But these stories are dangerous.
The stories you tell yourself reinforce your actions each time you tell them. They create an attachment between you and a way of being. They don’t allow you to be anyone other than the person in the story.
These stories are also loosely based in fact. We have a way of only remembering some of the data about our lives because our memories are not perfect. We remember most days of our childhood sitting inside reading books but we may completely forget about those summer vacations when we were able to run free in nature and loved it.
So don’t trust your stories. Reevaluate them often, especially the ones you tell the most. Especially your favorites.
Right now I’m wanting it to pass quickly, but it is taking its time. Oh well, I’ll move forward one moment at a time.
Fear is powerful. My greatest fears are the unknowns and the greatest unknown for me is the future. It is so easy to let that fear take over and prepare a fear based reaction to things that might never happen. When I do this I throw myself into a future that I don’t have all the tools to handle. For example, if I try right now to live in my future that will happen in a couple of weeks where I’m trying to figure out how to handle taxes when I’m self employed and have almost no income (which I have no clue about right now) then I won’t have the tools of any research I can do on the topic or professional advice I can seek. I’m setting myself up for failure.
Here’s a question I came up with the other day that stuck with me, “Why would you want to live in that future?” Why do I want to put myself in a position where I can only fail like I described above? Or why would I want to imagine a series of worst case scenarios three steps into the future when I have no indication that step one won’t go smoothly?
Planning definitely has its place but it can quickly turn into living in a fear based future. Yes, if you have all the information you need (or all you’re going to get even if you need more) then go ahead and plan. I suggest you sit down and make a task of it, rather than letting it take over your thoughts while your doing some other mindless task like driving.
But if you are still waiting for information then let it go. Put it on your calendar or task list for later if that helps you let it go. If I’ve just submitted an iPhone app for review by Apple I don’t need to plan for the possibility of it getting rejected. I’ll handle that when it happens. Why would I want to live in that imaginary future?
On the second episode of The David Brunow Podcast I talked about difficulties I’m having with my Dharma Talks app. I’d like to follow up that discussion with some examples that would be hard to share over audio only.
The problem is that I’m having trouble getting the proper information from the Mission Dharma website to display in the app. On the surface, this seems like a simple issue of taking the information that’s on the website, figuring out which parts of it mean what, and then storing it in the right places in the app. For example, if I can find an anchor tag, represented in HTML as
<a href="/talks/1">March 21, 2015: Talk Title, Talk Speaker</a> then I can take the text inside that tag as the raw Talk data. In this example, I can find the date by looking for the colon and taking everything before that colon and storing it as the date. I can find the title of the Talk by taking everything after the colon, looking for a comma, and then storing everything after the colon and before the comma as the title of the Talk. The rest of the text inside the tag is the speaker for that Talk. The URL to download the Talk is the easiest part because it is the full contents of the href tag.
This seems pretty easy, problem solved! But not really. This is where the fragility of HTML scraping becomes a problem. This is why most people would recommend against HTML scraping and I would definitely agree with those people if there is any other, better way to solve the problem. Or if the system you are building needs to be 100% reliable. But most systems don’t and I believe that Dharma Talks fits into that category.
I’ll give an example of the fragility. Here is an anchor tag that I ran into while I was initially developing Dharma Talks:
<a href="/talks/1">March 21, 2015, Talk Title, Talk Speaker</a> Do you see the difference? It’s subtle, but that comma after the year will completely ruin the parsing I described before. But while making the first version of Dharma Talks I’d seen this pattern so I adjusted my parsing for it. First I look for a colon, and if there is one then I do the parsing I described before. If there isn’t a colon then I find the second comma in the text inside the anchor tag and treat it the same as I did the colon earlier.
This worked for over a year other than a couple of minor issues where the person that maintains Mission Dharma’s website changed the text inside the anchor tag after the app had parsed it, resulting in two of the exact same episode. At that time I hadn’t wanted to limit the parsing to any sort of uniqueness because I wanted it to be able to parse things as generally as possible — I feared any restrictions would make it more fragile.
At this time the app only relied upon the Mission Dharma website being available for it to get new episodes. All the parsing was done inside the app and I had no control over what episodes were showing on someone’s phone. I couldn’t remove a duplicate episode that had had its title changed. I couldn’t fix a parsing error if the person maintaining Mission Dharma’s website didn’t follow one of the two patterns I described above. I liked the simplicity of only needing the app and the website, but I hated how fragile the whole thing was. I hated that my name was on something that looked poorly made. The line between simple and shoddy is thin.
Life got in the way and I didn’t work on the app for a year. When I did get time I noticed that I had taken a shortcut in building the app and I had hard-coded the years to be parsed. By hard-coding, I mean that I had told the app to parse 2010, 2011, 2012, 2013, and 2014. You can probably see the problem there. Hard-coding is bad and I know that, but I’m guessing I saw that as a very short term solution so I let it slide. That’s a good lesson for the future.
So I fixed the hard-coding so it looks at the current year and parses starting at that year all the way back to 2010 which should make that part of the app future-proof. I submitted the update to Apple, it was approved, and things worked. For about a week.
Up above when I was describing the ways the parsing could break I only talked about the text inside the anchor tag. That’s the nice way things can break. The bad way is if there is no anchor tag. For example, a simple typo could make this:
<a href="/talks/1"March 21, 2015: Talk Title, Talk Speaker</a> Do you see the problem? The app would see it instantly and the parsing would break immediately. The opening anchor tag doesn’t have its closing ‘>’ so it isn’t truly an anchor tag. This is what happened about a week after I released the new version of the app. New Talks stopped being added to the app.
I’d been thinking about having an application on my server that does the parsing and stores it in a database for a while. That would give me the control I needed to make sure that the Talks were loaded in the app correctly. Since the database was on my server I could change any entries that got parsed incorrectly. If things were too broken on the Mission Dharma site I could manually add Talks to the database. I could finally guarantee uniqueness for each Talk because I had total control of the data in the database. Ultimately, it meant that I could make sure that the information for each Talk was correct.
Why didn’t I do this a year ago when I first released the app? A few reasons. I wanted the app to be able to live on without me and without my server. I wanted the components to be simple. And I didn’t have experience with any programming language that I could run on my server. All my work had been on Windows servers and I had a Linux server. I still think these are valid reasons to make the decision I made, but if I had it to do over again I would have done it differently. I would have implemented the solution that I just did — a server application that contacts the Mission Dharma website for Talks to parse and an iOS app that gets the Talk information from that server application.
That solution went live today.
Tonight I watched the documentary The Look of Silence which is about an army revolution in Indonesia where a million people were accused of being communists and then slaughtered. Sure makes my day to day problems seem insignificant.
When I published the first version of Wake Up, Powered by Rdio®, I had never been employed as a software developer. I had never read a book or taken a course in Objective C. I just wanted to wake up to music and my music was on Rdio. The app was a side project and a learning experience and I was proud of what I had accomplished.
Looking back, it was an amateur effort. It’s obvious now. But although it was imperfect, it was mine.
And it was a tool that I used every night and it worked. At least 95% of the time I was woken up to music. I have never made any money with this app, and I don’t expect to make any in the future. I couldn’t justify spending more time on it. And since I was so close to it, since I had designed and developed the entire thing, I really couldn’t see it being anything else than it already was. Four or five months ago I had decided that the app would be in ‘maintenance mode’ and that I wouldn’t do anything new to it.
Then I got an email from Jenni. Subject line: ‘Love your app’. That sure made me smile. She wanted to know if I’d be interested in her help with some UI work. I was skeptical. Visited her website — wait, she does this for a living? And she’s actually good? I was more skeptical. Plus, I didn’t know if I wanted to put any effort into the app. Worse, I didn’t know if I wanted to work with someone else. I struggled with the idea that someone else could do something better than I could, and that instead of this being my app, it would be our app. It sounds silly to write about now, but I was in emotional turmoil. I can’t say I got past that turmoil quickly, but I decided to at least hear her out. Turns out, she also lives in North Texas. So we met for coffee.
Coffee went well. Actually, coffee went great — I was energized by just starting to work with someone else that is passionate about what she does. We seemed to have similar tastes in design and left the conversation with the idea that she would create a mockup and I could decide to go forward with it at that point. I drove home a little giddy.
About a month later, she sent a mockup. I really liked the design direction, but I wasn’t sold. I was still wrestling with my control issues.
But I like to think of myself as someone who won’t miss an opportunity because of my own insecurities, so I decided to go for it. And for the past two and a half months Jenni and I have been crafting Version 2.0.0 in our spare time — working together to make something better than I could make alone. Jenni is a joy to work with.
This morning, I submitted to the App Store.
As I said before, my first attempt at this app was not a professional work.
But this one is. This one is beautiful and functional and polished and I am proud to say that I took part in bringing it into the world. I can’t wait to share it with everyone.
In many industries the biggest competitor is non-consumption. By that, I mean that people are not buying your product or service from anyone. For example, a household that does not buy any milk is a non-consumption household for a milk company. To combat non-consumption, milk companies team up in dairy industry associations and pay for advertising about the benefits of milk. This advertising is meant to convert non-milk-drinkers which increases the size of the industry. Every milk company benefits when their industry is larger.
I believe that the idea of forming a team with other companies in your industry — your competition — is powerful. I don’t mean that you should collude on pricing or do anything unethical. But work together to create awareness around the work you do. Work together to show people why non-consumption is bad for them in the long run.
When your competitors succeed your market is moved forward. Every news article highlighting the benefits of a project you did helps your competitors. Work together to create more opportunities for everyone.
What is an artist?
I think I have a simple definition — someone who shares what is inside of herself. What is inside of her could be the way she sees the world or the way she feels in a moment of grief or the rage she feels because she’s been mistreated and looked down upon her entire life. I can’t define what’s inside of her, it could be anything.
If you share what is inside you then you are an artist.
Art is not inherently complicated or high brow. Art is a piece of an artist that she’s been generous enough to share.
And it doesn’t make you right. This world is too big for you to know all the answers. It is too complicated for you to understand all the factors involved. But this world has plenty of room for both your opinion and mine. I’ll take some time to try to understand yours and I hope you’ll do the same with mine.
We’ve had a rough couple months. I’ve been in the fun situation of simultaneously being grossly overworked and overdrawing my bank account. The novelty of owning our own business has worn off and now we’re only continuing through sheer willpower.
It feels like we’re between waves in the ocean right now. We’ve overcome a good amount by surviving for a year. But we still can’t see land — just a wall of water.
Hopefully land is just the other side of it.
As I state on my ‘about’ page, I am using a static blogging engine created and open sourced by Don Melton to create this site. I’ll to talk through why I chose Magneto, the current limitations of my setup, and walk through simple tutorial for other ruby amateurs that may want to set up their own Magneto site.
The main reason that I want to use a static blogging engine is that I want to have complete control over my content. With Magneto, every part of my website is generated on my local computer. If the company that I rent a server from goes belly up, or the hardware server on which I have one small, virtualized chunk gets seized by the government, I could be back up and running on a new server with a different company before the DNS records could change.
Since I have complete control over the content, that also means that I can change the CSS and JavaScript directly. When using a drag and drop type tool that someone else created, I feel like I have to think through someone else’s mind. I don’t know their mental model for the task I am doing, so I have to figure it out before actually getting anything done. With Magneto, I just have to be able to read source code and think like me, and I’ve gotten good at the latter.
So why Magneto in particular? It is written in ruby and I was exposed to it through Don’s blog at the right time. If I had wanted to learn php, I would have started using Marco Arment’s Second Crack long ago.
##Limitations Currently, I have run into only one significant limitation with Magneto. I am certain that I can build a workaround, but I haven’t thought about it too much yet.
Doing anything with my website while on the go, other than edits to content, is more difficult than I would like. And even edits require that my computer is on, connected to the internet, and watching my local directory for changes. None of those can be counted on to be true for a laptop.
##Getting Started with Magneto These instructions are based on my experience installing Magneto on my 2012 MacBoook Air running Mountain Lion. But I did it a little while back, so if you run into problems, talk to me on twitter @davidbrunow.
Getting your site up and running with some custom design settings shouldn’t take more than a couple of hours, less if you know exactly what you want everything to look like.
###Prerequisites
Web server - could be any variety since you will be sending it static files. However, if you are running a Windows or other non-*nix based server you will at least have to come up with a different solution to deploying your files than I will discuss here.
I will not cover the setup of this server here — I found all of the reference materials at linode very helpful if you are running a *nix based server.
*nix based local system (Mac OS X, Linux, Unix)
You must have ruby installed locally. If you don’t have it installed, follow these instructions.
You will also need coffeescript, kramdown, directory watcher, multi json, exec js and SASS installed locally.
You will need to be able to use a text editor (I use TextMate 2 because I want to be like the cool kids) and the command line.
###Installing Magneto First, let’s check to make sure that you have the prerequisite gems installed. Navigate to this directory either in Terminal or Finder (if you have a version of ruby other than 1.8 installed, then the path will be slightly different):
/Library/Ruby/Gems/1.8/gems/
Look at the contents of that directory, and see if the following directories exist:
coffee-script-2.2.0 kramdown-0.14.1 sass-3.2.5 directory_watcher-1.4.1 execjs-1.4.0 multi_json-1.5.0
If any of them are missing, run the following applicable commands to install them (since you are using the sudo command, you will have to enter your password after the first command):
sudo gem install coffee-script sudo gem install kramdown sudo gem install sass sudo gem install directory_watcher sudo gem install execjs sudo gem install multi_json Magneto’s installation is just as simple as the other gems. You just need to run this command on your local machine:
sudo gem install magneto That was easy, wasn’t it? Now let’s put some content out there.
###Website Generation Files Now, you will need to create the files that Magneto uses to create your website. The simplest way to start is to download all of the files from Don Melton’s website from github and then put them in a directory. I created a directory called ‘brunow.org’ off of my home folder. I think that something off of your home folder will be simplest, since you can use ‘~/’ when needing to provide absolute paths.
I started by trying to download as few files as possible. The upside of this approach is that I was able to see what each file did by seeing which features were missing at each step. The downside is that it took longer and ground my teeth a lot. But since I already did that for you, I will describe each of the files that you need and what they do, grouped by directory.
~/brunow.org/
The files in this directory handle the basic scripting of building the website as well as the overall configuration:
Rakefile: this is ruby’s version of a makefile. In general, it is a script that performs certain tasks. In this case, it will start a new draft post, deploy files to your server, clean up folders and post a draft. You will need to make changes to this file, which I will describe later. config.yaml: this is a general configuration file for your website. You will need to change a number of values in here, which I will describe later. script.rb: I’m not sure of the most correct way to describe this file. Pretty much, it is the main source code file for the website. Magneto will read through this file, and generate posts based upon the files in the /Items path. This is the main component that uses all of the other ruby files to put all of the pages together.
~/brunow.org/Items
The files in this directory are either a template of each file that will be moved to the server for the website (about.md will become /about/index.html) or the file itself (/favicon.ico will become /favicon.ico in the output.) All content, such as the ‘About’ page and each individual blog post, is in a variety of Markdown format called kramdown and when run through Magneto will be moved into its own directory and named index.html. Anything that will be generated by Magneto is in a file with a .erb extension.
.htaccess: this is a file that lives on web servers to establish access rights to directories. 404.md: this is the content that will be displayed when a page cannot be found on your server. It doesn’t follow the rule about being moved into a folder and renamed index.html. about.md: this is content about you. Well, when you first download it, it is content about Don. So you will want to make it about you. archives.erb: this is the template for the archives page of the website. This file contains both HTML and ruby. The ruby is used to group your posts by dates and display links to each of them in one location. favicon.ico: this is the image that will show up in the browser bar when someone visits your website. You will need to provide and image and then you can follow [John Gruber’s instructions on how to make a retina favicon]. index.erb: this is the template for every file that will be an index.html, which is based upon the document.erb template. robots.txt.erb: this is the template for the file that tells the ethical bots whether they can traverse your site rss.xml.erb: this is the template for your RSS feed. sitemap.xml.erb: this is the template for your site map. css/style.sass: this is the stylesheet for your website, in [SASS] format. It will become /css/style.css after processing through Magneto (which handles running it through the SASS engine for you). includes/sidebar.erb: the includes folder holds different ‘components’ of the web page. This particular file the is template for a right sidebar that has a short bio, recent articles and search. js/jquery.min.js: the jQuery JavaScript library is an easier way to do JavaScript - it contains advanced functions that would be a pain to write yourself, and solves browser compatibility problems. js/timeago.coffee: this coffeescript changes the date at the end of your posts from ‘January 3rd, 2013’ to ‘Two months ago.’
~/brunow.org/plugins
The files in this directory are called by either the script.rb file or by the .erb files that build the pages. Each performs its own little part in the process of website generation, and has documentation at the beginning which I will pretty much restate here:
copyright_year.rb: uses the copyright year information in your config.yaml file to determine how to display the copyright years image.rb: creates proper image tags items.rb: parses individual markdown files to create posts markdown_inline.rb: parses the markdown syntax reduce_empty_lines_filter.rb: removes extra whitespace relative_to_absolute_urls_filter.rb: changes relative URLs to absolute remove_more_marker_filter.rb: gets rid of the MORE marker strip_html.rb: not sure symbolic_to_numeric_entities_filter.rb: changes symbols like & to their numeric equivalent & video.rb: creates the proper video tags
~/brunow.org/templates
document.erb: the basic template of each ‘index.html’ file that will be created by Magneto. You will need to make changes in this file page.erb: the template of the page that is inside of the document post.erb: the template for each post that will be on the main site page post_article.erb: the template of the page if it is an individual post, rather than all posts
###Customizing Magneto Now I will describe the small number of items that you absolutely need to modify to get Magneto running as well as those that you will need to change so that you are not copying the style of Don’s site.
First, open config.yaml in your favorite text editor. Change base_url: to be the name of your site. If you know how your CDN works, then put in the proper URL there for cdn_url: — I think mine is the same as my base URL, but I haven’t researched that yet. Change the copyright information to yours, and put in a description of your site. This description will be part of the document header if you use a template similar to Don’s. If you are going to be using Google Analytics, then change Don’s number to yours. I actually left Don’s GA number in there because I am not using GA and I got an error when running Magneto when I took out that line completely. I did remove all of the GA JavaScript from the pages, however, and will try to track down the source of the problem with removing that line in the future. Instead of GA, I am using Mint. Why did I choose Mint? Because I want to own my analytics, just like I want to own everything else.
Anyhow, back to changing the config.yaml file: change search_sites: to your site’s URL, change the title: to whatever you want to show up in the browser’s tab bar, and change visible_posts: to show the number of posts that you want on your main and subsequent pages.
Now to the Rakefile. I don’t use the ‘stage’ or ‘deploy’ sections of the Rakefile right now, so I won’t speak to them. The one thing you need to change if you are going to be using the Rakefile for deployments is the part after rsync. You will need to put the information for the directory that you have your output folder in as the first argument after -avz. I use the absolute path because I have another process that calls Rakefile to make things more automatic. You will then need to put in the information for your server as the last parameter.
Ok, now to the customization of the look of the site. Let’s start in templates/document.erb. In here, you can change the names of the items in the header, add an image to your header like I have, or do other structural type tweaks. This is stuff that I can’t tell you what to do — it is time to make it yours.
So next, we will head to another area that I can’t tell you what to do: the css. I change a few things in items/css/style.sass, such as the color of the footer, the way that the site handles different screen widths, and hiding the sidebar.
Ok, you are just about ready, you just need to do three final things:
Delete the directories for each year (2012, 2013, etc.) These contain Don’s blog posts, which you won’t need.
Edit ‘about.md’ so that it contains information about you instead of information about Don.
Replace favicon.ico with an icon of your choosing. Don’s face won’t represent you very well.
###Workflow My workflow is constantly evolving and hopefully I can keep updating it here as I learn to use Magneto in ways that will better suit my needs. Like the furniture in my living room, I constantly tweak my workflow to try to make myself more comfortable and reduce friction — anything that I can do to make myself write more often is a good thing.
That being said, here is my current process:
I start a draft post with the command rake draft. This way, a new file is automatically created in the drafts directory with a current timestamp and a title that I provide. Since I have my entire ~/brunow.org folder symlinked to my dropbox account, I can then either edit the file in TextMate 2 locally, or use IA Writer on my iPhone or iPad. Sometimes though, I bypass all of that and just start typing in my Notes app on my phone. Then I can just do a copy and paste from my Notes app on my Mac into TextMate when I am ready to create the post. Realistically, the limitation of having to make posts on my computer isn’t a bad thing. It means that I have a higher likelihood of taking my time to develop my thoughts, helped by using a screen that is large enough to see meaningful amounts of text at the same time, which I find is better for editing and pruning my ideas.
So that I can make edits to existing files from anywhere, I have Magneto running in auto mode on my MacBook Air. When Magneto detects a file that has changed in the /items path, it will regenerate the site. I then have folder actions setup on the ~/brunow.org file. I learned about how to set up the folder actions on this site. That action calls a script, which deploys the files to my web server with the command rake deploy and then runs the command rake clean which removes the output directory and all of its contents. As discussed earlier, rake deploy uses rsync to send your files to the server.
Since I am using the auto mode of Magneto I could technically start a new post on my phone, but I really like how it automatically handles the timestamp for me instead of my having to figure out the format once again and then typing the whole thing.
Once I have finished writing the post, I use the command rake post which re-timestamps, renames, and moves the files to the proper location for the site. Since I have Magneto running in auto mode, it rebuilds the site, and within about 30 seconds I get a Notification Center message that my files have been uploaded by my folder action.
###Future I hope to keep updating this as I get responses from other users, or as Don updates Magneto. A little down the road I hope to work on my fork of Magneto and my website and get them both up on Github so I can share any enhancements that I make.
I also am planning on using Magneto to create a static engine that creates a sort of “storybook”. But that is still just tumbling around in my head right now.
You should definitely follow Don Melton on twitter — he has already tweeted about one blog post about how to increase Magneto’s efficiency and he has great stories about his years developing Safari at Apple. Plus he just seems like a nice guy.
You should also follow @davidbrunow for none of the same reasons.
We have so much control over our world today and it is tempting to make it exactly how we want it. To order the food we like without the mushrooms we know we don’t like. To stay inside in our nice comfortable homes. To think about our nice comfortable world views. Taking in what we want.
I’d like to make the case for allowing serendipitous events to unfold. Order something the way it comes, or add something to it you’ve never tried. Get outside in the cold and feel it to your bones. Read things that you don’t agree with or talk with people who have different points of view.
Doing these things will both make you grow as an individual and appreciate the things you like even more. More importantly, they open you up to possibilities you can’t imagine in your perfectly controlled world.
I’ve been thinking about the topic of persuasion lately because Scott Adams keeps writing blog posts about Trump’s persuasion skills. But while Scott tells me that Trump is persuasive, my Twitter timeline frequently shares that he is the most factually incorrect of the presidential candidates. That doesn’t seem like persuasion to me. It seems like lying and telling people what they want to hear regardless of the truth.
I do believe that lying by telling people what they want to hear is a skill — one that I don’t have but I see in others. You have to understand what others want and also be able to quickly adjust your strategy based upon your environment and audience. That’s not easy, especially when your audience is 300 million or so people.
But is it persuasion? It does get people to do what you want them to do, at least for a time. I think I would consider it persuasion without the lying. I’m not sure what to call it with the lying.
Here’s my rule about self promotion: I can only do it when I’ve made something new for my audience that I think they will enjoy or when I’m meeting a new audience that I think will enjoy things I’ve made.
Anything else is spam.
I liken it to whispering in a crowded, noisy room — I’m picturing a dinner party from one of the Batman movies right now. Most people will not hear you or ignore you but the ones that care about what you have to say will listen harder and pay more attention.
The scary thing about this is that it’s possible that no one cares right now. In my mind, the worst thing you can do in that case is repeatedly pick up the bullhorn and interrupt everyone’s good time.
Names are important.
I got into a disagreement with someone the other day about company names. He said that only the company itself gets any value out of a name. I replied that the company’s customers also get value out of that name. For example, when I go to buy an Apple product I want to know that what I’m getting is made by Apple. I buy their products because their name means quality to me and their values align with mine.
These names don’t only matter for high end electronics, which are obviously discretionary purchases and not necessities. Names matter for every purchase we make and each name has a different meaning that might appeal to you. Certain names tell you “you won’t find this for a lower price” while others say “we care about the world we live in.”
Without a way to protect their names companies would be hurt a little, but I believe that consumers would be hurt much more.
I feel like I am facing two problems with building an audience to share the things I create. Either what I make isn’t good enough for anyone to care or I haven’t earned the audience that wants to hear about my creations.
They both have the same solution, keep making things. Keep getting better. Keep making things. Keep getting found.
This is where I’m working right now.
I took the top from my cheap, particle board with dark wood veneer breakfast table, which I bought from Walmart about a year ago, and cut it in half. Surprisingly, the veneer didn’t peel back — the Internet’s advice to cover the cut line with blue painter’s tape actually worked. Unfortunately, I didn’t have my saw configured correctly from the start, and the cut isn’t straight.
After cutting the tabletop in half, I placed it on a couple of the chairs from the table. Voila, desk.
Really, it’s a pretty bad solution at this point. My knees hit unless I slide my feet to the extremes of my range of motion, carefully maneuvering around the chair legs. My elbows drop below my wrists and in the lightly padded folding chair, I crumple over most of the day.
Anyhow, you don’t get to make excuses about a comfortable chair or proper ergonomic position holding you back from creating things. Set up a desk, follow my recommendation, and start sharing with the world!
I’ve never been a great salesperson. For a long time that was because I didn’t know my product. One memorable example of that happened when I was selling used cars. I was on a test drive with a couple and the man asked if the moonroof had an auto-open feature. I didn’t know and said that it did. And then he tried it. And I looked like a fool and my credibility was shot. That was embarrassing.
Now I have a very different problem — I’m afraid to sell things that I make. I don’t know if that sounds strange. I’m afraid to sell them for two reasons.
First, I know they aren’t perfect. I know them so intimately that I know all of their flaws and limitations. I know that one of my apps is deeply flawed because it is an alarm clock app that you have to leave open all night long. I haven’t been able to look past that flaw to sell it.
Second, I’m afraid. I’m afraid of someone not being happy with what I created and being angry at me for selling it to them. I’m afraid of the responsibility of taking someone’s money and the obligation that I feel that creates. I’m afraid of trying to sell something that I’ve put my heart into and the world not caring.
It’s much easier to hide behind the idea that I’m an artist and not everyone will get what I make. And to tell myself that the reason the things I create aren’t catching on is because I’m not even trying to sell them.
I’m terrified of the idea but I’m ready to start putting that hiding behind me. I make some damn good things that I’m proud of. It’s time for me to let the world know about them.
I started thinking about tools this morning and came up with this matrix:
I think it is accurate but I’m not sure how useful it is or how it could be used.
I’ll explain it a bit.
As you can see in the top left quadrant, it is easy to find tools for common, simple tasks. For example, putting a hole in your wall to hang something. You can pick up a hammer and a nail at a local hardware store for a very low cost.
In the bottom left quadrant are tasks that are more specific to your needs or that you may only need to do every once in a while. Because they are rare you are unlikely to have the perfect tool but because they are simple you can probably adapt one you already have. For example, here in the southern United States we don’t get much winter weather so I don’t have a tool for getting ice off my windshield, but a credit card will do the job.
The top right quadrant is complicated but common tasks. It is still easy to find tools although they are generally more expensive than simple tools. Due to the high level of complexity the tool must have more generic features in order to keep the problem common and to solve it for as many people as possible. But due to the tool being more generic, you must adapt to it. Most computers and software would be in this category. For example, if you need to send email newsletters you have a variety of tools available but you will need to learn the way they work rather than it adapting to your needs. You have to follow its workflow.
The bottom right quadrant contains complicated and uncommon tasks. For these you usually have to create your own tools. For example, if you’ve created a piece of hardware with novel functionality and you want to be able to control it with your phone over the Internet you won’t find an off-the-shelf solution. This is the quadrant I like to live in because I really like creating these tools for people.
My environment seems to have a lot of control over my mental state. The most apparent way I see this is from how I feel more energetic on sunny days and more sleepy on cloudy ones. I see this in our dog’s behavior also and believe it is something hard-wired into low levels of our brain.
Unfortunately I can’t control whether it is sunny or cloudy outside. But I can control the lighting in my own house. The most important thing I’ve found is maintaining an evenness of lighting. If I have a bright light on one end of my room and no light on the other then I’ll have harsh shadows on the end with no light. Harsh shadows mean “danger lurks here” to the lower level of our brain and we don’t feel as safe.
One of the most difficult things about sticking with something new like an exercise routine, diet, training program, or a new business is believing that sticking with what you’re doing will give you the outcome you wanted at the beginning. With a daily running routine this difficulty may come in the form of thoughts in your head telling you that you aren’t making progress after just a week of running. With a training program you may start to believe that you just can’t learn what you’re trying to learn because it doesn’t feel like you’ve made any progress.
The time it takes to see your outcomes feels like forever when you’re in the middle of it. When our attention changes by the minute or second, the month it takes to see improvements from running every day feels like forever. The progress is slow, steady, and largely invisible.
Many people give up new things quickly because of these thoughts in their head. They are convinced that what they wanted at the beginning isn’t possible. They won’t ever get into better shape by running. They won’t ever learn that new thing because it’s just not one of their natural talents. They close down their new business because it isn’t ever going to take off.
Another group of people handles those thoughts differently but nearly as destructively. When she doesn’t see progress from running in a week, she changes her exercise program to lifting weights instead. And then a week later changes it to something else. She feels she has better control over the outcome. When he doesn’t feel like he’s learned anything in a week he tries something else, something closer to his areas of expertise. When the new business isn’t attracting customers they decide to go after a different group of customers. This group is just as likely to succeed as the first group.
The hardest part about doing just about anything is sticking to it. Doing the exact same thing day after day. Putting in the work with what feels like no guarantee of an outcome. Seeing no forward progress but continuing to put one foot in front of the other.
Consistency is the key to success. Believe in the outcome.
Back in the days when the only way to find a company was the yellow pages, companies would start their name with “AAA” to be at the beginning of the list. I can see how that makes perfect, rational sense — it’s an obvious competitive advantage — but that’s not what I want. I want a company name that means something to me and that will hopefully mean something to my customers. I want something that shows that we are unique and not a commodity.
Along those same lines, I don’t like the way that I see a lot of the business world work. I don’t like self promotion, telling the version of the truth that flatters you the most, winning clients by taking them to dinner or hockey games, or getting ahead by pushing someone else down.
So I don’t do any of that. I’m glad I don’t because I would lose respect for myself if I did. But I worry that I’m being naïve and immature. I worry that I’m trying to live in a child’s world, one that is idealistic and doesn’t exist. Further, I worry that I can’t compete in a world where the winners get to the top using tactics I won’t.
I may have to change the way I think about some of these things, which I’m begrudgingly open to as I learn from new experiences. I don’t know how I’ll balance my self respect with what the world demands. I may have to grow up and embrace some of these things I don’t like.
Every relationship has a “Honeymoon Phase” — an initial period where everything is new and good and can never go wrong. This doesn’t just apply to our relationships with other people, but our relationships with our job, technology, where we live, and everything else. When I went to Iraq in 2004 for Operation Iraqi Freedom the first couple of weeks had a “Honeymoon Phase” where everything was fun, exciting, and new. It applies as much to going to war as it does starting a new habit — for the first couple of weeks it is fun and exciting and new to get up every morning and run.
Until one day you wake up and it isn’t fun anymore. You go from a tremendous high to a pretty low low. Then if you fight through and give it a little more time, things will even out. Maybe they even out at a place where you aren’t joyful about getting up early to run but still enjoy it. Or maybe they even out somewhere where you dread your new habit.
The first two weeks don’t matter because they are not a good indicator of how real life will be.
Here’s a picture of the large moth that has been living on our porch for the last couple of days. He’s been hanging out and we’ve been marveling at his size. I think he’s a Polyphemus moth but it’s hard to tell since I never saw his wings spread open. He just grabbed onto the porch and hung on through the windy days.
Today a bluejay spotted him, hopped onto the porch and grabbed him. He tried to fly away but was too large and too slow. The jay carried him to the roof and proceeded to rip his wings off. The moth was quickly finished.
Nature can be cruel. And this cruelty can be used as rationale for us humans treating each other cruelly. The oft-used corporate mantra “survival of the fittest” absolves individuals and companies of their sins against their brothers and sisters. Like the jay, they are just trying to survive. It’s not cruel, it’s life.
I believe we can be more than our animal side. I believe that survival of our brothers and sisters is as important as our own. I believe our kindness and generosity are our best traits.
It takes time to know what is inside a person. I think we all have a bias towards thinking that the way that someone communicates is a good proxy for how smart they are and what they’ve got going on in their brain. I don’t think you have to go any further than someone speaking a language they aren’t familiar with to know that isn’t true. I can sound very smart in English but I sound incompetent or dumb in Spanish.
It takes time to see their actions over time, how quickly they pick things up, and how they handle change to figure out what they’ve got going on inside.
Give everyone that time. Don’t write anyone off.
Diets, exercise routines, meditation habits, and marketing campaigns all take time. It’s tempting to evaluate progress on them after a week. It seems like the most reasonable time period –longer than a day but shorter than a month — and a week feels like forever when you have to exercise your discipline repeatedly to do something unpleasant. Or when you are waiting on the outcome of something new you’ve tried to get customers to call you.
The chemistry of your body does not change in a week. Your mind will not be noticeably calmer. Customers won’t be beating down your door.
Meaningful change takes time. At least a month, sometimes more. Resist the temptation to give up.
I enjoyed watching a movie last night, Z for Zachariah. I liked it because it was simple and created an interesting situation.
The movie was simple in that it had only 4 characters, including a dog, and one setting. The situation was interesting because these three people were the last three on Earth (that we know of). The dynamic between them was awkward and human, as you’d expect.
This movie reminded me of how little you need to make a story. At the minimum you need a place, a character, and a situation (sometimes the place is the character, which is even simpler). Starting simple might be the best way to start to learn storytelling.
I’m fortunate to live in a place with trees. Where I can walk under them, look up, and marvel at their size and age. Where it sounds like flowing water when the wind blows through the leaves. Where the morning sun streaks over the ground in patterns of shade and light. And the evening sun’s golden rays find their way through the leaves to warm my body.
Two and a half weeks ago I wrote about starting a meditation habit every morning. Since then, I’ve only broken the habit once when I meditated in the afternoon instead of the morning. I’ve changed it so that it is the first thing I do instead of doing it at the vague time of “sometime in the morning”.
Around the same time I made a rule for myself that I’m not allowed to use electronics in bed. I still use my phone for an alarm clock, but beyond that I don’t use it. I had an awful habit of laying in bed and reading email, Twitter, and my RSS feed before summoning the energy to move. I’d spend a half hour just laying there.
Changing these two things in my morning has had a dramatic impact on how I feel about the day. I have a purpose each morning, something that is easy for any of us to forget, but especially impactful when you work for yourself.
I also noticed that my favorite mornings were the ones when I had one of the sessions from the Stanford iOS 8 class waiting to be watched. I would get a little bit giddy and excited before going to bed the night before. Apparently I really enjoy and look forward to learning.
In a strange coincidence, two weeks ago my mom gave me a book called “The Miracle Morning”. I put it aside because I’m reading a couple other books right now, but I picked it up two days ago when she asked if I’d read it.
I’m not too far into it yet — I wanted to write this before I read the whole thing and subconsciously stole all its ideas, but what I’ve seen so far is similar to this routine I’ve begun. The author, Hal Elrod, talks about how important the first hour of your day is for setting up the rest of it. If you spend the first hour of every day with a purpose and bettering yourself then those actions will spill over into the rest of your day. If you have a morning routine that you look forward to in the mornings then you will excitedly get out of bed instead of laying there as long as you can convince yourself to.
I’m not sure if I can recommend the book yet because it feels awfully “self-helpy” with all of the marks of that genre — promising everyone that with just one little secret they can get rich and be in shape, etc.
But I really like the ideas from the book that I’ve shared here and I’m going to continue to experiment with them. I’ll continue my meditation habit, find something to learn every day, do my daily writing, and possibly throw in exercise. I’ll write more soon about how that goes.
A few weeks back I was recording a podcast and I didn’t know what I was going to say going into it. I followed my normal podcasting routine — I poured myself a Scotch, sat down in the den, and started recording. I went through my usually intro. Then I sat there, not saying anything, for minutes. About thirty seconds in ideas started coming into my mind but I sat frozen not wanting to break the silence. I couldn’t force myself to do it. I had to restart the recording before I could say anything.
A similar thing happened this morning with this blog post. Twice I sat down to figure out what to write and twice I failed to have something to say, until I put the pencil to the paper and words flowed.
Every action you take is a chance to share your values.
Unfortunately not everyone has the privilege to be able to make every choice based on her values. She has to make a certain amount of money to be able to afford goods that are made by people paid a fair wage. She has to be in the right part of the country to be able to buy locally and in season.
But there are choices that we can all make. I value life so I do my best not to kill anything. That doesn’t cost me a thing.
So do what you can and don’t be too hard on yourself, but put thought into it. It matters.
I understand being proud of something and wanting to share that with the world. If you don’t do this then the world will ignore your since they don’t know the cool things you are doing.
I don’t understand fluffing up what you are doing so that it seems better than it is. Continually exaggerating the impact or coolness of what you are doing will cause the same problem in the opposite way. The world will ignore your because they’ve grown tired of your hyperbole.
I speak softly because the people who matter the most are the ones that take the time to listen to me now. Shouting at them will drive them away.
Tonight as I was feeding my daughter, she reached out her arms towards me and I leaned forward.
She grabbed the sides of my face and moved my head towards her right side.
She paused and looked at me.
She moved my head towards her left side. And paused again, looking again.
Then she pushed my face away, and softly, with a tiny smile, ‘cough cough’.
A huge smile spread over my face and my heart melted.
I’m ‘cough cough’. She knows me.
We all have thousands of thoughts that go through our head each day, most of which are repeats of the day prior. Most are harmless and superficial, but some are deeply ingrained stories that we’ve been telling ourselves for years. They’ve become a part of who we are whether we still want them there or not.
I recently recognized one of these thought patterns. The best I can describe it is that I have a way of blaming myself when things don’t go well even though it is completely out of my control. I get this sense of inadequacy, that I don’t belong, and that I don’t deserve to be where I am at, doing the things I’m doing. I feel like I’m just not good enough.
These little thoughts whisper to me throughout the day, usually without notice. They feel outside of my control like they are just part of the landscape. But now I’m aware of them.
Prompted by ideas in the book “The Miracle Morning” which I talked about in a post the other day, I’m working to replace these ideas. I’m doing that through affirmations, which feel really silly. But now that I’ve recognized those little thoughts that are telling me things that aren’t true, I can see how affirmations work. It is simply a way to replace your default daily thoughts with upgraded ones of your choosing.
Today is the first day I’ve tried using an affirmation so I have no real data on whether they work. But they cost nothing, can cause no harm, and have an enormous upside. And in just one day I noticed a difference — my affirmation was randomly on repeat in my head throughout the day. I felt more positive than I have in a long time.
Try it as part of your morning routine. Repeat something positive about yourself out loud. I did it 5 times in a row but I don’t know if that’s the right number. Let me know how it goes.
I think one great way to get more people into an industry than are currently there is by making the path into it easier for everyone. I don’t mean by lowering the standards but instead by lowering the total cost — in both time and money — as well the cost of making a mistake.
In particular I’m thinking of colleges and universities in the United States and how they prepare students for the real world. College costs in the US are high and continually rising. These high costs automatically exclude a segment of the population that has to decide to feed themselves or better their chances for success in the working world. Most people will choose to eat in that circumstance, it is lower on the Maslow hierarchy. If we can lower the cost to get an education for an industry then we should see all kinds of people in that industry.
Lowering the cost will make the process of figuring out “what you want to do with your life” better, but could use more improvement. Changing majors in college is difficult and results in wasted time and energy — we are encouraging students to diversify as little as possible in what they learn which I think is a bad thing. Any additional education, whether it is in a particular study path or not, is good for that person as well as anyone who hires them.
I have an idea of how I can help with this, starting small and seeing where it takes me.
I’m toying with this idea right now and I don’t quite have myself convinced about it. My thought is that if a person sticks with something long enough then she will succeed at it. The hardest part is being able to stick with it long enough. She has to fight through not having enough financial resources, not having enough time, and all the thoughts that crowd her head telling her that what she’s doing isn’t good enough and it never will be.
I’m not sure that continually trying by itself is enough for success. I’m not sure that you don’t also need talent in that area. I don’t know whether we have natural talents we should stick with or whether anyone can be great at anything given enough determination.
On the other hand, I think many of us hold ourselves to a far higher standard than the rest of the world does. I don’t believe that success demands perfection. I believe that worthwhile success demands care. It demands that you care for yourself, the people you do the work for, and the work itself.
Bruce Lee is one of my heroes. He wrote a book with his life philosophies and “instructions” for the martial art he created called Jeet Kune Do. I put “instructions” in quotes because Jeet Kune Do is a formless martial art without fixed poses or motions. Instead it is fluid, like water, and can take whatever shape is needed during a specific encounter.
The beginning of his book contains pages of thoughts which stand alone and also guide the reader through his philosophy. I was reading it this morning and the quote I shared at the beginning stood out to me. I felt a deep understanding mixed with resistance.
The first resistance said “If I don’t have opinions then won’t I be boring?” I fear that a me without likes and dislikes will be like a smooth white wall, completely plain and dull. That fear is strong — it won’t let me picture that different me — and I’m not sure how to get past it.
The second resistance said “How do I support good causes and fight against bad ones?” As I sit here thinking about that I recall my time in Iraq. During that year I learned that what we see in action movies is nowhere near reality. Very rarely, if ever, do we encounter pure evil or pure good because most of this world is a healthy mixture of both. I also remember that the further we align ourselves with one side the further we alienate ourselves from another. From that far distance you cannot convince them to meet you in the middle.
I’ve made the quote one of my daily affirmations. Partially because I feel deep down that it is true, partially because I want to challenge myself, and partially because I haven’t figured out exactly what it means to me and I want to keep it on the top of my mind.
How does reading it make you feel or what does it make you think?
In their infancy, new initiatives are too small for the Old Guard to care about — a thousand dollars or a dozen people here or there aren’t worth their time or money
The Old Guard has their own regimented way of doing things and can’t be nimble or agile in response to change
The Old Guard will want to do things their way
The Old Guard will want a prominent seat at the table due to their status, regardless of the resources they provide
The Old Guard is less likely to see the vision of the future since their day to day is solving the problems of today and their experience is in solving the problems of the past
Resources (money, people, connections)
Some relevant experience that overlaps the problems in the new initiative
A recent post by Marco Arment prompted me to gather my thoughts on making deposits from a smartphone into your bank account. I have a healthy amount of experience working in banking, and some experience developing software, most of which overlaps the banking experience. I want to discuss how I think Chase implemented this feature and how I would approach the implementation.
Marco ended his post with “Sometimes, new technology is not progress.” I’d like to alter that slightly, to say that poorly implemented technology is not progress. I believe that Chase has implemented a “checklist feature”, a feature that a company creates to stand out in a direct product comparison, rather than to create something great for its customers. I figure that you will see these types of features in industries that are lower margin or maybe just full of accountants.
Personally, I cannot stand “checklist features” – I am too attached to things being “done the right way.” But, from anecdotal evidence, this feature is benefitting Chase quite well. I have heard that people are changing banks simply to have the ability to deposit checks in this manner, and my mom hasn’t complained about the poor implementation (other than the time that I had to explain to her that her deposit had been rejected, days after it was initially deposited.)
Now, to the implementation – when offering a feature like this to my customers, I would be concerned about the following factors:
Identifying check information (routing number, account number, amount, images) Getting the check information to the Bank securely Ensuring that checks have not already been deposited Determining when to give the customer credit for the deposit Providing confirmation of the deposit to the customer
From what I can gather, and I must emphasize that I have no first hand knowledge of Chase’s practices, this is how Chase implemented this feature:
First, they prompt the customer for the amount of the check.
Second, the app sends the images to the server without doing any image quality verification. (Why else would the check get rejected later?)
Chase seems to have combined the third through fifth steps. I am guessing that someone manually looks at each set of images and makes the deposit manually, and that this is why it would it take days to receive a confirmation. That long confirmation time could also be explained by Chase waiting to get the funds from the other bank before approving the deposit, but I hope not, because this is poor way of handling this problem. I am not usually an advocate of pestering a customer with confirmations, but when it comes to money, I don’t think you can give too many. In this case, give the customer two confirmations, one saying that the deposit is good and another saying when the funds are available.
In summary, in Chase’s implementation the iPhone is being used to digitally hand the checks to a teller.
Here is how I would implement it:
First, I would have the customer take a picture of the front and the back of the check. On the iPhone, I would do some basic calculations to determine whether the image was skewed or too out of focus.
Second, if the images passed these basic tests, they would be securely sent to a server via HTTPs. The server would do additional image quality checks and then use OCR to determine guesses for the routing number, account number, check number, check date, and amount. The first three have a high likelihood of being correct, since checks in the United States all use the same font. The amount and check date would be more difficult, since it could be typed in any font or even handwritten. Therefore, after the check has been OCRed, the server would send the information back to the phone for confirmation by the customer. The customer would be prompted to change the information or confirm that it is correct.
Third, once this information is confirmed, the server would ensure that that same check had not been deposited in the past, in any account.
Fourth, the server would determine when the deposit would be available. In most cases, availability should be immediate. This risk rating would be determined by the customer’s account history, average balance, and how long the customer had been with the Bank. Monthly and daily deposit limits would also be put in place based upon this same risk rating.
Fifth, and most importantly for customer experience, the customer will be given confirmation before exiting the app, and will be told to write “VOID” on the front of the check.
In summary, the iPhone and the server work together to bypass the teller.
I’ve left out a lot of implementation details, but other things like not being able to connect to the server or deposit multiple checks in the same deposit are relatively simple to solve. And of course, to actually make my way work you need to know about Check 21 and x9.37 file formats, and have a good way of risk rating your customers, hopefully based upon historical evidence. But compared to having a human being touching every deposit, that stuff is easy.
The key difference between how I would implement this feature, and how Chase seems to have implemented it, is that I would put a lot more of the work and the trust on the technology. Yes, I would still have human eyes review at least a sample of the checks that are deposited. But technology is meant to reduce the burden of repetitive tasks. Let’s use it that way.
I’ve met many great people in my life, each of which has a special place in my heart. Unfortunately, life demands mean that it is easy to lose touch with those people — anyone that isn’t in your life every single day is easy to lose in the blur of daily life.
I’ve started a new weekly thing where I send a message to 2 people I haven’t talked to in a while. The message contents depend on the person, but generally I just say something like “We haven’t spoken in a while and you were on my mind so I wanted to say ‘Hi!’ I hope things are going well for you.”
I’m loving the results. You should try it too.
I find it easy to forget that the things happening to me right now usually started in the past and many time I set off that series of events. Sometimes it is as small as feeling the effects of drinking too much coffee six hours ago or as big as having to constrain my lifestyle to be able to afford to pay for my college loans a decade ago.
The good news is that when I recognize this I have a ton of control over why my future looks like. If I want to be able to sleep tonight then I’ll stop drinking coffee before noon. If I want my financial situation to improve in a year then I’ll watch my spending today or take actions to bring in more money now.
We don’t have total control over the future but I think we have much more control than we’d usually think.
Had a great conversation this morning about a new exciting project that is far too young to talk about yet. But the topic of trees came up at one point and the person we were meeting with has a lot of knowledge about trees. He said something along the lines of “The trees you want are the ones that grow slowly — they are the ones that last.”
Real change, the change that lasts, grows slowly. Be patient. Put in the hard work. Take your time. Good things will come in their time.
One of my biggest wastes of mental energy is creating imaginary ideas about how other people see me. Usually I think that someone doesn’t like me based upon some tiny “clue” that I turn into something much larger. It goes something like this — a coworker sighs every time I enter the room, which could be caused by any number of different things, but I attribute it to them not liking me.
This is a colossal waste of my energy. First, I’m imagining another reality rather than living in this one. Second, I have no real evidence about the way that person feels without them telling me directly. Anything else is not true. Third, and most important, that reality doesn’t matter.
What matters is whether I believe that I am doing the right things. I cannot control whether that irritates a coworker. I cannot force my right things on everyone else. So I’m letting go of those thoughts when they enter my mind.
I read an interesting blog post by Brent Simmons the other day where he was comparing reactive programming with traditional iOS programming. He made a comment about how you want to avoid state in your program because state is where the bugs are. I know he is a much more experienced programmer, but I can’t get my mind wrapped around what he’s saying enough to agree. I think that state is one of the best parts of programming or, more specifically, building systems that maintain and change state over time.
In my mind, complexity is where the bugs are. And try as you might you can’t avoid complexity for any reasonably sized project. You can move it around to different places but it is still there.
So the key is to make it as easy as possibly to reason about the complexity and to hold it in your mind. Which is similar to something Brent said — he prefers the straight forward, easily readable, and understandable version of the code more than a version that solves the problem “better.”
In all programming our minds are the weak link. We have to find the best ways to optimize for our understanding above all else.
Measuring progress on a project is deceptively difficult with any level of complexity. You’d think it is easy when comparing it to a simple task like knowing how far along you are in cooking a meal or running a 5K.
The difficulty comes into flavors:
Correctly estimating the total time for project and
Correctly estimating the proportion of time you’ve already completed
I’ve tried to use tools to help track this in the past but with little success due to a variety of factors. When I was working on a larger team (10 people rather than 2) it was difficult to get buy-in on the value of tracking this information and paying for the tool to do it.
Now that I’m part of a 2 person team and we’re having to evaluate whether it’s worth our time. Any time spent managing a project could also be spent working on it and moving closer to completion. But the real value in one of these tools is that it can track how good you are at estimating time by tracking your estimates and actual time spent on an item. If you know you always estimate 20% lower than your actual time then you can adjust for that in the future.
In our business, where we fixed-bid most projects, that knowledge could be pure gold.
A few weeks ago I reached a moment where I became completely weighed down by some negativity surrounding me. I was being too heavily influenced by people who seem to get their kicks by kicking other people. I’ve been telling myself that their point of view can be helpful, that they can make me think in different ways so I should accept their input.
But I was completely weighed down. How was I supposed to keep going? I needed a break and I took one and it made a huge difference.
I didn’t let that negativity near me for a while. During this while I’ve tried to figure out if the ability to think in different ways due to their opposing points of view is worth the negativity. I don’t think it is. The negativity pulls you down too much.
My advice is to let it go if there is any way you can.
Early last week I attended a meeting of local techie, financial, and entrepreneurial types here in Denton for the first time. During that meeting I probably spoke out of turn, as I regularly do, and shared my opinions about the external view of that group and the fact that I wasn’t sure that I would attend another meeting. I said something along the lines of “we will all decide whether it is worth our time to come to another one of these meetings and whether we get value out of them.”
As the last question of the meeting, Jack Kearney asked me what I would have had to have seen at that meeting for me to have no doubt about coming to the next one. I didn’t have an answer and told Jack that I’d think about it. Since the meeting I have thought at least a little about that question every day and I think I have an answer.
My answer is heavily influenced by what one of the ladies at the meeting (unfortunately I didn’t get her name) said on the topic of how to build a community. To paraphrase, she said that to build a community you get a really excited and engaged small group of people and then other people see that excitement and want to join and participate and the group keeps getting bigger that way.
If that is what I had seen during that first meeting then I would definitely be attending the next. I picture walking into the coffee bar, seeing a group of people excitedly chatting about what’s going on with them (I know that in this particular group we have a number of introverts, but introverts get excited too!) and then being warmly welcomed by that group as if I’d been part of it for months already. I don’t care what the topics are as long as they engage the group and the group is excited and wants me to be a part of what they have going on.
That isn’t what I saw in that first meeting. What I did see was one member of the group working really hard to organize the meeting and come up with topics but without effort from the rest of the group. So am I going back for another meeting?
Yes! Why? Because I see a group of people that want to be excited and engaged but just need to be pushed a little further to get there. And because I see the future of what this group will do for our bigger community of Denton.
I see the vision of why this group exists and I want to share that vision.
I think you can learn a lot by asking “why” in everyday conversations. I don’t think that most people think about the why of what they’re doing, what they like, or the things they choose.
You probably won’t get to any “truth” by asking why. You’ll learn more about the person than the problem, but that’s OK.
“Good enough” depends on what you’re doing. Are you trying to communicate an idea with the goal of getting feedback or are you trying to build something that competes with the best in the world?
Depending on how you work, you’ll naturally tend toward one way or another — you’ll either tend to over or under deliver. Finding the sweet spot is difficult.
Again, ask yourself what you’re trying to accomplish and whether what you have meets that goal. Know your natural tendency and try to factor it in.
Many times in life we can plan our way to highly optimal situations that don’t work out the way we want them to. They usually don’t account for human nature and the bumps that life provides to us all.
An example of this is the tree policy that many cities have these days. I know, tree policy? Why am I reading about a tree policy?
Anyhow, many cities have a policy of not planting similar species of trees next to each other[^1]. The main reason for this is that if a pest that affects just one species of tree invades then all the city’s trees won’t be wiped out. Sounds like a great plan.
But then the human nature kicks in. And humans find it difficult to replace just one tree because a pest killed it. After all, there are four other trees right near by that are all healthy. No need to replace that one!
What ends up happening is that the city’s tree coverage slowly dwindles until it is next to nothing and someone finally notices after the benefits of the trees have been lost for years.
The optimal, logical solution to a problem doesn’t work with human nature.
I don’t think that anything designed for human use or with humans involved should be designed solely for efficiency. It should be designed for human nature, and in particular the nature of the humans that will be using it. What happens when the economy is bad, will a tree be replaced? What happens when your app’s user is tired, will they find a shortcut for the process?
Make plans for real life and real people.
[^1]:All the information about trees and city planning that I’m including here is based upon reading “Walkable City: How Downtown Can Save America, One Step at a Time” by Jeff Speck several months ago.
I wrote a cover letter for a job application last night and marveled at how easy it was. I remember earlier in my career when I would agonize over the process. I think the biggest difference today is that I have a lot more experience and therefore more to say. I was able to say that I’ve started my own company, that I’m a member of Denton’s tech community, and that I’m teaching iOS. I had a story to tell because I’ve lived a story.
Part of the reason that I can tell a story is that I’m in my mid-30s and I’ve lived much more life than I had a decade ago. But the main reason I have this story is because I’ve gotten involved in the community and I’ve come across opportunities I’d never have gotten otherwise.
Of course I’ve also been writing daily so maybe that practice is why writing this cover letter came so easily. Like so many things, it is a combination of factors and the more you can put together, the better.
Several days ago I wrote about an exciting new project that I couldn’t share yet. I still can’t share it but not for the reason you may be thinking. Secrecy has nothing to do with my decision to keep it to myself.
That’s not to say that I don’t feel a bit protective of this project’s idea. Part of me wants to keep a tight hold on it. While I want this new thing to exist and don’t care if someone else makes it before me, I want the best possible version of it to exist and I know I can create that while you might make something compromised. I’m also really excited about working on this particular problem and I don’t want you to take that away from me.
But I recognize those thoughts and I can let them go. So why am I not sharing this project with you yet?
Because I don’t want to create an obligation yet. This exciting new project can only be a side project right now because I have no guarantee that we will ever make any money from it, and I have bills to pay. So I don’t know how long it will be before I get to devote meaningful time to it. If I tell you about it now you will probably want to know how it is coming along next month and I’ll feel an implicit obligation to share progress with you.
And from experience, I find it very difficult to share a vision for a project with others. A few people will see the vision immediately but the vast majority just won’t. You have to show them something — you have to put it in their hands.
Over the next few months I’ll be working on something to hold in my hand and then I’ll be happy to share it with the world.
Recently I’ve seen multiple examples of how identifying ourselves with a group causes us to separate ourselves from those who are not members of that group, including this video and this podcast episode. We separate ourselves from our neighbor with our religion, political party, and even the cars we drive (or the cars we don’t drive if we’re part of the biking community.) This separation is necessary to strengthen our bonds with the communities we are a part of — part of belonging to them means that you don’t belong to others.
I’m writing about this tonight because I read a blog post from a local city council person with one point that just didn’t sit right with me. He proposed a “neighborhood/district identity initiative” which involves naming, branding, and creating identities for our neighborhoods. To me this feels like just another way to separate ourselves. Yes, we’ll come together with our immediate neighbors but at what expense to our relationship with our neighbors across the city? I don’t want separation from either. I want to emphasize the things we have in common and set aside the minor differences. I definitely don’t want to add another difference just for the sake of it.
Group identities can bring us together and tear us apart. I don’t want to bring together my neighborhood at the expense of my city. We’re all Dentonites, we don’t need more than that.
To be a successful business owner, do you have to act like the stereotypical business person? Ruthless, cutthroat, a master of persuasion (or lying), and a top notch negotiator? Do you have to play by those kinds of rules or constantly get taken advantage of because your a nice person?
I don’t think so and my experience running a business so far is supporting that belief, although it is taking a little longer for things to work out than I’d like. That’s part of playing a long term game.
We would probably have more money in the bank account right now if our goal was solely to make money. We’d have different policies — for example, we would ask for payments during our at the beginning of projects rather than waiting until the end. We also would change our pricing so that we got paid for all the hours we worked rather than using fixed bids.
In addition to having different policies, we’d negotiate harder. If we knew someone was in a tight spot we might “play hardball” and negotiate for a much higher rate or other benefits.
But on the flip side, we may have the clients we have because of our policies and the fact that those policies embody who we are and what we believe. We had one client say that he wanted to work with us to help us succeed. With different policies we may not have found anyone to work with.
Either way, we’re going to try to stay true to ourselves. To me, this means bring the nice guy who hates negotiation and just won’t do it. And if someone takes advantage of our kindness? They don’t get to work with us again. Their loss.
It doesn’t take long for something new and amazing to become ordinary or boring. It doesn’t lose its amazing qualities, we just get used to them. So many things about this world are amazing that it can be overwhelming. I’m tempted to say “we should slow everything down”, thinking that we need time to absorb what we have already. In some ways that slowing down is the natural order — when our children are young they have many amazing “first times” in rapid succession. As they grow older, these events become less frequent and when our kids are mature they nearly cease.
We see this in new technology too. When the smartphone was young it was changing rapidly, every few months. But as smartphones nature we see fewer changes and things almost get boring. They’re all grown up. Which is perfect, because they slow down and let everyone catch up.
Our next round of excitement won’t come from smartphones — it will come from something just being born and full of possibility. And soon we’ll want it to slow down so we can catch up.
It is so easy to get caught up in the everyday going ons of life, to focus on the impact of this one thing on you at this very point in time.
It is so easy to forget that everything is changing constantly while we have our heads down in the details of those going ons. We forget to look up to see the fresh buds in the spring and the colorful leaves still on the trees in the fall.
We don’t have the perspective we need to see where those individual details fit with the passing of time and the changing of the seasons. We forget that we must plant things now to see them blossom later.
Rhythms are relaxing. Planes passing over head, one every few minutes. Ocean waves traveling towards the shore endlessly. Each brings change. Each fits in perfectly with all the others. Just like the seasons, fulfilling their purpose as they come and go.
I believe the natural order of the world can be seen in more than just nature. As I wrote yesterday, the way that technology products grow and mature is similar to the way living creatures do the same. While they are young they go through rapid growth and changes and then when they mature things go more slowly and they become “boring”.
I think these types of parallels can be found everywhere and can help us to understand and visualize the world around us. The problem is finding the right parallel. For example, I was thinking about the success of Facebook. I don’t believe that Facebook is successful because it solved any technological problem in a better or unique way. I believe it was at the right place at the right time -/m- that the conditions were right for it to succeed and grow. I’m not trying to minimize their accomplishments because a lot of hard work and serious skills went into it, but in a sea of undifferentiated social networks something was different for Facebook.
A couple of days ago I was thinking about potential natural analogies. Was Facebook like a rocket that had the right winds and trajectory to escape gravity? Was it like a fire that had enough energy and resources to catch and burn? Was it like a seed that didn’t get eaten by squirrels, was far enough away from other trees to grow and get sunlight, and grew up tall and strong?
Or was it none of these? Either way, I find it interesting to think about.
A week ago I was praising a morning routine and how it was making my days better. This week I realized one of the key parts of that morning routine is getting enough sleep the night before.
I’ve had some early morning and late night obligations this week which lowered my just over 8 hours of sleep per night average down to just over 7. I’m dragging. I have little energy to do anything new, I’m not being social, I’m having to force myself through my obligations, my writing is kinda crappy, and silly little things make me angry. I don’t trust this me.
It seems like the popular wisdom these days is that you don’t need much sleep, especially if you are driven to do something great. I don’t buy it. Sleep is critical.
I’ve been kicking this idea around for years and in the spirit of non-secrecy I decided I’d share it. I’m not actively working on it and have no plans to do so at this time. I haven’t done research on it in a while so someone might already be pursuing it.
So here’s the idea — a closet inventory management system that tracks what you wear, the last time you wore it, how often you wear it, and allows you to share as much or as little of that information with friends and followers.
I think we are coming up on the time when this idea is starting to be feasible. The biggest hurdle is “How do I allow users to track this information in a way that isn’t awful?” Very few users are going to want to put their entire closet into an app. Very few users are going to remember to input each piece of their outfit into the app daily. These are the problems that calorie tracking apps face also. But I think that either RFID or Bluetooth LE can fix these problems. Unlike food, either RFID or Bluetooth LE tags can be embedded into clothing by sewing them into a tag or part of the stitching. The app would need to be smart enough to know what you are wearing simply by seeing what tags are close to it.
I’d try to build it as a free service — forever free to the users. To get started I’d want to go to people’s closets and add these tags to all their clothing and build up the database of clothing. It would be a very manual and non-scalable process to start.
At the same time I’d be selling the idea to the clothing brands. I’d say “Look at all this data we can collect about your customers. Look at how easily they can share exactly what their wearing — down to the item number — with their friends. I’d charge them a monthly fee for access to incoming data. I’d ask them to embed the RFID or Bluetooth LE tags in their clothes. They’d bear that cost as a marketing expense.
So what do you think? Have you heard of someone already building this? Does this seem like a good idea? Does the thought of making it excite you?
Last Friday I started a project with a silly short timeline — building an iOS app in 2 weeks. I estimated the project at around 100 hours so that means near continuous work on it over this short time frame. I’ve handled similar situations before but I’m approaching this time differently.
In the past when faced with this situation I’d work until I could anymore, get as little rest as possible, and then get back to work again. I’d lost both sleep and motion because I’d rarely leave my desk.
This time I’m doing my best to still get good, consistent sleep and to exercise regularly. Instead of cutting these out I’ve cut most other entertainment activities. I’m not drinking or going out and I’m watching very little television.
I’m hoping by the end of these two weeks I’ll be a little healthier than when I started rather than being the empty shell of a person that I usually am.
When building user interfaces in apps I generally go through two or three phases. First is the building phase where I put all the design elements together and lay them out close to the design but not precisely. During this phase I’m concentrating on functionality and making things work rights so the design isn’t the priority. I also find that after working on the functionality for 15 hours over two days that I don’t have the energy or perspective to get the design right. My perspective I mean that I’m too close to it from looking at it so long and I wouldn’t know whether it was right or wrong.
The next phase is the polish phase. I approach the design days later, after going through the build phase on the rest of the screens of the app, with fresh eyes and I can see what is and isn’t working. Usually this phase only includes minor tweaks of colors, placement, and size.
The last phase is the test phase, where I look at the design on various screen sizes to ensure everything still looks good and I make tweaks where necessary.
I played some pickup basketball today. We played a game called “21” which is an every player for themselves game to see who can score 21 points first. Each player is responsible for keeping track of her own score. My worst skill in that competition is keeping track of my own score.
I’ve known about this weakness for a while. I would never keep track of the score when playing volleyball or miniature golf. That information just doesn’t stick in my mind. Because I was weak I that area, I saw it as unimportant. To put it another way, not being good at keeping score doesn’t matter because I’m not good at it.
Today I realized that is a silly way to look at it. Keeping score is still important in many contexts. Being weak at it doesn’t mean that it isn’t important but that I need to get better at it or rely on people that are strong at it for support.
Am I the only one who looked at weakness this way? I find that hard to believe — let me know if you see any of yourself in what I’ve talked about.
Every business should have an app.
That’s common sense. How can you compete in our technological world without an app? My pizza place cannot compete with Domino’s if it doesn’t have an app! People love watching that tracker.
How can a mom and pop shop compete without an app?
I’d say they should compete at what they are good at, being human. Not trying to lean on the crutch of technology that the big guys have to.
I’d go so far as to say that it is negligent to sell a custom app to a small business. That business has no idea the costs of development, testing and maintaining software. That app immediately becomes a liability simply because code ages so quickly. But in addition, small shops can’t afford really good design and development in the first place so they will be saddled with both a stinking pile of code and a crappy app that actually undermines the shop’s image.
So these shops should just give up and not even try, right? While fading into oblivion because they are out of touch with modern technology?
I don’t think so. I think small businesses need to see two things:
This is not a zero sum game. Every day new opportunity is created and your competitor winning does not mean that you have to lose.
The little guys need to team up with each other and with technology shops that are little too. Shops that know what it is like to be the little guy and will care to give exactly what is needed.
This is what I want to do with my life. I want to help the little guys grapple with technology in an honest, down to earth and caring way.
When I was working at my previous employer, I took charge of the CI architecture for Apple platforms. The CI supported the main customer-facing app, which was modularized with each module living in its own repo. This meant that we needed our CI architecture to support many repos. Since CI architecture wasn’t my primary responsibility (I was a senior iOS developer on a platform team), I also needed the system to be easily maintained from as few places as possible – I really did not want to update every module repo every time we wanted to add new functionality to our CI pipelines.
My solution was to have the bare minimum of CI infrastructure in the repos and have everything else living in a separate repo which could be cloned during the CI job. When I first implemented this at my previous employer we were using GitHub Enterprise for our source control platform and Jenkins for CI, so that meant that every repo had a Jenkinsfile but nothing else related to CI. When I migrated the team from GitHub Enterprise to the hosted GitHub and switched CI to GitHub Actions, every repo had a yaml file defining their actions but nothing else related to CI. In both of these situations, updating the Jenkinsfiles or GitHub Actions yaml files across modules was painful, but it was also rare.
When I started working at my current employer, they already had a similar app architecture that was modularized with each module in a separate repo. At that time, we were using a hosted BitBucket instance for our source control platform and Jenkins for CI so I implemented a similar pattern to what I had at my previous employer – each repo only had a Jenkinsfile in it and all the tools were hosted in a separate repo. Then when I migrated the team to a hosted GitLab instance, I was able to build things in such a way that each repo had no references to CI in the codebase – instead, the settings for each repo point to a centralized configuration file in that same separate repo that holds the rest of the CI tooling.
The current state of our CI architecture is working really well for us, so in this post I’d like to share one bit that I think is critical – this separate repo of CI tooling that provides everything a repo needs to run its CI jobs.
The CI Tooling repository is simply another repo that holds all the tools needed for CI, with only two things that make it work differently from other repos:
The repository does not use the main branch, instead it uses a branch per supported platform
The repository knows how to “unpack” itself so that its contents get put in the right places
Let’s talk through each of those in more detail.
When I say “supported platform” here, I mean the type of thing being built. For example, at my current employer the CI infrastructure I’ve built supports both our Android app and our apps for Apple platforms (iOS, watchOS, and macOS command line tools). Therefore, our CI Tooling repo has two primary branches, apple for Apple platforms, and android for the Android app.
When we want to make improvements to our Apple CI, we create a branch off of our apple branch, do the work, and create a merge request back into the apple branch. This does mean some duplicated work at times – some things we do on CI are common across platforms, like tagging releases – but my current stance is that that duplicated work is less effort and less error-prone than putting all our tooling together onto one branch. We’re also looking into ways to abstract out some of that duplicated work.
For maximum flexibility, it is really useful for the CI tooling repo to know how to put its tools in the right place. One example is the Dangerfile – it must be in the root of the repo on which you want to run Danger. But maintaining a separate Dangerfile in every repo when you have tens of repos is unwieldy. It is much simpler to have a single Dangerfile in the CI tooling repo which can then be placed in the right place when unpacked. And it is much more flexible for the CI Tooling repo to own that unpacking so that its contents can be re-organized, or new contents can be added, without anything outside the repo needing to be changed.
To do that, the CI tooling repo needs a script which I like to call unpack.sh. This script does two main things:
Deletes the .git folder from the checked-out CI tooling repo so any git operations will be performed on the repo where the CI job is being run, and
Puts files where they are needed for CI to function properly
An unpack.sh that moves a Dangerfile.swift to the right place could look like this:
#! /bin/sh rm -rf $(dirname "$0")/.git # Move things out of the CI-Tooling repo here mv $(dirname "$0")/Dangerfile.swift $(dirname "$0")/.. These are the kinds of tools I like to keep in the CI Tooling repo:
Danger Swift pre-built binaries, both executable and library
Dangerfile
Pre-built Swift tool to parse formatted commits
Pre-built swiftlint binary
Pre-built Swift tool to show public API diffs
Fastlane files (Fastfile and Matchfile)
Any other pre-built binaries or tools that are only used on CI
There are some things that we want in common across all our modules that we do not keep in CI Tooling. The determinant for this is whether developers need to use those things locally as well, such as configuration files for SwiftLint and Swift Format. We want our developers to get warnings and errors from those tools early, in their IDE, so we need those configurations inside the module repos rather than being in CI Tooling.
Using this repo is fairly simple – clone the repo with a depth of 1 to only clone the last commit, run the unpack.sh script, and then use the tools within the repo as you would in any other script. For example:
... git clone https://www.github.com/DavidBrunow/CI-Tooling.git --depth 1 ./CI-Tooling/unpack.sh fastlane run_tests ... The biggest key to success is ensuring that you have consistency across your different repos. This means having a standard folder structure, standard tools used, code quality standards, and one module per repo. A bonus side effect of this approach is that humans love consistency as well – it will be easier for your team to work within consistent repos than it would be if every repo follows its own rules.
But also, you will always have exceptions.
Sometimes it makes sense to special case those exceptions in your tooling. For example, we have some legacy repos that we don’t want to use swift-format on because it would cause a massive amount of churn and we don’t see the value in that churn with the legacy code. We have chosen to special case those repos by testing for the existence of a .swift-format configuration file in the repo. When possible, I like to use something specific to the tool being used to function like a feature flag. For other situations, we’ve had to special case by individual module names, which I only do if there is no other way to solve the problem.
Sometimes it makes sense to have entirely different tooling for different contexts. For example, we have different CI pipeline definitions for modules vs. the main app – there are enough differences between the two that it is easier to maintain two different files, each with a clear focus, than to try to put everything into a single file.
I’ve setup an example of my CI Tooling pattern in the repo for a macOS command line tool that parses conventional commits.
You can see the “client” side in the pull request GitHub action. It is simple enough that I can just copy it here:
on: pull_request: jobs: ci_tooling: uses: DavidBrunow/CI-Tooling/.github/workflows/macos-tools-pull-request-action.yml@apple permissions: pull-requests: write Lines 1 and 2 say that this action should be run on pull requests. Line 6 says that this pipeline should use the shared pipeline in my CI-Tooling repo, using the configuration in .github/workflows/macos-tools-pull-request-action.yml on the branch apple. Lines 7 and 8 give the shared pipeline permission to add comments to the pull request, which is needed for Danger Swift to add its feedback.
You can see the shared CI Tooling side for that action in this configuration file. This file is more complex because it is doing all the work – the client’s file is only calling into this one. I’m not going to go through it line by line because most of it is specific to what I want to do on CI and might be a good starting point for you, but you also may already have all those bits figured out. But line 31 is important:
export SCHEME=`xcodebuild -list -json | jq -r '.workspace.schemes[0]'` The script in the CI Tooling repo is generic and does not know what project it is working on. Therefore it needs to figure out what scheme to use for running tests, which it gets from the xcodebuild -list -json command. Making this tooling generic means that it cannot make assumptions. This makes things more difficult to initially get setup but makes adding new clients simple and straightforward.
You can also poke around that repo and see the other shared CI tools that I have, some of which I plan to talk more about in future blog posts.
It is tempting and easy to see how someone else got to where they are and want to imitate it. One problem with this is that you never know exactly how they got there — what you see and even what they tell you isn’t the whole story. Another problem is that their success came in their time — six months or six years ago when they were where you are.
It is important to notice what others are doing and you can use that knowledge to help inform your decisions. But blindly copying what they are doing, or even what the entire industry is doing, won’t get you where you want to be given your resources and timing.
I can see the use of making things seem like a bigger deal than they are. It is difficult to get people and companies to “do the right thing” with no other incentive than it being the right thing. Penalties for not doing the right thing (by which I do not mean breaking the law, which I would instead consider “doing the wrong thing”) are rare and small. Making things seem worse than they are and giving them a catchy name that infers how bad they are are ways to inspire compliance.
This kind of alarmism isn’t my thing. Maybe that’s because I’m the type that does the research to know what the real implications of a change are. When I was a Compliance Officer at a bank I read pending regulatory changes and knew where we stood with them. Having that knowledge makes everything less scary. I apply that knowledge seeking in everything I do. It is funny to think that my role as a web designer uses skills from my role as a bank Compliance Officer.
If you ask me about a scary pending change, I’ll give you an answer based upon research and I’ll explain my logic about how you should react. It’s not sexy and it’s not quite as fun, but over time you’ll see you can trust me.
Danger is a tool that connects your CI build systems to your pull requests. This provides an excellent developer experience where (most of the time) they can know whether a pull request is in a healthy state by looking at a comment directly on that pull request.
This connection between the CI build systems and the pull request allows teams to implement automated code health tools which can give quick feedback to about:
Warnings introduced by the changes
Linting and code formatting errors based upon agreed-upon standards
Code coverage percentages
Any other information which can be automated
Danger has two base implementations, one in Ruby and one in JavaScript. On top of that, there are Danger runners written in Kotlin and Swift which hand off the bulk of the work to Danger JS but allow for Dangerfiles, the file which define what Danger should do, written in languages that will be more familiar to mobile developers. I prefer to use Danger Kotlin when building CI for Android or other Java-based projects and Danger Swift when building CI for Apple platforms, because I find it is easier to get folks involved in CI code when it is in a language they use every day. It is also more likely that folks in a specific community will create plugins for Danger that you could find useful – folks using Danger Swift will be more likely to create plugins around Xcode and other Apple tooling than folks using Danger Kotlin would.
OK I think that is enough of an intro to Danger, next I’ll talk through the flexibility built-in to Danger through its plugin system.
Danger is architected to allow for anyone to create their own plugins that can provide information to Danger which can then be shown on a pull request. I’ve relied on this ability to add plugins to add extra checks that are specific to our codebase, like a localization linter which ensured that Xcode’s command line tools could extract keys for localization. Out-of-the-box, Danger allows for these plugins to be dynamically included at run time which is a lot of flexibility, especially when using statically typed languages like Kotlin and Swift.
This plugin architecture is very clever and lets people get started with Danger quite easily. But it is a bit complex. Let’s talk through the moving pieces in Danger Swift, all of which applies to Danger Kotlin as well:
The Dangerfile
The Danger Swift Library
The Danger Swift Runner
The Danger JS Runner
Here is how they are all connected. The Danger Swift runner builds and runs the Dangerfile while linking in the Danger Swift library. The Danger Swift runner then uses the Danger JS runner to interact with the source control platforms (GitHub, GitLab, BitBucket, etc). Let’s talk through each of these components in detail.
The Dangerfile, Dangerfile.swift for Danger Swift, is the code file that defines everything that Danger will do when Danger is run in a CI pipeline. Here is a simplified example of a Dangerfile from Danger Swift’s documentation:
import Danger let danger = Danger() // Add a CHANGELOG entry for app changes let hasChangelog = danger.git.modifiedFiles.contains("changelog.md") if (!hasChangelog) { warn("Please add a changelog entry for your changes.") } This simple example checks to see if the changelog.md file has been modified as part of the pull request and, if not, adds a warning to the pull request letting the developer know that they need to update the changelog. Providing that feedback through this automation means that a contributor to a repo can quickly learn what changes they need to make to meet the standards of that repo. Plus, the maintainer of the repo can focus on things only humans can do, like making sure that the pull request follows their architectural guidelines.
At the beginning of every Dangerfile, the Danger library must be imported. Let’s talk about how that works next.
The Danger Swift library is what powers the different things you can do in a Dangerfile. The library is built with the core Danger functionality plus any plugins that you’ve chosen to integrate. The documentation recommends integrating Danger into your workflow by adding Danger Swift and any related plugins to your Package.swift file. This allows the Danger Swift library to be built as-needed with just the plugins you’ve defined and puts everything in the right place so Swift can find the library when running the Dangerfile.
I’m not a fan of this approach but I’ll talk through that later when I go through how I like to use Danger.
The Danger Swift runner is a fairly simple tool that ties everything together. As mentioned before, it runs the Dangerfile while also providing the path to the Danger Swift library. This could easily be a standalone executable, but in the recommended setup, linked above in the Danger Swift library section, the runner is re-built through Swift Package Manager every time it is needed to be run.
In addition to running the Dangerfile, the Danger Swift runner runs the Danger JS runner, which handles all communication with the source control platforms.
As mentioned before, the Danger JS runner is the common tool across the different Danger “front-ends” (Danger Swift, Danger Kotlin, etc.) that handles all the interactions with source control platforms. These interactions are bi-directional because the Dangerfile needs access to information from those platforms and also needs to send information to them for warnings, errors, and informational messages.
Strangely, I don’t see anything about how to install Danger JS, or even the need to do so, in the Danger Swift documentation. I prefer to install Danger JS through npm, which I prefer to install through Homebrew. Here are the steps to do that:
brew install node npm install -g danger Now that we know how all the pieces fit together, I’ll gripe about the things I don’t like about this approach and talk about how I like to set things up.
All of my gripes revolve around the need to use Swift Package Manager to build and run the runner and library:
I don’t like to mix tooling and my app’s dependencies
I don’t always want to use SPM
I don’t want to re-build Danger on every run
The recommended approach is invasive to my project, requiring me to add a folder that will not be used
Due to the invasive nature of the recommended approach, applying the same Danger configurations across multiple repos, and keeping those configurations in sync, it creates a lot of manual overhead
I like pre-built binaries
What I want is a pre-built executable for the Danger Swift runner, and a pre-built framework for the Danger Swift library. Let’s talk about how I make that work.
The Danger Swift runner is already meant to be a standalone executable, so we don’t need to do too much there. We want to make sure that it is built as a universal binary so it can run on both Apple Silicon and Intel, so we can build it like this:
swift build -c release --arch arm64 --arch x86_64 Swift builds the danger-swift binary and puts it in the “.build/apple/Products/Release/danger-swift” folder so we’ll need to copy it from there to where we need it. All of that is simple and straightforward.
Building the library in a portable way isn’t quite as nice, but we’ll get to that in a moment. First, since we want a portable library that can be used anywhere, we need to find a way to build that library with all the plugins we need. This approach requires choosing your plugins ahead of time and not being able to do so at run time – if you want a new plugin you’ll need to rebuild and redistribute the library.
Fortunately, Danger Swift has already gone through the process of integrating a common plugin, SwiftLint, into the library so we can follow the maintainer’s lead and do the same thing for our plugins. There is already a “Plugins” folder in the “Sources/Danger” folder and adding our plugin there is quite simple – we copy the source code folder into the “Plugins” folder and then make whatever changes are need to make the Danger library successfully compile again. Doing that requires fixing any naming conflicts and, while we’re in there, we’ll fix warnings around importing Danger by removing any import Danger code. Let’s walk through an example with a popular plugin, DangerSwiftCoverage, which gathers code coverage so it can be posted on pull requests.
Fork Danger Swift and clone the fork to your machine
Clone DangerSwiftCoverage to your machine
Copy the “Sources/DangerSwiftCoverage” folder from DangerSwiftCoverage into the “Sources/Danger/Plugins” folder in Danger Swift. If you cloned the two repos next to each other, the copy command from the root of the Danger Swift repo would look like this:
cp -r ../danger-swift-coverage/Sources/DangerSwiftCoverage Sources/Danger/Plugins Open Danger Swift’s Package.swift in Xcode and try to build the Danger library.
Follow the compiler errors to fix all the build issues around multiple files and types with conflicting names:
Rename the file “Sources/Danger/DangerSwiftCoverage/Models/Report.swift” to “Sources/Danger/DangerSwiftCoverage/Models/DangerSwiftCoverageReport.swift”
Rename the File struct on line 34 of “XcodeBuildCoverage.swift” to XcodeBuildCoverageFile and update the type of files on line 26 of the same file to use the XcodeBuildCoverageFile type.
Remove the import Danger from the top of the “XcodeBuildCoverage.swift” file.
OK, now we’ve integrated a plugin directly into the Danger library which means that plugin will always be available in our Dangerfiles when linking against a pre-built version of the library. Here are all the open source plugins I like to include, and integrating them, or any others you may find, should follow the same steps as above:
DangerSwiftCoverage (mentioned above)
DangerXCodeSummary (yes, Xcode is misspelled, but still a good plugin)
As the Swift package is setup, there is no way to create a portable library. The reason is that the swift build command will not create a framework like we’re used to working with on iOS. Instead, it creates a folder full of object, .swiftmodule, and .dylib files:
$ ls .build/apple/Products/Release Danger-Swift.o Danger_Swift.swiftmodule RunnerLib.o Danger.o Logger.o RunnerLib.swiftmodule Danger.swiftmodule Logger.swiftmodule Version.o DangerDependenciesResolver.o OctoKit.o Version.swiftmodule DangerDependenciesResolver.swiftmodule OctoKit.swiftmodule danger-swift DangerFixtures.o PackageFrameworks danger-swift.dSYM DangerFixtures.swiftmodule RequestKit.o libDanger.dylib DangerShellExecutor.o RequestKit.swiftmodule libDanger.dylib.dSYM DangerShellExecutor.swiftmodule Runner.swiftmodule This is not very portable. We need almost all of these files to be able to link against libDanger.dylib. Plus, these files are tied to a specific Swift version because library evolution is not turned on. This means that when you change the default version of Xcode on a machine, and therefore change the default version of Swift, you’ll need to rebuild the Danger Swift library. I’ve worked around this in the past by keeping an older version of Xcode on the build machines that is only used to run Danger Swift, but it is easy to forget why you’re doing that and inadvertently break things.
To get a framework, which I find to be much more portable, you must use an Xcode project file, which I’ve added on this proof of concept pull request for showing how to have a pre-built library that uses library evolution. That pull request also changes the Danger Swift library’s imports to be @_implementationOnly imports which tells the linker that the symbols within those imports won’t be exposed publicly. And finally, that pull request tells the Danger Swift runner to look for a “Danger.framework” to link against when running the Dangerfile.
Once that is done, you can run this command to generate the framework:
xcodebuild archive -project Danger.xcodeproj \\ -scheme Danger -sdk macosx -destination "generic/platform=macOS" \\ -archivePath "archives/Danger.framework" I’ve added a shell script on that pull request that builds both the runner and the library.
Now that we have an executable binary and a framework, how do we use them in our CI jobs? Each of them is portable, so we can put them where we need them. I like to store all of my CI tooling in a centralized place, which I’ve talked about in my CI Tooling.
If you don’t want to, or can’t, use that centralized place, then you need to make sure that the danger-swift executable and the Danger.framework library are in the same directory when you run danger-swift.
Once you have them there, you’ll want to do something like this in your CI job:
... brew install node npm install -g danger danger-swift ci ... When I have ants in my kitchen, the ants are a symptom of a problem. The cause of the ants being in my kitchen is that I have crumbs on the countertops. That’s the root of the problem and the part that needs to be solved. I may need to find a way to temporarily relieve the symptoms — maybe gather the ants into a jar and let them outside — but if I only do that without solving the root problem then they’ll come right back.
Seem simple? It is until it isn’t.
Most problems you see are symptoms. Finding the root cause is the hard part. You don’t just have to dig. you have to do so scientifically and methodically. You have to identify a possible cause, research until you know everything about it, and then either logically deduce or test to determine whether it is the root.
Given this idea of root causes, you may see the world differently. When you have knee pain you may dig deeper instead of reaching for the pain reliever. Or when your dog misbehaves you may think about ways to change its lifestyle so it doesn’t do so in the future. Or when you encounter a million different situations you may handle them differently.
From the outside it always looks like things on the inside could be improved. Usually it looks easy too — I find myself making comments like “they just need to do this to fix it”. Sometimes that’s true but usually not. Usually though you can find a way to learn more and either confirm your initial thoughts or figure out it is more complicated than you thought.
Learning more taking effort but so does actually solving the problem. When in doubt I ask questions rather than share opinions.
In my experience there are two important hurdles in the way of getting good at something: not knowing what good looks like and not knowing how to change something that isn’t good to make it good.
Getting past each of those hurdles takes time. More time solving a certain type of problem will improve your taste and you’ll start to learn what good looks like. More time looking at what you’ve made and comparing it to things that you think are good will make you see how good things are put together.
I don’t think either can be rushed. Spend time doing them. After a month or two look back and see how far you’ve come.
I’ve never had a plan for my life. As a kid I didn’t know what I wanted to be when I grew up. I’ve never been able to plan where I’d be in five years. I’ve been affected by change outside my control enough to learn to not try. Fortunately I’ve been open to what life has presented me and that has led to a full, if unconventional, life.
If I’d had a plan (and been able to stick to it) I’d never have sold cars, gone to massage therapy school, joined the Army, or worked a number of roles in banking. I can’t say my life would’ve been worse but it would’ve been very different. Despite all the stress and heartache I’ve been through I like where I’m at now. Looking back, I feel like I’ve liked where I was far more often than not. I don’t think I can judge life in any better way.
Of course I still want some things to be different — I think that’s a natural part of being human. It is the part that keeps moving us forward. But it’s possible to be both happy in the now and want things to change. And fortunately things always change.
When starting our business I had a good idea of how we wanted to operate it. Many of our choices came from who we are as people and our natural responses to a situation.
But that doesn’t always work — running a business involves a lot of decisions and I didn’t have answers to all of them. I looked at other companies that I treat like role models that may have faced a similar situation from which we can draw guidance.
Breaking these companies of the categories, I have two types: aspirational and similar. Aspirational companies are bigger and have proven success, like Apple. Their lead on environmental and diversity issues strongly shapes my decision-making process.
Obviously as a tiny two-person shop we are not Apple. Which brings me to the similar companies I look up to. Generally these are husband-and-wife or boyfriend-and-girlfriend small businesses, just like us, but they’ve been around a little longer. Simply seeing others doing what we are doing helps me keep going, but in addition to that we can see the things they’ve struggled with and overcome already and figure out if their solution would work for us.
So what companies are your role models?
For the last two weeks I’ve had no thought about a new gadget arriving. I’d been given a ship date of June and I was OK with that. I wasn’t excited or anticipating anything. And then yesterday I got a shipping confirmation.
Everything changed. I have been excited since and I was a little anxious all day today while waiting for the delivery. My excitement level changed from 0 to 10 in one email.
Our brains are silly. My reaction doesn’t make any logical sense. Regardless, that’s the way we are. I’ve been thinking about this sort of thing lately in the context of our business — I am trying to be more and more conscious of the expectations that I set so that I can exceed those expectations.
The way we are wired doesn’t make sense — that things that we believe are ours are painful to give up — but it is unavoidable. Pay attention to what you promise to give others because once you promise it they will think it’s theirs. Look for the ways that you can greatly exceed expectations and create a super fan.
In my more tired and weak moments I find myself easily frustrated with the weaknesses of different groups of people. For example, the old with their slowness and hesitation, and the young with their lack of focus. In my weaker moments I see these as obstacles.
But I’ve learned to remind myself of the truth when I find my thoughts going in that bad direction. I’ve learned to tell myself that everything worth doing takes all kinds of people. The young balance the old with their relentless enthusiasm and drive to move forward. The old balance the young with their wisdom and focus. Building a healthy community requires that balance. It takes all kinds of people to get that.
It is easy to see what’s wrong. That ability comes and almost visceral level — something feels wrong or you feel in your gut. The hard part is seeing how to fix it. That’s also the valuable part because another person pointing out other thing that’s wrong doesn’t do much to solve the problem.
Having the vision to solve the problem takes more effort than seeing the problem. It takes thought, acknowledgement of your biases, and the ability to see points of view other than your own.
The most memorable advice that I’ve received from my mom is “you’ve got to look out for each other.”
My sister and I are close in age with me being just 15 months older than she is. Due to that we seemed to be always getting in each other’s way which caused lots of picking at each other and fighting. The worst time that I remember vividly is that I knocked her to the ground by pushing her while tripping her from behind. (Sorry Laura!) While yelling at me, my mom shared her advice.
Sometime around then — this was 20 years ago so the order of events is fuzzy at best — my sister was being picked on by a kid that took the same route home from the bus stop. One day — let’s pretend it was the next day after my mom gave me the advice, you know, for dramatic effect — I stuck up for Laura and told the kid to stop. He got off his bike and got up in my face. Probably said something cliché like “what are you going to do about it?” So I threw my textbook at him, hitting him square in the chest. He left, and left her alone after that.
That incident reinforced my mom’s advice and it has become a strong part of who I am. But this advice extends past my sister and me. We all have to look out for each other. We all have to make sure we take care of those around us.
For many years I’ve heard the word seamless and known its meaning but I didn’t really feel it. I don’t know what happened in the last few months to change that for me — maybe it was one of Jony Ive’s talks about the products he creates.
The word holds so much more meaning for me now. You cannot tell how a seamless product was put together because it was put together with such thought and skill. You cannot tell where it begins and it ends because it extends beyond its physical bounds into a bigger part of your life.
As I create things each day I hold them up to the seamless standard and I usually fall short, but I find it is a great way to visualize my goals.
We’re all different from each other in thousands of tiny ways. Those differences mean that it is more sure than “your results may vary”, they will vary. That’s why finding your path and happiness is important. Following my path or your coworker’s or neighbor’s won’t work. You can see what we do and test to find out if it works for you but if it doesn’t then that’s OK.
My word — doing what I say I’ll do — is my most valuable possession. If I have to choose between feeding myself and keeping my word then I’ll go hungry. I can’t always keep my word — things happen — but every day I have the simple opportunity to keep my word by being where I say I’ll be. If I RSVP that I’ll attend, I’m there. If I say I’ll be at a meeting then I’ll be there. In some ways those little things are more important than the big — anyone can show up for one time when the stakes are high. The challenge is showing up every day when you think no one is watching.
The best way to come up with new ideas is to change the balance in the world. The best way to change the balance in the world is to make something new, meaningful, and sustained.
I’ve phrased this in different ways in the past but I thought about it again today while talking with another client who has new ideas for what they want their company to be partially based upon the work we’ve done for her. It’s exciting to see the difference it makes — a difference that is hard to describe. It seems to just happen when you put in the work.
I’m a fairly opinionated person. I’ve recently told near-strangers that I think they use too many hashtags, that their programming language of choice is awful, and that I disagree with their political positions. I feel like being opinionated is being me. I feel like I am a fairly binary person where I see many things as ones and zeros.
But another side of me wants me to be balanced. To look at both sides of an argument and see them both at the same time. I see the beauty of this perspective and that this world needs balance. I read quotes by Bruce Lee about not liking or disliking because that is the greatest cause of suffering. I don’t want to increase suffering.
But then I worry that I do the world a disservice by being the balanced me. Many times I will state both sides of an argument rather than to share my opinion. I worry that my strong opinions will overwhelm the more weakly held opinions of the people I work with. Am I hiding from the responsibility of making or influencing that decision? Am I just avoiding conflict? How much should I temper my personality?
I really don’t know. Do y’all ever think about this?
Every time someone lets you down is another opportunity to beat yourself up with thoughts like “that’s what I get for trusting”. You can then close yourself off and make others prove their trustworthiness before you let them in.
In my experience neither those thoughts not that strategy is very useful. You end up closing yourself off to many great opportunities that require you to make the first gesture of trust. The best way to build someone else’s trust in you is to make a leap and offer your trust first.
I’ve been beating myself up the last couple of days because I had a bug in the app I’m working on that I couldn’t figure out. It was erratic and kept showing up in different places each time I saw it — kind of like that whack-a-mole game. I doubted my abilities and felt like the entire thing I created was awful because of this one (crashing) flaw. I was overwhelmed and wanted to crawl in a hole and try to forget about everything.
Instead I just kept going. Trying something else, failing, trying something else, failing, researching, stepping away and thinking, trying something else, failing, researching, trying something else, making a little headway, trying something else, and so on. Enough of that and I figured out the problem and a way to reproduce it every time (thank you Apple developer tools). Figuring out the problem was the hard part but solving it was difficult also. The problem was in a piece of third party code that I’d found because I didn’t want to write it myself. I ended up starting all over on the trying something else, failing, trying something else, failing, researching, and stepping away and thinking cycle. I slowly made progress and got to where I needed to be. Hurdling over one doubt at a time.
I’ve started a new habit of daily learning. I spend a half hour to an hour every day taking an online learning course. This last month, I’ve taken courses from CodeSchool and the Stanford How To Start a Startup course on iTunes U. I’m keeping track of what I cover each day so I can look back at how far I’ve come and to put peer pressure on all of you to do something similar. :)
4-4-2015: CodeSchool, Anatomy of Backbone.js 4-5-2015: CodeSchool, Anatomy of Backbone.js 4-6-2015: CodeSchool, Anatomy of Backbone.js 4-7-2015: CodeSchool, Journey into Mobile 4-8-2015: CodeSchool, Journey into Mobile 4-9-2015: CodeSchool, Journey into Mobile 4-10-2015: CodeSchool, Staying Sharp with Angular.js 4-11-2015: CodeSchool, Staying Sharp with Angular.js 4-12-2015: CodeSchool, Staying Sharp with Angular.js 4-13-2015: Stanford How to Start a Startup #1 4-14-2015: Stanford How to Start a Startup #2 4-15-2015: Stanford How to Start a Startup #2 4-16-2015: Stanford How to Start a Startup #3 4-17-2015: Stanford How to Start a Startup #3 4-18-2015: Stanford How to Start a Startup #4 4-19-2015: Stanford How to Start a Startup #5 4-20-2015: Stanford How to Start a Startup #6 4-21-2015: Stanford How to Start a Startup #6 4-22-2015: Stanford How to Start a Startup #7 4-23-2015: Stanford How to Start a Startup #7 4-24-2015: Stanford How to Start a Startup #8 4-25-2015: Stanford How to Start a Startup #8, #9 4-26-2015: Stanford How to Start a Startup #10 4-27-2015: Stanford How to Start a Startup #11 4-28-2015: Stanford How to Start a Startup #12 4-29-2015: Stanford How to Start a Startup #12, #13 4-30-2015: Stanford How to Start a Startup #13, #14
Life has many established processes for getting things done. In a company, for example, if you want to work on a new project then you lobby your boss for resources by providing data about how great your project is.
But I recommend that you just bypass that and you start building in your free time. Once you’ve built something then your boss can see your vision. And the momentum you’ve built will carry the project through to the end.
Yes you run the risk of your boss thinking your project is stupid and wasting your free time. But if you care about the project that much then devoting that time can only make you happier and better at what you do.
Find a way to step out of the process.
Jenni and I intentionally shipped an app with a fatal flaw.
No, I don’t mean the inability to change am/pm manually.
iOS, the operating system that runs on iPhones and iPads and iPod Touches, will not allow our app to do what it needs to do if it isn’t running. That means we can’t let the phone go to sleep and then have the app automatically open when it is time for the alarm to go off. That means that you have to open the app to set the alarm every night (or morning) before you fall asleep.
I knew about this fatal flaw when I started development on this app a little more than a year ago.[^1] I did research into different hacks that could possibly be used to allow the app to function in the background. At one point, I had decided not to make it at all since I couldn’t make it work perfectly. That’s what Apple does, right? They wait for the technology to mature before creating something half-baked? Well, I really wanted it to exist, so I built it anyway.
Fully knowing the burden of the flaw[^2], I made choices to allow setting your alarm every night to be as simple as possible. I added the ability for the alarm to start automatically at launch, so you only have to tap the icon to set the alarm. I designed the time input so that you can directly choose the numbers for the time you want to wake up, instead of scrolling back and forth in a picker like in a typical alarm app. And you don’t have to choose am or pm, because the app picks the next occurrence within 12 hours. With this design, choosing 6:30 am takes 3 taps.
I’ve used this app almost every night for the past year. I am constantly thinking of things that would make my process of going to bed and waking up better and adding those ideas to the app. I hope they make your nights and mornings a little better too.
I hope you enjoy our imperfect app.
[^1]: I’ve used a handful of different iPhone alarm clocks over the years, but I never stuck with them because of the friction involved with setting the alarm every night. [^2]: I stopped using this feature after Jenni’s beautiful redesign of the app. Now I actually want to experience the UI, rather than skip it.
When I was inexperienced I didn’t see the value of experience. Through sheer willpower I could get things done despite my lack of experience. Today I’m still skeptical of experience because it isn’t the time you’ve spent doing something but the lessons you’ve learned. It is too easy to do your job by going through the motions and taking away nothing of future use.
But now that I’m older I do see the benefits of some kinds of experience, generally broad strokes rather than narrow. Things that could apply across multiple projects and years, rather than experience with the quirks in the 2000 version of SQL Server. The good kind of experience in that example is knowing how databases are built in general terms. Once you know that you can fill in the details of quirks of specific versions. At that point the knowledge of these quirks has a place to live in a greater system rather than being one piece of knowledge disjointed from the rest of the world and regarded as sacred. It is only sacred because you don’t know why it works the way it does. Once you know that you’ll have useful experience.
1.) What is stopping you from getting what you want?
This question is difficult because you have to take an honest assessment of your life and your brain isn’t very good at that. Your brain would rather tell you something is impossible rather than put your through discomfort. For example, if your group of friends engages in bad habits it is difficult for your brain to tell you that you need to leave your friends behind because they are making your life worse. Your brain might choose to blame — yourself or your stressful job or your parents — instead of seeing the impact of those people you care about.
A couple of days ago a friend suggested that I write about how I handle stress. I initially thought “I have a lot of experience with that, that’s a great topic that should be easy to write about.” But the last couple of days I’ve been thinking about the stressful situations I’ve been in and I’ve struggled to take lessons away from them. I’ll try to stumble through the process of pulling out the lessons in this post.
As I said, I have a lot of experience with stress: growing up in a household that felt like a constant battleground, going through my parents’ divorce, getting kicked out of both of my parents’ houses, failing enough classes in college to lose my full scholarship, foolishly creating mounds of credit card debt and getting bombarded by calls from bill collectors, getting laid off followed by months of unemployment and losing my car and getting evicted, struggling to make enough money to eat, basic training in the Army, being deployed to Iraq for a year with a super stressful highlight of a rocket flying through the wall of the room two down from mine, fighting to prove to Army medical staff that the herniated disc in my lower back was a serious injury, assimilating back into civilian society, finding out my daughter had hydrocephalus, living in a failing marriage, taking on too many responsibilities at work and failing, my daughter spending a month in the neonatal intensive care unit, and my daughter having a seizure.
One effect of all those experiences is that stress affects me differently than an average person. I hit some pretty low lows early in my adulthood and everything else seems easy. But that isn’t to say that stress doesn’t affect me because it definitely does, but my initial reaction is to get calmer when everyone else panics. Looking back over those times I see different situations that have to be handled differently.
Many times you have no control over the source of the stress and no way to avoid it. You know it will end eventually but you have no way to stop it.
My most vivid memory of viscerally feeling this kind of stress is of standing in the hallway after the rocket hit our barracks. I had been laying in bed, reading The Art Of War before going to sleep. Then all I heard was a really big bang. Luckily, it wasn’t an explosion but just a rocket going through the outside wall of our building and bouncing off the walls of a room two down from mine. Then silence. I opened the door and peered into the hallway at the same time as everyone in the surrounding rooms and we saw the rocket rolling on the floor in the middle of the hallway.
We gathered downstairs while the bomb removal team took care of the rocket. I was severely shaken up. I had my arms wrapped around me — hugging myself — and my mind felt unstable. I don’t know a better way of explaining it than that. Then my mind came to a point where it examined the situation, weighed the options, and realized that I just had to carry on. I stuffed the experience down and locked it away. I just put one foot in front of the other, marching on.
The only way to handle that kind of stress is to focus on the next step.
This is a similar type of stress as college, where the best way to survive is to focus on the next class instead of the 30 you need to graduate. Like Kimmy Schmidt says, anyone can handle anything for ten seconds.
Enduring these types of stress forge you — they make you who you are. I’ve endured long periods of this type of stress, and I think I was able to do so because I had the viewpoint of “that’s just the way it is.” Because things were out of my control, I was able to push them out of my mind and push myself forward. My recommendation is that if things are out of your control you should reconcile that early rather than wrestling with “if onlys” — if only I’d joined the Air Force instead of the Army, if only I were smarter, if only I wasn’t so bad at math.
Yesterday I talked about a good kind of stress, a kind that serves as a fire to mold you into a different kind of person. Tonight I’m going to talk about a kind of stress that feels very similar when you’re going through it, but has a negative effect on who you are.
We all have different triggers that make us angry. Maybe you reacted to some of the things that I said I could let go of with the thought of “that would make me so angry.” I’m still struggling to understand all of my anger triggers but a couple of them are being told what to do and watching people do things in a half assed way. I don’t know why these make me angry, but they do.
I believe anger is toxic. If you’re in a situation where you are getting angry more than 10% of the time and that anger is causing you stress then you have to get out. You have to find a way to move on.
That kind of anger means that you don’t believe in some fundamental element of the situation you are in. It doesn’t mean that you are right to feel that way — there is no right or wrong in this, there is only the situation and the way you feel. Any judgments about right and wrong will only distract you.
The fundamental question comes down to “Are you angry a lot?” If yes, start planning your exit. If no, focus on the next step and keep moving forward.
I have always stayed in these kinds of stressful situations too long. I feel in my gut that they are no good for me but it is more comfortable to stay where I am rather than make effort to move elsewhere. That’s ok as long as you’re still moving forward. If you’re angry and not learning and not progressing in life then you need to get moving now.
The last two days I talked about two different kinds of long term stress, the kind you just have to get through one step at a time and the kind you have to run away from because it is toxic. Today I’ll talk about the ways that I’ve tried to cope with those kinds of stress as well as short term stress.
Our natural tendency during stressful times is to sleep less. For short term stress, like waiting for lab results after your daughter had a seizure or taking care of your significant other when he has a high fever, cutting out sleep is the right reaction. Our bodies secrete the right hormones and hold back the wrong ones and prepare us perfectly for that situation.
The problem comes when our body responds the same way during long term stress. We sleep less and try to fix the situation more, for months or even years. The less sleep we get the less well we handle our sleep deprivation. We lose brain function and we lose our humanity.
When you are going through long term stress you must get your sleep. Cut out everything else first, although it’s really tough to do.
Over a period of weeks and months those stress hormones will continue to build up in your body if you don’t move around to keep your bodily systems going. My natural response to work stress is to spend more time sitting at the computer and every moment away from it feels like a waste.
It is not a waste, you must do it. But not at the expense of sleep.
That little voice in your head will be your biggest problem. It will be telling you that you aren’t working hard enough, that you aren’t smart enough, that you don’t deserve to be where you are. When you get your rest it will call you lazy. When you find time to move it will tell you you are wasting time.
That little voice isn’t right. Listen for it but not to it. What I mean is pay attention to what it says and when it says something negative just let it go. Don’t fight it and don’t hold on to it. Just move on to the next thought or no thought at all.
Paying attention to those little thoughts in your head is a critical part of mindfulness. I practice mindfulness through a morning meditation habit and I highly encourage trying it. Meditation can be used for many things, but one of the main things I get out of it is noticing the thoughts that are going through my head.
It is easy to get caught up in thoughts while doing mindless tasks like driving to work or taking a shower. You can easily spend a half hour and have no idea what you thought about. But if you are intentionally sitting and trying to not think about anything then the thoughts that show up stand out more. And by the way, it is fine if those thoughts show up, that doesn’t mean you’re doing meditation wrong. Just practice letting them go again.
If you only see the worst in the world that says more about you than it does the world.
In software development you can’t truly say you’ve fixed a bug unless you can reliably recreate it before the fix and can’t recreate it afterward. Can this be applied to social problems? Is there a good way to identify the “bugs” in the system, reliably recreate them, and then solve them?
This is another post in my series of David’s rules which describe the rules I follow to navigate the ambiguity of life:
This is a simple one but almost everyone I meet gets it wrong. Do not shake another person’s hand while sitting on your behind. Get on your feet, at least a little bit. Put in the effort to show your respect.
My art may not speak to you. To you, it may seem boring, irrelevant, or in some cases obscene. That’s OK for both you and me. You don’t have to understand my language or get my perspective. And I don’t have to change my message so you can understand. That would fundamentally change my art and my message.
We can both simply walk away, you knowing “that wasn’t for me” and me knowing “that wasn’t for you”.
In a previous post I talked about the tools we setup for our new business. This time I want to approach that topic from the other side, discussing my process and how those tools, and some others I didn’t discuss before, fit into that process. My process consists of 3 main steps broken down into 12 total sub-steps, here is the first main step:
Make as few plans as possible before starting - I do most of my planning in my head with a sketch or two to help me work on ideas. Having fewer plans means you are less likely to get attached to any one way of solving a problem and puts the problem solving where it should be — in the creation phase instead of the preparation phase. This also works for me because I do smaller projects with fewer people. I do all the early versions of a project and then bring others in when I have enough created to have a discussion around.
The simplest of tools will work for this — I usually use eraseable crayon on a window for a dry-erase-like experience but a pencil and paper do just as well.
Understand the problem as well possible before starting - You can’t possibly know everything about the problem you are trying to solve before you start on the solution, but you should have a good handle on what it is. It is very easy to start trying to solve the problem before you know anything about it. Usually in these cases you will start with a solution to a problem you’ve seen before and not quite address the needs of the current problem. While your experience can be greatly beneficial it can also be a hindrance. If you don’t explicitly avoid it, you will try to solve every problem the same way.
The only tools for this part of the process are good questions, good listening, and a lot of time to think, both consciously and unconsciously.
I’m going to give an example of something I see in part of the tech community that I also see in other communities, such as spectators for sports or politics. The common thread is people who really care about the thing they follow, whether it be a company, a team, or a person. My example is about Apple and the passionate folk who want to give Apple advice.
Take a designer on Twitter saying that Apple needs to do something different with their design of iOS. Her assertion is that Apple is not showing that they are at the forefront of design with what they’re doing now. They risk falling behind and becoming obsolete.
Or take a software developer on a podcast that states that Apple software is really buggy and they need to spend more time on quality control. Otherwise they risk alienating their customers who will get tired of the bugs.
Each of these narratives is different but I think they come from the same place. Where is that? Fear.
The designer and developer are afraid that Apple will lose its edge and won’t have the cool technologies and ecosystem for them to work on. Or Apple will become irrelevant or fail as a company and they don’t want that because they love the company. The root of the fear is a lack of trust that the folks at Apple know what they are doing. These outsiders want to feel like they’re doing something — that they are contributing — so they do so by complaining.
Is it a good thing that they complain? It is productive in the cliche “squeaky wheel” way? I don’t know. Personally, I want Apple to have their vision for the future that doesn’t rely upon outsiders complaining. Of course there needs to be a balance between getting outside input and sticking with your vision but I think that balance should be heavily weighted towards the vision.
The first rule for making things was all about simple tools, a pen and paper, a marker and a window, and good questions. This second rule is where some fancy tools really make the difference.
Make changes easy — Use common editing tools that are easily accessible. Automate deployments to production so your changes get to users quickly.
We use a simple text editor as much as we can. We use Grunt for deployments as simple as ‘grunt deploy’.
Make mistakes painless — Use a version control system that tracks every change you make. You will be able to track down code that broke things and painlessly undo those changes.
We use Git for our version control system. I don’t believe that any of the other version control options even come close.
Make testing simple — Have a safe test environment that replicates production. The easier it is to test the more you’ll do it and the better the products you’ll ship.
Our local machines mirror production perfectly so testing is super simple. We setup local web servers with Grunt that make starting the test environment as simple as ‘grunt server’.
Of course, the specific tools you use for your workflow will have to adapt to that workflow. I have to change things up when I am making an iPhone app — I have to use a fancier program because the code has to be compiled. These particular tools are a good starting point for thought and discussion.
Last Thursday night I didn’t sleep well. My heart was racing and I was restless most of the night. Then I felt “off” all day Friday. Didn’t know why.
On the way to pick up my daughter from my ex-wife’s house I was anxious and uncomfortable. For no known reason I had a feeling something bad would happen soon.
I’d been driving for about 15 minutes with my daughter in her carseat in the back. She made a coughing/gagging sound and I looked back at her. She looked like she was spitting up some mucous. Her body was limp against the straps of the seat. I sing-songed “Emma” with no response. I started saying the ABCs, one of her favorite things to say back to me. Still no response, only more gagging, more spit up.
I frantically found a place to pull over, put on the hazards, and got her out of the car. She slumped over on me and continued to cough and gag every few moments, spitting up on both of us. I held here there on the side of the road, hoping I could help her get out whatever was causing her sickness. Nothing more than that mucousy substance came out. She barely had the energy to contract her stomach to cough.
After a few minutes, I gave up on the idea of her coughing up whatever was bothering her and got her back in the car. It was only five minutes back home so I decided it would be better to get her comfortable and laying down there. I called her mother to see if she had been acting strangly at all that day — no, she’d been acting normally.
I laid her down on the floor of my apartment, took off her clothes that she’d spit up on, and tried to comfort her. Her face was pale white and her lips had little color. She was breathing erratically. I was flipping out on the inside but tried to stay calm on the outside.
Finally, she spit up more than just mucous. Finally, she started looking better. I sat down next to her and she looked up at me. She was more responsive than she had been since she started gagging in the car.
Then her left arm started moving rhythmically. Up and down, up and down, up and down. I didn’t want to believe that something was wrong — I wanted to believe that she was comforting herself through that rhythmic movement. Then her eyebrows started moving up and down, then her leg, then her tongue. I got her in the car to head to the ER.
The drive to the ER felt like forever. Emma was limp in the backseat, her body moving beyond her control. When looking back at her at a light, I’d picture her smiling during bathtime — laying her back in the bathtub, with her hair floating above her head in the water. Then a snapshot of the enthusiasm with which she would look at me when I would start saying the ABCs came to the forefront. I almost lost it a few times. But I told myself “now is not the time for that.”
I get her to the ER, out of the car as she slumps over, still rhythmically moving. They take her to the back, put her on a table and start stabilizing her. An insensitive tech is suddenly standing next to me and states “She’s seizing?” I don’t know what to say. “That’s what they’re saying” is what I come up with. My daughter is having a seizure. I almost lose it again. I almost lose it so many other times in that ER as the techs, nurses, and doctor work to stabilize her. They do.
Emma was taken to a Children’s hospital and spent the next day there. Through the haze of anti-seizure and anti-fever medication, my daughter started to come back. She talked a little. She drank some milk. She smiled.
Emma is back to her normal self now. Her EEG showed that she had abnormal activity on the right side of her brain. We have no idea why the seizure happened or if anything triggered it, but the abnormal activity means that she’s more prone to future seizures than the average child. She’ll be taking anti-seizure medication twice a day for who knows how long. And like with everything else Emma has gone through, we’ll see how this all turns out down the road. It’s just one more unknown.
I’m not good at knowing by limits. It isn’t until I’m a ways past them that I notice that I’m at capacity — that I’ve got no more time or energy to give. I realized this this past week as I tried to plan a birthday party along with everything else I had going on. I didn’t do a good job of it because I had no room left. Even the smallest things become difficult when I’m at that point.
I do believe that I need to be in this situation right now to help our company survive. But I need to figure out the warning signs in the future because this isn’t sustainable.
What’s the right amount of friction for interactions with a part of your business? By friction I mean the amount of effort that must be put in to get your desired result. There will always be some friction due to the need to communicate ideas but in my mind the ideal friction is as low as possible. In this ideal world everyone would share a vision and passion for that vision and push things forward together.
This isn’t what happens in the real world from what I’ve seen. What I’ve seen is groups within a company that slow everything down — 95% friction. Usually they do it with good intentions, citing stability or rules that must be followed. For example, take a bank compliance officer who sees her job as preventing the bank from risk by saying “no” to everything even slightly risky and who adds paperwork to every process to increase compliance. She doesn’t understand her job well enough because what she needs to do is say “yes, but” and put her energies towards streamlining processes while using her expertise to stay compliant.
The right way to avoid risk is not by saying no. The right way is to be knowledgable and work towards clever solutions.
I have part 3 of my rules for making things coming tomorrow — I’ve had a busy evening and I am getting to this post late and I want to spend more time on that one. So I’ll interrupt that series with an observation I’ve had lately.
99% of the time you will not notice who you influence. But the silent majority of people you interact with will take something away from their time with you.
Will they take away something positive or negative? Is your ego OK with not having those people tell you that you touched their lives? Are you putting the things you want into the world?
My third rule for making things is all about making it easy to work with other people, whether you will actually be doing so or not. This rule is less about using tools and more about putting good processes in place, but I won’t be getting into the details of those specific processes because they will differ by team. The important takeaway is that you should be thinking about those processes.
Be able to integrate multiple changes seamlessly — This is critical to building quality software and to maintaining momentum. Without a good way to integrate changes, people will not merge their changes in a timely manner, changes will get lost, and you’ll find that the things you’ve already fixed are broken again. Not having that good way to integrate changes causes extra work and energy to be expended on tasks a computer should be doing, so your team will be spending time on that frustrating task rather than on the fun task of building cool new things. You’ll get less work done in the same amount of time and your team will be angrier.
We use Git to make our change integrations simple.
Make communication clear and open for everyone involved — The biggest hindrance to getting people to join in on a project is having to tell them all the background information about it. This can be limited by openly sharing all the information about every project so everyone on the team has a baseline understanding of what is going on. As a side effect, this improves morale.
Slack is the tool we use for this.
Use as few and as simple of tools as possible — Everyone on your team should be able to join in on a project without having to install any new tools. The best way to ensure this is to limit the tools you use and keep them simple.
Make it as easy as possible to add a new person to a project as possible (even if you have no intention of doing so) — This has two benefits. First, if you are running close to a deadline and need someone to help out quickly they can hop in without slowing you down. Second, making it easy for others to join in also generally leads to a solution that makes it easier for you to start over if you need, like if you want to move an entire project to a new computer or new server.
Reduce bottlenecks (don’t have one person be the only person for anything) — Having a bottleneck can kill the momentum you have tried so hard to build on a project and gives that bottleneck person one more thing to worry about when they are already falling behind. Don’t do that to them.
A couple of days ago I searched Facebook for an Army buddy of mine that I haven’t seen in almost 10 years. I’d looked for him at different times over the years and never found him. But this time I saw his smiling face as he sat with his daughter and tears came to my eyes. I was so happy to see him happy.
I’m so very thankful for that experience.
Tonight I was looking through old pictures and feeling nostalgic. I’m missing the people that have passed through my life that I haven’t seen for years. Fortunately I can find many of them on Facebook.
But Facebook just leaves me wanting more. I want to sit around with my Army buddies and have a drink and catch up and Facebook can’t do that. Despite all our advances, geographic distance still separates us.
When building software you always have to think about both the future and the past. You think about the future because you know your code will live for years and you want it to handle coming changes with minimal maintenance. You think about the past because you have an existing code base that still needs to work correctly and users that rely upon your code. Even if your app is new with no existing code or users you still have to think about the devices that have come in the past that it will run on and you’ll have to support. Devices used by tiny percentages of the population can be owned by millions. Supporting the past quickly becomes overwhelming.
You always have to consider the future but you have a choice about the past. Your choice will depend upon your app and market. For example, if you are targeting the education sector then you need to keep in mind how old their devices and operating systems are. In general, push things forward and cut out old code and devices after 2-3 years.
It feels right to say “the lesson from this is…” and make a pronouncement about how you are now wiser and won’t make that mistake again. But you can easily overdo it. Many outcomes are dependent upon the circumstances outside your control, most of which you cannot see. Don’t let your takeaway put you into a box or turn into an equivalent of “don’t take risks” because you’ll lose any chance at greatness by doing so.
I was showing a friend the iPad Pro and Apple Pencil a couple of nights ago. For the demonstration I just opened the Notes app, handed him the Pencil, and let him go. He got to decide what he wanted to try — he chose how the product revealed itself to him. I could have walked him through all the features but then he would miss out on discovering the magic himself. Plus, features I like may not matter to him because he may not be able to picture himself using it the same way I would.
When introducing someone to a product it is best to do as little as possible and let them connect the dots.
Since moving to Denton I’ve wanted to start riding my bike more instead of continuing the habit of hopping in the car to drive 5 minutes downtown. I’ve tried setting myself up for success by keeping my bike in the living room. My hope was that I’d think about it more and that making it as easy as possible to roll it out for a ride would reduce the friction enough, but that still didn’t start a new habit.
I didn’t realize until today how afraid I was of riding around the city. I noticed today because I finally overcame my fear and I did that in two steps.
First, I went out and rode with groups of other bikers a couple times. Seeing other people safely and happily biking made it feel safe for me.
Second, I pushed myself a little and rode my bike across town in spite of the fear. Safely making that journey boosted my confidence and wiped out my fear.
So if you aren’t starting that new thing that you want to do and you aren’t sure why, think about whether you are afraid. If so, find a way to do the new thing with a friendly and accepting group to start out. And then push yourself a little, before you are fully comfortable, and build up your confidence.
I’m very good at living in the present and generally that is a good thing. I truly believe that constantly living in the past or future won’t bring you any good.
But you must remember that you are the sum of everything you’ve done and everyone you’ve met in your life. You bring them with you everyday but it is simple to forget that while living in the present.
Don’t build shrines to the past, but don’t forget it either. Regularly take time to reminisce and interact with people you haven’t thought about or seen in years. You’ll be reminded of parts of you that you’ve forgotten.
This post is another in my series of rules that I use to help me navigate the ambiguities of life.
Take off your sunglasses you are having a conversation with another person, especially if you are meeting them for the first time. I don’t mean when you are just sitting around shooting the shit, but during any conversation where you should be looking someone in the eyes you shouldn’t be wearing your sunglasses.
In general, I don’t believe you should strive to learn about more things. I don’t believe that it is effective to learn about the newest tools or products that can make your work and life better. A very little of that is OK, especially learning about updates to the tools you use every day, but it will quickly become noise that distracts you.
I do believe you should learn every day, but I believe that you should learn concepts. A diverse information diet of concepts will make you better at what you do and smarter overall as your mind naturally makes connections between the concepts you know and those you are learning.
Ignore the noise and dig into something deep and interesting.
You cannot adjust for your bias because it is a fundamental part of how you understand the world. It is at a lower level than your senses and changes what you see, smell, and feel.
While you can’t adjust for your bias, you can alter it over time by exposing yourself to other points of view.
It feels like working more and more gets more things done. Taking a break or a nap feels like a waste and laziness. But sometimes that’s exactly what you need to get things done more efficiently. Let yourself rest without guilt. Everything you do will be better.
Data will not give you a vision of the future. It can only tell you what has happening — even real-time data immediately becomes history. Data cannot help you make leaps forward.
Data also has blind spots — things it cannot see or measure. Sometimes you know about these blind spots and sometimes you don’t. When you don’t know about a blind spot then you might come to the wrong conclusions because you are trying to make logical connections that don’t exist. These false connections are worse than no data because they can send you down the wrong path with confidence that you are going down the right one. That confidence means that it is unlikely that you will question your decision when you meet resistance.
As with everything else we experience, our perception of data is filtered through our biases and our view of the world. “Objective data” quickly becomes subjective as you apply your interpretation. You may not even notice that you’ve transformed the data from fact into fiction.
Data is not inherently good or bad. It has limitations which we must be aware of and remind ourselves of regularly. Data should inform, not guide, our decision making.
I have a strong pro-individual bias. I’ve seen many issues that I could solve single-handedly that different groups of people working together have repeatedly found ways to muck up. It boggles my mind that talented people can come together and form something that is less than the sum of their parts but it keeps happening.
I’m doing a sort of heavily biased case study on this right now. A group of talented folks from Denton have gotten together to come up with a proposal to build a technological solution to solve a problem that the citizens of Denton have. I’m working with this group to help in any way I can but I also have my outside observer hat on. So far what I’ve seen has prompted a lot of continuing thought and one big question:
With these talented folk living in Denton for so long why hasn’t something like this been done before? Or has it been tried before but failed?
I intend to ask around and see what I can find out. My initial hypothesis is that these talented folk have been waiting for permission to do something and that working with a city council member is an implicit form of permission. But I don’t know exactly. I’ll keep you posted.
The solution you need depends on the problem you have. That’s obvious. But the problem you have isn’t obvious.
I read a tweet this morning about how open floor plan offices are bad for your health. The first person that replied said “…I rarely see good solutions for maximizing floor space yet dealing with these issues.” That person sees a different problem — maximizing floor space — than I see — giving people a productive place to work.
Step #0 in solving a problem is figuring out what your problem is.
Throughout my work life I have worked many different jobs and excelled at most of them. I’m a team player with a strong diverse skill set and very strong work ethic. However, I’ve never had someone try to recruit me to a specific position. Even when I joined the Army, I went to the recruiter and said I wanted to sign up.
Sometimes my ego hurts a bit because of it, but in general I know I’m good at what I do so I don’t worry about it too much. I do wonder about the dynamics of it though — the whys of “Why don’t I get recruited?” and “Why does this person get recruited?”
I know in at least one situation that my friend thought I was too good for the place she worked and so she would never recommend me for it. That’s certainly flattering in a way but a pain when I am out of work. Does my skill set preclude me from some jobs because I’m overqualified? Probably.
I think another factor that weighs in this is that I haven’t been in one particular industry for more than five years and am rarely in any one position more than 18 months. I keep moving up or sideways through companies and then onto the next challenge. That doesn’t make it easy for anyone to classify me in any particular field.
I’ve also always been part of a small team or been the only person on the team. The best way to be able to recommend and recruit someone is to have worked with them before and I just haven’t worked with as many people as anyone who has worked on large teams.
So are these all just excuses? I don’t know. Have you ever recruited anyone to work for or with you? What factors influenced your decision to do so?
Either way, I’m happy about where it has led me, into doing my own thing.
One way you may try to figure out what is good is to look around at things you like — things you think are good. Maybe you can use those things to set your bar for quality. But imitation isn’t enough — a copy of something good isn’t necessarily good. Rather than simply copying you have to know what things about that good thing make it good. What do you like about it? What if you changed this one part, would you still like it then?
This is another post in my series of rules that I use to navigate the ambiguities of life.
When you don’t know which way you should go and there is no map to guide you, go left. Obviously it won’t always take you where you’re going faster, but you are making a decision and moving forward. That is what matters.
Every once in a while I have an idea that I think is fantastic. I get really excited and start imagining how much better the world would be if I did this thing. I explore the limits of the idea in my mind while examining it from every angle — is this really as good as I think it is? Once the excitement wears off a bit I get around to asking myself a very important question: why hasn’t this been done before?
I can think of four categories of answers this question could have:
It has been done before but failed for some reason
It hasn’t been done before because no one cared enough to do it
It hasn’t been done before because it is/was technologically impossible
It hasn’t been done before because no one could make the financial numbers work
Over the next several days I’m going to talk through these different possibilities and what they mean for your idea.
A year ago, my daughter started seizing in the back seat of my car.
Since that day she drinks a syrupy medicine twice a day and I carry a shot of Diazepam with me wherever we go. If she starts seizing again, I’ve been instructed to call 911 and watch the clock. If she seizes for five minutes then I inject the Diazepam in her rear.
Fortunately, she hasn’t started seizing again. From what I see, the seizure has had no adverse effect on her. Obviously, it is not possible to know what she would be like if she hadn’t had the seizure — but her curiosity and awareness of the world grows daily. She teaches me children’s songs and I teach her Beatles songs.
The past year hasn’t been about major breakthroughs — its about hundreds of incremental improvements. I am happy to say that Emma is really becoming herself. Now she is three and we can start to see her personality — hints of who she will be.
Emma started school a few months ago and has picked up some wonderful bad habits from the other kids. My favorite is when she doesn’t get her way and starts fake crying — the crying lasts for about five seconds and then she puts both hands on her nose, whinily saying “Nose”. I’ll have to get some video of it.
The part of that that really makes me happy is that she wants to get her way. That means something to me — that means that she knows what is going on around her.
I’ll share another thing she loves. I’m not a big fan of singing songs in the traditional manner every single time, that gets boring. So I’ll change the tempo of a song like “Twinkle Twinkle Little Star” when I sing it with Emma – changing it from “Twin-kle Twin-kle, Lit-tle Star” to “Tweeeeeeeeeeenkle, Tweeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeenkle, Liiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiit-tle Staaaaaaaaar”. She absolutely adores it. Every time she sees me she grabs my mouth and starts singing it that way to me. She is also very quick to adapt. If I change the tempo in a different way then she will do the same.
These incremental improvements don’t lend themselves to my concept for her site. My intention there was always to show the major milestones and the big ways that she overcomes expectations. Because of that, I haven’t posted anything about her progress in a long time. I fear that may make anyone who has heard her story think she isn’t making progress or that she hasn’t recovered from her seizure.
So going forward, in addition to the major milestones, I will be doing “State of the Emma” posts there, to share all the little things that turn into something big when put together. I hope to have one out soon.
Thank you for caring about Emma.
I’ve started getting into the basics of photography and shooting video and I’ve noticed something that is probably obvious to most people — in many cases what you see in the frame only shows a fraction of the work being put in to make something of quality.
For an example, I was recently shooting some pictures for a website we are working on. I’d found a picture that had a “feel” that I liked but the cost to license it was beyond our budget. So I staged a similar scene with two qualities in mind, brightness and calm. I think the pictures turned out great, and because viewers can only see what is in the frame, they won’t ever know that I was standing on a metal folding chair over a massage table in the corner of our office crammed less than a foot away from my desk next to a window with the morning sun coming through. They will see brightness and calm.
The same is true for shooting videos with quality audio — the microphone must be within a foot to a foot and a half from the speaker’s mouth but no one wants unsightly microphones in the video shot. So you either put it on a stand or have someone to hold it outside of the camera frame. Until recently I didn’t think about all this effort that went into getting good quality sound in a shot.
This applies to how you see others’ lives also. Like others have said better than I can, you usually only see other peoples’ highlight reel and their finished products. Their hard work and trying times are outside the frame and it is so easy to forget about them. In some cases people do this intentionally — they build up a different view of themselves for the world and most of the world doesn’t dig deeply enough to see the truth. But in most cases it is just not feasible to show all the hard work and tough decisions — can you imagine a realistic rendition of the training from Rocky? You’d be watching a man wake up at the crack of dawn and run and lift weights and train hundreds of times in a row. I’d appreciate the realism but there is no way I’d sit through that.
So after all this rambling, what am I trying to say?
First, if you put up a façade of who you are then you will probably fool most people because they don’t dig deeply. Unfortunately, the ones that do dig deeply are generally the ones who care and will be disappointed in your inauthentic story.
Second, for everything you see that you like in this world, remember the massive amount of work that went into creating it. And remember that you will need to put in a similar amount of thankless work to create your great thing.
Today I’ll continue the discussion I started yesterday about that moment after I’ve had an idea that I think is great. In that moment I ask myself “Why hasn’t this been done before?” One answer to that question is “Actually, it has been done before but it failed” so I’ll discuss how I handle that possibility. I think it’s important that I note here that I’m asking this question to determine whether I can turn my idea into a sustainable project and business. If you only care about making something you are fired up about then this question won’t matter to you.
The keys to handling this situation are research and finding root causes. I need to learn as much as possible about the previous attempts to do this thing. From that research I need to put together the facts to figure out why it failed. Most businesses fail because they run out of money but that isn’t helpful information here. I need to know why they ran out of money. I’ll also be tempted to blame the incompetence of the people who were trying to do this the first time. I’ll tell myself that I won’t be so dumb and make the mistakes they did. But again, that isn’t the root cause and, as a side note, I will make incompetent mistakes too although they may be different ones.
Ultimately the root cause should fall into one of two broad categories — the previous effort either went in unprepared, with too little cash or experience or talent or all three, or their target market didn’t care about their thing as much as they anticipated. After finding one of those root causes I have to ask myself “can I bring somethings to this that will avoid that problem?” Hopefully the answer is yes. Then that is the beginning of the slog to actually follow through and prove it.
A huge cloud of consciousness floats over the land, loosely connected but all the same.
Drops fall from it and land on the ground just long enough to claim their individuality before returning to the nearest stream and joining their brothers and sisters, moving forward together and usually unaware of their bonds. Unaware that they are the same.
They follow the course of the stream, sometimes hopping out as random events push things this way and that. They continue to the ocean, each following their own specific path.
At the end of the journey they evaporate and become part of the larger cloud of consciousness again. Once again remembering that they are all one, if they forgot.
Connecting with others requires a caring that leads to learning about others, a shared language, and common ground. The good news is that the simplest connections are easy — we can easily choose to care about the person walking down the street past us and communicate with shared smiles on the common ground of being human.
Deep connections take time. It is much more difficult to care about something over a long period. Words fail to express even the mundane parts of the day to day, serving as a poor form of communication. Body language and tone of voice are powerful aids but much of the time they can further confuse the message. The strongest common ground is similar experiences, the best of which are shared.
Today I’ll continue talking about the moment after I have what I consider to be a great idea. In that moment I ask the question “Why hasn’t this been done before?” One possible answer to that question is “Because no one cared enough to do it.” I’ll discuss how I handle that situation.
Most of my side projects start in this situation. I’ll identify a problem I have that I can solve fairly simply. For example, my Dharma Talks app that u created because listen to Mission Dharma’s Dharma Talks was difficult in a mobile web browser because it wouldn’t keep track of where I was in the talk between my morning and evening commutes. It is a simple app but no one cared enough to make it.
Another way of phrases that statement is that no one had a sufficient incentive to build that app. Which brings us to the fundamental problem when you are in this situation — you probably can’t make money off of your idea. I knew that going into making the Dharma Talks app because I volunteered to build it for a non-profit. But I’ve had other projects where I hadn’t realized the truth of this situation and put in time and energy with no direct monetary payback. I’m OK with that sometimes, but you may not be.
I don’t break the speed limit, I don’t cross a busy street without a walk signal, I follow the rules when I ride my bike, and I have complex work around the house done by professionals. I generally try to do things or get things done the right way. Some of that is the rigidity of my personality — as I’ve posted here before I like rules to remove ambiguity. But there is another benefit — peace of mind.
I don’t have to worry about getting pulled over for speeding or being at fault if I get hit by a car or my water heater exploding because I installed it wrong or any number of the other things that I choose to do right instead of cutting corners. That peace of mind isn’t about having the moral high ground, it is about eliminating fear because fear is something that can keep us from being our best selves.
Tonight I drew a picture of my daughter instead of writing (tomorrow might be watercolor):
I’ll continue talking about that moment after I’ve had an idea that I think is great. In that moment I ask myself the question “Why hasn’t this been done before?” One possible answer to that question is “Because it is or was technologically impossible.” I’ll discuss this situation now.
When I find myself in this situation the first thing I need to do is figure out if the technological problem can be overcome. If it can’t then the idea’s done, at least for now. I can add it to a list of ideas to come back to in the future and move on to something else for now.
I can’t remember a time I’ve found myself in the situation where something was impossible but isn’t now. I’ve always been too busy with today to leave cushion for tomorrow. From what I’ve heard from others speed is critical in this situation. If you see something is newly possible then it is likely that others will see that too.
This is a risky situation but the most fun. It is risky because you need to invest resources without any sure indication that you’ll have a market for what you’ve built at the end. It might be that people just don’t care about what you’ve made or it might be that someone beats you to market and takes the customers that you would have had.
It is fun because you get to do something that no one else has ever done. That’s the sort of possibility I need to find time to do.
I’m continuing my series of posts about that moment right after I’ve had what I think is a great idea. In that moment I ask myself “Why hasn’t this been done before?” One possible answer to that question is “Because no one could make the financial numbers work” which I’ll talk through now.
If I others haven’t been able to make the numbers work then you need to figure out if you can. Can you build it more efficiently so that you need a smaller total payback? Can you get your parts at enough of a discount to make it work? Can you remove the payment transactional fees? Have the cost of primary resources changed significantly since the last person tried? Or are you OK not making a living off of this thing or believe you’ll get enough non-monetary value out of it to make it worthwhile. Maybe it will help you form a relationship or spread the word about what you do. One word of caution from my experience — it is tough to rationalize working on things that don’t bring in money when you’re short on time. Your good intentions will be fighting against your psyche.
Yesterday I read a blog post about Warren Buffet’s rumored method for scheduling appointments. The author finished the story in a way that got under my skin:
It got under my skin for a couple of reasons. First, because it really does matter that he is Warren Buffet. When you are a billionaire you have much more flexibility over your schedule. I work in consulting and can’t imagine telling my clients that they need to call me the day before a meeting to schedule it. Because I’m not Warren Buffet I’m not in the position to dictate terms to others.
The other reason it got under my skin is that it implicitly states “if you want to be successful like Warren Buffet then you should do this.” But we don’t know if this is a key component of his success. It could be that he got successful and then started doing this because he could at that point.
One of my favorite things about cooking is how simple it is to integrate your senses into the process. Rarely in my modern life do I need to engage my sense of touch or smell but good cooking relies on both. The pasta is done when it has just the right texture when you chew it. The chicken is done when you smell it from the living room.
You can set timers for each of these while following a recipe but it won’t be as good as if you’d followed your senses. Cooking is one great way to start to get back in touch with your body.
I’m not sure why but I find that I regularly put my skill set in a box. I feel like I’m out of my element if I’m doing something that isn’t in that box. I’ve never had formal training in an area or had some outside entity verify my skills. So I don’t believe in them.
I’m finding lately that I’m the only one limiting myself in this way — the people I work with are not putting me in that box. They want to see me succeed and solve their problems across a wide range of situations.
I have the skills, understanding, and motivation. I don’t need to artificially limit myself.
I’ve been talking through that moment after I’ve had an idea I think is great. In that moment I ask myself the question “Why hasn’t this been done before?” In my opening post I gave a list of four possibilities and over the last several days I’ve talked through them. But from the beginning I forgot about the most likely possibility in my experience — that my idea has been done before and I just didn’t know about it.
This one is a let down. I’ve gotten my hopes up about this amazing thing that I could do just to find out that someone else has beaten me to it. That part makes sense though — there are millions of apps out there solving hundreds of thousands of problems so it isn’t strange that my idea isn’t unique. But what do I do with it now?
Most likely nothing. You probably won’t add a lot of value by adding your take on a solution. You may look around and notice that all the other solutions aren’t very good and think you can do better and you probably can. But the problem is that the reason all the other solutions aren’t good is probably that there is little to no money in this area. No money means no motivation to improve your app which means crappy apps.
Can you add something that will give you different results? Or are you so fired up about this idea that you can’t not do it? Then by all means go for it! But you’re going to have to be smart about it and even if you are the odds are against you.
Everything you do either reinforces your friends’ and families’ values or puts pressure on them to change them. For example, my friends apologize when they kill mosquitos because I’ve mentioned that I do my best not to kill living beings. I make sure to say that I am not hurt or insulted by their actions because my values only apply to myself, but they still feel some pressure.
I’ve felt the same pressure and I’m thankful for it. My sister has made me very conscious of water conservation and all she had to do was plant a seed and my mind did the rest. Now every time I run water I think about what she’s said.
Start sharing the change you want to see in the world, without any pressure. Simply sharing it can be enough to make it spread.
Private First Class Cuming died on August 21, 2004 when an RPG hit the Humvee he was driving.
I did not know PFC Cuming well. He was in a different section of my unit — a truck driver and I was a mechanic, but I happened to eat breakfast with him on the morning of August 21. He was smiling, excited to go out on a mission. He smiled a lot.
Here’s to you, PFC Cuming. You will never be forgotten.
Where does hustle come from? Is it forged from hard times where you can barely feed yourself? Or is it something inherent inside us that we can choose? Or is it a survival instinct that the strongest of us have?
I have grand ideas about helping people never have to suffer through wondering where their next meals will come from or how they’ll pay for a roof over their heads. But would that rob them of the opportunity to do something great? Or would it allow them to do something greater since they aren’t wasting energy worrying about survival?
When big things change it gives the new and fast-moving folks a chance to move ahead of the incumbents. For example, the Swift programming language came out shortly before we started our company. I’d written some Objective C (the language used for Apple device development before Swift) code before but it hasn’t been my full-time job and I was behind many others in that skill set. But now I’ve been using Swift every day while they’ve continued to write Objective C and my skills in that area — an area that is the future of all Apple product development — is stronger than theirs. I’ve come from way behind to be ahead. I see that as a strong advantage.
Look around and you’ll see that my example is just one of many times this has happened. Be on the lookout for your opportunity.
We just came back from San Francisco and our flight was delayed due to bad weather in Dallas. Fortunately, by the time our plane got here the weather had mostly passed but it was still pretty windy and bumpy during our descent.
Four plane rides over the last week have helped me become more comfortable with being uncomfortable in those kinds of situations. I feel I’ve really made progress in letting go of those things I can’t control.
This last flight I realized that while I knew I couldn’t control the bumpy ride I still tried to control my physiological response. I tried to control my nervousness and sweaty palms.
Once I realized that I let it go too. Instead of trying to control it I sat with it and felt how it felt. It wasn’t comfortable but it wasn’t really uncomfortable either. It was simply what I was feeling at that moment. Nothing more.
By adopting a standard called Conventional Commits for the git commits on your repo, and adding a tool that parses those commits, you can automate the versioning of code that follows semantic versioning. I’ve written a tool that parses Conventional Commits and I’ll talk through how I use it to automate my releases.
Conventional commits are a style of commit that originated in the Angular development team and are meant to solve the problem of automating versioning. I came across the idea of conventional commits years ago, before the standard linked above was created, when looking to automate module releases at a previous job.
Conventional commits are git commits which follow a specific format, for example:
feat: Add endpoint to the InputField API for formatting The feat: prefix in this format indicates that the change is a feature, which means that the semantic version’s minor version should be increased by one, and the description for that feature is “Add endpoint to the InputField API for formatting”.
To implement this parsing, we need two things:
An automation workflow that uses the parsed values to inform versioning, and
Ergonomic interaction points to inform the person using these formatted commits about what the automation does
I’ve written a command line tool, Swift Conventional Commit Parser, which is integral to the workflow I use for release automation.Footnotes
Swift Conventional Commit Parser has two commands, one for running on a pull request and one for running on a branch which should create releases. The two commands behave almost exactly the same, so once you’ve learned one there isn’t much to learn about the other.
These commands were designed for the place we need them in our automation, so let’s talk about how the pull request and release automation works. Throughout the remainder of this, I’m going to call the Swift Conventional Commit Parser the “commit parsing tool” or “the tool” for the sake of brevity.
I choose to use the commit parsing tool in the part of my pull request automation that runs tests. I do that because I use Danger Swift in that automation to report test results back to the pull request and it is simple to add the extra information from the commit parsing tool. This is what my GitHub Action YAML for macOS command line tools looks like today for that automation:
... jobs: ... test: runs-on: macos-14 env: GITHUB_TOKEN: ${{ secrets.GITHUB_TOKEN }} TARGET_BRANCH: ${{ github.base_ref }} steps: - uses: actions/checkout@v4 with: fetch-depth: 0 - name: Run Tests run: | git clone -b apple https://github.com/DavidBrunow/CI-Tooling.git CI-Tooling --depth 1 ./CI-Tooling/unpack.sh ./create_fixtures.sh gem install xcpretty gem install xcpretty-json-formatter defaults write com.apple.dt.Xcode IDESkipMacroFingerprintValidation -bool YES brew install jq export SCHEME=`xcodebuild -list -json | jq -r '.workspace.schemes[0]'` xcodebuild test -scheme $SCHEME -destination "OS=13.0" -derivedDataPath ../DerivedDataTests -enableCodeCoverage YES -resultBundlePath ../DerivedDataTests/coverage.xcresult | XCPRETTY_JSON_FILE_OUTPUT=result.json xcpretty -f `xcpretty-json-formatter` defaults write com.apple.dt.Xcode IDESkipMacroFingerprintValidation -bool NO brew install npm npm install -g danger ./CI-Tooling/swift-conventional-commit-parser pull-request -t "origin/$TARGET_BRANCH" > release_notes.json || true ./CI-Tooling/danger-swift ci There is a lot of noise in there that isn’t completely relevant to what we’re talking about here, but I think the extra context is useful for seeing how things fit together.
The key part for this discussion comes on the next to last line, where the parser tool is called:
./CI-Tooling/swift-conventional-commit-parser pull-request \\ -t "origin/$TARGET_BRANCH" \\ 2> swift_conventional_commit_parser_error.txt \\ > release_notes.json \\ || true This command takes in a target branch, which we’re passing along from the pull request’s target branch, and outputs any errors to a file called error.txt and any successful output to a file called release_notes.json. The || true at the end ensures that this command does not exit in an error. This is needed to ensure the pipeline continues running and allows Danger Swift to report everything, including any errors, back to the pull request.
The only error the tool will emit is when there are no formatted commits on the pull request branch. This error message is a great place to help folks learn about Conventional Commits and can be customized using the optional -n argument to pass in your own error message, which could link to how you use Conventional Commits in your CI system. By default, the error message links to the README on the Swift Conventional Commit Parser repo, which talks about how I use Conventional Commits.
The standard output from the tool is JSON. Here is an example:
{ "bumpType" : "minor", "releaseNotes" : "## [1.1.0] - 1970-01-01\\n\\n### Features\\n* Awesome feature (abcdef)\\n\\n### Chores\\n* Change the \\"total\\" field (abcdef)", "version" : "1.1.0" } We can take this output, or the error message, and use it in the Dangerfile to report back to the pull request:
if FileManager.default.fileExists(atPath: "release_notes.json"), let contents = FileManager.default.contents(atPath: "release_notes.json"), let jsonObject = try? JSONSerialization.jsonObject( with: contents, options: [] ) as? [String: Any], let releaseNotes = jsonObject["releaseNotes"] as? String { markdown("Release notes:\\n\\(releaseNotes)") } else if FileManager.default.fileExists(atPath: "swift_conventional_commit_parser_error.txt"), let contents = FileManager.default.contents(atPath: "swift_conventional_commit_parser_error.txt"), let errorMessage = String(data: contents, encoding: .utf8), errorMessage.isEmpty == false { fail(errorMessage) } else { fail("No formatted commit.") } This code in the Dangerfile will output errors on the pull request like this:
And will output the release notes on the pull request like this:
And that’s what it takes to make the pull request automation functional and ergonomic. Next, let’s talk about the release automation.
The commit parsing tool also needs to run on merges to release branches and the release command is built for that. The tool acts the same way as for pull requests, with the exception of not needing to pass in a target branch. Here is what the GitHub Action YAML looks like today for the release automation of macOS command line tools:
... jobs: release: runs-on: macos-14 steps: - uses: actions/create-github-app-token@v1 id: app-token with: app-id: ${{ vars.RELEASE_BOT_APPID }} private-key: ${{ secrets.RELEASE_BOT_PRIVATE_KEY }} - uses: actions/checkout@v4 with: fetch-depth: 0 token: ${{ steps.app-token.outputs.token }} - name: Release run: | git clone -b apple https://github.com/DavidBrunow/CI-Tooling.git CI-Tooling --depth 1 ./CI-Tooling/unpack.sh brew install jq # Run conventional commit parser CONVENTIONAL_COMMIT_PARSER_OUTPUT=`./CI-Tooling/swift-conventional-commit-parser release` if [[ "$BUMP_TYPE" == "none" ]]; then exit 0; fi VERSION=`jq -r '.version' <<<"$CONVENTIONAL_COMMIT_PARSER_OUTPUT"` RELEASE_NOTES=`jq -r '.releaseNotes' <<<"$CONVENTIONAL_COMMIT_PARSER_OUTPUT"` # Bump version FILE_THAT_NEEDS_VERSION_UPDATE=`grep -lr "@main" ./Sources` sed -i '' -E "s/(version: \\").*(\\")/\\1$VERSION\\2/" $FILE_THAT_NEEDS_VERSION_UPDATE # Update CHANGELOG RELEASE_NOTES=`sed 's/$/\\\\\\\\/g' <<<"$RELEASE_NOTES"` sed -i '' -f - ./CHANGELOG.md <<EOF 7 i\\\\ \\\\ $RELEASE_NOTES EOF # Push changes without running CI git add $FILE_THAT_NEEDS_VERSION_UPDATE git add CHANGELOG.md git commit -m "Release $VERSION [skip ci]" # Add tag git tag "$VERSION" git push origin git push origin "$VERSION" This automation first installs jq because we’ll be doing all our JSON parsing of the tool’s output in the automation’s shell script. If the bumpType is equal to “none”, and therefore no release is needed, the automation exits early. Otherwise, the release notes are added to the changelog, the code’s version is updated, the changes are added and committed to git, the repo is tagged, and all the changes are pushed to origin. The details about how this automation works is specific to the way I have my codebases setup, but the general process would be the same for any codebase.
With this automation in place, every commit to a release branch creates a new, properly semantically versioned release that can be distributed to your users.
That’s all it takes to setup this automated semantic versioning. Next I’ll talk about some approaches for this kind of automation that I rejected, in case you’re interested.
When figuring out how to automate versioning a few years ago, I considered and rejected a couple of approaches. I think it is useful to talk through why I rejected them, because at first glance they seem like a simpler approach than what I follow today. Plus, talking through them reveals what is important about the problem space of automating versioning. I’ll also talk through another approach that I did not consider a few years ago but that I think is relevant to the thought process:
Always bumping the patch version for any non-breaking changes
Using specially formatted branch names
Using specially formatted pull request titles
This is an approach that I didn’t consider when I first starting thinking about automating versioning, but I’ve recently heard that other folks might be doing this for their build automation. I’d reject this approach for a few reasons:
Always bumping the patch version means that you aren’t actually following semantic versioning, and I believe the most value you get out of semantic versioning is in the “semantic” part of it. Always bumping the patch version loses the semantic meaning of a version, which brings me to my second reason.
As a client of a library that bumps versions like this, I cannot trust the versioning to provide me with any information about how easy it will be to adopt the changes.
If you always bump the patch version, there is no “room” between versions to make a hotfix. For example, if I need to make a hotfix for version 1.0.1 but versions 1.0.2, 1.0.3, 1.0.4, and 1.0.5 have already been created, I have to get creative in my version naming to create a version between 1.0.1 and 1.0.2. If I were OK with the first point above, I’d bump the minor version by default to avoid this issue – but I’m definitely not OK with the first point.
I considered using specially formatted branch names, but that approach meant you either needed to know what kind of change you would be making when you started your effort, or you would have to change your branch name later in the effort to match the type of change. And while I like small efforts, one change per branch seemed overly limiting. Plus, in git, branches are ephemeral. I believe that any automated versioning should be idempotent and stable over time – no matter how many times it is run, given the same inputs it should always produce the same versions – and that would not be true when using branch names due to their inherent instability. Therefore I believe we should base our versioning on things that git considers to be more stable.
After rejecting specially formatted branch names, I considered something more flexible – pull request titles. Since pull request titles can be changed at any point in the pull request process, one could change the format of it without disrupting the remainder of the workflow too much since you don’t need to create a new pull request. But this approach has many of the same limitations as using branch names around one change per pull request and the automated versioning not being idempotent and stable over time.
Even worse, this approach would couple your automated versioning to your source control platform (GitHub, GitLab, etc.), which would be overly limiting in the long term.
Implementing Conventional Commit Parsing: There are many other tools out there that can parse conventional commits, many of those may fit your needs as well, but I know my tool better than those.
I have a strange balance of cynicism and idealism in the way I see the world. One area where I’ve been overly idealistic is when thinking about the power, influence, and voice that having large sums of money give you. In our democracy every person has a voice but the rich have a louder and more respected voice. I’ve tried to convince myself otherwise — that the poor and scrappy can get their voice heard too — but a few recent events have left me feeling jaded.
These events have one thing in common — the rich using the justice system and the ridiculous cost of going to court to get what they want. It is a crazy sort of vigilanteeism. One event is Peter Thiel’s war to destroy Gawker. Peter Thiel is a billionaire that was attacked by the online publication around 10 years ago and now he’s found a way to destroy them by financing lawsuits for third parties, like Hulk Hogan, against them. Another event is fictional but I’m sure it happens in reality also. It is the lawsuit that Hooli brings against Pied Piper on the TV show Silicon Valley. Hooli is the multi billion dollar giant corporation that can’t compete with the technology created by the poor start up Pied Piper on its own. It has to bring a frivolous lawsuit against them in order to stop them. The other example is private and I’m not going to share it here but I hope you get the idea from the first two.
I feel like justice in America is a luxury for the rich and I don’t like that. But I don’t know a better way to do it either.
What would you think if I told you that neurons in your brain fire differently depending on which direction you are facing and that you could improve aspects of your life by facing certain directions as much as possible. Would you believe me or would you think I’m speaking hokum? Would you test your experiences or simply write the idea off and move on to finding the next item to like in your Facebook timeline?
I’m the believing and testing type. I believe because I’m smart enough to know that we as a species don’t know a whole lot about anything, and I know a whole lot less than that. I test because the risk is low and because my experience of it is what actually matters. As we know from studies of placebos, our minds are strongly influenced by suggestion and I know my mind is no different.
I listened to part of a talk(it is the fourth video, I can’t find a way to directly link to it) tonight about neurons in the thalamus that are positively influenced by facing towards the east. The lecturer suggested that we should face our heads towards the east while we sleep to amplify that positive influence in the single place we spend the most time, bed.
I’m trying it — despite the fact that it sounds a little bit out there. But I surely don’t know what I don’t know.
Is your ego or the mission driving your action? Are you doing it because you want your name at the top or because you want to see this thing in the world?
When I’m working on a project I’m usually somewhere in the middle between mostly mission and a little ego or mostly ego and a little mission. These questions aren’t meant to judge and your reasons for what you do are your own and don’t matter to me. What matters is when your real reasons don’t align with what you’re telling yourself. If they don’t align then you may not get where you want to be because you’re heading the wrong way.
I’ve had my bicycle for about two years now, but I haven’t ridden it very much. It’s an older bike, but it was designed for racing so I know that it can handle higher speeds and the necessary stopping from those higher speeds. I know what it can do.
But that doesn’t mean that I know its limits. I haven’t spent enough time in the saddle to know what it can or can’t do when I’m riding it. I don’t know how sharp of a turn I can make without sliding or how hard I can push it while standing without throwing off the balance. To know those things I have to spend time riding and feeling out those limits.
When I was younger I wondered how I could build my confidence. I read magazine articles and tried to study confident people to figure it out. Looking back, I think I just needed more time in the saddle. I don’t believe you can rush confidence — it just comes from surviving life. I’m confident in my abilities now because I’ve been able to overcome every obstacle I’ve encountered. It hasn’t always turned out great, but I’ve always survived.
So if you’re feeling a lack of confidence around something in your life, find a way to do it more. Safely feel out those limits. It’s just like riding a bike.
Every day we take our dog, Dozer, on a walk around the neighborhood. Most days we walk the same route and see the same things. He smells the same trees and hydrants and marks the same spots. We usually see the same dogs at the same houses and those dogs bark or yap at him walking by.
But some days he doesn’t get barked at. Maybe we go at a different time and none of the dogs are out. Or maybe they are locked in the house because it is too wet out. Whatever it is, it seems to throw Dozer off a bit. He stares at the yard that usually has barking dogs as we walk by and he seems tense and more alert. He seems to believe that something is wrong.
Here is one interpretation that makes sense to me. A forest becomes quiet when a large threat is lurking. No creature wants to give away its location when it is threatened. Perhaps he goes on high alert when he doesn’t hear those familiar barks because he is worried that he is in danger.
Or maybe that’s the wrong interpretation. Dozer is a big dog and maybe he gets insecure when he isn’t being barked at. Surely, a dog of his size and strength should be seen as a threat by every dog he passes. If he doesn’t get those barks then he isn’t getting the respect he deserves.
Obviously I have no idea what goes through Dozer’s mind, but these are things I think about. And this all leads me to a hypothesis that I’m working on that I still haven’t quite fleshed out. The hypothesis has to do with Twitter and Facebook and social media and getting liked and favorited.
I know I like it when my Facebook posts get liked and my tweets get favorited. But why do I like that? Is it linked to the way Dozer behaves on our walks? Do I feel threatened or disrespected?
I painted the drawing I made last week.
Because I work in iOS development I choose to consume a variety of blogs and podcasts about iOS development and building a software business based upon iOS development and Apple’s App Store. One common topic of conversation is discoverability — how easy it is for customers to find my all. All of them seem to have the point of view that this problem of discoverability is unique to what we do. Some of them point to the faults in the App Store and say the Apple needs to fix this problem to help them.
Discoverability is a universal business problem and the best way that business has found to solve it so far is marketing. It isn’t Apple’s problem to solve, it is yours. Just like it isn’t a shopping center’s responsibility to ensure that a donut shop has customers. You, the iOS app developer, have to put effort in to let customers know about the awesome thing you’re doing — just like every other business.
Is there room for improvement on the App Store? Always. But Apple doesn’t owe us anything.
If I’m Marco Arment and I dislike the way bugs in the iOS Framework are being handled by Apple, here’s what I’ll do.
I’ll buy a domain name. pre-radar.com and pre-radar.org are both available. I’ll probably go ahead and get both.
Then I’ll build a site. Some sort of community site, probably something similar to Stack Overflow with reputation and badges. The site will allow developers to submit their code, which they believe is buggy due to the frameworks, for peer review. Since I have a large influence in the iOS Development Community, I can convince the best of the best developers to have a look at the code.
This peer review process will solve problems. First, it will get rid of many bad bug reports being filed to Apple, because someone would point out the error in the developer’s code that isn’t in the framework. Second, it would strengthen the reputation of pre-radar.com in the eyes of the community and in the eyes of Apple. Apple would be able to trust reports filed from the community. Third, it would build a combined voice that single tweets and angry blog posts cannot match — here are the bugs that we have found and verified: fix them.
By doing this, I also solve another big complaint about the current system – lack of transparency. The entire community can see everything submitted, and other developers can vote “me too” about bugs, after submitting their own code that shows the same behaviour.
I know, I know — Apple should do this. It is their responsibility to fix their system. But I’m a part of that system. And if I can make it better, why won’t I?
I don’t look back often. I choose to focus on the present while looking forward. But today is the day for looking back and remembering our sisters and brothers that gave their lives for our country. I’ll be reflecting on them today.
Whenever I travel by plane I like to wait until the very last minute before getting on the plane. While everyone else is jockeying for a good place in line, I’m sitting and relaxing. Until recently I didn’t know why they would be up like that for no reason.
Then I realized that they wanted something different than I did. They had a carry on that they wanted to be able to stow close to their seat. I put my carry on items in a bag small enough to put under the seat in front of me.
This idea can be applied throughout life. You can choose to try to be the best in a competition or you can choose to avoid the competition entirely.
Just want something different.
I struggle with the moral from the tale The Emperor’s New Clothes. In case you’ve never read it, here is the synopsis from Wikipedia:
It isn’t that I don’t understand the story but that I don’t know how to apply that lesson in the real world. Numerous times in my life I have met people filling the Emperor’s role who don’t respond well to any sort of criticism. Fewer times I’ve met people that think they are filling the child’s role who simply come across as assholes when they speak up.
Many things that I see as stupid make me want to say something. But what will be the benefit? I’ll either garner retaliation from the emperor or burn bridges in front of everyone else by looking like an asshole. And how can you be so sure that you are right? Few situations in your life will be as clear cut as a naked Emperor.
Here is how I suggest to handle it. In the great minority of situations you must say something, but you will know those times. Things like standing up for human rights.
The rest of the time, you don’t say anything at all. You smile and get along and have your own beliefs and go your own way and you don’t waste energy on it.
I was in a wooded area yesterday and happened to get a tick on me. I’ve never had one on me before so it was a new experience, as was pulling it off with tweezers (you have to pull really hard!). The most interesting part of the experience to me is my state of mind after finding this tick on me. I feel dirty, unsafe, violated, and paranoid. With every itch I feel or imagine I’m worried about other ticks getting on me despite the likelihood of that happening at home being very low.
This happens a lot when we encounter a small bad thing in our life. Our brain goes overboard trying to protect us from future occurrences regardless of any facts we present it. I’ve found the best way to handle it is not to argue with myself in my head. Instead I note the way I feel, acknowledge it as a feeling, and move on.
Looking back over the past year and a little more I cannot imagine starting this company on my own. Every day I learn more about my strengths and weaknesses and figure out I’m not as strong in some areas as I once thought. Fortunately, my business partner and girlfriend complements my strengths with her own and we have little overlap between the two. She’s great at things I’m not and vice versa.
Here’s a great example that isn’t business related, instead it is survival related (which obviously overlaps business at least a bit). I am awful at seeing dangerous patterns or shapes that aren’t moving. I know this because Brandy and I used to go walking on a trail that frequently had copperheads laying across it. I never was able to spot those snakes before she did and a couple of times I was walking too close to them before she pointed them out. That’s definitely my weakness and her strength. But if something is moving I spot it far more quickly than she does. So if something is lying in wait for us she sees it and if something is pursuing us then I’ll see it.
That’s a pretty good balance.
I had a few hiccups in my daily learning habit this month due to a trip to San Francisco and getting a little bit of a cold. I’ve also found it much harder to get excited about the topics I’ve chosen this time around — I don’t know if that speaks to how good the Stanford iOS 8 and Swift class was or just that I prefer more practical topics that don’t contain a lot of higher level math. Here is what I’ve learned about:
5-1-2015: Stanford How to Start a Startup #14 5-2-2015: Stanford How to Start a Startup #15 5-3-2015: Stanford How to Start a Startup #15, #16 5-5-2015: Stanford How to Start a Startup #16 5-6-2015: Stanford How to Start a Startup #16 5-7-2015: Stanford How to Start a Startup #17 5-8-2015: Stanford How to Start a Startup #18 5-9-2015: Stanford How to Start a Startup #19 5-10-2015: Stanford How to Start a Startup #20 5-11-2015: Stanford Machine Learning #1 5-12-2015: Stanford Hacking Consciousness #1 5-13-2015: Stanford Machine Learning #2 5-14-2015: Stanford Hacking Consciousness #1 5-15-2015: Stanford Machine Learning #2 5-16-2015: Stanford Hacking Consciousness #1 5-17-2015: None! 5-18-2015: Stanford Hacking Consciousness #2 5-19-2015: Stanford Hacking Consciousness #2 5-20-2015: None! 5-21-2015: Stanford Hacking Consciousness #3 5-22-2015: None! 5-23-2015: Hammock Driven Development, Rich Hickey 5-24-2015: Clojure for Java Programmers Part I, Rich Hickey 5-25-2015: Clojure for Java Programmers Part I, Rich Hickey 5-26-2015: Stanford Hacking Consciousness #3 5-27-2015: None! 5-28-2015: Stanford Hacking Consciousness #4 5-29-2015: Stanford Hacking Consciousness #4 5-30-2015: None! 5-31-2015: Stanford Hacking Consciousness #5
One of the quickest ways you can erode my trust is by asking me to sign something at the wrong time. Like an NDA before you discuss a project with me or a contract in a situation where a friendly handshake would do.
My policy is when in doubt, trust. You trusting me will make me trust you more. A positive cycle.
If everyone is shouting then joining them only adds to the noise. The first person to shout gets a reward but each person after her gets less. It doesn’t add to impact or success but instead makes the world a little bit worse. It drives away anyone who is following closely — those who truly care about what you’re doing.
A problem you’ll run into when trying to predict the future is figuring out what kind of math to use. It is easy to get things wrong if you try to do the math in your head since our brains aren’t very good at large numbers or logarithmic scales. Plus, the math you need to calculate something over two aces is different than if you need to calculate over more. What I’m trying to say is that you have to put the effort in to be methodical.
Using the wrong kind of math can trick you into thinking your estimate is in the ballpark if future reality when it actually isn’t on the same continent.
This week the idea of going to jail for something you believe in became much more real to me. In my mind, it is one thing to read about how people used civil disobedience and the trials they suffered decades ago and another thing to see it happening to members of your community right now. I’ve never before thought to ask myself what I would go to jail for.
I still don’t have an answer, but I’m pretty sure that fracking is not one of those things. When I read about our fellow Dentonites getting arrested for blocking the entrance to a fracking site I rationalized my lack of action. “I have bills to pay.” “I have work to do.” “They must be financially independent.”
I was just trying to let myself off the hook. What it comes down to is that I’m not as brave as they are. I’m not willing to sit in the way of a truck. I’m not willing to go to jail. I’m not willing to face who knows how much in court costs.
Those who have gone to jail for peacefully standing up for what they believe are heroes and I’m thankful they are a part of our community.
I started playing basketball in the 9th grade and I wasn’t very good. I had no coordination and could barely dribble and run at the same time. I couldn’t make a layup.
I kept working and kept getting better but throughout most of my years I sat on the bench. I think part of the reason for that was my typical way of wanting to define my own thing rather than play in someone else’s system — I was tall and wanted to play outside and our high school coach wanted a big tall guy to play near the basket all the time.
But the other part was that I wasn’t outstanding at what I did. I didn’t even know what would make me outstanding — I didn’t have that concept in my head. I could shoot from the outside really well but I couldn’t dribble the ball great so it was easy for little guys to take it from me and I’d get out of breath easily (although that was a problem our entire team had).
If I could go back and coach myself I’d make myself do the things I didn’t like more of the time. I’d have made myself run every day and constantly practice dribbling. Only then would I let myself practice the fun part of shooting.
I’d teach myself that I can improve in areas that I don’t like by just sticking with them every day. I’d build the confidence that I could out run, out shoot, and out dribble anyone. And I’d be good enough that it wouldn’t matter what system the high school coach had — he’d have to take notice and if he wanted to win he’d have to play me.
I don’t think us humans are good at making choices when any level of ambiguity or unknowns are involved. Take hiring a new employee as an example. The likelihood of finding the right person is a function of how clear the requirements for the position are and how much you know about each candidate. In most hiring situations I’ve been around the job is poorly defined and the only information you have about the candidate is what they have told you through their resume, cover letter, and a series of interviews. This is a situation where both parties need much more data to make a good decision. The amount of data is far beyond what you can get from doubling the number of interviews. You need to know what it is like to work with that person every day. She needs to know what her real job is and what her coworkers will be like to work with every day. Thousands if not hundreds of thousands of additional data points are needed. But they have to be the right data points. We don’t need to take her on a corporate retreat to see how she’d fit in (unless frequent corporate retreats are part of the job). We need relevant data. All the data in the world would actually make things harder to use because we can’t easily know which parts are relevant. The data we need is specific to our applicant, our people, our company, and the position we need.
This job applicant example was an easy one for me to come up with but I’m sure it isn’t the only situation where the same factors apply. How can you apply the same idea to your problems that don’t have great solutions?
Let’s take an example of collecting data on how your customers use your website. You can see what they click on, how often they visit, what kind of device they are on, and many other things that can tell you about them. You can use this data to make some relevant decisions like what kinds of devices you need to focus your testing on or what languages you need to support. Using the data in this way is smart and a powerful use of analytics.
I have a bias against using analytics because of another way people use them — to try to predict behavior. This is purely conjecture, but I feel like companies collecting huge amounts of data do so because they don’t understand human psychology and they believe that data about human behavior is a good replacement for that understanding. They probably think that the data is better than psychology because it is hard and factual compared to the inherent squishiness of psychology since humans are squishy.
Part of the reason I’m biased against analytics is because I believe I’m good at understanding human psychology. That shapes the way we run our company and is probably one of the fundamental reasons that companies like Apple and Google have such different approaches to product development. Apple believes they know what people want and only show the world those things. Google believes that data will tell them what people want and shares everything they are working on so they can get more data. I’m not sure that either approach is wrong but the approach you choose must be aligned with your resources and culture, so there may be a right and wrong answer for your situation.
Howdy!
On the ninth episode of The David Brunow Podcast I talked about the projects I’m currently working on, my thoughts on AI and big data, listening to and learning from very smart people, and how my previous efforts at doing this podcast have failed and how I’m trying to adapt to avoid that going forward.
Jeff Bezos at Code Conf: https://www.facebook.com/RecodeDotNet/videos/1048414361915213/
Elon Musk at Code Conf: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wsixsRI-Sz4&feature=youtu.be&list=PLKof9YSAshgyPqlK-UUYrHfIQaOzFPSL4
The Critical Path Podcast: http://5by5.tv/criticalpath
I have a pretty good memory and get bored fairly easily. That combination makes it difficult for me to sit through and pay attention to stories that I’ve heard before. Because of my distaste for it, I rarely tell the same story to the same person and I try to limit myself to only saying things once.
I’m starting to believe that good communication requires repetition. Not saying the same thing in the same words over and over, but changing the phrasing and the concepts at play in order to make the same point. This is especially true if you have a distracted audience and it is tough to find one that’s not.
So I’m going to try a new communication strategy where I don’t treat everyone like I want to be treated and start repeating myself more.
Certain skills are part of the “cost of entry” of starting your own business. These are the ones I can think of right now:
Competency with your product/service offerings
Customer Service
Marketing
Basic Accounting
Basic Technology Skills (email, word processing, spreadsheets)
You can rely on someone else to handle the bulk of some of these but you still need a basic competency in each. For example, you can hire a bookkeeper to track your income and expenses but you need to know how to review her work because it is your business and ultimately it is your success that is on the line if something is wrong.
If you think that being really good with your product or service is enough you’ll be surprised when no one knows about the great things you’re doing since you aren’t doing the right marketing or when you lose your customers because you aren’t good at taking care of them the way they expect.
Did I miss any skills that you think are necessary?
For the past while — months at least, maybe a year — I’ve been struggling with an idea. The idea is small and I’ve spent a disproportionate amount of time thinking about it.
I know that diversity of ideas and opinions in a work team is a good thing. Research shows this. Despite this knowledge, I was getting very frustrated by some of the ideas of my team members that conflicted with my own. I didn’t understand how a good thing could be affecting me that way. My rational mind was telling me “It is good to have this kind of diversity, it balances out the team. Your strength in this area will balance out a similar weakness in others.”
I’ve had a number of lengthy conversations with friends about this topic and I kept coming back to the idea that some diversity of ideas is good and some is bad[^1]. I just couldn’t figure out the distinction between the bad and good.
Recently I’ve figured it out: Values. My definition of Values is ideas that mean something important to a person.
If I split my ideas and opinions into two categories, Values and Everything Else, then my internal conflict makes sense. I can give myself a pass for not giving in on my Values[^2]. I’ll give some examples.
First, an idea that isn’t a Value, at least for me. “High Fructose Corn Syrup is an awful invention that is making our world more unhealthy.” I fully believe that idea, but I won’t feel frustrated if someone I know drinks a Coke. Here’s another, “The Mac OS is far more stable and powerful than the Windows OS.” I definitely agree with this, but I don’t grind my teeth every time I walk by someone running Windows 8.
Now, an idea that is a strong Value for me. “The point of making things is to help other people, not to make money.” This idea resonates with me. Working in an environment with an atmosphere filled with views to the contrary leads to frustration. I am not a good fit for that environment.
So what are my Values? I don’t know them all, but here are a handful:
The point of making things is to help other people, not to make money
The best way to get more work is to deliver high quality work
Spend as much as you can on high quality tools
Be happy to pay for things
Ideas alone are worthless
The right technique or strategy does not deliver high quality work — doing the hard work does
Every being in this world is connected, and everything you do changes another’s life either for better or worse
You cannot compartmentalize your life or your mind
What you repeatedly do you will repeatedly do
You cannot multitask and the one thing you are doing right now deserves your full attention
Software should be designed for the user, not for the programmer
[^1]: My statement that “some diversity is good and some is bad” is highly context-dependent. I am definitely not saying that no one in this world should have different Values than I do. I am saying that a difference of Values between the people you see every day causes problems.
[^2]: Not giving in on Values still does not make it OK to be a bigot.
What if the penalties in football were more like the penalties in the corporate world? What if, instead of negating any forward progress, penalties were simply subtracted from the gains?
This would create a remarkably different game. There’d be penalties on every down! A holding call on a 15 yard run would result in a 10 yard gain. Penalties would no longer be a deterrent to illegal play, they’d just be part of a good strategy.
Us folk in the technology world crave novelty. Technology is never moving fast enough and we always want the next next new thing. Tech companies and “journalists” take advantage of our wants and weekly or sometimes daily fan the flames with the latest press release disguised as news story.
Making an impact and creating powerful, impactful things is the opposite of chasing novelty. It requires dedication and focus and the willpower to avoid the distractions of the new thing.
As tech people it is important that we pay attention to the tech landscape and what is going on in general. But we need to make sure we don’t get caught up in it.
I lean a lot. While making coffee the morning I caught myself leaning my hips against the sink. Right now I’m leaning over the dining table while writing this. Later today I’ll relax on the couch and lean back.
I lean too much. Leaning means I can’t support my mass and that I need help. Occasional help is fun but spending my day moving between different things to lean on is not.
I have a fairly high threshold for absorbing new content and ideas. It is part of the reason why I’m so good at what I do because the technology world is constantly changing with new content and ideas coming at you all the time. But something about today’s WWDC got me feeling a little lost in the swirling flow of announcements.
Being overwhelmed felt strange. I don’t know if I’m getting better at telling how my body feels, if my new job flexibility let me relax more, if this event just had more going on, or if I’m just paying attention because I write about something every day, but I haven’t noticed this feeling in a long while.
The most striking part of the feeling was my brain trying to put things together in different ways. It felt as though fundamental rules might not apply anymore — like if all the sudden gravity behaved differently — and I felt my mind open up just a little bit instead of clinging to what it knows. Like it was trying to connect the dots in a new pattern.
I don’t know how much of being overwhelmed like this I can handle. Maybe once a year is just the right amount.
Apple’s annual Worldwide Developers Conference (WWDC) is next week and I’m excited about watching it. I’m not excited for any particular thing that’s coming because I don’t know what’s coming. That surprise is helping to build my anticipation but more so I’m looking forward to the showmanship. In particular I’m looking forward to how the showmanship makes me feel. I’m looking forward to Apple leaders taking and commanding the stage and slowly revealing their story with perfect pacing building to new announcements. I’m looking forward to well-crafted videos that show great things being done with Apple products. I’m excited about the feeling that I’m part of something much bigger than me — the Apple developer community — and that we are all coming together for this one thing for this one week.
People, even cynical software developers like me, want to be wowed. We want to be part of something bigger than ourselves. We want someone to put the effort into showmanship for us.
Apple isn’t magical — they just understand what people want. Another thing I’m looking forward to next week is absorbing more lessons on how they do it so I can do the same in the future.
If someone has to follow up with me on something that they’ve asked me or that I’ve promised to do, I feel as though I have failed. And one of the easiest ways to get under my skin is to say you are going to do something and then not follow through. I see this all the time in the professional world.
It seems so simple, but it is a great way to stand out. If I can give you something to do and be 100% confident that you will get it done or come to me with any issues without my follow up then you are on my very short list of people I want to work with.
The hardest time to follow up with someone is when delivering bad news, but that is the most important time to do it, not an excuse not to.
I’m starting to falter on my habits. I’m losing the motivation to continue to create every day. I’ve written something every day for 144 days and I feel like I’m starting to run out of things to say.
That’s strange though because new things keep happening. That means I must have new things to talk about and that makes me think I’m getting tired or lazy.
This is the point where I push through and put one foot in front of the other. What I write might not be very good during this slog, but I’ll get through it and to the other side. I know this is good for me and I have to force myself to do it even when most of me wants to stop.
I really like the idea of doing more with less. With getting things done with as few resources as possible. Using elegance and efficiency rather than brute force. Lotus cites this idea as their core philosophy and I love the quote they cite from their founder, Colin Chapman, “Simplify, then add lightness”. The reasoning behind it is that in racing every additional pound is constantly requiring more effort and therefore slowing you down by making it more difficult to accelerate, decelerate, and turn.
Running lean and using elegance and efficiency requires effort and nearly constant vigilance. The natural path for man-made things is to grow bloated, add more things, get more complicated, and reduce efficiency. “Simplify, then add lightness” can apply to more than just cars. It can apply to software, home appliances, lifestyles, and businesses.
How can you apply it in your life and work?
What would your life look like if you removed everything new for a little while, maybe two weeks? Looking at my life, I’d have to cut out social media, news, blogs, media I haven’t seen or heard before, learning new things, and meeting new people. Would cutting out those things make my life better or worse? Would it be nice to take a break from novelty every now and then, maybe on the weekends?
What do you think? Does the idea of missing out on novelty make you cringe or sound like a relief?
I have an unusual way of handling invoicing compared to the rest of the consulting industry. Usually you’ll have people that will either bill everything by the hour and put more of the risk of anything not going to plan on the client, or you’ll have people that will bill everything at a fixed price which puts more risk on their shoulders but also some benefit if they can continually outperform their estimates.
I do it differently. I give an estimate up front and my clients won’t have to pay more than that amount, as long as the scope of work doesn’t change. But I also track my hours and only invoice for the actual hours I worked. I’m taking on all the risk myself.
I do this because I see invoicing as something more than a way to receive money. I see it as a way to build trust and loyalty, a way to honor transparency, and a way to provide excellent customer service.
I am building trust because I am taking on extra risk. It will be clear to clients that I am not doing my work solely for the money. They will see that my primary motivation is to help them.
I honor transparency by showing them the actual hours I worked. They won’t wonder if I got too good of a deal out of them like you do after you buy a car from a dealership.
All of that leads to an overall excellent customer experience, which will lead to more work (when combined with high quality work, of course.) Future work is much more important than getting the most money right now.
Most days I don’t feel inspired to write a blog post. Instead I just sit at the dining table until a good-enough idea falls out of my head that I can write about. If I waited for inspiration before writing I’d write once a month or so — but realistically I wouldn’t write at all since I wouldn’t be in the habit and the friction of getting started would be enough to stop me.
The same idea applies to work, exercise, podcasting, and everything else you want or have to do in life. If you want to do it regularly you need to build a habit rather than waiting for inspiration.
Back in November I tested the maximum zoom levels of three different mapping options. The three options I tried were the built in Apple Maps using MapKit, Mapbox, and Google Maps. Back in February Mapbox released a new version of their iOS SDK that with one feature being higher zoom levels and today I got around to testing how that impacts my initial results.
Below I’ve put what each looks like running on an iPad Mini 4 running iOS 9. Obviously, the data for each location on Earth could vary across all three services and my one data point doesn’t provide enough information to answer every question about how each of them will work for you. To try to help that, I’ve put the source code for my test app on Github so you can test locations around you. If you happen to use it, I’d love to hear about your results!
Apple Maps
Mapbox
Google Maps
As you can see, Google Maps is still the clear leader in quality. What you don’t know from that picture that I do is that the building in it is under construction currently and that construction only shows up on the Google map — so their imagery is not only higher quality but fresher as well.
Mapbox does allow greater zooming than in the last version I tested but for at least this location the imagery is too low quality for the extra zooming to matter.
Sometimes relentless drive isn’t the answer. Sometimes you have to stop, slow down, or sometimes turn around. That’s the natural way of things.
For about four months of the year I willingly choose to subject myself to what I refer to as “Beta Season.” This is the time of year following Apple’s annual developer’s conference when I install the newest versions of Apple’s operating systems on the devices that I use every day. Devices I use to get my job done.
The best part of this time of the year is not the cool new toys or showing off to people that I’m special and they aren’t, although those are great. The best part is seeing how unstable and unusable software from one of the best software companies in the world can be.
Seeing this lets me know that Apple puts a ton of effort into making good software. It doesn’t come easily and they don’t magically write bug free code. They put in the work over several months to make their code run nearly flawlessly. Knowing this inspires me to put similar work into what I do and to persevere when getting it right seems insurmountable.
I have a bad habit when I’m making something and I’m starting to get tired. I’ll encounter a more challenging or tedious problem then I can handle at the time and I tell myself “I’ll come back to this later” and add it to a mental checklist of things that need fixing later. This leads to an awful burden as I progress through a project and this list grows. It also leads to me thinking that I’m further along in the project than I am because I forget about these items while measuring my progress.
I figure there are three ways I can improve upon my methodology that will help me create better quality things, measure progress better, and reduce my mental overhead during a project:
Push myself to solve the problem right when I notice myself falling into this tendency — Sometimes I have the mental energy to solve the problem and I’m just being a bit lazy. In those cases I need to push myself a little harder.
Keep a written list of the items that I need to revisit — This will reduce my mental overhead while also providing a better way of estimating progress since these items are written down right in front of me.
Take a break — Sometimes my mind is tapped out and I just need to stop and go for a walk or sit and enjoy some quiet. In those situations, pushing myself forward will lead to poorer output and wasted time.
Now that I’ve outlined these solutions I’m going to set myself up for success by preparing my work environment in any ways I can to reduce friction while working. In this case, I’ll start a list on one of the windows in the office that I use as a draw erase board for each project I’m working on so I can quickly add items without thinking much effort. Plus I’ll dump out anything that’s been collecting in my brain already.
Once I’ve done that, I’ll only have one hard problem — figuring out which option is the right one for each situation.
Researching what you want to do — the project you want to bring to the world — will only get you so far. You can’t learn every lesson ahead of actually doing it. Research won’t prepare you for how everything will work in your context. You’ll learn more in one week of your product being in the wild with world you want to bring it to than you will over months of research.
Prepare yourself. But when in doubt pull the trigger on it.
Programming is addictive. You solve a problem and then run into another one. You have to figure out what is causing it and how it fits in with everything else. Where the next piece of the puzzle fits so you can get one step closer to solving it. The challenges naturally progress in difficulty as you get better and want to do bigger and more complicated things.
I’ve recently decided to stop using an Internet service that I’ve been using for years and I’m amazed at how joyful I feel about leaving that service. I’m amazed because I didn’t even know that I was displeased with the service so this joy came out of nowhere.
Thinking about it more, the service has rough edges that irritate me just a little bit every time I use it, like a slow and buggy mobile client and a mediocre desktop client. These tiny irritations have been adding up in the back of my mind.
My takeaway from this is to ask myself what else I can take away that could bring this kind of joy? What other ways can I simplify my life?
I’m in the depths of creating an app right now and I’m not having fun. I’m fighting with mental data hierarchies and workflows and wrangling pixels and spending far too much time in my head. I feel disconnected from the real world. Parts of me want to surrender and admit that I’m not good enough, that I’m a fraud.
The work I do isn’t hard. I sit at a desk and type and think. But I want this process to be fun. Lollipops and sunshine all the time.
That’s just not the way it works. Sometimes doing what you like doing sucks. I cannot stand feeling the way that I feel right now.
I’m sure I’ve written these same words before but I don’t think I can write them enough. Most people will stop here. The voices in their head will win out and they will find something less painful.
Don’t stop here. Push through, persevere. The pain is temporary.
Separating people into two types is a silly exercise — obviously you could say just about anything for those two types and it would be both obvious and not very insightful — but I’m doing it anyway. There are people that have created something and released it into the world and there are people who have not.
I have a decision to make regarding the back injury I sustained while in the Army. I have the right to appeal the Army’s finding that I was 0% disabled at the time of my discharge. There is no risk for me making this appeal — the worst that can happen is that they deny it and I’ve spent some time filling out forms.
Tonight I’d like to talk about why I don’t want to make this appeal.
Despite my back injury I am completely able to do my job. I make good money doing work I enjoy. While extra benefits would be nice, I don’t feel like I need them.
The biggest reason why I don’t want to make this appeal is that I feel that I am giving up responsibility for my life. I feel that the moment I say something like “the Army is responsible for making my life work with my injury” that I am letting go of my own responsibility. I’m worried that that simple change of mindset is enough to change the way I see the world in more situations. That I’ll be looking for more situations where I can hold someone else responsible.
Writing it out, my reasoning sounds a bit out there. It is unlikely that my personality would change like that through one decision.
But I know that if I hold on to my responsibility that I will reinforce the part of me that I want to thrive. And I firmly believe that we are all of the thousands of decisions we make a day.
Tomorrow I’ll talk through the things that make me want to make the appeal.
We need them both. All consistency is boring and life passes us by. All variety and we’re worn out and can’t enjoy anything. There’s a middle ground — a different one for you than I — that we need to find where we have certain things that are consistent. Those are our roots in the ground. The ground may shift but it does so slowly, as we age and everyone around us does. But our branches experience variety all the time as the winds blow them around. We need them both.
The newest version of the Apple Watch software has built in reminders to take a minute to breathe. It guides you through taking deep breaths for one minute every four hours. I’ve been using it for the last few days and repeatedly find myself feeling like I don’t have a minute to spare. When I do take the time I enjoy it but that enjoyment isn’t enough to convince me to slow down for a moment. I think that says more about me than it does this new functionality.
The only way to have an educated opinion about a topic is to immerse yourself in it. TV shows and movies glorify a fake type of leader who makes decisions with little to no information just going by her gut. What they do show is the days, weeks, months, and years that that person spent being surrounded by their problems.
Don’t rush to make a decision. Sit with it, spend some time with it, and allow yourself time to think.
Tonight I’m going to talk about why I want to make an appeal about my 0% disability rating from the Army. The main reason comes down to pain.
I’ve been in varying amounts of pain every day for the last ten years. I don’t let it limit me too much, but more than an hour and a half of standing and walking around puts me in a bad place so I avoid that as much as I can.
This pain means I also couldn’t do what the Army trained me to do when I got out — be a mechanic. Instead, I took a very low paying job as a bank teller because that’s all I could get at the time with no degree and little experience.
I usually blame myself for this pain. I could’ve protected my back better. I could have not tried lifted as much as I did and I could have had better form.
But really, am I responsible for getting hurt while doing my job? I find it hard to convince myself of that.
I still don’t know what I’m going to do about this appeal.
I’ve been watching WWDC videos about Swift. The language is undergoing big changes which will likely irritate many people. Every project that has been created in Swift will need to have at least one line of code changed and likely more. This is exactly the type of “bad thing” that people waiting to adopt Swift have been warnings about — the change that breaks everything and makes everything you already know useless.
The leaders and contributors on the Swift project, which is open source, had to know that they’d get significant pushback against a change this big that has the potential to break so many things. But in the name of getting the language right they pushed through. They have a higher standard that their pushing themselves toward and they knew they didn’t get there on the first iteration so they are making the necessary changes.
Almost all the code I’ve written over the last two years has been in Swift and each of the projects will need to be modified. I’m not irritated at this fact or the people who decided to change Swift. I love that they are raising the bar on quality and making something truly great. It inspires me to strive for the same.
I’m a very trusting person. I believe you don’t need a contract where a handshake will do and if something goes wrong I’ll give you the benefit of the doubt that it isn’t your fault.
But despite my trusting attitude, being in a situation where I feel like someone is taking advantage of me is awful. I can easily see why people inherently distrust — simply to avoid that feeling.
But inherent starts one of those vicious cycles. The situation you’re in worries you a little so you start thinking you can’t trust the person. The fear and other negative voices in your head start screaming at you that you’re doing something dumb and that you’re dumb for it and that you are a sucker. It’s a truly awful feeling that will take your feet out from under you. So you back out of the situation you’re in. You don’t have all the facts but backing out feels safer and smarter.
Then your mind goes to work to rationalize your decision. The stories you tell yourself and others change and you become the hero of them — the smart hero that saw what the evil person was doing to try to take advantage of your generosity. You repeat this story to yourself and to those you care about. The fear spreads and the cycle continues. The next time your friend is in a situation where she is feeling the same things she will remember your story and the cycle continues, the fear spreading like a virus.
Meanwhile, in the real world you backed out of a situation that scared you but in which other the person intended no harm. She was just living her life and doing her thing and then something she did spooked you. She wasn’t out to get you. She didn’t want to steal from you or cause harm. She was just reacting to the changing events in her life. You will never know this, of course, and you will never know any benefits that might have come out of working through that situation.
I encourage you to sit with that awful feeling a little longer than you want to. Let it wash over you. Don’t react. Just sit, feel, and absorb. Let it pass. And once it passes, gather whatever information you need, and make a decision.
When I know my bank account is low I don’t like checking it. Obviously not checking it doesn’t make my bills go away or more money magically appear. But it makes me feel better emotionally. I don’t have to deal with the burden of knowing how little I have at that moment — I get to postpone it to another day. I’m hiding the truth from myself.
I do something similar with estimating how long projects will take and how much time I have available for them. I choose not to look at my schedule because it is so packed that I can’t possibly get everything done in the time I’ve promised. I hide from that truth and that hurt my business and me.
Hiding from the truth doesn’t change it. Hiding is a crutch. Sometimes you need it when recovering from a broken leg. But usually you don’t need that crutch and instead you need to face reality and do what you can about it. Facing it means you can make better decisions and prepare yourself for a future with less hiding.
I believe that if we look back at our history and we aren’t offended by parts of it then we aren’t making progress. And I believe that it is important to make sure we don’t hide the parts of our history that we are ashamed of and offended by. It is important to remember them.
By remembering them we remember and honor the struggle that those who freed us from them went through. And we give ourselves proof that we can make it through similar struggles today.
We do ourselves no good by pretending these things didn’t happen.
If you’re doing things right you’ll see the world a little bit differently today than you did yesterday. Something you’ve exposed yourself to for a while will snap into focus and make sense. Or you’ll encounter something new that feels fuzzy and undefined. The same things happened a week, a month, and a year ago to shape who you are today. A different you than you were.
Our mind is shaped by what we expose it to. If I’m dissatisfied with my state of mind then the easiest way to make a change is to look at who and what I watch, read, and listen to and cut out the ones that aren’t getting me where I want to be. Sheltering myself isn’t always the right thing to do. As with all things there is a season for each — a season to open myself up to new ideas and thoughts and a season to restrict those inputs. I’m starting to get fed up with those inputs so I think I’m heading into a new season.
Nothing can fill the hole in my heart from saying goodbye to my daughter for another three days. Nothing can make it easier.
All I can do is appreciate the time with her and remember her fondly when she’s not around.
Father’s Day, and every other day, I love and miss you Emma.
Why are you fearful? Why does someone want you to be fearful? She can control you if she can make fear drive your decisions.
I believe that every choice you make as a business should lead to the best possible customer service. If you do it right, optimizing for customer service will lead to more customers that want to work with you again. Optimizing for customer service may cost you more on the front end but those costs will be more than offset by the lower initial customer acquisition costs — you won’t have to find and convince as many customers.
It was with this same mindset that I wrote about invoicing a few weeks ago, and tonight I have more thoughts about invoicing, specifically about the costs our customers see on their invoice and more importantly, the costs they don’t see.
Our customers don’t see any itemized costs after their subtotal. If we owe sales tax or if we have shipping costs in addition to the price of our goods or services, we eat them. We do this because we don’t want our customers to be surprised by additional costs after they already had a cost in their mind. They just don’t have to worry about it.
I understand this isn’t always possible. We are fortunate that we are a small company and we only work in a small area because our accounting could be a nightmare if we tried to do this at a larger scale.
My advice is to always consider customer service when making your business decisions. Think about how you can create the best experience for your customers.
When creating something new you need to know where it will go in people’s lives. Will it be something they use first thing in the morning? When they’re on their morning commute? Before each meal? How will what you’re creating fit into what they already do? Their life is probably overcrowded so you need to find a way to displace something else, find a way to save them time, or create such a good story for the value of your creation that they’ll find a place to put it.
This is one of the places that people get the most deluded. They think that what they are making will fit into people’s lives easily but that generally isn’t the case. This is one of the areas you really need to look at objectively and with fresh eyes.
A couple of weeks ago I was in the midst of working on a project that required more intensive thinking than I’m used to for most software development. It had to deal with drawing lines and vector math and linear algebra that I haven’t had to dig into in a while.
I’d estimated the entire project would only take 60 hours and I had some free time in my schedule so I was sure that I could get it done in two weeks — I mean that’s just 30 hours a week, that’s easy!
So it turns out that when I’m thinking about hard things there is a limit to the amount of productivity I can get out of sitting at the computer and tapping away at a problem. And at that limit I just need to walk away and offload the problems I’m having to my subconscious.
And this brings me to the title of this post. Good scheduling, like good design, needs white space. It needs empty periods of not working to give shape to the work periods.
Today I heard from a local small business owner about how often he has had to change his business plan because the plan didn’t fit with real life. We’ve definitely been doing the same thing and I think it is critical to running a business the right way.
Since we want to help other small businesses, we have to look at what they need and how we can provide that. We can’t just stick with our initial thoughts about how the world works even though we’ve gathered more information that tells us different. And we can’t just do what we want to do if we truly want to be in a role of serving our clients. We have to go to what they need.
You’ll always need some limits of “that type of work isn’t for us,” but I’d recommend reevaluating those each time you confront another decision about them. You might be clinging to old data and world views. It might be time to change plans.
61% of gun deaths in the US are suicide. A moment of overwhelming weakness, sadness, pain or other negative emotion, easy access to a lethal weapon, and a life is lost, sending ripples of pain through everyone around her.
I don’t believe that being true to yourself is as easy as it sounds. The phrase makes it seem like you can just exist and fulfill it. But without conscious effort I believe it is easy to slip into someone else’s expectations. I have to actively pay attention to that and make corrections when necessary.
Similarly I have to manage how others see me — manage my appearance to the outside world. We do this in a number of ways, each of which reflects at least a little about ourselves because when we put in effort we do so towards the things we value. Likewise if you put in no effort that still reveals information.
Managing appearances comes up every day we run our small business. We think about the time we want to use in an email, the clothes we want to wear to a meeting, what the copy on our website and invoices says about us. There is a balance to strike though — too much management can make it seem like you’re scheming and inauthentic. Too little can seem like you don’t care.
Not too long ago most people only had crappy cameras that were difficult to use, had poor viewfinders that made it hard to know exactly what you were taking a picture of, and required careful handling of the film and a trip to the pharmacy to get the pictures developed. Now many more people have an amazing camera in their pocket with a 4 inch viewfinder so they know exactly what they’re taking a picture of and no requirement to handle the pictures carefully or take them to someone else before you can have them. Amazing things will come out of this as photography is brought to everyone.
Not too long ago the only way other people would read your writing was when you wrote a book or got published in a magazine or journal. Book publishers and magazine editors were the gatekeepers who decided what got in and what got cut. Now anyone with an internet connection can share their writing with everyone in the world for free or very cheap. The possibilities for expressing yourself are limitless and at your fingertips and amazing things will come out of this as everyone is given a voice.
I’ve never been the kind to follow trends, mostly because I’ve been oblivious to them. I never knew what was the cool thing to wear so I never went to the effort to buy it and wear it. This has led me to be picked on quite a bit when I was younger, for silly things like wearing black socks to school.
Recently I realized that it is really easy to know what is trendy — simply pay attention to what people are doing. In fashion, look at what people are wearing and see the patterns. If you repeatedly see the same item or style then it is probably in fashion at that time, most likely for some reason that seems completely arbitrary and makes no sense to me. Like how black athletic socks are now trendy and white ones aren’t — the opposite of what I grew up knowing.
But I still don’t have any desire to be trendy myself. That takes a lot of effort and money and caring that I just don’t have. But I do find it interesting to observe. I can get an idea of what group a person wants to belong to by paying attention to what they wear.
I’m going to talk about something more technical today that may be outside what many people will find useful. I create a lot of software projects from scratch. As a consultant I get brought in to create a thing that hasn’t existed before and make it happen. Generally I go through this process shortly after the requirements have been outlined and before they’ve been fully defined. I’m good at handling situations with ambiguity which really helps when the client either doesn’t know or can’t express exactly what she wants.
During this process I try to keep everything as flexible as possible. This means quick iterations on items and not handling every special case during the first round. The first round of code is partially exploratory as we see what works and doesn’t once we hold it in our hand. This first round is one of a few rounds, each of which further hardens the code into something stable.
But in the early phases the code must remain malleable. For that reason I won’t handle every possible error condition or write tests in the early phases. That effort could be wasted in more than one way. First, we may decide that the feature isn’t necessary anyway and throw it out. Second, the more I build around the first phase of code the more invested in it I’ll feel and the less likely I am to remove something that isn’t working right. It isn’t rational, but I’ll feel like I’ve wasted the effort and remember how much I put into it and that will discourage me from taking actions I need to take.
I’ve never blacksmithed before, but I’m guessing the way I build an app is similar to how a blacksmith makes a sword — keeping it fluid and malleable in the early stages and making it harder and stronger with each subsequent pass.
Far too slowly our country is starting to put into effect the kinds of policies that represent the America that I was told that we were while growing up. But thankfully, one more legal barrier to equality has been knocked down and now everyone can legally get married.
We still have a long way to go to get where we need to be — a place where we all treat our sisters and brothers as though they are just like us.
But this is one momentous step and I’m so happy to see it happen.
Today we drove to Colorado and we are staying in a camper on a piece of land in the mountains. This place is remote and has no power, water, or cell phone connectivity.
It wasn’t until I was here in this place what it is like to not be connected. Before leaving, I didn’t even think to tell my friends and family that I’d be in reachable because the very idea of being unreachable is so foreign to me.
None of my devices work for the things I usually use them for. My phone can take down this blog post as a note, but it can’t get my email or tell me what the weather will be like later today. My watch can tell me the time and track my movement and heart rate, but it can’t tell me when the sunset is going to be.
I don’t think that being disconnected is bad, but it is very different. And will require some more planning ahead next time.
I’ve recently noticed that I don’t always noticed the flaws in a product. Generally I feel I’m better at noticing the problems in something I make than something that someone else does which I guess isn’t a bad thing. But lately it felt like everyone was complaining about the Apple Watch and its failures and the entire time I was thinking “it isn’t so bad.”
Now for a normal person it probably isn’t so bad that I don’t complain about the Apple Watch or even really notice it’s shortcomings. Obviously I don’t have any control over their design direction so in the grand scheme of things it doesn’t matter what I think. But I’m an entrepreneur, a technology entrepreneur, and I feel like I might be missing out on opportunities by not paying attention to what is wrong in the things I use.
In watchOS 3 Apple has made huge improvements to the usability of the Apple Watch because they noticed the problems with it. That’s their job. I need to notice those same things, even if I can’t control them. I need to know the good from bad.
Two metaphors for how to view life: like morning rush hour traffic or like out of state highway travel.
Morning rush hour traffic is all about you wanting to get to the same place faster than everyone else. When someone cuts you off, she gets a little ahead and you get a little behind. This dynamic rewards aggressive behavior and doing what you can to ensure that no one takes what is yours.
Out of state highway travel is all about you getting to a distant destination. Some others on the roads with you might be going to the same place, but the farther the distance the less likely that is. Most of the time you are surrounded by people that are going their own way to their own destination which is different than yours. They have no incentive to slow you down or cut you off because you achieving your goal has no effect on them achieving theirs.
You can choose which life you want. You can go after the same things that everyone else does and fight your way to the top (or be out-fought and remain somewhere in the middle.) Or you can decide your own path which doesn’t involve direct competition and allows you to peacefully make your way towards the place that is right for you.
I’m choosing the second.
Some days software feels so fragile. I’ll be notified about two or three completely unrelated issues from a few different applications and it feels like everything is broken.
On those days it feels like I’m building a giant castle out of individual toothpicks, none of which are held together by anything more than gravity and sheer will.
I know that these applications have a solid architecture and that bugs are unavoidable. I also know that I’m the go-to guy when no one else can solve a problem — so I’m going to see a lot more brokenness than most.
But knowing that doesn’t help the feeling that I’m going to bump into a wall and accidentally knock the whole thing down. I’ll just have to sleep that off.
It has been over six years since I’ve written anything for my blog. I stopped writing due to a number of factors but most of them are irrelevant for what I want to write about today. Today I’m going to focus on the technical reasons behind my writing drought, so the relevant bits are the ones around the technology that powered my blog: static site generation powered by a tool called Magneto and a Linux server hosted by Linode.
Magneto is like many other static site generators in that it is written in Ruby, allows complete customization using Ruby templating and CSS, and parses a collection of Markdown files to generate the blog’s content. But Magneto is also different than the most popular static site generators in that the author built it as a fun side project and not for general use. I can’t remember with any certainty but I think they advised against anyone else using it. Apparently I’m drawn to using things I shouldn’t because I adopted it as my static site generator of choice shortly after they open sourced the project.
If you look in the archives here you can see that I wrote hundreds of posts using this setup. At times it was easy, especially when I was on a roll of posting regularly and my tooling (my computer, operating system, Ruby version, etc.) wasn’t changing. But when my posting was irregular or my tooling changed I felt pain. The errors I ran into were obtuse and cryptic. While trying to think of a way to describe it the only thing that comes to mind is the “PC LOAD LETTER” scene from the movie Office Space.
A large part of the problem is that I was learning Ruby as I encountered these issues and, while I was learning, Ruby was changing, growing, and releasing new versions. My pace of learning would never keep up with the pace of change because my use case was limited and I just didn’t flex those muscles often enough. My hobby use of Ruby could only lead to more pain.
After fighting with Ruby for who knows how long I still had the task of getting those files I generated onto the Linux server. It is a fairly straightforward task — all one needs to do is to run a tool called rsync from the Terminal to copy the files from one’s local machine, like the laptop I’m typing on right now, to the server. I cannot possibly explain, or even understand myself, all the tension in my body that has been built up by such a simple thing. I just could not remember how to run the command properly from one invocation to the next. This was fine when I could just press the up key in the Terminal to get to the last time I recited the encantation but that was not reliable enough over time because I’d lose the history in one way or another. Today I’d write a very simple shell script that would remember the command for me but at that time I had no experience with shell scripts. Back then my brain would much rather learn about new shiny tools than learn about the basic fundamentals like shell scripting.
Speaking of new shiny tools, somehow I got it into my head that a task runner was the thing I needed so I tried out the different task runners du jour, although the only two I can remember were a Rakefile and Grunt. Grunt is a tool written in JavaScript and everything I mentioned above about Ruby changing, growing, and releasing new versions is at least an order of magnitude worse (or better, depending on your point of view) in the JavaScript ecosystem. And I also had the same problem of not using these task runners enough to be familiar with their idiosyncrasies — neither Ruby nor that sector of the (very large) JavaScript ecosystem were part of my day-to-day work.
One theme from my experience has stood out more than any other: not being intimately familiar with your tools and their ecosystem leads to the kind of pain that isn’t good for me. Given that, I’ve tried to find ways to use the same tools I use to develop for Apple’s platforms in my day job. That started with looking into some open source static site generators written in Swift but none of those stuck. The Swift those tools use is the same Swift that I use daily but the approach was much different than the code I would write and I wasn’t bought into the ecosystem for each of the projects. I also went a long ways down the path of writing my own static site generator but that has turned into a big thing that I haven’t been able to devote time to.
Something else clicked during WWDC this year. The improvements in DocC, Apple’s documentation generation tool which can also generate static sites, plus the support for documentation previews in Xcode made me think that maybe DocC could work for my blog. Plus, I write a lot of documentation as part of my job and I’ve wanted to get more familiar with DocC so I could use it even more at work. Seems like a win-win-win.
Well, everything isn’t perfect but so far I’m probably more pleased than displeased with my experience.
Here’s what I like about using DocC to generate my blog:
Apple has created an opinionated and, to my eyes, pleasant design. My control over it is limited but not needing to make design decisions is nice and removes something that was causing me to get stuck.
Media handling is simple and straightforward.
I get automatic support for features I value, like light and dark mode switching, searching by post titles, and formatting of code blocks with proper syntax highlighting.
Everything is in an ecosystem (Swift Package Manager, DocC) that I can use ( and misuse) well due to my experience working with these tools daily.
I can easily build the site and push the changes to GitHub and host it on GitHub Pages for free.
Site generation is fast — it takes less than 2 seconds on my M2 MacBook Air.
Here are some things that I find noteworthy but not good or bad:
DocC will probably require a bit more manual work than other static site generators. For example, I don’t know of a way to loop over the N posts I’ve written most recently so I’m doing that manually. Other folks may have much less tolerance for that extra work but I actually kind of like it since the manual work is lightweight and doesn’t require abstractions.
And here is what I don’t like about it:
The site that DocC generates is very opinionated about looking like Apple’s documentation. This makes perfect sense for its intended purpose, but I’m not sure how I feel about it for this purpose I’m misusing it for.
The site that DocC generates has a base path of “documentation/MODULE_NAME” but I’d rather the site were at the root with no extra path. But really, do people care what URL they are linked to for a blog post? I don’t.
I don’t believe that DocC generates an RSS feed which is my favorite way of consuming a blog.
Here’s my workflow for writing posts using DocC now that I’ve finished the initial setup:
Create a file with a “.draft” extension for a new post. Using this extension excludes the file from static site generation until I’m ready to publish it.
Write. I’m using Xcode 15 beta 2 for all my writing because it has a nice preview of the rendered document.
When ready to publish, change the file extension to “.md”.
Create a link to the new post on the home page, for example: - <doc:06-29-blog-as-documentation>.
Run a script that generates the site. The script runs this command which is quite a mouthful and difficult to memorize:
swift package --allow-writing-to-directory docs generate-documentation --target Brunow --disable-indexing --output-path docs --transform-for-static-hosting Commit the docs directory.
Push the changes to GitHub. GitHub will automatically update the site.
I’m definitely not sold on this solution but I’m giving it a go. I’ve converted all my old posts to a format that works with DocC and, although I still have some cleanup there, it should be enough content to give me a good feel of how the site looks and feels. I’m going to try living with it for a while and see what additional insights time will provide. Will I cringe when I look at it in a month? Or will I get burnt out on a workflow that is too heavy? Maybe I’ll be delighted each time I think about how I’m documenting myself. Only time will tell.
I’ve just started reading the book “How to Fly a Horse” and although I’ve not gotten far what I have read has been mostly novel to me. One part that had a large impact on me was the author discussing what made us different than the other humans that didn’t make it as long as we did — different species of Homo sapiens. He makes the case that it is our relentless innovation that made us the victor. Before us homo sapiens were happy to use the same tools through multiple generations, passing them down from father to son. But that wasn’t good enough for us, we wanted to make our tools better and then better again.
Five self destructive words that are only good for destroying your self confidence and wasting your energy.
You couldn’t have known better, or you would have.
It is in the past and you can’t change it now.
Learn and move on.
We have a trillion different ways to do something meaningful with our life. But we get stuck in our day-to-day and do the same old over and over.
Why?
I didn’t do a great job of keeping track of my daily learning in June, but it was all about WWDC. Once a year, Apple hosts a conference called WWDC for their developers where they teach them about the new technologies that are being introduced and how to improve their use of the existing technologies.
Apple provides all of its videos online for free and in June I watched 23 of those videos. I’m not even half way done with them so most of July will be the same.
Five or so years ago I wanted to solve a problem I had — I wanted to be able to wake up to music from my playlists on the now-shutdown music streaming service Rdio. I built that app and called it Wake Up, Powered by Rdio. A very cool and very talented designer, Jenni Leder, like and used it and offered her help to make it look beautiful. After implementing her redesign I built functionality to play playlists from the iTunes music on the phone itself instead of from Rdio. Due to Rdio’s licensing agreement I could never charge for or put advertisements in the Wake Up, Powered by Rdio app but I could charge for the new app, called Wake Up to Music.
Wake Up to Music has never sold well. Jenni and I split the revenue from it and that works out to about a nice cup of coffee every three months. I attribute the slow sales to two factors:
No marketing effort on my part
It isn’t a very good app
I could solve #1 with some time and effort but I don’t think I can solve #2 which is the reason I’m writing this now. I’ve had a few bugs reported on the app and I need to decide whether they’re worth fixing or if I just need to let go of it. I really want this app to exist in the world but I think my stubbornness about it is causing more harm than good.
I’ve written before about the app’s fundamental flaw due to the restrictions in iOS that mean that I can’t build the functionality I want in the way that I want to. I want to be able to allow the user to setup alarms at their leisure and have those alarms play music from their chosen playlist without any additional effort on their part. But iOS doesn’t allow an app to start playing music whenever the app wants to — even if that app were instructed to do so by the phone’s owner. Therefore I’ve had to compromise the app by forcing the user to open it before she goes to bed and leaving it open all night.
This issue of forcing the app to be open all night isn’t the only crappy part of the experience and leads to other crappy side effects. Take for example the situation where the user gets a text after they’ve set their alarm. The alert won’t show up on the lock screen because the app is open. And if the user notices and decides to respond to the text then she also needs to remember to open the app again afterwards. Plus, since the phone is unlocked all night it has to be plugged in which isn’t very energy efficient. Plus plus, the phone being unlocked means that nightly backups might not get done. Plus plus plus, leaving the phone unlocked is a security risk because you are unconscious while anyone with access to your bedroom can get to all your private data on your phone.
As I said before I really want this app to exist in the world and despite these flaws I still want to use it every night. But I’m the guy who made it and I know every one of its flaws and how to work around each of them. Part of me is saying to myself “if I could only educate the users somehow!” I could add informational videos to the website and messages in the app about how to make it work optimally. I could add notifications to the user when they haven’t re-set the alarm properly after replying to a text or other notification. But the app would still be flawed. No matter how stubborn I am about it the app won’t be what I want it to be. It won’t be built to my quality standards and I feel like it reflects poorly upon me.
So I’m probably going to pull the app from the App Store soon but I wanted to post this and give anyone who care an opportunity to say “no, don’t do that!” Or “actually David you can get around your fundamental problem by doing ______” or “it is about time I can’t believe you thought it was a good idea in the first place.”
Do you have any thoughts? Let me know on Twitter or in the comments below.
Sometimes it is a little uncomfortable for me to sit still and think about something. Different parts of my mind chime in with thoughts like “you don’t have time for this right now” or “what if you don’t think of anything and this time right now is just wasted?”
These thoughts just went through my head a couple of minutes ago. I’m sitting in my car, waiting to go into a meeting. I have nothing meaningful to do (I’ve already been through my Twitter feed and email a few times and read everything in my RSS feed) and yet these thoughts still come up when I sit here for 30 seconds to think about what to write about today.
Thankfully, this time these thoughts were the inspiration for what to write. Most days, they are discomfort that I have to fight through.
Every day we have the choice to unite the world around us or to divide it. Division comes in the forms of dishonesty, gossip, and judgment. Unity comes in the form of loving and caring about every other thing in your life.
If you want to sabotage someone’s good habit, introduce a little doubt about it into their mind. It is amazing what a little doubt can do — it can make turn a hard uphill battle to sustain a good habit into an impossible task.
The resistance inside you is looking for anything to grab onto, anything to keep you from doing what is good for you. Be wary of anything that exists solely to introduce doubt — for example, studies sponsored by a group that benefits from your doubt — and be careful about the doubt you introduce to the people you care about. It has a much bigger impact than you’d imagine.
Sometimes pushing yourself harder is not the right answer. I’m still up at 1:37 in the morning after being out celebrating the Fourth of July last night. I’m exhausted and barely awake but I just forced myself through all the tweets I’ve missed and I’m forcing out this post.
But I should be in bed. My health needs to come first, no matter what I’ve committed to.
Good night.
Thinking about the way our technology has advanced over time I think it is safe to say that it moves towards smaller and more convenient until that point where smaller is no longer more convenient. A toaster can only get so small before your bread no longer fits. A knife can only get so small before you can’t hold it anymore.
If trying to predict the future of technologies it is a pretty sure bet that they’ll get smaller. The question is what is the usable limit of that piece of technology.
I wish I was better at handling frustration. It builds up inside me and I don’t know how to handle it. How do I release it in a healthy way?
I still haven’t found a solution for this one so I won’t be able to share any magic bullet. In the past I’ve been able to get myself so sad — by doing something like watching a sad movie — that I was able to cry and just get all the pent up emotions out. That isn’t working as well as it used to.
Now it just builds and builds. I think relaxing days can reduce the pressure a little, but not nearly enough to balance it out.
With the pressure comes an emotional exhaustion. Everything feels more difficult because I’m tired. It dulls my view of the world — instead of feeling bright and shiny it feels like it had a coating of dust.
It could be that I just have too many things weighing on me right now. I have a looming work deadline and the stress of starting our business and making ends meet and maybe this frustration feels so heavy because of everything else I’m carrying. I’ll have to think about that more, but not right now.
Right now I’m just so tired.
I’m not the kind of person who cares about earning badges. Certifications, degrees, and other résumé fodder aren’t my motivation. My motivation is getting things started. Moving things forward. Getting things done.
I’m driven by part duty, part obsession, and part ego. Not by fancy paper.
Knowing the rate at which technology moves forward is powerful because it would allow you to be in the right place at the right time. For example, Apple was able to create the iPhone when they did only because the right technologies had matured enough by that point. A year earlier it was impossible and a year later it was status quo.
The only way I can think of to know the rates of change is to be the one driving the change and even then you’ll be off. But I imagine that watching from the outside and figuring out the timing is not possible.
I don’t know if it is the best technique for solving problems, but one of my favorite tools is trial and error. Now I don’t mean that I try every conceivable combination to see what works, but I also don’t go to the effort to create a full logical proof before implementing a solution.
I think that sweet spot is the key to this technique working. You have to understand enough of the mechanics of the problem to be able to try a solution that is at least close to the right one. If you don’t understand those mechanics then the solution will be too far away to provide you any clues on how to get closer. You’ll be stuck far away from the solution. But at the same time, those trials could teach you more about the mechanics and move you closer to the solution.
If you work through the full logical proof then you are spending a lot of time on things that the human mind isn’t very good at and that computers are very good at. Things like looping and iterating — after all, if it was a problem with a solution that is simple for the human mind to understand then you would have just solved the problem without any trial and error.
So here’s my advice about solving problems: learn as much as you can about the problem, then try something to see if it works and repeat.
I have a problem when I create things that you might have to. I sometimes get lost in the process of creating something — making sure I’m using proper grammar the entire time I’m writing my first draft or trying to use the perfect architecture while creating the first version of an app.
The problem is that I lose momentum and energy while doing this. Instead of putting my creative energy towards the talks at hand — creating a blog post or software — I’m putting that energy towards thinking about what I’m doing. That creates quite a bit of drag.
As I write this though, I wonder if all that thinking is simply a symptom of needing more experience. Perhaps these things will start to come to mind naturally the more I practice.
I kind of hope so and I kind of hope not. I’d hate to think that I have all the answers and can simply rely on what I’ve done before. That sounds boring. Maybe that’s my problem.
You have more control over the pace of your work and life than you think. As social animals we tend to subconsciously behave like our peers — the people around us. One of these behaviors is our speed. When walking together we naturally match each other’s pace and if you move more quickly the person with you will probably speed up without thinking about it. Similarly they’ll slow down when you do.
It is similar to something I learned while doing dog agility years ago. If you are running with your dog and begin to slow down then she will too because she’s taking your cue. If you want her to continue at full speed then you need to do the same.
What cues are you putting out? What pace are you setting?
I’m where I am today because I’m a quitter. I’ve never quit at the best times, like when I’ve had another better job lined up. But I’ve always turned one good job into another that’s a better fit. That’s required choosing to leave comfortable situations and putting myself at risk. But that’s the only way I know to move forward. One leap at a time.
One of the toughest challenges I’m facing right now is underestimating how long a task will take and then having to push back every other task I have waiting. This causes stress and a sense of being overwhelmed for me and a bad experience for my clients.
I can see how this is one big reason why consultants will complain when an item isn’t in a project’s scope. Adding another item doesn’t just affect this project but it ripples through everything else. But I don’t like the idea of telling a client that something isn’t in scope. It results in bad customer service, a tense relationship, and a worse project. Pushing every project back is the lesser of those two bad places to be.
I think the key is slack. Leaving more white space and free time in the calendar than you think you would need to. I’m not great at this because I want to say yes to everything, but I’m going to have to do it. I’m also toying around with potential technological solutions for keeping track of scheduled time and that white space. I think setting firm boundaries on my time in software might help me stick to it.
I’ve noticed a quirk in the way my brain works when I’m writing code. What I’ll do is name a variable something different than what it is or print something to the console that says the wrong thing. So I’ll print “banana is changing” when in actuality the code has apple changing and try to remember in my head that in fact it is not banana that is changing each time I read the message. My memory fails in this situation on a regular basis. I’ll confuse myself and start debugging my code to figure out why banana is changing when it should be apple. My mind has a glitch in the way it processes the things I read — what I see overrides what I know.
I don’t think my glitch is unique. If you’d please I’d like you to try an experiment. Write something down on a piece of paper that is false, maybe something like “today is Tuesday” on a day other than Tuesday. Put the paper somewhere you’ll see it often and let me know how often you think it is Tuesday when it isn’t.
Every once in a while I get reminded that my memory has two distinct parts — before war and after. My memories from childhood, high school, and first time at college seem to be mostly gone. I remember certain people but others have completely faded.
A couple of days ago I was at a Starbucks in Lewisville working on an iOS app. A guy came in and sat down next to me. He looked familiar, but lots of people look familiar. At one point after going to the bathroom I was about to sit back down and he said “David.”
I was thrown off a bit because I couldn’t place him. But apparently we went to high school together and both played basketball so we were around each other every school day for years but he had faded from my memory.
Most days I think I’m completely normal and I don’t have to think back beyond a few weeks or months, but these infrequent reminders make me wonder how much damage was done in that stressful environment.
One of my biggest pet peeves is when people have been given a remarkable talent, like being able to sing well for instance, and they don’t share it with the world. Instead, they hide behind their fear and keep it to themselves and those close to them.
I believe that if you have that kind of talent then it is your responsibility to share it with the world. And we live in an awesome time when sharing has never been easier.
Stop being selfish and share.
I got a tiny computer in the mail today, the CHIP. I’m not sure what I’m going to do with it but while thinking about some possibilities I realized how little I know about this area of technology.
I think I’ve come up with a project that will be a good introduction to the tiny computer world. It seems like a simple concept to me — I want to build a device that has a camera and that can take pictures when told to do so by an iPhone app. There isn’t a lot of functionality there but thinking through the implementation I realized I have no idea how to do the key component of having the iPhone app talk to the device. I don’t think I could even muddle my way through it without hours of research on the internet.
Seeing this new thing I have no clue about humbles and excites me. Every time I think I know a thing or two about the world of technology I quickly get brought back down to reality.
The difference between being engaged in an activity and passively going along with it or being bored is amazing.
For the last few weeks meal time with my daughter has felt like a struggle. She didn’t want to eat and I was struggling to keep my attention through each meal. I started to dislike meal times.
But this last week I realized I needed to put more effort into my engagement. I started turning meal time into a game and a learning experience for her — she has to eat a set number of bites for me to spell a word. She loves spelling and counting, so I count down to the next word in different languages.
I’m engaged because I have to remember what number I’m on, which language I’m counting in, and which word is next up to spell. She’s engaged because she loves spelling and counting. We’re interacting better than ever before and we are both having fun.
I love meal times now.
I cope with emotional pain by turning to logic, work, and alcohol. I call the latter two my “-oholisms”. Each lets me get lost in another world and forget about my heartache, but none of them solve the problems. They just push them down further.
Yesterday I finally got around to watching the movie Inside Out and I thought it was great. Today I’ve been thinking about one of the concepts in the movie and how it relates to my life.
The movie is about a pre-teen girl and the emotions that live in her head and control her mood, Joy, Sadness, Fear, and Anger. These emotions steer her through life and take over in the appropriate circumstances. All the while she is creating memories which are depicted as marbles which contain a short video of the memory and are tinted by the emotion that was in control at the time. Every once in a while a special kind of memory rolls in, called a core memory. These core memories power the fundamental structures of who she is as a person — her passions and the things she cares about most deeply.
The part I’m trying to relate to my life is this concept of core memories. I know that Inside Out is just a movie and not a well researched documentary about how the world works. But I also love a good analogy and I find it fun to think about. The problem is that I have no idea what my core memories could be or what the fundamental structures of who I am are. I’m going to keep thinking about it and see what I can figure out.
I picked up a prescription tonight and had to wait inside a drug store for 15-20 minutes. Being inside a drugstore is a rare occurrence and it is even more rare that I’m there and wandering around without a specific purpose — that isn’t a way I spend my time. But I was there and I walked around the store and looked at what they had on the shelves. And those things on the shelves made me wonder about the value of knowing what’s on the shelves.
What information can I get from the things they have in stock, where they are located in the store, and how many they have on the shelves? Is that information useful in anyway or could it only lead to false conclusions? Is it useful data or just more clutter?
The store had several shelves for toy cars, small versions of real cars rather than imaginary cars. Amongst those toy cars was a high percentage of Aston Martins — I didn’t count but probably 20-30% of them were Astons. I find this strange because Astons are a particularly fast car or good car in terms of high performance cars. And I didn’t see any of what I would call good high performance cars there like Porsches or Ferraris. So why were there so many Astons? I can’t tell without more information. It could be that they sell a lot of the Astons at that store. Or maybe they sell a lot of them on average over all the stores. Or maybe the creator of the Aston toys pays more money for shelf placement and so they bought that ratio. Or maybe I saw so many because Astons don’t sell as well as the others.
Obviously I don’t have enough information to change what I perceived from mere information to real data. But that doesn’t mean the information itself isn’t useful because our brains are built to find connections. Each new thing we learn get organized with everything else we know and tested for logical accuracy. So each new piece of information can possibly spur something we can’t imagine now.
Much of my dissatisfaction in life comes from unreasonable expectations which should be fairly easy to solve by just altering my expectations. The problem is that I can’t figure out if my expectations are too high or if I just need to keep pushing in order to make my expectations reality.
Take estimating time as an example. I go through a lot of stress over meeting timelines that I promised to clients because I try to be true to my word. But estimating time on a project of any complexity is nearly impossible. Should I come to terms with that reality in order to try to spare myself some stress? Or should I keep on the path I’m on now and let my dissatisfaction power me through to a solution? I’m leaning towards the latter but that might just be because I’m stubborn and don’t want to accept reality.
I believe that in the short term different factors in the world can combine to create situations that don’t make sense and aren’t sustainable in the long term. I have a few of these situations in mind and might write about the topic more in the future, but right now I want to talk about free software.
Software is very expensive to create. The average software developer made $92,660 a year in 2013 according to US News. And the companies that are giving away free software have 10s, 100s, or even 1,000s of software developers.
So how can software be free?
I believe there are two reasons: 1) companies profit from free software by selling their users’ data and 2) money is very cheap to come by for people that have money so even investments on the sillier side are finding cash.
I think both of these are temporary and that at some point our reality must correct itself. At that point, I think we’ll see less free software. We may also see a lot more software developers looking for work as the cheap money dries up.
Having formed these assumptions, I’m giving myself a thought exercise. I think about how these changes would affect me and how I can plan for and benefit from them. It is a fun exercise and coaxes me to think in ways that I don’t in the rest of my work.
So what doesn’t make sense in your world? What do you think will happen with it and how will that affect you?
One of my bigger fears is looking stupid. I’ve kind of always known this but recently I felt some resistance that brought it to the front of my mind.
While working on an app I’ve been using a design pattern that feels a little bit dirty to me. I’ll cover the details in a later post, but in general it feels like what I am trying to do should be easier than it is and that always makes me think I’m doing it wrong.
The resistance came when I thought about writing a blog post about this design pattern. I didn’t want to do it. After thinking about why for a bit I realized that I didn’t want to look stupid. I feared everyone looking at what I wrote and saying “I can’t believe you did it that way that is so dumb.” I feared being seen as a fraud.
Now that I’ve found this fear and resistance I’m going to lean into it. I’m going to start writing blog posts about those things that I fear will make me look stupid or like I don’t know what I’m doing.
I recently created my second site with Magneto, so I’m going to share my experience in doing so.
I have had a website for my daughter hosted on Squarespace for a little over a year. The initial concept for the site was a sort of picture based storybook, something that I could read to my daughter as a bedtime story perhaps. None of the templates on Squarespace did exactly what I wanted, so I got a close approximation of what I wanted by futzing around with javascript and CSS every time that I made a post.
All of that futzing meant that I only made about 3 posts, all very soon after I created the site. I attribute that lack of posting to two factors (and I like to believe that it isn’t because I’m a bad father):
The time it took to make a post — to make the Squarespace site do what I wanted it to do, I had to spend about 20 to 30 minutes for each post. That was mostly because I would have to look at the past posts to re-learn what I had hacked together the previous time.
Having to log in to Squarespace — I’ve found that having to log in to a service is a large enough hurdle to discourage me from using it. Any friction in the form of discouragement is a factor that will undermine my intentions and that I want to eliminate.
So I decided to abandon Squarespace and create another Magneto site.
As I said earlier, I had an idea in my head of creating a website that was sort of like a children’s bedtime story book, to which I would add new information about my daughter as she grew up and could do more things. But I ran into problems with this concept. Where would a new user start in reading the story? If I put them at the beginning of the book then they would get the full effect of the story. However, my friends and family that checked back often would have to jump through hurdles to get to the new stuff. Additionally, in a children’s book there is generally one picture and caption per page. Having the same effect on the web would require a lot of clicking and waiting[^1], delivering a poor overall user experience.
So I abandoned the original idea and one of my primary reasons for leaving Squarespace[^2]. The new concept reminds me of what you would see on many Tumblr sites, pictures or videos with some comments.
Setting up Magneto was very easy to do. I simply followed my instructions (having to fix a couple of typos along the way) and I had the basic site up in a few minutes. It is so much easier the second time around.
Despite changing my overall concept of the site, I still want to tell a story through the use of pictures and videos. In order to do that, I had to make some modifications to the stock Magneto setup.
First, I added some hacky javascript to the article template so that my pictures are in a separate div from the caption text. You can see that javascript in post_article.erb on GitHub. This allows me to show the caption text on top of the image when it is moused over, and let’s the images speak the rest of the time.
Next, I created an HTML5 plugin that I use instead of Don’s video plugin. As I learned after diving into this, HTML5 video is a bit of a pain in its current form, which I attribute to Firefox’s insistence on not supporting the H.264 format. The plugin that I created does not account for this issue and therefore the videos do not show up in Firefox (although I added more hacky javascript to allow them to be downloaded). Not supporting Firefox has given my father a reason to troll me, but I had to make a decision based upon my particular constraints, and one of those constraints is that I would like to be able to make the posts completely from the file system on my iOS devices. From my research, it isn’t super straightforward to export Ogg Vorbis from the iPhone and even if I did that, I would be using twice as much space to store each video, which is just a waste. I also want to have full control over my videos, and I don’t want to have to log into yet another web service. So for now, HTML5 with no Firefox support is the way I’m going.
Now a short bit about my experience serving images and videos. I have no prior experience in this area (my current professional work involves sites on an intranet that have little to no media assets) so I was experimenting with serving these assets straight from my server (which is the lowest tier virtual private server at Midas Green Tech). With this strategy, my server would become unresponsive shortly after uploading updates to the site. I believe that this is because the server was caching those assets in memory, but I am not completely sure. I next experimented with a CDN, Cloudflare to be exact, and the server’s unused memory went up dramatically and load times shortened dramatically. In other words, as convention would tell you, use a CDN.
The last thing that I modified was Don’s timeago.coffee. I wanted the time stamps on my daughter’s site to display my daughter’s age at the time of the posting, so I created timesince.coffee. You can provide the script a starting date and it will display how long after the date that that post occurred, with accuracy to a month.
I am quite pleased with my switch to Magneto for my daughter’s site. I have already posted more times than I did on the previous platform, and more importantly I don’t get that feeling of dread that I usually do when I have to put in a password and navigate a site that I’m not used to navigating. I can almost do everything on my iPhone.
Would I recommend this setup to someone who is not technically minded? Definitely not. But if you are already managing a Linux server and want to share some pictures and memories with family and friends, or just want to have a memory for yourself, I think this is a great way to go. I might just be putting together another soon, and I will definitely be iterating upon my daughter’s site in order to get it closer to my original concept.
You can follow me on Twitter @davidbrunow where I will post links to any further blog posts about my experience with Magneto. And as a reminder, Magneto was created and open sourced by @donmelton.
[^1]: I could make the waiting after clicking much shorter by fully loading all of the content at the beginning, and then using JavaScript to hide and show different “pages”, but that would add more complexity to the site and make the template system generated by Magneto more difficult to use. Scrolling is very natural on the web, and probably the best way to do it.
[^2]: I do not regret my decision to stop using Squarespace, because of the following benefits of self hosting: 1) I have the content on my local machine and can use it any way that I like, 2) I don’t have to log in, and 3) I can run my daughter’s site on the same server that I run my own which saves me money.
I’ve had a bad time of creating estimates for projects the last year. Everything seems to take longer than I expected as I have to learn something new or hit an unexpected roadblock. The good news in that is that I’m learning what aspects of a project cause it to take longer to build.
Today I realized two more of those aspects: animation and functionality that requires a lot of resources and therefore efficiency.
Animation takes extra time because it has to be just right and I can’t get that without many iterations of watching the movement and comparing it to the previous iterations. That process takes time.
Anything that requires a lot of resources needs to be efficient in order to run well on every device. The problem is when the code you’ve written is as efficient as it can be and you have to start figuring out tricks to make further improvements. Like animation this is an iterative and time consuming process as you make a change, benchmark and compare it to the previous iteration, and so on.
So I’ve figured out that these things take extra time but I still don’t have a good idea of how much extra time that is. Still working on that.
I’ve always thought the ‘Thanks’ email was useless. That’s the email that someone sends back to you after you’ve sent them something and the only new content is ‘Thanks.’
I’ve thought it was useless because I didn’t think the value of following the social norm outweighed the downside of adding to the recipient’s daily deluge of email. I felt that the social norm in face to face conversation didn’t translate to the medium of email.
But I’ve changed my mind, especially in situations where I’m emailing people that don’t know me really well. I’ve changed my mind because the ‘Thanks’ email provides more value than simply meeting a social norm — it provides a confirmation that I received the information, that the sender is being heard, and that I’m OK with the contents.
That sounds minor but I think it is especially important in any business that lives to serve customers, so I’m going to start sending ‘Thanks’ emails.
I never learned to build a fire as a kid. I don’t know if I wasn’t taught or I wasn’t paying attention but the first time I tried on my own I couldn’t get it to light. I learned that there is more to it than putting wood in a pile and applying heat. Now I know that you need to layer the materials in the right way. First the things that are easy to get started — I like to use crumpled up paper for this. The next layer should catch easily but not quite as fast as the first layer. If it catches slower then it is likely to burn longer. Twigs and small sticks are good for this. The last year should be big chunks of wood — logs or thick branches that light slowly but will burn for a long time.
The bottom layer lights quickly and provides the energy to get the second layer to catch fire. The second layer can burn long enough to catch the top layer on fire.
I have written a blog post every day for the last six months. Over that time I’ve shared a couple of other habits that I’ve tried to start — they have all fallen away. But I’ve stuck with writing every day.
Is it easier now than it was 6 months ago? Nope.
Do I feel like I write better posts than I did 6 months ago? Nope, but I haven’t gone back to read those ones to see how far I’ve come.
At this point, I don’t see the same value in this habit as I did in the beginning. That happened with the other habits I’ve tried on too and I think it is natural. I don’t think it means that there isn’t value, I just think it means sticking with things is hard.
I’m going to stick with this one though. I’ve thought about stopping a few times but I’m just not ready to give up.
I am going to change my process a little though. I’ve been writing these posts last thing at night before I go to bed and I just don’t have much creative energy at that point in the day. Tonight I’ve started two drafts before thinking “I don’t have the energy to do this topic justice.”
So I’m going to try to move my writing time earlier in the day. I’m not sure exactly how to make that work, but I think it will be better.
Here’s to six more months!
Multiple times in my life I’ve been fortunate enough to have neighbors that have turned into good friends. That may just mean that most people are good, but whether that is the case or I’m particularly blessed, I’m happy.
Too much discipline and you’re rigid and lack creativity. Too little and you’re free flowing and going in circles.
With the right amount you’re driven and aiming for a target.
What does the phrase “my data” mean? If someone collects data about me, do they own it? What if it is personal information, like my health records? Are companies providing tools to help me collect my health data or to help themselves collect health data about me?
I lean towards believing that I should own data about me but I can see that lines need to be drawn. I can see where data about my shopping habits at a retail store could belong to that store and maybe similarly for an online store. But where does their data end and mine begin? Is it when the data is about my health and the things I own? As we move internet connectivity into more parts of our home we’re likely to see manufacturers try to collect more and more data about how we interact with their products. To pick a silly example, does the company that sold me a toaster have any right to the information about how much toast I each? I don’t think it does.
Years ago when I worked in banking the leadership of the bank I worked for hired a management consultant. She sat in our meetings and met with all of the managers one on one to provide advice to both the managers about their career and role in the bank and to the leadership about how well each manager fit in their role. When I met with her she shared two pieces of advice that have stuck with me, one of which I will share now.
Her advice was about energy. She said that we only have a few limited resources as a person and that energy was the most important. If you have time but you don’t have energy, like when you are sick, then that time is useless.
Since energy is a limited and valuable resource, she emphasized that you have to manage your energy expenditures. You have to put yourself in situations that increase your energy and avoid ones that drain you in order to have the biggest impact you can.
The older I get, the more true this advice becomes. I used to be able to power through any situation — it felt like my energy was unlimited, but maybe I just ignored the signs that I was drained. Now I feel it.
So what do I do with this advice? I avoid things that drain my energy as much as I can — for me this means avoiding long meetings, traffic, and interruptions. And I do the hard things early in the morning when I have the most energy.
Every craft has its own language. Recently I’ve been doing woodworking with a friend and I’ve learned the terms flat sawn and quarter sawn. The terms come from how a plank of wood was cut out of a tree and most wooden furniture we have was made out of trees cut in one of these ways. The cut determines the appearance and physical characteristics of the plank but until I worked with it myself I didn’t think about the connection. It is easy to forget that most of the things around us were something else before — even easier when we are surrounded by plastics and molded metals that don’t resemble their initial state.
Wood is different. You can see how it came out of the tree, what type of tree it was, and sometimes how long the tree stood on this earth.
You really should subscribe to Rdio. I cannot recommend the service enough, and I genuinely believe that it has made my life better.
But maybe you don’t subscribe to Rdio. Perhaps you already have a huge music collection and don’t like the new stuff that the kids these days are into. Or maybe you only listen to The Beatles and other artists whose music is owned by people who have an interest in holding back technology.
But obviously you really love Jenni Leder’s design of Wake Up, Powered by Rdio.
And since that’s the case, you will want our new app, Wake Up to Music. All the same functionality but powered by the music collection you have on your iPhone or iPod touch.
Any group of people organized for a purpose with any complexity or ambiguity will lose sight of their goals. This seems silly because why would they lose their goals if that is the entire reason why they organized in the first place? That’s where the complexity and ambiguity come into play. Each member of the group starts chasing details and getting caught up in creating and restating the giant todo list of things that need to get done — perfectly reasonable things but not focused enough to move forward at a useful pace.
The solution is focus. 1,000 “no’s” for every yes. A short list of things that must get done.
One of my blinds spots when it comes to building things for others is that I assume that everything is going well if no one is complaining. I figure that a rational person would let me know if something I’ve built for them isn’t working correctly so that I can fix it, but I think that is rarely the case.
Thinking about my own behavior using other people’s software, I rarely complain about bugs I see in software (which is strange, because I have no issue with emailing a random company about a typo on their website.) I think my behavior is typical and driven by the same reasoning as others’ — I don’t feel like my complaint will make a difference and I don’t feel like I have the time to complain.
I think my behavior has to change — I know that when someone complains about something I’ve built I want to do what I can to fix it and make them happy and I believe that most people making things want the same. So I need to start complaining more.
But that won’t change the psychology of everyone else, and that is why you have to build error logging into your applications. Automatic reports will tell you things that users never will. Plus they have the bonus side effect of giving you hard numbers of how good you software is now and how much better it has gotten over time.
I can’t remember when or where I learned about this idea, but I find it interesting and amusing. Let me set the scene.
You work in a corporation that leans pretty conservative, banking or financial management or the sort. It has been rough lately. Some of that may be your fault, but most of it isn’t. You have to present some bad news to upper management and you just know you will get your butt chewed about it. So what do you do?
You could lie, but you’ve got a pretty sweet gig and you don’t want to lose it over something silly like that. You could put lots of pretty graphs in the presentation to try to distract from the bad stuff, but you’re smarter than that.
Actually, you’ve been working towards this moment your entire career.
The tactic you use is monotony. And big words. And endless droning on about things that no one could possibly care about, but it is all relevant. You make your job look like the most boring thing ever. You use that boredom to hide any bad news — it is all at the end and no one cares about anything but getting out of the room at that point.
Now this isn’t a tactic I’ve ever used — it isn’t my style. But I find it extremely interesting because I’ve always had negative connotations about people who give boring presentations. But now I always wonder, are they just dull people, or are they just putting on an act?
A good façade must be thick enough to mask what lies beneath it. It adds bulk and in my mind unnecessary weight. A bad façade barely hides what is below it and causes a feeling of disease in the minds of those who see it as they try to tie the inside and outside together.
Not using a façade only works if what is inside is what you want to show the world.
My daughter Emma was born with a condition called hydrocephalus which means that she had a lot of extra fluid in her head which limited the development of her brain — there wasn’t anywhere for it to grow. This has meant delays for her but despite those delays she’s a happy, smart kid who can wheel her wheelchair where she wants to go, play the piano, and do many other things that doctors never thought she would.
I have high hopes for Emma and I read an article this morning that really touched me. What is described in this article is what I want for Emma. The details don’t matter and I won’t be pushing her towards anything in particular but I want her to show the world what she can do.
I’ve been on a social media diet over the last couple weeks. I got to a point where I felt I was spending too much time on it and decided I wanted that time back. I didn’t want to find myself absent-mindedly scrolling through Instagram or taking every moment that I wasn’t actively doing something and checking Twitter. And I’m not even going to get started on Facebook.
A few nights ago I didn’t feel like sleeping so I laid down on the couch, put my headphones on, and listened to new music. I opened Twitter since I hadn’t in a while and it looked different to me. It no longer felt like something I wanted to be a part of.
Of course that’s boring and I don’t blame you if you don’t care about my opinion. But I wonder if my experience is that of the canary in the coal mine or if I’m simply the old man yelling at the clouds. Am I just a little ahead of the rest of the population with my increasing disgust towards social media or is my opinion irrelevant in the context of normal humans?
I’ve been working on a project for about a month and I’m getting close to wrapping it up. I’ve gone way over my estimated budget for a variety of reasons and I’m completely OK with that, including the part where I eat any of the costs for going over.
But I found my thought process interesting during this project. When I was getting close to reaching my estimated amount of hours I was very stressed out about it. I think it was a combination about not wanting to be wrong with my initial estimate and judging my abilities to be lacking because I wasn’t meeting my goal.
But now that I’m way over, I’m not stressed about it at all. At some point, for some reason, my attitude changed and I’m not sure why.
Another on my list of things that don’t make sense and is unsustainable is the cost of healthcare.
I don’t have a whole lot more to say about this topic — long ago I decided to opt out of the health care system. But things are way past ridiculous when an insured individual has to resort to crowdfunding to get their bills paid.
Drug companies and hospitals are leaches providing little benefit at an extraordinary financial cost. This can’t continue forever.
I hope that we begin to see that we don’t have to pay these costs. I hope we see that being healthy is natural if we live in natural ways. I hope we will work towards our health every day so we can upend the current system.
Sometimes I have a problem and it has to do with that age old “if you only have a hammer everything will look like a nail” situation.
My problem is that I have a way of spending far more time trying to find a “quick” technological solution to a problem instead of just doing it by hand.
One example is from years ago. I was working at the bank and I was trying to do some sort of calculation in Excel. I had to go through somewhere like 300 rows to come up with a total value. I tried for an hour or two to come up with a formula that would solve the problem.
Eventually I gave up on it — I just couldn’t figure it out.
So my buddy Steve looked at it. He’s far less technical than I am. Within a half hour or forty five minutes he’d finished the calculations, doing them all manually without trying to figure out a fancy formula.
Despite knowing about this trap, I still fall into it every now and again. And each time I remember that story.
Even with the clearest communication, perfectly aligned incentives, and great relationships it is common to come out of an interaction with different ideas of the next steps to take. I’ve realized this lately and I’m making a point of closing out every interaction with a restatement of what I believe to be the next steps for everyone involved. Without this you cannot reliably move forward and definitely cannot have accountability — if someone doesn’t know exactly what the next steps are then how can they be expected to do them?
Documentation is a fancy word for a simple concept. Documentation is nothing more than recording how something works so that someone else can figure it out. Despite it being a simple concept it is really hard to do right. Things change constantly and documentation needs to be flexible and dynamic so it can change accordingly. Much of the time this change doesn’t happen or only happens haphazardly and when you want to learn about how something works you have to stumble through the documentation and figure out any gaps yourself or with a Google result from Stack Overflow.
I read a comment today where someone said that to them the best documentation is a sample program that implements the code you want to teach. That comment made me realize that I’d been assuming that everyone has the same opinion about what good documentation is but obviously that isn’t true. Personally I hate seeing a sample program because the details I want to learn get lost in the noise of the rest of the project. Having a sample program isn’t bad but it certainly isn’t enough — I want the documentation to walk me through common use cases.
I’ve been thinking about this topic this week because Stack Overflow came out with a new documentation product. They want to do the same thing for documentation that they did for technical questions and provide the place on the internet that people can find the documentation they need. I’ve been an early beta tester of it for a few months but I never had a chance to dig in and check it out. I took some time a few days ago and so far I’m not impressed by what I see but I’m no expert at the right way to build such a thing. Despite that, my complaint is the from what I looked at the documentation was very topic driven — information about a control that can be used in iOS — rather than what I see as more concept driven like how to get started building an app.
Despite my poor first impression I’m excited about what this new documentation product will be in the future. I’m confident the Stack Overflow team will refine the idea until it is an excellent solution.
I’m reading a book about working with children who have disabilities and one of the most important points the author has made, and repeatedly stated, is that you have to work with them where they are at. You can’t expect them to leap to where you want them to be. Forcing a child to crawl who isn’t ready to do more than wiggle around on the floor does no good and probably does harm. You have to work around the edges of what that child can do and keep expanding those edges.
This is true of all kids, but it matters much more if a child has a disability that doesn’t allow them to be as resilient as a child without any.
Today I was thinking about how well that advice works in other parts of our lives. If you want to make change happen you have to work around the edges of what already exists. If you disagree with someone, you will never change their mind by bluntly telling her she is wrong or making statements that paint a situation of us versus them.
Find common ground. Expand that common ground. We are all one and I benefit when you do.
I’ve played the game Chameleon Run on the Apple TV the last couple of days. It is a side scrolling running game where you have to make your player jump and change color depending on the terrain of the level. Some of the levels require quick responses and proper timing to navigate between obstacles.
I’m amazed by how quickly the human brain is able to learn to navigate the levels. Within minutes we can go from failing miserably every time we try to easily meeting all the objectives. This game is a great way of seeing how quickly we can learn and it’s also a lot of fun.
Despite thinking so most of the time, we aren’t very rational creatures. Or I should probably say that we underestimate how much our decisions are influenced by irrational things. For example, tomorrow morning I have a meeting. The venue for this meeting recently changed from a restaurant with a wall of windows to one that is dimly lit and only has windows on one side which are far from where we sit.
My subconscious is telling me that I don’t want to go back to that dimly lit place despite there being many rational reasons why it is better — the acoustics are better for large groups of people talking, the seating arrangements are more comfortable and better suited to conversation, and the restaurant has gone out of their way to make our experience as seamless and simple as possible.
But my subconscious wants sunlight and that’s what pulls me.
The easy to find bugs in software jump out at you. A crash right when you tap on a button, or information that is calculated incorrectly. But most bugs aren’t like that. Most bugs are hiding behind a series of specific steps that trigger a situation that you the developer didn’t expect.
Trying to find these bugs through a verbal description alone is time consuming. It is so difficult to communicate the relevant details because everything might be a relevant detail. Every step that led up to that bug could be part of what caused it. Or maybe it isn’t. Someone reporting that bug has no way of knowing.
I ran into this issue a couple of times this week. Eventually I hunted down the bugs but it wasn’t straightforward and I put off fixing them because I had no idea how long it would take me to do so.
Seeing the user create the situation would have made all the difference, but recording and sharing that video is not something a novice can handle. From some research tonight it looks like it is simple enough to teach a user to record their iPhone or iPad from a Mac using QuickTime, but what do I do for users that don’t have a Mac? Or for web applications or other types of applications that aren’t iOS?
“They” separates. “We” unites.
Tonight an acquaintance at a party I went to made a comment while watching the opening to the Special Olympics, something to the effect of “they want to be called intellectually disabled.” I don’t agree.
We all want to be treated like we are humans that matter. We don’t want to be labeled or put to the side. We are all the same, regardless of how smart we are or the color of our skin or any number of different things that we could look at and use to separate ourselves.
As the Buddhist saying goes, our discomfort comes from wanting things to be different than they are. So when you feel that way, how do you want things to be? Can you work on getting there? Or do you simply need to acknowledge that this is one of many discomforts you will feel in life and you just have to deal with it?
I find that simply asking myself the question eases the discomfort. I’ll be working and not enjoying it much and I ask myself what I’d rather be doing. I’d rather be napping. Well, you can’t do that right now. Ok then. I can move on and focus less on the discomfort.
I listened to a podcast this evening that stated that our number four need, after food, water, and safety, is social. We need people and therefore we’re highly motivated to be social creatures.
As someone on the less-social end of the spectrum I find this fascinating but wonder if it applies to everyone equally or if our desire for social interaction is directly related to this need.
My ingrained reaction to challenging someone to do something new or just at the end of their limits is “don’t do that, you might push her too far and she’ll fail and never want to do it again.” I think that’s a natural fear to have.
But I think most of us in most situations will respond to failing like that with a reaction like “that’s not so bad” and we will get back up and try again. We are wired to persevere until we overcome our challenges — anyone doing otherwise has trained herself out of her nature. That’s why we put up with falling a hundred times before walking, or riding a bike, or finding the person we love.
Remember when you’d have photos in your wallet? And not just any photos, you’d have a specially printed size of photos that fit just right. Two entire industries that are completely separate from the iPhone but still drastically affected. It’s amazing.
Life is not a highway. Highways are straight and have easily defined distances, landmarks, and destinations. We try to force those into our lives through birthdays and graduations and anniversaries — things to look forward to and remember. We try to straighten and pave the river, but rivers can’t be paved.
When you move to the edges of society you notice the river more. Anyone exceptional — slow or fast or smart or dumb or different — has experienced the meandering path the river takes. They’ve felt the rapids and the slow peaceful flat parts and the dams and the pointy rocks.
I believe that not acknowledging the river, trying to pave over it and smooth it out into a straight line of our design, leaves us feeling hollow. Our false sense of control makes us out of touch with our world.
You aren’t in control. Feel the current. Let it carry you where it will.
Dark patterns are design practices that are intended to use flaws in our brains to manipulate us to do things that are against our best interests. Examples are opt-out systems that require a person to take some action to stop something from happening. Many studies have shown that opt-out systems cause many more people to sign up for something than if they’d had to opt-in to it. They’ve taken the path of least resistance and trusted that the defaults will work for them OK. Unfortunately that’s becoming less and less true as industries discover how to use these patterns and flaws in our wiring against us.
I believe that everyone who builds technology should take a stand against these bad practices. We need to say that we won’t build things that manipulate people against their best interests.
The more I live, the more I realize that technical superiority is useless. By technical superiority I mean being extremely good at the details of the type of things you — a programmer who writes really nice code, a singer with an amazing voice, a writer who uses perfect grammar.
This technical superiority is useless because it doesn’t do anything to solve the problems that people need solved. Most people don’t listen to music to hear an amazing voice or read a book to see the proper usage of who and whom. They listen to music to be entertained and they read to either be entertained or to learn. Most people don’t care if the app they use has beautiful code behind it, they only care about whether it works for what they need it to do.
So I’d say that if you’re an artist — which I broadly classify as anyone that isn’t stuck doing the same thing every day — then you need to think about what you can do to solve people’s problems as much as you need to hone your craft.
Today we had an exterminator come and treat our yard with pesticides. Our dog has been attacked by fleas for a few weeks now and only putting medicine on him didn’t do any good — more fleas would just jump on him the next time he went outside.
I don’t like killing living creatures. This was a tough decision for me, do I kill these thousands of tiny creatures to make my life and my dog’s life better? I did. I mourn their deaths.
Brandy and I have been discussing the idea of hiring someone else to contribute to our company’s software building. We’re just throwing around ideas right now but all the talk is hypothetical since neither of us know whether we want to deal with having to manage other people and we also don’t know if we have enough work to guarantee an income for someone else — some months we are still barely scraping by ourselves.
The most important question to us is regarding what qualifications this person should have. I want someone who can either do everything I can do or is willing and able to learn. Brandy thinks that we could have someone with a smaller skillset that contributes mostly in maintenance roles, at least at the beginning. We still haven’t come to a solid agreement on that.
We have agreed on one thing that most people would probably not expect. We want this person to have experience waiting tables. Funny, huh? The qualification we can both agree on for someone who builds software is that they have experience that has no relation to computers at all.
Apple has a tool for developers called Dynamic Type. What this tool does is allow developers to use text that can be resized by the user so that it can be adjusted by someone who can’t see well.
I really want to use this tool and jumped on it in one project before realizing that it was too difficult for me to do. The difficulty came from trying to get the user interface right for every combination of device and text size. I never found a solution and then gave up at that time to get the project done.
Maybe I’m missing something or maybe I’m taking Apple’s advice to use Dynamic Type to literally. Maybe they mean where it makes sense. Or perhaps there is a third option where the user interface needs to be rearranged to support Dynamic Type and I need to approach the problem with different designs.
Once again I didn’t do a good job of keeping track of my daily learning in July, but like June it was all about WWDC.
I made it through another 30 or so videos and have 36 left to watch.
I’ve also recently spent time watching videos from previous years to learn more about Bluetooth for a new project I’m starting.
I think that I have an advantage over many other developers when it comes to building apps for clients. I’m easily irritated by bad software and good at building apps that I would want to use. That doesn’t mean excluding people that want to use apps differently but instead finding ways to make things easier to use. Because I’m lazy and easily irritated by things that are difficult.
Bring that touch of you into the things you build. Take the time to think about how you’d use it.
Today was the opening day for Denton’s co-working space called Stoke. We are leasing an office there and I arrived right when they opened this morning. Since the place is brand new they are still getting some things taken care of and working through some initial issues. Like when I arrived this morning and the coffee maker hadn’t been setup yet. And I had to wait to get connected to the wifi. And some things haven’t arrived yet, like tables in the conference rooms.
That sort of thing might irritate people. The rough edges at the beginning of something new. But I love that.
I have a new hypothesis. I believe that the only thing you need to make something great is the will to make it. If you have that will then you will be able to power through any obstacles.
I have a couple of ways I’ll be testing this, and I’d love to see if it works for you. I will be starting projects that are completely outside what I do today and see if I can make them great.
Greatness takes time, so I’ll report back later.
I find that the things that cause me the most displeasure are not real. By not real I mean created by man. Two of my least favorite are time and money. Neither exists outside of our minds and yet they control so much of our life.
I’m not fond of giving advice. I think a person should live their life rather than my version of their life. I can’t control someone else’s happiness and even if I could I can’t predict what would make them happy since my type of happiness will be different than theirs.
That being said, I do believe in sharing my opinion and experience. The difference is subtle. My opinion is what I would do in the situation and my experience is the reason why I would do that. That’s different than advice which is me telling someone else what they should do.
By providing my experience and rationale for my opinion I can enable that other person to have one more data point to make their own decision. And since it is only my opinion I don’t feel attached to the outcome in the same way as I would as if I were giving advice.
One of the most difficult things about technology is that solutions quickly become very complicated. For example, let’s say you want a website to show members of an organization. We will assume that you already have a website so we don’t have to talk through that complex process in addition to my example.
So you have a functioning website and you want to add a list of members of an organization. First you have to ask the question, how often will the members of this organization change? Who will be changing them? You run into the first bit of compounding complexity and have to decide whether you should use a database. Now a database really isn’t a complex concept — it is simply an organized way to store and find information, but with it comes another piece of software that needs maintenance and another language to speak to talk to it. Plus you have to find a place to store the data and a way connect it to your website. So let’s keep this simple and avoid the database for this example. We will update members by hand each time they change, which means a little more manual effort but if members don’t change often then avoiding the complexity will be worth it.
So we use our website software’s built in editor and manually add a few members of our organization in a simple table. Now we want to make it so that clicking on a row of this table shows us more information about that member. We’d prefer to let the user click anywhere on the row instead of having to click directly on the information in the row. Here comes more complexity! To make this table to work the way we want, we need to use a programming language called JavaScript. So we need to know another language and also how to make that language work with our website. We also have to be willing to fix that JavaScript if it breaks for any reason and be sure that it works in all of the 5 most used browsers. We decide to use JavaScript — we think this feature is worth the extra complexity. Now we can click on a row and see more information about a contact.
The contact information looks pretty good, but there are a few things we’d like to tweak to look a little better. Based upon the theme installed on our website, some of the text is bold where we want it normal weight and we’d like to change some of the colors to highlight important information. We’d also like to change that table that lists all the members so that when someone puts their mouse over one of the rows the row is highlighted so it is easier to see related information. Once again, here comes more complexity! Cascading Style Sheets (CSS) are used to change the style of things on a website. In prepackaged websites like Wordpress and Squarespace you can choose a theme that takes care of most of the CSS for you. But if you want to make a tweak here or there then you need to know yet another language and yet again how to make that language work with the website. We will choose to get the CSS working the way we want it in this situation because we really think changing the styles will make the information make more sense together.
All of that is a lot to consider for one “little” feature, I mean all we want to do is show a list of members and information about them! I could make a Word document that did that in a few minutes!
And even with all the complexity I discussed here, I didn’t talk at all about best practices like ensuring your website is secure, that your web pages load fast, that your information is backed up, how to best create and test changes, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. Technology is complex by necessity.
Many systems try to remove, or abstract, away that complexity by limiting your options. That is great for situations where you are OK with those limitations and, frankly, where you are OK with looking like everyone else.
But the best way to abstract away that complexity is with people. Good people who know the right way to do things, know which details you need to know about and which you don’t, and that genuinely care.
The solution to your problem with another person is to treat them as a person. Sit down together and have an honest conversation. Engage on the issue head-on but don’t attack. Ask questions to learn what is going on. Don’t be afraid to express how you feel but do so in a considerate manner.
Trying to solve problems with people by instituting policies and penalties will not actually solve the problems. It may eliminate the symptoms in the short term but they will come back stronger in the future since the root problem was never resolved.
Honest, compassionate, caring conversation.
Apple keeps adding features to its ecosystem that have me rethinking advice I’d give to clients about opening a virtual storefront. We’ve suffered with web based stores and the issues that come along with them, like security of our payment information, having to remember yet another password, and unintuitive and slow-to-load mobile layouts, because the value we get from them is so high.
Opening a storefront on iOS solves two of those problems immediately because your customers can use Apple Pay which is incredibly secure and already built in to their device. Given the right developer, an iOS app will load much more quickly than the typical website because less information would need to be sent over the network.
The main problem I see with recommending an iOS based storefront to businesses is that iOS development is pricy. On the web, business owners have more choices than they need between Shopify, Squarespace, Wordpress, and so on. I don’t think it will be long before the same number of options are available as iOS stores and it will be interesting to see if it is the established companies that bring those options or if new companies take over that market.
Regardless of where it goes, I think it could be a good way to differentiate your business right now and if I had physical products I wanted to sell, I’d open an iOS storefront before one on the web.
Some time back I made a significant effort to reduce sugar and salt from my diet. I stopped putting sweetener into my coffee and stopped eating fried food and other food that had been preserved in salt.
As a result, I can taste much subtler levels of sweet and salt in my food. I also get overwhelmed much more easily by the saltiness of fast food or over-sweetening coffee.
We have this awesome ability to adapt to situations and after very little time we don’t even remember that we adapted. Every once in a while we have to force ourselves to question out adaptations.
And weaknesses are strengths. Each needs to fit in the right place at the right time.
My wide range of technical talents helps me to fit in many roles as part of a team, to solve problems across a variety of areas, and to have a better idea of the big picture of how all the technologies fit together.
Those same strengths turn to weaknesses if I need to perform a highly specialized task in one area or if the project requires extremely optimized performance.
Fortunately I’ve found the right spots for what I’m naturally good at. Building things for business clients generally plays tinny broad knowledge base.
I am not planning to make any further commits to this project until iOS 7 is out to avoid releasing any code that is under NDA.
And yes, I know it’s ugly (especially on iOS 6.) Adding design, and hopefully a bit of delight, are next on my to do list.
You must have your Magneto blog’s folders linked to Dropbox in some way, whether it be by symlinking Dropbox folders to your local directories or by storing all of your directory tree in Dropbox directly. Write uses Dropbox to keep all of the draft, post, images and video in sync and accessible on iOS.
You must have a Dropbox Core API key, which you can [get from Dropbox][linkDropboxKey].
You must have Xcode so that you can build the app
You will need to make your own “Credentials.h” file in your project. It will need to look something like this (or you can look at my commit history, because I accidentally committed it…whoops!):
#ifndef Write_Credentials_h #define Write_Credentials_h #define CONSUMER_KEY @"your Dropbox key goes here" #define CONSUMER_SECRET @"your Dropbox secret goes here" #define USER_NAME_TOKEN @"choose a name for the oauth token to be saved in the keychain" #define USER_NAME_TOKEN_SECRET @"choose a name for the oauth token secret to be saved in the keychain" #define USER_NAME_USER_NAME @"choose a name for the user name to be saved in the keychain" #define SERVICE_NAME @"choose a service name under which to save the keychain information" #endif As specified in the Dropbox Core API setup instructions, you will need to change this section of “Write-info.plist” to have your Dropbox key after the “db-”:
<key>CFBundleURLTypes</key> <array> <dict> <key>CFBundleURLSchemes</key> <array> <string>db-0bzv4hxmz3d1144</string> </array> </dict> </array> While designing Write, I tried my best to keep true to the way that Don designed Magneto. To that end, Write is designed simply, with no underlying database. The app relies only on the file system in Dropbox and two preferences that are stored about your blogs: the location of the blogs in Dropbox and the index of the blog you are currently viewing.
This approach has at least one limitation that I have run into so far — since all of the information about your drafts and your posts is stored in memory, a large number of either could overwhelm the relatively small amount of memory available on your iOS device. I have done my best to keep that impact to a minimum.
My other major design goal was to enable the user to complete the entire drafting and posting process inside the app. That is another reason I created the html5video plugin for my daughter’s site - I can easily and directly take the video on the device and upload it to Dropbox. In this version, any cropping of videos or images must be done in the Photos app, but at least everything can be done on the phone.
Since the iOS app is not actually putting the file on your server when you press the “Post” button, some other process must be running to do so. The two options that I know of to do that are to be running Magneto in auto mode on your Mac, or to be running Magneto in auto mode on your server, with the Dropbox files shared to your server.
Currently, I am doing neither of those — I am manually deploying to my server after posting in the iOS app.
When you first open Write, after connecting to your Dropbox account, you will be shown a list of directories that might contain Magneto sites.
Upon choosing the site or sites that you want to have available in Write, you are taken to a list of the sites you have selected. You can choose one to see the drafts and posts for that blog.
Once you have chosen the blog you want to see, you will be shown a list of the file names for your drafts on that blog. Using the segmented controller at the top, you can choose to see the ten most recent posts.
From this screen, you can choose a draft or post to see and edit the contents, or you can click on the “New Draft” button to create a new draft.
The view of the draft is simply the content of the markdown file. As you can see in the screenshot, nothing is wysiwyg. It is the exact same thing you would see if you were editing the file in Sublime Text 2 on your Mac.
As you can see in this next screenshot, I haven’t put anything nice like a keyboard tray with common markdown keys in this version, but probably will in the future. You will also see a “Save” button. That button will upload the file to Dropbox, as will going back to the drafts screen. The file is automatically saved locally every five seconds. I have also included a button to add media, whether an image or a video. As I said before, this button will add the media to your Dropbox and place the proper tag at the cursor location in your file.
I think I am handling conflict resolution for the versions of files in a conservative manner. If the copy of the file on the local file system was modified after the copy on Dropbox, then Write updates the copy on Dropbox with the local copy. If the local file was modified before the Dropbox copy then Write creates a new “conflicted” version of the file.
From the draft editing screen, you can choose the “Post” button to move the file from the Drafts folder to the items/current year folder. Choosing that button will change the time stamp in the file to the current time and change the name of the file to the name on the title line, if they differ.
I hope you find Write useful.
If you would like to contact me for bug reporting or any other reason, I am on twitter @davidbrunow or you can email me at helloDavid@brunow.org.
I was listening to a Mission Dharma Dharma Talk a couple of days ago and the teacher, Howie Cohn, was discussing the Buddhist principal of doing no harm. He explained it in a way that I hadn’t thought of before and that I found interesting. I’ve been doing my best not to kill things but not doing harm is another step further. The interesting part of what he said was about how my choice to do no harm affects the people around me. If people around me no that I won’t harm them then they can be less guarded, more open, and closer to their true and best selves. That’s an aspect of doing no harm that I’ve never thought of before but I really like the idea. I think the follow-on effects of people being able to be at peace around you can be profound.
Yesterday I found myself approaching a tasks that I needed to complete with apprehension. I really didn’t want to have to do it because it seemed like it was going to be very difficult. My memories of having done it before we’re not pleasant because I’d forced myself through it while I was exhausted. That exhaustion made the task much harder the first time and that impression stuck with me, regardless of my energy levels yesterday. Depending on the day, that impression could have been enough friction for me to put off the task another day.
I have two ways to reduce the impact of these impressions of difficulty. The first is to avoid putting myself in a situation where I have to work on something when I’m exhausted. That comes down to better estimates, better expectations, and a better job at saying no to extra tasks. This is very difficult when I want to make sure a project is done right and want to spend the time to make sure it is. I’d much rather a project be late and right than on time and awful.
My second way to reduce the impact of these impressions of difficulty is to be aware of them. Sometimes that’s enough to overcome them. If I am aware that I’m feeling that way I can also repeat the task few times to show myself that it isn’t difficult.
Tomorrow will probably be a lot like today unless you are making a significant difference to change tomorrow. That being the case, wanting things to be different will only cause you discomfort. So either change tomorrow or find a way to like things the way they are.
I think it is due to poor project planning but every few months I find myself needing to go back into sprint mode — a time when I have to stop all extra-curricular activities, get on a good, regular sleep schedule, and spend most of my time in front of the computer working. This is different than an Agile sprint because work becomes all-consuming.
The key to sprint mode is seeing an end in sight. If you can’t see the end then you start to lose hope and that’s the worst thing to happen in that situation. It’s also nice if you can schedule some down time after being in sprint mode but I’ve never found time for that.
This morning someone on Twitter mentioned how he is moving and will be losing all of the shows he recorded on his DVR. This made me think about how crappy the DVR experience really is, despite the fact that DVRs are wonderful devices because of how useful they are.
The only reason that DVRs are wonderful is that they made an awful situation better. Due to the powers that control the TV industry, access to their content has been limited to how they want to give it to you, rather than how you want to get it. DVRs eased this pain a little by giving you control over some of how you get it, within limitations.
But DVRs are an interim solution. Having the content you want to watch available when you want it is viewers’ end goal and we are getting close to that happening. At that point, an interim technology like DVRs will just be crappy.
Look at what you’re building — is it an interim technology or the end goal? Are you OK with that? If it is an interim technology, do you have a path to take you to the end goal when the time is right, or will you fade into obsolescence at that point?
I think there are two ways to approach business decisions involving provided services to customers:
How can I get my customers to pay extra for this service?
How can I find a way to give my customers this service without any extra charge?
Which path you take depends upon the goals for your business. A goal of delivering maximum short term profit will push you towards #1 and a goal of providing your customers with the best possible service (which I believe leads to delivering maximum long term profit) will push you towards #2.
I love delivering as much as I can to my customers. One of the ways we do that at Shepherd Dog is our pricing. The maximum we charge is the amount of our initial estimate, which is a typical way of doing fixed bid pricing. But we take that one step further and reduce the price our customers pay if we work fewer hours than we estimated.
I am always looking for ways to deliver more to customers. I believe it is key to long term success in a service industry.
Sometimes — many times — things line up in my life in a way that is easy to follow. Like stepping stones through a creek bed I get something that’s leading me in the right way to go. We’ve had a few of those over the last year and a half after starting out company. I find it is best to go with that easier path and let it take you where it will.
Yesterday I was working on a bit of code that I’d written in such a way that my mind couldn’t make good sense of it. It was something like “if this isn’t true and this isn’t true and this isn’t true and this isn’t true then do this.” I wanted to alter two of those “this isn’t true” statements so that they were “this isn’t true and this isn’t true but only if this other thing is true.” With the way I had the problem laid out I couldn’t figure out how to do what I wanted.
So I changed the problem. I made it “if this is true or this is true or this is true or this is true and this is not true” then do the opposite of what I was first doing. I was able to fix the problem I was having by thinking about it in a different way.
Another situation could be where you are working on a problem that has multiple components and trying to keep all the information in your head at once isn’t working. Change the problem into multiple smaller problems that you can reason about separately.
I don’t think this strategy of changing the problem is universally applicable. It won’t help you solve many everyday problems like keeping mosquitos out of your house or avoiding traffic. But maybe it can and I’m just looking at the problem of figuring that out wrong.
We all do it. We all tell ourselves stories that are a little more dramatic and a little more favorable or unfavorable than reality towards the main character in our lives — ourself. People are targeting us specifically in some bad way or fortune is shining on us as everything goes our way. We may just embellish a little bit, crafting a story about how we aren’t meant to do the thing that is hard for us to do.
They are all stories. They are all lies we tell ourselves. And that’s ok. But it’s better if you notice those lies. Once you notice them you can use them for your benefit.
In business situations I aim to create a situations where the outcome I want to see is beneficial for everyone involved. This is surprisingly difficult due to the complexities of work, the inherent vagueness of projects, and the need to get paid enough to survive. That is one reason why it is so important to work with great people — the care they put into their work bridges the gap between incentives.
So let’s talk about the incentives with different types of pricing and I am going to specifically talk about pricing in the business to business service industry. I know of three primary pricing models: 1) hourly, 2) fixed bid per project, and 3) retainer.
I ran out of time to write this due to a meeting this morning, so I’ll break it up into multiple parts. Today I’ll talk about hourly billing.
When billing by the hour the client’s incentive is to keep the number of hours low so they don’t have to spend as much money. This can lead to them wanting to cut corners in order to reduce the total price. The service provider’s incentive is to charge for as many hours as possible to increase their income.
This imbalance of incentives leads to tension and possibly distrust. Unless the client and service provider have a strong relationship, the client doesn’t know if the service provider is recommending things for their own benefit or for the benefit of the client. They don’t know if the service provider is dragging their feet to rack up more hours. As a relationship is built these problems tend to fade but that takes time and consistency on both sides — the same people need to be working together because that trust isn’t easily transferable.
I feel like hourly billing is a necessary evil. I don’t like it but sometimes that is the only way because the task isn’t easily defined.
The first step to making a hard decision is figuring out what questions need to be answered. Then you need to figure out how much those questions matter. Then you need to answer the ones that really do matter. Then the decision should be clear.
Yesterday I discussed aligning incentives between you and your clients when in the business to business service industry. In particular I talked about the effect of pricing models, since money is the most important controllable incentive. Today I’m going to go into more detail about the incentives of project based pricing.
Project based, or fixed bid, pricing is the second most common way of billing I’ve seen. The way it works is that a company approaches you and asks for your estimate of how long a project will take. You give them an estimate and that is how much they pay you, regardless of the amount of time you spend on it.
Project based pricing is really good for the client because they know how much they will be spending up front. They don’t have to worry about their costs ballooning and what they will do in that situation. This form of billing also creates tension between you and the client because the client wants you to do as much as they can get out of you and you want to do as little so that you can have a higher effective bill rate — if a project that you estimate at 40 hours at $100 an hour only takes 20 hours then your effective bill rate is $200 an hour. Yay for you!
In my experience, consultants hate project based billing. It scares them because it is very difficult to get the estimate right and the $200 effective bill rate situation mentioned above is rare.
I really like project based billing, partially because I tend to go in the opposite direction as everyone else, and partially because I’m good at what I do and quicker than average.
The last couple of days I’ve been discussing the idea of aligning your incentives to those over your clients as a business providing services to another businesses. I’ve focused on pricing models because the primary, and most easily defined, incentive in these relationships is money. So far I’ve covered hourly billing and project based billing, and today I’ll talk about retainer based billing.
In the kind of work I’ve done, retainer based billing is a specialty tool only good for certain situations, like a plumbing key that is only good for opening a sewer cover. I’d love to find a way to make it work for projects because it makes some things much simpler, but I haven’t been able to come up with a way to do that yet.
In retainer based pricing, your clients pay you an agreed upon amount of money each month to ensure that you’ll be available for them for a certain amount of time that month. No matter how much work you do that month, you get the same amount of money.
As with project based billing, your client’s incentive is to get as much out of your for that monthly amount as possible. It is good to set their expectations right so that they don’t feel like they aren’t getting what they are paying for, so specify specific amounts of your time that they get per month or certain standards that you’ll meet.
Your incentive is to spend as little time as possible providing these services for your client which should lead to you doing your best to get things right the first time. Let’s consider two scenarios in which a local book store is having issues with their wireless networking.
In scenario 1, the book store is paying a company to send out technicians to look at the networking problem and charging by the hour. That technician has no incentive to get the work done right the first time because each time she goes out there she gets more billable hours. She’s probably great at her job and will get it fixed quickly and accurately the first time, but that isn’t always the case.
In scenario 2, the book store is paying a company to “make sure their network is working right.” They pay the same amount every month regardless of whether a technician has to come out. The company providing that service now has the incentive to do two things that benefit the client: 1) get the network working as quickly as possible if it has issues and 2) hire people that are really good at their job to ensure they get it done in as few hours as possible. Both of those are great for the book store because they need that network up to run their business.
Retainer based billing also makes invoicing simpler for both sides. Your company sends the same invoice every month. They only have to quickly review it to make sure nothing has changed, rather than go through each line item to make sure it looks right.
I really like the idea of retainer based billing, but like I said before it only works for a small set of situations. But if you can setup some of those situations you can get a nice steady baseline of cash flowing into your business every month that helps to smooth out the fluctuations you’ll get from your hourly and project based work.
I couldn’t agree with Tim Cook more. I’m starting to learn more about each company I buy from so I know that I’m supporting companies with similar values. Is this the way of the future or am I just getting old and cantankerous?
All the things happening lately with regards to email leaks and breaches and scandals are good reminders that email should be treated as part of the public record. Act as though the entire world will see every one you send. They just might.
The last few days I’ve been talking about aligning incentives from the point of view of a business that provides services to other businesses. I discussed pricing models as the primary tool for aligning those incentives and discussed how each of three pricing models — hourly, project based, and retainer — affects each party’s incentives.
After writing each part and reflecting on what I wrote, I noticed that I brought up the topic of tension frequently. I portrayed tension between you and your clients as a bad thing and that’s because I don’t like tension in my life. That doesn’t mean it is a bad thing for you and your business.
Like any advice, what I write is based upon my experience and my preferences. I’d also tell you not to “invest” in the stock market or ride roller coasters. I feel like reducing risk in my life means I can concentrate on making better things.
The type of relationship you have with your clients also depends on your goals. A tense relationship with a client might mean you are able to have higher profits from them. Higher profits aren’t my goal.
For now, that wraps up my series on aligning interests with your clients. I’m still hoping I can find that magic formula to perfect pricing and if I do, I’ll share it.
I’ve been working on a project where I’m taking an open source application and fitting it to the needs of a client. Like buying a pair of jeans at Old Navy and having them hemmed to fit you right. It will fit better but it won’t quite be perfect. Sometimes better is good enough.
This project has really helped reinforce my love for custom solutions to problems. With custom software I don’t just change the hem but instead I get to choose the material I want to work with, measure it all out perfectly, and stitch it together with precision.
Sometimes having a product with a general feature set is good. I like that my phone is a camera so I don’t need to carry both. But sometimes a general feature set just gets in the way of what you’re trying to do. Trying to make things generic makes everything a little bit worse.
If you’re asking for something, make it as easy as possible on that person to say what you’d like them to say. This is particularly important in business emails. We all get too much email and, many times, if an email requires us to do more work then it will be left in our inbox “to do later.”
This can really stall what you’re working on, so do everything you can to provide any information that person may possibly need to make a decision. In addition to all the relevant facts, make it a multiple choice question. Format it all nicely for easy comprehension — if you are sharing information from a table make sure the columns are lined up properly and put lines around it.
The worst thing that can happen when you send someone an email asking for their decision is that they do not respond. Even getting the answer you don’t want is better because that means you can move forward. Do everything you can to avoid having your email slowly rot in their inbox.
You’re excited now and things are easy. You want to get up and go. You want to show how much you care. You want to change the world.
That excitement won’t last. It will fade within the first few weeks. You’ll start to question whether you were right to be excited at all. You’ll think the lack of excitement means you’re going down the wrong path.
If you have a chance of following through you need to anticipate this change. You need to prepare yourself for that point where all you have is willpower and a desire to see the change you initially wanted to make and a desire to see it through to completion. You need to pace yourself so you have the strength to fight through it.
Smart people have this idea that they can figure things out. That’s what smart people do every day. But I think it gets applied too broadly. Some things can’t be figured out. The next successful thing seems like something that a smart person could figure out. But they can’t. Tens years ago no one would have bet on Instagram and Snapchat, two things that couldn’t have existed 10 years ago because too many other pieces had to move into play. 10 years is a long time but odds are that you wouldn’t have bet on either of those 5 years ago, or 3, or even last year. Confusing what you know and believe for how the world is.
I’m not good at saying no to people. Part of that is being in a position of needing to pay the bills. Part of that is the drive to complete the mission no matter the cost. Part of it is poor time management and believing that I can always squeeze another hour out of a day. But I think the biggest part is just that I have an image of myself that I have to keep up. That image is of a person who doesn’t drop the ball or let other people down and letting go of that image without thinking I’m a bad person is tough.
Thanks to the rise of mobile phones that are powerful computers, many businesses that never worked with technology in the past are starting to use it to provide their customers with better service. Delivery and transportation services are two of the newer industries which are able to provide much better service than in the past simply because their apps know where you are due to the magic that is GPS.
This also means that new industries are being introduced to having software bugs in their apps. These bugs can hurt their reputation and cause potential customers to distrust them. Let’s take an example of a flower delivery service that has a slick mobile app that lets you put in a destination address and gives you an estimated cost. You are going big for your significant other’s birthday and want to send them 144 roses. The app estimates that the delivery fee will be $5 and that as an added convenience you won’t be charged until they are delivered. Then you’re charged $29 in delivery fees because apparently the app had a bug where it didn’t add the $2 surcharge for every additional dozen roses. You’re angry and, whether the company was trying to be deceptive or not, you think they lied to you.
Unfortunately these types of bugs are the last things on a company’s mind when they are launching a new mobile-based service or building a company around it in the first place. The company is probably using a third party vendor for the app and they trust that that vendor did their job right.
Two takeaways from this:
The most important interactions in your app, in this example increasing the number of roses to deliver, need to be tested thoroughly. You need to test them yourself.
You need to ask what your vendors do to test the software they give you. Research any jargon they throw at you so you have a good understanding of what is being done. I’d recommend a dedicated quality assurance person for your software.
Like everything else in this world there are all kinds of business plans. You may want to think that everyone knows that good customer service and doing things the right way is good for business. But not everyone does. People build businesses around the worst parts of human behavior, taking advantage of our faulty wiring. Some make their profits by lying to their customers and only giving them what they’ve promised after forcing them to jump through ridiculous hoops.
I don’t like it but it’s out there. All I can do to counteract it is to build the best business I can following what I know to be right.
We started out our business with the broad idea of helping other small businesses and non-profits with their technology needs. People would ask us exactly what that meant and we didn’t really have an answer — it meant everything. If you had something you needed that even barely intersected with technology then we’d handle it. I think this was the right strategy early on for a few reasons. First, it is hard for a small company to find work and the more we offered to do the bigger the pool of potential work. We probably wouldn’t have made it this long without that pool. Second, it has allowed us to see what our target market needs and therefore how much work of different types is available. Third, it has given us the opportunity to try things and see what we like and don’t like. Combined with knowing what kinds of work is out there, this allows us to decide to do the things we are best at and enjoy doing the most (those two seem to go hand in hand.)
Start broad and narrow over time. You don’t have enough information to be narrow at the start.
Inspired by Seth Godin’s post today, today is the day to start doing things the right way. Today is the day to start making long term decisions instead of putting out fires. Today is the day to start changing the world.
I find myself falling into the “not today” trap most often when it comes to taking my time to make sure things are really great instead of stopping when they are functional. I tell myself that I’ll do that when I’m successful or when I don’t have to worry about money as much or when I have fewer projects going.
That day won’t come because the “not today” trap is inside me. It is my fear putting it all out there and my fear of success. I can only change it by repeatedly doing things differently, overcoming the bad habits and putting new patterns into place.
Today is the day.
It seems like technical people love to try to make everything modular. They try to make everything in as many replaceable and interchangeable pieces as possible. Modularity has benefits like being able to replace single components instead of the entire system.
But personally, I don’t want to have to worry about the different components of my things. I don’t want to have a modular phone because I’d have to spend time and energy figuring out the right combination of parts that will work best for me. Modularity is great, but I want a layer of polish on top of it. I just want things to work together without me having to be involved or think about it.
I’m nearing the end of a few projects right now and once again I’m reminded about how hard it is to finish something. It takes strong determination to make it all the way to 100% and not call it good enough. Fatigue sets in and every little task seems like a mountain to climb. Imagining being done and how nice that will be doesn’t help, it only makes it harder to endure the difficulty. My only advice is to find a way to focus on the parts of the work that you enjoy and let go of the rest.
Certifications are great for things that have reasonably limited bounds. Networking certifications are limited to everything to know about networking. That’s a lot to know, but it is a reasonable limit. Same with Microsoft or project management certifications.
Certifications also help to prove to the holder that she is qualified to do that thing. She doesn’t need to doubt herself, she has a piece of paper to prove she knows what she needs to know. If I had a certification for my work, maybe I wouldn’t have had a dream a couple of nights ago about how I’m not qualified for anything.
But certifications have problems. They are about knowing and being tested on knowing. And knowing a fact doesn’t necessarily help you solve a problem. And their reasonably limited bounds ensure that solving the meaningful problems and life cannot be certified. Anything uncharted is almost by definition un-certifiable.
You’d have a hard time convincing me to hire someone with a certification. That certification tells me that that person may be a valuable piece of a larger puzzle, but we’re too small to need a puzzle piece. We’d need someone who can solve any problem that comes up and there’s no certification for that.
I was watching Olympic volleyball today and during a timeout we got to overhear the coaches telling their players the strategy. The point that stuck out — even the announcers commented on it — was targeting the players in positions 5 and 6 on the serve. They hoped to take advantage of weakness.
This is a sound, logical strategy. Winning is important and targeting weakness increases your odds of winning. But I don’t like it and I try not to do it.
I don’t want to win by beating the worst players on the other team. I want to test myself against the best of them. That’s a true victory to me.
I believe that the human brain has a deep rooted response to small differences. This response’s purpose is to keep you alive. Predators do their best to ensure that you don’t see them coming so what you do see is in the details. The tip of a branch is broken, something smells a bit off, or it is too quiet. Your conscious mind might not even notice, but you feel on edge.
Our predators have changed from wolves to deceptive salespeople, but our deep rooted response still kicks in. And it is the details that matter more than the big red flags. Someone might just be really different and that is weird to you, but you can write that off to diversity. But a small difference, a feeling that the person is just a little bit odd, triggers a bigger response. You don’t know why, but you don’t trust that person.
So let’s say your a good business person, like most of you are. Are you paying enough attention to those details? If you’re a plumber and you’re wearing shiny shoes, I might not trust you. Or if the fonts on your business card are very similar, but not the same. Or if your logo looks different on your business card than it does on your website.
Each of these is another little flag that can immediately influence a deep rooted fear response in someone’s brain — a response that person is probably not even aware of. You don’t want that. Pay attention to those details. None is too small.
One of my favorite things about starting our business has been finding out more about who we are and then turning that into what Shepherd Dog is. Every decision is an opportunity to discuss our beliefs and make something out of them.
Choosing a phone system (and deciding whether you even need a phone,) deciding on the signature on your emails, and determining your pricing model and rates all add up to this new thing that you’ve created. When your company is small like ours is, we have nearly ultimate control over what it is.
I started thinking about this because I read a tweet about franchises and thought that that business model isn’t right for me. In a franchise you’re building someone else’s vision and missing out on all the fun parts.
Pain is a warning sign that I’m doing something wrong. Something detrimental to my health. Lately it has been too much work sitting in front of a computer. Not enough moving, stationary for hours. I’ve pain in my back that feels like it’s in my chest. Pain in my wrists, shoulders, hips.
My solution is not to go to a doctor. It is to get through this and then get rest and get movement. I need to use my body the way it was designed to be used.
What’s the primary purpose of putting a lock on something? I’d argue that it isn’t to keep people from getting into that thing — it is to know when people have gotten in.
No lock is impenetrable just as no house can be fully secured. But knowing whether someone has made it inside that house is useful. You can look for stolen items and be on the lookout for an intruder that is still in your house.
A cheap lock can be picked with simple tools that don’t leave a trace. For many years, computer security has relied on cheap locks that we call passwords. A password can try to keep people out of your things but they are not good at letting you know when someone has broken them.
I read a fascinating criminal complaint today about a group that would break into people’s houses and steal their wifi passwords. The group used those passwords to use that person’s internet access for whatever purpose they needed without the activity being traced back to them as easily. The group could have easily used that password to track all the internet activity conducted in that home.
That is scary stuff and I’d bet that most people’s homes are susceptible to this attack. The default password for the wifi network is long and a pain to guess, but my internet company prints it right on the side of the router so anyone with physical access to it could easily get the wifi password.
This is scary stuff. What can you do?
If someone is inside your home, not a lot. Routers have reset buttons on them so someone can change the password back to the default one printed on the side even if you change it to something better. But that is like putting a better lock on your front door, because you’ll know that the password was changed. All the sudden, your devices won’t connect to wifi and you’ll start to wonder why. Even though you can’t stop someone from breaking in in the first place you are in a much better position than if you didn’t know they’d been there.
Just like you can’t fully secure your home, you can’t fully secure your technology. Work on finding ways to know when your security has failed so you can respond quickly.
If it weren’t for Google, we wouldn’t be able to run the business we do. But Google doesn’t help us in the way you may think, like hosting our email or making our website easy for clients to find. No, Google helps because it allows us to do a task that used to take hours or day in minutes. Of course Stack Overflow gets credit for this too, but it was the fact that Google made a really good search engine that helped give us the confidence to say that we can solve any technology problem that a small business has.
I’m not a huge fan of Google in general, but I’ve got to give thanks.
In many cases, knowing that something works is as valuable as knowing how it works. Knowing that the sun comes up everyday at a semi-regular time is almost as useful as knowing how the celestial bodies are floating through space. Knowing that turning off a computer and turning it back on again makes things work right is almost as useful as knowing exactly what things in memory were causing an unstable system state. Knowing that adding a line of code to a particular place in an application makes it work in all browsers is almost as useful as knowing that that line of code changes how certain browsers interpret the site.
Just knowing it works is good enough until something changes and it doesn’t work anymore. Something is always changing. The sun will not come up tomorrow at the same time it did today. The way computers store their information will change (already has changed) and turning it off and back on again won’t always fix a problem. That “magic” line of code will only work in a couple of browsers and doesn’t do anything in the others.
In some cases you can get away with waiting until something changes to learn how everything works. Unfortunately, with the world being as complex as it is, this strategy can become overwhelming quickly when you have a bad week and have to figure out how 5-10 different things work at the same time. I recommend that most of the time you figure out how something works the first time you encounter it. Time doesn’t always allow that, but many times it does.
Every thing you learn about adds to a foundation and framework for you to learn more quickly in the future, building one block on top of another.
Novelty. Drama. Sugar. Salt. Caffeine. Alcohol. Attention. Stuff.
Want to know a great way to make me want to work with you again? Don’t be the bottleneck on the project. What do I mean by that?
Let’s say we are building something and we each have a part that needs to be done. We’re building a dog house that needs 4 walls, a door and a roof. You’re in charge of the door and we can’t put the roof on until the door is done. You’re the bottleneck if we have to stop and wait for you to finish your door.
Don’t be that bottleneck. How can I prevent that, you ask? I’d be happy to share some tips.
Know all the interrelated parts of the project and what parts are dependent upon each other
Think about the least amount you can do to get your part ready. Do we only need to cut out the door and put hinges on it before hanging it and putting on the roof? Then do that first and worry about sanding and painting it later.
Anticipate how long your things will take and how long everyone else’s will. This is hard and takes experience both with what you are working on and who you are working with. Cindy and Beth could each have wildly different completion times.
Don’t be too hard on yourself if you are the bottleneck, sometimes you can’t help it. But you definitely get the gold star if you find a way to prevent it. And you get an awesome feeling of satisfaction when someone else tells you she is done with her part and asks you how quickly you can be done with yours and you say “I’ll have it to you later this morning.”
Many things in this world are scary and bad. Getting in a car accident, laid off, or cancer are all bad and scary things. But I have a hard time thinking of other realistic threats.
The other scary things are either neutral or good. Asking someone to be your friend is scary but good. Getting a big project to work on is scary but good. Letting your kid take a risk and be independent is scary but good.
Scary is not equal to bad. Most times you should move towards the scary rather than away from it.
Knowing you have the freedom to make decisions and a difference changes a grueling process into an exciting one. Every day you have creative freedom over what you choose to do to touch the world. It may feel as though you are trapped or stuck but you aren’t. You’re free and don’t let anyone else tell you otherwise.
Getting someone to show their “like” of something on social media is easy. It costs her next to nothing and may even give her a feeling of generosity — isn’t it great of her to like this thing? She’s so great!
But those numbers don’t matter. Turning a like into a sale is just about as hard as turning nothing into a sale. Getting likes is like eating a cookie or potato chip. It focuses your mind on that awesome taste and dulls your senses to everything else. You just want your high and doing good, hard work doesn’t give fill that craving.
So if you are fortunate enough to have someone devoted solely to social media, then the number of likes they get may be a good way to measure their success. But don’t think about it all the time. Don’t let it distract you from the real work. Put yourself on a diet.
It gets me nowhere but I find myself doing it. Seeing someone else doing something similar to me, experiencing a moment of not being enough, and then mentally fighting to find ways that I’m better. My silly little human mind has a hard time understanding that there’s room for us all, getting caught up in the tiny world we see and ignoring everything beyond.
The technology world is full of lingo that most people don’t understand. As a bilingual need — one that can speak both technology and human — I try to do what I can to fix that. For example, I answered a question today that I thought I’d share here, with some paraphrasing:
Q: I need a website and I heard that Bootstrap is better than WordPress for mobile. What are your thoughts?
My Answer: It is difficult to give specific advice without knowing your process for building websites, so I’ll discuss the options in general terms which will either be helpful or lead to more questions that will be helpful :). I’m going to try to explain at a Sesame Street level – not because I think you’re at that level but because I think it helps to get rid of assumptions that could get in the way of understanding.
To start, Wordpress and Bootstrap are two very different things.
Wordpress is a Content Management System (CMS) which is a fancy term for a system for storing content and sharing it with others. Content is text, images, videos, and everything else that you might want on a website.
Bootstrap is a “Mobile First Front-end Framework” which is a fancy term for a template of styles that are primarily meant to be used for websites being displayed mobile devices. Bootstrap also adapts the styles so that websites look right on desktop computers. Bootstrap is used in a similar way to a Wordpress theme – to change the way the website looks.
Everything Bootstrap or a Wordpress theme does can be done manually if you speak the right language. That language is Cascading Style Sheets (CSS) which is the fancy term used for the format of files used to change the styling of websites. Both Bootstrap and Wordpress themes are collections of CSS files that make the website look right on different screen sizes so the person making the site doesn’t have to do all the work themselves.
So Bootstrap cannot replace Wordpress because it doesn’t do everything Wordpress does. But it can be used with Wordpress, depending on your Wordpress skills. Some Wordpress themes use Bootstrap already.
The end result you want, whether using a Wordpress theme, Bootstrap, or manually creating CSS, is for the website to look good and be easily usable on all devices. This generally means large pictures are made smaller and multiple columns are made into one column on mobile. This will require looking at the site on different devices no matter what, but either a Wordpress theme or Bootstrap can do a lot of the work for you.
We don’t have much time.
Every moment we get closer to losing everyone we care about. And each of them gets a moment closer to losing you.
But we can’t stand still and only spend time with them. We must move forward.
But we must also remember to feel the pain that comes with time slipping by.
And enjoy every moment of it.
The huge amount of information at our fingertips makes us feel like we know everything about everything. But for every thing we know 10 more things go unknown. Our silly brains make the logical leap that those unknown things don’t exist when they might — we don’t have enough information. I’m working on reminding my brain of that fact.
Being a technology nerd I surround myself with technology news and have technology need friends. That makes it hard to stay in touch with what real people value in technology.
For example, I know that real people — not just technology nerd people — care about their phone’s battery life. But I didn’t think that they knew enough about how their phone works to know that certain apps will use more battery than others. Today I downloaded the Snapchat app and saw the first two reviews both complained about it:
This is awesome. I love that people are holding developers accountable to better performance.
Doesn’t just come from people who don’t like what you’re doing or how you’re doing it. The worst pressure is from the people who praise what you’re doing but add “have you tried XXX?” You want to please them because they like you. And maybe they’re right — you’re no expert and good fortune is the main reason you are where you are.
Over the last several weeks I’ve been working on a side project app as a way to flex some product development muscles, build an entire app in the Composable Architecture, and experiment with tools and processes that I don’t get to use in my day job. I’ve tried to be very intentional about adding complexity to the project and therefore started off simply by not worrying about modularity or organization and instead just putting all of my Swift files into a single Xcode project and letting the flow of creation take me where it would. To keep CI/CD simple I decided to use Xcode Cloud and created a pipeline that would deploy a build to TestFlight every time I merged to main. My simple process was to write a bit of code each day, commit it to main, and then use the TestFlight build to get a feel for what needed to be done next.
Last week I shipped my first bug that caused a regression in functionality and decided that I’d gotten to the point of complexity where I needed some automated tests. I hadn’t been writing any tests to that point because what I’d built was not complex and because I was still in a highly experimental phase where tests would probably slow down the flow. But I think I hit the tipping point where adding those tests would speed things up by limiting potential backsliding from regressions.
Before I started writing tests I chose to do some yak shaving so I could implement the module hierarchy that I wanted. Modularizing would allow me to write tests targeted at specific features which I could build and run in isolation as my app grows. So I shaved these yaks to modularize my app using Swift Package Manager:
Created a Package.swift file
Defined all my modules and their dependencies in that file
Copied my code to the proper locations for Swift Package Manager
Added that Package.swift to my project
Made API public until the app would successfully build again
This is a process I am very familiar with but it still took me some time and I had to be patient with myself while doing it. Part of my mind was wanting me to hurry up and get back to building things because that part of my mind does not like to acknowledge that organizing and tidying up is part of the building process.
OK so I had modules and now I was ready to add tests. As I mentioned earlier, I’m using the Composable Architecture for this app and since I’m familiar with using it from the day job I only had to do minor refactoring around how I was generating UUIDs to support tests. I started with a test around the regression that I’d found and used the test to troubleshoot the issue. Once that was resolved I finished out tests around the rest of the features in the app.
One of my modules is a “DesignSystem” module which has UI components with little to no logic in them. Despite the lack of logic I still like to get some coverage on their layout and how they behave in different environments (like light mode, dark mode, and different Dynamic Type sizes) so I added some snapshot tests for that using Swift Snapshot Testing.
I ran all my tests locally and everything passed. 🎉
Now to get them running on Xcode Cloud. My experience with Xcode Cloud to this point had been simple and easy so I expected the same with adding tests. But my decision earlier to modularize meant that I needed to shave another yak or two — Xcode Cloud wants a specific test target or a test plan to run tests against and after modularizing I have multiple test targets. So I added a test plan I named “AllTests” and included all the test targets in it. This was oddly difficult because apparently there already was a test plan in the project that was automatically generated and I had to delete that one and jump through some other hoops. Eventually I had a test plan that I could use both locally and with my Xcode Cloud tests. I merged the changes to main and waited to see the green checkmark in Xcode Cloud.
All my snapshot tests failed on Xcode Cloud. 😿
My tests were failing and I didn’t know why so I went searching the internet for clues, starting with the issues section of the Swift Snapshot Testing GitHub repo. I found this issue which described what I was seeing and had a lot of discussion including multiple people who had resolved the issue. So I started naïvely implementing things that were suggested in that thread without understanding the fundamentals of the problem. And those things I tried did not work — I needed to learn a bit more about how Xcode Cloud works to be able to understand the conversations on that issue.
Since the approach I wanted to take mentioned adding a ci_scripts folder I searched for documentation around that and found this documentation for writing custom build scripts on Xcode Cloud. I didn’t care about custom build scripts but this documentation discussed where the ci_scripts folder needed to live, how to create it, and this section about resources in custom build scripts. That documentation gave me the underlying context I needed to fill in the details I was missing from the GitHub issue.
At a high level, this is what we need to do:
Create a ci_scripts directory where Xcode Cloud expects it to be.
Create a symlink in the ci_scripts directory to where our snapshots are stored.
Detect when running on Xcode Cloud in our snapshot tests.
Provide Swift Snapshot Testing with a file path to the ci_scripts directory when running on Xcode Cloud.
Let’s walk through those steps in detail.
Copied from this documentation for writing custom build scripts on Xcode Cloud:
To create the ci_scripts directory:
Open your project or workspace in Xcode and navigate to the Project navigator.
In the Project navigator, Control-click your project and choose New Group to create the group and its corresponding directory.
Name the new group ci_scripts.
Here is the directory structure that I’m using:
SpeakList/ .git/ App/ SpeakList.xcodeproj/ ci_scripts ... Sources/ ... Tests/ SnapshotTests/ SnapshotTests.swift __Snapshots__/ ... ... The root directory is called “SpeakList”, the Xcode project is in a directory called “App” which also contains the “ci_scripts” directory, and there are “Sources” and “Tests” directories to follow the default directory structure that Swift Package Manager expects. The “Tests” directory has a “SnapshotTests” directory with the test file “SnapshotTests.swift” and the “__Snapshots__” folder where Swift Snapshot Testing stores the snapshots.
We need a symlink from the SpeakList/App/ci_scripts directory to the SpeakList/Tests/SnapshotTests/__Snapshots__ directory which we can create by running this command in the ci_scripts directory:
ln -s ../../Tests/SnapshotTests/__Snapshots__ This is the part that tripped me up the most while I was trying to make this work. There are different ways that you could achieve the same goal of determining that the tests are running on Xcode Cloud but I chose to use the CI environment variable that Xcode Cloud injects.
For our tests to get access to this environment variable we have to “pipe” the variable through our Test Plan. I’d never done this before and Test Plans are a newer Xcode feature so I found it difficult to find documentation on what is needed. I eventually found this documentation for Datadog with this nugget that set me right:
To pipe the environment variable through we need to edit our TestPlan so it looks like this:
“Environment Variables” is set to CI=$(CI) and “Target for Variable Expansion” is set to “SpeakList” which is the main app target.
Now that we’ve piped the variable through we use ProcessInfo to access the variable in our tests. Here is what the single line of code looks like to return a Boolean for whether we are in the CI environment (we know we want to test for the value of "TRUE" based upon the Xcode Cloud environment variable documentation):
ProcessInfo.processInfo.environment["CI"] == "TRUE" I’ll share how that fits in with the rest of our test code in a bit.
Swift Snapshot Testing uses the location of the file where the tests are being run to determine where it creates and looks for snapshots. When running in Xcode Cloud we need to provide a different file path to the assertSnapshot method so Swift Snapshot Testing can find the snapshots in the location we symlinked them in the second step.
First we need to create a StaticString:
let xcodeCloudPath: StaticString = "/Volumes/workspace/repository/ci_scripts/SnapshotTests.swift" Then we need to choose to use that StaticString when running on CI:
let filePath: StaticString if ProcessInfo.processInfo.environment["CI"] == "TRUE" { filePath = xcodeCloudPath } else { filePath = #file } And then we need to provide the correct file path to the assertSnapshot method:
assertSnapshot( matching: view, as: .image, file: filePath ) After putting that all together our snapshot test could look like this:
class SnapshotTests: XCTestCase { let xcodeCloudPath: StaticString = "/Volumes/workspace/repository/ci_scripts/SnapshotTests.swift" func testTextExampleSnapshot() { let view = Text("Snapshot Test Example") .frame(width: 200, height: 200) let filePath: StaticString if ProcessInfo.processInfo.environment["CI"] == "TRUE" { filePath = xcodeCloudPath } else { filePath = #file } assertSnapshot( matching: view, as: .image, file: filePath ) } } That code we just created gets the job done but that boilerplate code to test for running on CI in every test would get annoying to write over and over. It would be better to extract the common things we want to do for every snapshot test to a separate method to remove that redundancy and have consistent snapshot tests for all of our views.
I’ve created an extension on XCTest with a method that handles the check for running on CI as well as:
Checks that the device or simulator used for creating snapshots has a consistent display scale and OS version
Creates snapshots inside a view controller so we are capturing what the view will look like on device
Creates snapshots in all color schemes (Light Mode and Dark Mode)
Creates snapshots in all Dynamic Type sizes
Disables animations in the view to get more consistent snapshots
Here is that extension:
import SnapshotTesting import SwiftUI import XCTest extension XCTest { // https://github.com/pointfreeco/swift-snapshot-testing/discussions/553#discussioncomment-3807207 private static var xcodeCloudFilePath: StaticString { "/Volumes/workspace/repository/ci_scripts/SnapshotTests.swift" } private static var isCIEnvironment: Bool { ProcessInfo.processInfo.environment["CI"] == "TRUE" } /// Creates snapshots in a variety of different environments at the screen size of an iPhone 13 Pro (by default). /// This method must be called when running tests on a device or simulator with the proper display scale /// and OS version. /// /// Environments used for these snapshots: /// * Light Mode /// * Dark Mode /// * All Dynamic Type Sizes /// /// - Parameters: /// - view: The SwiftUI `View` to snapshot. /// - snapshotDeviceOSVersions: A dictionary of the OS versions used for snapshots. Defaults /// to: ["iOS": 17.0, "macOS": 14.0, "tvOS": 17.0, "visionOS": 1.0, "watchOS": 10.0]. The test will fail /// if snapshots are recorded with a different version. /// - snapshotDeviceScale: The device scale used when recorded snapshots. Defaults to 3.0. /// The test will fail if snapshots are recorded with a different scale. /// - viewImageConfig: The `ViewImageConfig` for the snapshot. Defaults to `.iPhone13Pro`. /// - xcodeCloudFilePath: A `StaticString` describing the path that will be used when /// running these tests on Xcode Cloud. Defaults to `"/Volumes/workspace/repository/ci_scripts/SnapshotTests.swift"`. If your /// tests are in a Swift file with a name other than "SnapshotTests.swift" you will need to provide this /// same `StaticString` but with your test file's name in place of "SnapshotTests.swift". /// - file: The file in which failure occurred. Defaults to the file name of the test case in which this function was called. /// - testName: The name of the test in which failure occurred. Defaults to the function name of the test case in which this function was called. /// - line: The line number on which failure occurred. Defaults to the line number on which this function was called. func assertStandardSnapshots( view: some View, snapshotDeviceOSVersions: [String: Double] = [ "iOS": 17.0, "macOS": 14.0, "tvOS": 17.0, "visionOS": 1.0, "watchOS": 10.0 ], snapshotDeviceScale: CGFloat = 3, viewImageConfig: ViewImageConfig = .iPhone13Pro, xcodeCloudFilePath: StaticString = xcodeCloudFilePath, file: StaticString = #file, testName: String = #function, line: UInt = #line ) { guard UIScreen.main.scale == snapshotDeviceScale else { XCTFail( "Running in simulator with @\\(UIScreen.main.scale)x scale instead of the required @\\(snapshotDeviceScale)x scale.", file: file, line: line ) return } let snapshotDeviceOSVersion: String #if os(iOS) guard let version = snapshotDeviceOSVersions["iOS"] else { XCTFail( "iOS version not provided.", file: file, line: line ) return } snapshotDeviceOSVersion = "\\(version)" #elseif os(macOS) guard let version = snapshotDeviceOSVersions["macOS"] else { XCTFail( "macOS version not provided.", file: file, line: line ) return } snapshotDeviceOSVersion = "\\(version)" #elseif os(tvOS) guard let version = snapshotDeviceOSVersions["tvOS"] else { XCTFail( "tvOS version not provided.", file: file, line: line ) return } snapshotDeviceOSVersion = "\\(version)" #elseif os(visionOS) guard let version = snapshotDeviceOSVersions["visionOS"] else { XCTFail( "visionOS version not provided.", file: file, line: line ) return } snapshotDeviceOSVersion = "\\(version)" #elseif os(watchOS) guard let version = snapshotDeviceOSVersions["watchOS"] else { XCTFail( "watchOS version not provided.", file: file, line: line ) return } snapshotDeviceOSVersion = "\\(version)" #endif guard UIDevice.current.systemVersion == "\\(snapshotDeviceOSVersion)" else { XCTFail( "Running with OS version \\(UIDevice.current.systemVersion) instead of the required OS version \\(snapshotDeviceOSVersion).", file: file, line: line ) return } let filePath: StaticString if Self.isCIEnvironment { filePath = xcodeCloudFilePath } else { filePath = file } for colorScheme in ColorScheme.allCases { let viewController = UIHostingController( rootView: view .transaction { $0.animation = nil } .background(colorScheme == .light ? Color.white : Color.black) .environment(\\.colorScheme, colorScheme) ) viewController.view.backgroundColor = colorScheme == .light ? .white : .black assertSnapshot( matching: viewController, as: .image(on: viewImageConfig), named: "\\(name) - Color Scheme: \\(colorScheme)", file: filePath, testName: testName, line: line ) } for size in DynamicTypeSize.allCases { let viewController = UIHostingController( rootView: view .transaction { $0.animation = nil } .environment(\\.dynamicTypeSize, size) ) assertSnapshot( matching: viewController, as: .image(on: viewImageConfig), named: "\\(name) - Dynamic Type: \\(size)", file: filePath, testName: testName, line: line ) } } } A few months ago I stopped using both of the alarm clock apps that I created. The one for Rdio broke due to a change they made in their API that I couldn’t respond to quickly enough. The one for music broke due to some combination of beta software on my phone and the debut of Apple Music. So I went back to the standard iOS alarm clock.
That alarm clock has one great advantage over either of mine — it doesn’t have to be set every night before bed. Not having to remember that was liberating sand I felt as though a burden was lifted off of me.
But the thrill didn’t last. That alarm clock lacks two features that both of mine have: playing a random song from a playlist and tracking the amount of sleep I’m getting.
I spent a chunk of time over the last week fixing my alarm clocks and making them better. Using them again instead of the built in alarm clock is a joy.
It is nice to know that while a little change was nice, I’ve made something that really does work better and brings me joy to use.
Tonight I fought with an issue for hours that should have taken me minutes. I went into the situation with my normal debugging strategy which involves quickly making changes, seeing results, and then repeating until I’d found the problem.
But tonight I was dealing with a different kind of situation although I didn’t know it at first. I was dealing with caching, which meant that changes I made didn’t show up immediately. When caching, the server holds on to certain information for a set period of time for the sake of efficiency. It is much easier to hold onto a webpage for a few seconds and then show it again rather than rebuilding the entire page.
Like I said I didn’t know I was dealing with caching at first and my strategy wasn’t working at all. I made a change, checked for results and nothing happened. That went on for longer than I’d have liked it to but eventually I caught on. Troubleshooting with caching requires patience and attention. With normal debugging you can usually move quickly enough to keep your attention engaged naturally. But with caching you have to remember what you changed last for seconds or minutes. You have to pay attention to whether things have changed in more subtle ways.
If you are entering a competition, contest, or submitting something you created to someone else for approval, what are you asking for?
Are you asking for money? If so, is the money they are offering enough to do what you want to do? And is there some way you can create a very cheap version of what you want to make to help share your vision?
Are you asking for legitimacy? Do you fear you’re thing isn’t good enough? Do you want someone else, someone “who knows,” to tell you that you are?
Are you asking for publicity? Will more people see what you’re doing if you work with this group?
I believe figuring out what you are asking for matters. It matters not only to better know yourself, but also to better approach the problem of “how do I get this submission selected.”
Once again I didn’t do a good job of keeping track of my daily learning in August, but like June and July it was all about WWDC.
I made it through another 16 videos and have 14 left to watch from this year.
Once again I also spent time watching videos from previous years — this time to learn more about In App Purchase for a project I’m working on.
I’ve been on a kick lately about saying no to things. Apparently I’ve been pushed to my limit and can’t handle anything else so everything is turning into a no. But I still feel like a jerk for saying no and I don’t like feeling like a jerk. I start to apologize for saying no when I really meant it.
When is the right time to give up? It is easy to say “never give up” but that isn’t the right answer. It also isn’t the right time simply because you run into a little adversity. And the right time depends on what you’re doing. Are you wanting to give up on training that new hire and deciding to let him go? That needs to happen sooner rather than later. Are you wanting to give up on adding a feature a client asked for? That shouldn’t happen until you’ve come to the conclusion that what they want is impossible or outside of your abilities (and really, only impossible things are outside of your abilities.)
I heard this comment on a podcast today that was talking about homelessness in our community. I think that other than the “never” being a bit strong this is good everyday advice for all aspects of your life. Like when you want to make things easier for your kids when they’re fully capable of doing something. Or when an employee asks you about something they they can look up themselves.
Life has so many paths with so many starting points and so many destinations. You started somewhere different than I and you want to end up somewhere different. Of course your path will be different than mine. Your path will be different than everyone else’s.
Don’t get caught up in the details of someone else’s success. Their details probably won’t help you. Try to figure out if the bigger pieces of their story make sense to you. If they resonate then try adopting them into your life. See how they work for you.
Don’t blame yourself if they don’t work for you. Some things will fit and others won’t. Not fitting indicates a mismatch, not a flaw.
You’re perfect the way you are.
Listening to the same podcast as yesterday, but a different episode, a person mentioned something along the lines of “that is how we will solve the homelessness problem.” But I don’t think that homelessness is a solvable problem. You can make it better perhaps, but our world is currently setup in a way that knowingly puts some people out on the streets and is ok with that. The problem isn’t the homeless it is that our society thinks it ok that some people don’t have a consistent, safe place to shower, shit, and sleep.
In our current system, homelessness is not solvable. Despite the compassion I feel for those without homes, it’s a problem I don’t want to touch since I know I can’t fix it.
Part of our business is meeting people. That’s how we find clients. But meeting people is expensive, because it takes a lot of our time and we can’t bill for that time.
An easy way to cut our budget would be to stop spending time meeting people. We could maximize our billable hours and bring in more money.
Until the money stops flowing because we haven’t met any new clients. As much as our existing clients love us, they only have so much work for us.
We have to look at both the short term and long term costs and benefits. Short term we lose a little money by going out and meeting people. Long term we have a continual flow of work and get to keep doing what we do.
I’m not motivated by money, respect, or power. The only thing that motivates me is getting things done. The cycle is like the hunger cycle — get hungry and fill my plate, clear my plate, and then get hungry again.
I’ve been working on one of my simpler apps — it only has three screens — and it has taken me far longer than I wanted it to. I thought I’d be done by the end of July, but other things that took longer than I wanted them to got in the way. That’s the way it works.
I’m having to readjust my mindset about it a bit. I’ve always taken pride in getting things done quickly, but I’m understanding how much more important quality is than inflating my pride. It feels painful to push something back, and to explain to someone else that it has taken longer than I want it to. But that’s part of the doing things right. You have to take that extra time.
Like you I make a lot of assumptions. I’m especially bad when dealing with people because I’m not good at it so I have to try extra hard and I don’t always have the energy for that. One assumption I’ve been making lately is that other people know my process for building things. This process is obvious to me, of course, so everyone else must know too, right? This assumption leads me to the conclusion that people are being intentional incompetent rather than the truth which is that I just haven’t explained things well. Or at all.
So the point is that you can’t expect your customers to willingly go out of their way to research and learn everything about you and what you do. You have to go to them repeatedly and just a little bit at a time guide them towards what you need them to know. Otherwise you’ll get caught up in a situation where it seems like everyone is speaking a different language, people will get angry, and projects will fail.
Making a bank shot in basketball has two main parts: 1) knowing where on the backboard your shot needs to hit and 2) getting the ball to hit that spot. Both take talent and experience.
Our body survives based upon chemical reactions. Digesting food, processing thoughts, and flexing muscles all use a chemical reaction to achieve their purpose. Knowing about proper nutrition is essential to a healthy life and therefore the concepts behind these chemical reactions have been simplified into 3 macronutrients and calorie counting.
But this simplification doesn’t work. We are taught that each of these macronutrients is basically interchangeable — that a calorie is a calorie. But that isn’t true. The chemical reactions for different types of calories are different and therefore their outcomes will be different. Sugar intake is the start of a long chain reaction because it changes the chemical state of your body. So many factors are involved that it would be very difficult to know the exact impact.
But I believe the real problem is figuring out ways to simplify knowledge without going too far. Maybe this is where wearable technologies can help out. If your belt can keep track of the state of the chemical reactions in your digestive system then it can provide contextual information to keep you healthier. Computers are great at taking data like the state of your digestive system, comparing it to other data like all the available foods on the plant, and providing an output.
This belt would know when you’re low on potassium and recommend a banana. It would be able to help you consistently maintain an equilibrium that should mean a much healthier life, free of unknown chemical chain reactions.
The more I learn the less I feel I know and therefore the less that I feel like I can give back to anyone else. I’ve been an entrepreneur for the last 18 or so months and while thinking about it earlier today I struggled to come up with lessons I could share with someone else wanting to do the same thing. I have to ask myself what insight I can provide when I feel like I haven’t proven myself and even if I have then I know there’s no guarantee that what I did will work for you. At this point I can’t confidently share any business fundamentals that are critical to success.
What I can share is what I’ve experienced without the insight. Maybe that’s enough.
I’ve had a lower back injury for the last ten years and I’m in varying levels of pain every day. I’ve just started a new app that I ope will help me control that pain better and I’m able to approach it from the point of view of someone living in chronic pain. That point of view will help me make a better app. That point of view is the important part of making things — much more important than the technical specs and software stack.
What personal experience do you have that you can bring to a project?
I’ve made a big mistake in a few of my apps. I’ve figured it out before but forgot the lesson along the way. I was reminded of it today when I noticed I had a 2 star review in the App Store. My Dharma Talks app wasn’t working right for one of my users, and she went to the App Store to try to get it fixed.
I don’t think most people know that leaving a review asking for help makes it very difficult for me to help her. Without the details of her specific situation I don’t know where to start troubleshooting and I’d never know if I fixed her problem. But she isn’t the one that failed by leaving a bad review, I am.
I don’t have an easy way for her to contact me inside the app. She has no idea who I am or how to reach me. And it isn’t her job to find out. It is my job to give her that easy way to reach me.
Don’t be a dummy like me. Give people an easy way to provide feedback to you — especially if you’re making something that could be broken due to a bug, or could be perceived to be broken due to a misunderstanding.
Being the first to do something doesn’t matter.
Being one that makes an impact by doing it does.
How easily could someone copy what you do tomorrow? Could someone in Vietnam make the same thing you do but at a third of the price? Will the bank down the street offer the same rates on loans?
Right this moment I can think of two ways to resist being copied.
The first is relationships. Relationships are inherently unique. We build a different bond with each person we meet. No one else can replicate your relationships.
The second is building a large system of interconnected pieces, each under your control. This one is difficult and the key is integration. Any potential copies will seem shallow and hollow because they don’t work as well with the rest of the world.
If you can be copied your success will probably be short lived.
The last 18 months of starting a company and consistently striving to do better has taught me my limitations better than anything else. I’ve always been baffled by the thought of not being able to do something — if anyone else can do it then I firmly believe that I can also. But now I see where someone else could probably do things better. I think that’s progress.
Living things have a pulse. They constantly move although sometimes in barely perceptible ways but we notice this change. At a basic level we differentiate between living and dead. We feel a sense of dread from seeing death.
The things we create can be moving and vibrant or static and dead. Each thing we create needs to move in a different way to fit its style but each needs to move.
Lets say you’re planning a trip across the UNited States, starting in Washington state and going all the way to Florida. Your only tools for the trip are a car and a crude map that you created based upon your previous travels. Most of your navigation will come from reading highway signs and you have no way of anticipating construction, accidents, or detours.
So you’re planning this trip and I ask you how long the trip will take. How accurate do you think your number will be? Do you think you’d be off my minutes or hours?
Now imagine your getting close to the end of your road trip but you’re way behind schedule because you ran into multiple detours. And then someone tells you that you should get someone else to help with the driving so you can keep moving through the night rather than stopping to sleep.
But this new person doesn’t know how to read the map you’ve created. You didn’t think about it needing to be for anyone but yourself. So this new person doesn’t know exactly where you’re going. And this new person also doesn’t know how to drive your car. I don’t know why she doesn’t but she just doesn’t, although she is familiar with the concept.
So the first few hours of driving together are at a slower pace than you were at because you’re spending some time teaching her how to drive the car. And she can’t drive at night yet because she doesn’t know the way well enough so you aren’t seeing the amount of extra progress you expected. It isn’t long before you’ve realized that she’s not a help and only slowing you down. It isn’t that she’s done something wrong it’s just that she can’t learn what she needs to learn fast enough to make a difference in your drive.
This situation I’ve described is very similar to software development projects. We don’t have tools to tell us the effect route to avoid trouble and we only have our own experience and ingenuity as a guide. But one anticipated detour in code can easily add hours or days to a project and there is no way to avoid that. The transfer of information between a team is one of the biggest hurdles that needs to be overcome and unfortunately adding a person near the end can only cause harm. But there is one difference between the two scenarios — the time scale. A minute in this road trip is the equivalent of an hour or more.
For months, maybe a year or more, I’ve felt like I’m way behind on getting the things done that I want to. Recently I was able to complete something that I’ve been trying to get to for about a year and released new versions of a couple of my apps.
I feel like a burden has been lifted. I still have plenty I want to do, I’ve just recently started two more side projects and have a few in mind after those, but those are future projects rather than past projects — ones whose deadlines have already come and gone.
I know all of it is in my head, but time and again I feel the same way. I feel great if I’m ahead and poor when I’m behind.
In massage therapy school, I leaned the proper way to use my hands as a professional therapist. As a professional, I have to consider both the massage I am working on at that moment as well as the six others I have lined up after it. I have to use proper techniques like taking advantage of body weight and the cumulative forces working through my trunk to my arms to my hands. If I used smaller muscles like those that control the thumbs, then I’d be wore out long before the day was over.
That doesn’t matter when I’m giving one 30 minute massage to my significant other. I can use whatever techniques work best for me without having to worry as much about the long term consequences.
But thanks to my training — because I am a professional — I can know how to handle when I should act like an amateur and when I should act like a professional.
I believe I can add tremendous value by acting like an amateur. I can build things more quickly and figure out whether they work while breaking all the professional rules. But because I’m a professional, I know the trade-offs of what I’m doing. I know I’ll need to go back and change a lot of the amateur work I’ve done. I also know that I can’t sustain the amateur pace forever but that it’s a great way to get momentum behind a project.
I believe the best way to start any project is by acting like an amateur.
Few things compare to the relief I feel when I’ve conquered a problem after a long, frustrating battle. Relief, joy, and frustration intermingle in quite a pleasant cocktail. I allow myself a few moment to rest and relax and then move into the next battle.
Those of us at the front have to push forward faster than we’d like. We know that not everyone will keep up. We know that some things we do will be lost along the way.
But the only way to keep our momentum is to keep pushing forward as quickly as we can. It is uncomfortable. It feels too fast. Our minds struggle to keep up at times. But we must endure that to move us all ahead.
You can’t create a revolutionary new thing overnight in one fell swoop. Instead you take little steps one at a time. Only your close friends and family will see all the little steps it takes. Then one day the steps have added up and you’ve made a good thing. Not revolutionary and not even great, but good. You can be proud of it.
But this thing won’t be the revolutionary new thing. This thing is a little step forward on your path.
In most ways the world is safer than ever. But as always there are sharks looking to make a quick buck by taking advantage of quirks in our human operating system. One I heard about today is to see something that is trending on Google and then find a way to sell that thing to people. Of course marketers have always followed trends to see where they can make a quick buck but the digital tools available to them today are making it easier because they have more information. Plus, you’re giving away that information for free and probably not even thinking about it.
Doesn’t matter. Could be the ugliest thing you’ve ever seen but if it is yours then it works. You don’t need a designer or expert to tell you what is good. Put your initials on a napkin, take a picture, and call it a day. You have much more important things to concentrate on and that logo can wait.
Many things in the world can’t be proven and many problems can’t be solved. Sometimes that makes our irrational human brains not even try to solve the problem or come up with zany numbers to try to make things work. Figuring out the scale of a problem or situation is hard but the most important part of predicting where things will go. A 2 fold increase is very different than a 20% increase.
I think many times the mere idea of looking at the numbers that are available to us is overwhelming and scary. I tend to round down in my projections because I feel it is safer to do so. But that also means that I could miss out on opportunities because I underestimate their value. There is no solution to the problem, but the only way to improve is to look at the numbers you can, make your evaluations based upon them, and keep gathering information.
Caring about everything is as effective as caring about nothing. You have to force yourself to ignore 90% of the things the world wants you to care about so you can focus on that other 10% — the 10% that you’ve figured out, over time, matters to you the most.
Sometimes you’ll put something in that 10% that doesn’t belong and that’s part of the learning process. But take it back out once you realize it is in the wrong spot.
Set yourself up for situations where you don’t have to say no. Do what you can to put blinders on and ignore everything outside your focus. Just knowing it is out there takes energy and attention away from your important things.
We all think that what we are doing is brand new. We have a way of doing business that no one has ever thought of or tried before. Our business is so unique and has so little in common with other businesses.
But that’s not true. Everything we have today is built upon what was built yesterday. Everything we have has a predecessor that faced similar challenges. The predecessors that you know about most likely survived and built a system to ensure that survival.
What can you learn from an industry that’s kind of like yours and kind of not?
Real progress comes slowly over long periods of time. You have to be calm to see it and patient to push it forward. Quick progress rebounds as quickly as it pushes forward and you end up about where you started.
Every day push a little further.
I’m getting to a place where I don’t care about being patient with certain behaviors. I’m not sure what all those behaviors are yet. I’m not sure what the “right” limits for my patience are either. The problem I’m finding is that certain personality types take advantage of that patience and keep pushing its limits. I think I need to treat those people differently and set firm limits.
I feel so fortunate to be surrounded by music on demand. From my tiny handheld computer I can listen to the greatest music ever created. It is an amazing time and so easy to overlook how great this is.
A couple days ago I wrote about learning from how other industries have solved problems in the past that yours is facing today. When I wrote that I had one specific example in mind — the software industry learning from the book publishing industry.
I’m certain I’m not the first to make a connection between these two businesses because what we do when creating apps is very similar to what authors do when they write books. We each take a bunch of different ideas and concepts and form them together into what we hope is a unified whole. Many times we fail at this, as authors do, and what we make feels like a jumbled mess. The big difference between us and authors is that they can use all of their given language while we can only use the subset that is our programming language.
Of course the book industry is in decline and may not be able to be saved in the way we know it. But some authors are still thriving in these conditions. Why? Because they’ve built an audience. They have devoted fans who want to see them do well.
I think that’s how we need to sell software — by selling it to our audience of fans that want to see us do well.
Hopefully I’ve convinced you that building an audience is the way to succeed. Now you’re wondering how to do that. I’ve got two examples from the software industry which is exactly a statistical sample but it’s a start towards putting information together. These two examples have some things in common and one big difference.
The first example is Marco Arment. He created the hit app Instapaper. Instapaper is unique amongst apps in that it solved a real problem in a novel way that no one else was solving. The app was and still is really useful.
Instapaper was Marco’s big break towards building an audience. From that point he continued building it by hosting a few different podcasts and irregularly blogging.
The second example is David Smith. He is an iOS developer in Virginia and none of his apps are very well known. But he has built an audience slowly over time through his generosity in sharing what he knows and what he is experiencing through his podcasting and blogging.
I can see two options for you to start building your audience:
Make something so great and useful that people can’t ignore it
Generously give your knowledge to as many people as possible through podcasting, blogging, or whatever other medium you can find
Either way, people won’t know they like you until they know you. Find ways to let people know you.
Thinking more about setting limits on patience, I’m nearing my first guideline. I’m not sure how clear to make it yet or if I should just leave it vague but it has to do with disrespect. I think that’s one area where I don’t need to be patient.
Obviously misunderstandings can happen so I can’t simply always think I’m being disrespected and snap on people. But I should be able to see patterns of disrespect and act upon those.
Looking at my history I’ve made decisions primarily based upon one question: will this move me forward? It doesn’t matter as much whether it moves me towards where I want go — most of the time I don’t know — but the point is that I’m not going backwards.
I have a thing I want to build and I’m not sure if it exists already and I’d be a little surprised if it didn’t. I came up with the idea because I follow a Twitter account, [@DentonPolice](http a://twitter.com/DentonPolice), that posts pictures and a limited amount of information about people that have been arrested by my city’s police.
Following this account for a while it didn’t take too long to see that the tweets leave out the person’s race and I’d like to have that information so I can figure out what races are arrested for what crimes in our city. I thought it’d be interested.
So I came up with the idea of a visual database entry system, for lack of a better term. Here’s how it works:
User has data that includes a image of some sort — the image could be of a person or a horse or a document of some sort, doesn’t matter too much which. What matters is that that image contains information that can’t easily be put into a database and therefore can’t easily be used for analysis.
User defines the fields that she is interested in capturing, including both the fields she already has and the information she wants to get from the images. In the example from above, I’d define “Name,” “Crime,” and “Potential Race.”
User imports the data she already has, including all the images.
User is presented with each image in order and is able to fill in any missing information and easily go to the next image.
User can export data to CSV or access it through an API.
In addition to these steps, the entire application would be hosted online and open to crowdsourcing.
It seems like a simple concept and that’s why I’m thinking it already exists. Has anyone heard of something similar? I’d love to strike it off my todo list if so.
It is so easy to get caught up in best practices and future features and processes and never get started. Just make something. What you make now will not be the final product. You cannot foresee the obstacles you will face no matter how much time you spend thinking about it ahead of time. Making things is painful and that pain is unavoidable.
Make something. Once you have something, you’ll know where it needs to go next. Go there. Repeat.
The best way to prove yourself valuable in business is to get important things done. The things that no one else can do. The things that are harder. If you’re doing those things then you have the freedom to do what you please. But two burdens come with it: your peers will try to coast by while you work and you will have to find a way to say no so you aren’t burnt out when everyone wants you to do everything.
It is easy to get caught up in doing things the right way. I see this in my daughter’s therapists. Some of them would rather my daughter not do something at all than to do it with improper form. It makes sense that they’d have this attitude because it is what they’ve been taught. They’ve been taught their mechanics and exercises and they’ve gotten a certification in those things. If they leave those behind in the name of adapting then they’ve left their realm of knowledge. Their work is less about helping other than it is reciting what they know.
I don’t agree with that way of doing things. If a kid isn’t moving then the goal needs to be to get the kid moving and not preying about form. Form can come later.
I’ve started tracking my “added sugar” intake. I’m counting any sugars printed on the back of a processed food as added sugar and my intention is to figure out how much added sugar I consume. The point isn’t to say “this is bad” or “this is good,” but simply to know.
But it hasn’t worked out that way for me. Just the act of tracking my sugar intake causes me to reduce it. It is funny how that works.
In case you’re curious, here is my sugar intake for the last week:
The topic of disruption and the differences between market and competitive risk were discussed on the latest Critical Path, which I highly recommend you listen to. I’ve been thinking about this concept and how it can relate to me and to my business.
Competitive risk is the risk of not getting the outcome you want when in direct competition with one or more other people. For example, your boss leaves the company and everyone in your department is vying to replace her. You are in direct competition with 9 of your peers and your risk of not getting the job is pretty high. Plus, some factors that would make you more eligible are outside your control, such as your tenure with the company.
Market risk is the risk that you are entering a market that will not provide the outcome you want. For example, you move into a brand new position that has never existed before at your company. You will need to be able to show that your position is valuable over a period of time. You have much more potential in this situation than in the one with direct competition because you aren’t directly competing for resources. You have much more room to grow and blossom.
My takeaway is that you need to put yourself into positions where you can easily stand out from everyone else. If you’re a technology person in a room of other technology people then you won’t stand out. For any position of any complexity is nearly impossible to objective judge performance so you don’t realistically have a way to say you’re better than anyone else in the room.
But in a room of physical therapists, you stand out. You aren’t competing, you stand out, and you provide a unique perspective. The only question now is “can you provide value to physical therapists?” And that’s a question that you are able to gauge before you even put yourself in that room.
You probably have a title that describes the sorts of things that you do on a day to day basis. Mine could possibly be software developer on most days. But my real job isn’t developing software and if I think it is then I can very easily get caught up in the wrong things. My job is to solve problems using software. It is a subtle difference but important.
A long time ago I went to massage therapy school. I never got my certification but I can give a darn good massage thanks to it. Tonight I was thinking about one of the fundamental rules when giving someone a massage: always maintain contact with the person. If you need to move from one part of the body to another, like the left arm to the neck, make sure you keep a hand on the person you are massaging throughout that transition.
Maintaining contact provides comfort. The person knows where you are (and therefore where you aren’t.) She can infer why you are in a position from knowing your position so she doesn’t feel anxious about what’s going on.
Client service needs the same fundamental rule. Never get to the point where your client doesn’t know where you are. Don’t let them get anxious. Regularly stay in contact and over-explain what you’re doing.
Apple recently introduced an interaction model they call 3D Touch that acts as a sort of shortcut to common interactions. You can press a little harder on an email preview to see more of the message. You can press a little harder on the phone icon to quickly call one of your favorites.
T-Mobile has a new interaction model for customer service using Twitter. They use the Twitter API to connect your account to your Twitter handle and verify who you are. Once they do that they can provide near real time customer service and provide information about your account.
These examples make me wonder how I can provide a different interaction model. How can I make it easier on my clients to interact with me? How can I make it more delightful? Does that even make sense at our small size?
To break something than to put it together. To destroy something than to build it. To hack something than to secure it. To attack something than to defend it. To waste your time than to spend it wisely. To avoid fears rather than confronting them.
But we humans don’t crave easy. Many times we like easy, but we crave meaning. Meaning lies along the path of the hard way.
Making something useful starts with a vision. It starts with a person or team having an idea of a better way the world can work who then bend the world to fit that vision. I imagine this is how Apple’s new 3D Touch came to life — one of its creators tweeted that the process of creating it took 5 years. 5 years of pushing the technology where it needed to be to create their vision.
Less often, a person or team see the way something behaves today or accidentally stumble upon the right combination of factors to create something useful. I’m thinking about discoveries like penicillin.
Both ways work, but only one is reliable. You could spend lifetimes waiting for your penicillin idea and come up with nothing. Training yourself in the skills to have a vision and bend the world to it will always get you something.
There is harm in asking.
Next time it is less likely you’ll get a chance to ask. Ask too soon and you’re sure to be written off as someone who takes and doesn’t give.
Don’t ask. Give with no expectation of receiving. Do and make great things. Don’t be an asshole but be yourself.
Do those things and people will want to work with you. People will want to see you succeed and will go out of their way to try to help you. It won’t happen overnight but it will happen. Allow time for that. Spend that time making great things and being generous.
Facebook has had a few outages lately. This isn’t something I’d normally write about because it is topical, and if rather write about things that aren’t quite as time dependent, and because it is about Facebook, which I really don’t like. But my point is broader than these outages.
If your business relies on Facebook then you are dependent. When Facebook goes down you go down, and there is nothing you can do to fix the situation. This dependence comes with some really nice upsides — Facebook is a reliable platform that is easier to use than most content management systems and can do most of what a small business needs in a website.
But that dependence is always something I consider when making a technology system. Many times, the benefits are worth some level of dependence.
My adult life I’ve cycled through intense work, burnout, sickness, resting, intense work and eventually leaving a job due to this cycle. Last week I hit the sickness part of the cycle at the perfect time. I was taking a couple of days off work for a conference which meant that I didn’t try to power through getting work done while sick. The conference was intended as inspiration for creatives and I was still able to watch much of it through a live stream. I heard things I’ve heard before and always said “that’s a good idea” but never really took action on. I would always bow to the “realities” of life — that sounds fine for that guy, but he doesn’t have things going on like I do. I’ve got bills to pay and roofs to put over heads and student loans to pay.
During that sickness and resting period I read the quote above and I felt that it was describing this part of my life. I keep going through this cycle because I keep running away from this problem. I keep looking at everyone else around me as the problem when the problem is me. The problem is how I handle overwork and saying no. I want to do everything — and rightly so, there are millions of amazing things to do — but I cannot do so without hurting myself and making myself miserable. I have limits, I am not Superman. The world will always ask more of me as it does of all talented people. I have to handle that.
So I’m changing my attitude. I’m not going to be David-do-anything. I’m not going to always get the job done when no one else can and hurt myself by pulling all nighters just to maintain an image. During more intense periods of work other things will need to bend, but not my important other things like sleep and movement and time with loved ones. Meetings and commuting and that sort of things can bend. One on ones with my team members are crucially important, but can be pushed for the short term to ship something for a client.
One of the speakers (I believe it was Lee Steffen during Panel 02) at that conference I mentioned said that life is like juggling different balls: work, friends, family, health, and sprituality. He said that all those balls are made of glass, other than work. Work can bounce, work will recover. If you are like me and don’t ever let the work ball drop then you are probably cracking the other balls. Let the work ball bounce and see what happens.
I think it is easy to forget how interrelated everything is. Take the parts of our body. It is easy to think that arm pain is due to an issue with our arm. Isolating the arm as its own separate system simplifies all concepts related to it and makes them easier to hold in our minds.
But that oversimplification causes us to ignore connected and related pieces. Our arm is connected to our spine is connected to our hips and so on. And each part of this chain influences all the others in ways that I think would be difficult to model, even with a powerful computer.
Fortunately for us, our brains are good at compiling all the information about our bodies and letting us know when something is off. The problem is that we’ve forgotten what it feels like when everything is running smoothly so we need to retrain ourselves — we need to show our bodies the right way to move and put ourselves into the right postures that setup the correct geometries so we know when things are off and we can correct early instead of after our body has found a way to work around the imbalance.
So how do we do that? I’m sure there are many ways that I haven’t tried. I bet the movements in yoga would work well. I can tell you what works for me is the exercises in Pete Egoscue’s book series called Pain Free. I’ve written about this book before and I can’t recommend it enough.
Here’s some advice about interacting with me that might help you work with others like me too: don’t back me into a corner.
I lose all rationality when I’m put in that position. I am likely to do something that isn’t in my short term best interests just to be sure you don’t get what you want. I’m not saying this is a good thing, I’m just saying this is how I react.
So give me an out. Give me options. Everyone wants to feel like they are in control.
And if it won’t kill you, try to empathize with how I feel let me be in control of my stuff. And do that for everyone, not just me.
After 3 and a half months I’ve finally finished watching all the WWDC videos that I wanted to watch. Now I’m back to the machine learning course where I’m just trying to keep up with the math. I sure hope something more practical comes up in it soon because watching a man write formulas on a chalkboard from his notes doesn’t feel like it is doing me a lot of good.
Today I took a break and started watching something different that I am really enjoying. It is a talk from Horace Dediu about markets, S curves of adoption, and disruption. I highly recommend you watch the video.
Today I was listening to episode 159 of The Critical Path and if I heard correctly, Horace predicted imminent doom for the web as we know it — the web that we get to by using a browser on a computer or phone. This doom will be brought about by content blockers stopping advertising revenues. I’m going to have to listen to the podcast again to make sure I heard his point correctly, but even if I didn’t I think there’s an interesting thought experiment in the idea (and I’m completely ignoring any thoughts about the web going away right now, but that is very interesting too.)
If advertisers stopped paying to advertise on the web, where would they choose to advertise instead. Ads have been proven to shape consumer behavior so it is unlikely that advertisers will just stop paying for them. Their budgets won’t decrease, at least not immediately, so they’ll have money to spend. What medium will they choose? Especially now that TV, radio, and newsprint are each struggling to stay alive.
Will they choose apps, podcasts or push more dollars towards streaming video ads? I have no idea. But it’s an interesting thing to think about. And if you can guess right, it could be valuable.
I little while back I wrote about aligning incentives in situations where businesses provide services to other businesses. In the comments to one of those posts, Jack Kearney, one of my fellow Little DOCC-ers and Independent Representative for Fallbrook Capital Securities Corporation stated that he agreed with the overall premise of my posts and that he had more insight from his experience that he’d like to share. So I met with him a few weeks ago and today I’d like to share some highlights from that conversation.
First, I need to make a correction. Jack pointed out that he’d describe what I called a retainer as a subscription, and I fully agree with him on that. I won’t change the wording in the initial post but I will add a link to this post as a correction.
The services we are offering to clients is a monthly subscription to our services.
A retainer is different. A retainer is an up-front fee from one party to another. The retainer serves one primary purpose in two different ways: to ensure that the hiring party is serious enough to put money towards the relationship which also means that they have something to lose if they don’t follow through.
A retainer alone doesn’t align incentives. In Jack’s industry, incentives are aligned through a commission system. He is incentivized to do as well as he can for his client so he can get the highest commission and the commissions can be structured to provide even more incentive by increasing the percentage of payout at different tiers. For example, the first $5 could have a 5% commission, the second $5 could have a 7% commission, and the third $5 could have a 9% commission.
Commissions work well for his industry because the outcomes are binary — his business is to help companies get bought by other companies. The outcome is “the company sold for XX dollars.” Commission systems work very well with clear outcomes.
I can’t think of a way to make commissions work in the technology services industry because the outcomes are not binary. It is difficult to directly measure the benefits of having a great website or app. But maybe, with the right amount of effort and planning, a commission based system could be setup because being able to tell someone “I will make you this much money and only want this much of it” is a great way to both get buy in and align incentives. I’ll keep thinking about it in case I can figure something out.
I’ve never been a proponent of automated testing. I don’t believe in Test Driven Development and I’ve never written tests for my code. Despite that, I’ve shipped high quality code that I’ve been able to maintain without worrying about breaking things.
I attribute my ability to not break things to two factors: 1) I generally work alone on projects so I’m the only one touching the code, and 2) I don’t use any sort of refactoring tools and if I need to refactor I do it all myself so that once again I’m the only one touching the code.
This has worked really well for me. So well that I wondered why anyone would spend time making tests and thinking “leave it to software developers to come up with a solution to bad code that involves writing more code.”
But recently I’ve changed my mind about automated testing. I can see how it can find bugs that get introduced into your code and how it can provide peace of mind. I changed my mind because I had to do automated refactoring — so I wasn’t the only one touching the code — and my code got broken.
Fortunately the app that got broken was still in beta so the issues were caught quickly with minimal impact. And if I’d spent a little more time testing the app after the changes then I’d have found the broken parts before the tester. But if I’d had automated tests in my code I would have known where the issues were immediately after the automated refactoring.
So I’m going to start getting more familiar with testing. I still don’t believe that Test Driven Development is the right system, at least not for new projects, so I probably won’t adopt that. And I probably won’t write tests in every environment — if I’m the only one writing code and I’m not using automated refactoring then tests are just more overhead and more code that could have bugs.
But now at least I can understand the point of them and see the value they can provide in peace of mind alone.
If you didn’t make it then you don’t own it. If you don’t own it then you can’t use it without permission.
That picture on that website isn’t yours, you can’t use it without permission.
That advertising copy on a website isn’t yours, you can’t use it without permission.
Just because something is easy to take doesn’t mean it is yours to take.
Given the right parameters or the proper number of asterisks you can always make a vague statement of superiority over your competitor.
Your biggest fans will love it and wield your statement against the rest of the world. Your biggest detractors will see through it but you can’t convince them anyways.
The question is what will it do to everyone in the middle? Does it not matter because the middle won’t pay attention? Or will the middle get excited by your statement, only to be let down by the asterisks and qualifications? Will the middle get tired of the roller coaster you build with an exciting high now only to be let down later. Hype with no substance.
I think that matching the hype to an announcement may be one of the most difficult things to do. Too little hype and no one pays attention because they don’t know about it. Too much hype and no one pays attention next time because they were bored.
If I can’t get it perfect and I have the choice, I’m going to aim low. I’ll aim for under-hyping. Because if I can’t get it right this time I sure as hell want a chance to get it right next time.
I love music and I especially love rap music. I want to be a part of it and add to the hip hop landscape and I want to do that by making rap songs.
If you’ve seen me you’re probably laughing at me right now. I’m a straight laced, generally preppy looking, tall, skinny, white guy in his mid 30s. I don’t belong in hip hop. But I have this urge.
I’m going to put together a rap song eventually. I want it to be as good as Kid Cudi’s Pursuit of Happiness. It won’t be that good. It won’t even be as good as LL Cool J’s Deepest Bluest and I know it now and I’ll know it then but I won’t know how to make it better because I won’t have the proper taste yet.
But I’ll force myself to listen to it after a few weeks and I’ll hear the things that are wrong, the beats that are a little off and the timing of the lyrics being all wrong and everything else. Then I’ll make little changes, a few at a time.
After those changes I’ll once again wait a few weeks and let the song breathe on its own. I’ll listen again and notice different things that are off and try different ways to fix those things.
And little by little it will get better. Maybe if I try hard enough I’ll make it as good as that awful LL Cool J song.
I hope I can.
Have you ever been to a mixer? A social event where you are supposed to mingle, meet, and make connections? I’ve been to a few and I’ve never been a fan. But that’s because I didn’t know the right way to do them.
So what’s the right way, you ask?
Get a drink and find a place to sit. Not alone, have at least one other person with you. But sit. People will come to you. And it won’t be the usual people, it will be people you’re less likely to talk to regularly.
Try it next time you have to go to a mixer. Let me know how it goes.
Today I was listening to a podcast about coffee. The two hosts, who classify themselves as coffee enthusiasts, we’re giving tips directed to people just getting started in the world of coffee. They remembered what they went through and advised those new to the world of coffee to not get overwhelmed.
Immediately I knew their advice is universal. The road to coffee enthusiast is similar to the road to technology enthusiast or musician or painter or software developer. You start at a point of knowing nothing and you are immersed in knowledge.
I’d give slightly different advice than they did. My message is “you will get overwhelmed.” It is natural. Everyone does. It gets better. Pay attention to how you feel and take a step back once you start to feel overwhelmed. Give yourself some time to soak in the knowledge. Then pour another bucket on your head.
We went to an art show today in Downtown Denton and it was such a cool experience and I can’t even put my finger on why it was. Maybe because it takes a special kind of place to make time for art these days. Art is the opposite of efficiency and maximizing profits. A community that fosters art is one that knows that it must invest in more than just the rational and defendable decisions. It must invest in beauty and things that touch us deeply.
I just stopped working on a different draft of a blog post. I was trying to make a point by tying a couple of ideas together and it wasn’t going well. I kept wondering where I was trying to go with my point and failing to figure it out.
Right now I don’t know whether the entire concept of the post was bad or if my brain isn’t working well enough to put it together. I’ll be able to tell that with time, maybe tomorrow or maybe in a few weeks. For now, I’m setting it aside because I know it is just not working.
I don’t want to see ads in my social media. They are poorly targeted and get in the way of what I want to see. Most of the ads on Pinterest, for example, are completely different than the rest of the items that have been recommended to me. They stand out because they are misplaced.
Whenever I do like something I see in my Pinterest feed I habitually check to see if it has been promoted. If it has I make a quick face of disgust and move on.
I don’t want to see the things that a brand thinks are cool. I want to see the things that other humans think are cool, or even the things that the recommendation algorithms think are cool. Anything but a company paying to show me things.
The digital world should be a place that allows your customers to share what you make more easily. Make something remarkable and people will remark about it and share it.
Tonight I read this blog post about estimating the time it takes to create software. The author is against software estimation, mostly because he doesn’t believe that it is accurate. Due to this inaccuracy and trying to manage this extent of inaccuracy we are embarrassing ourselves in front of our customers and wasting huge amounts of time trying to stick to an estimate. The author wants to do away with estimates.
I completely agree with him that software estimates are not accurate. A few months ago I underestimated a project by a factor of three — it took me three times longer than I expected. And since our company’s philosophy is that our clients should know the most they are going to pay up front, we ate the time for that mistake. That isn’t the only time I’ve gotten an estimate wrong, either — I know the pain of software estimates.
But unfortunately they are the best we’ve got. From a software developer’s point of view it might make sense to discard estimates. We definitely don’t make estimates and timelines for our company’s internal projects. But we are in the nice position of only burning our time when we make software — we don’t have to worry about any employees’ salaries or health benefits or making sure they can feed their families because it’s just the two of us.
Most businesses don’t have that luxury. They have real budgets which they depend on for survival. They need to know how much they will be paying for something and estimates are the best we have right now.
I wish we had a better way, but I can’t think of one. Somehow we’d have to remove money as a factor and that doesn’t seem possible.
I’m a type of person who doesn’t like letting others down. I hate the feeling of someone else being angry or upset with me and I do my best to avoid it. In general, wanting to please others is a good thing.
But I think I take it too far, and maybe you do too. I’m so quick to take fault in order to make the situation right again that I don’t think about the fact that the other person’s opinion isn’t an absolute truth. She could be having a bad day, or slept poorly the night before, or just a crank. That’s not my fault.
Like everything, I need to find a balance. I can’t arrogantly walk the earth thinking I can do no wrong. And I can’t sheepishly assume that I did something wrong when someone is upset with me.
Instead I take each situation and reflect upon it and maybe discuss it with people close to me. I make sure I think and act accordingly rather than simply reacting habitually.
Have you given your problem a name? If so, are you still working to solve the problem or do you simply mention it in passing?
Take scoliosis for example — a curvature of the spine. Scoliosis is not a thing — it is a name we’ve given to a thing. You don’t treat scoliosis, because it isn’t a thing. You also don’t ignore it simply because it has a name — “yeah I have bad posture because I have scoliosis.” You treat the underlying problem. You find a way to re-balance your body to remove the curvature.
What’s your scoliosis in life? Are you ignoring it now that it has a name?
When building a business, what you don’t see is the stuff that matters. A customer that trusts you and tells their friends. The group of people that read your blog posts and see you as a source of wisdom or inspiration but never contact you. The effort you put into building systems that only seem natural once they are in place.
All of that is pushing your roots deeper into the soil. Creating stability and longevity.
It isn’t flashy and at times it is boring. But you have to follow your gut, do what’s right, and trust that good results will come from it.
It is easy to come to the conclusion that something is beyond repair. It may be saddening or even depressing, but it is easy. Because to say that something is beyond repair is to stop. It is giving up and coming to terms.
Another option is to keep hope alive — to keep fighting. This option is similar to living in denial and I’m not sure that there is a difference between ignoring information you don’t want to believe and keeping up hope. I think they may go hand in hand.
But when I’m thinking about life and living beings, I always keep up hope. We’re far more resilient than we give ourselves credit for and we can recover from nearly everything.
I’m a geek who likes new technologies. I can easily get myself worked up into wanting a certain device due to a combination of the way it has been marketed to me and the way that I’ve marketed it to myself.
When I was in my teens I got myself really excited about OS/2 Warp. You’ve probably never heard of it, but it was a computer operating system. I can’t remember the exact selling points that made me want it so badly but I think it had to do with multitasking or a better user interface. Who knows now.
I finally bought OS/2 and I was so excited. I installed it on my first computer, which was a 386 and I’m sure I was giddy throughout the entire installation process. And when it was complete, I asked myself “ok self, now what can I do with this?” And I didn’t have an answer.
That wasn’t the last time that I was beguiled by my geeky desires into buying something that I didn’t have a use for, but fortunately I’ve grown wary of those temptations. Now, if I can’t answer exactly what I want to do with something then I can usually resist.
But my point isn’t that you should resist technology. My point is that if you are creating technology then you need to show people what they can do with it. You’ll easily seduce geeks with specs and smooth, chamfered aluminum, but most people just don’t care. They care about how it will fit into their life and make their life better. They care about how difficult it will be to switch from what they have already have and will most likely not see why the change is worth that pain.
So make sure you can show people how they can use your thing or directly benefit from it. And if you can’t figure out how to do that, then you probably need to rethink your thing.
I’ve led a privileged life and I know it, although I will never know the full impact. I know enough to say that a large reason why I’ve been successful is because I’m a tall, good looking, white man. Because of those qualities alone I’ve been given opportunities that others wouldn’t have been given. And mentioning those traits ignores the facts that both of my parents are college graduates, that I was born in one of the richest countries in the world, and that I have full use of my body and mind.
I know I’ve worked hard in my life, but I’ve also been very fortunate.
I’m not saying that you’ve experienced privileges like mine and I’m not saying that I’ve worked harder than you — but I’d encourage you to take some time to think about your life and the times that fortune has smiled on you. Take a step back from your ego. Put your accomplishments into perspective.
With that mindset, how can you help someone less privileged than you? Maybe you can give them a voice. Maybe you can give them a chance. Maybe you can stick up for them when the world wants to beat them down. I’m not sure exactly what you can do — I’m still trying to figure that out myself. But I’m starting with knowing that I’ve been given advantages in this life that not everyone has.
I’m not a craftsman. I don’t know wood, leather, or metal working. But I know that if I did, then I’d do everything by hand. I’d purposefully use less efficient techniques because I think that they will result in better products. They’d have more humanity and people would be able to feel the care that I’d put into them.
It seems silly, but I take a similar approach when working with technology. Tonight we went to an informative class about Drupal, which is a Content Management System (CMS) that allows you to build sites with a lot of content and contributors quickly and relatively easily. But that’s just not the way I want to do things — it isn’t right for me.
I still don’t believe that a small business needs a CMS. And while I can do it, I’d rather not build a site that requires one. My preference will always be to build a site by hand using HTML and CSS, taking the time and care for every decision and every detail. My fingerprint will be on everything and you’ll feel the humanity and caring.
As I mentioned Snapshot Testing with Xcode Cloud I am working on a small side-project app that allows me to play with some tools from the Apple software development ecosystem. In that blog post I talked about the steps needed to get the Swift Snapshot Testing library working with Xcode Cloud but that was only the beginning of my snapshot testing saga. It seemed like every time I wanted to take a snapshot of a new view I bumped up against another problem. In this post I’m going to talk through what I bumped up against, the reasons why this very good library still has those rough bits, and how I will improve the situation for myself and my team by making opinionated choices.
Snapshot testing is a type of automated test where you provide an input to the snapshot assertion method, that snapshot assertion method creates a value for that input, and then checks to ensure that that value matches the previous “golden” value for that input.
This blog post is about snapshot testing where the input is a view and the value created by the snapshot assertion method is an image. If I provide a view for my app I expect an image that looks just like a screenshot of my app.
I’ll start by talking through some of the painful things I’ve run into and hope that they give a sense of the landscape that I’m dealing with when doing something that sounds simple like “just add snapshot tests”. All this pain happened over a single week around a month ago.
I published my blog post on using snapshot tests with Xcode Cloud and everything was working great with tests passing both locally and remotely. Since I have been using snapshot tests for a while that was a bit surprising to me, but I’ll touch on why that is a bit later. Days or weeks went by, I’d made changes that I no longer remembered (or maybe the world changed around me), and my snapshot tests were no longer passing on Xcode Cloud. I was especially upset by this because I’d recently shared that blog post about how to get things working and felt guilty for spreading misinformation.
Once I got some time to look into the issue I realized that one of two things had happened:
I had changed the Xcode Cloud environment to run on macOS Sonoma, or
The latest version of macOS Sonoma changed the behavior of the snapshots
Basically, the issue had to do with running my snapshot tests on macOS Sonoma on Xcode Cloud (running on Sonoma locally to record the snapshots seems fine) which had just made it to the release candidate stage. Changing the Xcode Cloud environment back to macOS Ventura resolved the issue and I was able to move on knowing that I had not completely misled people.
Someone in the Point-Free Slack mentioned that the snapshots they generated of their tab bar did not look correct. I hadn’t tried creating snapshots for the tab bar in my app, so I hadn’t run into the issue before, but I was quickly able to reproduce. The snapshots looked like this (the unselected tab bar icons are white which makes them very difficult to see):
I found a workaround — by adding this code before my assertSnapshot calls the tab bar would render correctly:
UITabBar.appearance().unselectedItemTintColor = .systemGray This feels a bit hacky to me but it worked.
The bumps are piling up but at least I can bandage them — I’ve found sometimes hacky, sometimes regressive, workarounds. As long as Apple always supports macOS Ventura then I don’t need to worry about the issue with Sonoma, right?
But throughout these fights I’d been ignoring a glaring issue with the snapshots of the SwiftUI List in my app. Take a look at this monstrosity:
OK maybe calling it a monstrosity is harsh. And the contrast between the light gray and the white is not great so the issue may be difficult to see, but each row in the List has rounded corners instead of only the top leading, top trailing on the first item and bottom leading and bottom trailing on the last item having rounded corners. What is going on there?
I tried a lot of different things to try to get this to render properly.
I thought that perhaps it was a timing issue and the UI needed more time to layout so I increased the wait time before capturing the snapshot. Nope.
I thought that maybe the wait time wasn’t enough and that I needed to increase the speed of the animations so I tried setting the window.layer.speed = 100. Nope.
I found this GitHub issue on the snapshot testing library and I was first encouraged by a potential solution and then disappointed when someone commented that it did not work for them.
I was out of options. I tried it anyway. And it worked! 🎉
I’ve said before, and I’ll say it again now: Point-Free’s snapshot testing library is great. So why am I running into so many issues? Why is this so painful? I think those three pain points are instructive so let’s talk through the root causes of each of those.
I have absolutely no insight into why I’m seeing the behavior I’m seeing on Xcode Cloud but I can make some guesses based upon what I do know. I know that Apple is going through a processor transition where their CPUs have changed from being manufactured by Intel to being manufactured by Apple. Along with this CPU change comes GPU changes as well since Apple is creating their own GPUs.
Again, I don’t know the details, but this foundational change is somehow leaking into our snapshot testing when running macOS Sonoma. I think the only people that can fix this work at Apple so I filed FB_INSERT_FEEDBACK_HERE.
That struck out code was my first attempt at explaining the behavior just a week or two ago while first drafting this post — I’m sharing it here to give a little insight into the circuitous path I took to get to an understanding of these issues. Since then I’ve figured out that having certain locales setup as preferred languages in a simulator causes different rendering.
So could that be the reason why the rendering is different on macOS Sonoma? Let’s cook up a test failure to see by adding this to our snapshotting code:
if Locale.preferredLanguages.contains(where: { $0.contains("ar") || $0.contains("hy") }) { XCTFail( """ Running on a simulator with Arabic or Armenian in its preferred languages which will cause the snapshots to be rendered differently. Please remove Arabic and/or Armenian from the simulator's preferred languages (Settings > General > Language & Region). """, file: file, line: line ) return } Then we’ll run the tests again on Xcode Cloud on a macOS Sonoma machine:
Well there we go. That same test passes on macOS Ventura. But that leads me to wonder “how many different preferred languages are setup in the Sonoma simulator?”
OK 34 preferred languages, cool. Running this same test on macOS Ventura returns 1 preferred language. Now I’m a bit more curious – which languages did they choose? Here they are as of October 2023 (notice that Arabic is in this list – I talk about why that is noteworthy in a later section that I linked above):
en | ja | sv | el | pt-BR | th | id |
fr | es | ru | he | pt-PT | cs | ms |
de | it | pl | ro | da | hu | vi |
zh-Hans | nl | tr | sk | fi | ca | es-419 |
zh-Hant | ko | ar | uk | nb | hr |
OK so it is great that the simulators include languages other than English – app development is not something that only happens in the English speaking world – but this does add more complexity to our snapshot testing story. I’ve created FB13288344 to ask for control over the preferred languages in Xcode Cloud. Until we get that we may have to make our local simulators mirror what is setup on Xcode Cloud.
Let’s take a look at the snapshot testing documentation around UIViewController snapshot strategies:
/// - drawHierarchyInKeyWindow: Utilize the simulator's key window in order to render /// `UIAppearance` and `UIVisualEffect`s. This option requires a host application for your /// tests and will _not_ work for framework test targets. This is the documentation for a strategy that we have not been using and therefore we are not getting this behavior. That part about the UIAppearance might be the answer to our question about why the tab bar is not being rendered correctly. Perhaps those unselected tab colors are being set on the UIAppearance.
So I have a theory about what is going on but I think we need to dig in on what this drawHierarchyInKeyWindow parameter does. Let’s do that while looking at the rendering issues with List.
To try to understand what might be going on with the List I think we need to talk through how the snapshot images are created. To do so we can dig through the code (yay open source!) and find this conditional in View.swift:
... if drawHierarchyInKeyWindow { view.drawHierarchy(in: view.bounds, afterScreenUpdates: true) } else { view.layer.render(in: ctx.cgContext) } ... Depending on the value of drawHierarchyInKeyWindow either the drawHierarchy(in:afterScreenUpdates:) or the render(in:) method is called. Both of these are methods provided by Apple that have been in the SDK for a long time. We can look up their documentation (linked in the method names) but what we find isn’t super useful, at least not to me. Here is a snippet from the drawHierarchy documentation:
OK that sounds great, that’s exactly what we want. So why do we need the render method? Maybe its documentation gives us a clue:
OK so the difference is that render only renders a layer and drawHierarchy renders the complete view hierarchy. But to do that you need a complete view hierarchy which we see on line 940 of View.swift:
... if drawHierarchyInKeyWindow { guard let keyWindow = getKeyWindow() else { fatalError("'drawHierarchyInKeyWindow' requires tests to be run in a host application") } ... To draw the complete view hierarchy in the key window we need something called a key window and we can only get that with something called a host application.
The key window is the application window with which the user is interacting. That property I linked to on UIApplication is deprecated since Apple no longer wants us to think about an application having a single window and instead to think in terms of a multi-window world, but that deprecation doesn’t matter for our purposes since the concept of a key window is still valid.
A host application is an application within which we can run our tests. This gets a bit complex in the current Apple ecosystem when you choose to use Swift Package Manager to modularize your dependencies like I did in the last blog post. Swift packages have no concept of a host application and therefore tests in Swift packages cannot be run inside a host application. Since I’m building an iOS app I have a host application at my disposal which I can use and I’ll talk about how to do that a bit later. For now, let’s get back to these two different methods for creating snapshots of our user interface.
What we’ve seen so far is two conditionals with two branches each and therefore 4 different ways that snapshots could theoretically be captured (based upon the conditional’s logic only 3 of these possibilities can actually be used in the snapshot testing library but I think it is useful to think through them all):
Method | Window | Configurable without code changes |
|---|---|---|
|
| No |
| Key window | Yes |
|
| Yes |
| Key window | Yes |
Then my followup question to that table is “do any of these configurations fix the bad behavior I’m seeing with my List?” (I had to modify the snapshot testing code to test the first “impossible” configuration):
Method | Window | Fixes |
|---|---|---|
|
| Yes* |
| Key window | Yes |
|
| No |
| Key window | No |
So the main difference in our List rendering is the method being called. We’ve already looked at the Apple documentation and I didn’t see any clues there as to the underlying reason behind the differences in behavior — that documentation did not even mention the difference in UIAppearance mentioned by the snapshot testing documentation.
After some internet searching I found this interesting StackOverflow post that talks about the implementation differences between those two methods:
So the render(in:) method is both less efficient and creates less accurate results!?! 😲 Why would we want to consider it as an option?
Well, as we noted before, the drawHierarchy method only works when the tests are hosted in an application. And as I mentioned before, at this point in time there is no way for a Swift package’s tests to be hosted in an application without a separate Xcode project. The render(in:) method is the only choice to use image based snapshot tests in a Swift package. Running tests inside of a host application is also much slower than running them standalone and folks might want to make that tradeoff of accuracy for test speed.
I think it is also worth noting that neither of these API were created with the intent of supporting snapshot testing. Without intentional support of that use case we can’t expect the Apple folks working on those API and supporting them across OS versions, processor architectures, and everything else changing to ensure that they work for this purpose. That being said, I believe that Apple should consider snapshot testing to be a first-class use case for these API (or to provide separate API for that purpose) and therefore I’ve filed FB13292311 for that.
As I’ve mentioned before I think the Swift Snapshot Testing library is very good. But I’ve also typed a fair number of words and spent a large amount of time working around these rough edges on the API. How can I think it is a good library and think it has rough edges? Do I have a poor sense of quality?
I may have a poor sense of quality elsewhere (I did once watch an entire movie about a homicidal tire named Robert) but I don’t think that is the case here. These rough edges come from two things: 1) the library authors are building upon lower level things that have rough edges, and 2) the library is low-level and general purpose.
The only way to cover over rough edges in the things that you are building on top of is to make decisions for the end users of the library. But making those decisions for the end users takes away the end users’ power and flexibility. Like most engineering, this is a trade-off and I think the authors of this library made the right choice. My only minor gripe would be that, as I mentioned before, the documentation around these trade-offs is lacking and therefore I, as an end user of this library, am not able to make as informed of a decision as I would like.
If I know my end users (or if I’m my own end user) then I can make informed decisions for them which will cover over most of the rough edges from the lower levels without taking away the power they need. There will be exceptions, like the rendering differences in macOS Sonoma on Xcode Cloud, but the experience can be much simpler. The trade-off here is that I need to ensure the environment the end user is working in matches the expectations of my strong opinions — they need to have their tests setup the proper way and have them hosted inside an application.
But even my strongest opinions can’t cover over all the issues and it is in those cases that we need to provide other ergonomics. For example, if you capture your golden snapshot on a simulator that renders at a display scale of @3x and then run a follow-up test on a simulator that renders at a display scale of @2x the test will fail. Similar failures will happen with different iOS versions due to minor differences in text layout, and with different simulators based upon the size of their status bar. In those cases we can find way to gently nudge the user onto the right path.
Even this approach has some flaws. After I finished that paragraph I went to test out a change to see if I could make my library more ergonomic when a simulator was set to a different language and found that all my tests were failing. Apparently if Arabic is in the list of languages — even if it isn’t the default language — the simulator will render differently. Now that I’ve figured that out I can add a check for that to the library but I can never be sure that I’ve covered every rough edge.
All snapshot tests should be hosted.
All snapshot tests should use drawHierarchyInKeyWindow = true.
Snapshots should usually be generated on the latest device/OS combination.
Snapshots should fail early, with a helpful failure method, when the snapshot environment is different than we expect.
Every view should be snapshotted in the same set of standard environments.
Users should have the option to create a “throwaway” snapshot for situations where dependencies or caches need to be setup to capture the right data.
Snapshots should be rendered on a small device size to be able to find layout issues at that size.
Next let’s talk about how to setup the environment for these opinions and the helper code I’ve created to work with them.
Hosted tests need to live inside an app’s XCProject or XCWorkspace and need their own target. Here are the steps to set up the hosted tests:
Create a “Unit Testing Bundle” target. This could be named “SnapshotTests” if you want to limit the scope of the kinds of tests that will be in this target or you could name it “Hosted Tests” since there might be other tests you want to write in the future that won’t be snapshot tests but will need to be hosted. One example would be live implementation tests for code that interacts with the keychain. Make sure that your app is selected as the “Target to be Tested” because this is what makes the tests hosted.
If you have existing snapshot tests in your Swift package, copy them into the folder created for the new test target. If you don’t have existing snapshot tests then create the tests in that folder.
Add the Swift Snapshot Testing dependency to the app project. Ensure that it is only added to the test target and not to the app target.
If using TCA, ensure that the app’s logic is not being run at the same time as the snapshot tests by wrapping the code that creates the store with if _XCIsTesting == false { }.
Add the tests in the test target to the test plan.
If you’re using Xcode Cloud for CI, update the Create a symlink in the ci_scripts directory to where our snapshots are stored to point to the new location for snapshots.
Now that we have setup hosted tests we have no excuse for not using accessibility snapshot tests. Unfortunately adding them is a little more complicated than simply importing the library because nothing in technology is easy.
Before we get into setting up the accessibility snapshot tests let me give you a quick sales pitch for them. Accessibility snapshot tests give anyone who uses them a superpower. That superpower is to be able to look at a user interface and know how a VoiceOver user would experience that user interface. Here’s an example:
This snapshot isn’t perfect – the order of the items in the navigation bar is incorrect, they should be announced before the list rather than after (I created an issue on the Accessibility Snapshot Testing library for this). But even with that flaw this is fantastic – I can easily see that the order of the elements inside each row doesn’t make sense. The name and quantity should be grouped together because that is related information that shouldn’t be interrupted by the edit button. The alternative to these accessibility snapshot tests is either firing up Accessibility Inspector or building to device with VoiceOver on and manually stepping through each element. And as a reviewer on a pull request who probably doesn’t have time to do that for every review this tool is fantastic.
Anyhow, I hope I’ve convinced you to at least try the accessibility snapshot tests and we can move on to adding them to our hosted tests.
Our first step is to add the Accessibility Snapshot Testing dependency to our app project, and specifically the hosted tests target (just like for the snapshot testing dependency). But unfortunately the current version of the Accessibility Snapshot Testing library does not support precision or perceptual precision which are both things we need since we are working across Apple Silicon and Intel machines and each of those machines renders things just differently enough to not completely match snapshots from the other processor type (not needing to set these precision parameters in my first blog post was the surprising thing I alluded to near the beginning of this post). Those things cannot easily be added to the library because:
Accessibility Snapshot Testing supports CocoaPods, and
Swift Snapshot Testing dropped support for CocoaPods at the same time it added perceptual precision
To work around this I’ve created a shim inspired by this pull request.
This allows us to set the precision and perceptual precision on our accessibility snapshots. Next I’ll share the code that implements my opinions and ties everything together.
This mostly builds upon the Creating Something Reusable but adds “throwaway” and accessiblity snapshots and provides values for precision and perceptual precision that work consistently for me. This helper has strong opinions and does not provide the user with a lot of flexibility — and where there is flexibility the API provides a default value so that most of the time users would not have to think about those options. Hopefully making these decisions for the user provides a simpler user experience that “just works”.
Here is a gist with my helper code. Note that some of the decisions I’ve made may not work for you. For example, I’ve added a check to make sure that the first preferred language on the simulator running the tests is English (US). This is because I am an American and the primary language I use is American English and this ensures that I don’t accidentally get to a place where all my tests are failing with an extra “u” in the word “color” if I’ve set my simulator’s primary language to English (UK). The tests will still fail with this check but they will fail with a useful error message. You may want to change that check to test for your preferred language.
This helper uses another helper extension on UIDevice which I pulled from Stack Overflow to be able to check whether the right simulator is being used for the snapshots.
These two helpers and the shim I created for accessibility snapshot testing all need to be copied into your hosted tests target.
Using these helpers, this is what the callsite for running the standard tests would look like:
... assertStandardSnapshots( content: Text("I am going to be snapshot!"), named: "Sample Text" ) ... Small teams that know each other well are the best at creating integrated, cohesive, and great things. Each member has to be able to understand what the others are saying or feel comfortable asking for clarification if not. Each member has to be able to tell any of the others when she is doing something wrong and she also has to be willing to accept that criticism.
Do hmm every day. Learn from your mistakes. Improve. Do hmm every day.
I’ve found myself asking this question a lot lately and I’ve come up with two things — allowing others to relate to you and allowing others a way to share what you’re doing.
The term “relate” is purposely vague. You don’t get to determine what relate means to someone else. But I picture each post on social media as opening a door through which people can see something about you and decide whether they want to walk through the door and engage with you about it more.
The idea of sharing things is much clearer. People can easily share what is important to them which might resonate with a large population and get shared even more. Businesses can share their latest work as an artist her most recent painting or a barista her coffee art — and people who enjoy that work can easily share it.
Until recently, I thought the goal of social media was to amass as many followers as possible. I’ve been misled by the prominence of the follower count across each social media platform. But the more I think about it the more I think that is an inconsequential side effect of sharing on social media. The more you share, the more doors you open to allow others to figure out they like you.
My goal is to share who I am, and for my business to share who we are and the cool things we make.
We are fortunate to have friends that revel in spontaneity. Today they invited us to go up to Oklahoma for a day trip to check out a casino. After a very full day, we are exhausted but satisfied. It was good to get out of our normal rhythm and spend time with some of our favorite people.
How long has it been since you’ve done something similar? Are you due for it.
Yesterday I spent a few hours directing traffic from a single file line of cars, through a parking lot, and to one of three lines. I was working with a team of volunteers, high visibility vests, and a couple of walkie talkies. Our job was to spot what was written on a car’s windshield and based upon that direct them to the right place.
Yesterday morning was gray and mostly rainy so we had to make adjustments — the water soluble markers for writing on the cars’ windshields wouldn’t work on the outside so they were put on the inside. Due to that constraint and the low amount of light from the gray skies, the writing on the windshields was difficult to read at any distance. We had to figure out a walkie talkie system on the fly to let our team members that were furthest away know what was coming towards them. But after only a few misdirected cars, we got the hang of that.
The tougher problem for me was communicating with the drivers and I tried out several different strategies for showing them their destination. I tried pointing to the sign that they needed to drive towards which had letters of the alphabet that most likely weren’t their name. I think that didn’t work well because the signs were behind the a-pillars of their car. I tried telling them to follow the vehicle in front of them by providing its make and model. I tried pointing to members of the team that could direct them better. I tried lots of different ways to get them where they needed to be.
I was trying to think as though I were in the car with them and seeing what they saw but I wasn’t great at doing that some of the time. I found that it was easier to give too much information rather than too little — a person driving in a parking lot in the rain with people and trees all around are already overwhelmed. It doesn’t take too much more information to push them over the edge where they aren’t even listening to you.
My lesson from this is when trying to guide or teach someone you need to give them the right amount of information for them at that moment. If you’re going to get it wrong, which you probably will, then err on the side of giving less information to avoid overwhelming them. They can always ask for more.
I don’t know much about the recommendation algorithms used at Pinterest or Instagram but in my experience they aren’t very good. I think the reason why is that they don’t know why I like something. Something complicated and full of detail, like a picture, has too many factors at play to know why someone likes it.
Show me a picture of a front entry to a house with clean lines and reclaimed wood furniture. I’ll indicate I like it, but Pinterest has no idea that it is simply because of the light and the feel of it. But someone else might indicate they like it for a completely different reason. I don’t know how the algorithms handle this today, but they have a lot of room for improvement.
I’m a smart, opinionated person. I heavily research any areas that I am interested in or that I need to know about. But I still find myself holding back my opinions or softening them in such a way that they aren’t really opinions anymore but simply plain vanilla statements.
I know the reason why I do this. I’ve been feeling it more lately. I’m scared that I’ll be held accountable by the person I am recommending something to and I am afraid of that responsibility. Part of me doesn’t want to be on the hook for that.
I’m working on it. When I feel that fear and resistance I power through them and work to share my full opinion without holding anything back.
Showing respect when discussing ideas with others requires more than simply giving them a chance to talk. It requires actually listening to what they have to say. It requires doing research ahead of time to ensure that you know what you’re talking about and you aren’t just wasting their time. It requires an effort to really do your best to see where they are coming from and to see the world from their point of view.
No ones point of view is crazy or ridiculous. Each of us has our reasons for believing what we do, and if you had lived the same life as that crazy or ridiculous person then you’d feel the same way they do.
Showing respect to others is showing respect to yourself — we are all the same.
Sometimes I can approach a problem and know exactly where I want to get started and the first few things I want to accomplish. Usually I’ve been thinking about a particular problem for a while or I’ve just gotten really excited due to the proper dosage of caffeine. I love that situation.
But most of the time things don’t come that easily. Maybe I’m working on a project that I don’t really like but I know that it is important to get it done. Or maybe I’m working on something I’m really psyched about but I’m working on more mundane aspects of it. And sometimes I just can’t figure out which direction to go with a problem.
I have a system when things don’t come easy and I generally use it when starting a new project or when getting going again after a moderate break, like a night’s sleep. I start by visualizing whatever I’m working on. So if I’m working on an app then I’ll launch it and get to the part of the app that I am currently working on. Seeing what I’m working on primes my brain for what I need to do and helps to focus me on the immediate next steps. Once I get that first visualization, I continue the workflow in the app until I come across something that isn’t working right and start working on it.
Getting my mind going by seeing the app sets me up to get back into the flow of working on it.
I’ve been looking forward to tonight. This is the first Halloween that has fallen on a weekend that my daughter stays with us and we have planned a Sesame Street costume theme — my daughter is Elmo, I am Cookie Monster, and my significant other is the Sesame Street sign post.
The big thing I’ve been looking forward to is seeing my daughter’s reaction to her and my costume. I wanted to be able to be both in the moment to experience it with her and also capture it to remember. Unfortunately those two goals don’t work very well together without hiring a professional photographer to document the occasion.
I wonder how this could be improved. Wearing a body camera is on potential option but it is unlikely you’ll get the exact shots you want. The new iPhones have a new feature that gets us closer. It records a second and a half before and after a picture so I can take a picture while saying something to my daughter and get her entire reaction. The beautiful thing about it is that you’re prepping for one particular moment, unlike in a video which doesn’t have a similar short window, and so you capture much more meaningful moving images than you would with video.
I still think it could be better but I’m not quite sure how yet.
If you can find a way to make money that is different than everyone else in your industry then you will have a huge advantage over them. You can compete in a different way since your values will be different. If you make money from, and therefore value, billable hours giving music lessons then you can reduce your rates on something you don’t value as much, such as studio time.
You aren’t competing head to head at that point and theoretically, this can give you an advantage. Of course, the real key is to decide which factors to compete on and how well you can do at those.
A colleague asked a question about why we were running into issues with features being overwritten in a test environment today. I replied and thought the topic would be good for a blog post, which I’ve adapted from the email.
In essence, the code that we write is just a directory of files that tell the computer what to do. We try to separate out different parts of the application into different files – for example we have one file that tells the computer how to do anything having to approvers – so that we can more easily reason about the application’s logic, so we only have to fix bugs or add features in one place, and so we have fewer issues with two people modifying the same file. Despite these efforts, if two people are working on two separate features at the same time then each of them can possibly make changes to the same files.
If those two people were both working on the same files in the same folder then they would constantly be causing problems with what the other was trying to do, similar to the problems you run into if you are trying to modify an Excel spreadsheet at the same time as someone else and you get locked out or lose changes. Whoever saved last would have their changes in the file and the other person’s changes would be discarded. To avoid this problem, each of us works on our own version of the files on our own computer. We use a software called Git to help us manage which version of the code is on our computer and it also helps us share the code between each other. Git also takes care of taking two versions of a file that two people have both made changes to and making them into one version.
The problem we are running into now is that we can only have one version of the files on the UAT server at a time. When I put my version out there it overwrites the other person’s version and their features are no longer available. The best way to solve this problem is to coordinate which testing will be happening at which time.
I’ve fallen out of a few habits lately and my daily learning is one of them. I’ve started a Coursera on what plants know but I haven’t gotten very far into it. I think the main cause of falling out of this habit is that I’ve had a backlog of work to do, but I think another part of it is that I don’t have anything that I’m really interested in learning lined up. The machine learning course that I’m in the middle of was wearing me out.
This coming month I’m going to try to get back in a few habits that I’ve gotten out of. That just seems to be part of the cyclical nature of life, habits rise and habits fall.
I spent a little time today testing the maximum zoom levels for three different iOS mapping solutions. Here is what each looks like on an iPad Mini 4 running iOS 9:
Apple Maps
MapBox
Google Maps
It is a very personal question. My point is not going to be the same as your point. I can see your point to help inform mine, but in the end it is up to me.
Over the next few days I’ll discuss this more. I’ll give examples of my points on different subjects, hoping to spark your reflection on your points.
This morning I was watching music videos on our new Apple TV. I had gone through all of the featured videos and wanted to watch more, but I didn’t want to search because I didn’t know exactly what I was looking for. I wanted to watch something fresh and that isn’t a useful search term.
Apple Music has been heavily criticized as being too complicated and difficult to use. Those criticisms bounced around in my head and amplified my frustration.
Then I fumbled around a bit, did a search for an artist and watched some more videos. Then I figured out a better way. I could find an artist I liked and choose the “Artist” option to see more of what they’ve done, including videos. I’d discovered a new way to use this tool and I was delighted by it. It felt good to overcome that frustration.
I think we’re placing far too much emphasis on making everything easy to use. Complicated processes and powerful tools should not always be able to be learned in a few minutes. By adding training wheels to everything digital we create we remove the depth from the product and make it less useful. We also rob our users of the opportunity to discover something new on their own.
I have three points of using social media.
I want to share who I am with the world in the hope of finding like minded people and make more friends.
I want to share the things I and our company build in the interest of promoting our work, letting people know about things we’ve made that could benefit them, and giving people an easy way to share anything about us.
I want to have lightweight and topical conversations with the people I friend and follow.
I don’t want a massive following and numerous likes. I want to reach the people that are on my same wavelength.
I don’t want massive influence, but I hope to build a solid reputation amongst those people on my wavelength.
What are your points of using social media?
I listened to a new podcast this morning called Under the Radar and hosted by David Smith and Marco Arment. Both David and Marco are indie iOS developers, meaning that they are not part of a big company and they make iPhone and iPad apps.
Their primary discussion on the show was about making money in the App Store and they brought up some great points, like how many developers want the world to work a certain way rather than changing their business strategy to how the world actually is. They talked about how each of them adapted to the world. Marco rode the first waves in the App Store and was able to charge higher prices at the beginning and has since moved to different sales models including free up front with in app purchase and now patronage. David has attacked the problem another way, building a wide variety of apps that offer less utility but have advertisements integrated.
Both of them have adapted their strategies as times changed and both have been successful.
But they didn’t mention another factor that I think is the most critical to their success. They are both podcasters.
From my own experience, I have given them money for apps and services because I “know” them from their podcasts. I’ve listened to every episode of David Smith’s Developing Perspective and all of Marco’s Build and Analyze. After all that time listening to them I feel a connection, as silly as that might sound since I am a nobody to them.
There is something about listening to a human voice that brings you closer to that person in a way that the written word doesn’t quite match. Through your voice you can build a fanbase of people that want to see you succeed, and you could also call it a personal brand or audience — it is all the same. What it comes down to is people trusting you which leads to them wanting to see you succeed and going out of their way to help you do so.
Put yourself out there, be generous, and share who you are and what you know regularly. Slowly build your fanbase and set yourself up for success.
I’ve recently heard someone say that you need to make sure that people know you are doing hard work.
The thought is that you won’t be appreciated for what people don’t see. If you make what you do seem easy then people won’t value your work. Plus, since what you did was so easy, people will keep asking for more and more.
That mindset drives me crazy. I approach work with an attitude of “that will be simple” 95% of the time. And maybe my work isn’t appreciated as much, it is hard to measure that. But people definitely keep giving me work, which is the important thing to me.
You can’t really make it look like you are working really hard without making it more difficult for people to give you work at the same time. And over time the friction of giving you work will result in you getting less work — people won’t want to put in the effort — and then eventually you become dispensable.
I’d much rather be overwhelmed with work and not be appreciated than hear appreciation but not have any income.
Related but off topic — people don’t care how hard you have to work.
While making every decision in our business we try to choose the path that we believe will lead to long term success over any that will only lead to short term success. We call this playing the long game.
An example is our pricing policy — we have chosen to always provide a written estimate up front and never charge more than that estimated amount. Plus, we only charge for the actual hours worked if we do manage to come in under our estimate.
That policy has meant that we had lost out on a good amount of money in the short term. But we believe that we will build a higher level of trust with our clients which, along with excellent service, will mean that they will do everything they can to work with us long into the future. We’re playing the long game.
What does it take to play the long game? Generosity, patience, vision, and resources to get you through the ramp up.
Are people successful because they track and measure things or in spite of it? The most successful people have more than talent, they care immensely about what they are doing and want to know every detail about what is going on. So they track things as a symptom of that desire for knowledge.
I believe the success comes from the caring, not the tracking.
I’m tutoring a retired math professor on how to make an app. He wants to make one that targets kids and teaches them math.
Going into this tutoring I thought that I’d mostly be teaching coding, in particular Swift. But while he does need some guidance there I find the most productive information I can provide is how to break up the huge task of making an app into smaller, doable pieces.
I’ve made lots of things and it almost comes second-nature to me now — I usually forget how critical of an ability it is. I don’t know how easily it can be taught because it requires a skill that I don’t see too often — being able to see the big picture and its smaller pieces at the same time.
I’m not a very social person and I’m not a fan of doing things because they are socially dictated. I have no problem not saying goodbye when leaving a party or ignoring the fact that it is a person’s birthday when I see them rather than wishing them a happy birthday. This applies to social media as well, where I have no problem ignoring a request to like a page or an event. My reasoning is that I want my likes to be pure (which, now that I am typing this, also means they are more valuable) and by pure I mean that I genuinely like the things I like.
I think I’m in the minority. I don’t think most people think twice about being asked to like something. I think that most people will do so out of social obligation even if they feel ambivalent about or dislike the thing. That leads me to the question “what is the value of a socially obligated like?”
I do believe there is some potential value. For instance, when a local high school football player is going door-to-door selling something to raise money for the team and stops at my house, I feel a social obligation to give money (which is kind of strange, given the examples of times I don’t feel socially obligated that I listed above.) I’ll buy something from that kid if that something is in the $10-$20 range. But that small amount of money won’t get a business that far, if a person even feels the same kind of social obligation.
I can’t answer my question right now even though I’ve been thinking about it quite a bit. I don’t think I have enough information to come to a solid, logical conclusion yet. But my gut is telling me that they are worthless and maybe even harmful. I’m going to keep trying to put my finger on exactly why I feel that way.
Over the last 9 months as we’ve started our business and worked to create a client base we have used one method to connect with others that has been foolproof so far. We’ve been generous with no expectation of getting anything back. As we hoped it would, this builds trust and great relationships.
It also has another great side effect — it helps you weed out the people you don’t want to work with. If you give generously over and over and all they ask for is for you to give more then things won’t work out long term. Find a way to separate yourself.
But the percentage of the population that wants to take advantage of you is small. Don’t let them change your ways. Start with generosity and an open mind and go from there.
Today was a good day. I remembered some old times, got recognized for old sacrifices, and enjoyed time with friends.
The remembering was more emotional than I expected. It pulled up memories that had feelings tied to them that I’d left far in the back of my mind. I miss every moment that came before this, both good and bad. I grieve their passing.
After tragic events it becomes difficult to remember that most of this world is good. Our natural reaction is to amplify the way we see the suffering in the world. Our brain fails us as we go into a defensive mode. A mode where everyone who isn’t exactly like us is our enemy.
But most of the world is good. Even in the parts of the world that aren’t like ours, most of the people are good, just like most of us are. They live their life the same way we do ours, doing the best they can to make their world a better place.
Today I spent a couple of hours at the Startup Weekend event here in Denton in a role of mentor/coach. Can’t say that I contributed very much in that short amount of time, but I did get a chance to talk to a few people and see some cool projects.
But the main thing that stood out to me was how excited people were to be working on their projects. Their enthusiasm was ebullient and contagious. Working in the tech industry every day with some fantastically cool technologies makes me a little numb to how cool it is to be able to do what I get to do every day.
It was a refreshing experience that I highly recommend.
I remember when I first got into programming I approached some problems differently. I’m not sure the best way to describe it, but I think I attacked them like a human would rather than like a computer could. I’ll give an example.
A common problem I’ve come across is tracking time. Let’s say I make an application that tracks how long I’ve been working on a particular task. If I try to solve this problem like a human could, I’d try to count the number of seconds I’ve been doing something. Each time the clock ticks, I increment a variable that is tracking my total time. And really, this isn’t an unreasonable approach to the problem, even for a computer. But solving the problem like a computer can is much better.
A computer can store abstract values that are difficult for the human mind to remember. And a computer can perform calculations on those values so much faster than I can blink that it boggles my mind if I let myself think about it. So a computer can use a different approach to solving this problem — it can store the starting time and the ending time and perform a calculation to find the total time. Why is this much better?
First, we have much richer information. Not only do we know the total time, but we know the start time and finish time. If we want to run a report and see how many hours are logged starting between 10 and 11 in the morning, we can. Since we can never predict how we may need to use information in the future, richer information is valuable.
Second, the system is more reliable. If our program is counting and runs into a crashing bug then the count is lost. That is really bad if you’re trying to track billable time. If we save a start date and the program crashes, we still have that start date available when the program starts back up and we can continue where we left off.
Third, the second approach is more efficient. If the computer constantly has to increment a number then it has to repeatedly work at regular intervals. That means it is using more power, and in the case of a mobile device draining the battery more quickly.
Since I’ve been doing programming for a while, the second approach is the only obvious one to me now. I have to work to try to remember how I approached the problem back when I was a beginner to see any other way to solve it.
Everything is always getting worse and everything is always getting better and we have little control over either. Change is constantly moving us forward.
Change is only bad if you’re living in the past and you’re trying to hold on to what was.
Everyone loves that good story about a person beating the odds. A high school student that makes a popular app. A businessperson that succeeds wildly through minimal investment. Finding that one tweak that can improve performance by 300%.
Those are all great stories. But what are the odds it will happen to you? Obviously the odds are zero if you don’t try, right? Anything can happen, right? And yes, you should try, to a point.
But that point is not a life or business strategy. You can’t bet your company on finding that social media hack that gets you millions of followers and thousands of customers just like you can’t bet your life on that lottery ticket that will have you set for life.
Instead you create a strategy for success without any of that. And while following that strategy you put yourself in a position where those situations could happen.
Have a social media account where you share the awesome things you’re doing. But first make sure you are handling the fundamental step of doing awesome things. Don’t spend all your time on social media trying to force something that isn’t there because you aren’t putting in the work.
Go out and meet that genius high school student that can make your product revolutionary instead of great. But meet her while you are out volunteering or meeting people that are interested in your story and helping you succeed. Don’t spend all your time looking for her instead of moving forward with your plans.
Concentrate on making your thing the best thing possible and leave the one in a million things to themselves.
I’m not sure if things have changed since I haven’t been around long enough. And I don’t know if my point of view is skewed by the people I surround myself with. But I feel like the concept of getting paid for an honest day’s work has fallen aside, instead, everyone is looking to maximize their ROI, hoping for big payouts, and trying to live the 4 hour workweek.
I don’t like it. I’m stubborn and a little old fashioned and I want to make an honest wage for the work I’ve done and the value I deliver.
One of our jobs as programmers is to see into the future. We have to be able to see the logical path our code will follow to its end and make sure it will go where we want. The easiest way to do this is by keeping things super simple, but that generally isn’t the best way to solve the problem.
Instead we must do our best and have people test the things we build. Even the simplest projects create a huge number of possible test scenarios so we test what we can and cross our fingers.
Over the last few days I’ve been teaching things that I’ve done so much that they’ve become second nature. Simple things, well simple to me, like using a three finger drag to move items on a Mac. Or when it is appropriate to retweet. Really simple things, except they aren’t.
If you’re ever feeling you don’t have any worth, find someone that wants to learn about something that is second nature to you. You’ll see there is much more to you than you realize.
We humans are highly adaptable. For example, within a minute after jumping into a pool on a hot summer’s day our body temperature will adjust to its new surroundings. But we usually still fear the cold from jumping in. What are you afraid to jump into?
While watching football today the announcers described the importance of maintaining momentum in a game. The Miami Dolphins had strung together a scoring drive with a few good plays on their next possession. Then they were flagged for a couple penalties in a row and had to punt. They’d lost their rhythm and their momentum.
I think good leaders can push a team back into a rhythm and generate momentum. That’s probably a nearly impossible to track statistic that is the difference between the goods and the greats.
That importance of that trait isn’t unique to football or even sports. Leaders in business do the same thing. They dictate the rhythm for their industry and create momentum for their employees. And they do it despite all kind of setbacks, using patience and sheer determination to make it happen.
The best way to keep driving rhythm and momentum is to have a destination — somewhere you are trying to go. That requires a strong vision of what you want the future to be and the knowledge of how to change the present to get to that future.
You’ll have to forgive me because I’m a nerd a I’ve never really understood the more socially driven aspects of life. Things like fashionable clothes or hip slang escape me — I just don’t get it. Why would you intentionally say something in a less direct and more obscure way? How will anyone understand you?
I had an epiphany a couple days ago. I think I’ve finally understood the point of some of things. I finally see the value in knowing what the hot, fresh thing is.
But I still can’t put it into words.
DVRs were the first devices to truly allow us to time shift TV — meaning we could watch a show when we want and when was best for our schedule, rather than when the broadcaster showed it. Apps like Instapaper changed the way we could consume news in a similar time shift. Instead of reading an entire article right when we happened upon it, we could save it to read later.
The new freelance economy combined with teams spread across the world is introducing the time shifting of work. When I get my work done matters much less if you are in a time zone 12 hours behind. That opens up flexibility. Companies hiring freelancers also have to work around their schedules, at least a bit, because freelancers generally have to have more than one client and the companies hiring them know that.
Those changes lead to the question “when does work need to be done.” Does it have to be between 9 and 5? Absolutely not. Hopefully at some point in the near future companies will have to charge a premium to get work done during set hours as more people realize that things don’t have to be that way.
The man, on the brink of insanity, screams into his phone “YOU ARE NOT REAL!”
The automated email, setup to be sent from a fictitious “Chelcie Plowright,” did not react to his anger in any way. Chelcie sat silent while he struggled to force a composure about himself.
Two days later, she’d write again. She’d never stop.
Few things are as powerful as a personal invitation. A personal invitation says “I want YOU here” — not everybody but you in particular. It says “I find you valuable.”
If you want someone to show up, and if it is at all possible, send a personal invitation. Not a form letter or newsletter made up to seem personal. Not a Facebook event or Meetup with them on the guest list.
Send a handwritten note, pull the person to the side, or start a direct chat with them. Despite our modern technological age, the personal touch is still the real magic.
We watched two mediocre movies tonight. Each was free with a TV package we already pay for and since we are tight on money right now we decided to try them rather than renting a movie that was more likely to be good. We went into each movie with fairly low expectations and we were still underwhelmed.
This makes me wonder how these types of movies get made. In other words, what causes the mediocrity? They each had a famous cast, most of whom had been in other good movies. Did they have young directors? Was the story just so bad it couldn’t be salvaged? Was the singular goal to make a movie that would gross a certain amount while staying under a certain cost?
I don’t know enough about the movie industry to say. But I don’t think it differs greatly from every other industry. So how do mediocre things get created?
When running a long distance your pace is important. Too fast and you’ll wear yourself out early and not finish. Too slow and you won’t get the time you want. Your pace is strongly influenced by your fellow runners because we’re highly social creatures and therefore influenced by those around us in subtle ways.
Having the right person next to you during that run is a great help. She can help you keep your pace when you feel like slowing down. But the right person can be hard to find because you need someone with the same optimal pace as you.
Pacing is everywhere in our lives. Some of it is rigidly set, such as the pace at which you progress through schooling or get promotions in the military. But most of it is a strange balance between your discretion and the pressures around you. You may enjoy taking your time to eat breakfast but if you need to do that plus get ready plus get the kids to school then you don’t get full control over the pace.
Over the past couple of years I’ve come to realize how important pacing is in business. We want a certain pace for our company but outside pressures keep encouraging us to speed up. The whole world seems to be moving faster, in turn increasing the pace and moving faster and increasing the pace in an ever-quickening cycle.
Those speeds are not sustainable. We need to focus on slowing down and running our own race rather than that if the person next to us.
Brisk, determined, and ready for the distance.
The only way to create a compelling product is to use it regularly. It doesn’t matter how good the specs or the client feedback or the testing is, you, the person making the thing, must use it. Daily if possible, regularly if not.
You will catch things that you would never know about. Little hiccups and annoyances. Things that make no sense after daily usage but made perfect sense beforehand. The only way to know about those things is to use what you make.
I’ve had apps in the App Store for years. I’ve never had huge download numbers, but thousands of people have used them. In that time I’ve had only a handful of people contact me asking questions and I’ve always been happy to help in any way that I can. But I never thought that I should write something about how to use my apps.
I figured that my apps are relatively simple and intuitive and don’t need additional explanation. I had stuck myself in a false dichotomy between having no instructions at all and having those screens you see when opening an app for the first time that you ignore and quickly skip over.
The truth is that no one should have to email me to figure out how my apps work. Of course I always have to work to make my apps as intuitive as possible. But not everyone approaches technology in the same way and no two people share the same idea of what is intuitive. So I’m going to start by writing “Getting Started” instructions for each of my apps (and of course we’ll be doing the same for Shepherd Dog apps.) I’ve started today with Getting Started Instructions for Wake Up
From there I’d also like to add a video overview for each app. I think that written instructions will work for some users but a video will appeal to more and also will be a better way to market the app since I’ll be able to show off the features.
I stopped writing for a while. I’d been writing a blog post every day for over a year and then simply stopped one day. I was stressed and tired from working almost constantly and then the app that I made for writing broke. I didn’t have time to fix it and I really didn’t have time to write.
I’m glad I stopped. I didn’t need another thing weighing on my mind and taking my time. I didn’t like breaking my streak but streaks come and go like everything else.
During the break I kept getting urges to write. I’m glad I got that affirmation that tells me I’m doing this because I want to, not because of a streak or because I think I need to write. I want to write.
In my Here Be Dragons: iOS Snapshot Testing Edition I discussed an macOS Sonoma Rendering Differently on Xcode Cloud’s Intel machines:
As I described later in that post, those preferred languages include Arabic which causes snapshots to be rendered differently than when Arabic is not in the preferred languages.
My workaround at the time was to avoid using Sonoma but fortunately I’ve now had a chance to find a solution.
I had filed a Feedback with Apple for the issue while I was writing that previous blog post. I shared that Feedback with an iOS developer community I’m a part of and Francis Chary recommended that I use a pre-xcodebuild script to setup the simulator the way I needed it to be setup. That recommendation led to me create a ci_pre_xcodebuild.sh script which sets “en” as the only language and “en_US” as the only locale on all the simulators on the build machines used for testing (see this documentation for more information about the scripts that Xcode Cloud supports). Here is the script (gist):
#!/bin/sh if [[ $CI_XCODEBUILD_ACTION == "test-without-building" ]] then # Setup the simulators so that they only have one preferred language. # This works around an issue where the simulators on Sonoma have multiple # preferred languages which include Arabic and therefore provide different # results when running snapshot tests. # # This solution was inspired by: https://stackoverflow.com/a/74335552 brew install jq brew install parallel # In my testing running more than 2 jobs in parallel led to flaky tests # where the simulators would error out. xcrun simctl list -j "devices" \\ | jq -r '.devices | with_entries(select(.key | contains("iOS"))) | map(.[] | select(.isAvailable == true)) | .[] .udid' \\ | parallel --jobs 2 'echo {}; xcrun simctl boot {}; xcrun simctl spawn {} defaults write "Apple Global Domain" AppleLanguages -array en; xcrun simctl spawn {} defaults write "Apple Global Domain" AppleLocale -string en_US; xcrun simctl shutdown {};' fi This script fixes the issue and now all my tests pass on Xcode Cloud runners using Sonoma. 🎉
I always want my life to be calmer and less stressful. I also always want to be creating things and making an impact on the world. These two desires are constantly in conflict and create tension. I feel the same tension between knowing I need to execute on projects in the future and therefore need to wait on them and the desire to do them right now. That tension between patience and impatience drives me forward and a little bit crazy.
Is there a way that I can create the way I want to without the tension? I doubt it. I think tension is a necessary part of creativity.
Everything is a miracle to the person who believes nothing is possible.
Nothing is a miracle to the person who believes everything is possible.
Miracles can only happen if you believe things are impossible.
I’ve slacked on my learning habit — actually I fell out of most of my good habits somewhere over the last couple months and haven’t been able to get back into them consistently. But I’m still learning, just at a slower pace.
This last month I took most of Coursera’s “What a Plant Knows” course. Fascinating stuff and I highly recommend taking it or reading the book authored by the professor for the course.
I don’t understand why I like music the way I do. It doesn’t make logical sense to me that hearing a good beat will make me want to tap my feet and nod my head. But it does. I love a good beat or a good sound in a song.
I’ve recently created a playlist I’ve called “Hot Right Now.” It isn’t too difficult for me to choose to add a song to it, although it has got to be a good some. But I have one firm, main rule about removing songs — if I ever want to skip it then it comes off the list. This is the playlist I wake up to every morning and listen to when I need to hear something great.
I’d love to share it with you. If you have Apple Music, here is [a link](Listen to Hot Right Now by David on @AppleMusic. https://itunes.apple.com/us/playlist/hot-right-now/idpl.d5611ee640cc45958ea4a0a1d5e54069).
It is easy to get swept up in your first reaction to hearing something. Easy to follow your gut and stick with the initial way you feel. But it doesn’t work a lot of the time. The world isn’t clear cut so your reaction probably has at least parts that are wrong. And your gut doesn’t know all the facts. More often than not it is operating from fear and other survival instincts which aren’t relevant for logical discussions.
It is ok to not know how you feel about something. It is ok to do research and soul searching to figure out why your gut reaction is what it is. It is ok to change your mind and it is ok to keep it the same, depending on the circumstances.
It might not seem likely but many days I find being a programmer stressful. I’m required to say “this thing will work” while knowing all the things that could go wrong. Knowing that I am fallible as all humans. Knowing that many parts of the infrastructure of technology are flaky. The things I make have to be ready for anything and I don’t always meet that burden. Sometimes it feels like the opposite is true — that everything I’ve made is broken and in need of repair. To be fair to myself though, I see most of the world as broken and in need of repair.
The stress gets to me. One transaction with a bug haunts me while thousands of others go smoothly. But that’s the cost of creating. You can never create something perfect, only the best you can do at that time.
I just read an article where the author lamented the fact that kids growing up in our increasingly digital world won’t have the same opportunities for serendipity that we did. Physical copies of books and music albums aren’t laying around waiting for a curious youngster. I’m not too worried about the ramifications of that in particular because I believe we can actively share the things we know of, the great books and songs, which will result in an even stronger bond than a child coming across old music their parents like. I can share The Beatles with my daughter and at “hey I like this and I think you will too.”
But the article did make me think about what I am leaving behind. While digital artifacts can be harder to happen upon accidentally, they provide a much better way to transfer information. Like this blog. If I continue to write a blog post every day then I’ll have years of content to provide my daughter. I’ve also created a playlist of songs I’ve shared with her that I’ll continue to add to over the years. All our photos are in the cloud, making family photo albums so much easier to pass along than the old photo books.
I can only imagine that over the years more of our lives will be able to be shared with our children digitally. While I love sitting down with a good physical copy of a book or listening to a good record on my turntable, I’m much more excited about how much I’ll be able to share with my daughter because everything is becoming digital.
Software is like an iceberg. 95% of its functionality is invisible to you, underneath the surface. And I don’t just mean the networking calls to the server and the syncing mechanism that makes sure your data is consistent between devices although that’s a big part of it. I mean in the actual functionality that you use every day.
Let’s say you use the Instagram app. You like browsing your friend’s photos but don’t spend much time with it otherwise. So you don’t see the search functionality, or the AI they built to show you pictures you might like, or the ability to switch accounts. All of that functionality is hidden beneath the water. You’ll never think about the effort that went into building and testing it because you never see it.
The definition of expert is “a person who has a comprehensive and authoritative knowledge of or skill in a particular area.” But what does that really mean in a world filled with information that is growing exponentially by the day? That definition of expert could only apply to the narrowest of topics, such as “he is an expert in Microsoft Office 2013.”
But can you take the definition of expert broader? Could you say someone is a technology expert? So much technology exists and so much innovation is occurring that no one person can know technology authoritatively. And I don’t think the lack of expertise only applies to a field like technology. The complexity takes over too quickly. Doctors become experts at single joints or organs. Which is fine but comes at a high cost — an entire team must be deployed to solve a problem.
Most people don’t have the resources for an entire team. The health insurance industry has risen to “solve” that problem. But we don’t have a technology insurance industry to handle paying for teams to solve your technological problems. Most can’t afford to have an email person and a web person and an app person and a server person, each authoritative experts in her own field.
In most cases, expertise is not what you need. You need someone that is able to solve your problem and that you can afford to pay. Someone you can trust to do the job right and treat you fairly.
Over the last two years I’ve tried many different ways of tracking my time and none of them really worked for me. Each of them interrupted my workflow and made me think about tracking time instead of doing work. Each time I recorded time I’d get a little bit angry. Plus, tracking time actually made me work less because I wouldn’t work if I couldn’t record a meaningful amount of time.
Over the last few months I’ve found something that works for me. When I start on something new, I post the name of the project, plus any details I may need to remember about it, in a Slack channel. Slack puts a time stamp on it so I know when I started. When I move to the next task or project, I’ll post the name of that activity in the channel. Slack puts in another time stamp on the next post and simply by subtracting the first time from the second my time is tracked. If I am taking a break, I’ll post a “-”. This posting process is frictionless and lets me concentrate on working.
The only downside to this workflow is that I haven’t eliminated the mental processing of the time — I’ve just moved that effort from the start to the end. That gets painful when I haven’t transferred my time out of Slack into our company time tracking system for two full weeks, but I highly recommend this method of tracking time.
I’ve always heard that anger is a secondary emotion. However tonight I researched the topic on Wikipedia and found it described there as a primary emotion. But that doesn’t fit with my personal experience. I feel two distinct stages — a feeling of helplessness or unfairness or hurt followed by a surge in anger.
If you experience anger the way I do then I think you have a chance to reduce the anger you feel. If you notice the helplessness first then you know you can take action, or come to peace with the fact that you can’t change everything, to feel less anger. If you notice hurt first then you may be able to discuss that hurt with the person that caused it.
What makes you angry and what are you going to do about it?
Sometimes I think it is good to give yourself meaningless rules. What I mean is to set a standard for yourself for no reason. Like “I will only send invoices on Tuesday afternoons.” This rule can make the task stand out in your mind so you’re less likely to forget it. And after a while the rule builds into something more — a tradition, a part of your culture. It can be like the grain of sand inside an oyster.
But it doesn’t have to be. After all, it is just a meaningless rule.
I have a bad habit when I look in the mirror, especially when I’m not wearing a shirt. I contort my body in ways that make me like what I see from the angle I’m looking because I’m not happy with what I see.
I’m not happy with my weakened body which has withered from too much time at a computer and not enough time moving. I’m not happy with the way my head hangs forward and makes me feel like a hunchback.
So I almost reflexively change what I see. I adjust for a moment and then move on with my life a fall right back to where I was. I do the same thing over and over. In those areas I am stuck.
Looking backwards you can connect the dots in any way your mind chooses. You can create a story and to you that story can be very real. Your story can have evil forces conspiring against you or it could have angels protecting you.
Neither is likely to be true. The people in your life most likely spend a very small percentage of time thinking about you, let alone working for or against you.
What are certifications designed to do — what is the problem they are solving and the job they are doing? I think the job for a certification, whether it be from a specific training or test, or college curriculum completion in the form of a diploma, is to establish trust. This trust is meant to be based upon past accomplishments and is expected to be established immediately, bypassing the years of relationship building that is necessary to organically build trust between people.
I believe that certificates do not work for their intended purpose. A certificate cannot reliably tell me the things I need to know to trust a person: whether she is reliable, smart, hardworking, and trustworthy. And I need to reiterate that I’d include many things as certificates that you may not immediately consider. College diplomas, technical certifications, professional licenses, and everything else that has a system in place to judge a person and determine whether to give her a piece of paper. They just don’t do their job — to the point where I will trust a person less if they have a certification.
I think that I’m a leading indicator. By that I mean that most people still value certifications at this point but I see the trend heading toward distrust. If that is true, what will be next? How do we gain someone’s trust? Will we be going back to a system where we earn it over years? Probably not. I think it will be by showing what you’ve done, at least in my line of work. Projects you’ve completed, problems you’ve solved, and things you’ve shipped on your own. That’s what I want to see from anyone I hire.
Rules are only good for people that follow rules. So how do you get rule breakers to do what is best?
Make it easier than the alternative.
You were once small and weak. Your tiny hand could only wrap around my thumb. You did not know this world.
Now you are bigger and stronger but not the biggest or strongest. Your small hands look tiny next to mine but give an excellent fist bump — we’re still working on the explosion. E-X-P-L-O-S-I-O-N. This world has been tough and in a short time you’ve been through a lot. You’ve learned from me and I’ve learned from you. Middle C. You know more about this world now and you still great every day with a smile.
Some days you simply have to let out what you feel.
I’m working on an estimate right now for a potential client. The company has an internal server and it looking to upgrade it. I believe their server needs are modest — they do very little with it and don’t have many users.
With their minimal needs I’d recommend a fairly inexpensive server (if I recommend a server at all as opposed to moving things to the cloud.) But I have this urge to recommend something with more power just in case. It feels safer to do that.
The problem is that that isn’t what is best for the client. And me playing it safe validates everyone else’s fears and they compensate similarly, delivering something over-powered and over-priced.
I’m going to take note of my fear and my desire to do things the safe way. And then fight through them and propose what I know is best.
Yesterday I sent an email to a potential partner about a project we’d like to launch with them. We’ve put a few months of work into a prototype and we think it could be a Really Big Deal. If things go well then we have more work to do. If things go poorly then all our work to this point was for nothing.
For now, we are in limbo.
There is no truth. Everything is subjective and everyone’s opinion is based upon their worldview — upon the events in their lives that got them to this very moment. Their worldview isn’t wrong. Their worldview isn’t right. And similarly yours is neither. There is no truth.
When things shift fundamentally it is more likely than not that the existing organizations don’t adapt quickly enough and therefore die. It is much easier to go with the flow and believe that everything will always be the same, rather than having a vision of what the future is bringing and adapting to that before it sweeps you away. Plus, things that have been around all our lives feel permanent even if they’ve lived very short lives relative to the rest of the world.
The big shift I see happening right now is in education. The costs are not sustainable and the knowledge is no longer limited to the halls of a university library — the knowledge is in the air. The timing is impossible to predict but I have a feeling that universities will lose their relevance in my lifetime. I wouldn’t want to invest in a university right now and I definitely wouldn’t want to work at one.
Timing is critical in situations that change exponentially — data breaches that could affect millions of people, germs making you sick, and fleas infesting your house. These are situations where you must take action quickly and effectively. These are situations where experience is very helpful.
Most situations are not time critical and the outcome will improve with time. These situations allow for learning.
Knowing the difference between the two is useful.
I have a cold right now with a sore throat and head congestion. I’ve had some whiskey to help me sleep and some cold medicine to keep my nose from leaking too much.
This cold has me thinking about something. What is the difference between whiskey mixed with tea and a cold medicine that helps you sleep? I don’t know the exact details, but I doubt there is much difference. But my mind perceives one as appropriate and the other as not. Through years of repetition and good branding I see two very similar things very differently.
So what else do I see this way? How else is my mind shaping the things I see? I know the answer is “everything else,” but I still think it is a fun thought exercise.
I’m reading Stephen King’s book On Writing and he believes that one of the most important things a writer can do is read. The other most important thing is writing, but that’s not what I want to talk about.
I started wondering if all creative professions benefit from consuming in the same way. Do good film makers watch a lot of movies, painters take in a lot of paintings, and metalsmiths look at a lot of jewelry? I’d bet so.
So then what do software developers consume? Some may argue that software development is engineering and not art. That is true in many situations, especially in corporations where a developer is working on only a tiny bit of the overall application.
But I live a different situation, and many others also do, where we build the whole application. And now that I think about it, I should be consuming more of the types of things I do. But what is analogous to a writer reading? It is a software developer reading code?
I don’t think it is. I think the proper analogy is a software developer using apps. I feel like I don’t do enough of this and I think it could really help me make better apps, as I see how things are done well or poorly.
Are you consuming enough of the right things?
She asked me to spell “Daddy.”
D-A-D-D-Y
She asked me to spell “Weekend.”
W-E-E-K-E-N-D
She asked me to spell “Us.”
U-S
She threw her arms around my neck and we hugged and hugged.
I feel like the trend is to brag about how little effort you had to put into something to make it. Maybe this isn’t only a recent trend since saying you are better at something has been around for ages. Either way I see it as an unhealthy habit.
I think some of this tendency is a backlash against the slow moving systems in corporations. And some of it comes from a desire to motivate others to make things also, something like “look how easy it was for me, and it can be that easy for you too!” But nothing of any substance is that easy, and the discouragement they’ll face when they realize that for the first time may stop them forever.
Making good things takes time. If someone tells you otherwise, ask for proof. And look at all the things they aren’t counting.
I’ve never raced a car around a track, like F1 racing or that equivalent in road cars, but I’ve sat in some trainings and watched others do it. One thing the instructors consistently warned about was following the wrong path into a turn.
When racing cars, the proper path into a turn is critical. Getting it right means that you get to maintain as much of your speed as possible and also that you don’t fly off the track. Getting it wrong means a best case scenario of losing speed and a worse case scenario of losing control and running into something. The right path is dependent upon the car you are driving — how well its brakes work, the tires grip, and how heavy it is.
Due to how our brain works, we drive to where our eyes are looking. So if we are looking at the person in front of us we will drive towards them, or where they’ve been. Because we are focused on them we follow their path rather than our own. If they are in the exact same car as us, that might work out just fine. But if they aren’t then we are setting ourselves up for failure.
The key is to focus on the road, not the cars in front of or around you.
I love stories that end with a happily ever after. Or ones where a person hits it big and doesn’t have to worry anymore. All the problems are solved and life is a dream.
My life to this point hasn’t been anything like that and I can’t really hold out hope that that will change. And my reality is more likely similar to that of many people who always feel like life is a struggle. I can’t argue that it isn’t.
I don’t think any of us ever get out of the woods. Instead we have to find our peace in each moment. Notice the ways that life and our emotions and internal dialog are pulling us. Acknowledge them — say to yourself “this is what struggle feels like”. Then enjoy it. Let it wash over you. Soon this thought and feeling will be gone, replaced by another.
While watching a Cowboys game a few weeks back we saw a play that just about defined the Cowboy’s season. It was during a punt, we were the kicking team, and the receiver didn’t catch the ball despite signaling for a fair catch. The ball was up for grabs by whichever team got to it first. It rolled around on the ground for a little bit and the receiver that dropped it was able to recover it. We didn’t even get close enough to fight for it.
We didn’t get close enough because our players weren’t running full speed. They assumed the ball would be caught and there was no point in putting in the effort to keep running. They couldn’t be bothered to push themselves to do things the right way. That little thing could easily lead to more points on the board.
That’s how the discipline to do the little things right pays off. It doesn’t create the lucky situation where the ball is dropped, but it does put you in a position to benefit from it.
Every few months I’ll pick up one of my side projects again — apps that I’ve been working on for years. What I find is a lot of functionality and code that I’d never permit myself to build or write today. I see bugs or missing features everywhere. I see code put together in a way that just doesn’t make sense.
I see all that because I’m not the same person I was when I last worked on that project. I’ve learned, gained experience, and gotten better. And I’m confident that the next time I pick up this project I’ll feel the exact same way again — I’ll see a subpar product.
That’s ok. That’s getting better. There’s nothing wrong with running into the upper limits of your abilities today. Just keep pushing those limits.
A few years ago I was visiting San Francisco for Thanksgiving. I can’t remember if it was Thanksgiving day itself or the day after, but we wanted coffee. The place we were staying didn’t have a coffee maker so we had to go out but most places were closed.
We ended up walking about 10 to 15 minutes to Ritual Coffee because they were one of the few shops that was open. They had a line out the door. But the reason I’m sharing this story happened after we’d been waiting in that line for another 10 to 15 minutes. We’d made it inside the shop and I was able to witness the epitome of taking your time. The barista did not seem to care the line was out the door. He didn’t care that people were waiting and irritated. He slowly measured the espresso, carefully tamped it down and gently spun the tamper, and he made sure he was making the best cup of coffee he could.
That memory is at least a few years old but it had an impact on me. It is what I think of when I feel like I need to slow down and make the best thing I can.
I’ve got a feeling in me that I want to communicate but I fear I’ll fail. I’ll try anyway.
I was watching some of Tupac’s music videos and listening to his powerful lyrics. His words express pain and frustration at living in a society that doesn’t care about him or people like him. Lyrics like “instead of a war on poverty, they’ve got a war on drugs so the police can bother me.”
I believe that Tupac is still remembered today and is considered one of the best rappers ever because he did things differently. He used lyrics to tell a story rather than only rap about girls and guns (although he did that some too.) Those songs — those beats and those lyrics — stir something inside me that wants to make the world different, better.
If you want to drive change you must do it by being different. Even that alone isn’t enough, you also need relentless effort.
But doing things the same way you always have or the same ways that the people in power do can only reinforce the current system. It will help to sustain the status quo and rather than tearing down the system you detest you will build it up.
It seems too simple. The only way to change things is to be different.
I’m a type of person that thinks and rethinks through interactions with people that don’t go perfectly. I analyze details like how people reacted to things I said and agonize over any faux pas. And so last night, after teaching my first class at the local community college, I didn’t sleep well.
I had four hours of class to mentally review, examine, and critique. Like that moment when I started saying “In addition to the state’s goals for what y’all need to learn, I have two personal goals” but then forgot my second goal. I had planned that statement out so many times leading up to yesterday. It was embarrassing.
But it is over and I’m ready to move forward. Live performances can never be perfect and I think I’ll get better at accepting that over time. Right now I just can’t wait to get back in there to teach the next lesson.
One of the ideas behind the “blog every day” philosophy is that forcing yourself to ship something every day will make you better at shipping things. It will reinforce the pattern of releasing things into the world so you don’t get stuck in a cycle of fear and always trying to make it better.
Not being able to ship things isn’t my problem. If anything, I have the opposite problem. I’m an over-shipper or a premature-shipper. I have a strong drive to get things done and when that is combined with too many things to do I have to really fight the urge to ship it right away despite any flaws in it.
I bet the best solution to this problem is to not have too many things to do and to set the right pace for myself.