tomrandle

I’d expected Claude to be a clearer winner when we started this, but it was much closer, and the difference largely subjective. Both are exceptional when they have pre-calculated metrics.

I was introduced to Calvin and Hobbes (as well as Sam and Max) as a kid by a taxi driver when on holiday in Florida in the 90s. Loved both. It’s been a delight to re read them with my son recently. I somewhat lament it’s not possible to by any merchandise though! I’d love to have a big print of the pair in their radio flyer crashing down the hill!

I love the app. Each week I discover a new to me species of insect in my garden. When the AI fails to work (relatively rarely) the community usually quickly manually identify it.

I’ve had less success with trees but it’s still pretty good.

The focus on images is a bit iffy. Usually I take the photo using the phones native camera app to overcome.

I’ve recently moved to a house with a wood burner / back boiler and I can’t wait to replace it. It’s made me appreciate what a huge upgrade natural gas boilers were. I spend a minimum of 15 mins a day chopping kindling, fetching wood, starting and feeding the fire. It’s not cheap and it’s not warm! It’s been fun and makes you appreciate your consumption more but the novelty only goes so far!

Seems to me Surrogation is very similar to The Cobra Effect / Perverse Incentives (https://www.geckoboard.com/learn/data-literacy/statistical-f...) , or the McNamara fallacy: https://www.geckoboard.com/learn/data-literacy/statistical-f...

Both very real problems that have existed forever. The solution, as the article suggests, is not relying on just a single metric, and not losing sight of your wider strategy. There’s a really good article on Reforge about the problems with the recent trend of a single “North Star Metric”: https://www.reforge.com/blog/north-star-metric-growth. Stacey Barr’s another thought leader on the subject: https://www.staceybarr.com/measure-up/a-single-kpi-that-meas....

Metrics absolutely cannot replace strategy and vision. It needs to be a core value of the company that you’d rather do the right thing by the wider mission than drive a metric at any cost. Managers at every level need to live up to that. This is harder the bigger the company. It’s one of the things OKRs, love or hate them, try and help with. Like with everything it’s whether you comply with the spirit or the letter of the law. And whether people get rewarded for latter!

We switched from Trello to Clubhouse 3 years ago - having dabbled with JIRA a few times. We'd outgrown Trello (not enough structure) but didn't want to give up on the speed / ease of moving and updating cards. I wrote about it here: https://medium.com/geckoboard-under-the-hood/why-our-dev-tea.... This seems like a sensible move to grow usage - interested to see how it helps!

At Geckoboard we have a Pi hooked up to a thermal receipt printer so that remote participants can print off their retrospective cards through Slack: https://medium.com/geckoboard-under-the-hood/building-a-slac...

(We've upgraded it a bit since that post! - We also use it to ping a Slack channel for when it's standup).

We also use Pis to run some of our dashboards: https://support.geckoboard.com/hc/en-us/articles/36002392437...

I really rate this book so it’s great to see it getting some publicity!

I think one misnomer is that to do stats right you just need to do the math right. But what analysis is done in the first place, the overall methodology and how that data is interpreted are more often where we go wrong.

At Geckoboard we’ve been trying to raise awareness of some of these issues. Heres a poster we put together: https://www.geckoboard.com/learn/data-literacy/statistical-f...

I built a Huxley Reprap Pro two years ago. The building experience was interesting, but fiddly. I needed a few spare parts along the way and getting them was slow. It feels very much like a prototype / proof of concept rather than working tool but getting it working was rewarding.

I printed a few things, including a centrifugal pump, from thingiverse as well as a few of my own designs. They usually come out reasonably well, but the finish is not attractive and it usually takes a lot of fiddling up front and more than one attempt. Comparing the quality to stuff I've had made by Shapeways / Materialise there is no comparison - they are infinitely superior.

Keeping the machine operational requires constant vigilance! If there's a kink in the filament, or the extruder loses heat the machine has a habit of self destructing.

A bit put off with home 3d printing, I recently built a Stepcraft CNC Router https://www.stepcraft-systems.com/en/

It's been an altogether more rewarding experience. It feels like a real machine and the results are really impressive. I've not really had anything go wrong with it after assembly. It is quite a bit scarier though having a diamond bit spinning at 20,000 rpm!