zwayhowder

I have two approaches, one is hiring on a day rate with a view to convert. The day rate contract provides a lot more flexibility if things don't work out. Though I've only parted ways with a single digit percentage of such hires in the last 10 years.

The second approach is hiring junior/mid level's and mentoring them into the senior roles. It takes a little longer, but the hours of mentoring are a much more effective use of my time than interviewing hundreds of candidates in my experience.

I've been out of the game for 2 years, so I can only imagine with LLM assisted coding my second option would be even faster.

All that's predicated on test driven development to minimise the load on seniors for peer reviews.

This took me back to my first PC gaming experience at age 6ish. Circa 1988. Nostalgia unlocked!

Funny you should ask. In high school I was regarded as highly intelligent, I was near the top of all of my classes and widely read, with an excellent memory for facts and figures. (Though no visual memory whatsoever).

Then one day we did a IQ test in science class. I scored near the bottom of the class. All of the geometry based "what comes next" puzzles left me flummoxed. Because I couldn't visualise, I couldn't rotate images in my head to identify patterns and so many of the questions were like that.

It's not even on the same level. Container tabs as the name implies are all in the same window, and you can program them, for example always open up google.com domains in my Google container, while opening amazon.com in my shopping container.

This keeps the cookies separate and means you are tracked less. Yes you can manually do this with Chrome profiles, but before this feature was introduced into Firefox I had a dozen or more Chrome profiles to keep all my work, community and personal Google/Microsoft logins separate.

I have been toying with the idea of introducing something like JD to my system using tags though so something can be both.

I use Paperless to catalog all my PDFs, Obsidian for notes and Gmail for email, Todoist for tasks and Cloze for CRM, all of which support tags.

I use a Boox Note 2 almost daily for reading and regularly with a bluetooth keyboard for writing. It has a stylus, and the OCR is good enough for even my terrible handwriting (I should have been a doctor apparently) and I use that to scribble in the margin of PDFs etc.

My setup uses Autosync [1] to synchronise a folder from my desktop to the device. On my desktop I have Zotero (a Citation library) and Calibre both configured to export to that folder (in subfolders). With two way sync my notes are back on my PC almost instantly which is fantastic.

I also run Readwise and Obsidian on the Boox.

1: https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.ttxapps.au...

I switched to vertical typing. It was a challenge at first, but now I can type almost as well vertically as I can on a normal horizontal keyboard with significantly less pain in my arms and shoulders.

I already owned a Moonlander keyboard with the tripod mounts, so a little playing around with Small Rig mount and I have my vertical keyboard, affectionately known as the Type Fighter.

To get to vertical I started with desk mounts that I could adjust and progressively increased the angle of the tilt. Eventually I joined the two halves with a 300mm straight rod. But I don't have the photos of that handy.

Also in the picture, my left handed trackball (Elecom) and my Logitech MX Vertical. I alternate the mousing hand regularly. (Trackball for big movements, mouse for fine detail and gaming).

https://imgur.com/a/TdV502g

One thing that I fully internalised only recently - despite learning Asian languages for literally decades. The things western people take for granted as ubiquitous in our culture are often unknown to Asian cultures.

As an example recently talking to a Japanese friend who is the same age as me we realised she had seen less than 10% of the movies that "everyone born in the early 80's has seen". She didn't know who OJ Simpson was, nor is she familiar with Henry VIII and his 6 wives. She knew the Backstreet Boys & One Direction, but not Take That nor East 17.

Traveling in China a few years ago I was surprised to see many Hokusai images used on clothing and shop decorations.

The Mona Lisa might be the western world's most famous artwork, but you rarely see it on a T-shirt unless you're meeting a tourist near the Louvre. I suspect that if both were in still trademarked that Hokusai would be making orders of magnitude more on royalties than Da Vinci...

I briefly flirted with a Japanese keyboard just to get the extra keys that they have (next to the space bar which is much smaller) I then remapped those keys to other more useful commands.

I then discovered VIA/QMK keyboards and now I have keycaps I can't even see on my vertically mounted split-key keyboard and more programmability than I know what to do with. But in 2012, a Japanese Keyboard was much cheaper than a Kinesis and to me the only option.

I grew up playing 1/72nd tabletop wargames with my dad and his friends - Napoleonic to WW2 usually. Often with Star Wars/Trek or Babylon 5 on the TV.

This was our 3am conversations.

My house is about 100 years old and still has the original concrete tile roof, with a stack of spare tiles under the house ready if needed.

An extension that was done in the 1980s has had to have its roof replaced once already due to what I have to assume was poor workmanship by the builder.

I used to work backstage at concerts assisting my dad who was a sound engineer. We had my favourite cable of all time, a 30cm extension cord that was affectionately known as the "you've got to be #&$@ing me" cord. You'd run a 40m extension cord up and around the stage and get to the light you needed to plug in and you'd always be just short.

When I went into IT I quickly made myself some 30cm long Ethernet cables with a keystone on one end for just such an occasion.

This surprised me when I was on my local government and we had an application for a 24/7 carwash. When I asked why they thought it would be profitable to be open overnight with staff they said that the local car dealerships would book dozens of cars in every night, they were actually busier from 9pm to 6am than the rest of the day.

I keep a dozen books by von Daniken and his contemporaries on my bookcase to this day. Not because I believe them, but to remind me that I once did. I like to blame the X-Files, but the 90s was a funny time and I don't even remember buying all these books, but I sure believed them for a while.

Same here, and if the audiobook has ideas that grab my attention I'll often get the physical book to read later. I find that I can churn through several books a week and find a hidden gem in one that is worth following up.

I'll gladly pay one Audible credit and 3-5 hours of my time while at the gym or running to find out a book isn't worth buying than pay 2-3x as much for the paperback and 9-15 hours of my time dedicated to reading it to find out the same.

I have both. But it isn't weaker. To be clear my gmail password and my password manager password are both 40-60 characters long.

I also have TOTP and a Yubikey and a Passkey etc etc.

I was more protecting myself against a situation where my password manager was unavailable AND I needed access to my email urgently. Which has happened at least twice to me in the past.

Though to be fair once was Lastpass about 15 years ago when they reset everyone's password because of suspicious logs in an abundance of caution. That's right there was a time they were a "good" organisation.

I use Diceware. 6 random words with alphanumeric padding. So basically the XKCD, but something like:

correct_2_horse_2_battery_2_staple. In my experience it doesn't take long to memorise the words.

I have two passwords I know off by heart, my password manager and my gmail (just in case). I also capitalise a certain letter in each word, but that pattern is in my head only.

I am of course lazy, so I use biometrics on my phone/tablet/laptop to minimise the need for entering my password. But I wouldn't if I still worked in a high risk industry.

I had the same thought, but wanted to know why the Author thought they were not.

For example, a major issue for self-containment is that EPUB content can embed external assets. A content document can legally include an image or font file whose src is a URL to a hosted server. This is not hypothetical, either; as of the time of writing, Google Doc's EPUB exporter will emit CSS that will @include external Google Fonts files. The problem is that such an EPUB will not render correctly without an internet connection, nor will it render correctly if Google changes the URLs of its font files.

The article raises some interesting ideas. Much like PDF and PDF/A, I would say an EPUB/A standard would be potentially useful.

In my browser? Two. "Import Bookmarks" and "Getting Started" that Firefox happily recreates and syncs to my account every time I do a fresh install :(

In my Zettlekasten 5374... Wow, that's... more than I thought.

Though some of those would be from Omnivore imports Obsidian of webpages. I just counted instances of "https" in the folder it syncs to.

I tend to save pages that I've kept the tab open for more than a day so that my brain agrees that I've "done" it.

I've also starred 200ish repos on GitHub. Does that count as a bookmark?

Someone at the time had a CNC aluminium one on ebay for $700 or so. I thought "I can do that cheaper". I was very wrong. The actual parts weren't too bad.(I still had to spend $1400 on the cameras IIRC), but the number of tools I didn't own was a lot higher than I expected.

Still no regrets, I had a fun week of arts and crafts and got to stick it to Elsevier and other academic publishers :D

I made one of these during my MBA. I spent close to $2000AUD including the two Nikon mirrorless cameras I purchased. I am not particularly handy and made it out of spare 2x4 lumber I had so it wasn’t light.

But it worked, I scanned about two dozen short term library books that I needed to reference frequently during my course at a cost of about $85 per book. If I’d purchased the time limited ebooks they would have cost $125 each, and been scattered across 3 different bookstore apps.

I would scan while watching tv and could do approx 1000 pages per hour.

I also learned that I should not do carpentry and potentially saved tens of thousands by hiring a handyman or carpenter for home diy…

I wish Firefox would support faster profile switching. I consult and have multiple customers who all insist I use their Gmail or Outlook accounts, so I need about 6 profiles on the go. I can't use containers because it means I can't default, for example Google to my Personal container, which I want in my standard profile.

Having to create shortcuts to load each profile or keep about:profiles open is frustrating compared to the Chrome experience.

It's not enough to stop me using FF as my daily driver, but it is enough to stop my partner using it for theirs.

I highly recommend "Managing Humans" by Michael Lopp. https://randsinrepose.com/

I read it several years into my management path and cringed when reading a few of the anecdotes realising I'd made the same mistakes.

The Rands' Leadership Slack is also a wealth of knowledge and advice.

I like the look of this for automation of some of my GitHub notifications. We have a small engineering team and we are all drowning under the number of notifications. This could really help with managing the load.

(Working in IT) I love laptop stickers for this. Whenever I'm returning from a conference a quick look around the lounge will reveal plenty of people with laptop stickers that are an easy to to startup a conversation. "Oh you're into $LANG/$TOOL, did you go to $CONF too?".

Have you ever seen a Morris dancer? If folk clubs will accept that...

But seriously, you're right that they don't always look like they'd be welcoming. Most folk clubs tend to skew older and that often means conservative, though my experience is that most of the old folkies now were all young hippies once and honestly they are more likely to attend a rally/march than a middle aged professional with a full time job and family...

Contra is a great beginners dance that is also fun for experienced dancers. It is basically just walking, no fancy steps.

A friend of mine used to host Contra dances done to techno with nightclub like strobes that were very popular with the university students nearby.

I met my wife, and most of my closest friends at dances like this article describes.

The Scottish Ceilidh, the Irish Ceili and the many Platford and Regency style balls hosted by folk clubs and dance groups keep these very much alive.

When I travel I always take my dance shoes and find local groups to drop in on and am always welcomed with literal open arms.

Sadly in my 40s I am one of the younger attendees of these events. Which is a tragedy for those of us who already love the culture and those who will never experience it.

Every large company I've worked at on implementing the ideas from this book that was successful put a lot of effort into supporting the chapters/guilds/communities of practice or whatever you want to call them that encouraged this cross-team collaboration. Sure every team had their DevSecOps person, but that person was also a member of the chapter that met regularly and maintained an active channel on Slack or similar to help each other out. Along with a standard framework for picking new things to minimise the sprawl of tooling where possible.