David Edgar's website

Wednesday, 17 January 2024

I’m looking forward to receiving Atlassian’s study a dozen times today from people mad about the mandatory two days in the office.

Sunday, 07 January 2024

They know, right...barbers? They can tell while cutting your hair whether you spend much time on it? It was when the guy pulled out the third different brush while frying my scalp underneath the blow dryer that I felt like saying to him "You know this is the only time for the next three months my hair is going to see any instrument other than my fingers, right?"

Saturday, 06 January 2024

🔖 How to build a small solar power system

Friday, 03 November 2023

https://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/2023/oct/31/michelangelo-secret-sketches-under-church-in-florence-open-to-public

Michelangelo hid from the Medicis.

In a tiny room beneath...... the Medici Chapels.

I was kind of disappointed to find it wasn't already noted in the Real Life examples of the Right Under Their Noses trope, https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/RightUnderTheirNoses

Tuesday, 05 September 2023

🔖 Measuring Developer Productivity Part 2

Part 2 of a response to the McKinsey developer productivity idea

🔖 Measuring developer productivity? A response to McKinsey Part 1

I predict this article being very useful to me by the end of the year in order to fend off the McKinsey thing being applied to me

Thursday, 17 August 2023

🔖 Why I'm leaving Micro.blog

This fairly closely aligns with why I am having so much trouble using micro.blog, a service I have been paying for since the Kickstarter. Using it just doesn't align with my read of the idea of owning my own words (I mean, I guess content is the right term but it has such a gross meaning in our degraded, hustle-ised culture). When I think about ownership, I think of having control of it. But obviously when I put those words on someone else's service, I have ceded control. Sure, Manton seems like a nice guy. So does @shlee@aus.social. Nevertheless, I am giving them a bit of me every time I post to their databases.

Friday, 11 August 2023

Looks at list of last books read. Hmmm

All of which are at least on their fourth go around. So comfort reading and competence porn.

Well, at least it got me out of my rut or not reading at all.

Sunday, 06 August 2023

🔖 Splitting the Web

An understated call to action to reject the lure of "the global town square"; not the same stridency as Cory Doctorow's "enshittification" themed articles, but the same basic point.

🔖 Building and operating a pretty big storage system called S3

A self-history on building S3 from a person who was there. The only thing I knew going into this was knowing the used Scrum as a project management tool. Not sure if it was the same person, but someone joined a Twitter Space run by Bryan Cantrill and defended the methodology on that basis. Which is not really here nor there.

Friday, 04 August 2023

🔖 Imaginary Problems Are the Root of Bad Software

Thursday, 03 August 2023

I wonder if each morning as I get out of bed the pets look at me and think “oooh, big stretch!”

Saturday, 22 July 2023

🔖 Tech debt metaphor maximalism

I had reason to try and explain this metaphor to someone this week, trying to reason with them that some debt is worth taking because delivering speedily is worth it. I couldn't remember this link though. Well, now I will.

Sunday, 16 July 2023

🔖 What Hallucinogens Will Make You See

I wonder if people with aphasia, the inability to picture something in their mind's eye, are more or less affected by hallucinogens.

🔖 The Expanding Dark Forest and Generative AI

Tending and caring for an indie web in the midst of generative AI content farms

Saturday, 15 July 2023

Was highly amused at the Product-Engineering quartet alignment meeting the duelling declarations, spoken within minutes of each other, that we need an AI feature to differentiate is from the competition and we also need an AI feature because we’re losing sales as the competitors are all promising one too.

Apple Guy Gruber (I don’t know why I bothered, it’s not like he could have a vanity search going anyway) approving quotes:

Why doesn’t the EU just turn off the web?

(https://www.threads.net/@levie/post/CurnRtuLgv_ CW Threads link)

And I just don’t get it. It’s not the web that vexes the EU, it’s surveillance capitalism. A thing he also claims to dislike in many ways. Calling for TikTok to be banned; a visceral dislike of Facebook; supporting Apple’s privacy initiatives.

I mean, you can’t help but wonder if he just has a grudge because the EU wants to force Apple to make the iPhone fractionally more consumer friendly with standardised cables.

Thursday, 13 July 2023

🔖 Moneyball for Software Teams – An Imperfect Heuristic for Quantifying Dev Performance

I kinda of love, in a horrified way, the evaluation that middle management is basically glorified high school politics and the solution is drumroll Taylorism. No, not Taylorism like that. Like this.

Saving in order to sporadically remind myself the dangers of systemisation.

Sunday, 09 July 2023

🔖 Questions for our first 1:1 | Lara Hogan

I read this one a lot, before every new starter.

🔖 How to pass any first-round interview (even in a terrible talent market)

Some obvious, some not obvious tips. I can't get past first interview any longer, so...

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