I Aged Myself Out of Software Development
2021 will mark the year I aged myself out of software engineering roles. About a month ago, on a Sunday, during an on-call shift, I considered a priority I told myself was unacceptable: staying home during an on-call instead of taking my kids to their activities. Had I stayed home instead of taking my kids out, I would have sent my resignation letter the next day. I told myself I would.
Weekend Ravioli
I recently became addicted to making ravioli. My kids love butternut squash and mushroom ravioli and campaign for both every week. It only recently occurred to me that making ravioli was straight forward and if you ignore most of the disciplines of baking it is similar to making bread. This is my weekend ravioli recipe. I call it my weekend ravioli recipe because it takes a bit of time to make and is a bit of a mess.
Passive Analytics Collection - Methods
This post is a continuation of my previous post introducing a strategy for passive UI metrics collection. In that post, I highlighted why metrics collection is hard, how I see metrics collection commonly done in the wild, and outlined a strategy I think is superior from both a technical and business perspective. In this post I will demonstrate this strategy with a live demo and summarize the types of UI metrics commonly helpful when understanding how people use your software.
Our Daily Bread Recipe
My standard bread recipe is simple. It is simple because I make it during the week while juggling work, kids, and dinner. The primary requirement for this bread recipe is that the process is reproducible without maths. The second requirement is that the flour bill is flexible and the process constant. I want to swap any grain for any other without having to tweak hydration levels and the like. Meaning the hydration levels are high but not too high and specialty flours are low but not too low.
Passive Analytics Collection - A Strategy
I’ve come to learn that collecting application metrics is tricky to get right. Developer needs, product needs, design needs, and senior management needs differ. There is no one-size-fits-all solution to gathering and organizing those metrics. A consistent theme throughout my career has been that while we have the best intentions when collecting UI interaction data, we rarely provide the depth of data sufficient to answer critical business questions from product and design.
Standard Preferment
I’ve been experimenting with preferments lately using a poolish left to sit overnight and have determined that the quality of the bread, in nearly all aspects, is superior to the same bread made without one. Starting with the taste, it makes a much more complex flavor. I’m not sure how I would describe the taste difference, but it has a deeper taste than bread that hasn’t had time to develop. Working with the dough is also a lot easier.
Basic Dill Pickles
My favourite purveyor of pickles closed up shop recently. Their product, while expensive, spoiled the very idea of store bought pickles for my family forever. With their shop shuttered and my kids clammering for decent pickles, I was left to go it alone on a grand pickle excursion earlier this year. Turns out pickles are trivial to get right. Thanks to a short turnaround time it is also trivially simple and cost effective to experiment.
Cinnamon Raisin Oatmeal Loaf
I’ve spent years trying to make a decent oatmeal raisin loaf. I’ve finally succeeded and I couldn’t be more pleased. This loaf is quite sweet and best for breakfast with jam or butter. I haven’t yet tried french toast with it yet but I imagine it would work well. For this loaf be sure to pay attention to process and refrain from hastening rise times. Soaking the oats and raisins in water is critical to creating the correct texture and ensuring nothing dries out or burns near the surface.
Motivation begets motivation
The older I get the more I find that motivation is the limiting factor to starting just about anything. There seems to be a minimum amount of motivational momentum or fuel required to learn something new. Paradoxically, the only method I’ve found to generate motivation is through motivation. I don’t think I’m unique in this either. Looking around it seems the older and more comfortable humans get the less motivation we have to challenge ourselves either physically or mentally.
The Trouble with Smart Home
This year I used the extra COVID time at home to experiment with smart home products. The goal was to identify rooms and spaces I used often, make them smart~ish, then simply live with it for a while and develop an opinion on the product space (e.g. setup, maintenance, reliability, troubleshooting, value-add, etc). There are plenty of obvious drawbacks to the tech including fragmented apps to control the devices and cost to name a couple.