It’s usually the implementation of Agile that’s bad.

The Manifesto’s organizing principles are quite succinct and don’t include a lot of the things that teams dislike.

We follow these principles:

Our highest priority is to satisfy the customer through early and continuous delivery of valuable software.

Welcome changing requirements, even late in development. Agile processes harness change for the customer's competitive advantage.

Deliver working software frequently, from a couple of weeks to a couple of months, with a preference to the shorter timescale.

Business people and developers must work together daily throughout the project.

Build projects around motivated individuals.

Give them the environment and support they need, and trust them to get the job done.

The most efficient and effective method of conveying information to and within a development team is face-to-face conversation.

Working software is the primary measure of progress.

Agile processes promote sustainable development. The sponsors, developers, and users should be able to maintain a constant pace indefinitely.

Continuous attention to technical excellence and good design enhances agility.

Simplicity--the art of maximizing the amount of work not done--is essential.

The best architectures, requirements, and designs emerge from self-organizing teams.

At regular intervals, the team reflects on how to become more effective, then tunes and adjusts
its behavior accordingly.

The Peter Principle

Kind of the opposite actually.

The Business™️ used to make all decisions about what to build and how to build it, shove those requirements down and hope for the best.

Then the industry moved towards Agile development where you put part of the product out and get feedback on it before you build the next part.

There’s a fine art to deciding which bugs to fix win. Most companies I’ve worked with aren’t very good at it to begin with. It’s a special skill to learn and practice

That’s why I don’t work on mission critical stuff.

If my apps fail, some Business Person doesn’t get to move some bits around.

A friend of mine worked in software at NASA. If her apps failed, some astronaut was careening through space 😬

You might check to see if Eater has a site for your city/area

🐬 Improvised Underwater Timekeeping for Dolphins:

An intelligent dolphin could adapt to underwater timekeeping by observing natural cycles, biological cues, and marine phenomena. Here’s how:

1. Harnessing Natural Rhythms

   • Tidal Changes: Dolphins could monitor the ebb and flow of tides, which occur predictably based on the lunar cycle. Changes in water current speed, temperature, or pressure could serve as cues for time measurement. • Day-Night Cycles: Despite being underwater, ambient light penetration varies with time of day. Dolphins with sensitive vision could detect shifts in light intensity or color. • Marine Sounds: The ocean environment is rich with natural sounds that vary throughout the day, such as coral reef activity during daylight hours or nocturnal hunting sounds.

2. Biological Cues

   • Internal Circadian Rhythms: Dolphins have well-developed biological clocks that could help them estimate time intervals based on their innate circadian rhythms. • Heartbeat or Breathing Patterns: They could track their heart rate or breathing intervals to measure short durations.

3. Environmental Markers

   • Bubble Streams: Dolphins could use their breath to create bubble trails or patterns and observe their rise time or behavior as a rough timing mechanism. • Floating Particles: They could monitor the sinking or rising of particles like algae or debris to estimate time.

4. Intelligence and Communication

   • Echo-Location as a Timer: Dolphins use echolocation effectively. They might develop a way to measure time based on how long sound waves take to bounce back from consistent underwater structures. • Social Synchronization: In groups, they could rely on collective signals, such as patterned clicks or whistles, to denote the passage of specific intervals.

5. Innovative Tools

   • Natural Hourglasses: They could manipulate objects like sediment-filled shells, observing how long it takes particles to settle or rise when shaken. • Thermal Layers: Dolphins could detect thermal gradients or changes in water temperature at specific times of day.

The Passenger is mild… but only half the story. You want to read the companion novel Stella Maris too

Some of his books are fucked up. The Road and Blood Meridian are stomach turning, gut-wrenching explorations of the awful side of humans.

All the Pretty Horses is: young man likes horses. Moves to Mexico to work on a ranch. Young man falls in love with woman. Hijinks. horses. Done

• All the Pretty Horses and The Crossing are beautiful western novels by Cormac McCarthy. Both are very much “a boy and his horse” kind of stories about learning to be yourself. They’re loosely related and there’s a third book that brings the boys together and concludes their stories

• The Jungle and Oil! by Upton Sinclair are novelizations of Sinclair’s investigative journalism work in the meat packing industry and the nascent workers rights movement respectively. Oil! was very loosely adapted into the film There Will Be Blood (the film covers maybe the first 3-4 chapters by greatly expanding upon the material

• Hatchet by Gary Paulsen was a very impactful book for me as a child. It’s a YA novel, but still worth a read. The main character Brian survives a plane crash in the Canadian wilderness and is forced to find a way to survive on his own

A few more recent novels that I enjoyed:

• Prophet Song by Paul Lynch. Won the 2024 Booker Prize (best English language novel) about an authoritarian government taking power in Ireland and how that unfolds from the perspective of a mother with young children. It’s a hard read, but very well written

• Our Share of Night by Mariana Enriquez. Translated into English. A friend described it as “sexy witches in South America deal with authoritarian rule.” And that’s pretty close…

• Same Bed Different Dreams by Ed Park. A semi-fictionalized history of the Korean Peninsula and the desire to have a unified identity. Many people come to the peninsula (same bed) with very different goals for its use (different dreams). Really fascinating book and engaging

• Tomorrow, and Tomorrow and Tomorrow by Gabrielle Zevin. Follows a trio of friends as they explore the world of video game design. Starts in the early 80s and runs through the 2000s. Reminder me very much of the show Halt and Catch Fire.

• My Friends by Hisham Matar. Follows a Libyan immigrant living in England in the 80s through 2010s as he wrestles with his identity, his homeland, his friends and family. Khaled’s closest friends serve as foils to his own feelings, reacting to the same circumstances very differently from himself

My top ten-ish tv shows

1. The Wire
2. Bojack Horseman
3. Patriot
4. The Americans
5. Better Off Ted
6. Arrested Development
7. Pushing Daisies
8. Gravity Falls
9. The Bear

Honorable Mentions

1. Over the garden wall
2. Luther
3. Friday Night Lights
4. The Queen’s Gambit
5. GLOW
6. Mindhunter
7. Sports Night
8. The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel
9. Atlanta

On my fifth rewatch right now. Just started S2

Obsidian might work for you

Surprised no one has mentioned The Expanse series. A ton of world building in very different kinds of environments. Space stations, small ships, big ships, generation ships, asteroids, moons, planets.

The environments are well thought out in how the residents would need to adapt

Gosh. I hadn’t thought about Indian in the cupboard in years

Not OP, but I almost exclusively read novels and non fiction via audiobooks. For context, I’m on pace for 70 books this year.

My main reason for audiobooks is I having a driving commute. Two hours a day round trip. Audiobooks keep me sane in a way that podcasts or music do not. I also do audiobooks when doing chores around the house.

Second, I struggle to focus on reading a book on my phone. Too many distractions and I think the reading experience is subpar. I do have an eInk reader, but I haven’t charged it in years because it’s easier to do audiobooks.

Physical books are rare in my home, but that’s a self-reinforcing cycle since I enjoy audiobooks so much.

Daddy would you like some sausages?

1. Overnight oats
2. Yogurt with frozen fruit and granola (parfait)
3. Granola/protein bar of choice
4. Hard boiled eggs
5. Peanut butter toast

Currently running server3 after some mishaps including a torched OS drive 🫠

https://cfenollosa.com/blog/after-self-hosting-my-email-for-twenty-three-years-i-have-thrown-in-the-towel-the-oligopoly-has-won.html

1. I went to grad school during the ‘08 housing crisis because there were not many jobs available for early career folks. The program was a combination of technical networking (Cisco) and business acumen.

2. Classes were longer seminars, much harder than undergrad with an intense focus on the subject matter rather than superficial discussions. Projects were also longer/harder including a thesis (~100 pages, 6 months of work)

3. I learned A LOT. I networked with industry folks and continue to engage with the alumni community. I’ve helped 5-6 grads land their first job.

4. After a few years working, I did an MBA part time (nights and weekends). That was similarly challenging and I also learned a lot.

5. I would recommend working professionally before a grad degree unless you’re in a specific industry like bio/chem research, math, psychology etc. basically industries where you require a Ph.D to do anything.

6. Do your best to get a graduate assistantship to offset the expense of the program OR work with an employer for continuing education.