Ross's Micro Blog

Back from a great little second Christmas in Devon. All well and in one piece (this is to be celebrated!)

We have had a very difficult December this year and it concluded with a stomach bug hitting us while people we were moving around were in the wrong places. I won’t say Christmas is ruined – others are far worse off than we are. But we’re having a very minimal celebration.

Am I allowed to swear in public on Christmas Eve?

Yay! My first post for the Delicious Brains blog! 😀

Really hope this helps some people get started with static code analysis in PHP or JavaScript (no TypeScript required).

https://deliciousbrains.com/php-static-code-analysis/

I’ve heard “you can do anything if you put your mind to it” a few times recently.

I disagree with it.

But I also want to turn it around.

What if, instead, this was:

“Others can do great things if you help and support them?”

Looks like I do this every year. Oh well. Merry Christmas, MicroBloggers!

Is this thing still on?

Can I still post to this thing?

Having a bit of a reading catch up – sorry for lots of boring links while you sit and enjoy Christmas Eve Eve:

I don’t know WHAT to think of this. If it was a picture we’d call it a “deep fake” but it’s text.

An interview with an AI Mark Zuckerberg:

https://w4e.uk/-Rptz

My daughter won’t wear jumpers and coats claiming “I like being cold”.

I suspect this is the fault of Elsa from Frozen and her “The cold never bothered me anyway”

Can someone reassure me that Elsa doesn’t have other ridiculous preferences in the sequel?

Could we maybe agree on some instant messaging/chat app conventions for:

a) I’m sending you this now but I don’t expect a response immediately
b) I don’t expect a reply to this at all – you don’t event need to say thank you or goodbye

?

What if there ISN’T a path (and other things I’ve learned lately):

https://rosswintle.uk/2019/11/what-if-there-isnt-a-path-and-other-lessons/

This is a brilliant and really well-made article (with video) about the history and future of the bicycle. Worth a read! https://www.bbc.com/future/bespoke/made-on-earth/an-ordinary-bicycles-epic-journey/

How on EARTH are you supposed to maintain any kind of consistency in doing anything when you have small children and both parents working? Sodding impossible!!

So my kid’s current obsession is Scratch coding. But he has limited screentime. So what does he do?

(Note: I’m sure someone has already made physical scratch blocks, but I think this is an AMAZING teaching tool!!)

After a couple of weeks of illness, exhaustion and feeling out of control of everything coming my way, I finally had a few days that I totally nailed. This included a day of ace parenting today.

YES!!!!!!

Some neat command-line history shortcuts for those who use terminal/command-line: https://opensource.com/article/19/10/bash-history-shortcuts (via changelog)

Oh. Yay! Looks like I might officially be a podcast guest soon!!
😃

Watch this space… 🕳 👀

This is a SUPERB article on the why you should and how you can do “deep work”. Aimed at coders but probably applies elsewhere too.

https://www.freecodecamp.org/news/focus-and-deep-work-your-secret-weapons-to-becoming-a-10x-developer-8e203a6ad291/

It occurs to me that I now see WordPress (the software) the same way I see iOS and MacOS.

I don’t contribute.

I don’t install betas.

I don’t really give feedback.

It’s impenetrable (by me at least) software made by others.

This is kinda sad.