Author: Ross Wintle

🖥️ Right. PHP 8.4 is out later in the month. Time to stop procrastinating and get https://caniphp.com/ updated!

Let’s see what’s new!!

That was a WILD weekend of dipping in and out of Turbo Admin support as the command-palettes-in-WordPress train continues to rumble.

Proud of what was achieved.
– Converted one highly skeptical user into an advocate.
– Got LOADS of great feedback.
– Made my first ever refund to an actually-not-that-unhappy customer who just needed some extra compatibility.
– Hand-held someone with lots of questions through to purchase.

Surprisingly emotional at times. But a good day in the end!

I feel I should say some things about the “business model” behind Turbo Admin, my command palette for WordPress. I've been thinking about this a lot lately.

"Software is amazing isn't it? I can self-teach so much. I can make interesting & useful things. I can share them with the world instantly. Sure, I can make money from them. But I don't have to. It can just be fun & exciting to make, share and help others!”

https://rosswintle.uk/2024/11/the-turbo-admin-business-model/

Software is amazing isn't it? I can self-learn so much. I can make interesting & useful things. I can share them with the world instantly. Sure, I can make money from them. But I don't have to. It can just be fun & exciting to make, share and help others!

Software is amazing isn't it? I can self-learn so much. I can create interesting and useful things and share them with the whole world instantly. Sure, I can make money from them if I want to. I can make a LOT of money. But I don't have to. It can just be fun and exciting and useful to make and share and help others thrive.

And that was (once?) the beauty of the open source spirit.

I’d love to get a little Panic Play date one day. Looks so fun. I don’t mind the base price. But add shipping and taxes and 😬

As a computer expert there are times when I turn up to fix someone’s computer problem and it’s just finding a button and pressing it and it takes ten seconds and changes the person’s day.

Today, I was the recipient of the 10-second simple fix from the car breakdown people.

I feel both stupid and immensely grateful.

The level of holding-my-tongue I’m (voluntarily) doing for like most of this month is torture!!

One day I will blurt it all out.

THEN you’ll know what October 2024 was like.

😂

This budget speech could have been an email.

Isn’t the whole point of coding guidelines that you apply them consistently? So a non-deterministic tool that misses things and is sometimes wrong is… pointless?

Using Copilot for code review is surely just a gimmick.

We already have tools that do *deterministic* code quality analysis using far fewer resources.

I just can’t square:

“Because Copilot code review is powered by a large language model, it can help with enforcing coding guidelines that are not covered by your linter or static analysis tool.”

with:

“Copilot isn’t guaranteed to spot all problems or issues in a pull request, and sometimes it will make mistakes.”

Oh wow! I've wanted a copy of “Efficient Linux at the Command Line” since I heard Daniel Barrett interviewed on @changelog (https://changelog.com/podcast/547) but it’s, like $30+ even for the eBook.

But there's a Humble Bundle with it in right now, along with a bunch of other Linux/bash/CLI books.

Really worth a look!

https://www.humblebundle.com/books/shells-and-scripting-for-seasoned-admins-oreilly-books

My own Vimeo account is a treasure trove of stuff that's fun to look through occasionally. 😃

Did I ever tell you about the time I opened a private document that I though was my CV in my Google Drive only to find that an entire manuscript for a 252-page novel had been mysteriously dumped into it?

It took me years to get a reply from the person that I think was the author. But they did eventually reply.

How the book got there remains a mystery.

https://vimeo.com/548151013

And if you don't have 30 minutes and/or don't want to do programming principles 101, then may I inspire you with with my 10 minute lightning talk on why, even if you don't think you are, You! Are! Creative!

https://vimeo.com/337727445

Both of these talks are pretty timeless. I'm hugely proud of both of them.

Will stop showing off now.

A friend just reminded me of the time I tried to cram programming principles 101 into a 30 minute WordCamp talk.

I've not done a lot of public speaking, but when I have I have given it my ALL!!!!

Sadly, there is not a good recording of this. The best I have is a scraped video with terrible sound. Perhaps you'll enjoy it anyway and maybe learn something too?

https://vimeo.com/463988477

Also…

"I've come around to the idea that actually, the solution to our AI problem is just to ban meetings.

Everybody is like: We're gonna make a thing so that you don't have to go to a meeting.

Just DON'T HAVE THE MEETING!”

The 11th October Vergecast was GREAT. Here's a clip of them discussing Zoom's AI Avatars.

"You need to record an initial video of yourself…from there you can write the message you want to say and have your avatar go to meetings and say it.

IT'S VOICEMAIL!!

It's the same amount of work.

This could have been an email!

I'm going to have my AI Avatar go to every meeting and say "This could have been an email!”

https://pca.st/episode/5113e5fd-05cb-40d6-ab4f-6cccddd17685?t=5935.604395604396,5997.289375053658

Turbo Admin extension update!

v1.18.0 is out now, you should get an auto update in 12 hours, or you can manually update if you know how.

This fixes up a weird issue I had with the command palette, but ALSO it changes the search method I'm using for commands.

Hopefully you'll notice it's just better and works like you expect. And it won't have broken anything for anyone.

But let me know if you come across issues.

With thanks for all the support and new customers this week. Y'all are awesome!