Jim Benson challenges us with the idea that your Personal Kanban board isn’t just for our own private use, but is something to be shared with your family, and with your team. How many folks would be comfortable with that level of transparency? There is real value to be uncovered by trying I think.
For more on what a Personal Kanban board is, read Personal Kanban 101 from Jim Benson and Tonianne DeMaria Barry.
I’m so happy to be a Big Brother in “Beyond School Walls”, a program of Big Brothers and Big Sisters that Comcast is a major part of.
The program is getting recognized for making a difference. I hope it expands with additional companies and schools taking part, and most of all, I hope I’ve had as positive an impact to my Little as much as he has had to me over these past 2 years.
If you have an interest, I urge you to look into becoming a Big Brother or Big Sister.
The New York Times today featured a short film from Elizabeth Lo where she reveals the long, lonely ride of the homeless in Silicon Valley, using Line 22 for a shelter for the night.
Her quiet short (8 minutes long), captured something that felt hauntingly familiar to me. In the early 90s I spent 2 weeks sleeping on the Frankford El, and like the temporary residents of this bus, did not know where to go, or who to talk to.
This is the 3rd in a series of 3 short films they are featuring, from independent filmmakers, supported in part from the Sundance Institute. Make sure to checkout the other two films.
I think Dan Gillmor nailed it with this. Not that I blame CNN alone for the school closings and long lines at the grocery store. Fear spreads fast. Last night I spent a silly amount of time refreshing multiple web pages, looking for any kind of clear consensus as to what we’d wake up to, but other than it being bad today, snow totals ranged from the boring to the world shaking. There has to be a financial cost to something like that as parents stay home for their children, who are told to stay home from school. And there isn’t even a decent hill to sled on.
Check out an archive of The Dalek Chronicles on Flickr. Amazing artwork from the 60s that predates their appearance on Doctor Who. Charlie Jane Anders calls it probably the most beautiful Doctor Who artwork ever created.
I’ve been exploring plain text formats for keeping notes and authoring papers. Kieran Healy wrote a fantastic post on the subject that I won’t attempt to replicate, read it.
Just over a year ago I posted to Facebook a small PDF that contained a collection of aphorisms, some personal, some collected over many years, that I try in keep in mind. I figured today would be a good day to convert this to Markdown and upload to Github for evolving and growing. Feel free to check it out, correct any misattributions, or just poke full of holes.
– https://github.com/kmartino/lessons
One of the things I need to get corrected in that doc is fixing its citations.
Last year I started to drive this old car around the block a few times and realized it still has it where it counts. This year, time permitting, it will feature some experiments and renovations with some serious fun along the way. The great thing is, I know I’m not alone feeling that keeping a personal blog still has value. So expect me to share lots of links to others doing the same, because that’s what we do, we link, we connect.
I’ve been doing this for so long, I can’t remember when I stared exactly, but I can remember, because I still have them, the many close relationships I’ve formed over the years having a corner on the Web.
To that end I’ve restarted the Philly Blogger Meetup. A long time ago it was a regular event that enabled our small community in Philly to meet one another face to face, and maybe form friendships. In the past few years I’ve tried to find other folks to keep the Meetup going, but failed miserably. Seeing this languish was killing me.
It’s true that there are many, many professional and fun Meetups across Philly that pack a lot of value in this space now, so we’re going to do something different, we’re going to share them with one another. And we’re not going to feature professional talks. Not going to have a regular time or place. We’re not going to have a set organizer (if I can encourage you to join in – please do!!!). What we are going to do is be a little different, and meet across the city and suburbs, in coffee shops and diners, and offer a chance for people that might not normally venture from behind the keyboard, a friendly way to do so.
When our hyperlinks become personal connections, amazing things can happen.
I hope to see you around.
Howard has been posting a new collection of his handwritten poetry, and is nearing the end of its 30 day run. Each day he’s posted something to think about.
The thing I treasure about science fiction is its utility as a toolkit for thinking about the relationship between technological change and human beings. This is why I value “design fiction” so much: an architect might make a visualization that flies you through her as-yet-unbuilt building, an engineer might build a prototype to show you what he’s thinking of inventing, but through design fiction, a writer can take you on a tour of how a person living with that technology might feel. That’s the kind of contribution to the discussion about which technology we should make, and how we should use it, that can make all the difference.
Cory Doctorow, at Locus Online, on “Cold Equations and Moral Hazard”. Read it.
Read Simon Brown’s post about how microservices are not the Silver Bullet some are promoting them to be. As always, pick the right tool for the problem *and* for who will be solving it (the team and organization matters!!!). Sometimes, yes, that’s microservices. Sometimes it’s not. Pick your poison, but do so with open eyes and a level of clarity.