August 2019

There were 18 posts published in August 2019 (this is page 2 of 2).

Please have a little respect for the past

I enjoy reading Philip Greenspun’s weblog, and he certainly has experience in aviation and software development. His recent post on visiting the Museum of Flight in Seattle throws quite a few digs at the US space program and people who have been a part of the effort. I worked at NASA and Lockheed in Houston from 1985-1997 on the Space Station program, and had the opportunity to work with a great group of people, both contractor and civil servant employees. Things were contentious at times (usually dealing with funding issues from Congress and the Administration), but we got the job done (flew Space Shuttles, came back from the Challenger accident, got the Space Station program back on track). I know that Philip likes to find fault with many things in the United States (and I agree with most of it), but I think he might want to stay with areas he has expertise in and not look for other ways to poke people in the eye.

Looking for some music tools to try

I am looking for a music production/DAW tool. I have done some playing around with the Web Audio API (see my series of articles on Theresa’s Sound World, and exploration of the Tone.js library), but found it difficult to use those tools for music composition. Some apps I am going to review (Windows versions) are:

My main interest is in algorithmic composition, so I am hoping to find a tool that can be scripted or programmed, or accept input files generated by a script or program. A tool I once looked at was Pyknon, a Python library for generating MIDI files, in conjunction with the book Music for Geeks and Nerds. If any of my three readers has any suggestions, let me know!

 

Using the tools at hand

Om Malik posted recently about his use of pen and paper, and what he likes about it. I am also a fan of making a task list on paper and crossing items off – it feels so good! Even if I do not complete everything on the list, getting everything down on paper feels good (see Getting Things Done Step 1 – Capture). However, there are times when other tools could and should be used. I have written about my use of Personal Kanban for organization, and I have dabbled with Google Tasks to replace my pen and paper list. The mistake I try to avoid is continuing to look for another tool when the one or ones I have at hand are “good enough”. I know of several people who always seem to be looking for another tool that will do the job better, when they could have used a tool they already have or that they are already familiar with. Use the tools you have at hand – see how that can make you more productive.

Why make a directory?

Here are some answers:

Collection – This could be as simple as making a list. The most common directory in use is the Contacts list on your smartphone (people and phone numbers, sorted in alphabetical order)

Curation – Seeking to list the “best of” resources for a topic

Examples

Feed Handbook (by Andy Sylvester) – Information on feeds of many types (RSS/Atom/etc)

Radio Userland Resource Directory (by Andy Sylvester) – created in 2007! (have to hover in front of the entry to see the link, need to update this sometime…)

Bob Dylan Bibliography (by Ron Chester) – created in 1996!

Indieseek XYZ (by Brad Enslen) – A human edited Indieweb directory

href.cool (by Kicks Condor) – in the style of the old DMOZ and Yahoo directories

Tools

Web page – make a ordered list or an unordered list and – voila! – a directory is born

Hugo – static site generator, used for the Feed Handbook above

OPML – XML file format used for subscription lists for podcast players

OPML Editor (for editing OPML files)

Little Outliner 2 (for editing OPML files)

WordPress – use of categories could create a directory structure, also there are many plugins to support creating directory websites (like Yelp, etc.) or simple directories

Getting motivated, taking action

I read Josh Bernoff’s post this morning (Simple Motivational Hack), and found it very practical. Step 1 (figure out a worthwhile career goal) can be generalized to be “decide on a goal” (it doesn’t have to be a career goal), which is the start of anything productive. His next steps (create some intermediate steps, set up reminders, think about your goal often, do a reset if needed) are also excellent, but Step 1 has to happen before you can move on the other steps.

I am also finishing reading Atomic Habits by James Clear, and have used two of the concepts from the book this week on starting a new habit. The first concept I used is “make it easy as possible to start”. I chose to write 100 words per day, and decided to do it in the form of blog posts. The second concept is to set up a reward after achieving the goal. Usually, there is a website or two that I read at lunchtime. I decided to make sure to accomplish my goal before I look at the websites. So far, I have been successful (today is day 3)!

Haste makes waste, part 157

In today’s episode, I lament when the rush to meet a deadline means that the software is not checked out sufficiently, and multiple problems/errors are discovered, most of which have to get fixed later. Sigh…

Sometimes there are business reasons for shipping something by a certain date. The cost of meeting that date, though, sometimes includes future payments to correct problems. There is no “one size fits all” answer to this topic, but the cost of corrections should be considered as part of the overall cost (unless schedule is king, which means resources will be made available to fix what needs to be fixed). Thoughts, anyone?

 

Install notes on 1999.io and MyWord Editor

I am working with Ron Chester to set up some instances of the 1999.io and MyWord Editor blogging tools, and have some test installs working on my Digital Ocean instance. I did have to make a tweak to one of the files in the nodestorage app, will be filing a Github issue on this. However, I did want to capture a few points that I re-learned in doing this again:

  • Install separate instances of nodestorage for each app (using different ports), otherwise you will mess up one of the tool outputs.
  • The Twitter API setup at apps.twitter.com has changed a little bit, what used to be called consumer secret and API secret are now part of the API secrets at the top of the page with the secrets info.

If you want to try the installs, go to the following URLs: