My first reading note was one year ago. I’m pretty proud of myself to keep this habit going. Some months have been lighter than other, or a bit late but the goal was to do it every month. I didn’t want to overthink the process, but it is time to address the pain points:

1. adding notes is a pain. I need to create a new file for each month, or find the correct file each month then I have to do a lot of copy/paste.
2. it might not make sense to have a Reading Notes per month. When I started, I choose to follow Jim Nielsen’s format, but then he switched to a per entry format:notes.jim-nielsen.com. I might split my content into: “Today I Learn” for some snippets, and “Notes”. I need to sync about the process of how to address this: stick to having this on jekyll or have a new app for that (Astro?).

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Article: “One big, one little” by Dave Rupert

This article hits home! I’m too a serial project starter. The one system that works for me is to take notes of side project ideas. Gather resources, ideas, boiled down the features, to get to a point where I can build a small subset of the project in 3 days. Once these 3 days, I can decide if it is worth keep going, if I’ll stay motivated to get to the next milestone.

Wikipedia: Unix philosophy

I was trying to get a good headline for my blog, and I remembered the Unix philosophy where 1 program do one thing well. And turns out all their bullet points applied to my philosophy when it comes to build software:

1. Make each program do one thing well. To do a new job, build afresh rather than complicate old programs by adding new “features”.
2. Expect the output of every program to become the input to another, as yet unknown, program. Don’t clutter output with extraneous information. Avoid stringently columnar or binary input formats. Don’t insist on interactive input.
3. Design and build software, even operating systems, to be tried early, ideally within weeks. Don’t hesitate to throw away the clumsy parts and rebuild them.
4. Use tools in preference to unskilled help to lighten a programming task, even if you have to detour to build the tools and expect to throw some of them out after you’ve finished using them.

Article: OLLOS

in comparison with calva, and personal software, craft for yourself, slow increment.

Article: “Who vs. whom – Mike Crittenden” by Mike Crittenden

• If you can replace the word with “he” or “she” then use “who”
• If you can replace the word with “him” or “her” then use “whom”

Article: “You Suck at Marketing” by David Cramer

I’ve work on a project about branding: Future Cards and I didn’t really grasp the whole idea of what is branding. David Cramer is putting it in words that I understand as an engineer. For Sentry, the values are “centered around trust and authenticity”. The branding is to share your values through medium (such as conferences, social media, podcasts, etc). To get your name out there even if it isn’t related to your product, but to share your values. Then when people hear about your brand, they’ll know what you stand for.

Article: “Muse retrospective” by Adam Wiggins

To piggyback on the previous article, Adam shares how they manage the distribution of Muse app. And the article also walk through the building of the app and why it didn’t meet the expectations.

Article: “snapsbyfox.com/blog/document-dont-create” by Roman Fox

It feels great when you read article about one concept and then you have another article in your (hundreds) of opened tabs that put this concept into a concrete form. Roman is talking about his approach to taking photographs:

I would go out with the intention of getting the most creative shots possible. […] I would often come home empty handed, frustrated

Switching the approach to document vs. create, it’ll create a story as a whole, and the creative shots will come without pressure.

Here is the post that illustrates this concept: A week in Oaxaca by Arun.

One another point raised by Roman is by documentating, you can create a habit: bring a small kit everywhere, everyday.

Nice cup of coffee? Take a photo. Nice light on the building? Take a photo. Day out with your mates? Take photos. Get into a habit of taking photos of everything.

Which brings me to another opened tab: How to Stop Procrastinating by Using the “Seinfeld Strategy”

He said the way to be a better comic was to create better jokes and the way to create better jokes was to write every day. […] You’ll notice that Seinfeld didn’t say a single thing about results.

Article: “Artificial Intelligence Clarification” by Simon Willison

It feels that it isn’t see much on the Web these days, is when people acknowledge their “mistakes”, and reflect on it.