In case you haven’t been forced to watch this, now I’m on the bandwagon as well.
All posts by MattK
Another perspective on small software
My work writes big SAAS tools. These are tools that almost make no sense for one business to write to the highest levels of quality unless they are going to sell them.
The other end of software is the business of solving specific problems for specific people – and that’s the part that I really like. My part of the big SAAS business tends to be very focused on people trying to solve problems.
When I write about the pitfalls of the Ops Developer, the other side of that is that Ops Developers should absolutely be empowered to solve problems!
I love the perspective of this page about Home Cooked Software and Barefoot Developers. All the tools and practices are fundamentally about helping people solve the problems they care about and helping them find more interesting problems to work on.
Macgray – Backbone
Via an excellent JWZ playlist
Games you play with strangers
I loved this mechanic from a game called Tides of Tomorrow. Certain players see ghosts of another actual human playing the same game – and what they do affects you (and vice versa).
these visions are not pre-programmed encounters but other players connected to you via the internet, and they have already played through the same events. Think of this as an asynchronous multiplayer system like ghosts in Elden Ring, only here they tangibly affect your game, perhaps leaving a key item such as a knife to plunge into said, unsuspecting kingpin.
You only ever follow in the footsteps of one player at a time, getting to know them through their decision-making impulses.
It’s a very apt mechanism for a game about the climate crisis, where collective action problems abound.
For all the whiz-bang novelty of this component, the lead designer maintains that it speaks to the game’s deeper themes – indeed, that the mechanic doubles as a carefully considered metaphor. After all, what is navigating the all-enveloping climate crisis, and perhaps even mitigating its worst effects, but a gargantuan collaborative effort involving people spread across vast continents?
Illuminati Hotties – Than Ever
This is such a great summer vibe and such a great band name.
Pitfalls of the Ops Developer
This is another post my work asked me to opine on. I’m a big fan of developers that aren’t focused totally on making software – folks who make their own tools to solve their problems. However, it’s definitely possible to get yourself into a real pickle where you can build yourself into a corner you don’t have the time and skills to get yourself out of.
Pitfalls of the Ops Developer is about how to recognize when your group wants to transition from home-grown solutions to something more standard. It’s HARD to know and it’s hard to anticipate when you are about to hit one of those inflection points. As always, there’s a ton left out, but I love hearing from folks about their stories around the topic. I was just talking to a client in London and they brought this one up as being helpful and describing exactly the place where they are right now. Soooo… I thought I’d share it with you!
Supermodel – Push
I might get sober next October, might get myself together if I just push.
via JWZ
The Black Cone, Monument to Disobedience
Gotta love this climbable monument in Reykjavík. I don’t know if you’re supposed to climb it but I didn’t think I could tell these kids not to get on it once they read the plaque.
“When the government violates the rights of the people, insurrection is for the people and for each portion of the people the most sacred of rights and the most Indispensable of duties.”
Declaration of the Rights of Man and Citizen (1793)
A wild ride through philosophy and danger
Just finished reading Unity by Elly Bangs.
This is great stuff and I highly recommend it. What an incredible debut novel.
On the first level, it’s a fast-moving cyberpunk dystopia about refugees running from calamity as an apocalypse threatens everything. Danae is a fragment of a group consciousness running from an underwater mafia state after a power struggle erupts from a decapitation bombing. She’s on the run with her love and a mercenary they’ve hired not knowing he can no longer kill. They are hunted by a cast of villains including a human-leather wearing psycho, a replicating body borrower, a Christian Confederacy cult and it all happens against a backdrop of impending Gray Goo annihilation.
That’s a banger right there, that’s what that is.
But underneath there’s a deeper set of questions. What does it mean to join together, to be one? Should union imply we are in full agreement? How lumpy and frothy can our coalitions be? How much can we disagree with our allies? How should mercy and forgiveness work? Can I be good if I’ve done bad? What does love mean and how close do we get? How do handle love when we fundamentally disagree with each other’s choices?
In some ways this feels like if Becky Chambers was writing on a really mean coke binge. But I mean that in a good way.
The world-building is delicious and full of tasty treats, but the story and the characters are each truly driven.
Fela Kuti – Palm Wine Sound
I played this riding home on my speaker and people were grooving at stop lights. Infectious and there’s no cure but shakin hips.