The Four Levels of Remote Communication, or Why Your Team Forgets Everything| another.rodeo
AI, service design, and the real work ahead| another.rodeo
Everyone has a backpack, and everyone has stuff in their backpack.| Another Rodeo
I was asked today how I built DSCovery, the aggregator I put together awhile back to help people find jobs in civic tech.| Another Rodeo
Last time we covered a lot of reasons why that once-fast team has slowed down. If you haven't read that part already, you should, but to give a quick recap, those were:| Another Rodeo
So I recently bought an old bike -- nothing new for me -- but as I was poking| Another Rodeo
Within days of finishing up the Monark/Road King resto-mod another rough and down-on-its-luck old cruiser popped up and I couldn't resist. I mean, for $25 it was this or a light lunch at Chipotle. So I bought the bike.| Another Rodeo
It's a question I've heard a lot over the years, from a lot of frustrated managers and stakeholders. They can't get past it.| Another Rodeo
The whole thing started on the Midwest Dev Chat Slack, when someone posted a screenshot from their work Slack that read:| Another Rodeo
A classic cruiser| another.rodeo
It's been awhile since I've written about one of my bike projects, yet somehow the house keeps filling up with them. This one's been with me since last October and I'm just now getting around to writing it up. The backlog is real, y'all.| Another Rodeo
A great bike, with a few caveats| another.rodeo
Building an aggregator for jobs in civic tech.| another.rodeo
Is it the most transformative thing we can do on the web in 2024?| another.rodeo
The more or least restored trailer, ready for camping.1971 Eco camper restoration#| Another Rodeo
I've had an urge to take experience a classic British three-speed for awhile now. The laid-back geometry, relaxed, upright ride and smooth internally-geared hubs just speak to me.| Another Rodeo
In early 2020, with my restoration of a 1971 fiberglass "egg" camper well underway I started thinking about how it could be fun to bring some modern technology to it. I mean, if you could bring modern automation, monitoring and entertainment to a 50-year-old travel trailer, how cool is that?| Another Rodeo
For awhile now I've been on the hunt for a nice step-through framed bike. My criteria weren't that tough: be pretty, and not terrible. Apparently in the world of step-through frames that seems to be a tall order.| Another Rodeo
Making your own custom handlebar plugs from wine corks is a nice and easy way of recycling an old cork or two while showing some individuality.| Another Rodeo
I found myself interested in trying out an e-bike. That's how it often starts: idly wondering if something is as fun or interesting as people say it is. It's this idle wondering that will eventually get me to try pickleball.| Another Rodeo
Maturity Model Generator#| Another Rodeo
I've never been overly cursed with good sense, especially when it comes to projects. If there is a lost cause, I'll find it. If there is a hopeless case, I'll take it on.| Another Rodeo
In May of 2021 I was working at 18F in a term-limited role, so I was actively interviewing. As I interviewed I realized that companies always asked me if I had any questions for them, and more often than not I completely froze and couldn't think of any questions at all in that moment. Not a great look.| Another Rodeo
In late 2020 or early 2021, for a number of different reasons I decided I wanted to get a better understanding of Natural Language Processing (NLP) and Python's Natural Language Toolkit (NLTK). Maybe it's vestiges of my career in journalism, but the idea of converting a mess of text into something the machine can understand and do something useful with appeals to me.| Another Rodeo
About every other year or so I'm reminded that the U.S. Federal government has a site called Fatherhood.gov, and tucked away inside that tiny little backwater in the vast sea of government web sites there is a collection of dad jokes. Yes, the United States government keeps and hosts a collection of dad jokes, and because they are the work the US government, they are owned by and open to the public.| Another Rodeo
I've used a library called MarkitUp on different projects of mine for more than 15 years. Compared to most Rich Text Editors, I found it to be much lighter weight and gave users Just Enough help to format using markdown. On the server side, this also offered nice flexibilty: I could store markdown, HTML, or both. In short, for a lot of nerdy reasons I really liked MarkitUP.| Another Rodeo
At one time, deployments were simply uploading files via FTP. When we weren't editing live files in production. We were but simple cavedwellers, and those were interesting times.| Another Rodeo
Back in 2017 Roy Rapoport wrote “The Five Conditions for Improvement”, talking about the conditions necessary for an employee to fix a performance problem. I think he came up with a great framework for helping people improve, but what really keeps me coming back, over and over again, is how applicable it is in larger contexts. I think what Roy really described were the five conditions necessary for any entity to improve. And that includes organizational entities.| Another Rodeo
Lots of people dislike meetings, with good reason: Meetings interrupt. They take time. They steal focus.†| Another Rodeo
Many years ago, armed with little more than a crude word processor and a take-on-the-world attitude, I embarked on a quest to become A Great Journalist. Day after day I fell bleary-eyed into early-morning classes, seeking knowledge. My words were going to make a difference.| Another Rodeo
I’ve heard it a thousand times from a thousand engineers: “I don’t want to be a manager.” A lot of senior engineers think this, but I’m not sure many of them understand what it will mean to them and their career. Here it is:| Another Rodeo
We’re now just a bit over two years into the AI revolution. The chorus of hype and promises — both empty and real — remains deafening. The capabilities of AI increase every day. Yet right now, the most impressive thing about AI may be how quickly we’ve trained our primitive monkey brains to recognize how incredibly boring it is.| Another Rodeo
One of the things I've always loved about blogs were the linkrolls... that candy trail to more and more interesting things scattered around the web. I love to see folks sharing the interesting things they find. Social media is built on that sort of sharing, but they've also commoditized it and gamified it beyond recognition, and there's no persistence to it, either. I wanted an old-fashioned linkroll for myself.| Another Rodeo
This is one of those projects where I wish I'd kept better notes and photos, because it was pretty fascinating to me....| Another Rodeo
April 8#| Another Rodeo
The bedraggled Raleigh| Another Rodeo
1971 Eco fiberglass camper restoration| Another Rodeo
Maturity Model Generator| Another Rodeo
Assorted projects and experiments and things. Nobody told me there would be so many rodeos.| another.rodeo
What we care about costs us.| another.rodeo