Josh Thompson

On Scooters as a class of vehicle/tool Introduction Often when I say “scooter”, especially in the united states, the person thinks of...

2 months ago

56

On Scooters as a class of vehicle/tool

from Josh Thompson [alt+shift+b] in literature

2 months ago

Introduction Often when I say “scooter”, especially in the united states, the person thinks of something different than what I mean. Here’s Denver’s Sportique Scooters, here’s one of their recent posts: So that is the kind of vehicle I’m talking about when I say “scooter”. I...

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Josh Thompson

Practicing with Polylines Part 2 - Get Your Data (as a polyline) From Strava Last time, I did a minimum first pass on rendering a polyline on a map. It wasn’t just any polyline,...

5 months ago

18

Practicing with Polylines Part 2 - Get Your Data (as a polyline) From Strava

from Josh Thompson [alt+shift+b] in literature

5 months ago

Last time, I did a minimum first pass on rendering a polyline on a map. It wasn’t just any polyline, though, it was a path of a walk I went on. (Technically, just a fragment of a path). this is a heavy draft, I’ve had issues getting this all working well in the past, still have...

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Josh Thompson

Practicing with Polylines This is a first pass at trying to do something interesting (repeatedly) with the same base...

5 months ago

14

Practicing with Polylines

from Josh Thompson [alt+shift+b] in literature

5 months ago

This is a first pass at trying to do something interesting (repeatedly) with the same base primative, in this case, a “polyline”. Read the rest of this post, understand what we’re going for, then go to part 2: get your own polyline from strava. It’s not trivial to get, but its...

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Josh Thompson

Playing with the HTTP send/response cycle in Ruby, without Faraday ("HTTP Yeah You Know Me" project) As part of the HTTP Server project. First, I’m working through Practicing Ruby’s “Implementing an...

over a year ago

12

Playing with the HTTP send/response cycle in Ruby, without Faraday ("HTTP Yeah You Know Me" project)

from Josh Thompson [alt+shift+b] in literature

over a year ago

As part of the HTTP Server project. First, I’m working through Practicing Ruby’s “Implementing an HTTP File Server” for general practice and understanding. I’m going to use Postman to capture traffic and try to replicate some of the things the guides reference. Lastly, I just...

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Josh Thompson

Recommended Reading I’ve read many books over the years. Thousands. Here’s a few that I find myself...

8 months ago

11

How to fly… like a boss

from Josh Thompson [alt+shift+b] in literature

over a year ago

I am in a quest to level up my life. Free flights is a big part of this. I’ve not gotten too many of those yet, but the next best thing is free seat upgrades. I’m not talking about first class - that’s beyond me, at the moment. I’m talking about getting stuck in the back of the...

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Josh Thompson

Training for climbing (progress update) I am at the end of my second iteration of climbing training, and this is how it went and what I...

over a year ago

11

Training for climbing (progress update)

from Josh Thompson [alt+shift+b] in literature

over a year ago

I am at the end of my second iteration of climbing training, and this is how it went and what I learned: I completed the workout twelve times, but I took a twelve-day break between workout eleven and twelve. I first skipped a workout because I had ripped skin open on one of my...

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Josh Thompson

How I take notes, AKA 'Add an Index to Your Notebook' A while back, sometime in 2017, I wrote this tweet: a while ago, I read about how to keep...

over a year ago

11

How I take notes, AKA 'Add an Index to Your Notebook'

from Josh Thompson [alt+shift+b] in literature

over a year ago

A while back, sometime in 2017, I wrote this tweet: a while ago, I read about how to keep well-organized notes on a range of topics. Here's my current notebook, indexed by category: pic.twitter.com/aVsNnGPEpd — Josh Thompson (@josh_works) May 8, 2017 Since then, I occasionally...

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Josh Thompson

Paths In Which I Am Interested this is still in draft status this page serves as a placeholder for various paths I’m interested...

8 months ago

11

Paths In Which I Am Interested

from Josh Thompson [alt+shift+b] in literature

8 months ago

this is still in draft status this page serves as a placeholder for various paths I’m interested in. I hope to bring attention to “linear parks”, or a park that functions more in size and shape to a street, crossing blocks of distance, but maintaining park vibes throughout. Path...

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Josh Thompson

Driven by Compression Progress Note from author: This is part of an experimental series, more-or-less based on “white papers” and...

over a year ago

11

Driven by Compression Progress

from Josh Thompson [alt+shift+b] in literature

over a year ago

Note from author: This is part of an experimental series, more-or-less based on “white papers” and academic literature, as applied to somewhat practical-ish domains. These pages serve as a brief overview of a paper, and I’ll be able to link to this paper down the road when I what...

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Josh Thompson

Learn to Type - Again Yesterday, we talked about why the Caps Lock key should be converted into a delete key. What I’ve...

over a year ago

11

Learn to Type - Again

from Josh Thompson [alt+shift+b] in literature

over a year ago

Yesterday, we talked about why the Caps Lock key should be converted into a delete key. What I’ve learned from learning Colemak Short, focused practice yields great results. When I start a timer for twenty minutes, I feel a sense of urgency, rather than defeat. Time boxing...

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Josh Thompson

Waking Up Early, Part 3 I’ve written about my attempts to wake up early before. Most recently, I promised to take a sleep...

over a year ago

11

Waking Up Early, Part 3

from Josh Thompson [alt+shift+b] in literature

over a year ago

I’ve written about my attempts to wake up early before. Most recently, I promised to take a sleep log, to track trends. Fortunately, I did not intend to try to wake up early, because I didn’t. Here’s what I learned in the last three weeks: Benadryl messes with your ability to...

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Josh Thompson

What Do You Do? I enjoy meeting new people. Usually, one of the first questions I’ll ask them is “What to you...

over a year ago

10

What Do You Do?

from Josh Thompson [alt+shift+b] in literature

over a year ago

I enjoy meeting new people. Usually, one of the first questions I’ll ask them is “What to you do?” They usually respond with their occupation, or their status in school. My follow-up question is “When you’re not doing that, what do you do?” Sometimes this is a conversational...

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Josh Thompson

20 Things 20-Year-Olds Don't Get Jason Nazar recently wrote an article titled 20 Things 20-Year-Olds Don’t Get. Please read it, but...

over a year ago

10

20 Things 20-Year-Olds Don't Get

from Josh Thompson [alt+shift+b] in literature

over a year ago

Jason Nazar recently wrote an article titled 20 Things 20-Year-Olds Don’t Get. Please read it, but with a big grain of salt. Nazar opens with the statement “I made a lot of mistakes along the way, and I see this generation making their own.” This seems to be an aspirational...

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Josh Thompson

My terminal setup note: this is a draft. Please ping me in slack/email with questions, spots where this is unclear....

over a year ago

10

My terminal setup

from Josh Thompson [alt+shift+b] in literature

over a year ago

note: this is a draft. Please ping me in slack/email with questions, spots where this is unclear. I’ll answer your question, and update this post. Here’s some quick notes on how I have my terminal setup. First, I use Zsh. If you’re on a new Macbook Pro, you also are using...

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Josh Thompson

Preparing to adopt a habit There are many habits I wish I had. More times than I can count, I have tried to get up early. I...

over a year ago

10

Preparing to adopt a habit

from Josh Thompson [alt+shift+b] in literature

over a year ago

There are many habits I wish I had. More times than I can count, I have tried to get up early. I faithfully set my alarm for some crack-of-dawn time that leaves me with a reasonable amount of sleep, but gives me time to myself before I have to get ready for work. Almost as many...

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Josh Thompson

Success is not support We did a high-level “Customer Success” overview yesterday. Today, lets contrast customer support and...

over a year ago

10

Success is not support

from Josh Thompson [alt+shift+b] in literature

over a year ago

We did a high-level “Customer Success” overview yesterday. Today, lets contrast customer support and customer success. Support vs. Success First, what’s the difference between “customer support” and “customer success”? Lincoln Murphey says: Customer Success is proactively working...

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Josh Thompson

On Hitting Small(er) People this has been hard for me to write, has been sitting in one draft form or another for months....

2 weeks ago

10

On Hitting Small(er) People

from Josh Thompson [alt+shift+b] in literature

2 weeks ago

this has been hard for me to write, has been sitting in one draft form or another for months. Finally getting it off the ‘drafts’ list, but only reluctantly. This is far too long for even me to try to read in a single sitting, especially on my phone, so it might be too long for...

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Josh Thompson

Setting up Application Performance Monitoring in DataDog in your Rails App When I write guides to things, I write them first and foremost for myself, and I tend to work...

over a year ago

10

Setting up Application Performance Monitoring in DataDog in your Rails App

from Josh Thompson [alt+shift+b] in literature

over a year ago

When I write guides to things, I write them first and foremost for myself, and I tend to work through things in excruciating detail. You might find this to be a little too in-depth, or you might appreciate the detail. Either way, if you want a step-by-step guide, this should do...

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Josh Thompson

2018 In Review & Thoughts on 2019 I find a lot of value in other people’s reviews of their years. It’s the time of year to be...

over a year ago

10

2018 In Review & Thoughts on 2019

from Josh Thompson [alt+shift+b] in literature

over a year ago

I find a lot of value in other people’s reviews of their years. It’s the time of year to be contemplative and reflective on the last 12 months, so here we are. Note to reader: I’m posting this in May, 2019. I wrote it in late December, 2018, didn’t get around to finishing it up...

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Josh Thompson

Three Ways to Decide What to be When You Grow Up Recently, I have had to explain to people what is it that I want to do. This question is difficult...

over a year ago

10

Three Ways to Decide What to be When You Grow Up

from Josh Thompson [alt+shift+b] in literature

over a year ago

Recently, I have had to explain to people what is it that I want to do. This question is difficult to answer for two reasons. The first reason is I am not yet strongly pulled into a specific position. My ideal answer would be “I want to do X role at company Y.” Short. Concise....

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Josh Thompson

A Five-Hour Experiment Josh Kaufman wrote an excellent book called The First 20 Hours. In it, he carefully plots out a...

over a year ago

10

A Five-Hour Experiment

from Josh Thompson [alt+shift+b] in literature

over a year ago

Josh Kaufman wrote an excellent book called The First 20 Hours. In it, he carefully plots out a handful of experiments to acquire a reasonable amount of skill in a new thing in twenty hours. He studied yoga, windsurfing, programming, Colemak typing, a form of Chinese chess...

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Josh Thompson

Mentors and Attitude Having a mentor is equal parts “having a mentor” and “being one who can be mentored”. If I am too...

over a year ago

10

Mentors and Attitude

from Josh Thompson [alt+shift+b] in literature

over a year ago

Having a mentor is equal parts “having a mentor” and “being one who can be mentored”. If I am too thick-headed to evaluate things that someone tells me and figure out how to apply that to my life, both of us are wasting our time. Having a mentor is life-changing because you have...

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Josh Thompson

Whole Messages in Slack I use Slack at work. And used it in Turing. And am in a few programming-related Slack groups. (Ahoy,...

over a year ago

10

Whole Messages in Slack

from Josh Thompson [alt+shift+b] in literature

over a year ago

I use Slack at work. And used it in Turing. And am in a few programming-related Slack groups. (Ahoy, #DenverDevs). My last job, I used Slack. The job before that, I got the whole company on Slack. I’ve used it for years. Slack delivers value to me, and induces little anxiety, and...

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Josh Thompson

Monthly Review: October This is my first monthly review. I’ll spend some time fleshing out the why and the how, and then get...

over a year ago

10

Monthly Review: October

from Josh Thompson [alt+shift+b] in literature

over a year ago

This is my first monthly review. I’ll spend some time fleshing out the why and the how, and then get right to it. If you don’t want to read a lot of introspective Josh, stop reading. I use the word “I” dozens of times. Consider yourself warned. For a long time I have feared life...

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Josh Thompson

A Runbook for Upgrading Your Parent's Junky Old Laptop to a Chromebook tl;dr: I’m creating a runbook for a very specific, delicate, and potentially time-consuming and...

over a year ago

10

A Runbook for Upgrading Your Parent's Junky Old Laptop to a Chromebook

from Josh Thompson [alt+shift+b] in literature

over a year ago

tl;dr: I’m creating a runbook for a very specific, delicate, and potentially time-consuming and emotionally-charged operation to replace my 70-year-old newly-widowed mother-in-law's ancient desktop computer with a easy-for-me-to-manage Chromebook Update: I posted to r/ChromeOS...

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Josh Thompson

Dream Big, and Build Optionality We all can dream big. I have dreams, and you probably do to. For example: Travel, location...

over a year ago

10

Dream Big, and Build Optionality

from Josh Thompson [alt+shift+b] in literature

over a year ago

We all can dream big. I have dreams, and you probably do to. For example: Travel, location independent living, being wealthy/choosing to do work that interests you, enjoying “simple” things. The list could go on, and on, and on. But then we go right along doing all the normal...

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Josh Thompson

Sidekiq and Background Jobs for Beginners I’ve recently had to learn more about background jobs (using Sidekiq, specifically) for some bugs I...

over a year ago

10

Sidekiq and Background Jobs for Beginners

from Josh Thompson [alt+shift+b] in literature

over a year ago

I’ve recently had to learn more about background jobs (using Sidekiq, specifically) for some bugs I was working on. I learned a lot. Much of it was extremely basic. Anyone who knows much at all about Sidekiq will say “oh, duh, of course that’s true”, but at the time, it wasn’t...

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Josh Thompson

Boulder Ruby Group meetup notes Move Slow and Improve Things: Performance Improvement in a Rails App Boulder Ruby Group Monthly...

over a year ago

10

Boulder Ruby Group meetup notes

from Josh Thompson [alt+shift+b] in literature

over a year ago

Move Slow and Improve Things: Performance Improvement in a Rails App Boulder Ruby Group Monthly Meetup @Recurly Offices, Feb 13, 2018 Slides are available here on Dropbox Git Push, Git Paid Here’s the “Git Push, Git Paid” t-shirt I mentioned: Thoughtbot designed these, and it...

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Josh Thompson

Five Days to Inbox Zero: How to Get Control of your Email Email is a constant in our lives, yet it can be so overwhelming that it becomes almost 100%...

over a year ago

10

Five Days to Inbox Zero: How to Get Control of your Email

from Josh Thompson [alt+shift+b] in literature

over a year ago

Email is a constant in our lives, yet it can be so overwhelming that it becomes almost 100% ineffective. I discussed with a friend the other day why they should switch from Yahoo to Gmail, and how to reduce the useless emails they receive. Below is how I suggested they move from...

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Josh Thompson

Simplify, simplify, simplify Kristi and I stumbled upon the realization that we’ve become minimalists. And it is exciting. We...

over a year ago

10

Simplify, simplify, simplify

from Josh Thompson [alt+shift+b] in literature

over a year ago

Kristi and I stumbled upon the realization that we’ve become minimalists. And it is exciting. We live in a one-bedroom apartment. It is spacious, for a one-bedroom, but compared to anything larger than a one-bedroom apartment, it is small. We managed to pack it full of stuff in...

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Josh Thompson

Career advice for Millenials. (ugh. I hate this title) Hah! You thought I had career advice? Not quite. Christian Bonilla writes one of the best blogs...

over a year ago

10

Career advice for Millenials. (ugh. I hate this title)

from Josh Thompson [alt+shift+b] in literature

over a year ago

Hah! You thought I had career advice? Not quite. Christian Bonilla writes one of the best blogs I’ve ever read at Smart Like How. Please click over there, and read a few of his posts. He talks about being data savy even if you’re not a data scientist. He covers how to suceed...

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Josh Thompson

How To Procfile: Run Just a Single Process Lets say you’ve got something like this in your Procfile: web: PORT=3000...

over a year ago

9

How To Procfile: Run Just a Single Process

from Josh Thompson [alt+shift+b] in literature

over a year ago

Lets say you’ve got something like this in your Procfile: web: PORT=3000 RAILS_ENV=development bundle exec puma -C ./config/puma_development.rb -e development devlog: tail -f ./log/development.log mailcatcher: ruby -rbundler/setup -e...

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Josh Thompson

Things That Are Surprisingly Good For The Cost (AKA How I want to build my tiny house) Working title: “My Dream Backyard House/ADU/round-one-of-building-experiment” I’m trying to build a...

over a year ago

9

Things That Are Surprisingly Good For The Cost (AKA How I want to build my tiny house)

from Josh Thompson [alt+shift+b] in literature

over a year ago

Working title: “My Dream Backyard House/ADU/round-one-of-building-experiment” I’m trying to build a kinda cool, quirky, sensitive-to-supply-chain-disruption, cheap, functional, emotionally healing home in my back yard. We love to host friends and family, guests, maybe AirBnB...

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Josh Thompson

Rails Migration: When you can't add a uniqueness constraint because you already have duplicates I get to occasionally contribute to the Wombat Security dev blog. I wrote the following for...

over a year ago

9

Rails Migration: When you can't add a uniqueness constraint because you already have duplicates

from Josh Thompson [alt+shift+b] in literature

over a year ago

I get to occasionally contribute to the Wombat Security dev blog. I wrote the following for development.wombatsecurity.com. This post has been updated to reflect some lessons learned while running this migration in production. Don’t leave a column without an index at any point in...

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Josh Thompson

The Complete Guide to Rails Performance: basic setup You know the feeling. You are excited to start a guide or a tutorial. You buy it, crack it open, and...

over a year ago

9

The Complete Guide to Rails Performance: basic setup

from Josh Thompson [alt+shift+b] in literature

over a year ago

You know the feeling. You are excited to start a guide or a tutorial. You buy it, crack it open, and start working through the environment setup. Then… something goes wrong. Next thing you know, you’ve spent two three too many hours debugging random crap, and you’re not even done...

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Josh Thompson

HTTParty and to_json I was having some trouble debugging an HTTParty POST request. A few tools that were useful to...

over a year ago

9

HTTParty and to_json

from Josh Thompson [alt+shift+b] in literature

over a year ago

I was having some trouble debugging an HTTParty POST request. A few tools that were useful to me: post DEBUG info to STDOUT netcat to listen to HTTP requests locally I had this code: options = { headers: { "Content-Type": "application/json", authorization: "Bearer...

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Josh Thompson

Overcome (some) barriers in work with this magic phrase You’re sending an email to your boss about some decision point you’re facing. How should you word...

over a year ago

9

Overcome (some) barriers in work with this magic phrase

from Josh Thompson [alt+shift+b] in literature

over a year ago

You’re sending an email to your boss about some decision point you’re facing. How should you word it? Compare this wording: Let me know if my criteria are sound, or if you have any concerns. I’d like to get started as soon as possible. To this wording: Unless I hear otherwise,...

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Josh Thompson

The Slight Edge, and why you should read it I read The Slight Edge a few months ago. Since then, it’s been the book I recommend most often to...

over a year ago

9

The Slight Edge, and why you should read it

from Josh Thompson [alt+shift+b] in literature

over a year ago

I read The Slight Edge a few months ago. Since then, it’s been the book I recommend most often to most people. (I don’t make book recommendations willy-nilly, but if something seems relevant to what the person I’m speaking to is experiencing/thinking about, I make a...

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Josh Thompson

Twenties vs. Thirties (from a feeling-behind-the-curve 27 year old.) Some months ago I found a very encouraging article, comparing one’s twenties to one’s thirties. I’ve...

over a year ago

9

Twenties vs. Thirties (from a feeling-behind-the-curve 27 year old.)

from Josh Thompson [alt+shift+b] in literature

over a year ago

Some months ago I found a very encouraging article, comparing one’s twenties to one’s thirties. I’ve scoured everywhere that I stick notes and interesting reads, and cannot, for the life of me, find the article. The internet is littered with tons of fluff pieces talking about sex...

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Josh Thompson

November 2016 Review Note to the reader: The words that follow are all about me. This is naval-gaze-ish. I feel I owe you...

over a year ago

9

November 2016 Review

from Josh Thompson [alt+shift+b] in literature

over a year ago

Note to the reader: The words that follow are all about me. This is naval-gaze-ish. I feel I owe you this warning. My November goals were an extension of October’s goals. I feel comfortable with long-term unchanging goals. They were: Deepen my knowledge of front-end web...

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Josh Thompson

Lay a foundation Yesterday I mentioned that low friction goals are an advantage over “high friction” goals. This is...

over a year ago

9

Lay a foundation

from Josh Thompson [alt+shift+b] in literature

over a year ago

Yesterday I mentioned that low friction goals are an advantage over “high friction” goals. This is just another way of saying “easy things are easier to do than harder things”. Revelatory, I know. Similarly, I wrote a long time ago that: We tell ourselves we can’t accomplish...

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Josh Thompson

Crock Pots are Foolproof, Right? A while back I got together with my good friend Dustin. I had an evening free, wanted to cook, AND...

over a year ago

9

Crock Pots are Foolproof, Right?

from Josh Thompson [alt+shift+b] in literature

over a year ago

A while back I got together with my good friend Dustin. I had an evening free, wanted to cook, AND hang out with good friends. I wanted to try a really good looking recipe, and watch Django Unchained. The cooking instructions for the recipe was “cook on low for 7-9 hours”. I...

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Josh Thompson

My Favorite (and all) body modifications In the range of the human experience, there’s a lot of possible body modifications one can purchase...

a week ago

9

My Favorite (and all) body modifications

from Josh Thompson [alt+shift+b] in literature

a week ago

In the range of the human experience, there’s a lot of possible body modifications one can purchase for oneself. Over the years, I’ve purchased three. LASIK vision correction in ~2016 When I was pretty young, mid-20s, my then-employer placed like a few thousand dollars a year...

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Josh Thompson

Troubleshooting Chinese Character Sets in MySQL A while back, I picked up a bug where when a customer tried to save certain kinds of data using...

over a year ago

9

Troubleshooting Chinese Character Sets in MySQL

from Josh Thompson [alt+shift+b] in literature

over a year ago

A while back, I picked up a bug where when a customer tried to save certain kinds of data using Chinese characters, we were replacing the Chinese characters like 平仮名 with a series of ?. This will be a quick dive through how I figured out what the problem was, and then validated...

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Josh Thompson

Tiny Habits take 2 Dr. BJ Fogg runs Tiny Habits, a one-week course on building new habits. Since most of what we do is...

over a year ago

9

Tiny Habits take 2

from Josh Thompson [alt+shift+b] in literature

over a year ago

Dr. BJ Fogg runs Tiny Habits, a one-week course on building new habits. Since most of what we do is governed by habits, it is reasonable to study how to build new ones, or replace bad ones. I have done his course before, and had success. I have been reading Freewith Kristi and...

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Josh Thompson

On Feedback Most of what makes us who we are is based on some sort of feedback obtained earlier in our life. By...

over a year ago

9

On Feedback

from Josh Thompson [alt+shift+b] in literature

over a year ago

Most of what makes us who we are is based on some sort of feedback obtained earlier in our life. By my best estimation, there are two types of feedback: Explicit feedback , which comes in a little box labeled “this is feedback”, and is hard to miss. Implicit feedback , which is...

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Josh Thompson

How To Take Back Your Attention On The Internet with uBlock note: this page has 17Mb of gifs and images. I don’t really want to take the time to manually trim...

over a year ago

9

How To Take Back Your Attention On The Internet with uBlock

from Josh Thompson [alt+shift+b] in literature

over a year ago

note: this page has 17Mb of gifs and images. I don’t really want to take the time to manually trim the gifs from >3Mb/each to <1Mb each, so I didn’t. If you’re on mobile, or trying to conserve data, you might want to come back to this one later. I value my attention and focus. I...

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Josh Thompson

Change your MAC address with a shell script For a while, I’ve had notes from Change or Spoof a MAC Address in Windows or OS X saved, so if I am...

over a year ago

9

Change your MAC address with a shell script

from Josh Thompson [alt+shift+b] in literature

over a year ago

For a while, I’ve had notes from Change or Spoof a MAC Address in Windows or OS X saved, so if I am using a wifi connection that limits me to thirty minutes or an hour or whatever, I can “spoof” a new MAC address, and when I re-connect to the wifi, the access point thinks I’m on...

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Josh Thompson

Deliberate Practice in Programming with Avdi Grimm and the Rake gem I’ve had the concept of Deliberate Practice stuck in my head for a while. I want to improve at...

over a year ago

9

Deliberate Practice in Programming with Avdi Grimm and the Rake gem

from Josh Thompson [alt+shift+b] in literature

over a year ago

I’ve had the concept of Deliberate Practice stuck in my head for a while. I want to improve at things (all the things!) in general, but writing and reading code, specifically. Writing and reading code is germane to my primary occupation (software developer) and drives most of my...

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Josh Thompson

Some Lessons Learned While Preparing for Two Technical Talks A few weeks ago, I gave two talks about Ruby and Rails: An 8-minute lightning talk about using...

over a year ago

9

Some Lessons Learned While Preparing for Two Technical Talks

from Josh Thompson [alt+shift+b] in literature

over a year ago

A few weeks ago, I gave two talks about Ruby and Rails: An 8-minute lightning talk about using .count vs .size in ActiveRecord query methods A 30-minute talk at the Boulder Ruby Group arguing that developers should embrace working with non-development business functions, and the...

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Josh Thompson

Primitive Obsession & Exceptional Values I’ve been working through Avdi Grimes’ Mastering the Object Oriented Mindset course. One of the...

over a year ago

9

Primitive Obsession & Exceptional Values

from Josh Thompson [alt+shift+b] in literature

over a year ago

I’ve been working through Avdi Grimes’ Mastering the Object Oriented Mindset course. One of the topics was using “whole values”, instead of being “primative obsessed”. The example Avdi gave was clear as day. He used a course with a duration attribute to show the...

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Josh Thompson

Tour of D3 for Clueless Folk Like Me D3 stands for Data Driven Documents, and it’s the coolest thing ever. Check out a few...

over a year ago

9

Tour of D3 for Clueless Folk Like Me

from Josh Thompson [alt+shift+b] in literature

over a year ago

D3 stands for Data Driven Documents, and it’s the coolest thing ever. Check out a few examples: Animated, interactive curves(dynamic) OMG Particles II(dynamic) simple map of the us(static) <= very little code Radial Dendrogram(static) circle wave(dynamic) Force-directed...

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Josh Thompson

2015: The year I didn't think much? I generally think that if I write what I am thinking about, I can think about it a lot better....

over a year ago

9

2015: The year I didn't think much?

from Josh Thompson [alt+shift+b] in literature

over a year ago

I generally think that if I write what I am thinking about, I can think about it a lot better. Writing has a clarifying effect (or is it affect?) on thought. If that’s the case, I just didn’t think much in 2015: I wrote about 45 things in 2013 and 2014. I wrote 8 in 2015. I’m...

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Josh Thompson

Redefining Success It’s been pretty quiet around here lately. It’s been almost a month since my last entry. I thought...

over a year ago

9

Redefining Success

from Josh Thompson [alt+shift+b] in literature

over a year ago

It’s been pretty quiet around here lately. It’s been almost a month since my last entry. I thought about writing something here almost every day, but here is why I didn’t: I want to produce “content” that is helpful and relevant to those who might read it. I felt like nothing I...

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Josh Thompson

Parking in Golden Parking in Golden is broken. This deeply broken parking situation causes vehicle and pedestrian...

over a year ago

9

Parking in Golden

from Josh Thompson [alt+shift+b] in literature

over a year ago

Parking in Golden is broken. This deeply broken parking situation causes vehicle and pedestrian traffic in Golden to break, in the same way that if a machine on a manufacturing line breaks, adjacent components need to stop, or it will also malfunction. The topic of parking (at...

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Josh Thompson

Book Notes: 'Why We Get Fat' by Gary Taube I recently read Why We Get Fat, by Gary Taubes. I read it shortly after reading The Case Against...

over a year ago

9

Book Notes: 'Why We Get Fat' by Gary Taube

from Josh Thompson [alt+shift+b] in literature

over a year ago

I recently read Why We Get Fat, by Gary Taubes. I read it shortly after reading The Case Against Sugar. My notes and a write-up on The Case Against Sugar As I explained in that post, I find it helpful to do a ‘deep dive’ on some of the books I want to be deeply influenced by. For...

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Josh Thompson

Recommended Reading I like to read, and I often recommend books to others. I used to have a very different list of...

over a year ago

9

Finding an Edge

from Josh Thompson [alt+shift+b] in literature

over a year ago

These last two weeks have been the hardest, or the most frustrating, of my time at Turing so far. I’ve been put a little off-balance by this difficulty, and I think I’m close to uncovering some useful tidbit or idea that will serve me well, and might serve someone else...

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Josh Thompson

My Thoughts on Eric Weinstein's Thoughts on Pia Kalani's Thoughts Context for two sentances It’s August 8, 2020. The news is full of coronavirus, schools, employment,...

over a year ago

9

My Thoughts on Eric Weinstein's Thoughts on Pia Kalani's Thoughts

from Josh Thompson [alt+shift+b] in literature

over a year ago

Context for two sentances It’s August 8, 2020. The news is full of coronavirus, schools, employment, police brutality, a vaccine, elections, so much politics, China, Tik-Tok, the Twitter-dm-hack-bitcoin-scam-or-was-it-dm-content hack happened. Tiger King, Cheer, Filthy Rich are...

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Josh Thompson

Typing for Programmers If you had to distill my ability to bring value to those around me, it would be “Josh types good”. I...

over a year ago

9

Typing for Programmers

from Josh Thompson [alt+shift+b] in literature

over a year ago

If you had to distill my ability to bring value to those around me, it would be “Josh types good”. I can press these magical little keys on this little metal box here, and make these words come out. If you’re reading these words, you don’t care how these words actually got on...

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Josh Thompson

Cheap fix to night-time teeth grinding A few years ago, I found out I grind me teeth at night. Kristi says it sounds like I’m chewing...

over a year ago

9

Cheap fix to night-time teeth grinding

from Josh Thompson [alt+shift+b] in literature

over a year ago

A few years ago, I found out I grind me teeth at night. Kristi says it sounds like I’m chewing marbles. Others who grind their teeth give themselves headaches, or wake themselves up at night. You can’t really stop yourself from grinding your teeth, since you’re asleep. You can...

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Josh Thompson

Why schedule something that doesn't exist? The first thing I did when making this post is I set it to be published tomorrow. Then, I left the...

over a year ago

9

Why schedule something that doesn't exist?

from Josh Thompson [alt+shift+b] in literature

over a year ago

The first thing I did when making this post is I set it to be published tomorrow. Then, I left the room for a bit. I didn’t have anything to say. Or, I didn’t think I did. Yet, all over my computer, and in various list trackers and note-taking apps, I’ve got dozens of ideas to...

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Josh Thompson

Upgrade your job So, apparently I send a lot of email about people trying to get cool jobs. Here’s yet another email...

over a year ago

9

Upgrade your job

from Josh Thompson [alt+shift+b] in literature

over a year ago

So, apparently I send a lot of email about people trying to get cool jobs. Here’s yet another email I sent to a friend, recorded here. Hi [redacted], First I want to highlight is that flexible/remote jobs are just like normal jobs, but more people want them, so the companies...

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Josh Thompson

Playing Pranks My wife played a brilliant prank on me today, as she does every year. Here’s a partial...

over a year ago

9

Playing Pranks

from Josh Thompson [alt+shift+b] in literature

over a year ago

My wife played a brilliant prank on me today, as she does every year. Here’s a partial list: Convincing me that I was about to eat a slice of carrot cake; it was a sponge covered with toothpaste. I bit into it. Convincing me that she had, in anger and frustration, cut off almost...

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Josh Thompson

Notes on, and quotes from: The Politics of Jesus (Yoder, 1972, 1994) As I’ve done many times before, compiling some notes about some long quotes from some books. In the...

over a year ago

9

Notes on, and quotes from: The Politics of Jesus (Yoder, 1972, 1994)

from Josh Thompson [alt+shift+b] in literature

over a year ago

As I’ve done many times before, compiling some notes about some long quotes from some books. In the modern world, we’re loath to read long, complicated passeges of text. I hope to get some of you to eventually order your own copy of The Politics of Jesus. On my website you can...

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Josh Thompson

Fred Roger's Method For Writing Scripts Someone said: People think this is silly, but read about Fred rogers’ method for writing a script...

over a year ago

9

Fred Roger's Method For Writing Scripts

from Josh Thompson [alt+shift+b] in literature

over a year ago

Someone said: People think this is silly, but read about Fred rogers’ method for writing a script for his show. The rules aren’t fully applicable to presentations, but the attention to detail and to the Interpretation of the audience is. Don’t use any words carelessly. I...

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Josh Thompson

Anki and Memorization with Spaced Repetition Software This is not meant to be read in isolation. Memorization is almost useless without doing work ahead...

over a year ago

9

Anki and Memorization with Spaced Repetition Software

from Josh Thompson [alt+shift+b] in literature

over a year ago

This is not meant to be read in isolation. Memorization is almost useless without doing work ahead of time to grasp the material. For the full context, start with Learning how to Learn I’ve not been able to find any comprehensive guides to using Anki to learn programming, so this...

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Josh Thompson

Parenting: A Place for Sources And Stories As some of us are or might be, I “am a parent”, or I “have a child”, or something like that. This is...

9 months ago

9

Parenting: A Place for Sources And Stories

from Josh Thompson [alt+shift+b] in literature

9 months ago

As some of us are or might be, I “am a parent”, or I “have a child”, or something like that. This is complex for me to write and engage with, because something that is certainly true for all of us is that we “have a parent” or we “have been a child”. To talk about any of it is to...

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Josh Thompson

Anarchy (or, less provocatively, Mutuality and Co-Creation) In 2017, I read The Problem of Political Authority: An Examination of the Right to Coerce and the...

9 months ago

9

Anarchy (or, less provocatively, Mutuality and Co-Creation)

from Josh Thompson [alt+shift+b] in literature

9 months ago

In 2017, I read The Problem of Political Authority: An Examination of the Right to Coerce and the Duty to Obey; everything and nothing changed. Lots changed because all of I sudden, I could clearly label a dynamic that had always irked me. I could see that some people would avoid...

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Josh Thompson

VCR's debug_logger and `git diff` I recently added the vcr gem to one of our repositories, and was adding tests for an external...

over a year ago

9

VCR's debug_logger and `git diff`

from Josh Thompson [alt+shift+b] in literature

over a year ago

I recently added the vcr gem to one of our repositories, and was adding tests for an external API. One of my tests was passing, and I wanted to commit the VCR cassette, along with the test/code that went with it. I had thought I’d rebuilt the VCR cassette a few minutes before,...

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Josh Thompson

MySQL concatenation and casting I recently set up my environment for working through SQL for Mere Mortals. I’ll record some...

over a year ago

9

MySQL concatenation and casting

from Josh Thompson [alt+shift+b] in literature

over a year ago

I recently set up my environment for working through SQL for Mere Mortals. I’ll record some interested tidbits here as I go. Chapter 5: Concatenation without the || operator I use MySQL at work, and MySQL doesn’t support the || operator for string concatenation. So, in the book,...

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Josh Thompson

Gratitude 3x/day Earlier this year, I read The Miracle Morning, which promises (paraphrasing here): If you do these...

over a year ago

9

Gratitude 3x/day

from Josh Thompson [alt+shift+b] in literature

over a year ago

Earlier this year, I read The Miracle Morning, which promises (paraphrasing here): If you do these seven things every morning you’ll be the most amazing person you’ve ever met. OK, it’s not exactly that bold, but it’s not far off. It wasn’t a terrible book, it had lots of good...

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Josh Thompson

Be a little better at personal email The next bunch of posts will be me “clearing out the drawers” of notes I have scattered across my...

over a year ago

9

Be a little better at personal email

from Josh Thompson [alt+shift+b] in literature

over a year ago

The next bunch of posts will be me “clearing out the drawers” of notes I have scattered across my phone, computer, and brain. There is no unifying theme to what will be written here. Three recommendations to email better TL;DR Email should usually be as short as possible. More of...

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Josh Thompson

Why Your Belayer is Keeping You from Climbing Hard(er) Since climbing regularly again (!!!), I’ve observed lots of belaying in the gym. I can’t walk up to...

over a year ago

9

Why Your Belayer is Keeping You from Climbing Hard(er)

from Josh Thompson [alt+shift+b] in literature

over a year ago

Since climbing regularly again (!!!), I’ve observed lots of belaying in the gym. I can’t walk up to a stranger and say “Excuse me, sir, I noticed that your poor belaying is totally crippling your climber’s ability to try hard, and actively eliminating any hope you had of...

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Josh Thompson

Change The more things change, the more they stay the same. Or something like that. Sometimes change is for...

over a year ago

9

Change

from Josh Thompson [alt+shift+b] in literature

over a year ago

The more things change, the more they stay the same. Or something like that. Sometimes change is for the better, and sometimes its for the worse. I don’t know if there’s always a difference. Recently, Kristi and I have seen lots of change; I’d say its for the better, but it’s not...

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Josh Thompson

Act a Fool, or: Motion vs. Action If you’ve started reading this article, but have only two minutes, don’t read what I’m writing. Go...

over a year ago

9

Act a Fool, or: Motion vs. Action

from Josh Thompson [alt+shift+b] in literature

over a year ago

If you’ve started reading this article, but have only two minutes, don’t read what I’m writing. Go read this article by James clear. It’s called “ The Mistake Smart People Make: Being In Motion vs. Taking Action”. I’ve linked it a third time here. Go read it. James starts with...

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Josh Thompson

Processes Vs. Goals (or, Systems vs. Accomplishments) In this excellent article on systems vs. goals, James argues that even if you did not pursue any...

over a year ago

9

Processes Vs. Goals (or, Systems vs. Accomplishments)

from Josh Thompson [alt+shift+b] in literature

over a year ago

In this excellent article on systems vs. goals, James argues that even if you did not pursue any specific goals, with the right system, you will still go a long way. This idea has been floating around my head for over a year, now, and I think it’s slowly coalescing into something...

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Josh Thompson

I Once Worked Hard When I began working at my first job out of college, I knew I didn’t want to spend my whole career...

over a year ago

9

I Once Worked Hard

from Josh Thompson [alt+shift+b] in literature

over a year ago

When I began working at my first job out of college, I knew I didn’t want to spend my whole career there. I was a college graduate (that means something, right?) working at a climbing gym, part time, teaching seven-year-olds how to climb at about $10 an hour. I had no idea what I...

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Josh Thompson

2023 Annual Review It’s that time of the year. I often enjoy reading other people’s annual reviews, and I’ve always...

a year ago

9

2023 Annual Review

from Josh Thompson [alt+shift+b] in literature

a year ago

It’s that time of the year. I often enjoy reading other people’s annual reviews, and I’ve always found value in writing my own, even as there is a few years I’ve missed, since I started the habit way back in 2015. for a long time, I did annual reviews. 2020 was late, and then for...

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Josh Thompson

My all-time favorite question to ask people (and why you should ask it too) I met two people yesterday from Colorado, while in Spain. We climbed together yesterday and today,...

over a year ago

9

My all-time favorite question to ask people (and why you should ask it too)

from Josh Thompson [alt+shift+b] in literature

over a year ago

I met two people yesterday from Colorado, while in Spain. We climbed together yesterday and today, and Kristi and I had dinner with them. Half way through the meal, I asked my all-time favorite question: If you could go back to twenty five year old you, and tell yourself...

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Josh Thompson

How to Run Your Rails App in Profiling Mode Last time, I wrote about setting up DataDog for your Rails application. Even when “just” running the...

over a year ago

9

How to Run Your Rails App in Profiling Mode

from Josh Thompson [alt+shift+b] in literature

over a year ago

Last time, I wrote about setting up DataDog for your Rails application. Even when “just” running the app locally, it is sending data to DataDog. This is super exciting, because I’m getting close to being able to glean good insights from DataDog’s Application Performance...

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Josh Thompson

December Review, January Goals This is a follow-up from last month’s goals 1. Deepen Knowledge of Back-end Development I finished...

over a year ago

9

December Review, January Goals

from Josh Thompson [alt+shift+b] in literature

over a year ago

This is a follow-up from last month’s goals 1. Deepen Knowledge of Back-end Development I finished OverTheWire’s Bandit series, except the last lesson, which didn’t make sense. (It does now! Turns out login shells and “regular” shells are different. I’ll take another spin at it...

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Josh Thompson

Blessed to be Sick Yesterday, I wrote about reducing work hours to less than 40 hours a week. Yesterday, I was...

over a year ago

9

Blessed to be Sick

from Josh Thompson [alt+shift+b] in literature

over a year ago

Yesterday, I wrote about reducing work hours to less than 40 hours a week. Yesterday, I was struggling to be engaged in my work. I was easily distracted, and didn’t feel very efficient during the day. Once I identified the tasks I needed to complete before I could walk away from...

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Josh Thompson

Robert Moses - The Most Important Person You've Never Heard Of this was originally posted a few years ago, republishing as a blog post as I organize an...

9 months ago

9

Robert Moses - The Most Important Person You've Never Heard Of

from Josh Thompson [alt+shift+b] in literature

9 months ago

this was originally posted a few years ago, republishing as a blog post as I organize an increasingly large number of links and resources here. Here’s a big dumping ground for some resources on robert moses I’ve got floating around. Obviously, this has grown to an unwieldy sizy...

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Josh Thompson

Recommended books from 2017 I read many books in 2017. I’m listing them out here, along with recommendations. Here’s the...

over a year ago

9

Recommended books from 2017

from Josh Thompson [alt+shift+b] in literature

over a year ago

I read many books in 2017. I’m listing them out here, along with recommendations. Here’s the recommendation “key”: 👍 = I recommend this book. This is intentionally fuzzy. 😔 = This book influenced my mental model of the world/reality/myself 🏢 = Book topic is architecture and/or...

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Josh Thompson

Bollards: Why & What author’s note: it’s always fun to see your own stuff on the Hacker News front page! This very post...

9 months ago

9

Bollards: Why & What

from Josh Thompson [alt+shift+b] in literature

9 months ago

author’s note: it’s always fun to see your own stuff on the Hacker News front page! This very post sparked >450 comments worth of conversation! I didn’t even know this got posted until days later! What are bollards The what and the why in a single image: The what and why in a...

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Josh Thompson

Hidden Damages of the Introvert vs. Extrovert "debate" Are you an introvert or an extrovert? Chances are good an answer pops to your mind. Of course you’re...

over a year ago

9

Hidden Damages of the Introvert vs. Extrovert "debate"

from Josh Thompson [alt+shift+b] in literature

over a year ago

Are you an introvert or an extrovert? Chances are good an answer pops to your mind. Of course you’re right! You’ve taken internet tests! You’ve read Buzzfeed articles describing one aptitude or the other, and you feel like they speak to you! Stop. Right now. You’re speaking lies...

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Josh Thompson

On Leaving Evangelicalism And Opposing It Content warning & summary This paper talks about ethics, ethical behavior, violence, abuse,...

a year ago

9

On Leaving Evangelicalism And Opposing It

from Josh Thompson [alt+shift+b] in literature

a year ago

Content warning & summary This paper talks about ethics, ethical behavior, violence, abuse, complicency, domination and oppression. It’s a condimnation of evangelicalism, but not, necessarily, any particular evangelical. There are those within evangelicalism who are ethical,...

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Josh Thompson

RailsConf CFP Outline I’m pitching some ideas for RailsConf. I only heard about it a few days ago (oops) so this is a bit...

over a year ago

9

RailsConf CFP Outline

from Josh Thompson [alt+shift+b] in literature

over a year ago

I’m pitching some ideas for RailsConf. I only heard about it a few days ago (oops) so this is a bit rushed: Idea 1: “Junior” Developers are the Solution to Many of Your Problems Abstract: Our industry telegraphs: “We don’t want (or know how to handle) ‘Jr. Devs’.” Jr. Devs, or as...

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Josh Thompson

How To Write A Letter of Recommendation for Yourself I meet regularly with early-career software developers. A few recurring meetings, 1x/week, plus...

over a year ago

9

How To Write A Letter of Recommendation for Yourself

from Josh Thompson [alt+shift+b] in literature

over a year ago

I meet regularly with early-career software developers. A few recurring meetings, 1x/week, plus ad-hoc calls as needed with others. A question came up recently: My three-month internship is close to wrapping up. The Co-founder/CEO/lead developer of the consulting company I’m at...

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Josh Thompson

Refactoring practice: Get rid of `attr_accessors` in `ogre.rb` in 2 minutes Preparing for Turing Series Index What follows is an eight-part series that will help you pick up...

over a year ago

9

Refactoring practice: Get rid of `attr_accessors` in `ogre.rb` in 2 minutes

from Josh Thompson [alt+shift+b] in literature

over a year ago

Preparing for Turing Series Index What follows is an eight-part series that will help you pick up useful information about a number of topics related to Ruby, specifically geared for students learning the Ruby programming language, as part of the Turing School’s Backend Software...

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Josh Thompson

Turing Prep appendix: Troubleshooting Errors Pretty much any time I hear the same question twice, I will try to add a section here for it, and...

over a year ago

9

Turing Prep appendix: Troubleshooting Errors

from Josh Thompson [alt+shift+b] in literature

over a year ago

Pretty much any time I hear the same question twice, I will try to add a section here for it, and make it as findable by future students as possible. Do you have a question not answered here? PLEASE send me a DM in Slack or @ me (I’m josh_t in the Turing slack). I’ll take a...

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Josh Thompson

Elixir/Phoenix part deux I planned on working through this tutorial for building a slack clone, but half-way through the...

over a year ago

9

Elixir/Phoenix part deux

from Josh Thompson [alt+shift+b] in literature

over a year ago

I planned on working through this tutorial for building a slack clone, but half-way through the set-up instructions, after I installed Elixir and Phoenix, I took a long detour through the basic set-up guide. Built some custom routes, along with controllers/views/templates,...

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Josh Thompson

An Intro to Customer Success Customer Success - what is it? When I tell people I work in “Customer Success”, they immediately...

over a year ago

9

An Intro to Customer Success

from Josh Thompson [alt+shift+b] in literature

over a year ago

Customer Success - what is it? When I tell people I work in “Customer Success”, they immediately think I do either Customer Support, or sales. In a way, they are correct. I do both. Today, and more in the future, I’ll dig deep into this particular industry. A traditional...

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Josh Thompson

How to Wake Up Early An understanding of sleep, and attempts to wake up early (Read Part Two, and Part Three) My...

over a year ago

9

How to Wake Up Early

from Josh Thompson [alt+shift+b] in literature

over a year ago

An understanding of sleep, and attempts to wake up early (Read Part Two, and Part Three) My understanding of sleep has evolved. When I was born, I spent most of my time asleep (if I recall correctly…) and gradually spent less and less time sleeping, until I was down to about...

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Josh Thompson

Fixing Ford and Washington Do all of these, in the right order/way/buy-in. btw, i’m pretending it’s easy. it’s not trivial, but...

over a year ago

9

Fixing Ford and Washington

from Josh Thompson [alt+shift+b] in literature

over a year ago

Do all of these, in the right order/way/buy-in. btw, i’m pretending it’s easy. it’s not trivial, but it is doable: Step 1: Install car-friendly roundabouts targeting a ~20 mph throughput speed throughout the city and eliminate all stopsigns and stoplights Please see about...

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Josh Thompson

Constraints Constraints are USUALLY seen in a negative light. Google defines it as: a limitation or...

over a year ago

9

Constraints

from Josh Thompson [alt+shift+b] in literature

over a year ago

Constraints are USUALLY seen in a negative light. Google defines it as: a limitation or restriction Here’s some example constraints that we find in the world around us, which we often view as an annoyance or frustration: I have to be to work by 9a I have to get up at 7a I have...

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Josh Thompson

Climbing in "decking range" In indoor sport climbing, as your climber progresses from the ground to the first three bolts, you...

over a year ago

9

Climbing in "decking range"

from Josh Thompson [alt+shift+b] in literature

over a year ago

In indoor sport climbing, as your climber progresses from the ground to the first three bolts, you need to be ready for any situation. Here’s how to give a kick-ass lead belay when your climber is close enough to the ground they could potentially deck. This is part of a series on...

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Josh Thompson

Wrapping my head around local politics 001 Warning: Buzzwords ahead about millennials.* As a millennial, I want to “get involved” in my “local...

over a year ago

9

Wrapping my head around local politics 001

from Josh Thompson [alt+shift+b] in literature

over a year ago

Warning: Buzzwords ahead about millennials.* As a millennial, I want to “get involved” in my “local community”, and don’t know the best way to “mobilize my resources”. vomit. I hate admitting that. But I still want to figure out if it is possible for me (little old me) to do...

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Josh Thompson

On Learning As a student at Turing, I’ve recently been thinking about learning how to learn, specifically in the...

over a year ago

9

On Learning

from Josh Thompson [alt+shift+b] in literature

over a year ago

As a student at Turing, I’ve recently been thinking about learning how to learn, specifically in the context of software development. I am a bit hyperactive when it comes to trying to learn new things. Over the years, I’ve done plenty of ineffective learning, and at least a...

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Josh Thompson

Letter to Two Climbers (Part 1) Hello! We met recently. (I gave Justin tape after he cut his toe and didn’t have a bandaid.) You and...

over a year ago

9

Letter to Two Climbers (Part 1)

from Josh Thompson [alt+shift+b] in literature

over a year ago

Hello! We met recently. (I gave Justin tape after he cut his toe and didn’t have a bandaid.) You and your partner were climbing a route near me and my partner. One of you (I’ll call Charles, because he had a British accent) was trying so hard to figure out some moves high above...

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Josh Thompson

Array divergence in Ruby Lets say you have a list of valid items, and you want to run another array against it, and pull out...

over a year ago

8

Array divergence in Ruby

from Josh Thompson [alt+shift+b] in literature

over a year ago

Lets say you have a list of valid items, and you want to run another array against it, and pull out the items that don’t match. You don’t want to iterate through all of the items in one array, calling other_array.include?(item). (That’s computationally expensive) valid_people =...

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Josh Thompson

Persistence Persistence. It’s worth far more than any finite sum of money. Actually, it’s worth more than an...

over a year ago

8

Persistence

from Josh Thompson [alt+shift+b] in literature

over a year ago

Persistence. It’s worth far more than any finite sum of money. Actually, it’s worth more than an unlimited amount of money, because an unlimited amount of money would complicate my life (and probably yours) far more than we can possibly imagine. Persistence. I keep trying to...

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Josh Thompson

Issues related to the city of Golden While I was biking around recently, I saw notes about an upcoming neighborhood meeting about some...

over a year ago

8

Issues related to the city of Golden

from Josh Thompson [alt+shift+b] in literature

over a year ago

While I was biking around recently, I saw notes about an upcoming neighborhood meeting about some rezoning, a big lot in downtown Golden. I went to the meeting (Thursday, July 22) and learned a lot. Here’s the lot in question: I have ridden my bike past this property hundreds of...

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Josh Thompson

Content but Restless There is tension between being content with what you have, and striving for more. We have all heard...

over a year ago

8

Content but Restless

from Josh Thompson [alt+shift+b] in literature

over a year ago

There is tension between being content with what you have, and striving for more. We have all heard the “serenity prayer”: God, grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change, The courage to change the things I can, And wisdom to know the difference. This prayer is...

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Josh Thompson

Turing Prep Chapter 4: Arrays, Hashes, and Nested Collections Preparing for Turing Series Index What follows is an eight-part series that will help you pick up...

over a year ago

8

Turing Prep Chapter 4: Arrays, Hashes, and Nested Collections

from Josh Thompson [alt+shift+b] in literature

over a year ago

Preparing for Turing Series Index What follows is an eight-part series that will help you pick up useful information about a number of topics related to Ruby, specifically geared for students learning the Ruby programming language, as part of the Turing School’s Backend Software...

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Josh Thompson

Metaprogramming in Ruby: method_missing I’m working through Metaprogramming in Ruby It’s a great read. There are examples in the books, but...

over a year ago

8

Metaprogramming in Ruby: method_missing

from Josh Thompson [alt+shift+b] in literature

over a year ago

I’m working through Metaprogramming in Ruby It’s a great read. There are examples in the books, but I wanted to take them out and apply them to some easy Exercisms. I feel some disclosure may be useful. In no way, at all, should you ever implement any of the “solutions” I’m...

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Josh Thompson

Do Not Work in Isolation I fear criticism. I don’t have nightmares about it, and I’m not (too) crippled by a desire to avoid...

over a year ago

8

Do Not Work in Isolation

from Josh Thompson [alt+shift+b] in literature

over a year ago

I fear criticism. I don’t have nightmares about it, and I’m not (too) crippled by a desire to avoid it, but I absolutely don’t like criticism, or being disappointing, or any of those things. If my ego were making all decisions, I would move even slower than I do today into “new”...

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Josh Thompson

A message for high schoolers tl;dr: Before you start looking at colleges, be able to discuss coherently the following three...

over a year ago

8

A message for high schoolers

from Josh Thompson [alt+shift+b] in literature

over a year ago

tl;dr: Before you start looking at colleges, be able to discuss coherently the following three topics: Credentialism Signaling Opportunity cost If you can wrap your head around that, you’ll be ahead of most of your peers. I’ve got a few links for you farther down in this...

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Josh Thompson

Three Levels of Competence Raise your hand if you’d like to be better at climbing. Yeah. Me too. I’ve spent an unusual amount...

over a year ago

8

Three Levels of Competence

from Josh Thompson [alt+shift+b] in literature

over a year ago

Raise your hand if you’d like to be better at climbing. Yeah. Me too. I’ve spent an unusual amount of time working with beginners, to help them improve at climbing. I’ve also worked a lot with (what I would consider to be) intermediate climbers, so can get better. I’ve certainly...

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Josh Thompson

Denver Botanic Gardens - What, How, Why I recently got access to a delightful amenity, based on where I live. I’ve been sharing it with...

8 months ago

8

Denver Botanic Gardens - What, How, Why

from Josh Thompson [alt+shift+b] in literature

8 months ago

I recently got access to a delightful amenity, based on where I live. I’ve been sharing it with others as quickly as possible, because they too have access to it. From here on out, when I reference “botanic gardens” or “the gardens”, I’m referencing the Denver Botanic Gardens,...

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Josh Thompson

A New Old Financial Product I’m going to weave together talk of land value, and financing, and some of the primitives1 around...

over a year ago

8

A New Old Financial Product

from Josh Thompson [alt+shift+b] in literature

over a year ago

I’m going to weave together talk of land value, and financing, and some of the primitives1 around financial products. How much would you pay for a box that lives in your mailbox and delivers $1000 on the first of every month? Would you pay at least $5000, if you felt really...

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Josh Thompson

Exploring source code via Griddler and Griddler-Mailgun Proofpoint had a two-day “hack day” recently. My coworker John and I teamed up on a cool little...

over a year ago

8

Exploring source code via Griddler and Griddler-Mailgun

from Josh Thompson [alt+shift+b] in literature

over a year ago

Proofpoint had a two-day “hack day” recently. My coworker John and I teamed up on a cool little feature. I’ll give some context in a moment, but this post isn’t about the hack day, or email - it’s about exploring source code. Here’s the context: In my day-to-day, I work on a...

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Josh Thompson

Give it 30 days Do you have any big audacious goal you want to accomplish? If you think back to Jan 1, 2016, what...

over a year ago

8

Give it 30 days

from Josh Thompson [alt+shift+b] in literature

over a year ago

Do you have any big audacious goal you want to accomplish? If you think back to Jan 1, 2016, what were your goals? Lose weight/get in shape Make more money/start budgeting Learn a language Learn a skill Read more Stop doing something (smoking, drinking) Statistically, all of...

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Josh Thompson

Be Gentle to You There are many types of people in the world, all with different approaches to “getting stuff done”....

over a year ago

8

Be Gentle to You

from Josh Thompson [alt+shift+b] in literature

over a year ago

There are many types of people in the world, all with different approaches to “getting stuff done”. My approach to doing stuff is different from my wife’s approach. (Who’da thunk?) These two years of marriage have revealed much. One of these “revelations” was this: my sense of...

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Josh Thompson

STOP YELLING ON THE INTERNET, or, A Better Use for the Caps Lock Key My current project is to learn to type using an alternative keyboard layout called Colemak. QWERTY...

over a year ago

8

STOP YELLING ON THE INTERNET, or, A Better Use for the Caps Lock Key

from Josh Thompson [alt+shift+b] in literature

over a year ago

My current project is to learn to type using an alternative keyboard layout called Colemak. QWERTY has problems. Here are a few, shamelessly borrowed from Colemak.com It places very rare letters in the best positions, so your fingers have to move a lot more. It suffers from a...

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Josh Thompson

Dizzying but Invisible Depth The following is from https://plus.google.com/+JeanBaptisteQueru/posts/dfydM2Cnepe, but Google+ is...

over a year ago

8

Dizzying but Invisible Depth

from Josh Thompson [alt+shift+b] in literature

over a year ago

The following is from https://plus.google.com/+JeanBaptisteQueru/posts/dfydM2Cnepe, but Google+ is shutdown, so it’s not easily sharable. I’m reposting here because this is such a useful post. Dizzying but invisible depth You just went to the Google home page. Simple, isn’t...

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Josh Thompson

How to be an awesome belayer For the next few posts I am going to geek out on sport climbing. If you’re not a climber (or a sport...

over a year ago

8

How to be an awesome belayer

from Josh Thompson [alt+shift+b] in literature

over a year ago

For the next few posts I am going to geek out on sport climbing. If you’re not a climber (or a sport climber), these are not for you. All of this information is in the context of sport climbing on trustworthy protection - not trad climbing! How to belay when your climber is in...

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Josh Thompson

First five meals from The 4-Hour Chef I don’t know how to cook. Period. My most impressive culinary creations were, until recently,...

over a year ago

8

First five meals from The 4-Hour Chef

from Josh Thompson [alt+shift+b] in literature

over a year ago

I don’t know how to cook. Period. My most impressive culinary creations were, until recently, spaghetti and beans-n-rice. I got married about a year ago, and had hoped that I would become inspired to become a world-class chef. After a long time eating Rice-A-Roni, spaghetti,...

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Josh Thompson

Things You Can't Do from Behind a Computer, pt. 1 Meet people. Over the last nine or ten months, I can clearly remember a handful of conversations I...

over a year ago

8

Things You Can't Do from Behind a Computer, pt. 1

from Josh Thompson [alt+shift+b] in literature

over a year ago

Meet people. Over the last nine or ten months, I can clearly remember a handful of conversations I had. I initiated each conversation with someone that I wanted to learn from. Most I had some prior relationship with (I.E. I had met them, or I knew someone who knew them). This was...

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Josh Thompson

Depression I’m starting to write more regularly these days. For a long time, I’ve hardly written anything, or...

over a year ago

8

Depression

from Josh Thompson [alt+shift+b] in literature

over a year ago

I’m starting to write more regularly these days. For a long time, I’ve hardly written anything, or only written when external circumstances required me to write something. For example, when I give a talk, I always create a page to “support” the talk, that I can link to in slides,...

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Josh Thompson

Two Critical Books and Two Critical Articles (For 'Software People') I speak with many persons who are considering becoming software developers (usually by way of a...

over a year ago

8

Two Critical Books and Two Critical Articles (For 'Software People')

from Josh Thompson [alt+shift+b] in literature

over a year ago

I speak with many persons who are considering becoming software developers (usually by way of a program like the Flatiron School or the Turing School). I’m a graduate of the Turing School, and have written a lot about the program, like: My reflections on Turing an 8-part guide to...

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Josh Thompson

On Minimalism I reluctantly call myself a minimalist. I’d prefer to call myself an “enoughalist”. This reluctance...

over a year ago

8

On Minimalism

from Josh Thompson [alt+shift+b] in literature

over a year ago

I reluctantly call myself a minimalist. I’d prefer to call myself an “enoughalist”. This reluctance is because I think the label brings in a bunch of connotations that I don’t like. Our apartment never looked like this. Source: home-designing.com What is Minimalism? a removal or...

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Josh Thompson

Maybe "Now" Is Not the Right Time Recently I deleted a bunch of old notes I had in Evernote. Some of the notes were almost immediately...

over a year ago

8

Maybe "Now" Is Not the Right Time

from Josh Thompson [alt+shift+b] in literature

over a year ago

Recently I deleted a bunch of old notes I had in Evernote. Some of the notes were almost immediately unneeded, like old receipts and confirmations. Much of the rest was notes related to goals (“Checklist to move out of MD Apartment”, “Planning trip to Buenos Aires”) or to...

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Josh Thompson

Taking the Plunge with Colemak This entire post is written in Colemak. I am aiming to write at least 100 words, and this is...

over a year ago

8

Taking the Plunge with Colemak

from Josh Thompson [alt+shift+b] in literature

over a year ago

This entire post is written in Colemak. I am aiming to write at least 100 words, and this is certainly harder than copying someone else’s words. I have completed a few hours of dedicated practice, and it is quite possible that I am jumping the gun, and will quickly revert to...

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Josh Thompson

Use an Alarm to Go to Bed Ironically, this is about going to bed early. See, it’s 10:40p, and I’m getting up tomorrow at 6:00....

over a year ago

8

Use an Alarm to Go to Bed

from Josh Thompson [alt+shift+b] in literature

over a year ago

Ironically, this is about going to bed early. See, it’s 10:40p, and I’m getting up tomorrow at 6:00. So I’m looking at about 7 hours of sleep. This is perfect. But, that is only if I’m asleep in the next twenty minutes. I know how long it takes to get ready to leave in the...

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Josh Thompson

Continuous Glucose Monitors: Why & What This is a story and explanation about why I sometimes wear a glucose monitor. It’s visible on the...

9 months ago

8

Continuous Glucose Monitors: Why & What

from Josh Thompson [alt+shift+b] in literature

9 months ago

This is a story and explanation about why I sometimes wear a glucose monitor. It’s visible on the rear of my upper arm, usually sparks a question or two, I’ve usually stumbled through a response, now I can simply pass this page along to anyone who asks. Since maybe 2018, every...

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Josh Thompson

Resources for People with Jobs RESOURCES FOR PEOPLE WITH JOBS You spend most of your waking hours at work. So, spend a few of those...

over a year ago

8

Resources for People with Jobs

from Josh Thompson [alt+shift+b] in literature

over a year ago

RESOURCES FOR PEOPLE WITH JOBS You spend most of your waking hours at work. So, spend a few of those waking hours when you’re not at work thinking about how to improve the hours that you are working. Often, improving your work means you can improve your work conditions and...

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Josh Thompson

Learning Spanish: Conversation connectors I’m learning Spanish right now, as I’ve mentioned. The bad news is I’ve been in some state...

over a year ago

8

Learning Spanish: Conversation connectors

from Josh Thompson [alt+shift+b] in literature

over a year ago

I’m learning Spanish right now, as I’ve mentioned. The bad news is I’ve been in some state of learning spanish for the better part of the last 15 years. My mom’s parents came here from Paraguay, and so she and her siblings are all native Spanish speakers, plus their spouses....

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Josh Thompson

Bootstrapping streetcars in Golden I was describing this two or three stage plan to a friend the other day. They almost understood it,...

over a year ago

8

Bootstrapping streetcars in Golden

from Josh Thompson [alt+shift+b] in literature

over a year ago

I was describing this two or three stage plan to a friend the other day. They almost understood it, but since they don’t live in Golden, and have not spent a lot of their life nerding out on “urban mobility infrastructure”, they didn’t quite get it. Since I’m trying to write...

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Josh Thompson

Who inspires you, and is still alive? There are lots of dead people that we look up to. But people that are alive, and not world-wide...

over a year ago

8

Who inspires you, and is still alive?

from Josh Thompson [alt+shift+b] in literature

over a year ago

There are lots of dead people that we look up to. But people that are alive, and not world-wide famous are a bit more knowable. Some of them will even reply to tweets you send them! So, here are a few people that I follow and have received TONS of amazing wisdom from. (I...

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Josh Thompson

On Friction warning. self-indulgeant diatribe coming. I generally try to avoid these, but it’s my website, and I...

over a year ago

8

On Friction

from Josh Thompson [alt+shift+b] in literature

over a year ago

warning. self-indulgeant diatribe coming. I generally try to avoid these, but it’s my website, and I can write what I want. We’re rapidly approaching the end of the year, and I’ve got a few dozen ideas rolling around my head that I want to solidify my thoughts on. One of the...

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Josh Thompson

Testing Rake Tasks in Rails I recently wrote a rake task to update some values we’ve got stored in the database. The rake task...

over a year ago

8

Testing Rake Tasks in Rails

from Josh Thompson [alt+shift+b] in literature

over a year ago

I recently wrote a rake task to update some values we’ve got stored in the database. The rake task itself isn’t important in this post, but testing it is. We’ve got many untested rake tasks in the database, so when our senior dev suggested adding a test, I had to build ours from...

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Josh Thompson

Illdefined Success is Unattainable We all probably have a few projects floating around our head, but they seem daunting. If it doesn’t...

over a year ago

8

Illdefined Success is Unattainable

from Josh Thompson [alt+shift+b] in literature

over a year ago

We all probably have a few projects floating around our head, but they seem daunting. If it doesn’t seem daunting, it’s not much of a project, and you should either ramp it up until it’s daunting, or discard it. So - we have a daunting project. Now what? If you’re like me, you’ll...

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Josh Thompson

Josh Thompson presentation to Governmental Accounting Standards Board (GASB) Here’s a very important one-hour video that is highly relevant to GASB. If my testimony accomplishes...

over a year ago

8

Josh Thompson presentation to Governmental Accounting Standards Board (GASB)

from Josh Thompson [alt+shift+b] in literature

over a year ago

Here’s a very important one-hour video that is highly relevant to GASB. If my testimony accomplishes nothing but encouraging members of the GASB board (Joel Black, Jeffrey Previdi, James Brown, Brian Caputo, Kristopher Knight, Dianna Ray, and Carolyn Smith) to spend 15 minutes...

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Josh Thompson

`ls` command to show directory contents I like to use the tree command on my local machine when trying to peek into the structure and...

over a year ago

8

`ls` command to show directory contents

from Josh Thompson [alt+shift+b] in literature

over a year ago

I like to use the tree command on my local machine when trying to peek into the structure and contents of a given directory. tree -L 2 will [L]ist recursively everything [2] levels deep from your current directory. The output is nicely formatted like this: > tree -L 2 . ├──...

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Josh Thompson

The How and Why of BlockValue I wrote the following post, and built the application in question, in 2017, in my “end of Turing”...

over a year ago

8

The How and Why of BlockValue

from Josh Thompson [alt+shift+b] in literature

over a year ago

I wrote the following post, and built the application in question, in 2017, in my “end of Turing” project, before I’d ever been hired as a software developer. I really enjoyed the app that I built, and I keep wanting to get around to cleaning it up and making it work again. Maybe...

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Josh Thompson

Two Things That Are Helping Me (Finally) Learn Spanish Kristi and I are in Costa Rica for the month of January. We spent two months in Buenos Aires this...

over a year ago

8

Two Things That Are Helping Me (Finally) Learn Spanish

from Josh Thompson [alt+shift+b] in literature

over a year ago

Kristi and I are in Costa Rica for the month of January. We spent two months in Buenos Aires this summer. That means in the space of six months, I’ll have spent three months in a Spanish-speaking country, yet I’ve not made significant progress on my spanish. That’s not to say...

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Josh Thompson

Rules for Fighting Fair When a friend tells me they want to date someone, I ask them why. They always say “she’s pretty,...

over a year ago

8

Rules for Fighting Fair

from Josh Thompson [alt+shift+b] in literature

over a year ago

When a friend tells me they want to date someone, I ask them why. They always say “she’s pretty, funny, and kind”, or “he is handsome, funny, and cares for me”. Obviously. Have you ever wanted to date someone because they are ugly, boring, and mean? So, rather than asking more...

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Josh Thompson

October 2016 Review October 2016 Review This month’s review. In another few days I’ll post the goals for November. I...

over a year ago

8

October 2016 Review

from Josh Thompson [alt+shift+b] in literature

over a year ago

October 2016 Review This month’s review. In another few days I’ll post the goals for November. I had three goals for October, as of about 12 days ago: October goals: Programming I wanted to finish a certain Rails Tutorial, and move on to the next one. This project I made zero...

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Josh Thompson

Full Copy of 'The Atlanta Zone Plan' from 1922 A Warning and a Request In a moment, you will read the full text of a 1922 marketing pamphlet. This...

over a year ago

8

Full Copy of 'The Atlanta Zone Plan' from 1922

from Josh Thompson [alt+shift+b] in literature

over a year ago

A Warning and a Request In a moment, you will read the full text of a 1922 marketing pamphlet. This document is an important thread to understanding some very large political problems facing the world today, specifically housing, affordability, the growing wealth gap, and...

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Josh Thompson

Krav Maga, or "Crush Balls, Gouge Eyes, and Break Bones" In the last few weeks, I have been physically attacked dozens of times. Usually the attacker was...

over a year ago

8

Krav Maga, or "Crush Balls, Gouge Eyes, and Break Bones"

from Josh Thompson [alt+shift+b] in literature

over a year ago

In the last few weeks, I have been physically attacked dozens of times. Usually the attacker was just trying to choke me, but sometimes he was trying to throw me to the ground. After a few minutes of fighting, I would attack him. Then we’d both shake hands, say “thank you”, and...

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Josh Thompson

"Cooking" is so much more I’ve long wanted to get better at cooking. I eat a lot of food, and would like to enjoy it. I’ve...

over a year ago

8

"Cooking" is so much more

from Josh Thompson [alt+shift+b] in literature

over a year ago

I’ve long wanted to get better at cooking. I eat a lot of food, and would like to enjoy it. I’ve gotten to a point where I am comfortable following a recipe, and I bet you normally are fine following a recipe too. To follow a recipe, you must have two things. These two things...

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Josh Thompson

Let Me Fix [some of] Your Parking Problems Hi there! I’m Josh, and I’m your local neighborhood advocate for overlooked spaces. Today, we’ll be...

a year ago

8

Let Me Fix [some of] Your Parking Problems

from Josh Thompson [alt+shift+b] in literature

a year ago

Hi there! I’m Josh, and I’m your local neighborhood advocate for overlooked spaces. Today, we’ll be focusing on parking lots. Your parking lot has a job to do, and every day, every night, rain or shine, hot or cold, clear, rainy, or snowy, your parking lot does the best it can at...

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Josh Thompson

Turing Prep Chapter 2: Run your first tests (and make them pass) Preparing for Turing Series Index What follows is an eight-part series that will help you pick up...

over a year ago

8

Turing Prep Chapter 2: Run your first tests (and make them pass)

from Josh Thompson [alt+shift+b] in literature

over a year ago

Preparing for Turing Series Index What follows is an eight-part series that will help you pick up useful information about a number of topics related to Ruby, specifically geared for students learning the Ruby programming language, as part of the Turing School’s Backend Software...

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Josh Thompson

Write Less Say More I recently read a short piece about using software to improve your own writing. To paraphrase one...

over a year ago

8

Write Less Say More

from Josh Thompson [alt+shift+b] in literature

over a year ago

I recently read a short piece about using software to improve your own writing. To paraphrase one of the suggestions: “do away with weasel words, the passive voice, adverbs, cliches.” I’m adding “complex sentences” to the list. Out of curiosity, I looked through things that...

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Josh Thompson

The Power of an Audacious Goal I generally try to hedge the risks I face. I’m no daredevil, nor do I love danger, but I do love...

over a year ago

8

The Power of an Audacious Goal

from Josh Thompson [alt+shift+b] in literature

over a year ago

I generally try to hedge the risks I face. I’m no daredevil, nor do I love danger, but I do love pursuing opportunities that take me beyond my comfort zone. The funny thing about going beyond your comfort zone is that once you’ve done it once or twice, you redefine your comfort...

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Josh Thompson

Quitting the shallow for the deep Deep work over shallow TL;DR: I’m off social media, but want to keep a functioning Twitter URL. So,...

over a year ago

8

Quitting the shallow for the deep

from Josh Thompson [alt+shift+b] in literature

over a year ago

Deep work over shallow TL;DR: I’m off social media, but want to keep a functioning Twitter URL. So, it redirects here. This year’s “best book I’ve read” label might go to Cal Newport’s Deep Work. Here’s the gist: One of the most valuable skills in our economy is becoming...

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Josh Thompson

Planned Unit Design Document (work-in-progress) This is a draft document, meant for circulation, will evolve with time and eventually be something...

over a year ago

8

Planned Unit Design Document (work-in-progress)

from Josh Thompson [alt+shift+b] in literature

over a year ago

This is a draft document, meant for circulation, will evolve with time and eventually be something we bring to the City of Golden for ratification, or whatever needs to happen to get this done in this zone. This document relates to Collateralizing Mortgages and Loans With the...

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Josh Thompson

Migrating my Jekyll site to Netlify Troubleshooting Netilify deploy Ugggh I moved intermediateruby.com to Netlify a few months ago in...

over a year ago

8

Migrating my Jekyll site to Netlify

from Josh Thompson [alt+shift+b] in literature

over a year ago

Troubleshooting Netilify deploy Ugggh I moved intermediateruby.com to Netlify a few months ago in like 10 minutes, so my primary site, josh.works, should take maybe 20, right? I’m a few hours deep. Here’s what I get when Netlify tries to build: I should have done the following...

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Josh Thompson

On Boldness In Climbing Climb boldly. I’ve tried to write about this many times, and have thousands of words scattered...

over a year ago

8

On Boldness In Climbing

from Josh Thompson [alt+shift+b] in literature

over a year ago

Climb boldly. I’ve tried to write about this many times, and have thousands of words scattered across my computer about this topic. I always felt like I wasn’t communicating it quite right. I wasn’t happy with it. So I said “screw it, I’ll explain it like I would if I were...

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Josh Thompson

Save hundreds by being willing to spend $20 When you pack for a trip, you pack “just in case” items, right? Things that in a certain situation...

over a year ago

8

Save hundreds by being willing to spend $20

from Josh Thompson [alt+shift+b] in literature

over a year ago

When you pack for a trip, you pack “just in case” items, right? Things that in a certain situation would be priceless. Think “umbrella” or “underpants”. But then you think of all the possible situations you might encounter, and you’ll find your “just in case” items quickly...

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Josh Thompson

62 lessons learned after one year of full-time travel Kristi and I put together a non-comprehensive list of things we’ve learned while traveling full-time...

over a year ago

8

62 lessons learned after one year of full-time travel

from Josh Thompson [alt+shift+b] in literature

over a year ago

Kristi and I put together a non-comprehensive list of things we’ve learned while traveling full-time last year. Samples: Kristi 1. Josh and I are such a good team, and we balance each other. We’ve figured out our strengths and how to contribute to our successes together. It’s...

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Josh Thompson

The Housing Market Is Absolutely Insane: How To Fix It I had a brief exchange with a good friend recently: The housing market is indeed insane. This...

over a year ago

8

The Housing Market Is Absolutely Insane: How To Fix It

from Josh Thompson [alt+shift+b] in literature

over a year ago

I had a brief exchange with a good friend recently: The housing market is indeed insane. This problem that we’re both discussing is: Unbelievable ($650,000 for a fixer upper) Oppressive (“unjustly inflicting hardship and constraint, especially on a minority or other subordinate...

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Josh Thompson

Growing in your first software development job I started my first software developer role a year ago. (November 2017) This is tremendously...

over a year ago

8

Growing in your first software development job

from Josh Thompson [alt+shift+b] in literature

over a year ago

I started my first software developer role a year ago. (November 2017) This is tremendously exciting, of course, but introduces its own set of challenges, like: I finished Turing and I’ve got a job! Oh snap. I just finished a grueling program, and my reward is I’m fit to sit at...

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Josh Thompson

On Fables: Finishing up Antifragile I’m cleaning up some notes I wanted to jot down over the last few weeks Nassim Taleb, in...

over a year ago

8

On Fables: Finishing up Antifragile

from Josh Thompson [alt+shift+b] in literature

over a year ago

I’m cleaning up some notes I wanted to jot down over the last few weeks Nassim Taleb, in Antifragile, says: The great economist Ariel Rubinstein gets the green lumber fallacy - it requires a great deal of intellect and honesty to see things that way. Rubinstein refuses to...

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Josh Thompson

Back in the saddle (of writing) Background It’s been a hell of a year. I’ve got about 10,000 things I’ve wanted to write about, and...

over a year ago

8

Back in the saddle (of writing)

from Josh Thompson [alt+shift+b] in literature

over a year ago

Background It’s been a hell of a year. I’ve got about 10,000 things I’ve wanted to write about, and have not gotten around to any of them. Here’s my various top-level reasons for not writing: what I want to write about feels too complicated to express easily/coherently I feel...

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Josh Thompson

2020 Annual Review please note: i’m publishing this far after it was drafted, which was in January 2021. It’s being...

over a year ago

8

2020 Annual Review

from Josh Thompson [alt+shift+b] in literature

over a year ago

please note: i’m publishing this far after it was drafted, which was in January 2021. It’s being published in June 2022 - I’m trying to back-fill ‘annual reviews’, I never finished this one or published it, until now. Is it even possible to mention a 2020 review without somehow...

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Josh Thompson

An announcement, and a teaser (for you rock climbers) Here’s a clip from a video I shot today. Can you guess what’s coming? (This is all going to happen...

over a year ago

8

An announcement, and a teaser (for you rock climbers)

from Josh Thompson [alt+shift+b] in literature

over a year ago

Here’s a clip from a video I shot today. Can you guess what’s coming? (This is all going to happen on The Climber’s Guide) (Warning to mobile users: big gif) In case you didn’t guess, or you guessed wrong… I’m shooting tons of video for a course. It’s going to be awesome. It’s...

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Josh Thompson

Habits Take Preparation Kristi and I moved to Golden, Colorado. We’ve been in our new apartment for five days. I’m trying to...

over a year ago

8

Habits Take Preparation

from Josh Thompson [alt+shift+b] in literature

over a year ago

Kristi and I moved to Golden, Colorado. We’ve been in our new apartment for five days. I’m trying to quickly settle into a routine that makes sense for both of us. For example - I work for a company in Boston. While I could keep local working hours (Mountain Time) I prefer to...

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Josh Thompson

Lifestyle Design (AKA Intentional Habit Building) The top New Years resolutions indicate that Americans know they need to make changes. The top three...

over a year ago

8

Lifestyle Design (AKA Intentional Habit Building)

from Josh Thompson [alt+shift+b] in literature

over a year ago

The top New Years resolutions indicate that Americans know they need to make changes. The top three resolutions always relate to getting in shape, eating better, spending time better, and spending money better. Everyone is aware that change is good, even necessary, but given the...

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Josh Thompson

Load Testing your app with Siege Last time, I dug into using Apache Benchmark to do performance testing on a page that requires...

over a year ago

8

Load Testing your app with Siege

from Josh Thompson [alt+shift+b] in literature

over a year ago

Last time, I dug into using Apache Benchmark to do performance testing on a page that requires authentication to access. Today, we’ll figure out how to use siege to visit many unique URLs on our page, and to get benchmarks on that process. I’ll next figure out performance...

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Josh Thompson

A 40 Hour Work Week Business Insider posted an article on why we have a 40 hour work week. The author blames big...

over a year ago

8

A 40 Hour Work Week

from Josh Thompson [alt+shift+b] in literature

over a year ago

Business Insider posted an article on why we have a 40 hour work week. The author blames big business for why we’ve not dropped below 40 hours per week. He thinks that if America became less consumer-driven, our economy would collapse. He’s got the wrong starting assumptions...

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Josh Thompson

Book Notes: 'The Case Against Sugar' by Gary Taube In the last few weeks, I read The Case Against Sugar by Gary Taubes. I found it to be compelling...

over a year ago

8

Book Notes: 'The Case Against Sugar' by Gary Taube

from Josh Thompson [alt+shift+b] in literature

over a year ago

In the last few weeks, I read The Case Against Sugar by Gary Taubes. I found it to be compelling (more on that in a moment) and I want to be impacted by them. I want the daily decisions that I make to be subtly influenced by this author and these books. Related but in a different...

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Josh Thompson

What I've learned from cooking in 36 kitchens in the last year Since we’ve been on the road full-time for the last year, Kristi and I have prepared meals for...

over a year ago

8

What I've learned from cooking in 36 kitchens in the last year

from Josh Thompson [alt+shift+b] in literature

over a year ago

Since we’ve been on the road full-time for the last year, Kristi and I have prepared meals for (usually) ourselves and (sometimes) others in 36 (!!!) kitchens. Sometimes we’ve used a kitchen for just one night, sometimes it’s every night for two months. Needless to say, we’ve...

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Josh Thompson

Quick Dive into React As usual, this is a work in progress. At a high level, I’m familiarizing myself with Phoenix/Elixir,...

over a year ago

8

Quick Dive into React

from Josh Thompson [alt+shift+b] in literature

over a year ago

As usual, this is a work in progress. At a high level, I’m familiarizing myself with Phoenix/Elixir, and need to sharpen my React knowledge along the way. After working through part 1 of a slack clone in Elixir/Phoenix tutorial, I ran into some errors getting the React app up and...

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Josh Thompson

Talent is Overrated Talent is Overrated In Talent is Overrated, the author argues that world-class performers are not...

over a year ago

8

Talent is Overrated

from Josh Thompson [alt+shift+b] in literature

over a year ago

Talent is Overrated In Talent is Overrated, the author argues that world-class performers are not genetically gifted. The difference between world-class performers and the rest of us? Lots of deliberate practice. (Read the article.) I have no interest in becoming Mozart, or Tiger...

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Josh Thompson

Type. Publish. Done. Yesterday I read How the Hell do I Prioritize Work, Blog & Find Balance. The author of the letter is...

over a year ago

7

Type. Publish. Done.

from Josh Thompson [alt+shift+b] in literature

over a year ago

Yesterday I read How the Hell do I Prioritize Work, Blog & Find Balance. The author of the letter is a busy, accomplished guy and still manages to write regularly. He said, in short: I sit down, and I write. I’ve done it a lot, so I’m not bad at it. I don’t often proof read my...

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Josh Thompson

The Power Broker, Chapter 30: Robert Moses and Mayor Vincent R. Impellitteri Note from Josh: The following is an excerpt of chapter 34 of the Power Broker, called “Moses and the...

a year ago

7

The Power Broker, Chapter 30: Robert Moses and Mayor Vincent R. Impellitteri

from Josh Thompson [alt+shift+b] in literature

a year ago

Note from Josh: The following is an excerpt of chapter 34 of the Power Broker, called “Moses and the Mayors”. The chapter is about Moses’ relationship with all of the mayors of NYC that overlapped with Moses’ “rule” over NYC. This excerpt covers just one of the mayors’ overlap...

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Josh Thompson

Mocks & Stubs & Exceptions in Ruby Some of my recent work has been around improving error handling and logging. We had some tasks that,...

over a year ago

7

Mocks & Stubs & Exceptions in Ruby

from Josh Thompson [alt+shift+b] in literature

over a year ago

Some of my recent work has been around improving error handling and logging. We had some tasks that, if they failed to execute correctly, were supposed to raise exceptions, log themselves, and re-queue, but they were not. The class in which I was working managed in large part API...

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Josh Thompson

Daily Exercise - Russian Kettlebells Exercise. It makes most people either cringe or salivate. Those of you who love exercising for the...

over a year ago

7

Daily Exercise - Russian Kettlebells

from Josh Thompson [alt+shift+b] in literature

over a year ago

Exercise. It makes most people either cringe or salivate. Those of you who love exercising for the sake of exercising - you can stop reading now. This information is probably not relevant to you. Those of you who don’t like to exercise, but know you really should exercise...

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Josh Thompson

About Roundabouts I’m desperately trying to work through a giant back-log of writings. Please see write it now for...

over a year ago

7

About Roundabouts

from Josh Thompson [alt+shift+b] in literature

over a year ago

I’m desperately trying to work through a giant back-log of writings. Please see write it now for more. I’m spending only a few minutes on this, forgive my errors. Of late, I’ve had a lot of conversations about roundabouts. I’m basically trying to explain the ways that a mobility...

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Josh Thompson

Becoming an Early Riser Early to bed and early to rise makes a man healthy, wealthy, and wise. -The man no child likes to...

over a year ago

7

Becoming an Early Riser

from Josh Thompson [alt+shift+b] in literature

over a year ago

Early to bed and early to rise makes a man healthy, wealthy, and wise. -The man no child likes to hear about when being awoken by their parents Getting out of bed is a struggle. I’ve spent the better part of twenty four years setting my alarm as late as possible so I could have...

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Josh Thompson

Ethan Magnass' sermons from Grace Anglican Church in Grove City, PA I’ve been recommending a collection of sermons to many people recently. I’ve listened to each of...

over a year ago

7

Ethan Magnass' sermons from Grace Anglican Church in Grove City, PA

from Josh Thompson [alt+shift+b] in literature

over a year ago

I’ve been recommending a collection of sermons to many people recently. I’ve listened to each of these sermons quite a few times. They’re worth your time. Ethan Magness is the rector at Grace Anglican Church in Grove City, PA. Sermon Series on Joseph Grace Anglican Church podcast...

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Josh Thompson

On Money (again) Recently I posted thoughts about money I’d written from back in 2013. Money is hard to write about,...

over a year ago

7

On Money (again)

from Josh Thompson [alt+shift+b] in literature

over a year ago

Recently I posted thoughts about money I’d written from back in 2013. Money is hard to write about, because there are many different ways we can approach it. It’s easy to feel judged when someone does something with their money that I don’t do with mine. That all said, there...

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Josh Thompson

Switching to Jekyll Why I switched to Jekyll A few days ago, I was really feeling the urge to write a short little blog...

over a year ago

7

Switching to Jekyll

from Josh Thompson [alt+shift+b] in literature

over a year ago

Why I switched to Jekyll A few days ago, I was really feeling the urge to write a short little blog post. So, I put it in a gist on Github. I’m an advocate of writing publicly, and making it a habit, so why was I putting it in a gist, instead of here, on my website, where I...

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Josh Thompson

How Can You Buy Happiness? You can’t, but that won’t stop you and me from trying, at least a little. We (Humans, americans, at...

over a year ago

7

How Can You Buy Happiness?

from Josh Thompson [alt+shift+b] in literature

over a year ago

You can’t, but that won’t stop you and me from trying, at least a little. We (Humans, americans, at least “other people like me”) like to buy things. But we should do more than just buy things. Experiences can have a much bigger impact on people’s happiness than things, and a...

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Josh Thompson

October 2016 Goals In the last year, I’ve fluctuated between writing every day for 30 days and not posting once in...

over a year ago

7

October 2016 Goals

from Josh Thompson [alt+shift+b] in literature

over a year ago

In the last year, I’ve fluctuated between writing every day for 30 days and not posting once in two months. Frankly, neither of those is good for me. I like writing because it clarifies my own thoughts. Sometimes it seems useful to others. I like to be useful (“utility” can...

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Josh Thompson

A Small Goal is Better than a Grand Plan We all have grand plans. Who’s future projection of themselves goes something like this: “One day,...

over a year ago

7

A Small Goal is Better than a Grand Plan

from Josh Thompson [alt+shift+b] in literature

over a year ago

We all have grand plans. Who’s future projection of themselves goes something like this: “One day, when I’m rich (goal one), location independent (goal two), and married to a fabulous woman (goal three), I will travel the world (goal four) while exploring my hobby of ___ (goal...

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Josh Thompson

Turing Prep Chapter 1: Make Mod 1 Easier Than It Otherwise Would Be Preparing for Turing Series Index What follows is an eight-part series that will help you pick up...

over a year ago

7

Turing Prep Chapter 1: Make Mod 1 Easier Than It Otherwise Would Be

from Josh Thompson [alt+shift+b] in literature

over a year ago

Preparing for Turing Series Index What follows is an eight-part series that will help you pick up useful information about a number of topics related to Ruby, specifically geared for students learning the Ruby programming language, as part of the Turing School’s Backend Software...

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Josh Thompson

Focus: One Thing at a Time The pressure to be working on more than one thing at a time is enormous. This pressure comes from no...

over a year ago

7

Focus: One Thing at a Time

from Josh Thompson [alt+shift+b] in literature

over a year ago

The pressure to be working on more than one thing at a time is enormous. This pressure comes from no one but me. And before I dismiss this tendency as “proof that I work too hard”, I must take another tact. It comes from a need to satisfy my ego. It is much easier to say “I did...

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Josh Thompson

Context Setting for certain patterns & classes of relationship difficulties I’ve been “catching up” a lot in my life lately. Some of that catching up involves bringing up to...

over a year ago

7

Context Setting for certain patterns & classes of relationship difficulties

from Josh Thompson [alt+shift+b] in literature

over a year ago

I’ve been “catching up” a lot in my life lately. Some of that catching up involves bringing up to speed various people I’ve not spoken too (or spoken too much, or openly, or recently, or ever, or some combination thereof). I am strongly biased towards written/editable/consistent...

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Josh Thompson

Friends Don't Let Friends Shortrope The first in a series about how to be a better belayer. Short rope [shawrt-rohp] verb The act of...

over a year ago

7

Friends Don't Let Friends Shortrope

from Josh Thompson [alt+shift+b] in literature

over a year ago

The first in a series about how to be a better belayer. Short rope [shawrt-rohp] verb The act of not giving sufficient rope to your climber. Getting short roped is bad. It’s not necessarily dangerous, nor does it cause you to take a whip (it can, of course) but the real reason...

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Josh Thompson

12 Lessons Learned While Publishing Something Every Day for a Month A month ago, I decided to publish something every day for at least thirty days. I read a few others...

over a year ago

7

12 Lessons Learned While Publishing Something Every Day for a Month

from Josh Thompson [alt+shift+b] in literature

over a year ago

A month ago, I decided to publish something every day for at least thirty days. I read a few others who did something similar, and discussed all the benefits. I’ve found myself struggling with creating something and then making it public. (Public here, on another project, or at...

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Josh Thompson

Piece by Piece The following is inspired by Amy Hoy. I’ve got a secret to share: I’m working on building a product...

over a year ago

7

Piece by Piece

from Josh Thompson [alt+shift+b] in literature

over a year ago

The following is inspired by Amy Hoy. I’ve got a secret to share: I’m working on building a product (of the digital variety) that will be so damn goodpeople will pay me $100 or more to get it. I’ve got a lot of bits and pieces of it littered around the internet, my computer,...

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Josh Thompson

MacOS: Keyboard Shortcut to Toggle Bookmarks Bar in Firefox A few weeks ago, after Firefox Quantum came out, I decided to try making Firefox my daily browser,...

over a year ago

7

MacOS: Keyboard Shortcut to Toggle Bookmarks Bar in Firefox

from Josh Thompson [alt+shift+b] in literature

over a year ago

A few weeks ago, after Firefox Quantum came out, I decided to try making Firefox my daily browser, instead of Chrome. Turns out, Firefox is great! It was a near-seamless transition, and Firefox has a much lower memory footprint, as well as features Chrome does not have, like...

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Josh Thompson

Trip Report: New River Gorge Kristi and I are spending a few weeks in Fayetteville, WV, home of the New River Gorge. There’s...

over a year ago

7

Trip Report: New River Gorge

from Josh Thompson [alt+shift+b] in literature

over a year ago

Kristi and I are spending a few weeks in Fayetteville, WV, home of the New River Gorge. There’s fantastic climbing here. I climbed with good friends, and was absolutely humbled by how strong they all are. (My defense, at least for the next few weeks, is that I’ve not climbed...

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Josh Thompson

Why I Eat Bacon Every Day (And You Should Too) note: as of late 2017, I’ve rolled over to a mostly vegetarian diet. I still love meat, but don’t...

over a year ago

7

Why I Eat Bacon Every Day (And You Should Too)

from Josh Thompson [alt+shift+b] in literature

over a year ago

note: as of late 2017, I’ve rolled over to a mostly vegetarian diet. I still love meat, but don’t feel comfortable eating it, for ethical reasons. I still believe that, on a whole, bacon is good for you, and I still eat veggies and many eggs every day. I just don’t eat bacon or...

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Josh Thompson

Can You Recover From Months (YEARS!) of Not Climbing? A few weeks ago, I headed into the gym thinking that I felt a little off-kilter. I’d not climbed in...

over a year ago

7

Can You Recover From Months (YEARS!) of Not Climbing?

from Josh Thompson [alt+shift+b] in literature

over a year ago

A few weeks ago, I headed into the gym thinking that I felt a little off-kilter. I’d not climbed in a week, I though, and maybe I was getting weaker or something. Turns out that wasn’t the problem - I had actually been climbing too much, and was feeling it. This is an odd...

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Josh Thompson

Waking Up Early 2.0 A few months ago, I wrote about waking up early. I tracked my progress for almost a month, and most...

over a year ago

7

Waking Up Early 2.0

from Josh Thompson [alt+shift+b] in literature

over a year ago

A few months ago, I wrote about waking up early. I tracked my progress for almost a month, and most of the days I woke up between 4:45 and 6:00. My “must be up by” time is 7:30a, so waking up more than an hour and a half early counts as a huge win. From mid-may until June 7, I...

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Josh Thompson

Avoid a car accident with a $3 tool TL;DR: Buy a blind spot mirror for your car. They are $2, and can keep you from getting in an...

over a year ago

7

Avoid a car accident with a $3 tool

from Josh Thompson [alt+shift+b] in literature

over a year ago

TL;DR: Buy a blind spot mirror for your car. They are $2, and can keep you from getting in an accident. Not a lot of people have them, though they’re awesome. I spend an inordinate amount of time thinking about how to make driving safer. Step 1 to making driving safer is “don’t...

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Josh Thompson

How to take payments via Stripe on a Static Site I’ve had rolling around my head an idea of selling small how-to guides and resources. Things that I...

over a year ago

7

How to take payments via Stripe on a Static Site

from Josh Thompson [alt+shift+b] in literature

over a year ago

I’ve had rolling around my head an idea of selling small how-to guides and resources. Things that I wish existed, but have never been able to find. For example, I’ve read a bunch of books that talk about good Object-Oriented design, or refactoring code, or writing better tests....

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Josh Thompson

Make Hard Things Easier by Removing Friction Friction resists movement. Lots of things count as (negative) friction. Anything that consumes...

over a year ago

7

Make Hard Things Easier by Removing Friction

from Josh Thompson [alt+shift+b] in literature

over a year ago

Friction resists movement. Lots of things count as (negative) friction. Anything that consumes resources (time, energy, money, physical goods.) Anything that causes negative feelings (shame, doubt, guilt, fear.) Anything that could have a downside (losing money, respect, your...

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Josh Thompson

A little bit of slope makes up for a lot of y-intercept The following is recounted on Quora, from a lecture by Stanford professor John Ousterhout (he’s in...

over a year ago

7

A little bit of slope makes up for a lot of y-intercept

from Josh Thompson [alt+shift+b] in literature

over a year ago

The following is recounted on Quora, from a lecture by Stanford professor John Ousterhout (he’s in the Computer Science department): Here’s today’s thought for the weekend. A little bit of slope makes up for a lot of Y-intercept. [Laughter] So at a mathematical level this is...

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Josh Thompson

Your "Community" Should Not Be Local When Kristi and I were planning our move from Maryland to Colorado, the biggest challenge we...

over a year ago

7

Your "Community" Should Not Be Local

from Josh Thompson [alt+shift+b] in literature

over a year ago

When Kristi and I were planning our move from Maryland to Colorado, the biggest challenge we anticipated was no longer being a short drive away from my sister, Jen, and Kristi’s brother, Richard. There are a few reasons, however, that we decided the benefits of moving...

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Josh Thompson

How to Move Kristi and I are moving to Colorado in July. We’ve taken three broad steps to make this move...

over a year ago

7

How to Move

from Josh Thompson [alt+shift+b] in literature

over a year ago

Kristi and I are moving to Colorado in July. We’ve taken three broad steps to make this move happen: We both are in process with new jobs I just started working remotely for Litmus, which means I can seamlessly transition to Colorado this summer. Kristi spent a few days last week...

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Josh Thompson

The advantage of low friction goals If you have a project, make it easy to take small steps. I’m trying to publish something every day...

over a year ago

7

The advantage of low friction goals

from Josh Thompson [alt+shift+b] in literature

over a year ago

If you have a project, make it easy to take small steps. I’m trying to publish something every day for a month. Normally, I would sit down at my computer, open a text editor, write something, the copy it into Squarespace, and customize the post from there. “Customization”...

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Josh Thompson

Three Android Apps I Use Every Day (and maybe you'll use them too) I’m not here to talk about Twitter and Instagram, which… I use too much. Lets talk about things that...

over a year ago

7

Three Android Apps I Use Every Day (and maybe you'll use them too)

from Josh Thompson [alt+shift+b] in literature

over a year ago

I’m not here to talk about Twitter and Instagram, which… I use too much. Lets talk about things that make my life better, and might do the same for you. (If you’re an iPhone user, just Google for the iOS version of the following tools. They’re all out there) Rewire App:...

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Josh Thompson

Falling into Place I recently started a job with Litmus. A key component of this job search for me was that it be 100%...

over a year ago

7

Falling into Place

from Josh Thompson [alt+shift+b] in literature

over a year ago

I recently started a job with Litmus. A key component of this job search for me was that it be 100% remote. At my last job, I worked remote regularly, at least one day a week, but the rest of the week, I was in the office. Remote work is becoming established around the world,...

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Josh Thompson

My Good Friends (Who Don't Know Me) Rumor has it you become like those you spend time with. Or “birds of a feather flock together”, or...

over a year ago

7

My Good Friends (Who Don't Know Me)

from Josh Thompson [alt+shift+b] in literature

over a year ago

Rumor has it you become like those you spend time with. Or “birds of a feather flock together”, or “you are what you eat”. Maybe that last one was Hannibal Lector, having an old friend for dinner. Anyway, the person that you are is influenced by the people you spend time with....

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Josh Thompson

Injury Impedes Improvement Kristi and I have been in Colorado for three months, I’ve been climbing regularly for two, I am back...

over a year ago

7

Injury Impedes Improvement

from Josh Thompson [alt+shift+b] in literature

over a year ago

Kristi and I have been in Colorado for three months, I’ve been climbing regularly for two, I am back in shape and it feels good. I am tempted to throw myself into climbing again. To climb every day, or maybe every other day, and finish every session with training. But here’s the...

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Josh Thompson

November 2016 Goals November 2016 Goals Note to the reader: The words that follow are all about me. Very naval-gaze-ish....

over a year ago

7

November 2016 Goals

from Josh Thompson [alt+shift+b] in literature

over a year ago

November 2016 Goals Note to the reader: The words that follow are all about me. Very naval-gaze-ish. I feel I owe you this warning. My November goals are an extension of my October goals. October was good ( October review) - I made progress on two of three projects, and one of...

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Josh Thompson

RailsConf Presentation: 'Junior' Developers are a Solution to Many of your Problems Did this talk resonate and you want to implement some of the ideas at your company? I might be able...

over a year ago

7

RailsConf Presentation: 'Junior' Developers are a Solution to Many of your Problems

from Josh Thompson [alt+shift+b] in literature

over a year ago

Did this talk resonate and you want to implement some of the ideas at your company? I might be able to help. Shoot me an email at joshthompson@hey.com or book some time to talk at https://calendly.com/joshthompson/coffee. This talk is available on railsconf.org, here:...

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Josh Thompson

Aggregate and deduplicate your deprecation warnings in Rails We know we all stay on the cutting edge of Rails; no one, and I mean no one out there is making a...

over a year ago

7

Aggregate and deduplicate your deprecation warnings in Rails

from Josh Thompson [alt+shift+b] in literature

over a year ago

We know we all stay on the cutting edge of Rails; no one, and I mean no one out there is making a 4.2 -> 5.2 upgrade because Rails 4.2 is no longer supported. You, dear reader, have just suddenly found an interest in resolving deprecation warnings, and as one jumps a few Rails...

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Josh Thompson

Cultivate Curiosity, or 'Reasons to be More Childlike' I’ve had an idea rolling around my head. I suspect that “being curious” will correlate well with...

over a year ago

7

Cultivate Curiosity, or 'Reasons to be More Childlike'

from Josh Thompson [alt+shift+b] in literature

over a year ago

I’ve had an idea rolling around my head. I suspect that “being curious” will correlate well with positive outcomes in my life, on pretty much any time horizon, be it days, weeks, or decades. Curiosity feels like a tolerable antidote to boredom, though boredom in and of itself is...

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Josh Thompson

Notes from 'Why We Sleep' I first read Why We Sleep: Unlocking the Power of Sleep and Dreams about two years ago. It...

over a year ago

7

Notes from 'Why We Sleep'

from Josh Thompson [alt+shift+b] in literature

over a year ago

I first read Why We Sleep: Unlocking the Power of Sleep and Dreams about two years ago. It immediately led me to prioritize sleep over almost everything else. Most of us don’t get enough sleep, and are worse for it. Usually when the topic of sleep comes up, I say Hey, there’s...

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Josh Thompson

Denver.rb meetup notes Move Slow and Improve Things: Performance Improvement in a Rails App Denver.rb Monthly Meetup...

over a year ago

7

Denver.rb meetup notes

from Josh Thompson [alt+shift+b] in literature

over a year ago

Move Slow and Improve Things: Performance Improvement in a Rails App Denver.rb Monthly Meetup @WeWork, Feb 12, 2018 We talked about performance profiling! Here’s the slides, on Dropbox I’m working on going deeper on the topic of Rails performance. I’ve got a lot more on the...

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Josh Thompson

Benefits of helplessness The last few days were rough, strangely enough. I live in beautiful Golden, Colorado with my best...

over a year ago

7

Benefits of helplessness

from Josh Thompson [alt+shift+b] in literature

over a year ago

The last few days were rough, strangely enough. I live in beautiful Golden, Colorado with my best friend (who I happen to be married to), and I’ve got a pretty cool job to boot. That’s the “big three”, right? (Relationships, work, location.) Yep. Except from Thursday through...

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Josh Thompson

Fry Your Pizza Here’s a problem many of us first-worlders have: cold pizza. There are two options. Microwave it, or...

over a year ago

7

Fry Your Pizza

from Josh Thompson [alt+shift+b] in literature

over a year ago

Here’s a problem many of us first-worlders have: cold pizza. There are two options. Microwave it, or throw it in the toaster oven or regular oven. A microwave makes it soggy, and a regular oven takes forever to heat it up. (If you’re willing to eat it cold, may god have mercy on...

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Josh Thompson

First pass with Elixir/Phoenix I’m digging into Elixir and Phoenix. I’m working through this tutorial to cloning Slack. The...

over a year ago

7

First pass with Elixir/Phoenix

from Josh Thompson [alt+shift+b] in literature

over a year ago

I’m digging into Elixir and Phoenix. I’m working through this tutorial to cloning Slack. The tutorial author says At the time of writing, I have ~1 week experience with Phoenix. Similar to Rubber Ducky Debugging, I am writing this blog post to force myself to think differently...

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Josh Thompson

How to never accidentally click Twitter's "Moments" again (and to block anything else on the... Do you use Twitter’s “Moments” tool, or do you just find it really annoying? Most people find it...

over a year ago

7

How to never accidentally click Twitter's "Moments" again (and to block anything else on the internet you don't want to deal with) - with uBlock

from Josh Thompson [alt+shift+b] in literature

over a year ago

Do you use Twitter’s “Moments” tool, or do you just find it really annoying? Most people find it annoying. Here’s how to get rid of Twitter’s “Moments” forever: 0. Be won over to using an ad blocker on the internet. They don’t block just ads, but malicious scripts and...

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Josh Thompson

Circles of Influence I was listening to a podcast today, where they said if you have problems knowing what to write...

over a year ago

7

Circles of Influence

from Josh Thompson [alt+shift+b] in literature

over a year ago

I was listening to a podcast today, where they said if you have problems knowing what to write about, or you’ve hit a block, write about something that angers you. This is easy. I could write about any number of things that we’ve all read in a newspaper, and get good and angry...

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Josh Thompson

Jaywalking: What, So What, What To Do What Is “Jaywalking” authors note: This feels very draft-y. There’s two distinct perspectives I note...

9 months ago

7

Jaywalking: What, So What, What To Do

from Josh Thompson [alt+shift+b] in literature

9 months ago

What Is “Jaywalking” authors note: This feels very draft-y. There’s two distinct perspectives I note in my mind, as I write this. Some people might “believe in jaywalking” and view non-car-users as an underclass, and act in such a way that makes this belief manifestly obvious....

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Josh Thompson

Structural Holes and Good Ideas Note from author: This is part of an experimental series, more-or-less based on “white papers” and...

over a year ago

7

Structural Holes and Good Ideas

from Josh Thompson [alt+shift+b] in literature

over a year ago

Note from author: This is part of an experimental series, more-or-less based on “white papers” and academic literature, as applied to somewhat practical-ish domains. These pages serve as a brief overview of a paper, and I’ll be able to link to this paper down the road when I what...

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Josh Thompson

Mythical Creatures: Refactoring wizard.rb Preparing for Turing Series Index What follows is an eight-part series that will help you pick up...

over a year ago

7

Mythical Creatures: Refactoring wizard.rb

from Josh Thompson [alt+shift+b] in literature

over a year ago

Preparing for Turing Series Index What follows is an eight-part series that will help you pick up useful information about a number of topics related to Ruby, specifically geared for students learning the Ruby programming language, as part of the Turing School’s Backend Software...

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Josh Thompson

Benchmarking a page protected by a login with Apache Benchmark I’ve been slowly working through The Complete Guide to Rails Performance. I’m taking the ideas and...

over a year ago

7

Benchmarking a page protected by a login with Apache Benchmark

from Josh Thompson [alt+shift+b] in literature

over a year ago

I’ve been slowly working through The Complete Guide to Rails Performance. I’m taking the ideas and concepts from Nate’s book and working on applying the lessons to the app I work on in my day job. I had a chance to attend Nate’s workshop in Denver a few days ago, as well; while...

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Josh Thompson

OK, some new books Yesterday, I proclaimed “ No new books”. I spent a lot of time today thinking about that...

over a year ago

7

OK, some new books

from Josh Thompson [alt+shift+b] in literature

over a year ago

Yesterday, I proclaimed “ No new books”. I spent a lot of time today thinking about that proclamation. Do I really want to limit myself to just the books that I’ve already picked for myself? Yes. Maybe. There’s a kind of book I don’t want to read any more of. That’s the “get...

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Josh Thompson

Everything I Do and Think I've Read in a Book (or, exploring the relationship between books and... Here’s yet another big post on money and income and saving and reading. I tried to write everything...

over a year ago

7

Everything I Do and Think I've Read in a Book (or, exploring the relationship between books and money)

from Josh Thompson [alt+shift+b] in literature

over a year ago

Here’s yet another big post on money and income and saving and reading. I tried to write everything on my mind in one massive letter, so I could write a really detailed answer once, rather than a less-useful but less-thoughtful email that I can never reuse. Hey there, I’m...

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Josh Thompson

About working remotely at Litmus with Pajamas.io A while back, I wrote a long interview for Pajamas.io, a publication around remote work. I’ve pasted...

over a year ago

7

About working remotely at Litmus with Pajamas.io

from Josh Thompson [alt+shift+b] in literature

over a year ago

A while back, I wrote a long interview for Pajamas.io, a publication around remote work. I’ve pasted the entire article here below. When Josh Thompson wanted to move out to rural Colorado with his family to be closer to the mountains he loves to climb, he knew finding a company...

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Josh Thompson

Winter on Two Pairs of Socks We’re minimalists, mostly. We try to not have a bunch of stuff. This naturally extends to the...

over a year ago

7

Winter on Two Pairs of Socks

from Josh Thompson [alt+shift+b] in literature

over a year ago

We’re minimalists, mostly. We try to not have a bunch of stuff. This naturally extends to the wardrobe. I’ll cover more about what we wear another time, but for now, I want to give you an idea. With the right socks, you can go an entire winter with just two pairs of socks. You...

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Josh Thompson

Train Hard When’s the last time you participated in a sporting event? (Football, Ultimate Frisbee, rock...

over a year ago

7

Train Hard

from Josh Thompson [alt+shift+b] in literature

over a year ago

When’s the last time you participated in a sporting event? (Football, Ultimate Frisbee, rock climbing, running biking, wrestling, whatever) When’s the last time you trained for that activity? Finally: When is the last time you trained for that activity with someone else?...

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Josh Thompson

The Violence of God and the Hermeneutics of Paul Sometimes I (Josh) want to share around certain academic works. Sometimes its a PDF that I want...

over a year ago

7

The Violence of God and the Hermeneutics of Paul

from Josh Thompson [alt+shift+b] in literature

over a year ago

Sometimes I (Josh) want to share around certain academic works. Sometimes its a PDF that I want someone to download and read, sometimes it’s text from a book I’ve read, and cannot otherwise get a sharable format of. So, I laboriously take photos of pages, use an optical character...

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Josh Thompson

Setting up for 'SQL Queries for Mere Mortals' This tweet is from… a while ago. Turns out I didn’t dig into this book, because the pace at Turing...

over a year ago

7

Setting up for 'SQL Queries for Mere Mortals'

from Josh Thompson [alt+shift+b] in literature

over a year ago

This tweet is from… a while ago. Turns out I didn’t dig into this book, because the pace at Turing didn’t allow for a few weeks of thinking just about SQL. yes, I'm digging into sql to better my AR skills, and ultimately whatever I need to use next. pic.twitter.com/UhjyGKv1FQ —...

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Josh Thompson

Ruby Tutorial 001 I’m playing with Michael Hartl’s Learn Enough Ruby book. I’ll throw basic things I learn along the...

over a year ago

7

Ruby Tutorial 001

from Josh Thompson [alt+shift+b] in literature

over a year ago

I’m playing with Michael Hartl’s Learn Enough Ruby book. I’ll throw basic things I learn along the way on here. A good starting point is using your command line. I use iTerm2 for my terminal instead of the default Terminal installation. To get up and running in your terminal,...

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Josh Thompson

Habits, Milestones, and Climbing Since April 9th, I have spent exactly 70 minutes training for climbing. Prior to April 27th, I have...

over a year ago

6

Habits, Milestones, and Climbing

from Josh Thompson [alt+shift+b] in literature

over a year ago

Since April 9th, I have spent exactly 70 minutes training for climbing. Prior to April 27th, I have climbed exactly seven times in the last five months. I just spent two days at the New River Gorge and exceeded my expectations, considering my almost half-year hiatus from regular...

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Josh Thompson

Collateralizing Mortgages and Loans With the Present Value of Rent Flow this is a draft document, it pairs with this Planned Unit Development application draft...

over a year ago

6

Collateralizing Mortgages and Loans With the Present Value of Rent Flow

from Josh Thompson [alt+shift+b] in literature

over a year ago

this is a draft document, it pairs with this Planned Unit Development application draft document Inspiration comes from many places, but most strongly it draws heavily from Order Without Design. I’ve quoted in depth two pages below, but there is many other sections of the book...

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Josh Thompson

2018 Reading Review & Recommendations I read many books in 2018. I’m listing them out here, along with recommendations. Here’s the...

over a year ago

6

2018 Reading Review & Recommendations

from Josh Thompson [alt+shift+b] in literature

over a year ago

I read many books in 2018. I’m listing them out here, along with recommendations. Here’s the recommendation “key”: 👍 = I recommend this book. (This metric is intentionally fuzzy.) 😔 = This book influenced my mental model of the world/reality/myself 🏢 = Book topic is...

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Josh Thompson

Travel somewhere fun. But first get on Scott's email list Most of us have a bucket list item of “travel abroad”, right? It gets harder to realize once you...

over a year ago

6

Travel somewhere fun. But first get on Scott's email list

from Josh Thompson [alt+shift+b] in literature

over a year ago

Most of us have a bucket list item of “travel abroad”, right? It gets harder to realize once you start looking through flight prices, though. If you and your significant other want to head to Europe or Asia, you might be dropping $2500, minimum, for the both of you. That’s...

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Josh Thompson

2017 In Review & Thoughts on 2018 Note: this “annual review” covers three topics. Click on one to skip to it: Looking back on...

over a year ago

6

2017 In Review & Thoughts on 2018

from Josh Thompson [alt+shift+b] in literature

over a year ago

Note: this “annual review” covers three topics. Click on one to skip to it: Looking back on 2017 thoughts on going into 2018 book recommendations from the 79 books I read last year I’ve got mixed feelings on annual reviews. I steadfastly refuse to set New Years’ resolutions, and...

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Josh Thompson

Trader Joe's Parking Lot Hey Trader Joe’s, This is a bit of an open letter, inspired by a recent visit to the local Trader...

a year ago

6

Trader Joe's Parking Lot

from Josh Thompson [alt+shift+b] in literature

a year ago

Hey Trader Joe’s, This is a bit of an open letter, inspired by a recent visit to the local Trader Joe’s. I just moved to this part of Denver, and now for the first time am living within like a 3 minute scoot of a Trader Joe’s. I know that some people like to complain about...

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Josh Thompson

2019 Annual Review It’s that time of the year. I always really enjoy reading other people’s annual reviews, and I find...

over a year ago

6

2019 Annual Review

from Josh Thompson [alt+shift+b] in literature

over a year ago

It’s that time of the year. I always really enjoy reading other people’s annual reviews, and I find value in writing my own. Previous reviews: 2018, 2017, 2016, 2015 My review breaks down into a few broad categories: Travel Relationships & Community Leadville Trail...

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Josh Thompson

Pry-ing into a Stack Trace I was recently working on a feature, committed what I thought was clean code, and started getting...

over a year ago

6

Pry-ing into a Stack Trace

from Josh Thompson [alt+shift+b] in literature

over a year ago

I was recently working on a feature, committed what I thought was clean code, and started getting errors. I git stashed, and re-ran my tests, and still got errors. Here’s the full stacktrace: > b ruby -Itest test/models/model_name_redacted_test.rb -n=/errors/ # Running tests...

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Josh Thompson

Blocks and Closures in Ruby Continuing on from yesterday’s post about method_missing, I’m moving on to a part of Ruby’s language...

over a year ago

6

Blocks and Closures in Ruby

from Josh Thompson [alt+shift+b] in literature

over a year ago

Continuing on from yesterday’s post about method_missing, I’m moving on to a part of Ruby’s language that has been a bit of a mystery for me for quite some time. I’m still working through Metaprogramming in Ruby. It’s the concept of lambdas, procs, blocks, and more. I also hope...

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Josh Thompson

On Cleaner Controllers A few days ago, I worked on a project that was mostly about serving up basic store data (modeled...

over a year ago

6

On Cleaner Controllers

from Josh Thompson [alt+shift+b] in literature

over a year ago

A few days ago, I worked on a project that was mostly about serving up basic store data (modeled after Etsy) to an API. We had a few dozen end-points, and all responses were in JSON. Most of the action happened inside of our controllers, and as you might imagine, our routes.rb...

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Josh Thompson

Find out how much money you've made (in your entire life) This post went by on the Personal Finance subreddit today: https://www.ssa.gov/myaccount/ After...

over a year ago

6

Find out how much money you've made (in your entire life)

from Josh Thompson [alt+shift+b] in literature

over a year ago

This post went by on the Personal Finance subreddit today: https://www.ssa.gov/myaccount/ After creating an account / logging in, click on Earnings, then add the columns. If you have been working for many years, try copying/pasting the column in excel and using the sum...

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Josh Thompson

Tongue Ties: What, So What, What To Do “tongue tied” (my first time hearing the word, my newborn’s experience) ‘tongue tie’ was something...

9 months ago

6

Tongue Ties: What, So What, What To Do

from Josh Thompson [alt+shift+b] in literature

9 months ago

“tongue tied” (my first time hearing the word, my newborn’s experience) ‘tongue tie’ was something I’d heard discussed (the little bit of fiber under a tongue) as the child we now know as Eden was incubating inside of Kristi’s womb. I didn’t think much of it then. Cut forward to...

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Josh Thompson

So you want to work remotely... Josh’s “rules” for getting a sweet remote job A few weeks ago, I met a fantastic guy who is...

over a year ago

6

So you want to work remotely...

from Josh Thompson [alt+shift+b] in literature

over a year ago

Josh’s “rules” for getting a sweet remote job A few weeks ago, I met a fantastic guy who is contemplating next steps for work. He is great at what he does, and is thinking about what direction to go in his life. He’s young, and thought working remotely sounded pretty cool. I...

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Josh Thompson

Turing Prep Chapter 3: Moar Mythical Creatures Preparing for Turing Series Index What follows is an eight-part series that will help you pick up...

over a year ago

6

Turing Prep Chapter 3: Moar Mythical Creatures

from Josh Thompson [alt+shift+b] in literature

over a year ago

Preparing for Turing Series Index What follows is an eight-part series that will help you pick up useful information about a number of topics related to Ruby, specifically geared for students learning the Ruby programming language, as part of the Turing School’s Backend Software...

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Josh Thompson

Workflow for developers (AKA My current tools) I’m a huge fan of “a good workflow”. Makes you think better. This is still under construction, but...

over a year ago

6

Workflow for developers (AKA My current tools)

from Josh Thompson [alt+shift+b] in literature

over a year ago

I’m a huge fan of “a good workflow”. Makes you think better. This is still under construction, but I’m fleshing out all the tools, tidbits, and other things that serve me well every day as I build my skills as a developer. It will always be a work in progress, but will hopefully...

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Josh Thompson

Accomplishments and Achievements We’re encouraged to accomplish and achieve, yes? From birth, we pass milestones. Generally these...

over a year ago

6

Accomplishments and Achievements

from Josh Thompson [alt+shift+b] in literature

over a year ago

We’re encouraged to accomplish and achieve, yes? From birth, we pass milestones. Generally these milestones grow in complexity as we add to our abilities - it’s been a while since I’ve been rewarded for not wetting myself - but they are usually on par with our abilities. For...

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Josh Thompson

The Millionaire Next Door I’m struggling to know what to write about The Millionaire Next Door. It’s got many wonderful...

over a year ago

6

The Millionaire Next Door

from Josh Thompson [alt+shift+b] in literature

over a year ago

I’m struggling to know what to write about The Millionaire Next Door. It’s got many wonderful traits, and I strongly recommend that you read it (I wouldn’t mention it otherwise) but it’s got some flaws. I’m afraid if I focus on the flaws, I’ll turn people off from it that might...

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Josh Thompson

Input metrics vs. Output metrics It’s tempting to track results, when trying to accomplish something. If you’re working on any...

over a year ago

6

Input metrics vs. Output metrics

from Josh Thompson [alt+shift+b] in literature

over a year ago

It’s tempting to track results, when trying to accomplish something. If you’re working on any project of sufficient size, the results will come slowly, fitfully, and sometimes not at all. So, don’t track results, track your efforts. (Yes, how very American of me. I don’t believe...

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Josh Thompson

Write It Now The original post note from October 5, 2021: This was typed up/published in about 20 minutes, took...

over a year ago

6

Write It Now

from Josh Thompson [alt+shift+b] in literature

over a year ago

The original post note from October 5, 2021: This was typed up/published in about 20 minutes, took 2x as long as I wish it had. I could make it 10x better with another hour of work, but I only have 20 minutes. I’m a fan of “conceptual frameworks” This concept has been important...

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Josh Thompson

"A delicate mix of chess... and bear wrestling" Over the last few weeks I’ve found myself needing to break down “why” of sport climbing (I’ll refer...

over a year ago

6

"A delicate mix of chess... and bear wrestling"

from Josh Thompson [alt+shift+b] in literature

over a year ago

Over the last few weeks I’ve found myself needing to break down “why” of sport climbing (I’ll refer to sport as “lead” climbing from here on out. Sorry, trad climbers). If someone is enjoying top roping, (or bouldering) why should they take on the work of learning to lead climb,...

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Josh Thompson

`Medusa` mythical creature: part 2 Preparing for Turing Series Index What follows is an eight-part series that will help you pick up...

over a year ago

6

`Medusa` mythical creature: part 2

from Josh Thompson [alt+shift+b] in literature

over a year ago

Preparing for Turing Series Index What follows is an eight-part series that will help you pick up useful information about a number of topics related to Ruby, specifically geared for students learning the Ruby programming language, as part of the Turing School’s Backend Software...

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Josh Thompson

Typing in Colemac 2.0 I want to learn to type in Colemak, but I’m afraid to try to invest twenty hours in it. That’s a...

over a year ago

6

Typing in Colemac 2.0

from Josh Thompson [alt+shift+b] in literature

over a year ago

I want to learn to type in Colemak, but I’m afraid to try to invest twenty hours in it. That’s a long commitment, and I’m afraid I would not follow through, and feel like it was a failure, because I didn’t allot enough time, nor reach a desired level of skill. My hope is that as...

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Josh Thompson

Back in the Saddle There’s a point in time when after spending a few weeks or months working on one project/goal, your...

over a year ago

6

Back in the Saddle

from Josh Thompson [alt+shift+b] in literature

over a year ago

There’s a point in time when after spending a few weeks or months working on one project/goal, your ability to switch tasks to another project diminishes. There’s plenty of evidence that humans can’t multi-task, and those who try just end up doing a lot of things poorly. On the...

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Josh Thompson

2016 - Biggest Lesson, Most Dangerous Books I don’t do New Years resolutions, but I like to think back on the last year. I’ll touch on two...

over a year ago

6

2016 - Biggest Lesson, Most Dangerous Books

from Josh Thompson [alt+shift+b] in literature

over a year ago

I don’t do New Years resolutions, but I like to think back on the last year. I’ll touch on two things: The most important thing I’ve learned this year: Tactical Silence Most dangerous books of 2016 Tactical Silence I suspect that a year from now, I’m going to look back and say...

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Josh Thompson

Limitations of My Own Thinking I sometimes make recommendations, or at least recount a story that has “actionable insights”....

over a year ago

6

Limitations of My Own Thinking

from Josh Thompson [alt+shift+b] in literature

over a year ago

I sometimes make recommendations, or at least recount a story that has “actionable insights”. Anytime this happens, I start tripping over myself with warnings and qualifying statements. Here’s what would happen: I would make a recommendation (“start a side project to help get a...

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Josh Thompson

Feedback pt. 2 Traditional Feedback is Explicit Feedback is the means by which any system makes changes. From the...

over a year ago

6

Feedback pt. 2

from Josh Thompson [alt+shift+b] in literature

over a year ago

Traditional Feedback is Explicit Feedback is the means by which any system makes changes. From the gene pool to the swimming pool, feedback works to eliminate the insufficient and improve the sufficient. (See what I did with the “pool” thing?) Your car gives you feedback if the...

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Josh Thompson

Quotes from 'Complex PTSD: From Surviving to Thriving', by Pete Walker I’ve found Pete Walker’s Complex PTSD: From Surviving to Thriving to be deeply helpful. Some of you,...

over a year ago

6

Quotes from 'Complex PTSD: From Surviving to Thriving', by Pete Walker

from Josh Thompson [alt+shift+b] in literature

over a year ago

I’ve found Pete Walker’s Complex PTSD: From Surviving to Thriving to be deeply helpful. Some of you, many of you, have blessed me and cared for me in kind ways, sometimes with very little knowledge of what was going on, or why I was the way that I was. Thank you. I’ve been...

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Josh Thompson

Pry Tips and Tricks the following is cross-posted from development.wombatsecurity.com. I wrote about some handy extra...

over a year ago

6

Pry Tips and Tricks

from Josh Thompson [alt+shift+b] in literature

over a year ago

the following is cross-posted from development.wombatsecurity.com. I wrote about some handy extra features I’ve found using Pry much of my day. I joined the Wombat team a few months ago, and have been working on the threatsim product. We had a bit of a bug backlog, and myself and...

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Josh Thompson

December 2016 Goals December 19th seems a bit late to write about December’s goals, huh? Nonetheless, I’ve had some, and...

over a year ago

6

December 2016 Goals

from Josh Thompson [alt+shift+b] in literature

over a year ago

December 19th seems a bit late to write about December’s goals, huh? Nonetheless, I’ve had some, and I will still have them through the end of the month. I did post a review of November a few days ago. This should really be rolled into that. A “monthly review/going forward”...

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Josh Thompson

Don't Focus on the Present If you accept the premise that training cycles are the method by which you will improve your...

over a year ago

6

Don't Focus on the Present

from Josh Thompson [alt+shift+b] in literature

over a year ago

If you accept the premise that training cycles are the method by which you will improve your climbing, you should be able to focus less on the day-by-day fluctuation in your performance. At least, I should be able to, since I accept that premise. Yet I still struggle to not be...

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Josh Thompson

Cancel Your Cable. Seriously. No one likes to waste money, right? There are two things that are even worse to...

over a year ago

6

Cancel Your Cable. Seriously.

from Josh Thompson [alt+shift+b] in literature

over a year ago

No one likes to waste money, right? There are two things that are even worse to waste. Time Energy Money can be earned, and if more is needed, you can spend less or earn more. Energy is what you need to bring ideas to fruition. Unlimited time with no energy gets you nowhere, as...

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Josh Thompson

Quotes from 'Spare the Child' Introduction Here’s quotes from Spare the Child: The Religeous Roots of Punishment and the...

2 weeks ago

6

Quotes from 'Spare the Child'

from Josh Thompson [alt+shift+b] in literature

2 weeks ago

Introduction Here’s quotes from Spare the Child: The Religeous Roots of Punishment and the Psychological Impact of Physical Abuse, by Philip Greven. It was written in 1989, same year I was born, 35 years ago as of 2025. It’s sometimes nice to be able to share quotes with people....

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Josh Thompson

Build a Personal Website in Jekyll - A Detailed Guide For First-Timers You’re a turing student, in the backend program. You know Ruby, you wanna start blogging, but...

over a year ago

6

Build a Personal Website in Jekyll - A Detailed Guide For First-Timers

from Josh Thompson [alt+shift+b] in literature

over a year ago

You’re a turing student, in the backend program. You know Ruby, you wanna start blogging, but everyone who says go start a blog Seems to also think you have 10 hours (or 20 hours? or 2 hours? how long does this take) to sit around dealing with setting up a personal website. Lets...

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Josh Thompson

Job Hunting Recommendations for Early-Career Software Developers I’ve distilled a number of conversations into this post. Some of it is specific to getting a remote...

over a year ago

6

Job Hunting Recommendations for Early-Career Software Developers

from Josh Thompson [alt+shift+b] in literature

over a year ago

I’ve distilled a number of conversations into this post. Some of it is specific to getting a remote job and working remotely, but all of it is applicable for any kind of software-related role. It’s probably applicable to non-software roles, but this is where most of my exprience...

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Josh Thompson

An Open Letter about Golden 2022-06-15 Update I wrote this document the first time in a very small number of minutes, three...

over a year ago

6

An Open Letter about Golden

from Josh Thompson [alt+shift+b] in literature

over a year ago

2022-06-15 Update I wrote this document the first time in a very small number of minutes, three weeks ago, on my way out the door on a particularly busy day. I follow “write it now”. I’ve gotten to discuss this letter with a few different people, because I mentioned it in email....

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Josh Thompson

`Medusa` mythical creature: part 1 Preparing for Turing Series Index What follows is an eight-part series that will help you pick up...

over a year ago

6

`Medusa` mythical creature: part 1

from Josh Thompson [alt+shift+b] in literature

over a year ago

Preparing for Turing Series Index What follows is an eight-part series that will help you pick up useful information about a number of topics related to Ruby, specifically geared for students learning the Ruby programming language, as part of the Turing School’s Backend Software...

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Josh Thompson

A Retrospective on Seven Months at Turing Collection of thoughts on Turing It’s the last week of Turing. I went through the backend software...

over a year ago

6

A Retrospective on Seven Months at Turing

from Josh Thompson [alt+shift+b] in literature

over a year ago

Collection of thoughts on Turing It’s the last week of Turing. I went through the backend software engineering program, and it’s been a journey. In no particular order, I’m throwing down thoughts in three general categories: What went well What didn’t go well What I might have...

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Josh Thompson

Social skills are like any other skills Learning social skills are no different from learning cooking skills, or handstand skills. It...

over a year ago

6

Social skills are like any other skills

from Josh Thompson [alt+shift+b] in literature

over a year ago

Learning social skills are no different from learning cooking skills, or handstand skills. It helps to have exposure at a young age, but with time and effort, you can learn, and even master, cooking, handstands, and social skills. Why do social skills matter? Most people get...

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Josh Thompson

LeetCode: Words From Characters, and Benchmarking Solutions I recently worked through a LeetCode problem. The first run was pretty brutal. It took (what felt...

over a year ago

6

LeetCode: Words From Characters, and Benchmarking Solutions

from Josh Thompson [alt+shift+b] in literature

over a year ago

I recently worked through a LeetCode problem. The first run was pretty brutal. It took (what felt like) forever, and I was not content with my solution. Even better, it passed the test cases given while building the solution, but failed on submission. So, once I fixed it so it...

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Josh Thompson

Streets in Asheville Quick-and-dirty street analysis in Asheville, NC A few months ago, I visited Asheville, NC. It’s a...

over a year ago

6

Streets in Asheville

from Josh Thompson [alt+shift+b] in literature

over a year ago

Quick-and-dirty street analysis in Asheville, NC A few months ago, I visited Asheville, NC. It’s a nice town, and has a great pedestrian life, as far as I can tell. As a thought experiment, I decided to see how well I could make the case for reducing the road width of a few...

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Josh Thompson

The Present You It seems most of the decisions in life are made in favor of the present you, or the future you. I...

over a year ago

6

The Present You

from Josh Thompson [alt+shift+b] in literature

over a year ago

It seems most of the decisions in life are made in favor of the present you, or the future you. I wish the future me could sit beside the present me, and discuss how I was going about my day. Instead, it’s a rather one-sided conversation. There are obvious choices, like food,...

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Josh Thompson

Why I use a Kindle Amazon’s e-reader is extremely functional. Most reasons to not use one focus either on practical...

over a year ago

6

Why I use a Kindle

from Josh Thompson [alt+shift+b] in literature

over a year ago

Amazon’s e-reader is extremely functional. Most reasons to not use one focus either on practical issues (depending on something with a battery) or on aesthetic reasons. These are valid issues, of course, but these pale in comparison to the many, many reasons to use a...

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Josh Thompson

Cultivate the Skill of Undivided Attention, or 'Deep Work' (Crosspost from... Dan Moore is always welcoming to guest authors; he accepted something I wrote: Cultivate the Skill...

over a year ago

6

Cultivate the Skill of Undivided Attention, or 'Deep Work' (Crosspost from `letterstoanewdeveloper.com`)

from Josh Thompson [alt+shift+b] in literature

over a year ago

Dan Moore is always welcoming to guest authors; he accepted something I wrote: Cultivate the Skill of Undivided Attention, or “Deep Work” (Letters to a New Developer). It ended up on Hacker News with 100 comments. I wrote this back in December 2019, forgot to post here until...

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Josh Thompson

Climbing in Cuba, 2019 A few weeks ago, I had the opportunity to go climbing in Cuba. Mark and Dave, walking back from...

over a year ago

5

Climbing in Cuba, 2019

from Josh Thompson [alt+shift+b] in literature

over a year ago

A few weeks ago, I had the opportunity to go climbing in Cuba. Mark and Dave, walking back from climbing outside Viñales Locals crag, called “The roof of the world”. Stunning routes. because it was so hot, we spent a lot of time in this cave. Kristi and I tend to stick...

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Josh Thompson

Monthly Review: November This is my second monthly review, and I’m hooked. I’ve thought this coming review frequently, but I...

over a year ago

5

Monthly Review: November

from Josh Thompson [alt+shift+b] in literature

over a year ago

This is my second monthly review, and I’m hooked. I’ve thought this coming review frequently, but I thought about that as I was conducting my month. This proactive review is in line with Viktor Frankl’s admonition to “live every day as if it were your second chance to live it.”...

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Josh Thompson

Thoughts on Money from 2013 I was looking through some draft posts I have lying around, and found one from the middle of 2013....

over a year ago

5

Thoughts on Money from 2013

from Josh Thompson [alt+shift+b] in literature

over a year ago

I was looking through some draft posts I have lying around, and found one from the middle of 2013. That’s 2.5 years ago. Reading over it, I feel satisfaction for a few reasons: Old Josh (from July 2013) wasn’t a train wreck. As soon as I think about myself in highschool and...

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Josh Thompson

How to Ask Questions of Experts To Gain More than Just Answers Recently, I co-led a session at Turing with Regis Boudinot, a Turing grad who works at GitLab. We...

over a year ago

5

How to Ask Questions of Experts To Gain More than Just Answers

from Josh Thompson [alt+shift+b] in literature

over a year ago

Recently, I co-led a session at Turing with Regis Boudinot, a Turing grad who works at GitLab. We discussed two things: asking good questions having a good workflow After the session, I promised an overview of what we discussed. Here’s that overview for “Asking good questions”....

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Josh Thompson

Letter to Two Climbers (Part 2) Hello again, it’s me! We met climbing a few days ago. I wrote you a letter, but didn’t want to leave...

over a year ago

5

Letter to Two Climbers (Part 2)

from Josh Thompson [alt+shift+b] in literature

over a year ago

Hello again, it’s me! We met climbing a few days ago. I wrote you a letter, but didn’t want to leave it on such a pessimistic note. First, I commend you both for getting out there. You both invested a lot in making that weekend happen. You acquired the correct tools, and spent...

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Josh Thompson

How to complete a project Most of us have goals. And we usually don’t reach any of them. The Minimum Viable Product “concept”...

over a year ago

5

How to complete a project

from Josh Thompson [alt+shift+b] in literature

over a year ago

Most of us have goals. And we usually don’t reach any of them. The Minimum Viable Product “concept” has helped me with some goals, and it could be helpful to you. It’s a simple concept: When starting something new, figure out what the minimum investment would get you the...

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Josh Thompson

No New Books I’ve promised myself that I won’t add any more books to my Kindle, either by purchasing them from...

over a year ago

5

No New Books

from Josh Thompson [alt+shift+b] in literature

over a year ago

I’ve promised myself that I won’t add any more books to my Kindle, either by purchasing them from Amazon, or downloading them online, or renting them from a Library. Why? I’ve let reading about doing things stand in the way of doing the things. No amount of educational literature...

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Josh Thompson

Corollas and U-Hauls These last few posts have a theme. We moved. I’m writing about it a lot because I thought about it a...

over a year ago

5

Corollas and U-Hauls

from Josh Thompson [alt+shift+b] in literature

over a year ago

These last few posts have a theme. We moved. I’m writing about it a lot because I thought about it a lot, and a lot of work went into it. When moving across the country, you have a few options. You could higher a moving company, who comes and boxes up your house, packs a truck,...

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Josh Thompson

June trip to the New River Gorge The New River Gorge had beautiful weather this weekend. The forecast for the weekend was, until...

over a year ago

5

June trip to the New River Gorge

from Josh Thompson [alt+shift+b] in literature

over a year ago

The New River Gorge had beautiful weather this weekend. The forecast for the weekend was, until Friday, near-certain thunderstorms. Typical of the New, the weather proved unpredictable, and we had glorious sun the entire trip. I was eager to get out to the New, since my last...

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Josh Thompson

Five Lessons Learned in Buenos Aires Note: This is an unedited draft of a post from July 5, 2015. Almost exactly one year ago, written...

over a year ago

5

Five Lessons Learned in Buenos Aires

from Josh Thompson [alt+shift+b] in literature

over a year ago

Note: This is an unedited draft of a post from July 5, 2015. Almost exactly one year ago, written after a week in Buenos Aires. Since writing this post, Kristi and I have continued on to more than a year of non-stop travel, though we’re settling down back in Golden, CO in about...

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Josh Thompson

Notes on the movie Frozen, which I dislike, and Suzume, which is excellent Introduction part of a longer series of drafts about the novel experience of being a parent, to...

2 days ago

4

Notes on the movie Frozen, which I dislike, and Suzume, which is excellent

from Josh Thompson [alt+shift+b] in literature

2 days ago

Introduction part of a longer series of drafts about the novel experience of being a parent, to someone currently best defined as ‘a young child’. I once wrote a lot about my experiences of things, then took a break, and drafted this blog post on a few pages of yellow legal pad,...

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Josh Thompson

POODR Notes: Acquiring Behavior Through Inheritance (Chapter 6) I’m reading through Practical Object Oriented Design in Ruby . These are some notes from chapter 6,...

over a year ago

3

POODR Notes: Acquiring Behavior Through Inheritance (Chapter 6)

from Josh Thompson [alt+shift+b] in literature

over a year ago

I’m reading through Practical Object Oriented Design in Ruby . These are some notes from chapter 6, Acquiring Behavior Through Inheritance; mostly these are for me, and they don’t intend to stand on their own. Read the book, work through chapter six, and then come back and read...

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Josh Thompson

Customer Success: American Airlines Case Study Continuing the theme of “what the heck do I do for work”, I’m writing about Customer Success as I...

over a year ago

3

Customer Success: American Airlines Case Study

from Josh Thompson [alt+shift+b] in literature

over a year ago

Continuing the theme of “what the heck do I do for work”, I’m writing about Customer Success as I see it. My words are my own, I don’t speak for the industry as a whole, or even for Litmus. I’m just trying to sharpen my own thinking. Last time, I argued that customer success is...

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Josh Thompson

$150 Custom-Made Standing Desk My desk/our kitchen table Standing desks are all the rage. (I’m still waiting for walking desks...

over a year ago

2

$150 Custom-Made Standing Desk

from Josh Thompson [alt+shift+b] in literature

over a year ago

My desk/our kitchen table Standing desks are all the rage. (I’m still waiting for walking desks to catch up.) Kristi and I outfitted our space with reclaimed furniture from Craigslist (also known as “cheap”), so we wanted to keep it going with a desk. My setup at our kitchen...

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New here?

Josh Thompson