Andy's discoveries and musings - Issue #5
Hello again. It’s Monday, and it’s March. Happy Women’s History Month! Also a bit of a less happy milestone, marking a whole year of not stepping foot inside my office here in London. What a year it has been…
As I continue to experiment with this format, I’ve asked for feedback! Thanks for passing it on. I’ve had some useful comments so far, so I’ll be changing things up a little bit. A reader suggested I could be a bit more restrained with formatting, and also think about how the links get incorporated into the flow of things, so let me know whether this week’s newsletter flows better, or whether I should think again.
On with my observations and discoveries, from the last week of February…
Longer-form content from me, this week
We record our Games at Work podcast on Fridays, and edit over the weekend, for a Monday publication. This time around, we followed up on the Perseverance Mars mission, talked about an fully-emulated Apple II in Unreal Engine, and a couple of stories that left me a bit uncomfortable - animating family photos via deep fake magic, and using humans as batteries.
(I’ll be taking a couple of weeks away from the microphone now, as I’ll be busy for the immediate next Fridays; it’s a lot of fun to do the show, so I hope to not be away for too long)
Links I found interesting
It is International Women’s Day coming up, and what better time to mention the Finding Ada initiative (and Ada Lovelace Day, although that is in October). I spent some time social-chatting about ALD with my friend Suw Charman last week, so it is top of mind. In addition, Twitter is again hosting an event for #IWD - previously we’ve had these in the office, this time it is going to be a virtual event, featuring some excellent engineers from our London team
#SheInspiresMe: A Celebration of Twitter Engineering Women twitterinternationalwomensday.splashthat.comQuick additional note that the Developer Relations team at Twitter is hiring - that’s the team I’ve been working in, for almost 7 years. We are looking for a Partner Engineer to provide technical developer support, particularly to our enterprise-level customers. As well as the US-based locations listed, London is also an option.
Staying on the topic of people, gender identity, and equality - for some time now, I’ve preferred they/them pronouns for when folks refer to me in the third person. I identify as male, but I don’t think there’s a particular reason for my gender to be part of the way I’m referred to. This was a nice read, that expresses similar views as my own.
Turning to tech (which is both my job, and my hobby).
I grew up with the BBC Micro and Acorn computers in schools here in the UK, and this piece from the BBC about the original project and the impact on my generation, is very nice. I’m typing this newsletter right now on a Raspberry Pi 400 - Raspberry Pi was itself born from the exact same mindset that created the BBC Micro, making technology accessible to everyone, at an affordable price. I haven’t gotten around to writing about the Pi 400 yet, but it’s my weekend hobby computer for hacking and making, these days.
Something I’ve been tinkering with lately is using a Raspberry Pi Pico, the new microcontroller, to build a StreamDeck substitute - a keypad I can use for controlling my video camera, lighting, and mic for work calls, and automating some other things.
Andy Piper on Twitter: "It's alive! #PiPico #Pimoroni #RGB… "
… my tinkering is nothing, compared to this insane, 12x scale, functional, Arduino Uno!
Two final tech links for this week. Firstly, the RedMonk Language rankings are always interesting to me, and also very important for me to follow, so that I have a sense of what is rising, what languages I might need to brush up on, or where I could better support developers. These are generated via various studies of Stack Overflow and GitHub, and can often be correlated to wider industry trends. The second link here is very cool detective work - identifying potentially poor - and performance impacting - coding through disassembling and patching Grand Theft Auto V!
The last two items are more world / local affairs; first, the ongoing fallout from the winter storm and power issues in Texas (these completely astonish me); and second, a proposed new open space for London, bringing a “High Line” project similar to that in New York City, to Camden here in London.
Manhattan makeover for London with floating green walkway plan
Thanks for subscribing, and thanks for checking out what I’ve been looking at this week.
You can always let me know what you think, on Twitter, where you will find me @andypiper.