ntietz.com: on-call, content-driven development, Rust web development
Hello and happy Friday!
When you read this, I might be in a medical procedure or recovering from it.
It's a scientifically proven fact (that I made up just now) that pictures of cute cats and other animals improve recoveries, so if you've got some to share, please send them my way!
As always, I hope you enjoy this month's newsletter. I'd love to hear from you if you have comments or questions!
Blog updates
- Making progress on side projects with content-driven development: It's easy to get overwhelmed with projects and stop working on them. I have found that by thinking about how I'll write about the projects, it makes it so I can make a lot more forward progress! This is a little about my technique and how I think it can be used.
- Personnel update: This is inspired by receiving a "personnel update" when a friend was fired many years ago. It felt coldly impersonal for such a deeply personal event, so I imagined what it would be like if the same approach were taken to other deeply personal events.
- What I tell people new to on-call: Being on call is a big part of a lot of software engineering jobs. It can be overwhelming but it's also a really great opportunity to learn. Here is some of what I tell engineers new to it.
- Rust needs a web framework for lazy developers: I love using Rust and I love doing web projects but put the two together and it's hard to get started. It's a joy once you are going, though. We need a web framework that puts the pieces together for us to speed that up! ...Maybe I'm working on one, and this is my design doc.
Projects
Right now my main project is "what's Nicole's body doing???" but as far as tech projects go, I'm still working on my mystery MIDI project. I'm hoping that the next newsletter will have some more info on it.
I mentioned last time that my previous iteration of my ergonomic setup had some problems.
That was the third version.
Now I've made the fourth version!
A full post will come sometime this month, but the crux of it is that this one fits in my airline personal item bag with my keyboard on it still.
I achieved that by making it fold in the middle!
You take out one bolt and the whole thing folds in half, with all the nubbins on the bottom having recesses on the other side so that it folds flat.
I use the folding feature more than I expected.
I designed it for travel, but it's useful even sitting at my coffee bar if I want a little more space in front of me.
The photos are a little dated at this point, so I’ll get new ones for the post.
I've improved the placement of the USB hub since then (it's now located on the back with velcro) but the main idea is the same.
I’m finally very happy with this setup, and I think I could fabricate copies of it really easily if folks needed them. I know this has been a lifesaver for me, and not everyone has access to a workshop like I do.
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I hope you have a great month!
❤️ Nicole