Christof Damian: 01.2023

Friday, January 27, 2023

Friday Links 23-04

Two podcast suggestions for you today. Exposing rainforest carbon credits: why offsetting isn’t working, which is worrying but expected and Ukraine: Under the Counter, about people coming together to do help.

Leadership

30-60 days in a new leadership role: run experiments for change - that seems early to me

Internal comms for executives. - "Good communication is a series of habits"

Five Ways Toward a Fairer, More Transparent Hiring Process - transparency and good communication is the key here.

Full Responsibility [Comic] - that's hopefully not future-me.

Engineering

Circle - The C++ Automation Language

Engineering Effectiveness Handbook - one view of engineering effectiveness in a nice format

Work

Stop Looking for the Perfect Job - a "Good Enough Job" is Just Fine [Podcast] - most jobs won't give your life meaning, and that is perfectly fine.

Overcoming burnout: a psychologist’s guide [Podcast] - view from an expert.

Urbanism

Pepper spray for the school run? The weaponised SUV set to terrify America’s streets - someone is taking the War On Cars too serious.

Environment

Exposing rainforest carbon credits: why offsetting isn’t working [Podcast] - carbon offsetting always seems too good to be true … turns out it is.

UK climate minister received donations from fuel and aviation companies - I am completely surprised.

The eviction of Lützerath: the village being destroyed for a coalmine – a photo essay - nice to see international coverage. And this is not about this village, it was always a lost cause.

Random Books

Reading is precious – which is why I’ve been giving away my books - I like the idea of a library in my house, but in reality it would just be catching dust. I love reading on the Kindle.

Ukraine: Under the Counter [Podcast] - a group of people smuggling abortion pills into Ukraine. I can't wait for the second part. Not all heroes wear capes.

The dark side of fine dining [Podcast] - suddenly I don't feel so bad about never eating at Noma.

Quintessence - "Quintessence shows you the top links that the people that you follow on Mastodon tooted or boosted in the last 24 hours."

‘Tragedy upon tragedy’: why 39 US mass shootings already this year is just the start - same, same

mozilla.org's 25th anniversary - good old days!

Friday, January 20, 2023

Friday Links 23-03

I enjoyed the podcast about the seven habits book (which I haven't finished so far) and the post about meetings for engineering organisations.

A lot of good content in the urbanism section this week. The videos about cycling made me miss snow a bit.

Leadership

Starting the year with 7 Habits [Podcast] - since I haven't made it through the book, this was a nice summary

TWH#42: Public Speaking In a Nutshell - I am at the "just do it scared" stage

Meetings for an effective eng organization. - some of these wouldn't have been my choice, or I would merge them. I never needed to have spec or incident reviews every week.

1:1 question generator - if you really have nothing on your list

Software and its Discontents, January 2023, Part 1 - interesting perspective from Kellan. I am excited for part 2!

Engineering

The Lisa: Apple's Most Influential Failure - source code is now available

Jira is a Sewer - you might be holding it wrong.

Ruby 3.2’s YJIT is Production-Ready - that doesn't seem a lot of a speed-up, considering how slow Ruby is.

Urbanism & Transport

The High Cost of Free Parking with Donald Shoup [Podcast] - it took me a while until I understood how broken our parking in cities is

Catalan connections – high-speed rail guide, night train rumors, cross-border links [Podcast] - Spanish high-speed rail is pretty impressive … if you find a route that works for you, and you don't need to take a bicycle with you.

LTNs appear not to push traffic on to boundary roads, London study finds - like predicted

Tempolimit würde Klima deutlich stärker schützen als bisher angenommen [German] - a speed limit on German Autobahns could save 6.7 million tonnes of CO2 each year.

Winter urban cycling showdown compares cities in Canada and Finland. Who will win Plus 1 Minus 2? [YouTube] - both look relatively pleasant

The Cult of Bike Helmets - "When it comes to the dangers threatening cyclists, wearing a helmet is like bringing a knife to a gunfight."

"Cities should not just build green transport but actively dismantle car infrastructure" - "A strategic reduction in road space means completely reframing the narrative around congestion."

Are Cities Too Reliant on Twitter? - yes! One thing I am missing from Mastodon are all the official local, Barcelona and Catalonia accounts.

Germany's Hidden Amsterdam [YouTube] - "Amsterdam" is a bit exaggerated, still a nice city for cyclists

Random Houses

1018. Léon Krier /// Krier House /// Santa Rosa Beach, Seaside, Florida, USA /// 1985-87 - this just seems wrong

Citizen Kane [Podcast] - I am not a fan of the film. It might be time to review it.

End of the road for Milltag as cycling clothing brand enters voluntary liquidation - some of my first jerseys were from Milltag :-(

Balearic Islands seek to ban non-residents from buying property - Barcelona next?

Friday, January 13, 2023

Friday Links 23-02

I have nearly caught up with my podcast backlog!

This week's post is short nonetheless.

I enjoyed the podcast about daily scrum meetings and if you can read German, I also recommend the article about digital nomads.

Leadership

Ep - 20 - What’s wrong with the software engineering industry? feat. Nick Rogers (VP of Engineering at Wagestream) [Podcast] - interesting chat

How to Run Successful Daily Scrum Meetings [Podcast] - many things I agree with, especially: doing daily meetings in Slack is not worth it

Feature Factories vs. Value Generators - we all (hopefully) want to create value. It's not easy.

Getting a job as an engineering executive. - I am not even sure I would like to be an executive, but still good insights

Make an effective executive LinkedIn profile. - Since I will be looking for a new job soon…

Your Best Work - about focus … and maybe mindfulness

Urbanism

Does Your City Have Enough Parks? [YouTube] - Barcelona is about 20%. I wonder how that is counted.

Are cycle tracks in your city built like urban freeways (but without the racism)? [YouTube] - very true. Even bidirectional or centred bike lanes separate the cyclists too much from the life in the street.

‘Entrenched car culture’ leaves millions of Britons in transport poverty - "Study finds drivers spending up to a fifth of pre-tax income on running a car as lack of infrastructure deters people from cycling"

Would You Fall for It? [ST08] [YouTube] - a big part of Europe certainly fell for it

Road to nowhere: why the suburban cul-de-sac is an urban planning dead end - I think they can be OK, if they allow through traffic for pedestrians and cyclists. This is not the case here, though.

‘A very street library thing’: in praise of sharing books with strangers - I love these. I am not sure if they exist in Spain. In the past, I did BookCrossing, which seems more or less dead.

Random OS

Haiku beta 4: BeOS rebuild / almost ready for release / A thing of beauty - I have a soft spot for BeOS, while never have used it myself. Maybe it is time to start up a VM with this.

Strava Raises Prices But Can’t Tell You How Much It Costs Anymore - that is a pretty astonishing mess

The Nibelungenlied [Podcast] - one of these things that you hear about a lot, but never go very deep.

The complicated legacy of Spain's super-rich 'indianos' – BBC REEL [YouTube] - I have seen their buildings around Spain. This is a good summary about the history.

Neoliberale Hippies [German] - critique of "digital nomads", and it doesn't even mention the environmental impact of this parasitic lifestyle

squadrats - fun Strava tool to make you explore new areas. A bit like the max square in Veloviewer.

TikTok car-fishing craze leads to closure of ancient Rufford ford - this was fun while it lasted

I Can't Taste Anything, Will I Like The Foods I Hate? | No Taste TASTE TEST [YouTube] - this must be the worst for a YouTube foodie. I hope it doesn't last.

Friday, January 06, 2023

Friday Links 23-01

Model of the Neue Nationalgalerie in Berlin

Happy new year! New year, new links!

I am not going to take a break just because I am on funemployment at the moment.

This week I loved the article about measuring engineering organisations and the podcast about Bauhaus.

Leadership

Measuring an engineering organization. - everything you need to start thinking about your metrics as engineering leader

Hypergrowth in Engineering Organizations: How to Hire, Grow and Support the Atomic Unit of a Team (with Lena Reinhard, Leadership Coach & Consultant) [Podcast] - interesting perspectives and tactics regarding fast growth

Understanding your environment [Podcast] - your environment shapes you, so be mindful in choosing it

How to capitalize engineering costs. - when you have to deal with the finance department

This Company Is Canceling All Meetings With More Than Two Employees To Free Up Workers’ Time - this will end in tears

Becoming a Manager of Managers - I think the different scale of problems is the one that can be easily missed.

Engineering

You Want Modules, Not Microservices - or a bit of both

Mistakes You Apparently Just Have to Make Yourself - I might have made some of them myself.

The Pedestrian Programmer - I now live with just a basic Emacs config

Urbanism

How London is finally (slowly) turning into a bike city [YouTube] - compared to other cities: yes

Using architectural decision records to streamline technical decision-making for a software development project - AWS on ADRs

New law in California means drivers must change lanes when overtaking cyclists - this should be the law everywhere

UK study adds to evidence of air pollution link to long-term illness - surprise!

Random Bauhaus

Bauhaus [Podcast] - history of the Bauhaus movement. I always related it to architecture, but that is only a tiny part of the history.

Six-day illegal rave sees 5,000 people descend on Spanish village - nobody invited me! The village seemed pretty chilled about it.

Danish bank workers celebrate first full year without robberies - Germany, please take note

Tobacco companies to be billed for cleaning up cigarette butts in Spain - this will be passed to consumers, which is a good thing.

Alcohol (it must be January):

Tuesday, January 03, 2023

2022 in Books

2022 Goodreads Challenge

Like many things of 2022 my reading didn't go to plan. It went different in a completely unexpected way.

My initial plan was to read about 18 books, which is a bit more than I manage in a normal year. I wanted to read a mix of fiction and non-fiction, and planned to alternate between one of each. I had a queue already on Goodreads and was all set.

It went well the first two months, but then I came across some non-fiction books that were so exhausting or boring that I gave up on them (I list them below in a separate section).

I also was not happy with other parts of my life, which led me to binge read two easy to read guilty pleasure thriller series. That's the reason I ended up with 54 books read in the year.

One thing I kept from last year is the use of Readwise to retain knowledge from the books. This led me to take highlighting and taking notes much more serious.

This year I'll start with a goal of 24 books, which seems reasonable. But if I learned something over the last few years, then nothing goes according to plan.

Non-Fiction

Make Time: How to Focus on What Matters Every Day

A quick read about how to structure your work and life for more focus. I didn't agree with a lot of this book. I think it is suited for a certain person who isn't me. The stuff I agree with is the usual: focus on fewer things, remove distractions, and have a life.

The Effective Hiring Manager

I was seeking a book about hiring and behavioural interviews and this
mostly fit the bill.
It goes into the different stages of hiring: preparation, screening, interviews,
deciding & offering and on-boarding.
I liked the focus on looking for reasons to say "no" through the whole
process.
I would have liked to have more about behavioural interviews, but the section
was at least a good introduction.
The suggested entire interview process with every interviewer repeating the same
questions seems a bit tedious. I am sure the results are great. I wonder what
effect this has on the interviewees.
In general, the book assumes a buyer's market with the attitude towards the
applicants only switching in the offer phase.
The on-boarding section is short and punchy. This appears to be a bit of an
afterthought.

Four Thousand Weeks: Time Management for Mortals

I heard about this through a podcast interview with the author.

It was still not what I expected, but in a good way.

It is about how we deal with the limited amount of time we have on earth, and about good or bad ways to deal with it.

A lot of it will sound familiar, and he quotes many authors who have written about related topics.

My quick summary would be:

enjoy everything you do at that moment for what it is
choose a few things to focus on
don't worry about missing out on opportunities, you can't avoid it anyway
just don't worry so much
everybody is winging it

I think this book could have been a lot shorter, but probably because I am still optimizing for time and sometimes things just take as long as they take.

Drive: The Surprising Truth About What Motivates Us

I really enjoyed this book, as with many of this kind of books, it is about a simple idea that most likely could have explained in a few blog posts.
That being said, the change from carrot/stick management to something more meaningful is something important, especially in the knowledge industry.
The book could do with an updated version. A lot of the examples are out of day and feel a bit dusty.

I am now using the framework of autonomy, purpose, and mastery when working with a team, but also when I evaluate my job and motivation.

Escaping the Build Trap: How Effective Product Management Creates Real Value

This is a great book about product management. I have seen many companies falling into the build trap by focusing on delivering more and more features to the users, while not thinking about the outcomes. It also goes into the details of the structure of product organizations, POs vs. PMs and how the product organization relates to the rest of the company.

More product people and leaders should read this.

My Hygge Home: How to Make Home Your Happy Place

I love the idea of Hygge. Creating a home for cosiness and togetherness should be the goal. Balancing this with the real world, with its messiness and pack of dogs that is keen on destroying everything, is another matter.

But occasionally, I have my Hygge moments and I aim to create the environment to have these more often.

A Philosophy of Software Design

We read this in our book club at work. There are many things I like about this book, but also a lot I disagree with. One thing that stuck in mind was his preference for big functions and classes.

Thinking in Systems: A Primer

I didn't like it as much as I should have. I can't put my finger on it, it might just be the writing style.
Even all the references to the environment or general leftism didn't help!
The chapters I enjoyed most were the zoo and the last two chapters. I guess they were the most practical ones.

Radical Focus: Achieving Your Most Important Goals with Objectives and Key Results

This is basically a brief intro to OKRs. It consists of an explanation, a fable, and some real life examples.
It didn't tell me anything new, but it is well written, and you get through it in a day.

Given up or paused non-fiction

Who: The A Method for Hiring

I disagreed with most of the premises of this book and gave up about halfway through.

The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People: Revised and Updated: Powerful Lessons in Personal Change

I think this is probably a great book. Something about the language makes it super hard for me to read. Ideally, I would like an executive summary.

For now, I pause this and come I will come back to it when I feel up to it.

Dynamic Reteaming: The Art and Wisdom of Changing Teams

This is a good book, and it helped me to move away a bit from my thinking of the ideal team being stable.

It also has good strategies for managing changing teams, which will happen, regardless of what you want because of organizational growth or people leaving.

Planning for swapping people around is also a good idea if you have the organization size to be able to support it.

And to actively include the teams if you are doing some kind of restructuring (splitting teams, for example).

What I don't buy is the idea that reteaming is the solution to everything and everybody can be just learning all the required languages and technologies to be able to constantly swap teams.

The whole book could also been a few blog posts.

Fiction

Millennium Series

I have seen the Swedish film a couple of times, which was great.
I also saw the US remake, which wasn't.
And unsurprisingly, the book is also great, even if you know the story already.
I loved the writing, the people, and the setting.
While the films only touch the surface, the book can easily dive into the characters, relationships and small details.
I am a bit of a Nordic Noir fan and this is probably one of the best.

I enjoyed the second book even more than the first one. It is also a much better story than the film, which focused mostly on the action.
I liked how we go into details of the characters and back-story of the protagonist.
Because the story involves the characters I like a lot more instead of solving some random crime, I was also a lot more engaged.

The House in the Woods (Atticus Priest #1)
A Place To Bury Strangers (Atticus Priest #2)

I basically buy everything from Mark Dawson. These are two independent detective books. Atticus Priest is another one of the broken lone detectives that I enjoy. Both books are set in the UK, with a very different approach to policing than the usual US setting.

Some chapters are playing in court, which are a bit slow.

Blood Work (Terry McCaleb #1; Harry Bosch Universe, #8)

Michael Connelly is another author I read everything from, this time focusing on the FBI.

The Vault

Another one from Mark Dawson. I prefer thrillers set in the present, but this trip back to Berlin with the wall is still fun.

Wormwood

Mark Dawson again, looking at the past of Group 15, involving travel to Ukraine and Russia and reimagining some events from the 80s.

Legends & Lattes

A lovely book. I don't read much fantasy, but this would have worked in any setting.
It reads like a cup of tea (or latte) and a biscuit next to a fireplace feels. The Hygge of fantasy books. Nice and cosy.
The characters and setting are fun. It is a bit like when all the characters of Lord of the Rings would have proper jobs.

The Avenger

Mark Dawson, continuing the story of Isabella Rose. She is the younger replacement of one of his previous heroines.

Foundation (Foundation, #1)

With the TV series being released, I thought I better give the book a go. This is better than the TV adaptation. Explaining the large spans of times is just much easier in writing.

I am uncertain if I will continue the book series. Maybe this is enough?

Buried in Secret (Sandhamn Murders #10)

Another one of my guilty pleasures. I read the series mostly because of the places in Sweden. It just feels relaxing … except of the occasional murder.

Zeb Carter Series (#1 - #3)

I found that I had to work hard to suspend my disbelief. It was a bit too much magic technology and abilities bordering superheroes for my taste.

Void Series (#1 - #3)

As I mentioned above, I don't read much fantasy. In this book series, there are two parallel worlds, one is sci-fi, the other one fantasy.

Initially, I really hated the fantasy chapters. There was just too much magic and the hero too unbelievable. But as the two world interwove it made more sense and I ended up enjoying the whole series.

The end was hard work to make sure that all the different stories came together.

There is also a lot of sex … a lot … more than necessary for the story.

Levon Cade Series (#1 - #11)

One of the binged series I mentioned in the introduction. Again, I enjoy the slightly broken hero. There is a lot of unnecessary killing, which calms down a bit in the later books.

Desert Star (Renée Ballard, #5; Harry Bosch Universe, #36)

As Harry is getting a bit old and will probably not last much longer, Renee seems to be his replacement for the future. Another reliable book by Connally.

The Sandman (John Milton #21)

Mark Dawson's main protagonist coming back for another book. Annoyingly, this ends with a cliffhanger.

DJ Slaughter Series (#1 - #6)

The second binged series. This really isn't that good. The hero is a bit of a present time gun slinger, who has a group of typecast sidekicks. There is a lot of killing and countless guns. How many versions of the M16 are there? And who even cares?

I hope this series doesn't continue. I might be compelled to read the next episode too.

Friday, January 27, 2023

Leadership

Engineering

Work

Urbanism

Environment

Random Books

Other Links

Friday, January 20, 2023

Leadership

Engineering

Urbanism & Transport

Random Houses

Other Links

Friday, January 13, 2023

Leadership

Urbanism

Random OS

Other Links

Friday, January 06, 2023

Leadership

Engineering

Urbanism

Random Bauhaus

Other Links

Tuesday, January 03, 2023

Non-Fiction

Given up or paused non-fiction

Fiction

Comics