Category: Uncategorized

06: Christmas food shopping

~ Matt Goddard ~ Leave a comment

2022-11-19 – Saturday

  1. Busy day, Christmas food shopping. Derc had an M&S voucher which we split 50/50. We ended up buying loads of finger foods which we could freeze for Christmas.
  2. Of course, our freezer is full, and Tam tells me we need another freezer!
  3. This is frustrating because we’ve got an American-style fridge freezer, so you’d be forgiven for thinking that we had all the freezer capacity we needed
  4. But alas, no. We can’t seem to freeze any more than we used to when we had a much smaller under-counter freezer. Volume-wise they appear to be the same.
  5. Anyway, a new freezer is arriving on Wednesday.
  6. Just because everything is bigger in America, don’t assume that American-style European fridge freezers will be too!
  7. Back to the finger foods, I’m especially looking forward to the mini sausage in batters and the reindeer bau buns.
  8. Sadly, I noticed that the finger foods of my youth are not represented in the M&S Christmas range. There was no prawn vol-au-vent, for starters!
  9. Reading: Makers by Cory Doctorow
  10. Wordle 518: 4/6

05: Development Process – Done is DONE

~ Matt Goddard ~ Leave a comment

2022-11-18 – Friday

  1. Development process: For a few months, we’ve been having issues with the concept of DONE. This seems to be one of the trickiest aspects of digital delivery; perhaps it’s the misunderstanding of agile as a concept.
  2. Not being DONE is a common issue, and when you run a business paid on milestones or project completion, it’s a real challenge. You can easily miss a payment milestone because of done-creep (done-creep is that process of being told something’s done, only to test it to find out that there are stupidly obvious bugs or design issues).
  3. So we’re trying something new (to us) to resolve this issue, and it appears to be working okay. Here’s the gist: When a Dev thinks they are done and ready to do a PR, they arrange a session with the PO and UX designer and run through the feature. If it’s DONE, the PR is approved (code review is still to be done). If it’s not done, bugs are raised, and the developer gets back to work.
  4. Arguably this doesn’t initially change the time to completion, but what it does is reset what done looks like to the whole team. I’m expecting to see fewer rework cycles over time as people adjust. I’m also hoping our POs and UX gain a better understand the complexities of development.
  5. Planning: another small win today. I feel like we’re getting on top of our scheduling issues. The combination of Float (Scheduling/Timesheets) and Monday.com for project management seem to be paying off. I have a reliable view of our committed work for the next month and 2 weeks of tentative work after that. Most importantly, I know what questions I need to ask my team to make sure we’re on track!
  6. Reading: Makers by Cory Doctorow
  7. Wordle 517: 5/6 too many consonants not enough vowels!

04: Weather, Health Analytics and Sheds

~ ~ Leave a comment

2022-11-17 – Thursday

  1. The weather has broken today, lovely and sunny yet cold! It beats the howling wind and rain we’ve had the past few days. This Christmas, I’m hoping for a weather sensor to track local weather conditions. I’m also going to put temperature sensors in the house so I can keep track of different rooms. Mostly out of interest, but mainly because I’m not convinced the Nest Thermostat is correct!
  2. Population Health Analytics: Follow-up meeting with our Healthcare Client. We’re creating a research plan to understand the business capability and customer and market needs. We will be helping them to define a new product strategy to capitalise on their analytics and insight capability. It’s a project that aims to help primary care trusts and integrated care services to understand and model their population’s healthcare needs.
  3. Data Migration Project: This is not going as smoothly as I had hoped. Everything else seems to be getting in my way of doing simple tasks! Prep the migration plan, and create a timeline. I don’t seem to have time! I need to book some time and focus only on that. I had a deadline today to do something and managed to get my head down for a focused 2hours and got loads done!
  4. This begs the question 1) Should I Be doing this at all? 2) if so, then how can I protect my time better?
  5. Random thought. Today I was thinking about my shed at the bottom of the garden (to call it a shed doesn’t do it justice, It’s a workshop). Currently, it’s full of crap, Loads of old tat from office moves decades ago. My dad made it by hand, constructed the frame, and ran in the electrics. Everything.
  6. Next year I’m going to tidy it up, add insulation and make it an office/workshop.
  7. Here’s what I was thinking, though, can you make a shed out of a 3D-printed frame and plastic screws. Could that plastic be reclaimed from old bottles? How much could be manufactured at home?
  8. It would have to be a structure that could be printed in 30cm lengths and stacked together like Lego.
  9. How would the cross beams work? How would you make strong joints? Would plastic screws hold??
  10. How small a prototype would I have to make to see if a scaled-up model would work?
  11. What would be the cost?
  12. Reading: Makers by Cory Doctorow
  13. Wordle: 5/6 one of those annoying ones where you get four letters and the first letter can be one of many! Seem to be some more realistic scores on the Wordle chat.