Alex Pounds

There’s few areas in programming where zealotry is a good idea, but consistent naming is one of them.

I normally limit myself to a maximum of two coffees per day except in dire circumstances, but there are Bajadera in the office today.

A man shouted at me not to take his picture. I said I wasn’t, & was just taking photos of the sparrows. Somehow, he seemed even more upset.

Marketing tip: replace all your call-to-actions with powerful yodel-to-actions.

Waiting for Godot, but with test suites/CI.

In other news, this time next week I’ll be in Brazil! I’m visiting Rio de Janeiro & São Paulo. If you’ve been, I’d love any tips.

A forgotten memory from childhood: Funfax, a filofax for kids. You could buy books & file them away. I loved mine with all my heart.

Not to mention a whole heap of engineering benefits.

I really am saddened/concerned that this principle’s being forgotten. It’s a crucial part of how the web is built.https://twitter.com/acreature/status/735305157207052288 …

8. There should be a government body that sanctions restaurants with "Fast food" in the name if it takes >30 minutes to prep your order.

7. It's really hard to get a sense of a candidate in a short time. I wish I was better at gauging aptitude/potential quickly.

6. Put your phone number on your CV as well as an email address. Github's nice but not essential.

5. It might be luck of the draw, but I'd expect at least 1 candidate notably excited by Linux/FOSS. If there was one, they didn't show it.

4. Candidates would benefit from even minimal salary negotiation. Ask the salary; ask if there's any scope on it. That's all you need.

3. Dressing nicely & doing ~1hr of background research into a company is a REALLY easy way to stand out of the pack.

2. "Everyone hates whiteboard coding" is contemporary folk wisdom, but EVERYONE chose the whiteboard when choosing between it & a laptop.

(I expected a mix of progressive enhancement, graceful degradation, and requires-JavaScript. Not so.)

1. Progressive enhancement is dead to the next generation of developers. Everyone's building apps that rely on client-side JavaScript.

So, I interviewed a bunch of candidates for co-op placements (ie. 3 month internships) today. Here's some observations from the aggregate:

Interview tip: yes, you are a student. Yes, it is hot outside. No, don’t turn up in flip flops.

The screencast got done, but nothing else did. Today I’m off to sunny Waterloo to interview placement students.

Today: record and edit a screencast, edit some photos, try to write something.

I18n plus client side rendering: it’s templating engines all the way down.

Rails has a locale-aware to_sentence: %w(a b c).to_sentence => “a, b, et c” (for French). Is there anything similar for JavaScript?

“I brought you into this world, and I can take you out of it.” — Super Mario warp pipes

Programmers should need a license, like guns. With a waiting period. Without one you can still code, but can’t use copy-paste or --force.

The more time I spend in Affinity Photo, the more I like it. It’s got powerful tools that are easy to apply (once you learn the interface).

Top tip for convention panels: if you ask a question, don’t treat it like a conversation.

Off to TCAF today. I’m looking forward to putting some faces to names. Lots of artists I’ve been reading for years.

BEM can give your CSS structure for large projects, but it can also discourage both reuse & a global “house style” for overall appearance.

The photo guild at work visited a photo studio this evening. I really enjoyed using studio lighting & working with a model again.

I wish I could tell the sparrows in my neighbourhood that I appreciate their hard work.

Product idea: clothes hangers shaped like skeletons. So you can have lots of skeletons in your closet.

Go not to the growth hackers for counsel, for they will say that dark UI pattern really boosts engagement.

The hawk that lives nearby taunts me. It knows I’d like to photograph it, so it swoops by to catch my eye & hovers out of good photo range.

I’m not proud of it, but there’s a small part of me that loves seeing an expensive sports car with a traffic warden inspecting it.

(I’m pretty sure I won’t get all the hyper levels done, but I’m confident I can at least unlock them.)

Some people, when confronted with a problem, think “I know, I’ll use a flow chart.” Now they must go to step 2.

Look upon my 100% collection of cats & mementos in Neko Atsume, ye mighty, and despair.

I was hoping the circular avatar trend would result in massive proliferation of Zorb balls in the real world, but so far no luck.

I take a little solace in knowing there’s a parallel universe where the Eaton Centre food court is called “The Eaton Centre Eating Centre.”

I would say “I’m not angry, just disappointed,” but it would be a lie. I am angry as well.

I bought a decent microphone and I love building blanket forts, so you should definitely invite me on your podcast.