Build, Run, Repeat - page 6
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Handle with Care
I’ve recently had the pleasure of reading “The Phoenix Project”, which is a phenominal little book. It did a lot to really make me think about how I approach my working process - both in the office and on my side projects. It’s sister book, “The Unicorn Project”, is on my list for later, but one thing that I’ve recently been dealing with at work a lot is the idea of risk. Fundamentally, good software development practices seem to fly in the face of “common sense” approaches to risk - and often the worse failings seem to happen when people try and minimise risk instead of confronting it.
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Do or do not
This week, the thing I’ve experienced the most is a defense of just getting on with the thing, instead of worrying about doing the thing. I find sometimes developers tend to approach things from a risk adverse, cautious position. Usually the focus is on how to minimise changes done and disruption caused - especially when you’re dealing with legacy products (and who isn’t). I think where this can cause problems is working on personal projects and proving a concept. Getting wrapped up on whether it’ll work, rather than just seeing if it will.
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Project management for fun (not profit)
I’ve got this long running personal project I like to call “Fitdash”. It’s essentially a dashboard for my Fitbit data (they have a quite nice API that’s easy to access), to help me keep on top of maintenance and have a longer term view on my fitness goals. It’s had a lot of iterations and versions over the years, and essentially I use it as my testbed when I want to learn about a piece of tech. One of the most impactful (and surprisingly fun) changes I’ve made however has happened recently, and it has nothing to do with trying to write more code.
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Endurance
Those that know me, will know that I’m an avid runner - last year I completed my first pair of marathons, and I had been intending to do more this year until the Coronavirus crisis. People who have known me a little longer however, will know there was a time where the idea of me even running a couple of kilometers would have been laughable. I want to take a moment to talk about some of the lessons I’ve learned over years and kilometers.
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Some Registration Required
Following on from my last post about turning a stock N64 gamepad into a USB gamepad— I want to support four controllers from one Arduino, simultaneously. I’m waiting for some salvaged N64 ports to arrive, but in the meantime I’ve still got problems I can solve. Today’s problem is how are we going to know which controllers are connected, and only talk to those controllers, quickly.
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