I had  several hundred articles  on Jukkasoft. It had been a journey of tad less than 11 years. User counts were up, visitors booming. My relative boom!

Then I wanted to actually delve deep into WordPress development. As I am a wetware engineer, going into tech is in itself rewarding. It’s new territory to conquer. Writing code and writing articles actually both work as mental exercise.

Nerd Sniping? Yes. Useful? Hope so!

Plugins are the sauce of a WordPress engine. Plugins have been used throughout the known universe, both time- and space-wise, to make most everything.

A WordPress site is composed of few basic ingredients:

• database
• WP engine (PHP code)
• an active theme
• plugins
• a configuration

Desired qualities of Plugins

Neat plugins make an improvement that is understandable, (somewhat) necessary, useful to at least a good bunch of people (one will do, for starters), and easy to use.

The freedom to experiment is wonderful. There’s probably not a plugin that would be useless, for the person who writes it. I haven’t written any plugins, yet. So the first ones will be pretty simple.

I do have a dream of a plugin, called ‘Diamond’ (what an original project name!?)

The Diamond plugin would allow to experiment with simple tinkerings, kind of like A/B test the effects of very simple changes to the blog; a change in a WordPress theme being used; perhaps just as simple as a background color, text style or similar.

The idea is that you could check the numbers, whether the changes in your blog’s visitors is positive. Increase in visitor counts and certain similarly headed statistics would tell you indirectly that at least you didn’t screw up!

I believe people vote by their true online actions. If the blog is not visited a lot, it simply doesn’t yet contain interesting stuff, OR it has some impediment that makes the content hard to access.

WordPress plugins explained

WordPress plugin dev rules of thumb

• use ‘return’ within the plugin PHP code
• do not ‘print’ content from a plugin
• register the plugin’s entry points
• use comment section to provide metadata for WordPress (it will understand your plugin better)

Gradient ascenter

• ascenter => we inverse the direction
• typically Scrum has burndown visualization
• developers are “relaxing towards a zero”, which may not be good
• in Gradient ascension, the (Gradient descenter’s) “cost function” is still applicable; see machine learning and Gradient Descent
• ..but as it’s going towards up (ascending), interesting idea of Project direction (compass) meaning arises also!
• without proper direction, we might end up in wrong valley
• Gradient ascenter was my ad-hoc term for the idea of a Software teamwork done like rock climbing: leave no one behind!
• safety net
• ascent happens only so that no one can be too far ahead (or too far left behind)
• psychological safety in a software project
• implementation: more to come!

Käy antamassa äänesi! Annoin omani 1.2.2020
https://www.kansalaisaloite.fi/fi/aloite/5966

Alunperin kuulin FA-signaalin eräältä kollegalta, joka teki vaativia tietoliikenneasennuksia ja Windows-työasemien konfigurointeja. Oli meneillään tutorointi; työhön perehdyttäminen. Työhön kuului läppäri, ssh-konsoli, mustavalkoista tekstiä; toisinaan “konehuoneeseen” piipahtaminen, kaapelien setvimistä ja tutkimista (“tracing”); kytkentöjä, konfigurointia, ja testaamista. Ja työhön kuului myös muutostilanteen läpiviemisen lisäksi normaalien päivittäisten help-ticketien vastaanottoa ja ratkaisua.

Olin märkäkorva; oppipoika. Kuuntelin innoissani sekä teknisiä että sosiaalisia vinkkejä tältä henkilöltä. Hän oli ollut kymmenenkunta vuotta jo kansainvälisen yrityksen ylläpitäjänä; kiertänyt puolet firman noin 160 maakonttorista läpi, asennellut riittävät ja tarvittavat releet ja pitänyt huolta että ihmiset eli käyttäjät oikeasti myös ymmärsivät mitä releitä oli asenneltu ja ennenkaikkea: kuinka niitä tulisi käyttää. Ja miten ottaa yhteyttä ylläpitoon, kun ongelmia ilmestyi horisonttiin. Ongelmia ilmestyy aina horisonttiin.

Joskus ongelmia on niin paljon, että niitä täytyy alkaa selvittää “toisesta päästä”, ja hetkeksi mentaalisesti tulpata sisääntulevien valitusten puolta.

Kysäisin välittömästi, mitä tuo “FA” siis tarkkaan ottaen tarkoittaa. Hän vastasi: “FA tarkoittaa: fuck all.”

FA:n aikana tehdään kylmähermoisesti asioita eteenpäin, vaikka ydinpommi pamahtaisi jalkojen alla (useimmiten se pamahtaa kyllä muutamia satoja metrejä pään yläpuolella; tai jossain sivummalla).

Käsitin näin, että “FA” on senecalainen, teholtaan usein kohtuullisen voimakas, joskus käsimerkillä viittilöitävä, toisinaan sisäisesti hiljaisena ajatuksena toteutettava mekanismi.

FA on ohjelmistopiireissä myös “pomodorona” tunnettu: 20-25 minuuttia teräksistä keskittymisen aikaa. Flow-tilaa ilman ehtoja.

Kokeile jo tänään. Se saattaa johtaa oikeille raiteille. Ainakin hetkeksi 🙂

PrePavd concept? What did it promise? (Listen here)
What does it give if implemented?

• promise: enables you flick your attention!
  -> make you juices flowing at the blink of an eye
  enable working without friction; no technological barrier to information work
• crowdsourcing and offshoring / outsourcing without the depraving conditions

Implications downstream?

-> job switching (as understood in 2020; switching to (just one) another salary job) becomes an obsoleted concept, possibly
— is a big societal thing
— what does a “job switching” currently represent to different parties?
– organizations?
– companies themselves, having traditional 37.5h/wk employees
– schools?
– academia (universities)
– transport
— energy?
— CO2
— nature

• pay (salary) might become easier, and more transparent
• meritocracy realized?

• part of “digital economy”
• what about FB’s Libra in the future, or similar endeavours?
• does this PrePavd touch the platforms of 2020?
• what about platforms of 2025; rising stars?
• how can future platforms be gauged?

When job switching comes obsolete ->

• companies get best impulse for projects
• what about consistent performance?
• how does it play in reality?
• people get to do the fun stuff!
• [well, who does the shitty stuff? What is shitty stuff? Is there such a thing, or is it just in our minds?]

Crafting a Subject that will not be blocked by brain of Mr43

• be consistent between Subject <-> Body. If you promise, deliver.
• don’t clickbait. Ever.
• write efficiently, short 100-200 words max. No one you want to influence has time for your (too_long) shit.
• if your mail body doesn’t add anything (content-wise) to what you already said in the Subject, you’re using wrong media – use SMS; or something else that drives the deed better.
• don’t write random shitty noise articles
• be timely; don’t send stale information that does not have any historical value (either) – if your product / message has historical time value, have an API or store directly to user’s Solid (MIT / Inrupt) pod
• concentrate – make your message about one clear actionable thing
• be personal if possible – don’t bulk-post
• if you send out professional HR mails that are supposed to really entice applicants, make them good
• use normal case, DON’T SHOUT ALL THE TIME
• don’t send message whose Subject is: “Please do not reply to this mail”

Reasons that will lead to an unread email to be down-thumbed based on Subject alone:

1. I don’t believe that your Subject truthfully captures what would be in email body
   
2. You’re blatant clickbait – I can sense it immediately
   
3. You might be too long an article for my schedule, so I rather not postpone or keep procrastinating, but delete the mail
   
4. Great! Nice to know. The subject already tells everything. Don’t need body. Deleted.
   
5. Sounds like random noise incoming, I’ll muffle it. Deleted
   
6. Yesterday’s weather notification from a system – deleted. Future-referencing weather notifications are much more useful.
   
7. Your content seems to be bit too much of a mixed plate, a “smörgåsbord” – I don’t want confusion. I’m a flow-baby, or at least right now in flow mode (TM)
   
8. You are most likely a robot posting the email, without any viable payload to be expected..
   
9. Some random notification coming out of a list I once subscribed – I’ll unsub, this was my bad! Note to self: don’t subscribe on remotely interesting project’s bug tracking lists.
   
10. The content might be relevant job post, but in a format (from HR system) that reflects the organization is outdated – I want modern and fresh organization. Everybody wants that.
    
11. SORRY I DON’T DO CAPS
    
12. Subject says: ‘Please don’t reply to this mail’. No worries. Click.

Cheers!

There’s an audience of 500 people in a great auditorium. In comes the master. He is calm; takes a look at the audience. His voice is pleasant and assuring.

He begins: “you know, when I was younger, and less experienced, I thought I would have the power to change people. I was wrong.”

“I discovered, much later, that one can only change oneself. There’s no external power that can impose change upon you. Change begins and ends in You.”

He keeps an artistic pause. “You.”

Then he goes on to speak for a good 45 minutes. The audience gives standing ovation.

75% of the folks have a major change in their lives.

Now.

Was the motivation speaker telling the truth? If so, what happened? He basically told that no one, except one-self, can change a person. But his speech had an impact that changed eventually 375 people’s lives (75% of all 500). So he changed the people?