Sprint Retrospectives

I’m doing some research on how to run productive sprint retrospectives.

Mountain Goat Software has a good structure that breaks down into how to encourage good habits:

Start: What needs to be added to the team’s habits
Stop: What needs to be changed or removeed
Continue: What working but needs to continue in order to become a habit.

Once something becomes adopted as a habit, it drops off the list. Otherwise the list would grow.
The key is, keep it short, keep feelings out of it. I also like that in each sprint retrospective, there is a sheet of paper with last week’s retrospective points so the team can see them. They don’t need to be discussed but having them as a reference is helpful/


I’ve had other weekly retrospectives that were like this:
Each person takes a turn listing:
Round One: 3 things that worked
Round Two: 3 things that could be improved upon
Round Three: Any blockages
The meeting ends with a quick list of what’s happening the following week, plus a shout out to someone or something exceptional that happened that week.

This style works well on teams with new employees because it forces everyone to become part of the discussion from their very first week. I like tat the feedback is given in rounds instead of having the first person go through the pluses and minuses before moving on. It allows for time to think about your own list and modify it.

Most importantly, I think, is to get the retrospective done fast, record what’s been discussed, and move on. We’re smart humans, a quick check in is usually enough to plant a seed for future improvements, or when necessary, a follow up conversation off-line.

A Good Markdown Cheat Sheet

As we build out our site infrastructure and document our development process in our github wiki, I’ve been learning a lot about Markdown.

I’m loving the simplicity of this Markdown cheat sheet by Adam Prichard. It’s a boiled down version of Github’s documentation on writing markdown. It gets straight to the point. Gotta love a good cheat sheet.

I should also mention he’s built a tool that lts you write email in markdown. Pretty nifty.

 

 

Make your own Table of Contents in Google with Bookmarks

I never remember how to do this so I’m adding the quick steps here. I know there are ways of auto generating a Table of Contents in Google Docs, but I don’t know, I just like making my own. Don’t judge me.

  1. Go through your body of text and Select the headers/text you want to link to in your hand-spun TOC.
  2. Select Insert > Bookmark
  3. Go to the top of your doc and make a little list of things you want in your TOC
  4. Select one, Hit Command + K
  5. Click the Bookmarks > to expand the available bookmarks list
  6. Click on the bookmark you want to link to.
  7. Enjoy!

Here’s mine!

How to stop an iframe video when closing modal

Needed to stop a video from playing and was impatient and having trouble getting it to work using YouTubes APIs. Found this solution and it worked right off the bat.

https://gomakethings.com/stopping-youtube-vimeo-and-html5-videos-with-javascript/

Add this method to your script:

var stopVideo = function ( element ) {
var iframe = element.querySelector( 'iframe');
var video = element.querySelector( 'video' );
if ( iframe !== null ) {
var iframeSrc = iframe.src;
iframe.src = iframeSrc;
}
if ( video !== null ) {
video.pause();
}
};

Call the function as needed, passing the container element into the function:

stopVideo( tab );

Dragged a hard drive icon into infinity

Although it was another lifetime ago, I used to work at Apple, so when I have issues with my Mac, it bruises my ego. Lucky for me, the internets are full of answers to questions. My hard drive disappeared from the finder. I knew it was ok, I could get to it through the Terminal, but how to get it back up in my finder window. Here’s the answer I needed today:

“Show missing hard disks in the Finder sidebar
The Finder sidebar is a convenient location to access frequently used items such as hard drives, various folders in your home directory, network shares, and any custom items you drag there. If you use the sidebar for accessing hard disks, then there may be times when certain hard disks do not show up here, while others do.

The likely reason for this occurring is if you have removed that specific hard drive from the sidebar. Even though the Finder has a sidebar setting you can check or uncheck to globally show or hide all external hard disks, there is a gray area where only some of these enabled items will be shown. This happens when you select and drag items off of your sidebar manually.”

https://www.macissues.com/2014/10/23/show-missing-hard-disks-in-the-finder-sidebar/

wordpress localhost subpages not working

I’ve been banging my head against the wall because a local install of a wordpress I’m developing would for some reason not let me go to any wordpress subpages. I kept looking at my permalink settings, they looked fine, tried adding mod_rewrite to my htaccess file. It didn’t make sense because the admin pages were working. Then I found this tip on Stack Overflow. Sometimes all it takes is going to the permalinks page and hitting the save button to regenerate the permalinks. Thank you Enniu!

https://stackoverflow.com/a/17623426/8061436

Frank Stella does Moby Dick

https://www.masterworksfineart.com/blog/frank-stella-and-moby-dick-a-whale-of-an-imagination/

Stella explained “I think the Moby Dick series [1986-1997] is a kind of turning point. I was a little afraid, and probably still am a little, with Moby Dick, but the pictures [are] essentially curved surfaces. They started to really move, and the novel moves; you’re going around the world, it’s pretty wet, there are a lot of waves and motion (Pobric).” In this manner, Stella creates a visual narrative as powerful as its original textual form.

Forever Stubborn

I was reading a Twitter conversation between two programmers a couple months ago. One of them said “I’m not a good programmer, I’m just stubborn.” I completely related and I’ve had that statement on my mind ever since. Despite the dozens and dozens of tutorials over the last few months, despite building my own projects, writing out code with pen and paper, dreaming nonsensical dreams about key-value pairs, playing coding games with my kid, reading at night until my eyes close on me, I still feel like a bad programmer. But I am not giving up, ever. OK? Never. Never ever.

I had an interview today. I was given a logic test. I eventually answered it but I’m embarrassed at how long it took me to answer it. After the interview I went on Amazon and looked up logic puzzle books. I looked for websites with logic puzzles. I thought, well, I’ve uncovered this inadequacy and now I know it’s there, have to do something about it. Stubborn. Stubborn. Stubborn. Determined and stubborn until the day I die.

I’d love to sit and chat some more about my stubbornness, but I have to get back to my umpteenth Javascript class.

Jolene Kelley website is live

Jolene Kelley is a Craniosacral Therapist in Portland, OR. She hadn’t updated her site in several years. Her previous site was not responsive and while it did a good job of delivering information, it needed a refresh. Jolene was also frustrated that she was unable to update the site other than adding and editing posts and pages. In order to save time and money, I found a template (Colorist by <span class=”author”><a href=”https://wordpress.org/themes/author/webulous/”>Venkat Raj</a>) </span>with a great customizer and used that as my starting point.

There’s a funny story about how I met Jolene. I’ve been job hunting for several months off and on. It’s been stressful to say the least. I needed to give myself a day off so I headed to the soaking pools at <a href=”https://www.mcmenamins.com/kennedy-school”>McMenamin’s Kennedy School</a> for a soak. Jolene was there with her 4 year old daughter. Her daughter to a liking to me, it happens a lot to me, whether Juniper’s with me or not, kids tend to like me. Jolene and I started chatting about life and work. She asked me if I was looking for small website work and I said yes! Her beautiful site is the result. She had a big hand in the design, I just made the code magic happen. She threw in a Craniosacral appointment as a thank you and, let me tell you, this woman has a real gift. I’m so proud of how great the site turned out and I’m extra lucky that I met a great person.

Check out her site!

Go Deep

Applying River Tips to Life Struggles

“If you’re stuck in a hole, balling up and letting yourself go deep instead of fighting the water should help you flush out.”

–Quote from Irene’s Kayaking Blog

I used to raft quite a bit. Rafting is an interesting sport. Normally the term “swimming,” usually invokes images of happy summer days, splashing around a pool, possibly while sipping drinks with tiny umbrellas. In rafting and kayaking, swimming is a very very bad word. You don’t want to swim. Swimming means you’ve been ejected from the safety of your raft and are more than likely fighting for your life, possibly getting hypothermia, risking a head injury hitting your head on a rock, or getting pulled into a hole you can’t get out of.  A hole is a powerful, churning whirlpool that happens in an eddy, where the water rushes in and gets trapped, pulling any debris (or swimmers) down into it’s depths. It’s hard to get out of a hole. You can’t tell which way is up, gravity makes no senses, and you suddenly realize how important air is to you. Holes are nasty.

I was thinking about river holes today. I kind of feel like I’m stuck in a hole right now. I don’t know how to get out. This diagram and the preceding tip are a reminder that I can’t just tread water forever. At some point I’m going to have to ball up, go under, and try to shoot out to other side. When I do, I might not have enough oxygen to make it out the other side, but if I stay in this hole, I’ll eventually drown.

When Things Go Wrong on the River – And How to Get Out of a Hole