Podcasts, January 2020
I used to listen to a lot more podcasts, but I spent the end of 2019 getting rid of a bunch of them that, honestly, had started to feel like obligations.
Since I dropped a few shows, I also switched Overcast from 3X speed to 2.5X, which is actually quite nice. If I can figure out how to get rid of a few more, maybe I can get comfortable with it running at 2X.
Anyway, here's what I'm listening to (regularly) right now:
- The Daily — Monday thru Friday podcast from NYT with a longform story followed by a quick recap of the previous day's headlines.
- Pod Save America — Flagship of Crooked Media, PSA covers politics news through a left-leaning lens. Kinda bro-y, but I still like it.
- Lovett or Leave It — Jon Lovett's extremly loose recap of the week in politics.
- Pod Save the World — Gotta stay up on foreign affairs, y'all!
- 99% Invisible — Compelling show about the unseen aspects of design. Roman's my favorite podcaster, hands down.
- Reply All — Been listening to PJ and Alex since TLDR. The consistency in show quality makes up for the annoying delay between episodes.
- Bodega Boys — Inject the Art directly into my veins!
- Jordan, Jesse GO! — Basically the first "two funny guys and a guest bullshitting" podcast. Been listening for as long as they've been a thing.
- Roderick on the Line — I'm keeping a small bag packed for Supertrain.
- Do By Friday + After Show — Weekly "challenge" podcast where the hosts sometimes don't do the challenge.
- My Brother, My Brother And Me — This show makes me laugh like a dumb goober, so I'll probably never get rid of it.
- Let’s Make Mistakes — My friend Mike is (rightfully) cranky about stuff.
- WTF with Marc Maron — Almost 1100 episodes and I haven't missed a single one. Even the subjects that I'm not interested in turn out to be great interviews.
If I make any changes, I'll let y'all know!
tags: podcasts, media-diet
ROADMAP.md for WordPress developers
On the WPwatercooler podcast this week — while talking about what's coming in 2020 — I proposed that WordPress plugin developers might want to consider adding ROADMAP.md files to their GitHub repos.
Much like CHANGELOG.md shows you where a project has been, ROADMAP.md would show you where a project is headed.
- Planning on fixing a long-standing issue? Put it in
ROADMAP.md. - Working on a new feature? Put it in
ROADMAP.md. - Getting ready to roll out indexes for common database queries? Put it in
ROADMAP.md
Standard changelog rules apply. Group things by version number, with simple, digestible bullet points. Add context where necessary. Avoid putting dates on things so you're not on a deadline.
Unlike changelogs, which are kept in reverse-chronological order, roadmaps should be kept in chronological order. What's coming up in the next release should be the first thing people read. You don't want to make your users dig around for what's next, do you?
Should anyone decide to do this, I'd love to know about it. At me on Mastodon or Twitter and send me a link to your repo!
tags: wordpress, roadmap, changelog
Why not WordPress?
As someone who has had a 14 year career working with WordPress, it might be surprising that I'm not using the same old hammer that I always have.
But, in order for me to feel more comfortable with writing on the regular, I decided to try using something without any baggage. And what's more baggage free than a bash script that converts Markdown files into blog posts?
No plugins. No themes. No block editor. Just words. Glorious words.
Tildeverse, meet the Fediverse
Thanks to Darius Kazemi's wonderful RSS to ActivityPub service, you can now follow this blog from the Fediverse service (Mastodon, Pleroma, Hometown, etc.) of your choice.
Happy reading!
Fuck. That sounds kind of corny. Oh well... Still getting my sea legs back, I guess.
tags: fediverse, activitypub, tools
Objectives for 2020
Let's begin, shall we?
Here's a list of the pie in the sky shit that I'm going to try to do in 2020:
- Keep track of my media diet, a la Kottke.
- Launch a Hometown instance for Bakersfield makers.
- Get out of the house and go for a walk most days of the week.
- Try to write more. Like this. Maybe some longer things.
- Submit only AMA sessions to the WordPress events I apply to speak at.
- Attempt to care for sourdough starter (currently unpurchased) and make a few loaves.
- Smoke a brisket that people rave about.
- Grow my own weed in the backyard.
- Make some stupid internet crap.
So, that's it for now. Nothing too ambitious, right?
I've already started on some of this. Until I post more, I'll leave you to guess what I'm working on though.
tags: todo, objectives