08 Feb 2024, 13:00 p.m.

Whether And How To Trust A New Maintainer

How should we think about trust when it comes to adding new maintainers to a project? Another way of saying that is: if I'm an existing project maintainer, considering whether to entrust you with co-maintainership, …

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18 Jan 2024, 12:16 p.m.

This Is A Part Of My Self, Too

You are a selected audience. That is to say, you have selected, yourself, to read this. You have a variety of reasons to do so, and I imagine that, for some of you, you do …

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11 Jan 2024, 14:00 p.m.

Glimpses of 2023

I started on a more systematic 2023 retrospective post, and found that a pretty significant amount of my 2023 centered on stuff I don't want to talk about on my blog. Feel free to ask …

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11 Jan 2024, 11:08 a.m.

A Few Athletic Lessons

I have learned or re-learned a smattering of lessons in the last few months, concerning athletic activities and inhabiting my body in general.Sometimes, when I do crunches or sit-ups or similar abdominal exercises, my neck …

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03 Jan 2024, 11:20 a.m.

Some Diversity Advice I Give

Colleagues ask me for advice on diversifying their hiring pipelines, recruiting and retaining volunteer contributors, and addressing diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) in marketing to and taking care of their users. Here are a few …

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19 Dec 2023, 11:05 a.m.

Nailing Down An Answer, Or At Least A Question

Someone in a group chat mentioned a particular annoyance in dealing with doctors, nurses, and similar medical experts. Sometimes you take pains to ask them a specific, deliberately-worded question, and they don't really seem to …

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28 Nov 2023, 11:47 a.m.

Free Online Classes From FEMA

My country's Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) offers a bunch of free independent study online classes. I started poking around and there's some neat stuff in there.You can read all the material for free online, …

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16 Nov 2023, 11:15 a.m.

In Retrospect, Surprised We Didn't Notice The Adjacent "Mostly Harmless" Joke Available

Leonard and I frequently play edutainment webgames, and thus we're slowly getting better at various realms of human knowledge. Recently we've added a few new games to the rotation. Metaflora has clarified for us how …

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14 Nov 2023, 10:45 a.m.

Going From Proprietary To FLOSS Product Management

Someone asked me for pointers on doing product management (and, to a lesser extent, project management) in Free/Libre Open Source Projects for the first time, after many years of experience in proprietary software. I basically …

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08 Nov 2023, 1:15 a.m.

Eldercare, Family Caretaking, and End-of-life Logistics: Stuff I Learned

My mother died recently, after a long decline in her health, and I was one of the main people who helped take care of her. (Here’s her obituary.) While caring for her, preparing for her …

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