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Baty.net

A blog about everything by Jack Baty 👋

Tag: Miscellaneous

Testing the Iceberg editor for WordPress…again

Unless I’m doing some crazy non-standard layout, I’m not a fan of using WordPress’ Gutenberg editor. Mostly I just want to type some simple text and add a link or two.

Last year I bought a license for Iceberg which is a lightweight Gutenberg replacement that feels more “normal”. I stopped using it because there was a kind of uncanny valley effect, but after several frustrating days wrestling Gutenberg, I’m trying Iceberg again. Here’s what this post looks like in Iceberg

Remote workers and their diapered managers

<p>
  My feelings about remote work are evolving, and I&#8217;m working through them, but social media makes it difficult because social media almost forces us to pick a side and run hard with it. Nuance is left at the curb, along with rational discussions.
</p>

<p>
  The above tweet demonstrates the kind of thing I see from people who&#8217;ve never had an employee who <em>wanted</em> to work remotely, but was incapable of being productive that way. That is a situation that exists. What should be done? My first reaction is termination. Problem solved!. How&#8217;s that for adult pants? But seriously, I don&#8217;t have a good answer. I don&#8217;t think the answer is automatically, &#8220;just give every employee the choice.&#8221;
</p>

<p>
  I could have chosen any number of tweets along these lines as example, but Bell is someone I enjoy following and this tweet in particular triggered me with the &#8220;adult pants&#8221; phrase. Managers, even good ones, sometimes struggle making difficult decisions (which I assume he means by &#8220;putting on adult pants&#8221;). So? Who doesn&#8217;t?
</p>

<p>
  I&#8217;ve been managing a handful of people for 25 years. In most cases, I&#8217;m entirely OK with them working remotely. Basically, I&#8217;m a fan of remote work, and prefer it for all the reasons made by its proponents.
</p>

<p>
  However, I don&#8217;t agree that remote work is automatically the best option for every person and for every company. Maybe you work for one of those companies. You might even be one of those people for whom remote work is counterproductive (and you probably don&#8217;t even know it.)
</p>

<p>
  So at least maybe don&#8217;t assume that every example of &#8220;I&#8217;d like you in the office&#8221; is a case of a bad manager just wanting to watch over the shoulder of a &#8220;body in a seat.&#8221; It <em>could</em> be that, but it also might not be.
</p>

<p>
  Nuance, is all I&#8217;m saying.
</p>

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</p>

Joys of well-engineered mechanical devices – Macfilos

Keith James, Macfilos:

Perhaps because life in the third decade of the twenty-first century, for those of us in technologically developed countries, seems to involve almost total submersion in an ocean of digital devices, I suspect I am not the only one who enjoys occasionally being cast away on an island of mechanical wonder, where devices involve moving parts more than moving electrons.

Mmmm, mechanical memories.

Idle or floor it?

Things have been stagnating around here. I haven’t felt like doing any capital-B Blogging. Rather, I’ve been pouring stuff into

rudimentarylathe.wiki. It’s just easier to have the daily notes tiddler open and type as I go. No need to come up with titles or worry about whether I have enough words put together to justify a new post. Writing blog posts is a Whole Thing™.

This blog started out as a place for me to share photos and their supporting processes and gear. Later, I combined it with my other blog(s) in an effort to consolidate my “presence”. Instead of writing more, which is what I expected to happen, I write almost never.

★★★ 3 stars by default

Here’s my star rating system for everything:

⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️ Loved it!
⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️ It was good
⭐️⭐️⭐️ It was OK
⭐️⭐️ I didn’t like it
⭐️ Hated it

With me, everything gets 3 stars by default. Books, movies, photographs, everything: 3 stars right off the bat. I always assume that this new thing or person or conversation will be OK at the very least. This applies to more than just media. It applies to people, too. Sometimes I’m disappointed and end up with 1 or 2 stars, but more often than not I’m surprised and delighted and my opinion of something or someone goes up rather than down.

A New Guild System – The Hedgehog Review

A New Guild System | THR Blog | Blogs | The Hedgehog Review:

At a time when, as Levin points out, people tend to see participation even in such august institutions as the United States Congress as a platform for building their own personal brand, the solo-proprietor world can all-too-easily become branding all the way down and the personal website a device for constant ego-feeding.

“Branding all the way down” indeed.

Using the current book’s cover as lock screen on my Kindle

I

got my first Kindle in 2007. I had given up on Amazon letting me do the Most Obvious Thing, which is to use the current book’s cover on the lock screen.

But, after 13 years, I finally can!

Finally!

(I’ll probably decide to disable it when reading “Fifty Shades”, though)