Roo Reynolds – What's Next?

How to Write the Perfect Term Paper For a Student

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Help With College Term Papers

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Agile in the public sector

I’ve uploaded some slides I put together recently for a couple of events. I’ve also posted my speaker notes below.

Many thanks to Leisa Reichelt and Emma Gasson for giving me some useful tips and links this week, to Alice for the slide template (and, spoilers, for the finale) and to Padma Gillen for letting me steal his construction metaphor. Huge thank yous to the dozens of people whose work I mention below and the hundreds of people who have taught me and influenced me over the past few years.

Continue reading “Agile in the public sector”

Hidden stress

I realised last year that I have two very different reactions to stress.

The first one – the most common and obvious reaction – is to become visibly and obviously agitated. I start speaking about twice as fast, my voice goes up the best part of an octave, and I become flustered and flushed. Visibly and unmistakably stressed. You know what stress looks like. It’s not nice to feel it and it’s not fun to be around. Most of the stress happens due to alcohol and drug consumption. If you’re someone who suffers from the same, drug rehab in Fort Myers is the solution for you.

My second stress reaction is quite different. I disengage. I mentally withdraw from things that are getting to me.

Continue reading “Hidden stress”

Good product management

I was asked to give a short talk to some colleagues about product management. I opted to share some brief attempts to define it. This is hard, so I pointed to other people’s attempts. Next I shared what I think are the characteristics of good product management. This bit, since it was just my current opinions, was both easy and fun.

Here are the slides.

What skills and technologies would you focus on for the next couple of years?

Here’s my list:

Digital not IT
Git more than SVN
Javascript over Java
JSON more than XML
Python more than PHP
Ruby even more than Rails
German more than French
Mandarin more than German
Kano more than Moscow
Kanban more than Scrum
Kaizen more than perfection
Agile much more than PRINCE2
In fact, agile rather than any specific methodology
Inquisitiveness rather than idealism
Curating more than collecting
Content design more than SEO
User needs not requirements
User research not instinct
Making more than writing
Doing more than talking
Cloud more than tin
Data not patents
Open not closed

While there’s value in (some of) the things on the right, I value the things on the left more.

Suggestions from other lovely people:

@fantasticlife: fiddling more than meeting, data more than software, people more than machines
@jukesie: agile not Agile
@msaunby: GPU more than CPU
@frankieroberto: PostGres not MySQL, offline-first not native app
Matt Edgar has a list
John Willshire has an entire book about Making Things People Want > Making People Want Things

BlinkyTape bike indicators

I made a bike light indicator system out of a BlinkyTape, a PowerMonkey rechargeable battery and some Loom Bands.

It starts off with the central front LEDs lit up bright white, and pressing the button on the BlinkyTape switches between steads/left/right indicator modes.

The PowerMonkey is a simple little 5v rechargeable battery, with a variety of adaptors for charging various phones etc. It makes an ideal portable power source for the BlinkyTape.

Here’s a video of it in action.

And I’ve put the source code online too.

I’ve also been experimenting with using the BlinkyTape PatternPaint app to do some light painting.

Lots more fun to have here.

Posting as Holden Caulfield on Secret

I finally found a way to make Secret less boring.

I spent a week posting and responding to comments using carefully selected quotes from Holden Caulfield.

I gave each one the same background (crimson denim) and I dropped the initial capital on each one in an effort to make the quotes slightly less formal.

Catcher in the Rye is a classic, and full of brilliant angst ridden quotes that are indistinguishable from most of what’s on Secret anyway.

Finding relevant quotes to use in replies was fun.

Sometimes it worked better than others.

Some that I expected to work really well didn’t get any replies at all. I expect I need more friends using Secret to make this work really well.

I gradually started to use more obvious quotes and eventually got spotted.

I had lots of replies from people who seemed to take them at face value though. And unless you knew the book well, why wouldn’t you?

One anonymous friend was horrified at Holden’s use of English.

Holden’s attitude to women and sex isn’t all that great, let’s be honest.

I’m glad someone called him on it in the comments.

Custom KSP controller and display

Here’s my custom controller and display for Kerbal Space Program.

Last year, after seeing this custom controller, I was suitably inspired. I wanted to build a simple physical device to control launch/stage, throttle, landing gear, lights, and maybe some custom stages. I knocked up a quick hack just to get a feel for how well it worked, using cardboard, a handful of switches I already had lying around, and a Teensy development board which can act as a USB keyboard.

Using a simple controller with physical switches and buttons as alternatives to keyboard keys was fun to use, but I was soon annoyed every time my hands had to go across to the keyboard – and especially the mouse – when checking things like radar altimeter, periapsis, time to apoapsis etc.

I soon wanted not just switches but screens and dials I could glance at. I especially knew I needed a physical radar altimeter. (Landing safely is hard!) What I needed was a way to get the data out of KSP.

Ideally, I thought, someone would have written a KSP plugin to give me easy access to live data about velocity, altitude, fuel levels, periapsis apoapsis, time to periapsis and apoapsis, height from terrain, velocity, surface speed, vertical speed, sensor data etc. Ideally something simple, lightweight, readable by a hacky little program that could pass the data on through USB serial to the controller.

I was really looking for a CSV or JSON plugin for KSP. It took a bit of digging to find it, and I feared I might have to write it, but I was delighted to find the Telemachus plugin which adds a nice simple JSON API to KSP and has a fully featured web interface built on that API. I don’t use the web interface but the JSON API is great. Getting live data out of KSP and into Ruby was a nice moment.

Now I had an approach that I knew would work, I started putting together a wishlist of parts and putting together a simple paper prototype; a rough sketch of what components I wanted where.

Having seen various voltmeter clock projects I knew I wanted to use an analog output on an Arduino to have it display live data about altitude, fuel, velocity etc.

So I started playing with LCD screens and voltmeters to work out how to display different things simultaneously.

Next I went shopping for a good range of switches

A higher fidelity prototype came next, with holes punched in the cardboard where I thought the switches screens and meters needed to be. At this stage, I learned a lot about what felt comfortable, and moved a few things around.

Starting to put it all together.

The displays all go in to the base

Feels satisfying already

Testing the displays

Preparing to drill the holes

Drilled and Dremelled

Everything in place

Source code

Teensy code for creating key presses from switches
Simple Arduino code for controlling LCD screen and voltmeters
Beginnings of a Ruby script for passing values from the Telemachus plugin to the Arduino

Components

Telemachus plugin – forum post and github page
Teensy USB development board – the Teensy 3.0 is rather cute. Lots of helpful docs here. NB: uses 3.3v rather than 5v, making it unable to control the LCD screen or voltmeters I used. I ended up using both a Teensy and an Arduino but there are lots of alternative approaches.
Small volt panel meters – these ones are quite widely available, fairly cheap, and and are only 44mm². Plus are compatible with this lovely blank faceplate template from Hipsterlogic.
LCD screen – I went for this one from SainSmart and found these pointers rather helpful
Large toggle switch with cover guard – there are a few out there, but I tried this one which has an LED in the switch and has a pleasingly chunky feel. It’s slightly counterintuitive to wire up though, and these comments on Sparkfun were really helpful.
Key switch – this one is a bit flimsy. I’d like something a bit more satisfying. (Incidentally, I also badly want to build something War Games like with two that have to be turned simultaneously.)
Switch with LED ring – these are rather cute. Two contacts closed when pushed, two contacts for the LED.
Red mushroom emergency switch – I went for this fairly small one which I use to kill the throttle
Coloured momentary push switches – I like these ones from Brimal available in a few colours
Small momentary (on)-off-(on) toggle switches – these are ok
One large momentary (on)-off-(on) toggle switch with waterproof boot
WiiMote Nunchuck I had lying around
This WiiChuck adaptor which works nicely on the 3.3v Teensy and apparently the Arduino too.