Newsletter
Referred Pain
April 21, 2020
Doctor it hurts when I do this...
The problem isn't always where the pain is
I have an amazing group of tech reviewers for my Functional Programming book.
Last week I sent them chapter two and something about it felt off to me but I couldn't identify it.
Their comments were amazing and helpful. They ranged from typos, to setting something in the wrong font, to not giving the reader what they need in the sample code to continue with an example.
But they kept coming back to problems they were having in a couple of sections.
I knew where it hurt - now I had to figure out how to fix it.
Sometimes your knee hurts because you're walking funny because of a pain in your hip or foot. The problem isn't the knee and fixing the knee won't help.
You need to look beyond the symptom to try to find the cause.
I tried two solutions.
I moved two sections up to the front of the chapter. They didn't belong where they were and that's why people were complaining about the sections on either side of them. Now they all read better.
I've also added an experiment called "ABDCE" - "A Badly Drawn Comic Explanation".
I haven't heard feedback about these yet, but I think I'll leave them in for now.
Link to the Podcast episode from April 21, 2023.
Back to baking
I've been using 3+ pounds of flour a week as I've been exploring recipes to share with you and, as many of you know, it's gotten difficult to find flour.
Fortunately, one of our neighbors (one of Maggie's former English teachers), saw my plea on FaceBook and gave us a spare 12 pound bag of King Arthur flour that she had bought and then decided she didn't need. Thank you! Such an act of kindness.
So, I'm back to posting recipes though now that we know more, they are formulas not recipes.
This week we're making variations on the Basic Bread recipe. We already experimented with Poolish and Sourdough. This week I encourage you to try other flours and we're about to push the hydration quite a bit in both directions.
You'll find this and more on the Editors Cut blog.
Other people's stuff
I meant to mention this a couple of weeks ago. Mattt has released swift-doc on GitHub.
It takes a directory of Swift files and generates docs in HTML or Markdown.
Oh and while we're here - GitHub has dropped their prices for many. Microsoft has been an outstanding steward for this resource.
Silly diversion
It's kind of neat to see the things people can do at home without a ton of equipment these days.
I was editing a video I prepared for a conference (more on that next week if I ever figure out how to post to teachable) when someone sent me a link to this fun video.
No - my video is not of me dancing or interacting with fragments of myself.
Maggie's link
Maggie and I have long been Vi Hart fans. She explains math ideas better than almost anyone I know. Her web site and video library of doodle explanations is worth spending hours perusing. I can't imagine how much time it takes her to do these things that it looks as if she is just dashing off.
This link is to a different sort of video. It is an explainer for the Roadmap to Pandemic Resilience.
Vi has produced a short that explains what a task force (that she is on) is recommending for the pandemic. She illustrates why we can't come back too quickly and outlines four stages of what they recommend as our plan to end the home quarantine.
The bad news is that the plan lasts through July and beyond. The good news is that following it will likely mean we don't have to start all over again shutting things down.