Jeffikus

OneTab Links: Episode 9

This week has been pretty relaxed, I took the week off to spend some time with the kids and to sort out my passport that expired during lockdown.

Time with the kids was fun, the passport renewal…well, that sucked, but it’s done now!

Tech/Software Development

Basecamp were in the news. I don’t want to go into the details here…read it and make up your own mind.
Interesting article about Building Products at Airbnb.
A free lo-fi wireframe kit for Figma shared by a colleague on Twitter.
Interesting article on using Laravel Wave for a SaaS in 2021.
This is going to be a big one in the future, the WordPress patterns directory is going to be a reality very soon.

Life

I’ve plugged this before, but I’m still enjoying Endel, and very happy I purchased the years subscription!
We first tried to renew our passports in Paarl, so my wife and I stayed overnight on Sunday at Laborie Estate. I can recommend it if you want to relax and are in South Africa! The Italian restaurant on the estate is fantastic – I recommend the Chorizo and Prawn pasta!

Treat your Ears/Mind

A reminder that executing is greater than planning…

"I could build this in a weekend."

But you didn't.
— Oliur (@UltraLinx) April 29, 2021

This conversation between GSP and Lex Fridman really highlights the impact of Fathers.

Big changes to privacy on iOS going forward.

Super cool off grid house.

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OneTab Links: Episode 8

What I digitally ate this week (see what I did there?) – honestly it wasn’t much, I mostly worked, did some leadership training, and slept. I’m on leave next week which will be a nice break!

Tech/Software Development

WordPress themes are set for change going forward. My team at Automattic is hard at work in this very area 🙂
Apple launched some new products at their Spring Event. Not sure what I think of the new iMacs to be honest…
I completed a LinkedIn course on Full Site Editing and the free community course on http://fullsiteediting.com as well.
There was a proposal to treat Google’s FLoC as a security concern within WordPress core.

Life

Cape Town was hit with a devastating fire this week. I’ve posted a video below, but man, it was hard to watch. Not to mention my works at the foot of the mountain where it was burning.
The European super league came crashing down after only a few days.

Treat your Ears/Mind

The fires in Cape Town this past week were devastating to many, including my alma mater UCT. I spent many hours in the section of the library that was lost. Really affected me emotionally 🙁

That’s our African Studies Library, one of the most important buildings in South African academia. Apart from harm to people or loss of life, this is the worst possible outcome of a fire starting by Rhodes Mem. We will never replace this. https://t.co/x2akKwe0gf
— Nick Mulgrew (@NichMulgrew) April 18, 2021

My alma mater burns…..so sad…..

I’m big fan of the AeroPress

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OneTab Links: Episode 7

Some really fascinating article, tools, and videos I enjoyed this past week.

Tech/Software Development

Want to create a one page website with WordPress? Here’s a great tutorial.
I have had a fascination with UI Kits/Design system templates for a while, I quite like this one , this one and this one.
Laravel Wave 2.0 launched, which is basically a SaaS kit that is open source and is essentially a competitor to Laravel Spark.
Full Site Editing resources continue to appear, with a nice course on LinkedIn launching.
Need a WordPress theme for podcasting? Here’s a great YouTube review of 5 themes.
Aino launched a Block Pattern set for WordPress.

Life

South Africa began allowing bookings for COVID-19 vaccines for over 60 year olds.
This is worth watching from Tim Ferriss about how to not allow your phone to control you and I’ve embedded it below as well.

Treat your Ears/Mind

Never realised a tweet could make me so emotional…made me think back with deep gratitude about joining Woo all those years ago! I was the 3rd full time employee back then!

Never bet against small teams of people who believe they can change the world. 🚀
— Allison Barr Allen (@abarrallen) April 14, 2021

South Africa….you hurt my heart so much sometimes 🙁

I’m big fan of the AeroPress

Thought provoking

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OneTab Links: Episode 6

This week was a short week thanks to the Easter weekend, but I still found some good stuff, enjoy!

Tech/Software Development

Wix were in the news for all sorts of the wrong reasons. But some good news is that a colleague of mine has developed a tool to help export your site content even though Wix don’t allow that 🙂
Sadly, the Free Software Foundation were also in the news for the wrong reasons.
Scott Bolinger interviewed Mike Jolley about headless WordPress and his journey.
Rob Hope shared a beautiful tool for sharing code snippets.
An interesting Podcast episode about building the Twenty Twenty One WordPress theme. I contributed towards this project, so was cool to listen to this 🙂

Life

Some cool gadgets you might be interested in purchasing.
I love coffee, I love playing cards, here’s what happens when they collide.
I love how these beer cans have been designed! Just needs a nicer font in my opinion!

Treat your Ears/Mind

This was basically me this week:

This is deeply accurate. https://t.co/hxx5wwqiI8
— Hugh Lashbrooke (@hlashbrooke) April 9, 2021

I’ve been making AeroPress this week, here’s the recipe I’ve used.

Fascinating

Peaceful!

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OneTab Links: Episode 5

I missed posting last week due to some family responsibility, but I’ve got a bumper edition with some good stuff this week!

Tech/Software Development

I was telling a colleague about design systems this week, and some places I had been to for inspiration – Codyhouse is a great resource including their 6 part series on Design System.
WordPress Full Site Editing is ramping up for inclusion in core, and here’s a good podcast talking about the latest news there.
Design platform Figma are having a conference in April.
Want to learn how to make block patterns for WordPress? Here’s a great tutorial.
In case you didn’t know, WooCommerce has a great free resource for learning modern JavaScript.
Just another story of how people from Cape Town, South Africa have been instrumental in building large online tech companies – this time AWS.
Mike Jolley finished his 4 part series on Headless WordPress with a great post!
If you are looking for a free WordPress theme for your portfolio, this is a great new option called Eksell from Anders Norén!
This is a useful collection of code cheatsheets and examples.
If you prefer paper over digital wireframing, this printable resource is for you.

Life

If you are still in lockdown and miss the pub or socializing in general, you can still pretend you are there with these sounds.
My friend Rob Hope site One Page Love became a teenager! Congrats Rob! 🙂
I see one of my favorite coffee shops in Cape Town ships internationally 🙂 and they ship my favorite roast, Black Honey, in capsules if you prefer that instead of beans!
My favorite shoe brand, Vans, finally launched an online store for South Africa!
Most of my friends know that I have a notebook obsession. I might just buy one of these to try as it looks pretty cool!
A colleague of mine built one of these guitar kits recently, they look amazing!
I also watched the Snyder cut of the Justice League, and saw Francis Ngannou become the UFC Heavyweight champ! (video below)

Treat your Ears/Mind

A twitter thread with some thought provoking advice:

How to Get Rich (without getting lucky):
— Naval (@naval) May 31, 2018

PRS make some wonderful instruments, private stock are just incredible!

A walkthrough on how “Everlong” was written.

A new UFC heavyweight champ from Africa!

Just listen and enjoy 🙂

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OneTab Links: Episode 4

In this week’s episode I share a fun SQL joke found on Twitter, a musical about guitar pedals, and I even wrote a leadership blog post this week!

Tech/Software Development

While in a meeting earlier this week a colleague’s web cam on their Mac wasn’t working. Here’s how to fix that 🙂
I haven’t tried this web builder yet, but it looks pretty interesting, especially the claim of “clean, readable code”
I helped a friend backup their WordPress website this week. They needed a free option, so I used Updraft Plus and XCloner. I always make 2 backups 🙂

Life

This week I wrote about being a buffer for your team.
This resonated with me as I had 1:1’s with my team this week.
I use sticky notes in real life to organize my thoughts, but recently I’ve been using digital Stickies too.

Treat your Ears/Mind

A database joke:

A SQL statement walks into a bar and sees two tables. It approaches, and asks "may I join you?"

hahaha
haha

I'll see myself out.
— Danny Thompson (@DThompsonDev) March 12, 2021

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Leadership: Being a Buffer

Every Monday my team runs a retro/planning meeting for the past week and the week ahead, where we run through 3 things in our retro;

What went well?
What could have gone better?
What could we change?

This week the team felt really focused for “what went well” but I felt there was a lot of “noise” and “distraction” – this was interesting to me, so we explored why there was a difference.

As it turned out, I’ve been doing my job properly by handling the tasks that would have prevented the team from doing their core work. Which is great, as I’m being the buffer that they need! 🙂 They could then focus, and complete the tasks towards the team goals.

What was even more of a win to me was how open they were to give me that feedback! It validated some of the work I was doing and gave me confidence towards the week ahead and the processes I’ve been putting in place behind the scenes.

OneTab Links: Episode 3

In this week’s episode I found some cool articles ranging from WordPress and Laravel, to Electron and Firebase!

Tech/Software Development

A crash course in Firebase on CSS Tricks. I’ve been a big fan of Firebase for a long time, since long before Google acquired them.
Interesting UI design app for making iOS apps inside iOS.
Good article on WordPress Full Site Editing.
Pretty slick new free portfolio WordPress theme from Anders Norén.
This is a clever consistent use of styles across creative apps like Visual Studio Code.
Makerpad were acquired by Zapier!
I came across this Laravel tutorial trying to fix my local dev environment (thanks Big Sur) so I haven’t actually tried this yet, but if it works, that’s one less environment to have 🙂
Started tinkering a little in Electron.

Life

Some interesting thoughts about Facebook usage.
If you have kids, this is a pretty good thing from Apple.
Thought provoking article on the “Why behind work”
I got the Windows install from last weeks episode working on the SDD! Only problem now is the bluetooth doesn’t work 🙁

Treat your Ears/Mind

A tweet from a friend:

Something that I've saying to a lot of people these past two weeks:

"Go easy on yourself mate."

So here we are, ya'll. We're all busy, in a rush, trying to make shit happen, but we can also look around and appreciate where are right now and be kind to ourselves.
— Marc Perel (@MarcPerel) March 12, 2021

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OneTab Links: Episode 2

In this week’s episode I found some more fun things; some punk rock thoughts, Star Wars beats, and a bunch of interesting podcast related stuff 🙂

Tech/Software Development

It’s actually very important to retire old code bases and not just maintain them forever because of the difficulty of maintaining them becomes extremely high.
Microsoft introduced Mesh.
WP Briefing Podcast Episode 1
I was recommended this React course from a colleague. Thinking about taking it.
Are we finally going to see IE11 support disappear?
Some interesting nocode tools.

Life

Tim Ferriss interviewed Jordan Peterson.
I was reminded this week about why I should still be blogging, and what I should writing about.
Received a new hat this week, of course it’s WordPress branded, but man it fits super nicely!
I purchased an SSD and will be installing Windows on it so I can dual boot my Mac without losing internal hard drive space 🙂

Treat your Ears/Mind

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OneTab Links: Episode 1

This week I found some fun things; it’s a mix between Tech, Life, and Music. This post will keep evolving each week.

Tech/Software Development

Lex Fridman has some fascinating discussions around JavaScript on his podcast. Here’s a shortlink to some episodes on Youtube.
Build your mobile app in 10 days with React Native
Love this for mobile inspiration
Cool site for a WP forms plugin
A responsive web browser for testing
A colleague of mine launched a free Design School!
WordPress with NextJS – this sound fun!
New Framework7 looks great and supports Capacitor
Finally got around to watching WordPress Themes of the Future.
PWA’s with WordPress.
Boardly: The Simplest Planning Board

Life

I got a smart timer installed so I can control my swimming pool pump from my phone 🙂
I still really wanna order one of these retro gaming devices.
I started running again, and played around with a fun new app from Lukesbeard
I like coffee. And I really like this WooCommerce site from South African roastery Bluebird Coffee.
I’ve read most of the books from Basecamp/37 Signals, but not this yet. Gonna start it after I finish The Making of a Manager on Audible.
I’ve been using Endel app for the past week and a bit. I love it. I’m using it on Mac (despite the heavy CPU usage – toggle it, trust me) and iOS. Happy to pay for this!