Many, many, blog posts by Alex Kessinger (frequent inventor of words). on Rumproarious

It's Going to Get Weird

Fri, 10 Apr 2026 12:00:00 -0600

I was a front-end engineer before the iPhone existed. As apps increased in use, a thought occurred to me: what if websites just… disappear? What does that mean for my job? My gut reaction was I guess it’s time to learn Objective-C. I tried it. It wasn’t fun. It wasn’t my world. Cut to today, Websites didn’t disappear. But more importantly, I realized my job was never “writing front-end code.” My job was delivering value to people sustainably and efficiently.

Your File System Is Already a Graph Database

Sat, 04 Apr 2026 10:00:00 -0700

Karpathy recently posted about using LLMs to build personal knowledge bases — collecting raw sources into a directory, having an LLM “compile” them into a wiki of interlinked markdown files, and viewing the whole thing in Obsidian. He followed it up with an “idea file,” a gist you can hand to your agent so it builds the system for you. This is a great idea, I’ve been doing some form of this for over a decade.

The StaffEng Podcast is Back

Wed, 21 Jan 2026 10:00:00 -0700

After a long hiatus, David and I are bringing the StaffEng podcast back. We’re back because our work is changing dramatically, weekly, and we want want to learn from folks who are riding this wave with us. You can read more here: We’re Back When we started the podcast back in 2021, we were exploring what it meant to be a Staff-plus engineer. We talked to practitioners about setting technical direction, mentorship, sponsorship, and all the things that set senior individual contributors apart.

Curiosity: An Unreasonably Powerful Tool

Sun, 11 Jun 2023 09:16:56 -0700

You want to get hard things done, and you want to tackle progressively bigger things. We all do. If you are reading this you chose to do a hard thing. You probably use hard work and elbow grease to do the job. While that kind of work is valuable, at a certain level of complexity, those tools loose their usefulness. And yet, you still want to do the hard thing. This is a good news/bad news deal.

A Morbid Sense of Pride

Sat, 17 Dec 2022 16:38:21 -0700

Once you’ve decided to adopt a new view of safety, and want to help an organization change, how do you know if you are changing anything? How do you know if you are successful? Especially considering the total organization overhaul you hope to achieve. It can be useful to identify some markers somewhere between nothing, and total success. What are some markers that demonstrate we are on our way? A recent incident, which involved a system I am partially accountable/responsible for, left me with a morbid sense of pride.

How my biggest work failure led to success

Sun, 10 Apr 2022 01:16:56 -0700

From my tiny West Berkeley apartment, with my family asleep upstairs, I typed into the search box: “python Berkeley”. It was 2015 and for the past 6 years, I commuted hours a day all over the Bay Area. My goal was eventually to create a startup. But, My latest gig had imploded and I was tired and mis-wanting to be a startup founder was reason number one . While I still enjoyed programming, I needed a refuge from the hustle, if possible a job I could walk to.

Expertise is all around - it's just not evenly distributed.

Tue, 22 Dec 2020 01:16:56 -0700

Writing down remediation items is a seductively simple outcome for a post-mortem. It’s satisfying. “Yea, there was an issue but if we do these 3 things, we will be better off”. It’s all wrapped up in a nice bow. Although remediation feels like the right outcome, it’s not the most powerful reason to do a post-mortem. The most valuable part of a post-mortem is the ability to radiate expertise into your organization.

Debriefing Facilitation Guide

Tue, 22 Dec 2020 00:00:00 +0000

Software is key to a growing number of businesses. Which means working with software safely isn’t just prudent, it’s existential to many. The wrong kind of accident could wipe you out. Investigating incidents is a technique many businesses use to remediate issues that led to accidents in the first place. They hope it will help them reduce the number and scope of accidents in the future. While traditional accident investigation is problematic, Etsy use’s a “New View” of safety to create better outcomes.

The Amazon Kinesis Event

Sun, 29 Nov 2020 09:16:56 -0700

(A hypothetical dependency graph that led to a systemic failure in AWS us-east-1 from @0xdabbad00) Like many, I was personally affected by the AWS outage last week. I was on-call, and was paged for a couple of reasons. While I was paged, I owe a lot to the infrastructure team I work with. They managed all of the issues I was paged for, and outside of a few spurious pages, I was mostly insulated from the issue.

A Season for Reflection

Tue, 24 Nov 2020 01:16:56 -0700

Striving to be better, made me. Even though, it almost broke me. Over the last few years, I’ve tried to find a way to balance my daily duties and routines with my drive to be better and do better. Besides being a great time to be with family and friends, for me the time between Thanksgiving and New Years' allows me to burn through my inbox, collect my thoughts, maybe write.

The Goal

Sun, 22 Nov 2020 00:00:00 +0000

Alex Rogo is a harried plant manager working ever more desperately to try improve performance. His factory is rapidly heading for disaster. So is his marriage. He has ninety days to save his plant - or it will be closed by corporate HQ, with hundreds of job losses. It takes a chance meeting with a professor from student days - Jonah - to help him break out of conventional ways of thinking to see what needs to be done. The story of Alex’s fight to save his plant is more than compulsive reading. It contains a serious message for all managers in industry and explains the ideas, which underline the Theory of Constraints (TOC), developed by Eli Goldratt.

Site Reliability Engineering

Sun, 22 Nov 2020 00:00:00 +0000

Members of the SRE team explain how their engagement with the entire software lifecycle has enabled Google to build, deploy, monitor, and maintain some of the largest software systems in the world.

The Five Dysfunctions of a Team: A Leadership Fable

Sat, 14 Nov 2020 00:00:00 +0000

Lencioni reveals the five dysfunctions which go to the very heart of why teams even the best ones-often struggle. He outlines a powerful model and actionable steps that can be used to overcome these common hurdles and build a cohesive, effective team.

Daily Stand-Up Meetings Start Breaking the Rules

Sun, 01 Nov 2020 00:00:00 +0000

A group of researches who’ve studied the daily standup for over a decade summarize their research and provide recommendations for how to make standups more valuable.

Selecting Empirical Methods for Software Engineering Research

Fri, 30 Oct 2020 00:00:00 +0000

Researchers studying software engineering often choose inappropriate methods. This chapter from, ‘Guide to Advanced Empirical Software Engineering’, is intended to help folks understand how to choose the right methods.

Just The Gimlet Episodes of StartUp

Thu, 29 Oct 2020 16:16:56 -0700

When it comes to creating a start-up there’s prevailing wisdom. There’s even a school you can go to to learn it. But, for every company that does it “right”, there is one that does it their own way. One that is introspective and honest (ish). That other way is epitomized by Gimlet, the podcast company, at least if their podcast is any representation of how they work. I’ve brought up the podcast a few times with friends and co-workers because it’s entertaining, and it instructive for folks who work in growing businesses.

Experiences from conducting semi-structured interviews in empirical software engineering research

Sun, 25 Oct 2020 00:00:00 +0000

Interviews provide a rich set of qualitative experiences to analyze, but they require a high level of effort to achieve high quality results. This paper provides recommendations based on available literature and the experience of the authors.

The Field Guide to Understanding 'Human Error'

Mon, 27 Jan 2020 00:00:00 +0000

The Field Guide to Understanding ’Human Error’ will help you understand a new way of dealing with a perceived ‘human error’ problem in your organization. It will help you trace how your organization juggles inherent trade-offs between safety and other pressures and expectations, suggesting that you are not the custodian of an already safe system.

The Phoenix Project

Sat, 25 Jan 2020 00:00:00 +0000

Bill is an IT manager at Parts Unlimited. It’s Tuesday morning and on his drive into the office, Bill gets a call from the CEO.The company’s new IT initiative, code named Phoenix Project, is critical to the future of Parts Unlimited, but the project is massively over budget and very late. The CEO wants Bill to report directly to him and fix the mess in ninety days or else Bill’s entire department will be outsourced.

The Fifth Discipline

Fri, 24 Jan 2020 00:00:00 +0000

In The Fifth Discipline, Senge describes how companies can rid themselves of the learning “disabilities” that threaten their productivity and success by adopting the strategies of learning organizations—ones in which new and expansive patterns of thinking are nurtured, collective aspiration is set free, and people are continually learning how to create results they truly desire.

The Case of What To Call My Role

Tue, 24 Dec 2019 22:16:56 -0700

In my professional roles the word engineer is in the title somewhere. For instance I’m currently a Principal Engineer at Stitch Fix, but I’ve been a Software Engineer, Front-end Engineer and so fourth over the years. The word engineer isn’t really apt for what I do though. In the last year I found a new promising word: Symmathecist. I learned about it from this post “The Origins of Opera and the Future of Programming” by Jessica Kerr.

Give Thanks for Simple Tools

Mon, 23 Dec 2019 21:10:24 -0700

The infrastructure of my productivity is a set of tools that revolve around plain text files. Try as I might it doesn’t work any other way. I’ve tried tools with more “stuff” in them. Often when I try and import my modest1 set of files they grind to a halt. So, I go back to my tried and true tools. I’m thankful they exist and continue to work. It’s a patchwork of folks and tools that keep this stuff running.

A Kind Legacy For Go

Sun, 22 Dec 2019 19:27:54 -0700

I use Go off and on. I’ve recently had the opportunity to use it again. I feel comfortable now with a handful of languages including Go. More importantly I’ve fought fires in production, developed new services, and tried to refactor balls of mud in a handful of languages. Out of them all no language is more kind to it’s user then Go. That fact is on display in this talk Go at Google: Language Design in the Service of Software Engineering.

In The Beginning Was the Command Line

Sat, 21 Dec 2019 22:19:04 -0700

There is a book. Called “In The Beginning Was the Command Line” written by Neal Stephenson. 1 You might know him from such books as Snowcrash or Cryptonomicon, but he’s written some non-fiction as well. It’s hard to describe but it’s about the act of computing and the choices that surround folks who computed, especially in the late 90’s. It’s compelling for many reasons, but I think I can point to at least one reason what I was so fascinated by the command line and by linux.

What'll Programming Be Like

Fri, 20 Dec 2019 15:11:27 -0700

I think about this sometimes. Like, people used to punch holes in cards to program. That’s insane to me, but I can only imagine what it will look like in the future. I think the biggest questions is like, will we even write code? Or, will we train, direct, or work with some … thing. Here’s an interesting post that talks about near to far future: “Programming: 50, 100 years from now”.

Big Software Projects Are Failing

Thu, 19 Dec 2019 08:28:13 -0700

I have worked on projects that missed the deadline by years. It’s soul-crushing. Whats worse is that it sounds like it’s endemic. Big projects are failing all over the place. Most IT experts agree that such failures occur far more often than they should. What’s more, the failures are universally unprejudiced: they happen in every country; to large companies and small; in commercial, nonprofit, and governmental organizations; and without regard to status or reputation.

Conventional Wisdom

Wed, 18 Dec 2019 07:19:27 -0700

Conventional Wisdom can be a bunch of BS. It can be a bludgeon to keep the troops in line. When it goes unexamined it can create group think that prevents healthy discourse.

Cryptographic Right Answers

Tue, 17 Dec 2019 20:02:48 -0700

I like most people am deathly afraid of crypto. There are just too many gotchas. Therefor I appreciate posts like these where smart folks break down the answers. We’re less interested in empowering developers and a lot more pessimistic about the prospects of getting this stuff right. https://latacora.singles/2018/04/03/cryptographic-right-answers.html

Good API Design

Mon, 16 Dec 2019 08:18:29 -0700

It’s easy to see Kubernetes as “a way to run containerized workloads”. If you look at the comparisons that’s what they all do: ECS, Docker, and Mesos, etc. But, I don’t think that’s the vision for Kubernetes. Here are a few tweets from Kelsey Hightower: The future where Kubernetes clusters disappear and we just leverage Kubernetes style APIs to deploy workloads is fast approaching. 1 The cloud made the hypervisor disappear.

Performance Matters

Sun, 15 Dec 2019 12:41:40 -0700

I’m torn between two axes. The first is being user-oriented. Thinking about the problems from their perspective and ensuring you are always working on something that improves value. The second is that good software is often fast software. While it’s hard to make a case that keeping a service at a p99 of 500ms will increase the value to your users, I’ve found that trying to make it is important. The reality of the situation is always that it depends.

Devops

Sat, 14 Dec 2019 21:45:42 -0700

DevOps, at least as I understand it, is about delivering value. It sounds simple, but delivering that value happens via a pipeline. The stages of that pipeline often represent whole groupes of people. Ofthen those groups can have competing priorities. Thus increasing friction in the pipeline and slowing down the deliver of value. That’s where DevOps comes to the rescue. By working with everyone in the pipeline and building a shared vision of how to deliver value, you can get everyone to optimize for the shared global goal of value delivery.

Easy Simple Complicated Complex

Fri, 13 Dec 2019 18:54:39 -0700

The biggest irony in dev work is that we all want to build easy to use systems, but that’s hard to impossible to do. Easy is hard. Rich Hickey in his talk “Simple Made Easy” walks us through this irony and why its so important that we continue to try and build easy to use systems. 1 Here is a transcript of the talk as well. ↩︎

Anything From Julia Evans

Thu, 12 Dec 2019 08:09:01 -0700

It’s not often that anyone can take up basic linux literacy and make it interesting, but Julia Evans1 does it with style. Here is her zine on pipes2: She doesn’t just illuminate linux, she will often bring that same clarity to more advanced topics such as service discovery. Here is a zine from a blog post 3 she wrote on Stripes engineering blog. So, checkout the zines, or one of her many posts on kubernetes or networking and learn something.

Helpful Numbers for Designing Technical Systems

Wed, 11 Dec 2019 07:56:26 -0700

When I design a new service, I want it to be efficient. Mostly, for any humans involved, but also for the technical components. Why make two HTTP calls when you can make 1. When thinking about tradeoffs it can be helpful to consider how long common operations take. Not surprisingly, lists have been made of these common operations. As far as I can tell starting with Peter Norvig, and then re-popularised by Jeff Dean.

A Taxonomy of Ignorance

Tue, 10 Dec 2019 08:00:01 -0700

Given I don’t know what I don’t know, but I want to find out. This taxonomy of ignorance and interesting thought experiment. The Five Orders of Ignorance 1 Lack of Ignorance. Lack of Knowledge. Lack of Awareness Lack of Process. Meta Ignorance http://losangeles.acm.org/Archives/laacm0512-Article%2002%20The%205%20Orders%20of%20Ignorance%20OCT%202000.pdf ↩︎

Finding Out What You Dont Know

Mon, 09 Dec 2019 08:25:01 -0700

We don’t know what we don’t know. Clearly. But, sometimes the keys to a project exist in the unknown. Yet many of our project planning and execution tools don’t take this into account. If you just do the same thing over and over again, you will probably get better at performing that sequence, but you won’t learn anything new. That’s a quote from “Introducing Deliberate Discovery” by Dan North 1.

A good commit message

Sun, 08 Dec 2019 11:34:54 -0700

There will be commit messages. Many. Of. Them. Your team will read them. Your boss will read them. Strangers will read them. You will read them. Future self is skeptical of present self. You owe it to everyone to try and write better commit messages. I’m not suggesting that I always do, it’s a lofty goal, but here is some help: Separate subject from body with a blank line Limit the subject line to 50 characters Capitalize the subject line Do not end the subject line with a period Use the imperative mood in the subject lineWrap the body at 72 characters Use the body to explain what and why vs.

Value Over Tests

Sat, 07 Dec 2019 17:34:54 -0700

I am a fan of tests, but my testing journey was long and fraught. One of the hardest ideas for me to understand was where do you draw the line. How much is enough? I tried many different ways to understand this, but it wasn’t until I read this quote from Kent Beck that a key idea crystalized. I get paid for code that works, not for tests, so my philosophy is to test as little as possible to reach a given level of confidence 1

The Three Ways

Fri, 06 Dec 2019 07:43:58 -0700

During the course of my work I find my self rubberbanding between two extremes - universal truth and exacting, excruciating detail at a specific moment in time. Those many not seem like they are on the same continuum, but that’s where todays suggesting reading comes into play: The Three Ways by Gene Kim 1. I’m a sucker for bit of wisdom that is seemingly inscrutable, but reveals it self to be universal.

Platforms Are All Around Us

Thu, 05 Dec 2019 08:44:22 -0700

But, how do they work? 1 Platforms are about leverage. When done well they increase value superlinear rate compared to the amount of resources available. They are also hard to define, hard to see, and hard to build. Today, I’ve got a one two punch. First an article from Frank Chimero, “Platforms as Tables, Tables as Platforms” 2. In it Chimero finds that Design and Jazz are both platforms, but also:

A Systems Approach

Wed, 04 Dec 2019 09:00:24 -0700

Whatever it is that you do, if you have wondered about increasing productivity, improving outcomes or creating more long lasting value, you owe it to your self to learn a little about the study of systems. Okay, starting with the most banal definition of a system: A system is a group of interacting or interrelated entities that form a unified whole.[1] A system is delineated by its spatial and temporal boundaries, surrounded and influenced by its environment, described by its structure and purpose and expressed in its functioning.

A Pile of Links

Tue, 03 Dec 2019 14:20:24 -0700

There must be a large and storied body of literature when it comes to curation, but I am unfortunately not familiar. I might have a chance someday, but for now, what I do have is this article from Frank Chimero “Sorting A Mass” 1. Up till this point, I had bookmarked anything and everything that came close to piquing my interest. But after this article, I remember bringing more of a critical eye to my reading.

The Stream as a Guiding Metaphor

Mon, 02 Dec 2019 14:20:24 -0700

Being a child of the 80s I can recall a time before the internet permeated my entire reading experience. It was a happy accident for me and my career when I was able to access the internet on a daily bases. Before the internet, Wired came once a month. When I had enough money I’d buy 2600 (it’s hard to convince parents to subscribe to a “hackers” quarterly). Between publications, I’d dwell on the information.

How To Download The Internet by Accident

Sun, 01 Dec 2019 23:00:00 -0600

Gonna start out the month with a fun and simple one. MP3 Blogs and wget by Jeffrey Veen. When I read this, I had a VPS, that I could barely keep running. I blindly ran the command in this post. The next morning I found that I had downloaded almost 30 gigabytes of MP3s. It forced me to learning about things about linux, and wget. This was important, because I got one of my first tech jobs because I knew about wget.

500 articles to read!

Sun, 01 Dec 2019 12:00:00 -0600

500+ articles to read. That backlog took years to build. Years of, “Yea, I’ll totally read that”. Then not reading anything. While I was able to trash part of the backlog. (No, I don’t need to read “4 spaces are better then 2 when formatting code”). I still had a healthy backlog. To not keep anyone in suspense, I read it 1. Reading it reminded me of my favorite articles from years past.

Advice for a software dev who is not a librarian but now finds themselves writing software for libraries

Fri, 03 Aug 2018 12:00:00 -0600

Well, around 3ish years ago I stared working for a company that sells software to libraries and I didn’t know a thing. I have learned a lot since then, but I am now embarking on a new journey and I would like to leave some advice to other software devs who might find themselves in similar situations.

The best advice I can give is to find a community who can remind you of how important libraries are.

Use Short-Lived AWS IAM Credentials For Everything

Mon, 28 May 2018 15:48:24 -0600

Managing IAM credentials is a burden. Besides juggling N separate credentials, I don’t want more secretes to manage. There must be a better way and I’m experimenting with some tools to find a better way.

JSON Feed For Hugo

Wed, 17 May 2017 10:00:00 -0700

After learning about JSON Feed I took some time to implment a template for Hugo. This relies upon version 0.20 of Hugo which has support for many alternative formats. You can see find this in the github repo for this site.

JSONfeed

Wed, 17 May 2017 10:00:00 -0700

JSON Feed is a new format for syndication that was developed by Brent Simmons and Manton Reece.

This is a great idea. Read the announcment.

Blogging as the Long View

Mon, 10 Apr 2017 21:00:00 -0700

I share Gabe Weatherheads sentiment about blogging. Is this it then? Is this the last gasp of independent blogging as everyone moves to micro transactions of half considered thoughts? Will Tweets eat Wordpress? It sure seems like the indie blogs are thinned down to a small collection of ideas and opinions. What I miss about blogging is the slow contemplation of a bloggers ideology. Indie bloggers like Kottke and Daring Fireball have been publishing for over a decade on a daily basis.

Short Notes on Instant Articles

Wed, 13 May 2015 15:11:11 -0700

Instant articles are cool. They look nice, at least the NatGeo one does. This is a much better reading experience then the average article, especially on mobile. It’s a little weird that Facebook effectively owns the “TV” of mobile content. That being said, Facebook just defined the “Instant Articles” market. If people in general like that experience other apps can capitalize on this new market. Some app could unbundle that experience from Facebook.

Programs are meant to be read by humans, and only incidentally for computers to execute.

Tue, 20 Jan 2015 21:00:00 -0700

PPK is on a tear. He’s having a conversation in public that I’ve been having for a few years. You really should read these three blog posts for context. I appreciate the discussion and I hope that it continues, but the scope is sufficiently broad enough that I won’t be able to go through it all point by point. Instead I would like to provide a framework for the disscussion, thats why I titled this blog post with a quote from Donald Knuth

Full stack is more then a checkbox for your startup

Sun, 19 Oct 2014 12:37:06 -0700

The words full stack will quickly be overburdened, but for now they represents an ideal. The basic premise laid out by Chris Dixon. The new approach is to build a complete, end-to-end product or service that bypasses existing companies. Awesome, we now have this new word, and it’s a word that is getting used a lot from fund-raising, to job listings, to internal memos. Like any new label how the hell do you know if a company is actually full stack?

On To My Next Adventure

Tue, 06 May 2014 22:56:56 -0700

Taken by a co-worker when App.net was still picplz. App.net is shutting It’s clearly the context for this post, but it’s not the point. I am leaving App.net to be the VP of Engineering at new company that should have a name shortly. Durring my time at App.net I constantly operated at the edge of my abilities, and past them sometimes. It was alternatingly painful and exhilirating. I will be processing my stay here for quite awhile, but the main thing I learned from App.

How Vox Media Creates News Products

Fri, 07 Feb 2014 10:56:22 -0700

Yesterday we got a look into how new news organization are working in a technical sense1. To my mind its one of the few detailed posts about how places like Vox Media are working to actually innovate. It was written by Pablo Mercado, Vox Media’s VP of Technology. He detailed a little bit about how they pull together all the talent needed for a project and how they coordinate that talent.

Introducing Lark a RESTy interface for Redis

Sun, 22 Dec 2013 10:21:22 -0700

Lark is a python library that provides a generic method for transforming a HTTP request into a redis command. If you know what webdis is then you’ll roughly know what this is. It does a couple of things right now: It users REST as a guideline without getting to pedantic. It has built in support for per user key prefixs. It automatically JSON encodes redis values (where appropriate). It has lots of tests (and TravisCI all setup).

Feedbin.me Goes Open Source

Mon, 02 Sep 2013 14:10:22 -0700

Feedbin.me has released the code that runs the service as open source, checkout out the Github. It joins Newsblur as being the second large for profit RSS reader to release its code in such a manner. I’m not aware of any other commercial services that open source all of their code. This seems like a strong move that only a independent developer can take when faced with competition from well funded competitors.

Open Question: What's the impact of Reader's shutdown on traffic?

Thu, 27 Jun 2013 23:35:22 -0700

Let’s say that there are only 1 million Google Reader users. In three days, that’s a million people who won’t be clicking on American Apparel ads. Which could directly effect the bottom line of websites that are entirely funded by ads, like blogs. Is there anyway to know by how much though? What do you think the leading indicators might be? I have enabled comments for this post so let me know if you have any answers.

The Rumproarious eBook

Mon, 24 Jun 2013 06:59:22 -0700

I have been threatening to do this for a while, and now I have. I created a mini-ebook about the future of feed readers. I used many of the blog posts that I wrote over the last few weeks as the raw material for it, but I tried to craft a solid narrative for the ebook. Check it out: Feeding Our Reading Habits Also available in PDF and for the Kindle.

Network Thinking In TV

Mon, 17 Jun 2013 09:21:22 -0700

The Sopranos is a story about a man that happens to be set in the world of organized crime. The Wire is a story about a setting, Baltimore, that happens to include a story about some people. They just so happen to be there so we learn a little about their lives, but the the real story is that of the city. This distinction is what makes The Sopranos one of the biggest shows of the last 20 years, and it makes The Wire a show with a small but vocal crowd who think it may be the best TV show ever made.

What Would a Facebook Reader Mean?

Sun, 16 Jun 2013 10:06:22 -0700

Last week multiple signs started to appear that point to the fact that Facebook might be prepping a news reader. While there has been discussion of the possibility few, if any, have tried to figure out what it would mean in general. Admittedly, there are few details, but it’s not that hard to extrapolate from past actions. You need to look at this from a couple different perspectives though. Why does this make sense for Facebook, Publishers, or the consumer?

Tastestalking

Fri, 14 Jun 2013 09:28:22 -0700

Discovery is a pretty broad activity for one tool, but the idea is simple. Some cycles are inward, convergent paths, meaning you end up getting deeper and narrower into a topic over time. For certain topics, this isn’t always bad. Often you would go deeper on subjects that matter to you. In general though, you want to slowly move outwards. It’s a form of diversification. You don’t want your sources to stagnate, or you could end up missing out on a larger context.

Juxtapositon In Feed Readers

Thu, 06 Jun 2013 08:57:22 -0700

Juxtaposition is a technique that gets used quite often without anyone noticing. It gets used and misused daily by the media to great effect. To understand the power of juxtaposition I think it helps to talk about the Kuleshov Effect: “Kuleshov edited together a short film in which a shot of the expressionless face of Tsarist matinee idol Ivan Mosjoukine was alternated with various other shots (a plate of soup, a girl in a coffin, a woman on a divan).

Reading Efficiently

Wed, 05 Jun 2013 07:23:22 -0700

Now that we covered context, I think it’s important to talk about motivation. It frames the entire issue. What motivates you to read? The answer to this question puts you on entirely different paths. For example, if you are motivated to read to pass time, thats fine, but much of what I am talking about is useless to you. Yes, you are reading, but you aren’t reading for comprehension, nor are you reading because you want to move on to something else.

More On Sync and RSS

Thu, 23 May 2013 19:33:22 -0700

Sync is key for feed readers got picked up by Dave Winer on Twitter here is what he had to say: “Sync Is Key For Feed Readers (If so, then make web apps, and you’re done). http://4fj.r2.ly/" — @davewiner And then Peter Rojas responded: “@davewiner I need an offline mode for my RSS reader since I often read on the subway, so mobile app is important to me.

Two Quotes About Google Reader

Thu, 23 May 2013 07:31:22 -0700

I understand that I am innately drawn to people talking about RSS readers. I shouldn’t be surprised when I find a good quote about Google Reader any day, but these are two good quotes. The first come from a tubmlr blog, I thought it appropriate, called Britticisms. She seems to be an RSS reader after my own heart. In response to the question, could you list some of the blogs you subscribe to via google reader, she started with:

Sync Is Key For Feed Readers

Wed, 22 May 2013 08:56:22 -0700

Sync could simply be explained as the process of making everything the same in multiple places. In terms of an RSS reader, I think it’s the technical cornerstone of the tool. Information doesn’t care where you are or what device you are on. It is created at breakneck speeds, and you should be able to manage it from anywhere on any device. While this is a clear value proposition, not everyone would agree, but there are other reasons why sync is important.

Super Human Reading Powers

Fri, 17 May 2013 14:53:22 -0700

Growing up I was told that I had a learning disability. Some form of dyslexia, I think, I don’t remember exactly what it was. I don’t really think about it that much now days because I don’t think its holding me back any. But, I have started to think that the reason I enjoy using feed readers so much is because of whatever learning disability I had, or have is. Also, how I use a feed reader as a tool to stay afloat could probably be used by others to achieve spectacular results.

The Pogue Piece on Reader

Sat, 11 May 2013 23:53:22 -0700

David Pogue wrote a piece yesterday about Google reader. Explaining the Reader situation in plain english. In it I think he exemplifies the current market while completely missing the larger picture. What he gets right is the broad picture, i.e., What a feed reader is, and what has happened. He had a good solid broad definition. Makes it sound simple, which could be one reason no one wants to pay, but sufficient.

Context Is King

Fri, 10 May 2013 09:00:22 -0700

Websites place content within a context of their choosing. They make certain decisions for the user that range from simple to subtle. The fact that using a feed reader gives more control to the user over context is the best and most basic reason to use a feed reader. While the case to be made is not that every website out there has nefarious reasons for its context. We simply don’t always need to let the website make those decisions.

We Are In The RSS Cambrian Explosion

Thu, 09 May 2013 10:01:22 -0700

I don’t think the revival of readers will happen because one person made it happen. This was hard for me to fathom, because I wrote an article about how there would only be room for one player, but we are in the middle of a Cambrian explosion. The people making the new readers are mostly going it alone, so far. But, on more than one occasion I thought to myself, what if they were all on the same team?

Feeds on an Internet

Mon, 29 Apr 2013 09:43:22 -0700

I recently wrote about how large the feed reading ecosystem could be. Specifically how large the pad market could be. In that post I wrote about how people say a Google Reader shut down is a good thing because there will be rapid innovation in the space, but few talked about what that innovation could be. I agree, but think that innovation is a matter of iteration and revision and not always a complete break from what came before.

How Large Will the Paid Feed Reader Market Be?

Thu, 18 Apr 2013 06:34:22 -0700

Clearly, the market for feed readers is in transition. With only the mention of Google Reader closing, we’ve seen large user movement. Feedly alone gained more than 3 million new users recently1. In the midst of all this change, more than a few people have said, “This is going to mean good things.” But what does that really mean? Any “good thing” will have to be driven by the makers of feed readers, so I am going to start there.

How Big is the RSS Market?

Thu, 11 Apr 2013 21:01:22 -0700

I am currently researching this question, but if you know the answer, or even if you think you know the answer. Let me know. http://alpha.app.net/voidfiles http://twitter.com/voidfiles PS: Right now, I think the whole market is around 100 million active monthly users.

Brent Simmons Creates RSS Sync Mailing List

Sun, 17 Mar 2013 17:06:22 -0700

Brent Simmons created a mailing list to talk about any new potential RSS syncing services. “I created a new mailing list for people who want to talk about the technical side of RSS syncing. Ideally there would be a single standard for RSS syncing, and clients could choose among systems. But I don’t insist on that — at least not yet. I think it’s ambitious enough just to get some working sync systems up and running.

Waiting for Chris Wetherell

Sat, 16 Mar 2013 11:21:22 -0700

Whenever there are big changes to Google Reader Chris Wetherell usually has something insightful to say. In the latest cycle he has done an interview with Om Malik, but he hasn’t written a post yet. It’s not surprising given that he is the creator of Google Reader that he might have something to say. I have always enjoyed his posts in the past. Given that we are about to see a bunch of new feed readers, the reason I am waiting is that his old posts about the birth of Google Reader are always incredibly insightful, even upon re-reading.

Edward Tufte quote of the day

Wed, 13 Feb 2013 09:17:22 -0700

At App.net we collect a metric ton of stats. When I build anything I try to collect some stats. We all must do that. Why not right, stats are fun. The hard part comes when you need to formulate those stats into information. It’s not easy. Slowly, I learned what to watch, what was important. It’s hard earned intuition, but intuition is no substitute for a well structured argument. Which is why I loved this short piece by Edward Tufte.

Be Guilt Free

Tue, 29 Jan 2013 23:57:22 -0700

Do not feel guilty for not reading the tidal wave of information that piles up on your door everyday. Just don’t. Half the battle in this modern era of information overload is learning how to not care about all the information. We call them feeds, or streams for a reason — they never end. Your only goal should be to build a better net. It’s not to worry about unread counts or friend requests, or virtual corn fields.

Going Long On Markdown

Mon, 29 Oct 2012 00:04:22 -0700

Markdown like RSS is one of those things that has fundamentally changed my relationship with the way that I work. Unlike RSS though I think Markdown is primed for mass adoption. Its ready because it fills a classic need for a lightweight-journaling-note-taking-style syntax, it has wide spread adoption ie network effects, and we are already seeing movements to standardize and proselytize Markdown to a larger community. The other day on App.

Optimistic Server Interactions

Thu, 30 Aug 2012 20:58:22 -0700

At PicPlz we built a hybrid mobile app. We had a native container written for iOS and Android that hosted a web version of our code. PicPlz was the first time I had worked on a fully mobile website. My operating paradigm was that I was building a website for a small screen. One day, our iOS developer asked me why our follow button didn’t just react when a user touched it.

Standards spelunking, App.net, and a change of heart

Thu, 19 Jul 2012 21:56:22 -0700

I have been standards spelunking recently. ATOM, OStatus, JSON XMPP (hint: that one is a joke), and Activity Steams. All this exploration led me to a conclusion - standards are not the panacea I once thought. There is a lot to like about standards; hard work, thourough thought, and sometimes a success, but we can’t blindly follow the standards off a cliff. I have been presented with an amazing opportunity to spend some time looking through all this prior art.

The New Aesthetic of Feeds

Mon, 18 Jun 2012 17:17:22 -0700

The new aesthetic sat in my overflow folder for a while. I probably subscribed to it while working though a best new blog list. It was always curios. The pictures were nice, but like many blogs you figure it out by reading it. When I read the Atlantic piece It finally clicked. If you don’t know, The new aesthetic is an art movement. It’s tag line would be an exploration of how our digital products effect us.

RSS and New Media - comments so far

Fri, 03 Feb 2012 21:20:22 -0700

I have had a fun few days processing the input I have recived about RSS needs better PR. I encourage everyone to keep the feedback coming. I would also like to announce that I am going to open this blog to other authors. If you would like to write a post just let me know. I am sure we can figure out something. Some great comments so far. So what is this new medium?

A twitter conversation with Dave Winer

Thu, 02 Feb 2012 21:20:22 -0700

I had a short twitter conversation with Dave Winer yesterday about my blog post, RSS needs better PR. RSS needs better PR sia.tw/wzJZVk — alex kessinger (@voidfiles) February 1, 2012If what RSS needs is better PR then give it better PR.:-).blork.ly/zLuoQz — Dave Winer ☮ (@davewiner) February 1, 2012@davewiner I'm tryin man. — alex kessinger (@voidfiles) February 2, 2012@voidfiles -- really? you're all doom and gloom -- so negative. honestly, that's not really good PR.

RSS needs better PR

Tue, 31 Jan 2012 21:20:22 -0700

RSS is in a bad state and it’s possibly in danger. The rate of adoption seems to be slowing down. There are blogs, but new forms of information are being created, and they aren’t using RSS. Even the people who love it are resigned to its demise. It’s really hard to even make a business case for why your service should have RSS. Best argument we have right now is that its a greater good argument.

Google Reader Has Transitioned

Tue, 01 Nov 2011 21:20:22 -0700

So, it happened. Google Reader has forever changed. I am the one that always makes fun of normies when they complain about Facebook changing. I am sure that I can learn to use it even now. So, while I am totally butt hurt about this whole process. I think there are two standout problems that could be fixed quickly. The design of the story area is sad. I can’t tell where it begins, and ends.

Reader Roundup Iranians, R$$, and More Funny Please.

Tue, 25 Oct 2011 18:51:56 -0700

There have been some bigger names weighing in on the coming Reader changes. What I am liking is that client authors are starting ask some serious questions about what this means for google reader syncing. Today I saw Marco, and Gruber posting about Reader. They both chose to reference an article written by Brent Simmons. Marco said: “The bad news is that there really isn’t an alternative RSS sync platform that I know of.

With google reader changing is there a competitor looming?

Thu, 20 Oct 2011 18:51:56 -0700

Google Reader is changing, and that leaves a door open for a competitor. Google Reader is among my most used tools. It’s up there with the browser, text editor, and command line. I am pretty sure people have snickered at my interest in RSS more then once, and even then it’s only when I am in the company of people who know what the hell RSS is, an every shrinking pool of people.

My first attempt at figuring out why The Awl is so good.

Mon, 27 Jun 2011 17:10:39 -0700

I am going to leave the breakdown of weighty subjects to other people, and hopefully I am biting off a small chunk of this pie, but I want to try my hand at figuring out why something is so good. I am going to start with blogs as a whole. I have become entranced by blogs in the last few years, they have seriously started to become important voices in their own right.

A quickie about how I use rss

Mon, 16 May 2011 06:09:59 -0700

I saw Alexis Madrigal talking about using RSS on twitter today. He mentioned that he felt twitter was better at surfacing things that he wanted to write about then a RSS reader. I know nothing about how he uses a reader, or what he has in it, but I wondered how he was using his reader. In my opinion, if you setup your reader correctly, it will always be better then twitter.

My #jqcon talk

Sun, 17 Apr 2011 18:15:54 -0700

I gave a talk at the jQuery conference on sunday. I wanted to create one page were all the information about the talk could live. This is that page. Sources: Phonegap Backbone.js HTML5 rocks offline gMail Mobile application cache Six Revisions - web development blog Building iPhone Apps with HTML, CSS, and JavaScript book Lawnchair jquery-offline Details: outline gist of the talk Slides - full slides with speaker notes

Reading Code

Wed, 30 Mar 2011 05:48:12 -0700

I recently spent some time getting to know backbone.js. I wanted to apply it to a mobile app I have been working on. While the code is great, I stumbled on an idea while using it. When I fist start using a framework of any kind, django for example, I almost always use there getting started tutorial. You copy, and paste the code from this tutorial, and then poke and prod it until you get some kind of understand of the code.

RSS, I can't quit you.

Tue, 29 Mar 2011 05:42:03 -0700

On occasion my blog posts receive outside attention, like when a piece get’s featured on a more popular website. For instance I was quoted in an article over at the register last week, and that catapulted my stats for a day. Regardless of what drives traffic to my blog, most readers of my blog seem interested in RSS. That is fine with me, because I like talking about the finer points of RSS just like everyone else.

I have to say it, RSS is not dead.

Mon, 14 Mar 2011 23:51:30 -0700

When I read about the death of RSS, I laugh, but I think the point is we need a new platform to consume RSS. It needs to cater to curators, and hubs of influential people. To some degree Facebook has become a kind of RSS reader, but the king of RSS readers is Google Reader, and we need a new version. It’s hard to think of a way to make Google Reader better.

Goodbye PHP

Wed, 09 Feb 2011 23:42:16 -0700

Last night it occurred to me, I might never use PHP in a serious manner ever again. It’s bittersweet. No one is a bigger advocate for leaving PHP behind then me, but it was where it all started for me. I had played around with VB in grade school, but desktop programming never got to me like web programming. PHP was ready for me, meaning the metaphorical person who doesn’t know how to program but wants to learn.

Hacker from both Flickr, and Stamen Design writes about curation.

Wed, 06 Oct 2010 03:45:41 -0700

If you are interested at all in what is happing to curation you should read this well-researched article by Aaron Cope. The article stems from Cope’s time at Stamen Design Group, and Flickr, but it doesn’t stop there. This is a deep article with a lot of links, and references. What the Internet has done to the field of journalism, it will do to the practice of curation. This is not a claim based on empirical study, but rather, a prediction based on the evolution of “social software”, communities of interest that form and exist principally in on-line networks and a need to find stable ground in a digital world where the means and cost of production and distribution has approached zero.

I am leaving Yahoo!

Wed, 08 Sep 2010 18:52:37 -0700

I have spent the last 3 years, or so, working at Yahoo!, you must raise your voice at the end of the hoo, and it has been awesome. The opportunities to learn, and grow were huge, but it’s time for me to move on. In any organization you can pick it apart, and I have, but my move isn’t about that. If anything, it’s about getting a variety of experience.

I wrote a guest post for the DailyJS: The Future of Mobile Sync

Fri, 03 Sep 2010 17:59:05 -0700

I have been really impressed with the coverage of the javascript community over at DailyJS. So, when they were asking for guest bloggers I jumped at the chance. I chose to write about an idea that has started to surface which is mobile data sync. Sync can be tricky especially when you mix in the fact that mobile devices can be offline for long periods of time. I tried to find a solution, but couldn’t find anything.

Medium, Curators, and Jason Santa Maria

Thu, 12 Aug 2010 06:13:32 -0700

If you haven’t checked out anything from Jason Santa Maria, go check his blog out. He has been around for a long time, I think. The fact that I don’t know much about him is what impresses me the most. I have read a few of his blog post, but each one has been incisive, and powerful so that they stand on their own. I don’t need to know who he is to understand the he gets it.

HTML5 Brief: in a couple paragraphs

Sun, 08 Aug 2010 17:12:00 -0700

HTML5 is a loaded term that covers a range of ideas, but here is an attempt to explain it. Explicitly, all that HTML5 stands for is the next version of HTML. After this version there will be no more versions of HTML. Instead they will evolve the spec slowly over time instead of using major revisions. The next gold standard was going to be XHTML2, but it got dumped because it was built on an unrealistic view of the web.

I just read the most wonderful short story: Mr. Penumbra’s Twenty-Four-Hour Book Store

Mon, 26 Jul 2010 18:46:40 -0700

here is the story My favorite part besides the book was that I started to read it as if it was a dudes blog post about working in a 24 hour book shop. I thought the whole thing was real. The story was based in San Francisco too, and I was going to go to the store and check it out. Near the end of the story though something happened that isn’t real, and I realized it was a short story, and not a blog post, although it was written in the style of a longish blog post.

The mosh pit and cognative surplus.

Mon, 12 Jul 2010 06:52:45 -0700

I was caught off guard by an interesting compare/contrast over at snarkmarket. Two quotes from recent books, both disparaging looks at pre-internet life. The author, Tim Carmody, asks if these kinds of feelings are what are driving us to use our cognitive surplus towards creation. Maybe slightly, orthogonal to his original idea, was a thought that pop’ed into my head. Not just why are people leaving TV, but how. I have tried to get my parents to use “newer” things, like linux, bad idea I know, but here they are using the internet in interesting ways, in creative ways all without “my help”.

Published An Article On The YUI Blog

Fri, 28 May 2010 00:24:53 -0700

I just published an article on the YUI Blog. I have been working at a Yahoo! for almost 3 years now. I have enjoyed more of my time at Yahoo, then not, and I think that Yahoo has a lot of really cool things going on. I have met some of the smartest developers I have ever worked with inside of Yahoo, and there is a lot of technical brilliance here.

User Driven Design, Requires Talking To Users

Fri, 28 May 2010 00:04:53 -0700

I have made a number of websites, small and large. I would say that wacchen, is my fifth large project “launch”. I take that word “launch” with a grain of salt because this time I have done almost no fanfare. I just started by sharing things on my blog, and twitter. People have started to show up, about 8 of them so far. That is fine by me, this is actually a great little rollout.

Universal Feed Parser is awesome, except for embedded videos.

Fri, 07 May 2010 22:39:43 -0700

If you have never dealt with pythons awesome feedparser, Universal Feed Parser, you should check it out. This bad boy can take some of the crapiest, most mal-formed feeds atom, or rss, and give you back manicured, well formed python objects. I have used the project many times over, and am indebted. There current security model is so tight that it removes all object, and embed tags. This is very secure, and for most people probably a good idea.

Mon, 01 Jan 0001 00:00:00 +0000

For many years I was fascinated by RSS and Feed Readers. I wrote a number of blogposts about RSS and Feed Readers, but they no longer represent a burning passion for me that they once did. I don’t want to remove the posts, but I dont' want them to be as front and center as they used to be. You can find them here.