linked list+culture incubator

I’d be glad to discuss the opportunities you're contacting me about. For me to be confident I’d be a good fit, could you let me know about these 3 points?

is the prospective role in the field similar to what I do now (Apple device/IT infra and at-scale administration/software development/telemetry)? I'm not a people manager, but I love mentoring.

would the salary be at least over the ten million yen/year+ I make now, if not closer to the 20mil in total compensation mark that’s annoying because it means I'd have to do my own taxes? It can certainly be less if funding to attend conferences (outside of Japan) and training and things like '20% time' would make up the difference.

is the prospective employer easy to recommend because they make money ethically and support open source and progressive organizations committed to diversity… or are they in energy/fintech, do stack-ranking or insist employees smush together into an open office layout for mandatory ‘core time’?

I currently have unlimited PTO and can work 'distributed' with a global team, (which is how I moved to Japan in the first place) which should prove I'm both capable of achieving even in a lack of meatspace coworkers/strict structure, and that I’m motivated to do provably good work (check my GitHub) - I'd love to match that level of support and respect with any prospective employer. I’ve moved to Osaka based on the fact anyone in a role like mine has long proven to be able to achieve from anywhere (although there is an office in biking distance).

While I consider myself ‘open’, I’m more interested in spending time discussing opportunities that are appropriate given my (15+ year) career - I'm hoping I wouldn’t be asked to make some outsized compromise.

Would they really USE all of the CC suite if you installed it? Audit it first! One-liner:

Just a quick post to remind folks about the undead parakeet that is Automator. A while back I dropped a post in here about un-flattening pkgs to inspect them via an OS X Service, and was lucky to remind myself of the process I went through to create that recently when a task came up which fit the bill - text processing.

Here's the situation: some interface to some part of our network stack at work expects MAC addresses in a non-standard format (according to me): hyphens instead of colons, all lower case. Our inventory system unfortunately can't perform field validation/transformation when entering the information manually, so it's up to us to sanitize data. (This is hanging off of our ticketing system, with no real API to speak of. Sometimes you lose 'em.)

Now to the tip: the 'run shell script' Automator library item can allow you to do text processing any which way you're used to, which for me often means sed. Tip the second, on the topic of sed, is I just learned you don't need to use forward-slashes between sections (which I find confusing), pipe characters are totally valid as well. Accepting input and choosing output replaces text in the Automator interface means you have inline transformation/formatting by just calling up the services menu, which of course you can assign a shortcut (key combination) in System Preferences/Keyboard.

If you're dealing with unversioned or otherwise potentially unrecoverable data and would like to put an on/off switch on this light saber so you're not as nervous, you could add pbpaste to the front of the pipeline and train yourself to copy the text first before processing. (Sometimes I wonder how I'd operate without a clipboard manager, ClipMenu is a great free one I've been using forever - call that tip the third.) This ability also came in handy when I wanted a quick way to convert python function and class names I had typed out with spaces to instead use underscores.

If you're like me, you love autopkg. You don't even want to perform searches for download links anymore. I'm told there are certain things that can't be automated. But, when I first saw that many recipes could follow roughly the same format, I thought to myself 'we have to go deeper'(BUMMMMMMM!BUMBUM!) I created RecipeGenerationUtils, which lazily generate plists in an easily-customizable format. This allows you to follow a suggested pipeline of making download, then munki, then pkg recipes. Each step builds upon the previous, and one can obviously extend it for Absolute Manage, DeployStudio, FileWave, or Casper recipes just the same. I threw in a convenience script to find .app bundles and find the appcast URL and apps bundle identifier, which puts many of the pieces in your hands.

Then Tim Sutton came along and showed the world this:

If you're into gathering Sparkle appcast feeds for things like AutoPkg recipes, TIL brew-cask has about 500: https://t.co/OYBWMGOq9z

— Tim Sutton (@tvsutton)

July 26, 2014

A project that has branched-off and is built upon Homebrew's GUI install tool, Cask, has gained a lot of attention recently, but I've found its ability to update apps lacking. It does have a groundswell of community participation though, so one smart system can help the other! I set to work applying my generation utils, and soon after had nearly 400 'live' download recipes to inagurate the Experimental-Brew-Cask-Recipes repo. After confirming the ids of the zipped apps I was able to fetch, pkg recipes were generated, and munki recipes for many others. The description for the apps in the generated munkirecipes are blank, and all of these should get a good look-see, once-over check that they are functional and won't harsh your mellow.

As a result of all this heavy lifting, you can check my user for a starting point by running e.g. autopkg search -u arubdesu xscope or other apps, like this:

autopkg search -u arubdesu sketch

Name Repo/path ---- --------- sketch.download.recipe arubdesu/Experimental-Brew-Cask-Recipes/sketch/sketch.download.recipe sketch.munki.recipe arubdesu/Experimental-Brew-Cask-Recipes/sketch/sketch.munki.recipe sketch.pkg.recipe arubdesu/Experimental-Brew-Cask-Recipes/sketch/sketch.pkg.recipe

On June 26th, I had the pleasure of being invited by @Tecnico1931 to the NYC Metro JAMF user group meeting.

A worksheet I created for this event may be found here: url.aru-b.com/jssAutopkg

Dude, I produced the AFP548 podcast, HAVE YOU HEARD OF IT?

Alternate brag: "I didn't invent the AFP548 podcast, I PERFECTED IT"

Giving a talk or presentation or leading a training session at a conference(or 'camp' or user group) is a great way to expand your knowledge and get your name out there. Little happens in this world without networking, and I'm lucky enough to have a background watching world-class performers, with my own natural proclivity to stand up and be noticed.

Sitting in a talk where you won't be able to take anything home to use in your day-to-day life, or having it fail in other ways that make you feel your attendance wasn't a good use of your time is a major bummer. I decided I had a topic or two I could research further and share my familiarity with after only a few years in the business, and I knew it could be a fun experience. I then did what folks commonly do: I made some slides, took brief notes to describe why I put the things on the slides, and hoped they were the right length and in a logical order.

That didn't go horribly, but I was annoyed with how I didn't feel the time I was allotted matched the amount of content I had prepared. You don't want too little, and you can't go over - Tom Limoncelli taught me that, after Q&A, you want to end 4 minutes early so the people who came to your talk are the first to hit the refreshments and snacks counters.

Supposedly Malcolm Gladwell memorizes the entirety of his scripted, slide-free talks that he gives as a source of income and for organizations like TED. I was impressed to hear this, but do not presume to be at that level now. I saw the slideshare 'Presentation Secrets of Steve Jobs' and came up with my current workflow, which is the following:

- Write the script

To not stress too much about the first draft, I consider it a long blog post, which I'm used to producing rapidly. (To spoil the points out of that 'Presentation Secrets' reference above, they break it down that you should spend 1/3rd of the time, which for a 1.5 hr preso may be around 40 hours, writing the script. Then 1/3rd on slides, then 1/3rd on rehearsals. Pretty imposing, and you're not even in front of an audience yet!)

- Load it into a teleprompter app

This is a newer trick, because I need to be ready to rehearse and refine the script separate from Keynote's crappy notes/outline support. It also tells me immediately if I have enough content to fill the time slot, since there's a 'time remaining' estimate for the current speed. New Yorkers might be known to... talk faster than some, so setting a lower speed also helps me slow down.

- Make the slides

Three guiding principals here: 1. Everything is in service of your script. Fancy transitions and animations will only screw with you(don't get me started about Prezi) - I go so far as to separate out the appearance of bullets by duplicating the slide and removing the subsequent bullets until that later stage 2. Full-frame pictures reinforce the movie-theater affect and give peoples brains a refuge. Where it doesn't violate the first principle of being in service to the script, put breaks or transition wording in the script where your slides are elaborating a particular point - which will change running time, of course 3. Too much text (more than ~15 words) and you'll lose the audiences attention while they read the slides. You want the audiences attention on you, you're the Virgil taking them through Dante's Inferno - or hopefully more like the fictional guru Erik Reid of The Phoenix Project guiding folks to enlightenment. 

- Rehearse

It may go without saying, but my favorite comparison is combing your hair in the dark - you know you're doing something, but without rehearsal you actually have no idea what is going on.

I wish this page would….

I don’t want to be too wordy here(ha!) with truisms, and I admit the following may seem preachy even though I don’t purport to be the paragon of virtue myself. However, I wasn’t seeing this point of view represented in the debate over the pledge linked here and followed up here. For those that haven’t come across this yet, the TL;DR version: Presenters may take it upon themselves to pledge that they will not speak on panels/conferences unless women are represented. A bold move for those who can afford the lack of exposure if organizers can’t successfully engage women speakers, and this idea catching on could at the very least cause tension between participants in the short term. The initial fear-mongering holds up tokenism as a probable ill effect, which I feel greatly underestimates other humans lack of desire to be a token, and the genuine truth that women who are great presenters exist in every field and are available. And if it’s someones first presentation, and they screw up, I screwed up plenty in my first presentation, everyone does, we’ll almost certainly still be the better for it as a community.

Being a white male(who speaks english fluently, among other advantages,) I’m probably best put to use in this conversation by talking to… other white males, and therefore the following is addressed to those members of my teensy audience. So in no particular order(and in no stated quantity, since ‘top N’, list posts feel kindof like cheap gimmicks) I’d like to break down other thoughts I came upon while mulling over the counterpoints to common objections, the intention of which is to help start a conversation with other conscientious individuals:

- Minorities can exist in various fluid quantities among different fields(and over time,) not as if proportions are important, but gender is a pretty big, may-as-well-be-50% potential portion of every field. So picking this larger disproportion first could be considered a great start towards equal contributions from all groups - no one’s discounting race or age or any other bias by starting with gender

- Conferences are when you get outside of your comfort zone and glimpse a world other than the one inside your particular bubble. The ‘boys club’ atmosphere and sometimes juvenile humor/alpha male attitude that comes along with it when we only interact with our closest peers could be embarrassing in front of our spouses, parents, daughters and customers. It’s a great reality check when challenged to still be appropriate and comfortable in ‘mixed company’

- Detractors are polling significantly among bald-faced trolls. As recent events may show us, we should strive to stand on the right side of history. ‘My workplace/team/department doesn’t have (m)any women’ is a saying from nearly every workplace before the turn of the previous century. It’s not political correctness, it’s helping other humans realize their ambitions. Correlation is not causation… I’ll stop before I get carried away

- Presenters outnumber organizers(duh.) Organizers could use reminders that participation is a real priority for everyone. If I felt this would endanger my chances as a presenter, which I treasure as an honor any time I’m even considered, well, I can handle the possible downsides. Not to be so melodramatic as to draw parallels to Benjamin Franklin’s ‘Liberty vs. Security’ quote, I do consider this an ethical imperative

The biggest cop-out in all of this is that I realize the pledge is the smallest of possible contributions I can make as a (white) male; Women, strong ones that will rise through the ranks in spite of the prevailing detractors and obstacles, they will be turning the tide on this. They will stand up and be(and have been) part of the initial waves of mentors and role models, irregardless of the all-too-real bias of the support structures in place in education and industry.

Should there be more/better things that we can do about this issue? Absolutely. Conference panel representation isn’t a silver bullet to break down homogenous fields that could be advanced with more perspectives, but let’s not stand still or listen to lesser instincts by discounting smaller steps like this suggestion.

Further Reading:

Unpacking Male Privilege

Applescript is back in the spotlight, thanks in part to a post by the self-described raconteur John Gruber, writing for Macworld. Armin Briegel did more for me to solidify the upsides of it as a tool that can help real people get things done now… but enough about Casper. (I’ve been criticized for having too much on my mind and trying to share (debatably) dense thoughts without a gentle ramp-up. But them folks probably won’t be reading this anyway.)

Where was I? Applescript. I had the… luck of finding a script that would add BPM tags to my iTunes library, through the conduit of running the Djay application against it first, which stores the values in a separate file. It took over a week and a half for that Applescript to run(alternately spiking one CPU or the other on 10.6 client,) but my media server wasn’t really doing that much anyway.

Now, if you’re like me, you’re interested in getting things done in Mac IT - so I’ve got two optimizations that are tangentially related to Applescript: Services and Automator. As mentioned in a recent podcast episode by previously-mentioned raconteur, ThisService is an app that’s been around for a good long while, and has been spiffied up not too long ago. A Mac sysadmin may find the need to generate a new UUID, say for use in CreateUserPkg.app by MagerValp. As one of the pre-canned examples, you can generate and paste that text anywhere in OS X that supports Services. Code that already exists! Win! <Insert big disclaimer: these are only text-based services you can interact with(as far as I can tell.) I’m hoping to keep my eye out for times I pop into the terminal to generate a bit of text to grab so I can automate all the things, as they say.>

I had looked into ThisService because it sounded cool, but I didn’t realize it wasn’t going to solve the problem I had been inspired to search it out for: unflattening the new-ish(2007? earlier?) installer package format. One trip to Automator later, I’ve got a service for that! Download ➡ here ⬅. Just drop it into your ~/Library/Services folder and enable it in System Preferences(or use Services Manager, also mentioned in the podcast above,) and you’re off to the races. Two optimizations you may want: how about auto-unxar-ing the Payload(since we’re following the commandments of packaging and use less payload-free packages now?) Open the Service in Automator and uncomment the corresponding lines to auto-expand it! Have BigHonkingText or some notification conduit(Growl, etc.) installed? An example is included to send a alert to the screen, just in case the payload may take a bit to unpack, to give you some feedback.