Posts by wogan@mastodon.africa
(DIR) Post #AXmlPBuMbVCB4RMEdM by wogan@mastodon.africa
2023-07-17T12:39:24Z
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Interesting signup on mastodon.africa lately - @moclinhan68 - if you're in need of incense and feng shui products direct from Vietnam, look no further!
(DIR) Post #AXmog6N2kEx6gLWlsW by wogan@mastodon.africa
2023-07-17T13:16:04Z
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@Hypn Now THAT'S POPIA compliant ð
(DIR) Post #AXmp2EznMFAVnqD5lI by wogan@mastodon.africa
2023-07-17T13:19:42Z
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Today feels like a good preview of what I want my usual day-to-day to look like:* Up at a reasonable time* Had a workout* Wrote some code for a side project* Thought about, talked about and wrote about some business ideas (mostly in my journal)* Took like 1h15m off to actually cook and eat a lunch* Currently working on a feature for one of my big projectsWith any luck, I'll get to have 2 days/week like this for the rest of the year, and build myself into a position where I can do more.
(DIR) Post #AXmpZmp4buUYGvBtpI by wogan@mastodon.africa
2023-07-17T13:26:09Z
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The big things currently absent from this day:* Meetings! None are scheduled* Having to deal with employee drama (anything from sick leave and managing the impact, to escalated coding issues that need solving)* Most interestingly: Time tracking.The latter is an experiment right now. I got into the habit of doing detailed time tracking back in 2018, but today is the first work day in over 5 years where I'm consciously choosing NOT to run the timer, just to see how it feels.
(DIR) Post #AXmuMif1H1LjMy4p6W by wogan@mastodon.africa
2023-07-17T14:19:48Z
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Strange thing to get stuck on today: Label printing ð I assumed this was highly standardized by now - especially given that Word has an explicit option for the "Tower W110" label sheet I'm using, but the layout of the resulting labels is drifting so badly, that it ends up cutting off the logo after literally the first layer.I think this is going on the side-project list: Figuring out how to actually get 24x labels printed with the logo in the same spot in each one.
(DIR) Post #AXoUsdOiASrzoxvUfo by wogan@mastodon.africa
2023-07-18T08:43:41Z
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Ah hell yes, it's EIN time! I've probably just unlocked the next tranche of paperwork and procedure.#Stripe #Atlas #Business
(DIR) Post #AXodPcw1hxvFZkkhSy by wogan@mastodon.africa
2023-07-18T10:19:15Z
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And away we go! My Stripe account is fully setup, and just received its first $10 test payment. A few days from now, it should payout to my Mercury bank account, and then I will legitimately be able to charge USD globally.ðķa_whole_new_world_little_mermaid_1989.mp3#Stripe #Atlas #Business
(DIR) Post #AXok5OUkNxG8g7I9c8 by wogan@mastodon.africa
2023-07-18T11:34:01Z
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@carnage4life It's basic directional stuff:* Twitter is run by a bonafide maniac who seems intent on bankrupting it to get out of a massive debt* Threads is run by a platform company that has people that build platforms every single day, and likely want to build platforms for the rest of their careers.
(DIR) Post #AXqQQyKFgaLjDbwppw by wogan@mastodon.africa
2023-07-19T07:03:16Z
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Spent all of 20 minutes this morning trying to figure out how to manually dial out on a modem (using AT commands), and it's honestly amazing how many hidden layers there are to the stuff we take for granted (like getting online).Also, yes, I could not figure it out ð AT+COPS? and AT+CPIN and everything else tells me I should be good to go, but ATD keeps returning NO CARRIER and I'm done head-desking on this for the day.
(DIR) Post #AXqR3upEdLUPel0fHE by wogan@mastodon.africa
2023-07-19T07:10:19Z
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@GrahamDowns Surprisingly, some folks do!I'm building a smart metering business, one of the things I need to be able to do (which I honestly thought would be a lot easier than this) is to get the MSISDN of a SIM without putting it into a phone. AT+CNUM barely works in SA, so doing ATD*135*501#; (for Vodacom) is my only realistic option, but getting that right via minicom is proving to be a pain.
(DIR) Post #AXqSx0iAYDbPnDXXCi by wogan@mastodon.africa
2023-07-19T07:31:26Z
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@Skoop You will install Microsoft's latest walled garden and you will like it :P
(DIR) Post #AXqTqNDiZ64ZWuhBrM by wogan@mastodon.africa
2023-07-19T07:41:29Z
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I got a new perspective on the "build vs buy" argument recently. I've usually been in favor of "buy off the shelf if it meets 80% of your needs" because "building in-house has huge complexity and cost implications"Except, apparently with enterprise/B2B SaaS, where the "off the shelf" licensing cost for some tools exceeds what you'd pay a good developer to build for you custom.Because it turns out, you're actually paying for the devs at the other company to build your "off the shelf" solution
(DIR) Post #AXqTymBFeCfXG8Y4qe by wogan@mastodon.africa
2023-07-19T07:43:00Z
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So right now, I'm working on helping my client build an in-house tool, and we're having to compete with an "off the shelf" solution, but the more we dig into it:* The licensing cost for the off-the-shelf solution is insanely high* Anything extra that's needed (it's always extra) is charged for* In effect, my client is paying for the vendor's developers to make the system do what they wantIn some aspects, functionally indistinguishable from just hiring and running a dev team directly
(DIR) Post #AXqXeA02IETyrtjBey by wogan@mastodon.africa
2023-07-19T08:24:04Z
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@malmorrow Haha! That's really true to enterprise software, it turns out :)I think the tradeoff runs along the "key customer" axis:* Company with small handful of large accounts - it's mostly bespoke dev per customer* Company with thousands of small users - it's more truly "off the shelf" since you don't need to fight to keep any one customer happy
(DIR) Post #AY0kqJDvCdYytwcGsS by wogan@mastodon.africa
2023-07-24T06:39:02Z
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@GrahamDowns It's a neat idea, but it looks like the registrar doesn't allow for single-character domains!
(DIR) Post #AY0ktdMCnqaiDI4nOC by wogan@mastodon.africa
2023-07-24T06:39:40Z
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@taylorlorenz Maybe because they first have to boot this poor unsuspecting account off the network?
(DIR) Post #AY0lAgROahnGhTdMjA by wogan@mastodon.africa
2023-07-24T06:42:45Z
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@ukrkyi @taylorlorenz This is Elon we're talking about, the only reason the @x account is not dead yet is because the engineer is currently in the bathroom or something.
(DIR) Post #AY0lFRHgN2J98mMH2m by wogan@mastodon.africa
2023-07-24T06:43:36Z
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@GrahamDowns It probably would! And if I'm being honest, I don't really want to have anything to do with "X" (as a social media brand) given who's currently running it. Happy to let someone else roll those particular dice.
(DIR) Post #AY0lQbvJ9fB9K4Dgsi by wogan@mastodon.africa
2023-07-24T06:45:38Z
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End of an era! I remember back in 2007 (or was it 2008?) when I built TwitterSA.com - a free aggregator that basically just saved all geolocated-to-South-Africa tweets and served them in a read-only twitter-like UI, which came in handy many times (due to the fail whales!), and was finally taken out of commission by a C&D from Twitter's lawyers (for using "twitter" in the domain").Given how it's ending, can't say I'm sad to see it go.(Pic grabbed from @taylorlorenz )
(DIR) Post #AY0lUunkuMmh1xjvg8 by wogan@mastodon.africa
2023-07-24T06:46:25Z
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@GrahamDowns X is too generic a symbol to copyright or trademark (I think a German clothing brand tried to grab Y at some point), so best of luck to those lawyers enforcing anything.For me, I just genuinely don't want to be associated with Elon or anything he does ð