Joel Always one syllable

Fenway Fest 2025

12 Jan 2025

One of the gifts for my son this past holiday season was that we would bring him to Fenway Park for the first “Fenway Fest”. Typically the Red Sox have a “Winter Weekend” but this year moved it home, which is … much more convenient? For us, at least.

Of course getting to meet the players and get some autographs and cards signed was the highlight, but the absolute cherry on top of the entire event was the ability to be in Fenway Park in the middle of a beautiful snow storm.

Fenway. Snow. (animated)
Fenway. Snow. (animated)
Yaz -- his statue -- welcoming us to Fenway with a tip of his cap.
"Carl Yastrzemski" welcoming us to Fenway Park.
Statue of Ted Williams placing his cap on a little boy
The Ted Williams statue outside of Gate B.
Fenway 2025 signage, in lights
FENWAY 2025.
Entrance into Fenway, dusted with snow, the park in the distance
The entrance to Fenway dusted with snow, with the Green Monster in the distance.
The mini-est of snowmen.
The mini-est of snowmen.
Center and right field bleacher seats covered with snow.
Center and right field bleacher seats covered with snow.
New Balance.
New Balance.

All photos taken with an iPhone 14.

No one teaches you: Career growth and management

04 Jan 2025

'Feedback' as a young artist.
As cliché and corny as this may be, still: tend to your career like a garden.

Preface

When I say “no one teaches you”, I mean that there are life lessons that are not among the typical curriculum provided to young adults as they begin navigating their ADULT adult lives. Not from their schools, their first jobs, and not from their parents. This post is a reflection on life lessons you may have to learn the hard way - like I did.

No one is paying attention to you at work. (Like, really seeing you perform at that high level.)

Well, mostly. Maybe if you’re some wunderkind? Or 10x unicorn? Maybe.

But no, mostly. Nope.

Sorry.

Why? Because everyone is also trying to make their way, get by, keep their head above water, or get to the end of the day or week. Being an adult is hard, and most of us are just tired.

Of course there are always exceptions to the rule. People around you may care, and may be trying to do what they can to help you excel and get that promotion, but at the end of the day that responsibility ends up at your feet. The responsibility to prove that you are doing everything you need to do to move up that ladder, is ultimately on you.

For an interesting read on what it’s like navigating advancement of a career in “BIG TECH” (scare quotes!), there is this post from Michael Lynch - “Why I Quite Google to Work for Myself”. This post has stuck with me for months, so I couldn’t write my own thoughts without sharing his.

Now, here’s where some of those exceptions kick in - if you’re lucky, you work at a company that has a tried and true process for showcasing the impact you have delivered to the business. Perhaps that’s a set of documents that serve as a framework for advancement, or the company uses something like Lattice to good effect, or your manager is constantly on your ass to document everything. But that’s a lot o’ “buts” and “maybes”.

But … most don’t.

So don’t expect that the people in charge of making decisions will just know. They won’t.1

With that cynicism laced with realism—or vice-versa—out of the way, what now?

Keep receipts. Document what you’ve delivered month-over-month. What were your personal initiatives? Where have you delivered against your goals and promises? Who have you helped improve, and are you able to state how and why? Be direct on what you intend to do. What are your plans? Look at your organization’s leveling rubrics and not only track where you meet the expectations, but can exhibit how you have internalized those skills and have burned into muscle memory.

I want to be clear on something - I suck at this! I am often so focused on the day and week at hand, that I neglect to suitably prioritize the documentation of slow and steady growth. This is as much a reminder for me as it is for anyone I might have a similar conversation with. I wish I’d more people in my orbit over the years to beat this into my brain. Alas, I did not. C’est la vie. (Again, not their problem.)

So if you’re reading this, consider the above. Good luck. Look out for #1. Keep your receipts. And let me know how it goes.

  1. I worked at this consultancy several lifetimes ago. I was doing good work (as far as I knew) and had several people telling me as much. The challenge at the time was that the department we were in skewed more towards the design/IA/UX side of work at a digital agency, but as a specialist in front-end technology I, and others, were on the fringes and met with an apples vs. oranges, compare-and-contrast, problem. I was not equipped at that time to make the case for myself and outline where my personal value and the role’s trajectory (from a larger digital evolutionary perspective) was. My memory recalls that I eventually did get that promotion, but the glacial turn towards getting there burned me out enough to leave when I could. To be clear, most of that was a product of my inaction and the inability to realize this. ↩

No one teaches you: Feedback. Giving or Receiving.

29 Dec 2024

'Feedback' as a young artist.
Question: is "criticism" always negative?

Preface

When I say “no one teaches you”, I mean that there are life lessons that are not among the typical curriculum provided to young adults as they begin navigating their ADULT adult lives. Not from their schools, their first jobs, and not from their parents. This post is a reflection on life lessons you may have to learn the hard way - like I did.

When I graduated high school I decided to stay relatively close to home and attend the University of Hartford, a medium-sized liberal arts school in CT known for their arts programs. Theater, ballet, music, illustration, art history, graphic design - all well represented by the programs at UHA. That first year I chose my major, art with a concentration on illustration. I spent most of it in art history classes and foundational 100 level classes, figure drawing and the like. I enjoyed some of it1. However, I quickly ran into something that would put a hard stop to my dreams of drawing superheroes for Marvel or DC2.

“Crits”. Critiques. Criticism.

I couldn’t do it. Could not handle it. (I was a sensitive kid3.) After so many years of people complimenting my doodles, my art class projects, the comic strips for the school paper, I was just not ready for the heavy dose of real criticism.

Reframing Criticism

Looking back now, I wonder what would have happened if I’d had the proper framing—the framing that “criticism” was a coaching device, not a vessel for insult and derision4. If I had known these professors were there to break things down in order to rebuild better and bolder, would I have stayed? Perhaps.

And therein lies a lesson: knowing the intent behind the feedback matters.

When we understand the why behind feedback, it transforms how we process and respond to it. In hindsight, I see that feedback is not inherently negative—it’s a tool for growth.

The link to ctocraft is one of the better distillations of many themes learned from reading the soon-to-be-mentioned “Thanks for the Feedback”. If you’re not interested in reading an entire book on the topic, just go read that blog post. I wish I had written it.

Feedback: The 3 Types and 2 Sides

Feedback comes in several forms, three that I know of:

  1. Coaching: Guidance to help you improve.
  2. Evaluation: Assessing your performance against a standard.
  3. Appreciation: Recognition for your efforts or achievements.

There are also two sides to the feedback equation: giving and receiving. Both are emotional intelligence (EQ) skills that require training and practice.

To give effective feedback, ask yourself:

  • Do you understand where the receiver is emotionally or mentally?
  • Have you considered how they prefer to receive feedback?
  • Do you know the context in which they like to receive praise or guidance?

To receive feedback effectively, reflect on the following:

  • What is the intent or motivation of the giver?
  • Can you temporarily set aside your ego or pride and compartmentalize?
  • Can you resist the urge to respond defensively and instead focus on understanding the “why”?

How to Build Your Feedback Skills

How might you work on these things? The book “Thanks for the Feedback” is an excellent resource for examining these things. I would recommend it to anyone navigating a career in the corporate space. (Not to mention spouses. And parents.) There’s much to learn in there that often no one will take the time to explain or examine with you5. I am grateful that the managers and peers at my day-job had us read this as part of a work book club. It has been immensely helpful.

A Reflection on Art School and Beyond

Thinking back, I have wondered how my time in art school would have differed if I’d been better equipped. What would my career trajectory look like? With the crystal clear 20/20 hindsight I’m not too broken up that things went the way they did. It all worked out pretty okay in the end.

  1. At that time, if we’re talking “take it, or leave it” - the art history part I’d put in the “leave it” bucket, certainly not “take it”. My professor was dreadfully boring, the lectures were huge, and my ADD was having absolutely none of it. Although, I guess, I do still know what doric columns, flying buttresses, and the Venus of Willendorf are. ↩

  2. Or Image. Or Valiant. This was the 90’s after all. ↩

  3. Still am, just equipped with better coping mechanisms. ↩

  4. To be fair, some of the professors absolutely did take joy in ripping things to shreds. Cruel? Maybe. (Probably.) But the emotional callouses may serve as armor in what is ostensibly a cruel world. ↩

  5. An extra tidbit: if you have done some examination of the self and know how you prefer to give and receive feedback, tell people! Write a personal README! Share it with your manager and teammates! Wouldn’t it be helpful to tell people up front the cheat codes on how to work with you? For me, it’s been a tremendous help. ↩

caddy, docker, and dnsimple

16 Nov 2024 ⦁ #dev ⦁ #homelab ⦁ #self-hosting

“I’m experimenting wth Caddy as a replacement for Nginx.”

Right now, that’s an aspirational statement, and not entirely factual.

Because, I would need to get Caddy to run properly to actually experiment with it.

Alright, haha – enough sarcasm.

In order for me to get Caddy to run with the following requirement - must have a Caddy docker image that supports DNSimple’s TLS challenge. The stock Caddy docker image you get from Dockerhub does not have all of the DNS providers. As a result, you need to build your own image containing the DNSimple module. How might you do this?

Edit your Dockerfile.

FROM caddy:builder AS builder

# Set Go environment variables to fetch dependencies directly
ENV GO111MODULE=on
ENV GOPROXY=https://goproxy.io
ENV GOSUMDB=off

RUN xcaddy build --with github.com/caddy-dns/dnsimple

FROM caddy:latest

COPY --from=builder /usr/bin/caddy /usr/bin/caddy

When I attempted to build an image with the above, not containing the ENV’s I would run into errors related to the proxies used to fetch the Go libraries. The ENV’s above were helpful to get things to work, thanks to the comments here in a Github issue.

Built with:

docker build -t caddy-with-dnsimple .

Bonus compose.yml contents:

services:
  caddy:
    image: caddy-with-dnsimple
    container_name: caddy
    hostname: caddy
    restart: always
    volumes:
      - ./data/caddy:/data
      - ./data/caddy/Caddyfile:/etc/caddy/Caddyfile
      - /etc/timezone:/etc/timezone:ro
      - /etc/localtime:/etc/localtime:ro
    ports:
      - 80:80
      - 443:443

And started with docker compose up -d

Fujifilm x100vi Part 2: Buttons, knobs, and dials

13 Oct 2024

So much stuff in this thing. What are all the buttons and knobs? What are they called? What can you do with them?

At the top of the camera

Function 1 button to the right of the On/Off switch. (The un-labeled one.) It turns face detection on and off.

The exposure compensation dial is right next to it. This is for when you want to over-expose or under-expose your photos.

The big dial towards the center is the shutter speed, and ISO dial. More on this soon … because I admit that I have a lot to learn.

The “hot shoe” is where you can place your external flash (The light. Not the memory.)

At the front of the camera

  • Front command dial.

  • The “function two” button which brings up a menu that allows you to loop through common settings with the control ring while you are shooting. Eg: cycling through different “film simulations” you can choose (sepia, black and white, etc).

    An example of the utility of “function two” is providing fast access to “tele-conv” (or “teleconverter”). To go from “off” to 70mm or 50mm:

    1. Press function two on the front of the camera
    2. Cycle through the options to “tele-conv”
    3. Now when you’re ready to shoot, turn the control ring to zoom in with 50mm to 70mm modes.
  • Around the function two button is a little toggle where you can switch between your optical viewfinder and your electrical viewfinder.
  • Between the control ring and the body is the aperture ring.
  • At the very front is where you can attach filters by unscrewing the very tip, or front of the lense, and placing your filter attachment and filter. Like the Moment Cinebloom filter, as mentioned in the video.

To the left of the camera

The focus mode switch where you can select “manual focus”, which turns your control ring on to focus your shot, well … manually. Clicking on the dial in the back of the camera, at the top and on the right, to zoom in.

“Continuous” is great for when you’re shooting moving objects.

“Single” is better for shooting things like portraits.

The back of the camera

The viewfinder and the diopter immediately to the left where you can adjust the focus of the viewfinder. Immediately to the right is the sensor that will turn the screen off if you’re placing your eye up to the viewfinder.

The “Drive/Delete” button which will display the menu to switch between different shooting modes - most common for selecting whether you’re in “Still Image” or “Movie” modes.

“AEL / AFL” button, is the exposure and focus lock button.

The rear command dial to the furthest right at the top controls the shutter speed.

The little “Q” button on the edge of the back, on the right side, is the “quick menu button”. This gives you quick access to different settings so you don’t have to dig through all the different deep menu settings. You use the little joystick to move around to the different quick menu items and then cycle through each of them with the rear command dial.