Journal
The Personal History of David Copperfield
Watched The Personal History of David Copperfield today and quite liked it. I haven't read the original book by Charles Dickens. But I went and read the story online after watching the film. I could get a sense of how good an adaptation the film was. It passes my test for a good movie - it should linger with me after watching it. This can happen only if a film is true to itself.
Locked out of Twitter
I lost access to my Twitter account. Some of it can be attributed to my foolishness. But a lot of it is because of how bad Twitter's systems are. From what I investigated, it looks like the email address on my account was removed ever since I deactivated and then reactivated my account earlier this year. This means I am now unable to reset my password using the usual method. I have been trying to reach them for the last month and Twitter support is virtually non-existent. I understand there is no way to provide personalized support at their scale. I am redirected to a URL saying 'No reset method available', which means someone actually saw this scenario and chose to handle it in a way that requires an email associated with your account to resolve it.
Lockdown
I am writing this in the middle of a worldwide pandemic. Most of the world is in lockdown and slipping into a recession. This is day 20 of a nation wide lock down in India, and I haven't stepped out of my house in the past two weeks. So many workers have been rendered jobless. The world seems to be coming apart. I am writing this here to record my state of mind at this time - I feel strangely peaceful.
Thoughts on Shape Up
Shape Up: Stop Running in Circles and Ship Work that Matters is an online free-to-read book by Basecamp that talks about their process of building software. I think it is safe to call it a project management book. Though I don't use Basecamp, I am a fan of their philosophy of building products. I have read their previous books Rework and Getting Real. If there is one theme that cuts across all their work - it is the idea of doing away with what is not essential. It could be called a frugal approach to product building, where they aspire to do more with less by questioning what is necessary.
Two series I am enjoying
Nope, this is not about TV series.
The first series I am talking about is an email course by Dan Abramov called 'Just Javascript'. I receive a new module every other Thursday and I look forward to each one of them. Rather than teaching programming, what is does is fix the mental model by creating a 'Javascript Universe' so that it can be easily reasoned with. I think it is already giving me new ways to think about the language and I am sure I will carry this mental model with me while writing and debugging Javascript code. Oh, and I love the illustrations by Maggie Appleton. Highly recommended if you are an intermediate Javascript developer. Dan is sending out each module after writing it, so it is a work in progress. It is a bit like witnessing the making of a classic.