Tech in the Trenches

Stop YouTube videos from autoplaying

On August 18, 2015

I subscribe to a number of YouTube channels. I like to queue up the videos I want to watch all at once. Then I go back and reorder and watch them. As you may know, YouTube loves to auto-play every single video you open.

I’ve stopped Flash from auto-playing on the Google Chrome browser already. But YouTube uses HTML5 video when Flash isn’t available. So they play anyway.

Until now!

So if you’re tired of videos bleating in the background without your consent, we’re completely with you! 🙂

That’s why we’ve created a Chrome plugin to help you stop HTML5 videos from playing. The videos will auto-pause right after page load. Buffering will start anyway.

Here’s a link to the plugin in the Chrome Web Store

This plugin works flawlessly with YouTube. I can open 10 videos and while they buffer in the background, not a single sound comes across my headphones because nothing is playing.

When I’m ready to play them, I press play and they’re already pre-loaded.

Newsletters I enjoy

By Carl

On August 14, 2015

In Observations

Newsletters. They come in the mail. They contain little bits of news or entertainment each week. I quickly fall in and out of love with a lot of things but these newsletters I’ve enjoyed for months with no sign of that changing. Do you have one that you love? Who is creating something awesome I should be enjoying too?

Austin Kleon’s Weekly Newsletter

Every week I send out a list of 10 things I think are worth sharing — new art, writing, and interesting links straight to your inbox.

I always find something fun or interesting in Austin’s newsletter. This week I enjoyed Why “do what you love” is often a fairy tale., the original designs for Pac-Man and newspaper popouts.

Austin maintains an eclectic Tumblr collection of all things interesting to him. It’s always interesting to dip into it and see what he’s been thinking about lately.

CJ Chilver’s A Lesser Photographer

His newsletter always brings a little bits of truth to photography. You won’t find gear recommendations or reviews. You won’t find out the best ways to shoot things. There are plenty of people doing that.

CJ provides a deeper look at photography. This week he offers some truths about mistakes.

If you’re an artist, a mistake is not provoking thought.

Last week, he left us with this thought:

Unlearning photography may be just as rewarding as learning photography.

And before that he reminds us to Stop Making Photographs for Photographers.

He’s a breath of fresh air in the world of photography. Enjoy him in newsletter or blog form.

If his words resonate with you, he sells a book by the same name. It’s $5.

A LESSER PHOTOGRAPHER – Craft & Vision

Escaping the Gear Trap to Focus on What Matters

TinyLetter Forwards

This mailing list is just plain fun!

One great TinyLetter, picked by the folks at TinyLetter, delivered to your inbox every week.

Each Friday, you’ll get an issue of a mailing list by someone using TinyLetter to distribute it. It’s always interesting to see what shows up and I love the idea.

Five Song Fridays by Song Exploder

Every Friday, five songs will be handpicked by me and a few special guests and recommended to you, with links to the tracks right in your inbox.

First, if you’re not listening to Song Exploder sign up immediately. It’s a podcast with musicians talking about how they made their songs.

Five Song Fridays is a playlist hand-picked and delivered by Hrishikesh Hirway and special guests.

Here’s a few to get you started:
– The Long Winter – The Commander Thinks Aloud
– House of Cards theme with Jeff Beal
– Bob’s Burgers with Loren Bouchard

This.

This. is where you find and share the best entertainment, art and journalism on the web. Follow the people you trust, give thanks for their links and share the links you love. Each user can share just 1 link a day.

This is a project from The Atlantic. It’s been in beta for a while and they’ve just opened a newsletter where you can subscribe and get 5 links per day, each chosen by a different person.

I’m trying it out and so far I’ve found one thing I wanted to read each day. It’s too early to recommend but I love the idea and the variety of voices it offers.

Looking at the site, there’s no way to sign up. I got an email this week offering the newsletter, so maybe it’s only open to people who already asked to be notified. I remember signing up months ago when I first learned about it.

Empathy is Feeling with People

By Carl

On August 13, 2015

In Observations

The Power of Empathy

The audio of this RSA short is of Dr Brené Brown who spoke at the RSA on The Power of Vulnerability. She talks about the difference between sympathy and empathy and argues that to be truly empathetic you have to be vulnerable by connecting with someone’s pain in yourself.

This short video is a fantastic primer for empathy. What is empathy? How does it differ from sympathy? Are adorable animals the best at explaining any topic?

Here are the main things I took from this short talk.

Empathy is a choice.
It’s a choice to connect with another person by reaching within yourself to get access to that part of yourself that hurts in the same way the other person does. It’s a vulnerable choice to make because you’re opening up.
Sympathy drives disconnection. Empathy fuels connection.
Response doesn’t make something better. Connection makes something better.

Empathy is important in the world of customer service too. Showing empathy is a vital customer service tool. It builds the connection between you and the other person. It brings you together. Connecting with people is a great first step in starting to help them. You’re an ally, not an enemy. You’re showing them empathy, not sympathy. Sympathy starts with at least…

I know you lost all your work, but at least you still have a job. That’s sympathy.
Empathy is not always offering a response. Sometimes the best response is to say, I understand.

Showing a little empathy can go a long way to bettering your relationships with your customers, friends and family. At the end of the day, we don’t want to be alone. We want to make connections with each other. Build those connections with empathy.

Silos

By Carl

On August 13, 2015

In Observations

There are bottlenecks in your communication and it’s slowing your team down. Working in a large organization, there are two ways to share information collaboratively.

First, there is an open flow of information. For instance, a wiki. When I worked for the National Cancer Institute, we had a giant wiki all the technical staff used, updated and relied upon for information. It was a fantastic way to share information across teams and locations. Everyone was able to contribute to the knowledge of the group. Everyone was accountable for their changes.

Second, there is a collection of silos. This is Sharepoint. These are network drives. The silos prohibit the free-flow of information and limit it to pre-approved groups of people. Gatekeepers for those groups hold the reigns of their information tightly and in order for new people to access the information, they must be granted access.

Silos are slow.

When information is locked away inside a silo, it can take hours, or days for the information to be available to those who need it. When information is open, it can be accessed immediately and work can continue.

How many times has this happened to you? You’re at work and you need to do something for the first time. For me, that’s fairly often. When I had access to a well-manicured wiki, it was a matter of searching and finding the information I needed.

Now, I asked for where the information lived. It could be on the Intranet. It could be on Sharepoint. It could be locked away on a network drive somewhere.

I got a quick answer over email.

There are some user guides located at https://sharepointURL

Great. I clicked the link and read the guide. Now I am ready to complete the work!

Wrong.

Sharepoint Denied Access

I’m denied access because I am not on the pre-approved list of people who can access this how-to guide.

I replied to the email that I did not have access. I then clicked the Request access link and found this helpful page.

Sharepoint Request Access form

An anonymous form where I can Send Request. Where does it go? Who manages this access? Can I call them? Email them? No.

I completed the form with the information I needed to get access to and why. And I wait.

That was yesterday. Today, there is no answer. Nor is there any access.

I am not expecting it any time soon. There is no accountability with this system. There is no way to see where my request is or if it went anywhere.

Lip Service

Many organizations say things like we want to foster more communication and collaboration. And then they roll out tools which do precisely the opposite.

I’ve seen where a culture has grown around the open sharing of ideas and information and it’s a magical thing. But too many times information is stuck in silos.

Silos will always stifle communication and collaboration and put up unneeded road blocks. In order to foster communication and collaboration information must flow between teams seamlessly. If a person on another team needs a document, it shouldn’t involve a level of approval to make that document available.

I was popular in high school for two days

By Carl

On August 12, 2015

In Introspection

I’ve often wished I could tell my younger self it will be OK. I grew up in a small town of 2,000 people in a county of about 12,000. My high school was 525 kids and my graduating class was 168.

I knew everyone and everyone knew me. If not personally, at least by name or reputation. Or both. I was a big kid and a freak to boot. The rumors that circulated about me were hilarious.

This open letter to a younger you hit home with me.

An Open Letter to My 15-Year-Old Self Just Before the Start of High School

Get a shitty job. Work in a grocery store, steering shrink-wrapped pallets of cola through cramped warehouses. Spend hours daintily arranging shelves that you will later see customers destroy in minutes. This will pay for your food court lunches and headphones, and also impress on you the nihilistic reality of most of the work out there. Get a good, long, nasty look at how impersonal and irrelevant your role on this earth can be if you’re not careful. Get your face right into it, right into the filthy shelves and bins of expired yogurt and the empty eyes of your manager and make a vow that whatever you do with your life you will always be moving away from all of that.

In High School I worked as:
– A desk clerk in a rec center
– A lifeguard
– A bagger at a Food Lion
– In my father’s print shop doing bindery work

All of these jobs taught me I needed to go to college, get a degree and learn to do something more interesting and valuable.

I still partly regret going to college. I don’t have loan debt hanging over my head. But I feel like I was a different person after college. And not a better person than when I started.

It got me a BS in Communications. Which may not have opened doors. It hasn’t closed any on HR checklists.

Get over any desire to be normal. The desire to be normal is its own perversion. Some people do achieve the appearance of normalness, which means they have successfully hidden or beaten down everything about them that is interesting or memorable in the hopes that they become impervious to criticism. Go the other way. The great joke here is that nobody has ever been normal.

There’s a reason I colored my tennis shoes with sharpies in high school. There’s a reason I worked on a literary magazine and hosted open mic nights. I knew there was no hope for me.

I was 6’5″ 250 lbs. The football coach salivated at my dimensions. But I have the aggression of a kitten and didn’t want to be a human tackling dummy.

I did almost play football once. As a kick and punter. Until I had to choose between soccer and football.

I was popular and cool in high school for about two days.

Then I chose soccer and left the football team behind. Same thing happened when I had a choice to quiet the basketball team and attend my very last open mic night as the Literary Magazine’s editor. Or ride the bench in a meaningless game for a coach that never much liked me.

I quit the team.

Be your own person. You’re much more interesting as you than you trying to be something you think someone else wants you to be.