Interesting to see that my productivity system of giant todo.txt from the 90s is sorta back in style in software engineering.
Keenan Johnson
@keenanjohnson.com
Freelance Human. Founded some hardware startups. Loves making things. Currently in London. https://www.keenanjohnson.com/ https://www.breadboardfoundry.com/ https://www.ribbitnetwork.org/ https://sifa.id/p/keenanjohnson.com
A startup just told me they don't use slack or anything, they just chat on signal.
Watched a friend go on Facebook to sell a toaster and there is some absurd stuff on there. Like I saw a post that was “We may need to move our farm operations in the near future. Anyone have experience in moving their farm?”. Like what does that mean. They are picking up the crops from the field?
Just watched this talk on software dependency culture and feeling both hopeful and despondent about the state of the industry all at the same time. www.youtube.com/watch?v=E82l...
Dependency Cultures - Richard Feldman | SSW 2026
YouTube video by Software Should Work
youtube.com
I try not to be a hater about most things, but when people use non deterministic software (like llms) to do things like add up math tables etc, I definitely make a loud sighing noise.
You either die a hero, or you live long enough to see yourself become the jira admin
Just started a new consulting project for a good robotics thing. Weeee
Watched the new spider person movie. Very relatable as a maker. Your stuff is barely working all the time, you keep asking for help, end up having to borrow some supplies from your defense industry friends.
My bank email: “Scams are getting more sophisticated” followed by the most bland scam looking stock image I have ever seen.
Half the planet is having a massive fight about how to correctly interpret an Ancient Greek poem but go ahead, close some more humanities departments.
I get so many emails now that are like: "HALLO I RED YOU HAVE BIZ_NASS AND COULD YOU USE MOAR SRRVICES TO HELLP YOU ACCLERATE GROOWTH? WE OFFER EXXACTLY THIS SERVICES. DO YOU LIKE IT? WHAT ARE TOP FIVE THINGS YOU WISH SRVICED TO ACCEL EXPONENTIAL / INNOVATE"
I'm thinking today of one of my favorite quotes: "It is a mistake to think you can solve any major problems just with potatoes" - Douglas Adams
The pros and cons of putting your robot vacuum status on atproto ... in this essay I will ...
Was just contacted and asked to help an alumni network group build their own sorta social media / private thing to break out of their current use of facebook groups / slack etc. Can’t tell if it’s a good idea / project or one of those cursed kind of everyone tries this things.
Tried setting up my @sifa.id account in hopes that one day linkedin in it's current form can be dead. sifa.id/p/keenanjohn...
I just watched a huge talk on the history of OOP (object oriented programming) where they went back and basically did a bunch of anthropology through papers letters to figure out the origin / why of it. Very cool and I feel like I could really get into that type of thing.
Just found out there is a conference called better software conference which is just dedicated to people discussing software engineering as a craft and how to be better. That just fills me with hope as most of the discourse I'm exposed to goes the other way.
My conspiracy theory is that most small websites that have ads don't actually make money. They just can't figure out a better way to incentivize people to pay to upgrade other than to remove ads.
Heard from two different people at biggish companies that slide presentations are dead. Everyone just asks LLMs to make bespoke websites for meetings etc that people click around in.
A friend sent me this and it truly describes the human condition in modern society
The irony of picking latex to not deal with layout annoyances, but then spending 97% of the time fighting layout / overlap annoyances
them: what's booty" me: wut? them: booty, like pirates? me: looks at computer. has boot.py open in text editor
One of my new pet peeves in engineering is people sending ascii block diagrams that are most likely generated by LLMs that "almost" make sense, but will have one crucial confusing bit. Like a hardware component connected into a philosophical idea. Just connect USB to existential dread
Getting back into PCBA design after a break for a bit this week.
If you haven’t tried a liquid band aid before, it will change your life
Still working on my little sub game. Starting to dig into the sound design which is one of the parts I'm most excited to do.
