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The Nottingham Tech Community

This is a great post by https://mindthe.net/devices/ about the awesome tech community we have in Nottingham and why its such a lovely place to be personally and professionally.

Recommended read: The Nottingham Tech Community https://blog.dddeastmidlands.com/2019/10/10/nottingham-tech-community.html

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Happy #PronounsDay! My pronouns are he/him/his, and you can read them programmatically on my website (using #Microformats), as described in https://www.jvt.me/posts/2019/04/10/pronouns-microformats/

It's super important to make them visible so folks everywhere are more comfortable sharing their pronouns

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Modding, Vim, i3, and Efficiency

I've found that I can use Vim for just about everything I do day-to-day (be it personal or professional work) but just not with Java. I feel I need too much of IntelliJ's functionality, and that's OK! I'm happy to admit that it is a better experience for me.

Recommended read: Modding, Vim, i3, and Efficiency https://nora.codes/post/modding-vim-i3-and-efficiency/

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Meetup.com alternatives

With the recent news of Meetup.com increasing prices for organisers https://twitter.com/securestep9/status/1183798804371386369?s=19 this is great to see the alternatives mapped out!

Recommended read: Meetup.com alternatives https://www.notion.so/Meetup-Alternatives-36d73649d34f4bba9e2065f1fa8cd03f

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Meetup Mates

Dominique shared this at DevOpsDays London, and it's a really great idea.

Because it can be difficult attending meetups on your own, Dominique and co have set up a community that makes it possible to meet folks before a meetup, maybe have a drink and a chat, and then head over together.

It has made a huge difference to folks wanting to attend, and has given people a lower barrier to attending an event, because they'll be able to chat to others on Slack before they go, so it won't be as awkward.

This is something that Tech Nottingham and Women in Tech Nottingham do, where before the event there will be some folks meeting at the Theatre Royal, and then they can walk over together, getting a chance to meet others.

Several of the organisers in the Nottingham tech scene chatted with Dominique about this at DevOpsDays, and we'll be looking to see if we can roll it out in Nottingham, too.

Anna has started to use her /events/ page as a way to help others see what events she's attending and for others to join her, too, and I think I'm going to be copying her and doing similar to make it easier for folks to see what upcoming events I'm attending.

Recommended read: Meetup Mates https://www.meetup-mates.com

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How our security team handle secrets

This is a really interesting post to hear how some other folks in a similar environment to us manage their secrets.

It's always cool to see how other folks are doing similar things, anyway, and as usual, Monzo have a great blog post.

Recommended read: How our security team handle secrets https://monzo.com/blog/2019/10/11/how-our-security-team-handle-secrets/

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The Web Can't Survive a Monoculture

This is a great article on why we can't just let Google Chrome / Chromium take over the Web, and need to fight for other alternatives.

But as well as looking at the browsers, we need to look to the platforms too. If everyone ie uses Twitter, then Twitter are less likely to make changes because no one has an alternative. Whereas when we have multiple viable options, folks can jump around and use better platforms if they exist.

The IndieWeb is looking to do this - check out https://indieweb.org/why for a bit more info

Recommended read: The Web Can't Survive a Monoculture http://mikepennisi.com/blog/2019/the-web-cant-survive-a-monoculture/

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Day trip to London tomorrow, so 4+ hours on the train - hoping to finish my writeup of DevOpsDays London as it was a great conference and I'd love to share it with y'all!

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Had a very exciting end to the week.

I'm looking forward to sharing some news on Monday - keep an eye out for a blog post!

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Apple Successfully Implements OpenID Connect with Sign In with Apple

This is very good news - open standards like OpenID Connect (OIDC) make interoperability and integration easier, so hats off to Apple!

Recommended read: Apple Successfully Implements OpenID Connect with Sign In with Apple https://openid.net/2019/09/30/apple-successfully-implements-openid-connect-with-sign-in-with-apple/

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So very close to having my IWC Amsterdam blog post finished before WIT Notts - may have to see if I can get the last bit sorted before the talks start!

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Logs were our lifeblood. Now they're our liability

This is an interesting post, and is an important one to think about. We need to remember that although now we've got lax data privacy / retention laws, it's only going to get more user-focused and protect everyone more (which is universally a good thing!) but that we need to make sure we're architecting things in the right way to handle this.

Also, while you're thinking about this - have a read through some production logs and wonder "what could a bad actor do with these? Could they phish a customer? Could they steal their identity? Or are these so useless that we may as well not be logging anything at all?"

Recommended read: Logs were our lifeblood. Now they're our liability https://vicki.substack.com/p/logs-were-our-lifeblood-now-theyre

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RSVP Rant

Completely agree with this, as a meetup organiser, and would go one step further to say if you're able to RSVP if you're not coming that'd help too, otherwise there's the assumption you'll turn up, especially if you're a regular!

Recommended read: RSVP Rant https://www.danclarke.com/rsvp-rant

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I will not be attending Cyber Nottingham - October Meetup on

It's a shame as this sounds good, but it clashes with https://www.jvt.me/events/homebrew-website-club-nottingham/2019/10/16/ and as it's Hacktoberfest it's going to be pretty busy, methinks!

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Against TDD

This is an interesting read - I'm a big fan of TDD but a few things here hold true

Recommended read: Against TDD http://neopragma.com/index.php/2019/09/29/against-tdd/

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Nothing like a fire alarm when you're fast asleep to get the blood moving..

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Let’s write more blog posts: an experiment

#10MoreBlogPosts sounds like a great initiative - hope that it'll help get more folks into blogging.

I've found it's really helped me personally since starting to work on blogumentation (blogging as a form of self-documentation https://www.jvt.me/posts/2017/06/25/blogumentation/ )

Recommended read: Let’s write more blog posts: an experiment https://amyhupe.co.uk/articles/lets-write-more-blog-posts-an-experiment/

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It's been an awesome day at IndieWebCamp Amsterdam!

The afternoon was chatting about licenses and ownership, then looking at how to migrate folks from silos to IndieWeb with a long term strategy, then some discussions about events, RSVPs and calendars, and finally all things syndication.

Got some great discussions, and lots of interesting things to play with tomorrow at the hack day!

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Interesting start to the morning at IndieWebCamp Amsterdam - we've spoken about accessibility of the Web and IndieWeb, and about how private posts and privacy should work

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I'm really enjoying the intros at IndieWebCamp Amsterdam. Its nice to see the range of websites, the technology usages, and that some folks are posting while they're talking while others haven't touched their sites in years.

It's an exciting chance to get reinvigorated!