Assorted Reads (August 2024)

Hi folks! I hope you've all had a great month. I've been getting settled into my new role at Float Financial over the past few weeks and, while I enjoyed my time off between Netlify and Float, it feels good to be coding again.

Let's get into some interesting reads to check out!

Wrist Health & Maintenance Program

One of my new co-workers shared this article recently and I've found it to be a great set of exercises that don't take too much time out of my day.

I think those of us who sit in front of a computer for most of our workdays are generally aware of how detrimental doing so is to our health over the long term. Based on anecdotes from my social circle, wrist pain associated with repetitive motions seems to manifest sooner.

Ergonomic keyboards and mice can help with this, but taking some time to stretch your muscles every day can help even more. Speaking for myself, I've used an ergonomic keyboard for years and noticed how stiff my wrists still were while going through these exercises.

Charitable giving is a life hack

This Substack article made me think about a passage from Terry Crews' autobiography which has stuck with me since I read it a couple of years ago:

You don't work for money. You work for appreciation. You work to create value and to be valued.

Crews wrote this to explain his practice of donating 10% of his gross income. His argument for doing so is that it ensures that everything he does has value because everything he earns will result in helping someone in need and, by doing so for more people over time, he becomes more valued.

I think the article and Crews make a great case for how charitable giving can make all the jobs we do serve a greater goal that we find meaningful and worthwhile to invest in, especially in moments when we struggle to find purpose in the work we're doing in our day-to-day.

How to Architect Software for a Greener Future

I'm a huge fan of Sara Bergman's talks and writing regarding architecting software to be 'greener'. So much so, I was motivated to examine edge computing through a green software lens and to incorporate what I learned in future versions of my edge computing talk.

If you're interested in the green software movement, I highly recommend giving her article a read.