In the same week Dunkirk Dave didn’t see his shadow thus forecasting an early spring, my area got clobbered with a huge snowstorm coupled with high winds, coupled with poor road plowing. If you don’t know Dave, he’s the “other” groundhog. Said other groundhog predicted a longer winter, so I am going with the rodent from my hometown.

Improved is Subjective – What you see in this post is compiled with a lot of copying and pasting of links from my Microsoft Edge browser. Last week I noticed links were labeled with the title of the Web page and not the actual URL text, and I had no idea why. It turns out this is a new “feature.” Scrolling down this article fortunately showed me how to disable it.

Or Maybe Just Surf – Perhaps my browser expectations are too high, and I should just use the Edge browser to do a different type of surfing offline as my friend Craig does?

Can’t Widget Your Way Out – You may have seen a floating icon over the edge of some Web sites, and by clicking you get “help” in the form of accessibility tools. I have been suspect of these, as with all of my research and hands-on experience, there is no magic bullet for Web accessibility. This report from the Seyfarth law firm confirms that fact.

What to Do? Tell Me a Story – User story mapping is a term that applies to an agile approach of defining what you are going to do (e.g. build software, design a service) instead of writing detailed specifications that nobody reads. This is a good article on user story mapping from a design point-of-view.

Zoom Like a Pro – If you think the only prep you need before going live on camera is to make sure you are wearing something, then you may not want to read this post from my friend Roland on how CEOs and other experts approach streaming. Not surprising, there’s a lot more going on you don’t see in that little box on the screen.

There Once Was a Sidewalk from Nantucket – Appleton, Wisconsin is soliciting poetry to be set in concrete in sidewalks. I showed an example of this sidewalk square prose last summer in one of my What I Learned posts. Where I am not “there” in writing poetry, I’m equally as interested in seeing what is laid in concrete as seeing crumbing sidewalks repaired.

It’s Spongebob, For You – The Nickelodeon kids TV empire now has a birthday club where you can have one of their show characters call you. As my kiddo who has an upcoming birthday doesn’t read my blog, I’m not worried she sees what I may do for it. I’m also thinking of doing this for some not-so-kiddo friends.

Fluffy Unicorns for Adults Only – Last weekend I had the pleasure of imbibing a Fluffy Unicorn... IPA, that is, at the Stillmank Brewery in Green Bay, Wisconsin while attending a meetup there of listeners of the No Agenda Show Podcast. It was a delicious brew, but I decided not to get stickers of the beer label for my kiddo who loooves unicorns. Perhaps a call from the school in the morning asking why there is a such a sticker on the Chromebook may have led to this decision.

Unlocking the Nextcloud – I often say I need to write more about Nextcloud, the private cloud software I use to manage photos, calendars, contacts and more. Though I am not going to do it now, I do want to share this link to fix if you get an error when deleting files on how to clear Nextcloud file locks.

Christmas (cards) by the numbers – This past week I took down Christmas cards (don’t worry, the decorations came down weeks ago!) and as I went through them, I counted a 50/50 split between traditional cards – ones where you actually write on them – and photo cards – ones where you build and print online or at a store. With recent trends towards the latter, I was surprised at the actual mix.

18 (bottles of?) Books On The Wall – When listening to a Scrum podcast listing recommended books to help ScrumMasters like myself, I looked up and saw all the unread books on my bookshelf. Counting them, I have accumulated 18 books I have yet to read. As I still want to read them, I decided to scratch the list and read what I have. Look for more book takeaways when I find the time to do so.

What I Know – My friend Gary shared this post on LinkedIn from organization psychologist Adam Grant with an interesting chart on what we know, and the humility of admitting what we don’t I know at least in the US admitting you don’t know something is a sign of weakness in some organizations, where the reality is others may not know the answer either.

Burnt Cookies – I’ve been using the DuckDuckGo Web browser as the primary one on my iPhone for the last few weeks and have enjoyed its user experience. Built in is the simplicity of clearing your personal data by clicking a “flame” logo, literally seeing flames burning your cookies and other private information as shown in the accompany image. You can alternately choose a whirlpool or airstream animation. The browser also supports Android devices but not Windows or MacOS. If you’re conscious of being tracked as I am, this is an elegant way of thwarting it.

“We shape our tools, thereafter our tools shape us.” – Marshall McLuhan

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This is from The Hot Iron, a journal on business and technology by Mike Maddaloni.

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