🗣 How to speak

I watched Patrick Winston’s How to Speak https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Unzc731iCUY and it correlates a lot with my thoughts https://www.goncharov.xyz/life/how-to-make-speech-en.html

However I've spotted some new ideas:
1️⃣ Impact = f(Knowledge, Practice, Talent). Talent to speak is more lightweight than Knowledge
2️⃣ Start with an empowerment promise. Do not start from jokes. Tell people what they will know at the end that they don’t know now yet. Makes the hour meaningful.
3️⃣ Cycle. Say things three times: Tell them, tell them again, remind them. Repetition increases the chance everyone gets it.
4️⃣ Build a fence around your idea. Say what it is - and what it is not. Prevent confusion with other similar ideas.
5️⃣ Ask one good question. A short, non-embarrassing question wakes people up and makes the talk interactive. Pause up to 7 seconds is OK.
6️⃣ Prefer props for teaching. Writing at the board or demonstrating props is the right speed for people to absorb ideas. Props create empathy, people mirror actions.
7️⃣ Use memorable props or demos. It turns abstract into physical, so people remember props far more than bullet lists.
8️⃣ Show vision fast (< 5 minutes). State the problem and what you’ve done - list steps and contributions. People decide quickly if you have impact.
9️⃣ Winston’s Star for memorability. Give your work a: Symbol, Slogan, Surprise, Salient idea, and a Story. One clear sticky idea beats many good ones.
🔟 End with contributions, not thank you. Final slide = what you did. Leave people with your contributions visible while they ask questions and walk out. Also you can make a joke at the end

🔗 you also can take a look onto https://www.coursera.org/learn/public-speaking

P.s. Also he created two awesome courses. I really insist to watch them:
- https://www.coursera.org/learn/algorithms-part1
- https://www.coursera.org/learn/algorithms-part2

#review

🎯 Booting PC from a Vinyl Record

Found a fun engineering experiment: booting PC from a vinyl record. Yes, literally.
https://boginjr.com/it/sw/dev/vinyl-boot/

What’s the trick?
Early IBM PCs had a cassette interface. It could load data from analog audio.

The author:
- encoded a 64 KB boot image as audio,
- pressed it onto a vinyl record
- connected a turntable to the PC’s cassette input
- PC listens to the record, decodes the sound into bits, loads everything into RAM and boots FreeDOS.

TL;DR
If you can turn sound into bits, you can boot from it.
Vinyl included.

#fun #retro #hardware

🎯 How I really estimate work

I read How I estimate work as a staff software engineer and pulled the core ideas:

1️⃣ Accurate estimates are impossible for most work
Most of work involves unknowns that you can’t predict until you explore them. Only tiny, well-understood tasks are easy to estimate.

2️⃣ Estimation isn’t for engineers, it’s for managers
Managers often come with a timeline in mind first. Engineering isn’t really choosing the estimate. It’s choosing what work can be done within that estimate.

3️⃣ Unknowns dominate known work
Known tasks are predictable. Uncharted code paths and interactions take most of the time and those you can’t numerically nail down in advance.

4️⃣ Start with context, not code
Before reading any sources, figure out what timeline is expected, how urgent the project is, and what trade-offs are acceptable.

5️⃣ Don’t ask how long will it take? ask what fits in this time?

6️⃣ Focus on unknowns, not on known tasks

7️⃣ Give plans with trade-offs, not flat numbers
Instead of 4 weeks, present options like:
- full solution (risky)
- simplified approach (quicker)
- help from another team (less risk)

8️⃣ Sometimes you must say this is impossible

Summary:
Estimating isn’t about predicting time. It’s about mapping technical options to business expectations under uncertainty.
Good estimation = understanding what you don’t know and managing the risks.

#til

🔫Doom via Telnet

just run

telnet doom.w-graj.net 666

Action Default Keybind
UP ARROW UP
DOWN ARROW DOWN
LEFT ARROW LEFT
RIGHT ARROW RIGHT
STRAFE LEFT ,
STRAFE RIGHT .
FIRE SPACE
USE E
SPEED ]
WEAPON SELECT 1-7

it really works. more details https://github.com/wojciech-graj/doom-ascii

PS it's better to use the dark mode like in the coments

#til #ascii

🤖microbit

I've just found quite promising project for kids: https://microbit.org/

There is gui, javascript & python to have some fun with kids. They can start just from GUI and can program it. however initializating is a bit tricky

#DYI

🌧terminal weather app

It draws current weather via ASCII animations. It's driven by real-time weather data.

https://github.com/Veirt/weathr

brew install Veirt/veirt/weathr
mkdir -p ~/Library/Application\ Support/weathr

cat >> ~/Library/Application\ Support/weathr/config.toml <<EOL
hide_hud = false
silent = true
[location]
auto = true
hide = false
[units]
temperature = "celsius"
wind_speed = "kmh"
precipitation = "mm"
EOL

have fun

#ascii

DHCP irl

#fun