Posts tagged: catalytic

All posts with the tag "catalytic"

30 posts latest post 2026-01-08
Publishing rhythm
Jan 2026 | 1 posts

My Reader Project

In 2024 I built my own reader after years of being bitter about google killing reader more than a decade prior. Seealso All the way back in 2020 I made a post on what I wanted to build into my own reader. It went long forgotten until I tried to make this post and slugs clashed. Reader-2020 [1] Built on markata # [2] I built it on top of my own static site generator markata [3], feedparser (šŸ Parsing RSS feeds with Python [4]), some jinja templating, and tailwind. After putting all the work I have into markata, it makes projects like this fairly easy to build out with just a custom loader to load new posts in. References: [1]: /reader-2020/ [2]: #built-on-markata [3]: /markata/ [4]: /parsing-rss-python/

What I'm learning in 2024

2024 has been a learning fueled year, Diving deep into things I never would have previously thought I would. Itā€™s been a bit of a mix of the šŸ”„hot twitter trends, and exactly what tech twitter tells you not to do. It just goes to show community is great, the tech community is filled with strong opinions, but you need to think about what really makes sense for you, your career and your customers (or lack there of). tech # [1] - k8s - tailwind - fastapi [2] - htmx [3] - jinja - opnsense successful one day builds # [4] - play-outside - reader - thoughts - thoughts chrome-extension Kubernetes # [5] Damn did I sleep on k8s for way took long. This is like exactly what Iā€™ve needed for a lot of things. Itā€™s a perect example of what happens when you listen to the tech community tell you. Looking for a Heroku replacement, What I found was shocking! [6] I started looking for something to make my homelab [7] deployments easier at home. Previously I needed to ssh into my server an...

my linked in work history

My linked in work history is empty. I made up a position about content developer that tracks how long Iā€™ve been blogging. I think i did this because LinkedIn requires it. Either way this is public knowledge and fine sharing. Social Engineering # [1] If you have taken any security class for your job seriously you have already been told not to share your work with most companies to the public, this is private information that only opens you up for social engineering attacks against that company. I care about privacy and security # [2] I care about the security of these companies I work for and their reputation, so I refuse to publically share it. Need to know # [3] If somehow you need to know where I work itā€™s my choice to tell you. I donā€™t need to advertise to every social engineering hacker where I work on the platform that they go to get that information from. References: [1]: #social-engineering [2]: #i-care-about-privacy-and-security [3]: #need-to-know

Your LinkedIn is Garbage

Your linkedin link sits at the top of your resume, its one of the first things I see when I open your resume, but yet it gives me no more information that the damn resume you sent me. Save that space on your resume for something useful. So you want that /in/me on your resume # [1] Fine if you want it on your resume make it actually useful for someone reading your resume. Actually post something # [2] If I am reading resumeā€™s and I actually take the time to look at your linkedin I want to see you post something. Take a side, make an opinion and post it. Learn something new, make a post about it. If you have a blog and you make a good post share it there. Your work history belongs on your resume # [3] Any security 101 tells you that you should not share your work history on linked in. You should not share photos of you at your workplace that include sensitive information such as your badge. Your work history on LinkedIn is for hackers to steal and use for social engineering. ...

Make the easy things easy

Itā€™s so easy to get out of rhythm, get busy, and drop the ball on some things that you really want to do or should do. This blog is a good example. I took some time off for some family reasons, but have taken a long time to get back to it simply because I am out of rhythm. As I am trying to get back into the rhythm there is some tooling that I have set up for it that I completely forgot about that feel good to use again. Repetitive Tasks # [1] Simple Repetitive Tasks that I have to do often can just feel soul crushing, and one main thing that got me interested in programming. AI tools are becoming more and more useful at solving these problems. For instance code generation tools like co-pilot or codeium are really good at boilerplate and pattern repetition. Things that used to be a few vim macros is now just banging on tab. I often look for setting up templates or some sort of snippet to replace a big chunk of boilerplate that I know I will need over and over. timebox # [2] Do...

devops philosophy

How to keep a secret - https://changelog.com/shipit/58 Kelsey Heightower Fundamentals - https://changelog.com/shipit/44 What does good devops look like - https://changelog.com/shipit/28 Docs are not optional - https://changelog.com/shipit/17 Dave Farley the foundations of Continuous Delivery - https://changelog.com/shipit/5

Deliberative #

People exceptionally talented in the Deliberative theme are best described by the serious care they take in making decisions or choices. They anticipate obstacles.

I am risk-adverse. I want everything well thought out and calculated before I make any sort of change. I have never gambled in my life and just the thought of it makes me anxious.

Aim it #

I can use this as a strength to plan out potential issues and prevent them. I do this quite often with my role in infrastructure.

I need to make sure that I use deadlines to keep this as a strength and not hinderence.

Automation #

One of the biggest ways that I utilize this skill is automation. I am all about automating things, not just because I donā€™t want to do the manual work, but I am not sure when I am going to need to do something again.

I was listening to shipit37 with Vincent Ambo talking about building fully declaritive systems with nix. Vincent is building out Nixery and strongly believes that standard versioning systems are flawed. If we have good ci setup, and every commit is a good commit the idea of a release is just some arbitrary point in history that the maintainer decided was a good time to release, and has less to do about features and quality.

Since many things still want to see a version number, there is one automatic always increasing number that is a part of every single git repo, and that is the commit count. Nixery is versioned by commit count. When counting on the main branch there is no way for two points in time to share the same version. The git cli will count all commits by default so you have to be careful to only include commits from the branch you want to version/release from.

git rev-list main --count

Stand With Your Team

People who are quick to toss team members under a bus are not well trusted or highly thought of and it will lead to some toxic team dynamics. Building Steam # [1] While collaborating on any project there are going to be decisions made that arenā€™t necessarily your favorite, during a summer internship my mentor made some decisions that I was not on board with, but I accepted his wisdom and moved forward with little push back. Full Spead Ahead # [2] During a review, leadership showed interest in the option that I wanted to go towards. I was quick to jump up and say I told you so right then and there and pitch reasons why my idea was so much better. The Aftermath # [3] I walked out so proud that leadership recognized my idea, but I will never forget the look on my teammateā€™s face and what he told me after the meeting. ā€œWow quick to throw me under the bus in front of everyone šŸ˜¢ā€. I ~ my teammate Realizing what Happened # [4] It was at this moment that I threw my mentor, a good ...

How to crush amazing posts on DEV

This post was inspired by a comment I left on @dsteenmanā€™s post. {% post dsteenman/how-long-should-a-blogpost-be-2k6n %} Most of the time I prefer short as I am more likely to read the whole thing. If its setup as a series I am more likely to work my way through the whole series in a matter of a few sessions. Just my preference I will say though there are certain articles that fit well to the long format. They are articles that folks tend to come back to often as a reference again and again. Sections # [1] - layout is key [2] - Break it up [3] - Article types [4] - superpost [5] - single post [6] - series [7] - discussion [8] - Post what you want to read [9] layout is key # [2] Either way, you go layout is key. You are not Steven King, no matter how great of a writer you are, you are unlikely to hold attention like he can. Most folks reading blogs scan articles first. I often scan, then read. If the article is really good or pertains well to me I will read everything, ...

Black Tech Pipeline

I was particularly inspired by @chantastic episode 103 of the react podcast with @ParissAthena. They spoke about the black tech pipeline as well as Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion. Pariss is quite an inspiration. She has done so much work to create a better place for POC in tech. I like that not only is she helping them get jobs but acting as a mentor for their first few months on the job to make sure that they are able to find their place and fit in. Based on an episode of react podcast. šŸŽ™ Listen to the full episode [1]. So Inspirational # [2] I was particularly inspired by @chantastic [3] episode 103 of the react podcast with @ParissAthena [4]. They spoke about the black tech pipeline as well as Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion. Pariss is quite an inspiration. She has done so much work to create a better place for POC in tech. I like that not only is she helping them get jobs but acting as a mentor for their first few months on the job to make sure that they are able to find ...

How I Built My GitHub Profile

I ran a discussion on dev that collected quite a list of examples in the comment section. So many great calls to action, animations, memes, and weird tricks. [1] My current profile # [2] [3] social icons # [4] Upload all of your icons to the repo in a directory such as icons or assets, then link them with a height attribute like below. I used html [5] for mine, not sure if you can set the height in markdown. <a href="https://dev.to/waylonwalker"><img height="30" src="https://raw.githubusercontent.com/WaylonWalker/WaylonWalker/main/icon/dev.png"></a>&nbsp;&nbsp; note I did add a bit of &nbsp; (non-breaking-whitespace) between my icons. Without adding css this seemed like the simplest way to do it. Center # [6] Aligning things in the center of the readme is super simple. I used this trick to align my social icons in the middle. <p align='center'> ...html </p> right # [7] For my latest post [8] I floated it to the right with a little bit of align='right' action. <p> <a ...

Practice your craft

Show up For Practice # [1] how I practice # [2] What Works for You # [3] References: [1]: #show-up-for-practice [2]: #how-i-practice [3]: #what-works-for-you

Productive one on one

[1]Inspired by https://m.soundcloud.com/front-end-happy-hour/episode-095-shot-for-shot-one-on-ones References: [1]: https://dropper.wayl.one/file/33e9b982-c621-4506-a61c-bfe106d633f1.webp

Donā€™t waste your time learning everything

ā€œDonā€™t waste your time learning everything.ā€ [1] LinkedIn Post from Tarry Inspired by this linkedIn post [2] I felt that this comment was very powerful. Here are my 2 cents. Be Productive # [3] Stick to what you know, and learn a little bit of something new every day. If what you know is how to use Excel like a boss, donā€™t fee ashamed that you are missing something. Be proud and use what you know. Donā€™t Stagnate # [4] Take small steps enhance what you know now with something new that you get you closer to where you want to be. If you need something that sci-py offers learn how to load in data and use that part. If your sick of waiting for IT to pull data out of the database so you can use it, learn that. Dont Overwhelm Yourself # [5] If you try to drop everything you know now and jump whole hog into these new flashy things its not going to work. Learn what you need to know. New things crop up very often. They will come and go. Some things will get traction, some will never...
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catalytic

It's not all about winning

This is my story into data science. The Journey Begins # [1] I am addicted to the process of learning and improving my skills nearly to a fault. The reason I say nearly is because my addiction is fueled with results. I crave the output of my work enhance the work of others. I jump with joy as I see users gain insights they could have never imagined before. My mouth starts watering as I see their boring repetitive data mining activites be completed in a matter of seconds, opening up their mind to focus on their expertise. The day I stop learning will be the day that I start looking for another career path. Itā€™s not all about winning. ~Mom This happened to me in 2014. I have a mechanical engineering degree and had a really good position at the time. I owned full engineering control of a small subset of engine components. The problem was that Everything is so proprietary and hardly documented the process of learning did not click with me. I felt like I had learned a lot about the ...
Follow Your Passion

Follow Your Passion

Follow Your Passion # [1] my journey into data science In January 2018 I started work as a full time data scientist turning my passion into a career. It is something that I didnā€™t see myself doing 5 years ago, but is something that I love to do. It combines my love of data, visualization, story telling, software development, and writing code. Most of all it allows me to work in a space that promotes learning and creativity. As a mechanical engineer for a company that has been building equipment for nearly a century the mechanical engineering is very well established I felt that there was not a lot of room for creativity. Find Your Role # [2] When I first started as a full time mechanical engineer References: [1]: #follow-your-passion [2]: #find-your-role

No More Death By PowerPoint

No More Death By PowerPoint I Waylon S. Walker vow that from this point forward I will no longer create powerpoints to be considerec DEATH BY POWERPOINT If you have not seen David JP Phillips Death By PowerPoint [1] TEDx, stop now and watch it. You will never look at slides the same again. Watching this video ruined me for watching presentations with these issues. Reveal is a tool that makes it very easy to follow these principles I currently work in a company that employs over 100K employees, and to this day I cannot recall a single presentation given where the slides did not violate the rules stated in Davidā€™s Talk. This year I am putting a stop to this starting with myself. I am starting a new job role in 2018 and there is no better time to make some drastic changes to my workflow than now. I expect there to be a few followers and many naysayers, but I dont care. I will employ the directives listed below. 1+1=0 # [2] Very few people (if any) in your will be able to multi-tas...