DaedTech Digest: Functional Style, Isolation, and Blogging Mental Models

Welcome to yet another DaedTech digest Friday.  We did a mini-move again this week, relocating from Phoenix back to San Diego.

As an aside, I think I might solidify what I’ve gravitated to a little already, and make the digest column a weekly blurb about the remote work/location-independent life.  It’s not necessarily directly related to the theme of DaedTech.  But it does dovetail with my takes on remote programming.  Plus, I should be able to mix hobby behavior with earning on my own blog, right?

Anyway, the first tidbit is this.  People often ask me “so do you like rent apartments or AirBNB or what…?”

The answer to that?  We use AirBNB and VRBO to find places.  But when you extend a stay out to a month plus, you get away from $150 per night, and you get a monthly price which often comes at a steep relative discount.  It’s not as cheap as renting an apartment.  But it’s not as expensive as hotels or short stays on those sites.

But that’s for a first stay.  What generally happens is that we make good connections with our short term landlords.  We’ll then deal directly with them for subsequent stays, because it’s less expensive for both parties.  And so, here we are, back in San Diego for a month.

Picks

• Turning on and getting familiar with Gmail’s keyboard shortcuts is something you won’t regret, if you haven’t already done it.
• I’m going to pick the Hit Subscribe Facebook page.  This isn’t me patting myself on the back.  We have an intern working for Hit Subscribe, putting together a social media offering to complement our content.  So she’s putting all of this together and doing a great job of it.
• Last night, we had dinner at the Ocean Beach Pier Cafe (“Walking on Water Cafe”).  It’s depicted in the picture above, but this video really gives you a feel of what it’s like to be there.  Anyway, if you’re ever in Ocean Beach San Diego, it’s a fun place to get a bite.

The Digest

• Here’s a post for QAComplete that I wrote a long time ago — a primer on managing test cases and how the core of it means hiring smart people.
• On the Hit Subscribe blog, I wrote a post about how most tech bloggers start out with the wrong mental model for content.
• For my ongoing research series on NDepend’s blog, I wrote about the effects of functional-style programming on codebases.
• Here’s one for Gurock’s blog where I look at some options for .NET isolation frameworks.

As always, have a good weekend, all!