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20260119 Scrum

I've been in awe at some news I've been reading. Because they have been very powerfully written. It is like reading a good novel - which I no longer do, between reading news, documentation, and writing (which is to say, not reading), I no longer read what I know is fiction. Too bad though - some of the books in my past have been excellent. Take William Gibson and Bruce Sterling, my favorite american sci-fi authors so far.

An image converted to black-and-white for a tattoo

I was asked to contribute to a tattoo design. The client wanted a tarot card tattooed on his forearm. I collected several proposals, and upon receiving approval, edited the selected picture to be well-suited for a tattoo. Originally, the client wanted it in color. But one of the iterations I did looks so good in black and white that he agreed that it was the best one. The final image was the black-and-white one, with color replaced by a pattern.

When a Referral Program Slows Down

A customer watched their referral numbers climb steadily for months—until it suddenly slowed down.

By the time we spoke, the frustration was clear. The team had invested real effort into building momentum, so the hiccup felt personal. Their first order of business was to regain control by making a few adjustments to the program.

As we walked through what had changed, the issue came into sharp focus. The program itself hadn’t failed, no. But the attitude around it had shifted.

Functionality update: micros_email now allows email templates to respond_inline

Functionality update: micros_email now allows email templates to respond_inline .

This means that if there is an automatic action on a received email, the sender will receive their own message that the system responds to. An automatic email responder that uses an email template, carries over the history of the conversation to the recipient. This option is enabled by default. 

Enabling this option should greatly clarify why there is an autoresponder, and help the sender take the right action, which in most cases is to fill out a web form.

Why I don't allow empty chatter in my messaging


Someone just sent me 10 messages, each 1 word in length, and I got pretty upset about it. Yet at the same time, I got pro-active and decided to explain to that person why I don't allow such empty messages in my communication. She thankfully understood my position, so I kept her as a friend.

Tutorial: Stable Diffusion from Scratch II

html { font-size: 20px; } code { font-size: 0.8rem; } .center { text-align: center; } .a20251225-container { margin: 2em auto 5em; width: 800px; } .a20251225-container img { max-width: calc( 100% - 1em ); padding: 0.5em; display: flex; margin: auto; } .a20251225-container img.bordered { border: 1px solid #999; } .a20251225-container table { margin: auto; } .a20251225-container table thead td { text-align: center; } .a20251225-container table.bordered td { border-bottom: 1px solid #999; padding: 0.5em; }

How to push to two github remotes at once

For the purposes of backup and resilience, it may be useful to maintain two identical git remotes for a repo. Maybe one is on github, and another one is on a machine on another cloud. Then, you may want to automate pushing every change to the two repos at once.

git remote set-url       --push origin git@github.com:<username>/<reponame>.git
git remote set-url --add --push origin git@git:/home/git/repos/
git push origin

Push to multiple remotes. Add the hosted Git server as a remote: 

How to remove all .DS_Store, ._* files in a folder

If you want to recursively delete all .DS_Store files in a subfolder, you can run the following commands. First, see what is being deleted:

find . -name '.DS_Store' -type f

Then, delete those files:

find . -name '.DS_Store' -type f -delete

And also:

find . -name "\._*" -exec rm {} \;

.^.

An example spam email

Hi there,

I want to inform you about a very bad situation for you. However, you can benefit from it, if you will act wisely. 
Have you heard of Pegasus? 

This is a spyware program that installs on computers and smartphones and allows hackers to monitor the activity of device owners.  It provides access to your webcam, messengers, emails, call records, etc. 
It works well on Android, iOS, and Windows. I guess, you already figured out where I'm getting at.