mb bischoff (she/they) makes apps, posts, & podcasts. changes
Last night, I listened to this episode of the podcast The Allusionist from October. As a keen observer of language, the host Helen Zaltzam is often bothered by the cliches of foodservice phrases like “Enjoy!” or “Are you still working on that?”. What follows is a fascinating discussion with restaurant professionals about the origin, meanings, and functional purposes of these and other similar expressions. I’d highly recommend giving it a listen.
It is the most dramatic new look for our magazine in its 162-year history, and one that, we hope, reflects boldness, elegance, and urgency. The redesign of the print magazine, as well as the new look of our website, was led by Peter Mendelsund, our creative director. His design work, carried out in collaboration with many teams across our magazine, is also reflected in the new Atlantic app that launched today.
Really excited about this bold new look for one of my favorite publications, and honored to have gotten to work on the development of the app at Lickability.
While this is a very real way people might use the pinching gesture 🤏 in both the physical world and in the emoji world, this societal obsession with penis size can be harmful. Masculinity is not defined by penis size, or even having a penis at all in the case of many trans men or nonbinary individuals.
When did Emojipedia get woke?
I’m extremely tempted to spend the $50 on this nifty application from Arrow Bit SL that claims to document and expose nearly 100% of the SwiftUI API and make it super easy to learn. Apple’s own docs are still sorely lacking at this point with 60% of the framework being completely undocumented. Anyone else try it yet?
The next day, he said, “We are looking at a way to link. Noting Motherboard explicitly—and I understand why [sic] would want this—is more complicated, however. Are we then obliged to note that The Guardian had some of the documents, too? If half a dozen other publications got a piece of the Facebook material, as well—for ‘internal’ documents, they do seem to get around—would we need note them, too? Where does it end?” The Times never added a link.
Thinking about a journalist in the NYT newsroom in not being able to figure out how to make a hyperlink cracks me up and I’m not the only one.
I’ve soft-launched a new version of this website designed by my pal Robyn Kanner and developed by Martin Giannakopoulos. If you’re reading this in RSS and haven’t seen the site in a while, come take a look around and send me feedback on Twitter.
Whether you need some context on yesterday’s Supreme Court cases, some hope for the future, or a reminder that trans people are people: go listen to the latest episode of one of my new favorite podcasts, Gender Reveal, hosted by Tuck Woodstock.
Last March, I gave a 7-minute speech at a reading series that scratched my persistent itch to be in front of a crowd. But in 2019 I want to get back into my usual schtick of giving longer, prepared presentations with slides. I love attending conferences, and I especially enjoy having the opportunity to hone a talk and share it with a group of my peers.
Later this month, I’ll be heading north to speak at (the appropriately named) NSNorth 2019. NSNorth is Canada’s premier independent Apple developer and designer conference, and like Çingleton in years past, it’s taking place in beautiful Montréal, Québec. I’ve never been to this conference before, but I’ve met the organizers at other events, and I’ve heard great things.
My talk is called Growing Pains and it’s about the things that break as your software team or company gets bigger and what you can do to make that a less painful process. If you’d like to hear more about the conference and my experience on the topic, Dan and Phil interviewed me on the NSNorth Podcast. Give it a listen below or wherever you get your podcasts:
Finally, the organizers have announced that this is the last year for NSNorth for the foreseeable future, so if you’ve always wanted to attend, now’s your chance. If you need help convincing your boss to cover the cost, they’ve got you covered. Tickets are on sale until this Friday, April 12, so act fast. Je vais te voir là-bas!
It’s Julie’s last day at work. She’s already turned in her laptop to IT, sent her goodbye email to the team, and is wrapping up her last knowledge transfer meeting. Tonight, there’s a goodbye drinks with the whole engineering department at that bar everyone loves across the street from the office. You’ve followed all the processes as a manager to offboard this person correctly, and wished them good luck at their shiny new job with more stock options and a higher salary you just couldn’t match. “Good for her,” you think, as the night winds down over a final round of cocktails. But wait – you’re not done yet.
In September 2016, I was honored to be invited to speak at Joe and Charles’s incredible Release Notes conference in Indianapolis. Release Notes, an outgrowth of their podcast of the same name, approaches the software business as a business first and foremost. Their guiding principle is to discuss “everything but the code”.
Here’s the audio and slides from my talk. It’s called Write Your Way Out (yes, it’s a Hamilton reference). I spoke about writing and the importance of writing well as a software engineer, a product manager, and especially the owner of a software company. Watch it below and let me know what you think on Twitter.
The dates for Release 2019 in sunny Playa Mujeres, Mexico have just been announced (Oct 3—5). If you’re in the software business, I can’t recommend it more strongly. Get on the mailing list so you don’t miss tickets!
