The Weekly Cache #3
New
I published a couple of new posts, including Power Apps Naming Conventions, and using Context Variables to simplify multi-step Power Apps logic.
Travel
The family and I went to Bristol, TN, to watch the first-ever MLB game at the Bristol Motor Speedway, where the Atlanta Braves faced (and beat) the Cincinnati Reds. Read more about our adventure here.
Books
I finished reading The War of Art by Steven Pressfield. The book was quite different than what I expected. It was a short, easy read. The first part was about Resistance, the enemy of creativity.
"There's a secret that real writers know that wannabe writers don't, and the secret is this: It's not the writing part that's hard. What's hard is sitting down to write. What keeps us from sitting down is Resistance." (Steven Pressfield, The War of Art)
I started reading Hidden Potential by Adam Grant.
Movies
While in Bristol, we wanted The Fantastic Four: First Steps. I loved the tone and style of the movie, but overall, I thought it was a bit of a letdown. A very predictable (and unoriginal) story. The action was weak. We barely saw them use their powers at all until the final fight, which in itself was anticlimactic. Not a terrible movie, but I felt it could have been so much more than what it was.
Tools
While I was trying Inoreader again last week, I found that I kept going back to Readwise Reader. While I think Inoreader is better for RSS feeds, I like reading in Reader.
For work, I started using Microsoft OneNote to take notes. I used it years ago, but I was never really a fan. I'm trying it again, this time to stay within the Microsoft ecosystem for my work notes. I like having shared notes with the team and having a single search that looks through everything on the platform.
I'm finding that the podcast DTNS (Daily Tech News Show) does a great job of providing a daily briefing on all the relevant tech news for the day. They keep it brief and enjoyable to listen to.
Links
Kurzgesagt is a YouTube channel that explains things with engaging animations.
Curate Your Own Newspaper with RSS
Molly White writes a detailed guide to using RSS to curate your own news feed.
What if you could take all your favorite newsletters, ditch the data collection, and curate your own newspaper? It could include independent journalists, bloggers, mainstream media, worker-owned media collectives, and just about anyone else who publishes online. Even podcast episodes, videos from your favorite YouTube channels, and online forum posts could slot in, too. Only the stuff you want to see, all in one place, ready to read at your convenience. No email notifications interrupting your peace (unless you want them), no pressure to read articles immediately. Wouldn’t that be nice?
Joan Westenberg talks about deleting their Second Brain, containing over 10,000 notes.
PKM systems promise coherence, but they often deliver a kind of abstracted confusion. The more I wrote into my vault, the less I felt. A quote would spark an insight, I’d clip it, tag it, link it - and move on. But the insight was never lived. It was stored. Like food vacuum-sealed and never eaten, while any nutritional value slips away.
Natural Conversation is a new experimental pop-up newsletter written by Cody and Manu that will run through August 2025.
Steve writes about his thoughts on Vibe Coding and how it compares to legacy code.
We already have a phrase for code that nobody understands: legacy code.