A few words from Agical

Full source code: Newsletter automation using Buttondown + Google Sheets

Here’s how I created a fully automated, weekly newsletter using only RSS, Buttondown, and Google Sheets. Full source code included! I run a hobby project (Cospaia, mostly in Swedish, but it’s not important for this article) together with some friends. We wanted a weekly automated newsletter. When figuring out how to do this, I compared it to a commercial project I’m involved with, where we use Netlify Forms and Mailchimp, with Zapier as glue.

Läs mer »

The Stone Soup is a Lie

Some 20 years ago I worked at a startup with a CEO who liked to cook up various tricks to make potential customers think we were further ahead than we were. I complained that he was setting us and the customers up for failure. I suggested that at the next meeting we should be completely open and honest about what they would buy into. We could leverage it, even. We could tell the customers about the big opportunity to be part of, and shape, our journey.

Läs mer »

Bring me clarity - Not No No Notification Adjustment

Are you bent out of shape by obscure emails? Do text walls on the intranet rub you the wrong way? Are you looking for the exit when the CFO pulls slide after slide with nothing but misplaced participles and spelling errors. I’m sorry if I got you revved up. Relax, take a deep breath and read on. Get a load of this: hasNoNoNotAdjs(...) If you think the above is from the popular 90-ies song “No Limit” you’re barking up the wrong tree.

Läs mer »

How to increase collaboration between analyst and product teams - 3: Chat culture!

It’s pivotal to have a deliberate and thought through system for communication when you’re into cross functional collaboration. Such as between product and analytics teams. To have a shared chat platform for everyone in an organization should go without saying these days. Like Slack, Discord, Teams or something else. Still, I know there are workplaces where people lack an appropriate chat tool for one reason or another. Or, where the chat is used for limited conversations, or only inside one’s team.

Läs mer »

Calva Maintenance is Exciting!

The following is my report for the May - June, 2023 period of Clojurists Together long term sponsoring. As usual, the bulk of my open source energy is poured into Calva, a Clojure/ClojureScript/ClojureCLR/ClojureDart/Babashka/nbb/Joyride/etcetera development environment that takes Interactive Programming seriously. I also got to contribute to Clojure related starter projects + was interviewed for Flexiana’s new Clojure Corner series: Clojure Corner with Peter Strömberg Calva Over at Twitter someone asked me if I was up to something exciting.

Läs mer »

How to increase collaboration between analyst and product teams - 2: Go see!

I hear about, and have seen for myself, that there are challenges to get product and development teams involved in the analyst team’s work. And the other way around. Since we’re heavily dependent on each other to succeed with our work, it’s important to do something about it. The principle “Go See” is one thing I’ve had good experience with, when it comes to increasing collaboration between different teams or parts of an organization.

Läs mer »

How to increase collaboration between analyst and product teams - 1: Demo your data!

In data teams, I’ve often met the objection that it’s not possible to demo “our product” for stakeholders. “It’s just data flows, no one wants to see that”, or “How would we demo the ETL jobs we’ve been working on”, or “we’ve just been working on integrations with the new data platform, there is no UI (user interface) to show” etc. If you’re not already doing this, regular demos are a great way to increase collaboration between different parts of an organization.

Läs mer »

Changing my mind: Converting a script from bash to Babashka

Here, a description of one of my many rewrites of shell scripts. From: bash-plus-a-lot-of-Unix-tools To: Babashka-plus-fewer-Unix-tools (zero Unix tools in this case). Clojure reaches wherever I want to code something. For shell scripting it is a great choice because Babashka. By old habit I still often start out with bash. I paste a piece of my command line history in a file and go from there. Then when my script stops behaving like I intend it to, and resists my attempts to make it: I regret not doing it with Babashka.

Läs mer »

How to create a really simple ClojureCLR dependency tool

I just published clojure-clr-starter – A Dockerized CLojureCLR Starter Project, that makes it easy to create a ClojureCLR project, start it and connect a Clojure editor. This article describes how the project is set up. Surprisingly little glue was needed once David Miller had created clr.tools.nrepl (a few weeks ago). There is no dependency tooling for ClojureCLR yet (it’s being worked on) so we have to solve a few things ourselves.

Läs mer »

A self directing internship - and how I learn to code again - part 2

(Also read: Part 1 - A self directing internship - and how I learn to code again) I asked myself: “Where do I want an internship, and how do I get it?”. I had almost completed my online foundational training program in Data Science and without thinking too much, I reached out to some people in my close network. I mentioned that I’m learning to code again and that I was open for an internship in an analytics team.

Läs mer »