johnsy.com
johnsy.com
Pete Johns
Human being; just like you. He writes from Melbourne about software leadership, reliable systems, and building things that last, and he would rather publish here than chase engagement on social feeds. parkrun (volunteer, runner, ambassador) gets him outside; expect candour, craft, and the occasional grumble when the tech stack misbehaves. Moreover he doesn't like talking about himself in the third-person.
Latest Posts
It has been interesting going back to work and getting up to speed with my new team’s systems, some of which are third-party and others are Very Much Invented Here. I find myself thinking about this quotation a lot: It seems that...
In December I wrote Forty-two about being forty-two percent of the way through my career break. Time has flown since then. Today the progress bar reads one hundred percent. What I said I would do When I announced the break in May last...
“Why don’t you use WhatsApp?” The short answer is privacy. I should be upfront: I do still have a WhatsApp account. Kids’ sports teams use it to coordinate with parents, and I check those groups when necessary. The app is hidden from my...
I had a strange experience this morning. After having our barcodes scanned at Diamond Creek parkrun’s annual Pride event, my friend and I headed straight to D’s athletics event. As we were talking, one of the organisers tapped my friend...
When I was doing a lot of Ruby-on-Rails development, I really liked having rbenv to manage which version of Ruby a project was using. I also really liked Scripts to Rule Them All: predictable entrypoints like script/setup and...
Of all the FIFA World Cups I’ve not cared about, this is the one I have not cared about the most. -- Pete Johns (/piːt ʤɒnz/ - he/him/his)Thank you for using Atom. You're awesome.
Yesterday I completed my third and final scheduled hour of the Conquer Cancer Australia relay. I say “scheduled” as from time to time people drop out, so I may drop in and do a fourth hour, if needed. Having done a few hours now, I am...
Today marks two significant (to me) anniversaries. Coburg parkrun - 16 May 2015 Eleven years ago today I was timekeeper at Coburg parkrun # 1. It was a big monment saying “go” and seeing about a hundred people head off together on Merri...
Our 11-year-old was keen to be a part of the Conquer Cancer Australia World Record attempt, so he was up before me this morning to join the runners and joggers and walkers taking one-hour shifts. He’s not old enough to be registered as a...
One of the things I have been really enjoying during my career break is learning to tackle cryptic crosswords. I am still not very good at them, but I can solve clues today that were dark to me a year ago, and that’s pleasing progress. I...
It’s been a very parkrunny week, which involved me presenting at a Volunteering Australia webinar about Community-Led Volunteering and my parkrun experiences. Some people have said nice things about the presentation and the recording...
K recently joked that were I to appear on Mastermind, my specialist subject would be Iron Maiden. She may be right. They’re certainly the band I have paid the most attention to over the years. Throughout the 90s they were the band I...
As you know, this month I am taking part in a World Record attempt, as part of Conquer Cancer Australia. These legends have been moving a baton around Princes Park since Saturday, with runners, joggers and walkers taking one-hour shifts....
This morning I was one of the 283 finishers at Coburg parkrun event #517, and K was one of the 14 volunteers. From last weekend’s post and the previous weekend’s post, it may seem that I only go to parkrun to participate in challenges,...
One of the things I was told before I got my first Mac was that Apple’s user interfaces were the most intuitive. Back in the early 2000s, I think that was probably true (compared, for instance, to Microsoft Windows, where you’d tap the...