Tech — Work — Ramblings

by Mike Kalvas

I see you're not using JavaScript (which is awesome!) on one of my pages that uses it to provide a better experience. If you see something not working right, please let me know. My site should work exactly the same without it apart from any exceptions noted here.

I use prism.min.js to do syntax highlighting. It clocks in at 23kb total in size. Since the majority of the writing I do involves coding, I personally find this to be a worthwhile trade off. If you choose to keep this disabled, rest assured, the code examples are still there, they just may have some extra whitespace and obviously no syntax highlighting.

I do no tracking at all and am a zealot about keeping my pages as small as possible. If you're reading a page of mine that transfers more than about 250kb over the wire (including my most gratuitous indulgence — fonts) I've messed up.

So, if you'd like to have a slightly richer experience, consider enabling javascript for my site and I promise your trust won't be misplaced.

202304112220 Selling ideas requires effort

Specifically, there are 3 skills to master in order to be able to sell our ideas:¹

Giving Formal presentations
Producing written reports
Mastering the art of informal presentations as they happen to occur.

The best ideas don't naturally win out, they must be sold even if they're much better than the competition. After all,

Change does not require progress, but progress requires change.¹

Some tips for getting better at these:¹

Privately critique presentations you attend
Ask others for their opinion on yours and others' presentations
Find parts that are effective and those that are detrimental
Be yourself or develop a personal style that you are comfortable with. This includes subtle things like telling jokes and being personable.

Hamming, R. W. (2020). The art of doing science and engineering: Learning to learn. Stripe Press. https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/53349431-the-art-of-doing-science-and-engineering ↩ ↩² ↩³