Toots for davidruffner@raphus.social account

Written by David Ruffner on 2025-01-18 at 03:29

I was wondering if you have any tips on forming a peer mentoring group? I was talking to a friend from my physics PhD program, and we both had personal projects we were struggling to make time for. I think we could help each other make more progress than we could make alone. We could share knowledge with each other, give each other feedback, or just listen. Do you have experience with something like that? What worked and what didn't? How did it start?

[#]community

[#]peerMentoring

[#]smallgroups

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Written by David Ruffner on 2024-11-30 at 23:02

"We call socio-emotional debt the many micro and macro interactions where people experience their needs not being considered. Whether or not that is true is not relevant. Unaddressed, this debt builds up over time and creates more and more interpersonal friction" - from Many Voices One Song by Ted J. Rau and Jerry Koch-Gonzalez.

It's like tech debt, but for social groups. I definitely have experienced this in a team. It gets terrible after a while if it is not resolved.

[#]sociocracy

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Written by David Ruffner on 2024-11-26 at 15:56

The PyData NYC 2024 talk videos are available online! https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLGVZCDnMOq0ohEIZ-_wM2W_xqSVjyA3dC

Here is the link to the GPU acceleration in Python tutorial that I referenced above: https://youtu.be/Aumh3evLSKc?feature=shared

[#]PyDataNYC2024

[#]python

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Written by David Ruffner on 2024-11-08 at 18:29

At PyData NYC tutorial, by Jacob Tomlinson, I learned that now it is possible to access the same array on the GPU from pytorch and cupy. I'm loving how it will let you use the strengths of different libraries without dealing with extra memory copies.

https://nyc2024.pydata.org/cfp/talk/VAVRYW/

[#]PyDataNYC2024

[#]pytorch

[#]cupy

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Written by David Ruffner on 2024-11-07 at 14:21

I'm enjoying Many Voices One Song by Ted Rau and Jerry Koch-Gonzalez. https://www.sociocracyforall.org/many-voices-one-song-2/

It is a manual about sociocracy, which is a way to effectively govern organization through consent. I think I will start gathering quotes I enjoy from the book on a thread. Here is the first:

"we create the smallest amount of policy -- enough to guide, avoiding blockages or clashes with other tasks...Policy...is made to free people"

[#]sociocracy

[#]sociocracyForAll

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Written by David Ruffner on 2024-10-31 at 13:41

I'm listening to my first audio book from Librivox, Heidi https://librivox.org/heidi-by-johanna-spyri-solo/. My dad read it to me and my siblings when I was a young, so I have good memories of it. It's fun to listen as a parent now. In one part, little Heidi takes off her outer layers so that she can run freely with the goats on the mountain. I can totally see my 3 year old doing that.

I'm grateful for this free resource. And thanks to @Kayray for the excellent narration.

[#]freeCulture

[#]libriVox

[#]publicDomain

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Written by David Ruffner on 2024-09-24 at 13:36

The ageratina altissima, white snake root, is blooming in our area, northern NJ. I like how it blooms at almost the same time, mid-September every year. This picture is from the 20th. I used this the Native Plant Trust Go Botany site to confirm the identification. https://gobotany.nativeplanttrust.org/species/ageratina/altissima/

[#]bloomScrolling

[#]nativePlants

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Written by David Ruffner on 2024-09-04 at 12:51

I tried out Stract search, https://stract.com/, it is an open source search engine with its own index. It looks promising although it's index doesn't cover everything yet. But it has a nice explore tool that helps you find sites similar to ones you already like. As an example, from my interest in sociocracy and cohousing I found the cohousing association of america site https://www.cohousing.org/live-it-cohousing/live-it/. Nice!

[#]foss

[#]openSourceSearchEngines

[#]stract

[#]SearchEngines

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Written by David Ruffner on 2024-09-01 at 02:32

I created a python script with sub-commands today which I hadn't done before. I found an example of how it works, https://adamj.eu/tech/2021/10/15/a-python-script-template-with-sub-commands-and-type-hints/ . Having a template to work from made it much easier for me. Thanks @adamchainz for sharing!

[#]TIL

[#]python

[#]subcommands

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Written by David Ruffner on 2024-08-25 at 23:03

I was feeling discouraged just now, and came across this post from Leo Babauta about dealing with discouragement, A Short Guide to Dealing with Discouragement - zen habits zen habits https://zenhabits.net/discouragement/

I am grateful for it. Less for the specific tips, but for the reminder sometimes the universe provides exactly what you need. Thanks Leo!

[#]encouragement

[#]discouragement

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Written by David Ruffner on 2024-08-23 at 02:37

I just watched @dajb 's 2012 TEDx talk on digital literacies. I really enjoyed it. There are lots of different ways to be literate digitally. And remixing is key to developing those skills. Lots of good memes too 😀

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=A8yQPoTcZ78

[#]digitalLiteracy

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Written by David Ruffner on 2024-08-14 at 03:09

I just started playing and enjoying Feudal Tactics, https://github.com/Sesu8642/FeudalTactics. It is very minimal turn based strategy game, where you try to conquer an island with competing kingdoms. It is tricky because you want to build up more warriors to take more land but you have to pay them, so there is a balance. You can build castles too 🏰. I could see it being a fun party game. Cheers to the developer for making it!

[#]openSourceGames

[#]foss

[#]fossGames

[#]turnbasedStrategy

[#]hexmap

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Written by David Ruffner on 2024-08-01 at 18:43

When someone boosts an interesting post, I want to be able to thank them. I can easily interact with the boosted post, but I can't favorite the boosting action itself. I could send the person who boosted a direct message but I worry it would be out of context. How do you let people know that you appreciate their boosts?

When I boost it feels like it is going into a void. It would be nice to know if my boosting was helpful.

[#]askfedi

[#]howToMastodon

[#]mastodonQuestion

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Written by David Ruffner on 2024-07-09 at 03:23

In 2019 at my work, we transitioned our software team to Scrum. Clarifying the scrum master and product owner roles made a dramatic difference. I moved from manager to scrum master. It is a relief to no longer try to get the dev team to follow my interpretation of the CEO's vision. She joins our sprint reviews and can tell them herself. I advocate for the software team in the management team meetings. We form a double link. Less pressure and more consent.

[#]consent

[#]doubleLink

2/2

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Written by David Ruffner on 2024-07-09 at 03:03

Scrum has two "leaders" for each team, the scrum master and the product owner. I see a connection with the double linking principle in sociocracy. Teams connect by having one member of each team participate in both team's meetings. Each of the linking members bring their perspective to the other team. In Scrum, the product owner brings the perspective of the business team, and the scrum master brings the perspective of the dev team to the business team.

[#]sociocracy

[#]scrum

1/2

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Written by David Ruffner on 2024-05-06 at 20:15

All the cinquefoil are blooming too 😀 . They brighten my day!

[#]bloomScrolling

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Written by David Ruffner on 2024-05-06 at 20:09

I'm enjoying the Star-of-Bethlehem flowers which are currently blooming in our yard! They come up completely on their own.

[#]bloomScrolling

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Written by David Ruffner on 2024-04-15 at 20:08

I cancelled my Evernote subscription after about 10 years. It was a very helpful tool for me. I'm grateful for it. It allowed me to customize a todo list system, that helped me be much more effective. However it stagnated over time, and I started feeling stuck. Last year I switched over the Obsidian (for personal reference and to-do notes) and Joplin (for shared notes with my wife). It's been a learning curve, but I'm liking the system I have now.

[#]evernote

[#]obsidianMD

[#]JoplinNotes

[#]notes

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Written by David Ruffner on 2024-03-16 at 19:01

I found this Smarter Every Day video to be super inspiring. It is different than his typical videos. Destin gave a talk to people involved with the NASA Artemis program and challenged them to give negative feedback so the project can stay focused on the mission. I think many organizations struggle to do this well. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OoJsPvmFixU

[#]artemis

[#]smarterEveryDay

[#]nasa

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Written by David Ruffner on 2024-03-05 at 11:20

Just tried out GPT4All. It's an open source application for running LLMs locally. You can pick from a variety of open-source models. From initial testing it works pretty well. Not as good out-of-the-box as GPT4 or Gemini or Claude but has a lot of potential. I love that it is running locally on my machine and that I can look into how it works. It allows you to tweak things like temperature and has a way to integrate a document store.

https://github.com/nomic-ai/gpt4all

[#]LocalLLMs

[#]gpt4all

[#]foss

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