• Prior posts on Books

Books, Audiobooks & Long-form Reads

1. Mexican Gothic by Sylvia Moreno-Garcia

I am decidedly not a fan of horror or thrillers in any form of media, but this was such a deliciously spooky gothic read with a strong heroine and unexpected allies and the feeling of being in a secluded mansion in 1950s Mexico.

2. The Education of an Idealist by Samantha Power

Both a cautionary tale and a spirited defense of an idealist in today’s world, Samantha Power’s career as a journalist, then as a lobbyist and finally a Washington insider in the Obama administration was a thought-provoking and packed read

• Prior posts on Books

Books, Audiobooks & Long-form Reads

2020 was the year of dashed hopes for a large reading list. Even the 6-10 books I managed to get through were a struggle, but here are the ones I enjoyed the most:

1. The Murmur of Bees by Sofia Segovia

The lovingly read audiobook for The Murmur of Bees kept me company through trains in Portugal and was somehow poignantly fitting to the spareness and warmth of Portugal. The unexpected protagonist of the story is such a remarkable character that he stays with you well past the reading of the book. And, one of the more significant plot points leads the characters through the Spanish Flu in Mexico. I read this book earlier in 2020 before the events that followed, and was reminded of it often as the COVID-19 pandemic unfolded across the globe.

2. The Gene by Siddhartha Mukherjee

The biology textbook I never had growing up. This book opened my eyes to DNA as a programmable vehicle that is both constant and evolving. Highly recommended.

3. The No.1 Ladies' Detective Agency by Alexander McCall Smith

Though the narrative flags sometimes, this book conveys the strong spirit of the main character, Mma Ramotswe, and the pace of life of Botswana while Mma. Ramotse solves several smaller and larger private detective sub-plots.

4. The School of Life: An Emotional Education by The School of Life, Alain de Botton

Somehow both a challenging and deeply timely book for what 2020 turned out to be.

5. On Writing Well by William Zinsser

Although not quite relevant to day-to-day business writing, definitely a well-written and useful reference book for long-form non-fiction writing.

6. Bird by Bird by Anne Lamott

Reading about writing seems to be a favorite pastime of mine, but it is such a treat to read about the process of writing from remarkable storytellers. Anne Lamott’s telling of her writing process is moving and humorous and memorable. Especially the titular anecdote. Highly recommended.

• Prior posts on Books

Index

• Books & Long-form Reads
• Audiobooks
• Abandoned

Books & Long-form Reads

1. The Big Picture by Ben Fritz

Despite having had an opening day seat to almost every Marvel movie released since 2008, I did not put together how fundamentally it changed movie-making until I read this book. The ethics of the source material are questionable (the leaked Sony emails), and the moments when the author uses private emails to make a point generally feel icky. However, the business of making movies has changed from talent-led to franchise-led and the book walks through a very well laid case for how this change happened and which studios benefited from it.

2. Catch and Kill by Ronan Farrow

The Time’s Up and #MeToo movements felt like big bangs of news announcing another male celebrity being outed as a predator. What got lost in these moments was the depth and breadth of panicked months and years as the women struggled with the decision to come out and name their perpetrators. Ronan details all the detective work, the months and years of back and forth, the media machine and the fear that kept these men in power and spilled over at times into intimidation and feigned ignorance. Powerful, sad and hopeful.

3. Hit Refresh by Satya Nadella

In 2007, when I decided to get my first MacBook Pro, I was making the choice to go with the innovative company that took risks, and leaving behind the bully that cared only about selling expensive disks with bad software. 13 years later, it feels like Microsoft is the innovator, having created a series of interconnected online apps that all work together seamlessly. As a Microsoft user at work, I continue to be impressed with the culture change Nadella brought to Microsoft - this book introduces the man and his story. I liked reading about his amazement at having been selected as a CEO despite having a personality he did not associate with a Gates or Ballmer-type of leader, and his humbling at being called out for some out-of-touch comments he made regarding promotion opportunities for women. His approach to dropping the litigious attitude at Microsoft towards its customers, dissolving the cut-throat up or out culture internally and embracing true product innovation have all stayed with me now over a year after reading the book. Of course, it is hard to tell what is true of the internal cultural change, but as a Microsoft user, I have seen first-hand the improvement of the products coming out of Microsoft and credit the change to Nadella.

4. Just Mercy by Bryan Stevenson

Michael B. Jordan and Jamie Foxx bring to life just one particular storyline within this expansive book that covers many more stories of Bryan Stevenson and his Equal Justice Initiative. I was waiting for this in the movie and the moment never came, but this book is Bryan’s lifelong journey trying to live his idea of ‘just mercy’, of the type of mercy that comes with justice, which is the true opposite of poverty. While the big arc is the story of Walter McMillian, I found the smaller anecdotes - cavity searches at prisons, humiliation, racism, threats, or simply running out of money or time just as powerful, all of them battling Bryan’s quest to balance the terms of engagement that put people of color at a very distinct disadvantage within the penal system.

5. When Breath Becomes Air by Paul Kalanithi

Diagnosed with lung cancer, Paul Kalanithi, an Indian-America neurosurgeon, captured his simultaneously hopeful and challenging journey as his work, interests, relationships were forever altered. Even knowing that Paul eventually succumbed to the cancer, the book is uplifting, surprising, heartbreaking, thought-provoking as Paul talks about every small and big change in a plain-spoken style that feels like he is with us, telling us his story from his living room.

6. The Fifth Risk by Michael Lewis

The Trump presidency is still playing itself out, so it is hard to tell where the story ends, but Michael Lewis dives into the operational logistics of how it began and the impact it had on various branches of government immediately. The politics of it aside, I really enjoyed learning about where and how weather data is collected, who owns it, how its commercialization has impacts on something as crucial as hurricane warning systems etc.

7. Work Rules!: Insights from Inside Google That Will Transform How You Live and Lead by Laszlo Bock

Laszlo Bock, the former SVP of People Operations at Google, writes about his journey bringing a data-driven approach with a typical Google twist to the function of HR. Subsequent controversies at Google regarding its internal culture probably brings into question some of the claimed successes in the book, but it is still a comprehensive chronicle of one of the first companies to approach HR from a data perspective.

8. Big Magic: Creative Living Beyond Fear by Elizabeth Gilbert

9. Modern Technical Writing by Andrew Etter

10. Americanah by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie

11/12. Steal Like an Artist and Show your Work! by Austin Kleon

Since Amazon hasn’t made embed codes available for Austin’s books, I am linking directly to his website. I hope to buy both books in print someday.

13. Infidel by Pornsak Pichetshote, Jose Villarrubia, Aaron Campbell

14/15. Data Jujitsu by DJ Patil and Data Driven by DJ Patil and Hilary Mason

16/17. Off the Clock and 168 Hours by Laura Vanderkam

18/19. Sprint and Make Time by Jake Knapp and John Zeratsky

Audiobooks

1. Catch and Kill by Ronan Farrow

2. The Ocean at the End of the Lane by Neil Gaiman

Books I abandoned

1. I'll Be Gone in the Dark: One Woman's Obsessive Search for the Golden State Killer by Michelle McNamara

2. The Secret History of Wonder Woman by Jill Lepore

Definitely took a turn for the very strange. Now I can’t unsee all the weirdness.

3. Brief Interviews with Hideous Men by David Foster Wallace

There is no denying the raw ugliness DFW brings to the page when describing these hideous men, but meeting the one in essay #20 ‘On his deathbed’ will hold me over for a few years until I can muster up the strength to visit a different one.

• 2016 Reading List
• 2017 Reading List
• Update on 2017 Reading List

Index

• New in Reading Tech
• Books & Long-form Reads
• Audiobooks
• Abandoned

New in Reading Tech

A few more items that rocked my world with respect to reading. For last year’s list, see New in Reading Tech in 2017.

The year I discovered Audiobooks

By a series of serendipitous events, I came to listen to Born a Crime by Trevor Noah (Daily Show) at the same time as two of my coworkers, and it turned into the most wonderful, impromptu audio book club and made me a forever fan of audiobooks.

Following Born a Crime, I’ve listened to 6-7 more audiobooks and that is a medium now firmly part of my reading experience.

For any other readers looking to wade into audiobooks, a couple of observations below:

• An excellent narrator will elevate even a mediocre book, and a narrator you don’t like will turn you against your favorite book. I have never relied too heavily on reading book samples before buying or borrowing a book, but I learned my lesson with audiobooks early on. Listen to the full 5 minutes of the sample and imagine hanging out with this person for the entire length of the book (often 8 hrs to 21 hrs depending on the subject), and then commit to it. Luckily, Audible has a fairly generous return policy and I was able to return a couple of books with narrators I didn’t like.

• Certain topics seem to lend themselves better to an audio format. This is of course dependent entirely on personal taste and preference, but I gravitate towards memoirs and science fiction in audio format and prefer other genres like literary fiction, business / psychology, self-help, etc. in e-book format. Books read by authors are a risky move as book narration is more performance than reading, but when the authors themselves are actors/comedians, it lands well. Memoirs read by the authors had an especially powerful impact (Born a Crime by Trevor Noah, The Year of Yes by Shonda Rhimes), while science fiction / fantasy read by a professional narrator or performer (Ready Player One, Armada by Wil Wheaton, Martian by R.C. Bray, Anansi Boys by ? etc.) worked well.

• The pacing of the plot is an important consideration. It is difficult to skip ahead in an audiobook, unlike an ebook, so if the plot doesn’t move along at a clip, it feels like the book simply won’t end. This is difficult to tell from the sample. I haven’t yet found a solution to this other than to read the reviews carefully.

• I’ve found several options to get audiobooks - from libraries (via Libby), Audible, Kindle WhisperSync narration to add to books you already own etc. Audible is worth the default Gold plan at $15/month for one credit (worth one book) because they have excellent customer service, a fairly generous return policy, and sufficient perks/sales/free content to keep you engaged after you have used up the single credit. There is also an option to pause the subscription for up to three months every year, and a hidden silver plan that offers one book every two months for the same $15/credit. You also own all books you purchase even if you cancel the subscription, unlike songs on a streaming audio service.

Checking for Goodreads books on Overdrive

Goodreads has been a trusty companion these past three years as I have rediscovered reading. After years of tracking potential books to read in Word documents, on my iPhone, on Evernote etc., my system now is fairly simple: I hear about a new book on NPR, on a podcast, in a newsletter, or from a friend, look it up on Goodreads and add it to my ‘Want to Read’ shelf, and tag it to my current year reading list.

This has the benefit of maintaining a single comprehensive reading list, accessible via multiple mediums, and providing additional reviews and links I can use to decide if I want to read the book.

Where this process has occasionally gotten clunky is when it is time to actually buy / borrow the book. I am a huge fan of libraries, and with Overdrive making it so easy to borrow a book, I like to borrow them when I can. The most user-friendly way to search Overdrive has been via the Libby app on my phone - I have more than one library card, and Libby looks the book up in all libraries you have access to and borrows the book wherever it is available.

The process, although clunky, works great as long as I am looking up a couple of books at a time. But, come the holidays or any kind of vacation, I stock up on 5-10 books to read on the flights and in hotel rooms, and this is where the Libby lookup process becomes time consuming.

After recently returning from a vacation where I read quite a few books but had to spend quite a bit of time and thumb power looking up all the books on Libby, I decided to flex my Python skills to build such a solution if one didn’t exist. Luckily, someone has already found a way and built a helpful Chrome add-in.

The add-in is easy to add to your browser, easy to configure and very effective at a glance.

Adding books to Goodreads from an Amazon page

Most online articles link directly to the Amazon page of a book, and it has been easy to add the book to one of my Amazon lists for tracking. This inevitably causes two separate book lists that I end up having to merge periodically. Given that Amazon owns Goodreads, I expected an easier way to just ‘Share’ the book to Goodreads from the Amazon page or even add to one of the Goodreads shelves directly from the ‘Add to List’ menu. Unfortunately, I haven’t managed to find any such button or any Chrome add-in to hack in this functionality.

Once again, the internet comes to the rescue. This is a javascript snippet that can be added to any browser as a bookmark: it launches the Goodreads site on a new tab and searches for the title of the book you currently have open on Amazon. It has not failed me yet for mainstream, English-language titles.

Books & Long-form Reads

1. The Graveyard Book by Neil Gaiman

2. Neverwhere by Neil Gaiman

3. The Library Book by Susan Orlean

Audiobooks

1. Born a Crime by Trevor Noah

2/3. Ready Player One and Armada by Ernest Cline

4. A Man Called Ove by Fredrik Backman

5. Anansi Boys by Neil Gaiman

6. Veronica Mars: The Thousand-Dollar Tan Line by Rob Thomas, Jennifer Graham

7. Hillbilly Elegy in Crisis by J.D. Vance

8. Year of Yes by Shonda Rhimes

Books I abandoned

1. Good Omens by Neil Gaiman and Terry Pratchett

2. What If by Randall Munroe

I list this one here a little reluctantly as I thoroughly enjoyed every page I did read, and I am probably more than 65% of the way through the book. This is one I will definitely pick up again in the future.

• 2016 Reading List
• 2017 Reading List

Index

• Reading technology
• Books Read in 2017
• Abandoned in 2017

Reading technology

A few items that rocked my world with respect to reading:

Borrowing eBooks from my local libraries

I’ve been a Kindle user for about 9 years now. Sometime in the past 5 years, I discovered that it was possible to borrow eBooks from your local library, but the user experience left a lot to be desired. The selection of eBooks available for borrowing via Overdrive was not that impressive, and the experience of downloading a DRM-protected ePub or Kindle book to your computer, then copying it over to your Kindle was clunky and not very user-friendly.

How far we’ve come today…

As I recently rediscovered, the Overdrive system has gotten a lot smoother, better integrated with library systems and with Amazon, and has an impressive collection of new-ish books. The selection of books available to borrow still depends on which library systems you have access to. From having moved recently, I had library cards from where I lived before and where I now live. On top of that, the LA Public Library system kindly provides a library card to all California residents who brave LA traffic and visit a branch in person. All put together, this gives me access to quite a wealth of popular and recent books.

The Libby app by Overdrive

The same Overdrive system that lets you borrow library books has also launched a differently skinned app called Libby. The Libby app connects to any libraries you have cards for via the same Overdrive platform, so if you are looking to only borrow eBooks, you can go through either Overdrive or Libby, but the different thing here is the experience of borrowing audiobooks. With Libby, it gives you a list of all available audiobooks by library, and borrowing an audiobook is as easy as clicking ‘Borrow’ and the book will immediately start buffering / streaming through your phone. The app also makes samples available if you’d rather not commit to borrowing the book.

Fire HD 10

Amazon has had this on sale on and off for $99 + taxes - if you find such a deal, get it! With the fairly easy to execute Google Play sideload trick, you not only have the wealth of Amazon apps but also the vast world of Android apps on Google Play, including Netflix, Google Drive/Calendar/Mail, Microsoft’s Office 365 apps etc.

Fire HD also comes with a 6-month complementary membership to Washington Post, and a $5/year subscription to Wired magazine.

The experience of reading on the old gen Kindle was amazing - since the basic “paperwhite” Kindles aren’t backlit, there is no strain on the eyes from the tablet. The Fire HD 10 is backlit, but it has multiple options on making the screen darker (white-text-on-black background) on dimming the tablet for ‘night mode’

I was specifically looking for a tablet that could do a decent job of letting me doodle / draw wireframes/mockups/brainstorm charts without me having to invest $700-$900 for a complete iPad Pro + Pencil ecosystem, and I’m happy to report that Fire 10 HD by itself is enough for some basic level of doodling.

One word of warning - for a $100 tablet, you get what you pay for with the screen - it is not very strong and cracks easily. Put a case or screen protector on the Fire 10 HD the moment you get it.

Goodreads

I’ve had a Goodreads account for over 6 years now. I have seen Goodreads get acquired by Amazon, seen them get through various controversies over giving preferential treatment to author accounts, and primarily being too lazy to delete the account, I kept it open and sporadically updated my lists of books I’d like to read.

A couple of years ago, Goodreads helpfully started scanning my lists of ‘Want to Read’ books, looking up sales on the Kindle versions of those books on Amazon.com and sending me email digests of Goodreads Deals i.e. ‘We found a great deal for an ebook on your Want to Read shelf!’. Well, wow. I’ve probably purchased at least one book every few emails, if not more. At $2 - $4 a book, I’m getting a real deal on bestselling books and I can keep my reading “pile” full of books that I actually want to read.

Books Read in 2017

1. Influence: The Psychology of Persuasion by Robert B. Cialdini (1984)

I loved this book! The concepts of persuasion outlined in this book are timeless, even if in some cases, the examples aren’t - case in point, I don’t know of anyone who refers to “confidence-men” anymore. Although the use cases are sometimes stuck in the 80s, the author’s underlying message is powerful and worth absorbing.

2. Longitude: The True Story of a Lone Genius Who Solved the Greatest Scientific Problem of His Time by Dava Sobel (2010)

This book hit a lot of relevant notes for me - travel, entrepreneurship, innovation, challenges of communicating new technology. What I didn’t realize, and now have a new appreciation for, is the connection between accurate timekeeping and navigating the seas.

3. The Handmaid's Tale by Margaret Atwood

Dystopian and disturbing. The writing was great, the book was a page-turner and the main character’s inner life felt authentic. It’s the sort of book that stayed with me, even as I wondered how truly ‘futuristic’ or ‘dystopian’ this world really was when women still have so far to go and so much to change to feel truly equal.

4. To Pixar and Beyond: My Unlikely Journey with Steve Jobs to Make Entertainment History by Lawrence Levy

Pixar recently released Coco, which I absolutely loved and recommend as an example of what authentic ethnic storytelling should look like. News also came out regarding a pattern of alleged misconduct by John Lasseter, the Chief Creative Officer at Pixar. ‘To Pixar and Beyond’ serves as an interesting point-in-time capture of Lawrence Levy’s recollections of his time at Pixar - starting just before Toy Story was released, and ending around the time Disney fully acquired Pixar and captures the passion and work culture and loyalty to Pixar that could arguably result in both of the above pieces of news.

5. On Writing: A Memoir Of the Craft by Stephen King

I hope to read this book at least once every few years. Stephen King writes about his writing process, his advice to new writers, and about his writing career - drugs, alcohol and all. This isn’t a textbook about writing, but neither is it just a memoir. The advice and the memories all weave together seamlessly and it’s more layered than it appears at first read. I don’t know that I came away with very concrete writing advice beyond ‘don’t use adverbs’, but I was certainly inspired by King’s no-excuse attitude towards writing.

6. Harry Potter and the Cursed Child by J.K.Rowling

Having re-read the original Harry Potter books multiple times, I was a little hesitant to read this since it seemed too different to be a continuation of the original story - i.e. it’s a play, it’s not really about Harry and friends and it’s set in a different time. But after reading it, I can reassure you that this certainly inhabits the world of Harry Potter, and it was certainly lovely to hang out with the characters, both new and old, one more time. I wasn’t wild about the play format and the story did seem to move quicker because of the requirement for the characters to be doing / saying something (they can’t just think, that would be quite boring on stage). At the same time, I was quite amazed at the amount of magical activity that happens in the book as I couldn’t envision how that would be performed on stage. Good book and worth a read for the Harry Potter fan.

7. The Graveyard Book by Neil Gaiman

Loved this story! At the recommendation of a friend, I had read American Gods a while ago and was impressed by the scale and genius of it but didn’t really love the characters or the story. This felt exactly the opposite. It starts as a small, intimate story about a child in a graveyard and becomes so much more eventually. The characters stay with you, the story is heartwarming and grand and heroic. I first heard of this book on Tim Ferriss’s podcast - he recommends the audiobook version narrated by Gaiman himself and highlights this book as a starting point for those who usually only read non-fiction and are looking to dip their toes in the water with fiction.

Books started in 2017

8. What If?: Serious Scientific Answers to Absurd Hypothetical Questions by Randall Munroe

Ever wanted to get fully thought out, scientifically precise answers to questions like “What would happen if the earth stopped spinning?” or “What happens if everyone in the world gathers in one place and jumps together?” or “How big does a laser pointer have to be to heat the moon?”. No? Well, don’t be so sure. I’m halfway through this book and thoroughly enjoying the thoroughly researched scenarios that I never gave a thought to before now.

9. Death by Black Hole: And Other Cosmic Quandaries by Neil deGrasse Tyson

Similar to the above but more galactic and comprehensive, and more patiently explained by Neil deGrasse Tyson. Enjoying this so far.

10. The Underground Railroad by Colson Whitehead

So far, it has been a sprawling portrait of one woman as she silently bears life on the plantation. The eBook expired before I could finish it, but I will definitely re-borrow when I have some time to dedicate to the book.

Books I abandoned

1. No ordinary time: Franklin and Eleanor Roosevelt : the home front in World War II by Doris Kearns Goodwin (1994)

Slightly demoralizing to read how separate of a life Franklin and Eleanor Roosevelt lived during FDR’s pivotal presidency before and during WW2. Definitely want to learn more but this is too stark and intimate of a look behind the scenes.

2. Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind by Yuval Noah Harari (2011)

The previous book I read and liked in this genre was the The Naked Ape: A Zoologist’s Study of the Human Animal by Desmond Morris. The tone in ‘Naked Ape’ is lighter and the book is more fast-paced than Sapiens, so I may need to adjust my expectations of Sapiens before getting back to it.

3. Open by Andre Agassi (2009)

The opening chapters of the book are riveting - Agassi gives a live play-by-play of what it feels like the morning of a big match, just before it, during it and after it. I was halfway through the book and into his phase of life when he is busy rebelling and fighting the establishment. I might still get back to it - the book is well written and Agassi serves up insightful anecdotes in the making of a greatest of all time athlete.

4. Overwatch: A Thriller (The Logan West Thrillers) by Matthew Betley (2016)

Not the style of writing I like to read.

See last year’s reading list project page for more details.

For 2017, I hoped to select a list of books with more complex content, still with the aim of covering as wide a range of categories as I can, but a smaller total number.

I am carrying over 3 books from 2016 - No Ordinary Time, Sapiens and Open by Andre Agassi. Usually, if I haven’t finished a book in one continuous session, it gets less and less likely that I will finish the book. That said, I do plan to make another serious attempt at finishing the books. Stay tuned!

Index

• Books Read in 2017
• Currently Reading, Carried over from 2017
• Reading List for 2017

History:

• Published: Mar 11, 2017

Books Read in 2017

Nothing to see here yet…

Books I'm still reading, carried over from 2016

No ordinary time: Franklin and Eleanor Roosevelt : the home front in World War II by Doris Kearns Goodwin (1994)

Category: Biographies & Memoirs > Presidents

Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind by Yuval Noah Harari (2011)

Category: Anthropology

Open by Andre Agassi (2009)

Category: Biographies & Memoirs > Modern

Reading List for 2017

1. Influence: The Psychology of Persuasion by Robert B. Cialdini (1984)

Category: Business & Money > Consumer Behavior

2. Overwatch: A Thriller (The Logan West Thrillers) by Matthew Betley (2016)

Category: Literary Fiction > Action & Adventure

3. Team of Rivals: The Political Genius of Abraham Lincoln by Doris Kearns Goodwin (2005)

Category: Politics & Social Sciences > Civil War

4. Flash Boys: A Wall Street Revolt by Michael Lewis (2014)

Category: Business & Money > Fiction

5. The Art of Language Invention: From Horse-Lords to Dark Elves, the Words Behind World-Building by David J. Peterson (2015)

Category: Foreign Languages

6. Just Mercy: A Story of Justice and Redemption by Bryan Stevenson (2014)

Category: Law

7. Data Smart: Using Data Science to Transform Information into Insight by John W. Foreman (2013)

Category: Computers & Technology > Databases & Big Data > Data Mining

8. The Underground Railroad: A Novel by Colson Whitehead (2016)

Category: Literary Fiction > African American

9. Thinking, Fast and Slow by Daniel Kahneman (2010)

Category: Cognitive Psychology

10. Longitude: The True Story of a Lone Genius Who Solved the Greatest Scientific Problem of His Time by Dava Sobel (2010)

Category: Engineering & Transportation

Barack Obama's Recommended Books

See full article here

11. The Three-Body Problem by Cixin Liu et al. (2007)

Category: Science Fiction > Hard Science Fiction

12. All the Light We Cannot See by Anthony Doerr (2014)

Category: Literature & Fiction > Genre Fiction > Historical

13. Ghost Wars: The Secret History of the CIA, Afghanistan, and Bin Laden, from the Soviet Invasion to September 10, 2001 by Steve Coll (2004)

Category: Politics & Government > Specific Topics > Terrorism

Bill Gates's Favorite Books of 2016

See full article here

14. The Gene: An Intimate History by Siddhartha Mukherjee (2016)

Category: Medicine > Basic Sciences > Genetics

Bill Gates’s review of The Gene: An Intimate History

15. The Grid: The Fraying Wires Between Americans and Our Energy Future by Gretchen Bakke (2016)

Category: Engineering > Energy Production & Extraction > Electric

Read the main My Favorite Books of 2016 article for a short note from Bill Gates about the book.

With Instagram’s rebranding earlier this year, they also took the opportunity to disable several handy features in their API, one of them being the ability to export IG posts you like to a different platform. Previously, all you had to do was hook up an IFTTT (if-this-then-that) account to your Instagram and, say, Evernote, to have all your likes automagically saved to your Evernote. Now, no more.

I can sort of see the thinking behind that - if I like someone else’s post, I don’t own that image so I don’t necessarily have the rights to “download” it. However, there are legitimate use cases for this including if I wanted an automated way to bookmark these images for later reference.

The method I’ve outlined below is still not fully automated, but it is better than individually bookmarking each liked post.

The ingredients

1. An Instagram account, of course
2. A Twitter account you’ve created just for this purpose (don’t use your main one!)
3. An IFTTT account

The process

• After you have your Instagram and Twitter accounts in place, login to your IFTTT account
• Set up a recipe to post from Twitter to Instagram, like so. The tweet that you post from instagram will actually just have the IG username and a permalink to the specific instagram post. But, Pinterest is smart enough to pull the only available image from that page although it links to the twitter post (which is not great, but not bad either).

What your IFTTT recipe summary looks like:

What the ‘action’ part of your IFTTT recipe summary looks like:

• Find your past Instagram likes via the Settings menu on your iPhone or iPad Instagram app. I’m not sure where the menu option is on Android.

• Forward the Instagram posts individually and tweet them to the Twitter account you’ve created for this purpose.

• That’s it! IFTTT works its magic, and posts the photos to your Pinterest page and now you can refer to a selection of your Instagram likes.

Obviously, this is not a fully automated process and cannot be used to get a full backup of your Instagram likes, but this will help you catalog specific IG posts for future reference.

Feel free to comment below if you’ve found a better or different method to do the same thing.

Some companies have made this into an art form.

Google, for example.

I still remember the launch as it were, of Gmail. The excited chatter with friends about rumored acquaintances who had an invite. That thrilling instant message from a friend telling you they had an account and were waiting for their quota of invites. Then actually getting the invite yourself, and becoming part of the Gmail beta. (And the hilarious anti-climax of then having a very minimal, cool, and empty email account.)

Google has since launched so many other products, all in similar fashion and I have signed up for so many of them over the years (Google Reader RIP, Bookmarks RIP, Calendar, Drive, Blogger, Google+ etc although some have bit the dust or transformed since).

And this, I realize, has become something of a guiding philosophy in terms of how I believe a product should be launched.

I recently came to learn of this article, Slow Assimilation Works Best, which again captures so succinctly the philosophy of that first Gmail product launch.

This works out great in practice too.

Whether it’s a new process, a technology, a platform, an app - I’ve seen this process work out well every single time, and with lasting results. And, as noted in the article, approach#2 fails every single time.

Especially within organizations, the Big Bang approach, while exciting and satisfying, also necessarily means that several of the users this process was launched at were previously unfamiliar with it, and likely had no input in it, nor any concrete idea of what it solves and what it doesn’t solve (since no process or tool solves everything). Even with prolific post-launch communication, users will only remember that they got a new process or tool without context, and are now required to use it whether or not they want to.

The Soft Launch approach misses the benefit of a flashy introduction, but in every case, is satisfying to the developers since you get immediate, quality feedback on what could be improved, from an audience interested in providing feedback and qualified to do so, with the final product benefiting from this shorter feedback cycle. The alpha testers get the benefit of being the first to influence the product or process, and feel involved in the ultimate result, which as psychology tells us, can be a powerful motivator for buy-in.

The journey has been interesting, to say the least. Nintex behaves in very unexpected ways, and with our workflows being fairly complex, we’ve had to cross a lot of hurdles and come up with workarounds, hacks and a fair amount of research to solve these problems. The Nintex forums have also been a great resource and I’m including links to any helpful solutions posted there as well. I’m recording these below as a reference for myself and anyone else facing the same hurdles.

Linking multiple workflows

One of the workflow solutions I have been working on involves linking multiple workflows in sequence. The reason these had to be split was because of some rather complicated task assignment logic we’ve used in a couple of these workflows, and size limitations prevented us from combining all of these in one workflow. There are a couple of ways to achieve multiple workflows:

Option 1. Firing off all workflows simultaneously on item creation, but having the other workflows wait for a certain field to change.

This worked great for a couple of reasons - the transition from one workflow ending to the other workflow beginning was very short and seamless, and all workflows were launched with the same initial permissions.

But the problem was if the user had to restart the workflow for any reason. The user would have to remember to fire off all the workflows, in the right order, and even then the “wait for field change” didn’t always work.

Option 2. Linking one workflow to the next using the ‘Start workflow’ action.

I quite thought I had found the holy grail with this solution - I could even do conditional branches and fire off different workflows depending on whether particular fields had been filled. It did require me to put in an admin user ID and password into the workflow action that launches a separate workflow, and getting the configurations filled out just right took some research as well. For more information on how to configure the ‘Start workflow’ action, see article: Start a Workflow using NINTEX Workflow in SharePoint 2013 Online

However, it turned out that the workflows launched correctly, and in sequence, only as long as the initial request was submitted by my account, the one with site administrator rights. When a user with lower permissions (Edit or Contribute) initiated the workflows, the first workflow kicked off without any problems, but the next linked workflow would fail and get suspended with the following error message:

Retrying last request. Next attempt scheduled after (date/time). 
Details of last request: HTTP NotFound to 
https://siteurl/sites/subsite/web/lists(guid'xxxx')/Items(n)? 
Correlation Id: xxxx Instance Id: xxxx

Item does not exist. It may have been deleted by another user.

I had encountered the ‘Item does not exist’ error before - it tended to appear when a user didn’t have access to view that particular item.

And since the workflows ran without problem when initiated from my account, I knew it had to be a permissions issue.

I went down the rabbit hole researching several possible solutions, all listed below including the final solution that works like a charm. Scroll down to #6 if you want the tl;dr.

Giving the user higher permissions

#1. Upgraded user permissions from Contribute to Edit - this didn’t work and gave me the same error message. Giving the user any higher permissions would result in users being able to see each others’ List items, which would contradict business requirements.

Giving the user higher permissions temporarily

#2. Considered elevating user permissions on the SharePoint List temporarily while one workflow transitions to the other, per this article Set Item Permissions - Start Workflow Issue but it was a risky move to add more permissions temporarily since if anything failed, the user would basically see everyone else’s requests and this was a no-no.

Giving the workflow higher permissions

I found a series of articles on using elevated workflow permissions to remedy the issue.

#3. One of the articles, Workflow App Permissions suggested tricking SharePoint into thinking of the workflow as an App (i.e. a functioning widget or add-in like a Document Library or a List). This was an interesting approach, and definitely worth a try, until I found…

#4. An article on using an App Step, a Nintex feature that can leverage higher permissions than the rest of the workflow, per this article We use Nintex online with SharePoint 2013…, and this Nintex O365 documentation article for App Step.

I added an App Step to my workflow and when I clicked into the action to configure it, was greeted with this message.

The required feature is not currently active.
 
To enable App Step, the following site feature must be activated:
Workflows can use app permissions

#5. The Nintex App Step documentation linked above also led to a SharePoint Dev center artice on how to Create a workflow with elevated permissions by using the SharePoint 2013 Workflow platform. This article in conjunction with another helpful article How to enable usage of App Step led me to the Site setting that allows workflows to use app permissions.

While setting up an App Step seemed like the best solution of all of the above, it still felt like a lot of added weight to the workflow. I wondered for a moment if simply enabling this setting might allow the workflow to run with elevated permissions, and this was certainly worth a try.

#6. (SOLUTION THAT WORKED) So, I went into Site Settings > Site Actions > Manage site features:

And enabled the ‘Workflows can use app permissions’ setting.

I tentatively kicked off a workflow from a test user account with lower permissions, and …. it worked!

However, kicking off a new workflow from an existing workflow seems to take Nintex a good 15-20 minutes to slowly work its way through. This can be fairly awkward during live demo sessions, but shouldn’t be a problem during normal live usage.

Hiding the Task Outcome field

Within the Nintex workflow, we are able to set up task assignments that have one of several outcomes (Approve / Reject / On Hold etc). These task outcome options show up as a visible radio-button field on the custom task form that can be created for the approvers. This field refuses to elegantly hide or be switched off in any way - in fact, it’s a requirement that the field be enabled/rendered on the form for the approvers to successfully select an outcome. For the longest time, we’d keep tucking this outcome field behind other fields, or behind an empty white square graphic and it would still manage to peek through.

Until, a colleague of mine found this hack online that leveraged the Control-CSS field and some simple jquery to make the field invisible.

In the Control CSS field associated with the Task Outcome choice control, put in a unique class name.

Control CSS = hidden-control

Switch over to the Form Settings, and in the Custom Javascript field, add in the following jquery snippet.

NWF$(".hidden-control").hide();

Hiding or disabling fields by SharePoint Group membership

Nintex has a neat function called fn-IsMemberOfGroup() that checks if the user currently looking at the form is a part of a particular SharePoint group.

The trick here is to make sure you manually type in the name of the group and enclose in quotation marks. If you copy-paste the name of the SharePoint group, especially from SharePoint, it seems to carry some artifacts that Nintex dislikes and the hide/disable based on SharePoint group functionality refuses to work.

See articles: fn-IsMemberOfGroup(“Task Team”) not working in Nintex Forms O365 and fn-not not working

Date/Time Format Strings

A couple of handy reference articles on using inline functions Date and Time Format Strings - Quick Reference Guide or the default options available in a ‘Set Variable’ action Using the Format this Value Feature with Dates to format dates.

Checking for an empty Person field

This turns out to be more complicated than it seems. One would think that a simple check for Is this field blank ought to do it, but the Run If and Conditional If actions don’t contain a is blank / is not blank check for List Lookup columns; the only options available are equals and not equals.

The trick, as described in this Nintex post Check for empty person field in workflow is to instead save the Person field as a string field in a Workflow Variable. Once this field is available as a workflow variable, the Run If action does have an is not empty check.

Regular Expressions in Nintex

It’s completely amazing that Nintex allows RegEx parsing. That’s powerful stuff, and it enables you to do a lot with just a static text field. I ran into having to use this to extract an internal reference number from a text string.

This reference number was always preceded by a hashtag ‘#’ symbol, which made things easier, but it wasn’t always in a constant position and could be varying lengths, so I couldn’t use the substring action available in Nintex. It was however the first set of consecutive numbers in that string, which is a useful piece of information for leveraging RegEx.

To start with, the Nintex documentation on using Regular Expressions was pretty helpful: Nintex Actions > Regular Expressions

The goal was, for example, to parse the number 543 from the string “#543 Test List Item with additional descriptors and possible more numbers 93940”.

The actions required were as follows:

1. This Regex expression successfully extracts all the number sequences and stores them in a collection: ^#([\d]+)?
2. Since we want just the first iteration of this expression, we use the Nintex action to retrieve just the first item in the collection
3. The ‘#’ symbol is still stuck to the first expression, so we do a substring-replace action to remove the # and we now have the pure number code from the list item description.

Stay tuned for more notes..