4/4/26 “Finest Worksong”, R.E.M.

Notes:

- Wonderful open chords
- I transcribed the first note as an open-B, but changed to the D string after watching a live performance
- Nice harmonics

Takeaway:
Another day with Peter Buck! I love how powerful and musical his parts are.

4/3/26 “Shiny Happy People”, R.E.M.

Notes:
- Played with a single-coil bridge pickup and tone felt close
- This lead riff is amazing; so much music out of four notes
- Learned it faster than expected

Takeaway:
Peter Buck is amazing! This song is a joy to play and putting it on makes people smile.

4/2/26 “Fade Into You”, Mazzy Star

Notes:

- Had to work on my slide!
- A beautiful lead guitar part

Takeaway:
The lead fades in and out; less is more. I like how adding an A on the D string shifts the chorus turnaround from Bm to D.

4/1/26 “Dreams”, The Cranberries

Notes:

- Easy to play; a chance to focus on tone and expression
- Lead is simple and iconic

Takeaway:
RIP Dolores O'Riordan. This guitar arrangement is brilliant! Just what is needed to let the vocals shine, and nothing extra

3/31/26 “Take a Picture”, Filter

Notes:

- Dropped D with lots of open strings
- Lead benefits from distortion and sustain
- Classic 90s sound with dissonant open chords, intentionally “muddy””

Takeaway:
Super fun to add to this very layered song with long ringing notes

I’m doing an open-ended challenge to learn some new songs on guitar! My goal is to pick up the song quickly via paper-and-pencil transcription.

I’ll post what I learn, and what surprised me.

Let’s go! 🎸

I’m thinking about a weekly newsletter for SaaS CTOs (teams ~10–100 engineers):

“3 tech trends you should care about (and what to do about them)”

Format:

- Act on this
- Watch this
- Ignore this

Would you read that?

If yes, reply or like this post, and I’ll send a first issue to a small group.

Getting It Right the First Time There’s an enviable quality of great engineers I’ve known: they seem to get things right the first time. When you ask them to do something, and they say “It’s done”, it is, almost always. How?

This is an enviable quality of great software engineers I've observed. If you're trying to level up, it might help.

www.jakeworth.com/posts/gettin...

Today I Learned: Rebuilds on Write With Nodemon #til

jakeworth.com/tils/rebuilds-on-write-w...

Today I Learned: MCP Stdio and Stdout #til

https://jakeworth.com/tils/mcp-stdio-and-stdout/

Today I Learned: TSC Watch #til

https://jakeworth.com/tils/tsc-watch/

Observable Exceptions That Don't Crash Throwing a JavaScript Error test to your observability tool? There’s a better way.

Testing exception capturing, without crashing your app (Sentry example):

www.jakeworth.com/tils/observa...

#til #javascript

NPM Install "Engine Strict" Suppose your package.json specifies a Node engine of <= 24. Will all engineers on your team use Node 24? Not necessarily, unless you use this one weird trick!

Today I learned that locally, the engines key of package.json is an advisory. But, we can change that! #til #javascript

www.jakeworth.com/tils/npm-ins...

Hello World from MCP! Hello World! Today I’m posting a TIL using MCP (Model Context Protocol).

A very short blog post, generated from MCP. #mcp #til

www.jakeworth.com/tils/hello-w...

Input Redirection Operator I’ve been known to cat README.md | pbcopy a file. There’s a better way: the input redirection operator!

Today I learned about the input redirection operator.

"my knowledge" < "this cool operator" 😎

www.jakeworth.com/tils/input-r...

Tmux Toggle Sessions To toggle back and forth between two Tmux sessions, use <leader>-L.

"Toggle Tmux Sessions" www.jakeworth.com/tils/tmux-to...

Disable DRF Browsable API Django Rest Framework includes a UI for interacting with your API. Here’s how to turn it off.

Two more TILs from me to close out the week!

"Disable DRF Browsable API" 🐍
www.jakeworth.com/tils/disable...

Import React and React 17 JSX Transform I’ve written before about the two competing ways to import React, but after React 17, you don’t need either.

📈 Exciting TIL from yesterday!

React 17 JSX transform lets you use JSX without explicitly importing React.

www.jakeworth.com/tils/import-...

Running Great Refinement Meetings This year I’ve run over 25 Scrum refinement meetings; here’s what I’ve learned.

This year I’ve run over 25 Backlog Refinement meetings; here’s what I’ve learned. #scrum #agile

www.jakeworth.com/posts/runnin...

I used to be like: "I'm a Rails dev, so my blog *has* to be a Rails app!" Nowadays, I'd pick whatever is the absolute easiest tool for me to write, edit, and deploy.

User Manual Working with me? Awesome! I built this user manual to share my working style and communication preferences. For those interested in building their own user manual, here’s the guide that helped me. 🧭 W...

This week I shipped something new on the website: a user manual for working with me. Have you ever made one of these? Was it useful? Share in the replies!

www.jakeworth.com/user-manual/

Thanks for coming out, Don! ❤️

November Social at Novare Res!, Tue, Nov 11, 2025, 6:00 PM | Meetup Join us at Novare Res in Portland for an evening of networking, socializing, and JavaScript! ⏰ Timeline 6:00 - 8:00 PM: Refreshments / networking 8:00 PM: Depart (or not;

Tonight is the Maine JS Meetup! Join us at Novare Res in Portland for an evening of ECMAScript-compliant conversation and socializing. 🍻

www.meetup.com/mainejs/even...

It's the Hashrocket Starter Pack! "Follow all" for insights from some of the smartest, most interesting folks to ever walk the streets of Jax Beach. 🏝️

go.bsky.app/ArMALD4

November Social at Novare Res!, Tue, Nov 11, 2025, 6:00 PM | Meetup Join us at Novare Res in Portland for an evening of networking, socializing, and JavaScript! ⏰ Timeline 6:00 - 8:00 PM: Refreshments / networking 8:00 PM: Depart (or not;

🎉 Tuesday night, join us in the Old Port, Portland, Maine for an evening of socializing and JavaScript! Always a great group, and great conversation.

www.meetup.com/mainejs/even...

This week, we ran an experiment: entire team voting on tickets to be included in an upcoming release! It was interesting.

Has anyone done this? What would you call it; participatory software planning?

Thanks Swizec; this could not have come at a better time! I'm trying something like this now on an upcoming release.

🌲 I made a Bluesky Starter Pack of devs in Maine! We're a small community, and growing. Click that follow button, and let's get a conversation going!

go.bsky.app/6WrdHtm

Testing a feature or bugfix, make sure you aren’t trying to "catch it passing."

Okay: "Can I get it to work?"
Better: "Does it ever fail, even if I stray from the happy path?"

"Being fast" matters at the org level, too. Fast organizations fix little things. They experiment instead of talking. They deploy fearlessly because they know they can recover quickly from mistakes.