David James

I’ve read 20+ books on creativity. I love the topic. One thing that barely get mentioned is being ready to record your thoughts in detail when inspiration strikes. Creativity is often fleeting, but if you can trap the essence of the idea when it hits you with the strongest waves, you can revisit it later and refine your thoughts. Here’s my 5 shortcuts: 🧵

@thesamparr @rachcorrine Half-zip from Sunspel, I have two, very comfortable too: sunspel.com/products/mens-…

@rachcorrine 1/4 zips aren't inherently bad. the ones people wear the work are. an all cotton one worn casually can be great. i own vintage champion ones and they are wonderful and look cool

Decided to do some research and see if I could find any pics of JFK Jr in a quarter zip. This is what I found. “JFK Jr didn’t have good style he was just hot.” My point exactly lads my point exactly.(For the record I think he has incredible style because STYLE is aura style is everything - read Bukowksi gd.) Anyway. Still hate quarter zips but they’re fine on JFK Jr here in sweats. On golf course too, sure I’ll bite.

@FootballCliches sacrilegious

@davidjames Well....

@FootballCliches dear, oh dear

@iamdevloper The rapper?

Remember DHTML?

I’m not saying marketing claims are getting out of control but I just read that a WiFi password is being changed as part of a brand refresh.

@ShaanVP DM. I wrote a blog post on a similar subject: theantistartup.com/creativity/

3 ways to hijack the creative part of your brain: 1. Morning Mud we mistakenly think greatness is clean. Like you're supposed to wake up, meditate, cold plunge, sip green tea -- and then produce brilliant work. Nope. You gotta work like a pig. Wake up, and roll in the mud. Seinfeld spent the first 2 hours of his day writing jokes. Why? because if you want great jokes, you gotta write a lot of bad jokes. He did that everyday, for 40+ years. Less than 0.1% of those jokes ever made it into his standup set. Quantity is the mother of quality. b..bu..buut what about writer's block? "there's no writers block" he said. "there IS scared. there IS lazy. But there's no writers block." You can cure writers block like it's a simple case of the hiccups: "just sit down and accept your mediocrity" Translation: the harder you try to be great, the more you paralyze your creativity. Instead, be willing to roll in the mud. Make bad stuff, everyday. Ed Sheeran: "I don't try to be great. When I walk in the studio, I remind myself 'today, I must dare to suck'...you can never make a great song, if you're afraid to make a bad song" The first 2 hours of the day. Sit down and create. Before you check the news, twitter, and stock market. BEFORE YOU PUT ANYTHING IN YOUR BRAIN... make something. Coders code. Writers write. Musicians play music. It's not going to be good. It's not SUPPOSED to be good. Good comes later. You will only be as great as you're willing to be bad. 2. Engineered Rest If you're reading this - you work too much, and it's suffocating your creativity. All great work is on the other side of a breakthru idea. How do you get a breakthrough? 3 places: 1) in water 2) in motion 3) after a nap Ever notice you get your best ideas in the shower? That's because your brain shifts from Executive Mode (doing tasks) to Default Mode (connecting dots) "Creativity is just connecting things" - Steve Jobs Aaron Sorkin (writer of west wing, social network) showers 8x a day when writing scripts. Einstein used to float on a boat without a motor at sea. The coast guard was worried he'd drift away. He said "good, more time to think" Darwin used to go for long walks in nature. He'd kick a stone every lap. He started calling his problems "4 stone problems" and "5 stone problems" JK Rowling came up with Harry Potter on a train. Edison, Einstein, Salvador Dali all took very short naps, and woke themselves up (holding a key, or metal ball that would drop and clang when they fell asleep) - because the brain enters a hypogogic state which allows for creative connections. Showers, Naps, Swimming, Walking -- these look lazy. What's more important to you: Looking productive or being productive? Just like athletes and bodybuilders use sleep to grow their muscles - you must give yourself permission to relax. Clock out so your subconscious mind can clock in. 3. THINK INSIDE THE BOX Creativity loves constraints. Dr. Suess was an up and coming writer. His editor bet him $100 he couldn't write a book using less than 50 words. "it was damn tough. but that's what made it fun. It gave it that bounce" The book (Green Eggs and Ham) went on to be his all-time best selling book. The lie we're told is that you need to "think outside the box" If you study the great ones, you see they do the opposite. They put themselves INTO a tight box. Fewer options. Tight deadlines. Less features. ^these are the tools of the master creators that's just a taste, reply DM if you want me to DM you the full list

@luke_madden The true Christmas spirit, cash is king! 🤣

@davidjames Our folks did this years ago - cash inside a card, we watched them throw the card away into the back and pocket the £ 🤣. Don’t worry

I wanted to give the people who pick up our bins a bonus for Christmas so I put some money in an envelope and then I thought what do I write on the front of it? I started with ‘dear bin men’ and I thought what if there are women? So I changed to ‘bin people’ and immediately realised this was insane so I finished with ‘recycling guys’. This is my life now.

@davidfowl Sadly not, same issues with old version of code. We had to role the whole site back to .net core 8 and it works fine.

@davidfowl Fair point, no we didn't, we actually moved from System.Data.SqlClient to Microsoft.Data.SqlClient, but will roll back and see if it helps. Much obliged David.

@davidfowl Hi David, were there any significant changes in database connection pooling/simple connection plumbing. We upgraded from .net 8 to .net 10 and seem to get lots of : "The timeout period elapsed prior to obtaining a connection from the pool. This may have occurred because all pooled connections were in use and max pool size was reached." The "code" is the same, only the version of .net is different

@davidfowl sql azure

@davidjames What database?

@sivers just arrived in London 😀

Thanks, that makes sense. Hacked, ah, what a pain.

@MotorclaimGuru Hey Tim, I wondered if this link ever worked? Or were there reasons you had to remove the service?

@AatifNawaz Can these be purchased?

Pakistan will wear a special pink jersey during the T20I series against South Africa to promote Breast Cancer Awareness. An really cool looking kit for a very important cause.

@tobytarrant Stay with me….1:05 into Kings of Leon: m.youtube.com/watch?si=m_P0m…

@tobytarrant Toby…this is important..do you remember…en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kabir_Ali the cricketer?

Hello, I've joined the @TheGreenParty I like their policies, I like how they don't talk down to voters and I like how they speak about the great potential of the UK rather than always tearing it down for political gain You can join too if you like 👍 join.greenparty.org.uk

@davidfowl @aspiredotdev One thing I think would be super useful is a ‘bootstrapped sass’ template for Aspire. The likes of shipfa.st

We release Aspire 9.5 soon and the building blocks are finally beginning to come together 😍 #aspire @aspiredotdev

@verge If done correctly, the whole ‘show the user a webpage’ whilst keeping them in app can be useful. The problem is, apps are so keen to keep users inside the app and away from real browsers it often turns into a terrible experience, usability/accessibility-wise.

Reddit is testing a way to read articles without leaving the app theverge.com/news/775722/re…