@jpaulreed@mastodon.social Profile picture
Human factors in software development & operations. @REdeployConf founder. “How many incidents does it take to get to the center of a sociotechnical system?”
Peter Spofforth Profile picture 1 subscribed
Feb 4, 2021 32 tweets 9 min read
Who out there LOVES THEM SOME CRON?!?!!

Or just uses cron?

Or... y'know... likes a good story. (Involving cron!!)

Well, this is the thread for you... Recently, one of my cron jobs entries wasn't running the way I'd intended, so I pulled out the trusty crontab(5) manpage.

After skimming it and trying (rather unsuccessfully) to fix the issue, I decided to grab a cup of coffee and actually sit down to READ the thing.
Nov 24, 2018 17 tweets 4 min read
The study of human factors is inextricably rooted in examining how humans use (often complicated) tools to perform work.

One of the first papers any student of the field will read is Fitts and Jones' 1947 paper on the subject. THREAD. You're probably familiar with this paper, even if you don't know it: it's a write-up of the investigation of planes that kept "collapsing" in various World War II theaters; it found that the aircraft gear and wing flap handles were next next to each other... and identical.
Jun 13, 2018 13 tweets 6 min read
A friend recently asked me "Hey, this @REdeployConf thing you're doing sounds pretty interesting... but I'm not sure whether it's for me."

"Well..." I replied...

THREAD: First some context: I had the original idea for bringing people together to talk about resilience in technological systems last year, during my first year in my Human Factors and Systems Safety masters.