How’s the new job going? I’ve been asked that a zillion times recently, so it’s probably worthy of a job post. I answer, “So far so good!” To be honest, it’s hard to say. I mean, it’s great for a lot of reasons:

• I work with really smart and talented people who are all super friendly.
• Our product is a thing that people genuinely LIKE. (Sadly, I think this is a career first for me.) They rave about it! Several of my friends have actually used it and emailed me compliments about it!
• I’m learning heaps about things I never had a great deal of exposure to before (like content marketing, email campaigns, etc).
• The work I’ve done seems to be genuinely appreciated and the feedback has been great.
• I get to walk to work every day to an extremely cool office in Surry Hills where we’re fed by a wonderful chef.

So what’s the issue then? I guess it’s more just the ambiguity of figuring out where I fit in. It’s like switching schools. (Sudden 7th grade flashbacks.) There’s a fine balance between sitting back and observing, and jumping right in. This kind of situation always brings out my Imposter Syndrome, and it doesn’t help that I’m probably the most technical woman in the office. I feel the need to prove my bonafides to the guys, but I know how annoying that can be. And then there’s the perpetual issue of being a generalist in a team of specialists. Everyone wants to feel useful, right?

But ambiguity has upsides too. I have the freedom to get involved in all sorts of areas that I wouldn’t before. So far I’ve resisted the impulse to fall back to being a BA (well, mostly – I’ve created a couple Activity Diagrams that were like SCRATCHING THE WORST ITCH EVAR). Mostly I’ve been working on an email marketing strategy, but I’ve also been helping out on the recruiting front and have passed a couple leads over to HR. I’ve identified some bugs in our analytics tracking. I’ve lined up some speaking gigs on behalf of Canva and the company is extremely supportive of that. Next week I’m going to have a stint on Customer Support (with some other new recruits). All of this is new and exciting. Scary, but fun too.

So that’s where I am after three weeks. Looking forward to the next six months and beyond!

(“VP of Gettin’ Things Done” is actually my current title on LinkedIn. I’m thinking of changing it up every six months. Any suggestions?)

Pressure Cooker Pork Stew with Sweet Potatoes and Prunes – Dad Cooks Dinner – Made this for dinner tonight, and it was glorious.

Here’s a giant 800-track alt/indie-focused 90’s playlist in chronological order – Medium – Oh hello, soundtrack to the next 55 hours of my life.

Roald Dahl’s The Twits: How do you make a book that smells? | Children’s books | The Guardian – Great idea, but EW!

IFTTT Blog – Introducing the Maker Channel – Awesome! I don’t have to roll my own tweet service anymore.

How To Marry The Right Girl: A Mathematical Solution : Krulwich Wonders… : NPR – I’m going to use this method to find a builder for my bathroom renovation.

Start-up Costs: Silicon Valley, Halt and Catch Fire, and How Microserfdom Ate the World – How can Microserfs be 20 years old? I need to buy it and re-read it. (I keep giving copies away and never getting them back; that’s how you know it’s good.) I love that book. I first read it when I was working in a startup in the dotcom boom, living in a sharehouse in London with my boyfriend and two other guys we worked with. I identified with Daniel, but I wished I was as cool as Karla. I think about her theory that the body stores memories and emotions in muscular deep freeze every time I get a massage. I cried and cried at the ending. I even liked the silly bits, like the pages where Daniel would free associate words to create a subconscious for his computer. IT SPOKE TO ME, MAN. And now here I am once again in startup life, and everything is different but somehow the same. Poetic, isn’t it? Change all the IRC references to Hipchat and you’re pretty much there. (And I know I’m not the first to point out that Coupland essentially invented Minecraft in this book. I hope Notch thanked him!)

This made me think: Is there a recognised canon for Computer Age books? I think Microserfs should be in it. What else? I recently read The Cluetrain Manifesto for the first time, which everybody else in my book group hated but I loved. (Man, in 2000 we really thought intranets were going to be a much bigger Thing than they ended up being, huh?) I still haven’t read The Cathedral and the Bazaar or The Mythical Man Month, which I probably should. The Snook reckons that The Cuckoo’s Egg is worthy of inclusion. Any others?

Geo for Bootstrap, a Timeless Theme by Divshot – It’s 1996 all over again, and I LOVE IT.

KnitYak: Custom mathematical knit scarves by Fabienne – Very cool initiative. I backed it! I’m tempted to try to create my own unique pattern for handknitting too…

Recently I tweeted a photo of my homemade coconut yogurt, and a couple people wanted to know how I made it. I got the idea from the Eat Drink Paleo cookbook by Irena Macri. You can buy coconut yogurt at Coles, but it costs $8.25 for a 500ml container. (Ouch!) If you make it yourself, it costs about half that much. That definitely makes it worth the additional effort to me.

I start with four cans of coconut cream or milk, which yields about a liter of yogurt. The first step is to boil a big kettle of water and pour it over a saucepan, spoon, and the metal bowl with a plastic lid I plan to store my yogurt in. This sterilises everything and makes sure the only bugs in your yogurt are the ones you put there deliberately! I carefully move the hot items to a clean tea towel to dry. I open each can of coconut milk/cream and pour it into the saucepan, stopping when I get to the clear/watery bit at the bottom of each can. (You can chill your cans to make separating even easier, but it’s not too hard to stop when you get to that point. I figure I lose maybe 20%.) Start heating the coconut up slowly on the cooktop, using a thermometer to check when you’re getting close to 40C. When it hits 43C, it’s time to take it off the heat and add your yogurt culture.

For my first batch, I used a sachet of yogurt culture the Snook bought at The Hop and Grain brewstore. For the second batch, I used a reserved quarter cup of my first batch of yogurt. (You could also try it with leftover purchased yogurt.) I use the sterilised spoon to scoop out a bit of the hot coconut into my clean cup, and then I add the starter and stir it in. Then I pour the whole thing back into the pot and stir it around well. Then it’s time to transfer the whole pot into my metal storage bowl and cover it up. This goes into the oven, which is set at 40C (the lowest our oven will go – it’s basically just the oven light as the heat source). And then I leave it there for at least 12 hours, if not more. You can tell when you uncover it that it’s been fermenting, and it’ll have a nice little tang if you taste it. Once I’m satisfied, I put the whole thing into the fridge for another day. It’s not as thick as storebought yogurt at first, but it definitely continues to thicken up the longer it sits in the fridge. It’s really nice!

And to go with my coconut yogurt, I usually have some paleo muesli. This is another recipe from Eat Drink Paleo, and I’ve made it several times. Unlike the yogurt, this is definitely not cheaper than the storebought version! That’s because it’s basically all nuts and seeds, without the filler of oats or grain. I use a mix of macadamias, almonds, and hazelnuts, and I generally put either dried cranberries or apricots in as the fruit. Then I add maple syrup, honey, shredded and flaked coconut, pepitas, and vanilla. I never bother with “activating” the nuts, and I never remember to add the chia either. (Chia kinda grosses me out anyway.) Just be careful not to eat too much in one sitting! As my friend Amy said when she tried it last week, “THIS STUFF IS LIKE CRACK.”