Weekly review cw 29

New Directions for “Server Side Stories”

It's always fascinating how small, new ideas can lead to other great things that weren't even intended, let alone considered possible. The same thing happened with the consideration of how to handle remote guests for the “Server Side Stories” podcast.

As part of its service, the tool Riverside generates shorts directly after recording using AI. The quality of these shorts is impressive. So, if I have the shorts that are a byproduct of the original recording, why not put them live? For this to make sense, “Server Side Stories” must exist in the YouTube universe: So I create a channel.

Creating a YouTube channel is, in theory, a simple process. Select “new channel” in my account settings, upload a logo, insert a banner, copy the description text from the podcast platforms, and link to the RSS feed. Voilà – I thought. Anyone can spread fake news and other bullshit online these days. But not me via an RSS feed on YouTube. First, I need to authenticate myself by submitting my photo ID via video and photo, and then wait 24 hours for the verification result to see if Google believes I'm genuine. I don't have a business account with a company name and accreditation under the email account. 🤯

After YouTube deemed me credible, the channel finally went live: 20 episodes to start with and 14 views after three days. 🫣 Go to YouTube channel

NTSV Table Tennis Continues to Evolve

A lot has been happening in the table tennis department over the last week. Starting next school year, NTSV will take over the school cooperation with Ohmoor Elementary School for grades one through four. We are permitted to use the table tennis squad's Olympic training centre on Sachsenweg – thank you, Stefan Meder. Every Tuesday, starting in October, from 2 p.m. to 3:30 p.m., pupils can learn about the wonderful sport of table tennis as part of the afternoon care program. My two excellent coaches, Farid Khazaeli and Alex Seibert, make this possible.

The planning group for the club's internal championship also met this week. Like last year, the Club Championships will take place on October 3rd in the Sachsenweg Hall. Thanks to a well-coordinated team, the event's framework was drawn up quickly, and improvements from the previous year were refined. An exceptional dynamic, born of a team of reliable organizers: Martin Scholz, Myke Möllenkamp, and Dieter Bühling.

And when things go well, they usually all go well. From the time I applied for hall time to the approval, four hours passed. That's incredible. Special thanks to NTSV sports coordinator Nils Bellgardt and the specialist in the government office!

I have one more: Thanks to the support of someone in the NTSV youth team (who, at their request, do not want their names mentioned here), I have a social media manager who is taking over the NTSV table tennis account on Instagram. We're marching straight towards 100 followers.

API-First Design

The patient documentation application is progressing. Now that the back-office administration website is almost complete, the next step is to develop the mobile application. Thanks to the wireframes, it's clear how therapists navigate through the application and what information they see, when, and where. To enable the parallel development of the front-end and back-end, it's essential to determine how the information flows. My approach is API-first.

Every step, from login to the therapist task dashboard to entering the documentation, is examined, and the respective data requests and responses are defined. This process is extensive and encompasses every detail. It is precisely defined which requests and parameters are needed, and what the response looks like, so that the mobile application functions as planned in the concept phase. Once all calls have been defined, the interface is complete, and the front-end can be developed independently of the back-end.

Experience shows that adjustments to the definition are still necessary during development, as not all aspects, especially exceptional cases, are fully represented. Thanks to experience, the proportion becomes smaller and smaller, but never completely disappears. So why go to the trouble upfront and not define the interface step by step in an “agile” way?

Experience shows that small features and the associated need to introduce changes to the interface usually lead to massive adjustments to the backend logic and data storage. I want to use this approach to identify these vastly time-consuming adjustments, which unfortunately impact the entire interface, early on. If you'd like to delve deeper into this concept, I can highly recommend this article from Swagger.io.