The Coefficiencies Newsletter Issue 8 #

Hello, welcome to issue 8 of the Coefficiencies Newsletter!

Last week during my semi-regular Star Trek Adventures gaming night I decided to introduce a classic trope: an encrypted log file they needed to decrypt to find a clue. I wanted it to look exactly like an LCARS-style computer console from the show, and have codewords they could enter to decrypt some or all of the log depending on how well they rolled.

I’m not a programmer, so of course I turned to ChatGPT - specifically, Codex, its terminal-based code editor. I was able to make a very basic version of it by starting with an LCARS HTML template I downloaded from the internet and asking it to use that as the basis upon which to build it. Within an hour I had a very basic version that I could use. In the game, I presented it on my iPad mini for the crew, so it was just like they found a classic “PADD” from Star Trek: The Next Generation, adding to the atmosphere.

Afterwards, I realized there were some improvements I could make, like adding an admin password to adjust settings or wipe it, and add or change different log entries and the code words presented. I spent a few hours over the course of the week refining it with Codex, and eventually published it on GitHub, with a working demo hosted on GitHub that’s fully usable. I plan to use it again and hope other Star Trek Adventures players will find it useful!

Links #

A Vinyl Emulating Music Player #

Earlier this year I wrote about my dream for a 3D music app and how nothing out there quite comes close. This week I discovered something that comes very close to my dream. MD Vinyl is a music app that shows you a 3D list of your albums as album covers that you can scroll through. When it’s time to play your album, they render it as a record on a record player. You can pick up the needle and drop it to start playing, and move the needle to move further down in the album. I wish it had better filtering and collections for your albums, but as it is, it’s just a fun way to rediscover your music collection.

An Awesome New E-Bike #

I am seriously lusting after the new e-bike from Also, a spin-off of Rivian, the electric car company. The bike itself looks very nice, and it’s modular, allowing easy swaps of parts to suit your needs.

But the thing I found the most interesting is that the pedals in no way are connected to the drivetrain. Instead, when you pedal, it uses some of the force to charge the battery, and drives the bike faster or slower depending on how quickly you pedal. It’s $4500 USD, and there’s a waitlist, so I doubt I’m getting this anytime soon. But definitely something to contemplate if I can figure out how to replace more car trips with bike trips.

Insights Into Prioritization #

As much as I dislike that I have to read it on Substack, I really like John Cutler’s newsletter on the platform. He had a great one about how prioritization works at different levels this week, which was perfectly timed to help me and my team as we did some roadmap planning this week. Essentially, John argues that there are four factors to consider when prioritizing work:

1. Make more money
2. Reduce costs
3. Preserve the money you’re making
4. Contain your current costs

And when teams are struggling with what to prioritize, what they are really struggling with is which of those factors is more important to the company right now. So the job of senior leadership is to essentially rank those factors for teams when prioritizing their work. It’s a really simple concept, but I found it incredibly insightful and helpful both in setting expectations with my team, asking for expectations from my leaders, and for prioritizing things myself.

Wrap-Up #

Hope you enjoyed the newsletter this week! I’m really happy I’ve been consistent with this for so long. At the same time, I’m kind of disappointed with myself that the number of subscribers hasn’t really grown. Everyone who writes wants an audience, and I’m no exception. So here’s a shameless plug: if you like this newsletter and can think of someone who enjoys it - pass it along!

-Tom