Stephanie recommends "Blue Eye Samurai" and d a new ceramic pot (donabe) for cooking. Joël talks about the joy of holding a warm beverage in a unique mug.
Stephanie discusses her shift to a part-time support and maintenance role at thoughtbot, contrasting it with her full-time development work. She highlights the importance of communication, documentation, and workplace flexibility in this role. Stephanie appreciates the professional growth opportunities and aligns this flexible work style with her long-term career goals.
Blue Eye Samurai (https://www.netflix.com/title/81144203)
Donabe pots (https://jinenstore.com/collections/nagatani-en)
thoughtbot’s Support & Maintenance services (https://thoughtbot.com/services/rails-maintenance)
Transcript:
JOËL: Hello and welcome to another episode of The Bike Shed, a weekly podcast from your friends at thoughtbot about developing great software. I'm Joël Quenneville.
STEPHANIE: And I'm Stephanie Minn. And together, we're here to share a bit of what we've learned along the way.
JOËL: So, Stephanie, what's new in your world?
STEPHANIE: I have a TV show recommendation this week. I think this is my first time having TV or movies to recommend, so this will be fun. My partner and I just finished watching Blue Eye Samurai on Netflix, which is an animated historical Samurai drama.
But the really cool thing about it is that the protagonist she's a woman who is disguising herself as a man, and she is half Japanese and half White, which the show takes place during Edo, Japan. And so that was a time when Japan was locked down, and there were no outsiders allowed in the country. And so, to be mixed race like that was to be, like, kind of, like, demonized and to be really excluded and shamed. And so, the main character is on, like, a revenge mission.
And it was such a cool show. I was kind of, like, on the edge of my seat the whole time. And it's very beautifully animated. There were just a lot of really awesome things about it. And I think it's very different from what I've been seeing on TV these days.
JOËL: Is this a single-season show?
STEPHANIE: So far, there's just one season. I think it's pretty new, yeah. It's very watchable in a couple of weekends.
[laughter]
JOËL: Dangerously so.
STEPHANIE: Yeah, exactly [laughs].
JOËL: How do you feel about the way they end the arc in season one? Do they kind of leave you on a cliffhanger, or does it feel like a pretty satisfying place?
STEPHANIE: Ooh, I think both, which is the sweet spot, in my opinion, where it's not, like, cliffhanger for the sake of, like, ugh, now I feel like I have to just watch the next part to see what happens because I was left unsatisfied. I like when seasons are kind of like chapters of the story, right? And the characters are also well written, too, and really fleshed out even, you know, some of the side characters. They all have their arcs that are really satisfying. And, again, I just was left very impressed.
JOËL: I guess that's the power of good storytelling.
STEPHANIE: Yeah. I was reading a review of the show. And that was kind of the theme of–it was just that, like, this is really good storytelling, and I would have to agree. Yeah, I highly recommend checking it out. It was very fun. It was very bloody, but [chuckles], for me, it being animated actually made it a little more palatable for me [laughs]. The fight scenes, the action scenes were really cool.
I think the way that it's been described is kind of, like, you know, if you like historical dramas, or if you like things like Game of Thrones, there's kind of something for everyone. I recommend checking it out. Joël, what's new in your world?
JOËL: Listeners of the show don't know this, but you and I are on a video call while we're recording this. And you'd commented earlier that I was holding a cool mug. It's got a rock climbing hold as a handle, which is pretty fun. I enjoy a lot of bouldering. That makes it a fun mug.
But I was recently thinking about just how much p