Right now we are sitting at a recorded and processed backlog level of 3 weeks on the Substack. That 3 weeks of backlog is scheduled to run until Friday, September 15, 2023. Based on my normal routine for the weekend I should be recording week 139 right now during my Saturday morning. This morning The WAN Show was back (no comment) and I have the content ready to record for block 139. Instead of picking up the Marantz professional sound shield live vocal reflection filter from under my desk and starting to record on my Yeti X from Blue microphone I took a step back. Blocks 139, 140, 141, and 142 are actually written and ready to record, but they could be better. This morning I’m going to read all 4 of those blocks and give them a round of editing and expansion. That will be a part of the reworking content process that is important.

Recently, I have been way more likely to push the entire backlog back a few weeks and drop in new topics. That is in part a function of not wanting to put a new topic so far out in planning and review. Having a new topic that grabs my interest be shelved for over a year while the backlog is consumed in front of it just seems wrong. Right now that backlog goes out until block 226 which is really a problem for future Nels. Sometimes you have to be willing to mix things up and change up the backlog. It’s a healthy part of the agile process. I’m even going to create a new category for posts that is going to be about backlog management.

Throughout the next week I’ll be working with LangChain and building some Colab notebooks related to using and understanding all the use cases currently in that space. I’m going to spend time every day working on a single block of content within the backlog as well. That should end up yielding some good content building and a lot of focus on getting things done. For the most part the process of recording the audio, video, or other elements is distinctly separate from the writing process and is normally a part of my weekend routine.