February 2009
21 posts
“Longer Term” Planning: Thinking at the Beginning... →
A complete product plan includes not only birth, but life, and the eventual death. The time when the last server is turned off, and any clients still in the wild begin failing with “cannot connect”…
January 2009
16 posts
Get your gat, let's go shoot some stuff! →
Gather around, boys and girls, for today’s history lesson:
The term “gat” as a slang for a handgun does not originate from 80’s gangsta rap, and long pre-dates NWA or Ice-T.
The term was originally coined in America’s first prohibition era, of the 1920’s and 30’s. It was short for “Gatling Gun”, but was commonly used to refer to the...
Serendipity →
“Mistakes are the portals of discovery.” - James Joyce
“The most exciting phrase to hear in science, the one that heralds new discoveries, is not ‘Eureka!’ but ‘That’s funny…’” - Isaac Asimov
It is only by tweaking the data and trying something completely new that we discover if we are truly in the right place. This is the reason for...
“‘There is no use trying,’ said Alice; ‘one can’t believe...”
– Lewis Carroll, Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland
Face Your fear, or let it control you. →
“What’s great is that YOU create your fears, so YOU can beat them.
…
“Life doesn’t last for very long. We need to remind ourselves of this all the time.
“Tomorrow is never guaranteed.”
The Delivery is Just a Part of the Process, and Is... →
So many in this business are focused on the “end goal” of The Delivery, yet they fail to miss the point: The Delivery is not the end, it is the beginning. The Delivery is the birth of the product. A…
The Gig Economy →
“Gigs: a bunch of free-floating projects, consultancies, and part-time bits and pieces they try and stitch together to make what they refer to wryly as “the Nut”—the sum that allows them to hang on to the apartment, the health-care policy, the baby sitter, and the school fees.”
Feels like I’ve been living this way for a few years now.
Shoot the Baddies →
Shoot the bad guys! Can’t decide if my favorite is the Space Invader or the Goomba.
Bad managers top reason for quitting →
Obvious statement of the month:
“An employee who shows up at work wearing suits even though your company has a business casual dress policy may be going on job interviews”
Science hopes to change events that have already... →
“Such are the perils of retrocausality, the idea that the present can affect the past, and the future can affect the present. Strange as it sounds, retrocausality is perfectly permissible within the known laws of nature.
…
“Dating back to Newton’s laws of motion, the equations of physics are generally “time symmetric” — they work as well for processes...
“People can be so disappointing in their predictability.”
“The thing about boundaries, especially interpersonal ones, is you never know...”
Goals for the New Year →
A year in the Gregorian calendar is just as good as any other, arbitrary measure of time invented by mankind for structuring your life, so here we go…
Purging The Negative People →
“In 2009 I think it is wise to simply purge the people from your life who are negative influences, takers, posers, gossips, dream killers and generally rude or hurtful.”
Lord Kelvin and Being Usefully Wrong →
“There is nothing wrong with being wrong, only with being wrong for the wrong reasons.”
If you’re not making mistakes, you’re not trying enough different things in life. If you’re not getting something wrong every now and then, you’re not trying hard enough to improve your life. Failure brings new thinking and new ideas about how your world really works.
December 2008
16 posts
“There is a philosophy of ‘just good enough’, that we tend to...”
– Andy Ihnatko
iPhone App Store Sales for #1 Spot Revealed →
“He’s since revealed to us the most recent sales numbers for the last couple of days which includes the coveted #1 spot on the App Store’s Top 100 sales.” “12/21 - 9760 units, #2 overall” “12/22 - 13274 units, #1 overall”
“After Apple’s 30% cut, that means the iFart Mobile is generated $9198 in one day.”
Given these numbers, the...
Seadragon Goes Mobile →
1) Not sure I care to install any M$ software on my iPhone, and 2) the web page requires Silverlight, which is NOT ubiquitous, despite Microsoft’s inward eye’s desire for it to be so. Fail
