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Category: geekthoughts
I’ve talked about this before, but I don’t think I’ve ever written it down. As more of my day-to-day involves leadership, I think about this stuff. To run an effective team, you need to think in vector sums. As the great poet A. Yankovic once said, “Do vector calculus just for fun.” But this isn’t…
I can’t blog about secret projects I’m working on, so how about something completely different? I’ve improved my fitness level substantially over the last five years. (On index cards, I have my daily weight and body fat percentage, according to the bathroom scale, back to November 2009). Here’s some things I’ve learned: Moving counts. A…
In Nate Sliver’s new book, he mentions a classification system for experts, originally from Berkeley professor Philip Tetlock, along a spectrum of Fox <—> Hedgehog. (The nomenclature comes from an essay about Tolstoy.) Hedgehogs are type A personalities who believe in Big Ideas. The are ideologues and go “all-in” on whatever they’re espousing. A great…
Having been recently accused of “vile” habits in regard to tea-drinking, I feel that I need to clear the air. :) I’ve never been officially tested, but I am almost certainly a supertaster. (This explains, among other things, my aversion to most vegetables and my status as a nationally ranked beer judge). I’ve never been…
I found this article interesting. The author posits: “A good programmer will spend most of his time doing work that he hates, using tools and technologies that he also hates.†While I disagree with many of his supporting arguments, I think the overall theme is pretty accurate. Working with software, the good parts seem to…
Whenever I undertake something big and challenging enough to be worthwhile, whether editing a W3C specification, running a more demanding distance, a new software project, or something else, I notice a similar trajectory of progress: Ready to start: Full of adrenaline and excitement. Audacious goals seem readily reachable. 5-10% through: Whoa, this is difficult! And…
Found this article interesting. Not too many hundreds of years ago, cutting-edge scientific research involved watching balls roll down ramps. Making fundamental discoveries seems to be slowing down, or at least getting harder. As a consequence, we should expect more big discoveries from the sciences where the relevant technology follows a Moore’s-Law-like exponential growth trajectory….
Facebook (v): to deliberately create an impenetrable computer user interface for purposes of manipulating users. More collected Geek Thoughts at http://geekthoughts.info.
According to this article, a recent terror suspect almost got on a plane despite being recently added to the no-fly list. Why is it so difficult to administer a no-fly list? The CAP Theorem has answers. (Disclaimer: as always, this blog is apolitical–this isn’t about whether no-fly lists are a good idea or not, only…
Dora: Oh no! Lawrence Fawusu, 52, Operational Manager of the International Commercial Bank Ghana Limited is in trouble! He needs to move the sum of US$22, 000.000 (TWENTY TWO MILLION UNITED STATES DOLLAR) outside the country, but doesn’t know where to turn. Dora: Who do we call when we don’t know the way to go?…
May all in your life be an optimization problem to solve. More collected Geek Thoughts at http://geekthoughts.info.
Games like Farmville and the iPhone knock-off iFarm throw in a unique twist in the realm of strategy gaming: crops that get planted mature in “real time”. If a crop takes 24 hours to grow, then you need to literally wait the full 24 hours. Great for making an app “sticky” and getting users to…
If Moore’s law applies to flash (and flash-like) memory storage, and it certainly seems like it does, in another decade we will all be carrying around a terabyte on our phones. What happens then? More collected Geek Thoughts at http://geekthoughts.info.
Tractors are to dogs as rocking chairs are to cats. More collected Geek Thoughts at http://geekthoughts.info.
If you live close enough to a Netflix mailing hub, it’s possible to get on the maximal schedule: Enjoy a DVD over the weekend Mail it back on Monday Tusday, Netflix gets it, ships a new one Which you get (and watch) on Wednesday Return in Thursday mail Friday, Netflix gets it, ships a new…
First draft: get it on the paper (or screen). No editing. No criticism. Crap is fine, just get it down. Leave markers in trouble spots, but don’t stop. First revision: Quick pass over everything. Get the obvious flaws fixed. Wordsmithing, checking for horrible words, passive voice, adverbly writing, etc. Skip over the hard stuff. About…
Raining bacon. More collected Geek Thoughts at http://geekthoughts.info.
My personal stability theory, as it applies to software engineering: in a multilayered software architecture, the likelihood layer N works well can be expressed as a probability (less than 1 in practice) relative to the lower level layer N-1. For example, if you attempt to write a mission critical Tcl app on a flaky Tcl…
I think estimation is an important skill, and if not, I’ll eat my 10,000 hats. More collected Geek Thoughts at http://geekthoughts.info.
This sentence describes a unique story by David Moser. This sentence reinforces the notion that the story previously alluded to is not only entertaining but also thought-provoking. This sentence is false. Some sentences can even refer to themselves without using the word “this”. This sentence concludes the post with a pithy and memorable flourish. This…
All the input/output/port stuff in XProc seemed incomprehensible to me until I recognized something simple. Every time you see a <pipe> element, read it as “comes from”. For example <p:output port=”result”> <p:pipe step=”validated” port=”result”/> </p:output> reads as ‘output to the “result” port comes from the port “result” on step “validated”‘ and <p:input port=”source”> <p:pipe step=”included”…
The rules of Nomic Chess start out like regular chess, except that when it is your turn, instead of making a move, you can change the rules such that any particular class of pieces (say pawns) can move like any other class of pieces (say queens). An optional second rule is that when you are…
From CMSMcQ at Balisage: Context switches are expensive. More collected Geek Thoughts at http://geekthoughts.info.
I hate moving at high speed with multiple large chunks of metal in close formation. I hate the sound of traffic. The smell. I hate it when people jump in a car to drive somewhere a block away. I hate driving. I hate parking. I hate SUVs. Also, getting a root canal leaves me in…
According to this article, the big Y has been fined by a Belgian court for not turning over user information. Bypassing normal channels, Belgian officials went directly to the company demanding information, a similar situation that has come up before. (But unlike the Chinese incidents, this one directly involves the US headquarters.) Yahoo! deserves applause…
Since all these childhood media properties (just recently Transformers, G.I. Joe, Land of the Lost) are getting the movie treatment, why not a few more? Pez, the movie (directed by Michael Bay) A band of interdimensional travelers with rectangular bodies and grotesquely large heads arrive on earth to plant monitoring probes, with sprout out of…
Google Android Will Be on 18-20 Phones by End of 2009 source. Let’s see, Larry, Sergey and Eric Schmidt, there’s three phones… More collected Geek Thoughts at http://geekthoughts.info.
Take something that’s done, no matter how crappy, and submit it. Right now, I’ll wait… Next time you have something ready, by comparison it will be ever so much better, and you’ll have no excuse to avoid submitting that as well. More collected Geek Thoughts at http://geekthoughts.info.
The following is from an actual Midwestern newspaper clipping (you know, the things printed on flattened trees) from circa 1992. Monday, July 19, 7 p.m. — Overeaters Anonymous at the Gloria Dei Lutheran Church, use south door (kitchen). On a serious note, researchers at Cornell University found that people who pass through an entryway near…