February 9, 2012 | 1 Comment
Vague timeframes like “ASAP” or “in a few days” are a sure way to get sorrow into your work day. You’ll likely spend too much effort getting something earlier than the customer wanted, or later than he expected, leaving him … Continue reading
January 23, 2012 | 4 Comments
In her fantastic book Bossypants, Tina Fey has a sidebar about how improvisational comedy has changed her life, and given her a new worldview. We in open source would do well to adapt these ideas to how we conduct our … Continue reading
November 2, 2011 | 2 Comments
By Mark Jason Dominus, from a talk in 2003, reprinted here with permission. Sadly, it’s still relevant today. The #perl IRC channel has a big problem. People come in asking questions, say, “How do I remove the first character from … Continue reading
October 10, 2011 | 2 Comments
Who says you’re not a genius? Who are any of us to say? And why would anyone bother telling someone that? In my last blog post, I talked about how it was unnecessary and counterproductive to justify your projects to … Continue reading
October 6, 2011 | 8 Comments
Here’s a Reddit/Slashdot/whatever thread that never happened: Internet crank on Reddit: “Hey, Steve Jobs, I guess that new iPad looks cool, but I think iPad is a stupid name, it makes me think of sanitary napkins.” Steve: “Yeah, well, here’s … Continue reading
July 26, 2011
At OSCON today, I went to a talk called “Why Know Algorithms” by Andrew Aksynoff. I was pleasantly surprised to see that the speaker was the author of Sphinx, a powerful full text indexing engine that I’m considering adopting for … Continue reading
February 21, 2011 | 0 comments
These links are collected from my Twitter feed. If you have suggestions for news bits, please mail me at andy@petdance.com. Job boards no more “help” you find a job than a billboard “helps” you find a new pair of shoes. … Continue reading
May 30, 2010 | 0 comments
Seth Godin’s blog entry today sums up so much of my frustration with much of what I see on the Net: Yes, I know you’re a master of the web, that you’ve visited every website written in English, that you’ve … Continue reading
July 13, 2009 | 2 Comments
Skud asked me a few weeks ago if I’d mention something here about support for women with children at geek conferences. Specifically, she asks for updates to the Geek Feminism wiki page on childcare and women-friendly events. What jogged this … Continue reading
March 8, 2009 | 0 comments
Beautiful Teams from O’Reilly is going to the printer next week, and I’ve been reading the draft. It’s chock full of interviews and stories and opinions about development teams and what makes them work. If you’re a reader of this … Continue reading