January 2012
15 posts
The culture that is Sweden — Marginal Revolution →
…In December, officials from the country’s tourism board decided that they would hand over the reins of their @sweden Twitter account to a different citizen each week.
My Longest Uptime Yet
wes@shablam:~$ w
08:13:43 up 730 days, 9:36, 1 user, load average: 0.00, 0.00, 0.00
USER TTY FROM LOGIN@ IDLE JCPU PCPU WHAT
wes pts/0 cpe-67-250-31-15 08:13 0.00s 0.07s 0.00s w
Happy 2nd birthday, shablam!
Dear Developers
If you submit a code sample for an application to S7 Labs, make sure it:
runs
terminates within my lifetime
Thank you.
if i die - the digital afterlife facebook... →
“When I came to think of every organization as a dysfunctional family, it...”
– The MIT Connection, Arnold Kling | EconLog | Library of Economics and Liberty
Building a Twitter Search Engine with Python and... →
Useful tutorial for learning how to use Xapian and Python for full search text. Build a twitter search engine in about 120 lines of code.
BRYCE DOT VC: Conditioning Company Culture →
brycedotvc:
Multiple times throughout the conversation he would repeat sayings like, “we think that done is better than perfect” or “we move fast and break things” followed by stories of corporate folklore wherein engineers and employees exemplified those axioms. It was clear that employees who embodied these values were celebrated and held out as examples to the rest of the company.
One of...
Brad DeLong: How Does the Cat Survive Alien? →
Welcome to Method of Action →
Upcoming online course + games intended to train developers to be better designers. The kerning game is fun, though I think I’ve got some room for improvement (final score: 85).
How Scottish Scientists Re-Created a... →
Like something out of a Jameson commercial.
Keystone: A Simple Python Web Framework « late.am →
Looks interesting! Might try it out for some simple sites.
December 2011
16 posts
“Is it very much more exciting to discover we’re on a ball, half of us...”
– The Feynman Series (part 3) - Curiosity - YouTube
Meet the Tiger Dog: Chinese owners dye pets to... →
China is more and more becoming that crazy uncle who doesn’t know what to do with his time. And soon it’ll be that crazy rich uncle who doesn’t know what to do with his money. I can’t wait to see this outcome!
The Influence of the Ecstasy of Influence ::... →
How To Buy A Tennis Racquet
A couple months ago I decided to replace my 90’s era racquet with something new and shiny. It very quickly became an overwhelming process. Head, by itself, has two dozen different racquets in the YOUTEK line, in addition to its older and lower end technologies. And that’s just one company — there are half a dozen well known brands, each with the same bewildering array of options,...
“This reminds me of the early days of the internet, when phone number lookup...”
– A thought of mine on Facebook’s Timeline, posted on Facbeook.
Why Use A Web Framework?
My experience with Python web frameworks has run a little backwards. I started off by building my own, then moved on to Paste and WSGI components, web.py, Tornado, and finally Django. At S7, we’ve settled on a combination of Tornado and Django, though Tornado may get usurped by something built internally, and there is still exists some healthy skepticism of Django.
There are many obvious...
Facebook Devs Just Cost The World Millions Of...
You know how you can prevent us from hating you? Don’t waste our time.
Facebook recently sent out a few changes to their comment plugin system. I’ll spare everyone the details, but the upshot is that for pages that use their old system but currently have no comments, they throw an annoying warning message onto your page for all users to see that the site needs to upgrade the comment...
“Espenshade found that Asian-Americans needed a 1550 SAT to have an equal chance...”
– Don’t Check Asian — Marginal Revolution
Ah, so I guess this is why I didn’t get into Harvard. Or maybe it’s because I didn’t apply.
25 Great Calvin and Hobbes Strips. →
One Path to Better Jobs - More Density in Cities -... →
Ryan Avent on why dense cities make their citizens more productive than less more sprawling areas.
“Tchaikowsky died of colon cancer at the age of 46 in Oxford. In his will he left...”
– Andre Tchaikowsky - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
November 2011
16 posts
Is there a better alternative to the 5-star rating... →
Don’t Call Yourself A Programmer, And Other Career... →
What I Learned Building the Apple Store - Ron... →
I’m very interested in seeing the J. C. Penny transformation…
Mobile UI Patterns | Recently Added →
Very neat gallery. Is there something like this for regular websites?
Words Words Words
CROBOTS Documentation →
I learned so much from writing CROBOTS bots.
Siri is not Google
I don’t get the people who say Siri is a threat to Google. No, it’s not. Siri uses Google. Siri is a threat to the damn touch keyboard, and eventually the real keyboard and mouse.
Here are some of the cooler things that Siri responds to:
Send email to Jenni about groceries
Remind me in 1 day to clean the stove
Text Bob to say that I’m almost there
When is Bob’s...
A Note: Prolegomenon to Any Useful Discussion of... →
In short, hate the game:
In a standard economic transaction, it is no mystery where the value to both sides comes from. When I buy a double espresso from Café Nefeli for $2.25, the coffee is more valuabe to me then $2.25 is. Were I to consider only the experience and not worry about fairness consideration—that is, if I did not worry about thinking that I was turning into a chump—I...
“The knowledge that I’ve got enough.”
– Kempa.com » “Joe Heller” by Kurt Vonnegut
“Eventually, we’ll ramp down marketing just as fast as we ramped it up, reducing...”
– Groupon’s Mason Tells Troops in Feisty Internal Memo: “It Looks Good.” - Kara Swisher - Commerce - AllThingsD
Groupon’s way of saying: hey marketing department, you guys will be the first to get canned.
Amazon.com: Kindle Owners' Lending Library →
Very cool — this might just tip me over into Kindle territory over the iPad.
October 2011
19 posts
Guy Who Used Company Funds To Throw Wife Birthday... →
Best headline ever.
Are parking fines based off market prices?
A parking ticket in NYC will cost you a cool $115. I think this is, in part, because the cost of private parking is so high — the daily rate in a garage can be $30 or $40, depending on where you are. The ticket has to be steep enough to make you think twice about using any old curb as a parking spot. This is the only example of a private market setting a government price that I can think of....