DevelopingChris

"It was at this time that I formulated an image that I’ve used many times since: profit in a..."

Sun, 23 Oct 2011 14:14:00 -0400

“It was at this time that I formulated an image that I’ve used many times since: profit in a business is like gas in a car. You don’t want to run out of gas, but neither do you want to think that your road trip is a tour of gas stations.”

- Tim O’Reilly

"Garnish with tears."

Sun, 23 Oct 2011 13:32:23 -0400

“Garnish with tears.”

- American Drink: Back to School Special

- This is funny and sad, and interesting in 1 simple read. If you have a child or 2, and they are older than 5, you’ve at least thought of this. Or maybe I’m a horrible person. Garnish with tears.

Another reason to love github. It’s clear that you can fly...

Wed, 12 Oct 2011 09:52:34 -0400

Another reason to love github. It’s clear that you can fly sideways through a canyon or delete your repo, in the danger zone.

merlin: Boom. And Boom

Fri, 07 Oct 2011 10:57:34 -0400

merlin:

Boom.

And Boom

Steve Jobs

Wed, 05 Oct 2011 22:37:16 -0400

I feel silly being upset by the death of someone who I was not close to. But I am moved by him, both in life and death.

My condolences to his family. I have had family members pass due to the same illnesses. I really hoped that he could be the outlier in every sense. I cannot begin to imagine the toll the publicity has taken on your family.

In speaking with my father about it, we both remarked how this could be the young programmer’s Lennon. Hard to think about what it would be like if we never knew him, hard to think about what its going to be like in the future. It’s an apt comparison I think since Steve was such a fan of Lennon.

Think Different.

Stay Foolish.

archiemcphee: Timo Arnall found this awesome street keyboard in...

Fri, 30 Sep 2011 12:59:40 -0400

archiemcphee:

Timo Arnall found this awesome street keyboard in Brussels, Belgium.

[via My Modern Metropolis]

This is the crazy awesome stuff you can do with ifttt.com FOR...

Tue, 13 Sep 2011 22:31:52 -0400

This is the crazy awesome stuff you can do with ifttt.com FOR FREE

Weight Loss Tip: Don't drink your calories

Thu, 28 Jul 2011 10:05:05 -0400

Paleo, South Beach, Atkins, Bacon Diet, Peanut Butter diet. Pick your poison.

The #1 source of calories for me, no matter what the balance of food groups, was beverages. 1 Mountain Dew, of any purchasable size, can be more calories than Mcdonalds french fries. 1 Rockstar energy drink has the same amount of sugar as 6 krispy kreme donuts.

Try replacing just some of your daily Beverages with lightly flavored water. Lemon works really well to break up the monotony. I try and drink 3 liters a day. I typically come no where near that much. But that is my goal, in the summer, it has helped me stay cool.

While measuring my weight loss, there was a period of time that all I did was change my beverages, I lost much more weight than working out more. One half pound a week more. That is 26 pounds a year. Bicycling for 1 hour moderately burns ~350 calories. That’s 1 latte, 1 dew, or 1/2 a rockstar energy drink. I can only do that kind of cycling a few days a week. I can drink 2 or 3 beverages a day.

Diet soda has no actual calories, however that doesn’t mean consuming them has 0 affect on your metabolism.

So next time you pick up that liquid desert, try and remember although liquid, its still food.

Logging In To 2 Accounts in Gmail 1 Browser

Tue, 26 Jul 2011 10:05:05 -0400

Logging In To 2 Accounts in Gmail 1 Browser:

If you have more than 1 gmail account thanks to google apps for domains. You can use this trick to have 1 browser and 2 accounts.

Mentors worth breaking things down

Tue, 19 Jul 2011 10:06:06 -0400

Mentors worth breaking things down:

Good little example on why you need to step back and simplify to get through bigger problems. Maybe even small problems need to have a simplification.

Moo Cards Rock

Fri, 24 Jun 2011 09:56:12 -0400

Especially now that they print standard sizes, moo cards are really interesting that they allow you to print multi color process cards for very little.

If you are in need of business cards, or name cards, they are more expensive than vista prints, you owe it to yourself not to go with the champagne of beers on this one.

Moo’s website

I just got my first batch in, and I love the color and feel of them. And the ability to use them for promotional prints is really nice.

Relational database tree structure FTW. What is really...

Tue, 21 Jun 2011 10:49:01 -0400

Relational database tree structure FTW.

What is really insightful is just how fast the failure loads. subsecond

"If they want to pay you, are they paying you? …..no….. Seems like it would be good to..."

Wed, 15 Jun 2011 10:00:07 -0400

““If they want to pay you, are they paying you?
…..no…..
Seems like it would be good to take their money. You never know if they are serious about the product until you take their money.””

- Paul Graham - Office Hours

The step up on this song is intriguing. Not my usual style, but...

Tue, 14 Jun 2011 10:00:06 -0400

The step up on this song is intriguing. Not my usual style, but made it easy to drown out the office. Worth a listen if you like lighter side electronic music at all.

Best podcast I've been listening to lately

Mon, 13 Jun 2011 10:00:06 -0400

Best podcast I've been listening to lately:

The one about defending yourself against, “Thats just a button guy” was right up my alley.

Also nice to hear someone be real. And the derails are really good, or is that a ruby project?

"Git Stash — Use git stash when you want to record the current state of the working directory..."

Fri, 10 Jun 2011 10:00:06 -0400

“Git Stash —
Use git stash when you want to record the current state of the working directory and the index, but want to go back to a clean working directory. The command saves your local modifications away and reverts the working directory to match the HEAD commit.”

- Git Stash Help File

— When you learn to love this thing, you’ll wonder where its been

Moving To Tumblr

Thu, 09 Jun 2011 10:00:06 -0400

Blah blah blah.

I’m really lazy about hosting my own blog.

I don’t have a good way to post from my ipad, or phone.

Queue tumblr. More updates, hopefully more regularity. More pictures of whats going on. Better design. Less hosting for me to do.

More short and sweet posts on things like: Git, Javascript, Testing. And now with awesome Gist support so I can help by giving better code than I could on wordpress.

"The best way out is always through."

Wed, 08 Jun 2011 16:58:20 -0400

“The best way out is always through.”

- Robert Frost, “A Servant To Servants”, though I prefer “The only way out is through”, attributed to Winston Churchill in at least one-third of episodes of Back To Work with Merlin Mann and Dan Benjamin (via jasonbaldwin)

Paper todo system

Fri, 11 Mar 2011 00:00:00 -0500

I really like pen and paper for my todo lists. Which is ironic because my handwriting is dreadful.

I was meeting a friend for coffee and they asked why I needed a notebook, and I showed them my system. He thought it was good enough I should share it.

I’ve tried many systems, GTD, 7 habbits, AutoFocus. If it can be done with fancy stationary, I’ve probably given it a shot to see how it goes.

My system is the best of those previous 3 that I can see. I use a medium sized notebook, 5” x 8 1/2”, I really like the feel of acid free paper but that really doesn’t matter.

I write out everything that I can think of that I need done in the middle of the page, as a running list. No priority, no filter, just stream. This becomes the master list. A good master list is made up of actionable statements. “Mortgage” is not a thing to get done. “Call mortgage officer at x bank about mortgage rates” is a good item.

So now we have a master list of things to work from. Flip the page and write the date on top. Scan over the master list and pick 3 things you can take action on in the next few hours. Write them on this page. An action can be to delegate it, complete it, make some progress and then postpone the rest, or cancel it entirely. To denote the action taken I use the Franklin planner style. For complete a check mark, fairly normal. For delegation, the initials of the person, and a circle around it. For started a dot, if completed check through the dot, if postponed and arrow pointing right. To cancel something I draw an x.

Now tomorrow rolls around. Now you need to track which page you are on, I use a paper clip, ordinary metal that I can get at anyone else’s desk if I need one. Flip the page, put the paper clip on that page, write the date on the top, pull over any deferred items first, then write in the next 3 things you can do from the master list.

If anything new is added to your plate while running this course, just add it to today, not the master list. The master list is just a jumping point. If you find yourself procrastinating or you need to break things down, just flip to a blank page, start a master list, and get more granular and start over. As long as you move your paper clip, you won’t be confused by this exercise, and you can get back on track quickly.

Other hacks, that I’ve come up with to make this even better include, writing phone calls from the bottom up on the page. All others from the top. Usually phone calls need knocked out all at once, so its easy to whip out the smartphone and tick off 4 things quickly.

I would love feedback on how you do this kind of thing.

Php downgrade after upgrading distro to Ubuntu 10.4 Lucid Lynx

Tue, 18 May 2010 00:00:00 -0400

Many php applications have compatibility issues with php 5.3.1. Unfortunately in that is the only version currently available in the aptitude repositories for the latest version of Ubuntu.

Once you have either freshly installed Ubuntu and php, or after you update just your distro and do an apt-get update, you will be on 5.3. There are lots of people with this problem. Many of them have solutions. Most involve running lots of terse commands. Then I ran across this shell script that once you have everything installed for php 5.3 will downgrade your stack to 5.2.10 for you. Since I’ve had trouble finding the original source after a few days, here’s the source in case you need it.

#! /bin/sh
php_packages=`dpkg -l | grep php | awk '{print $2}'`

sudo apt-get remove $php_packages

sed s/lucid/karmic/g /etc/apt/sources.list | sudo tee /etc/apt/sources.list.d/karmic.list

sudo mkdir -p /etc/apt/preferences.d/

for package in $php_packages;
do echo "Package: $package
Pin: release a=karmic
Pin-Priority: 991
" | sudo tee -a /etc/apt/preferences.d/php
done

sudo apt-get update

sudo apt-get install $php_packages

Copy this script into a file in your home directory, make it executable and then run it. It set everything up for me really well.