D for Effort

Binders Full of Women in Tech

2015-01-17T10:48:00.001-05:00

Commentary: To bring 'binders full of women' into tech, we must get on the same page - GeekWire

Why should this matter to you if you’re a tech CEO like me and trying to build a company? We know now that adding women at every stage of a tech company’s growth (and most especially in the earliest stages) improves profits, stabilizes revenue, decreases legal costs for financial malfeasance, reduces public relations fiascoes, improves product quality and decreases marketing missteps, and creates a better working environment. It’s stupid on every level not to acknowledge the obstacles women face when they try to join a tech company.

This article by Tarah Wheeler Van Vlack is fantastic. We need tech companies to make this a big deal.

Here’s What Happens When You Install the Top 10 Download.com Apps

2015-01-12T11:28:00.001-05:00

Here’s What Happens When You Install the Top 10 Download.com Apps:

We installed the top 10 apps from Download.com, and you’ll never believe what happened! Well… I guess maybe you might have a good guess. Awful things. Awful things are what happens. Join us for the fun!

Omigod. Such a train wreck. I have seen all this and worse on my sons' PCs. Just try getting a Minecraft mod without being deceived into downloading some invasive software.

16 Year Old Quits School to Code

2015-01-08T09:41:00.001-05:00

http://www.joeeames.me/?p=11

A man is taking steps to allow his high school daughter to code full-time.

There could be a number of reasons why this would make sense to do, but he lost me completely when he said, "or she could be sitting in yet another history class" like it's a bad thing. We are not burdened with an overabundance of history knowledge. Ugh.

Children At Play

2015-01-07T12:56:00.001-05:00

I have coworkers who do stupid shit like this for fun.

Crazy Cool

2015-01-07T10:41:00.001-05:00

The Internet of Anything: The 3-D Printer That Can Spit Out Custom Electronics | WIRED:

Mechanically, the company’s printer isn’t that different from a MakerBot or one of the dozens of other 3-D printers now on the market. The real breakthrough is the conductive ink the printer uses to print electronic circuits. The ink has a toothpaste-like consistency and unlike something like solder, it can be pushed through a nozzle at room temperature.

This is starting to get interesting.

Reasons not to use Uber

2015-01-07T10:29:00.001-05:00

The great Richard Stallman on Uber:

To recover our privacy and make democracy safe, we need to redesign digital systems so that they do not collect information about people in general. First step, don't help any new ones gain a foothold.

I've personally never ridden in an Uber, but every couple of weeks there's a new story about how creepy they are.

The Path to Closing Guantánamo - NYTimes.com

2015-01-06T09:27:00.001-05:00

The Path to Closing Guantánamo - NYTimes.com:

The road to closing Guantánamo is clear and well lit. We are now approaching the 13th anniversary of the opening of the Guantánamo detention facility. Imprisoning men without charges for this long — many of whom have been approved for transfer for almost half the period of their incarceration — is not in line with the country we aspire to be.

Close it already. We've taken the moral low ground now for over a decade.

Dog Food

2015-01-05T19:55:00.001-05:00

True story: today, our ancient labrador mutt got out of the yard (she’s doing that a lot since a dead tree smashed a section of our fence) and we found her trotting down our quiet street with a whole, intact pizza slice in her mouth. I tried to get a picture of her, but she ran away to the neighbor’s yard and proceeded to bury the pizza in the yard.

It lies there still, and Elizabeth and I were just debating which is worse: to leave your dog’s pizza in the neighbor’s yard, or get caught digging it up.

AeroPress

2015-01-04T11:34:00.001-05:00

This really does make a fantastic cup of coffee.

What Shape are You? - Made of Metaphors

2015-01-03T23:56:00.001-05:00

What Shape are You? - Made of Metaphors:

Once you think in this way, you can interact with any other leader as a peer, working elbow-to-elbow, of one mind on what needs doing. Until you think in this way, without even realizing it, you are implicitly asking for those above you to insulate you from reality, to build you a little sandbox where you can work.

I found this essay really thought-provoking. It's about how to perceive and evaluate the value that individuals contribute to a creative endeavor.

(Via http://softwareleadweekly.com/)

Best Wii Games: Editors' Choice Games Reviewed at IGN

2015-01-03T22:22:00.001-05:00

Best Wii Games: Editors' Choice Games Reviewed at IGN

As I write this, my sons are playing on the refurbished Nintendo Wii they got for Christmas. It's an old enough console that it's probably verging on "vintage", but the great thing about getting an old system is that you can pack your library with only the best games ever made.

I usually rely on the IGN Editor's Choice list to figure out what was the best of the best.

We're currently rocking Skyward Sword (Zelda), Super Smash Bros. Brawl, and New Super Mario Bros.

Also, Angry Birds Star Wars, just because Dean digs it.

Tamar Adler’s Health Soup

2015-01-03T21:25:00.001-05:00

in addition to death and taxes, we can be confident of future illness.

Elizabeth made this on New Year’s Day. It’s good for what ails you: Health Soup Recipe - NYT Cooking

Related: I loved Tamar Adler’s book, An Everlasting Meal. It's a collection of essays about how to be more intuitive with your cooking, and less preoccupied.

Setting Up an iPad 2 at Christmas

2011-12-27T13:36:00.001-05:00

My father-in-law got an iPad 2 as a surprise gift from my mother-in-law this year. I was excited for him, because I really do think the iPad 2 is an excellent device. I usually recommend Apple stuff to my friends and family, but this is what setup was like yesterday. I realize that half of this is getting a Google account, but still, anyone who is not a super-nerd would probably not make it through this gauntlet!

Go to Settings to create a new Apple ID
Agree to the Apple terms of service.
Decide not to use his UTSA email address, since he might not have it for long
Let’s create a Google account
“an account is already associated with that email” Send a reset email
Go upstairs to boot up the Windows laptop
Connect to VPN. Crazy password.
Open a terminal for some reason. Crazy password again.
Open Outlook. Crazy password for a third time.
Find account reset email, follow link.
Fill out new password form
We still don’t have Gmail. Click the Gmail tab for a new account form.
Try and fail three times to choose an ID which isn’t taken. Finally go with an ugly suggestion from Google.
Agree to the Gmail terms of service.
Put in phone number so Google’s robot lady can call us(!) and read a verification number over the phone.
Enter verification code into the form. Gmail, finally!
Back to the iPad. Use new Gmail address to create an Apple ID.
Agree to the Apple terms of service again.
Apple sends a verification email to the Gmail address. Back to the laptop.
Go to Gmail inbox, follow verification link in the Apple email.
Enter Apple password to finish verification.
Back to iPad. Can’t proceed without credit card information on file.
Enter credit card information, but the fields have scrolled off screen, so we’re typing blind.
Mistyped security code. Try again.
Failed again. Can’t submit form without a Mr. Ms. or Dr. on your name.
Now we have an Apple ID. Go to App Store to try it out.
Download free Netflix app, type Apple ID and password.
Open Netflix app to have a look. What is your Netflix username and password?
No idea. We’ll skip this for now.
Back to the App Store for what he really wants: Pages.
Ready to spend $9.99. Tap Buy. “this app requires iOS 5.0 or later” WTF x10!
We need iTunes on a PC to update the system. Do you have iTunes on your laptop? Of course not.
Head downstairs. Peggy’s PC has iTunes.
Open iTunes, connect iPad.
Please register your product. Another form: name, occupation, age.
Agree to more terms of service.
Can’t update without synching first. Synching…
An update is available! Start the 758 Mb download.
When the download is complete, the update will be installed.
Baby needs her nap, we gotta go home. Hope everything is ok!

Life Lessons

2011-12-13T15:09:00.001-05:00

I’m still figuring this out at 36 years old:

Don’t combine single malt scotch and karaoke in one party.

The Primal Blueprint

2010-12-28T23:13:00.001-05:00

I just finished reading Mark Sisson’s two books, “The Primal Blueprint” and “The Primal Blueprint Cookbook.” I stumbled across these at Amazon and found that my public library had just ordered them. I’ll cut to the chase: I loved these books and have been inspired to make some radical lifestyle changes.

My doctor had recommended the paleo diet to me four years ago, and at first I expected the Primal Blueprint to be a simple rehash of those ideas. It’s true that the Primal Blueprint closely resembles the paleo diet, but it offers more and addresses some of the problems I had with the paleo diet.

The best overview of what the Primal Blueprint is about is available in this post at Mark’s website.

Mark Sisson advocates a number of things that already been kicking around in my head. Here are a few points that I had already sensed were true, and Mark hammered them home:

if you’re eating the right foods, there is no need to count calories.
your body will tell you when to drink water, so you needn’t robotically consume eight glasses a day.
some people are adapted to digest dairy products. If you are one of these, and you have access to high-quality sources of dairy, these are good foods.
fat is not the enemy. If you are eating whole, unprocessed food, the fat is a great benefit.
you cannot leave your life and your health in the hands of Big Pharma and Big Agra.
body composition is more important to your health than your weight.

I loved the information about the importance of insulin and how the Standard American Diet overburdens our insulin response. The culprits are (refined) sugar and grain, which were not foods that were ever available to people before the advent of agriculture.

Mark’s program doesn’t only deal with diet, but describes a whole spectrum of lifestyle choices, like making sure you get enough sleep, and getting regular exposure to the sun.

As of yesterday, I am giving up refined sugar and grain. To the extent that I can, I am also giving up factory farming, especially grain-fed, confinement meat operations. Although these are not easy rules to follow, I am confident they’re in the best interest of my energy, health, vitality, and longevity.

I’ll let you know how it goes.

Learning to Live to a Hundred

2010-04-06T11:49:00.001-04:00

I very much enjoyed Dan Buettner’s TED talk, How to live to be 100+. He is a National Geographic writer and explorer who has searched around the world for cultures that produce the most centenarians, in the hopes of learning what they have to teach about long and prosperous life.

He found five remarkable communities: Sardinia in Italy, Ikaria in Greece, Okinawa in Japan, Nicoya in Costa Rica, and California’s Seventh Day Adventists. Though these cultures are dramatically different from each other, he was able to isolate what they have in common. In all these communities, they:

Move Naturally - physical activity is a regular part of their daily lives. They don’t have to go to the gym; They are naturally in motion throughout the day.
Right Outlook - they feel a deep sense of purpose in their lives, and they experience periods of calm in every day.
Eat Wisely - they don’t have a special diet. They eat the foods that come from their community. What they don’t have is anything processed, anything made in a factory.
Connect - they keep themselves surrounded by family and best friends. They belong to a community of faith.

While I am fascinated by his adventure, and his findings make intuitive sense to me, there is one thing he didn’t mention that I feel is critically important: none of these people needed to be taught to live this way. They didn’t see Dan’s talk, or read his book, nor did they hear about his prescriptions for long life on Oprah. In other words, far from heaving a set of rules upon themselves, the good life, for them, was automatic, a natural consequence of living the only way they know how.

This next bit may sound a bit heretical to an American audience: the true gift of these cultures to their people is that they were freed from the burden of choosing. In the U.S.A., we take pride in fitting ourselves out with an individualized life: what kind of food we’ll eat, what kind of home we’ll have, what we’ll be “into,” what we do for fun. The trouble is, we, as a culture, traded the effortlessness of being with the unending chore of knowing. We have to know everything all the time. Is there lead in the paint? Are there hormones in the milk? What are the seven secrets that will drive him crazy in bed? We can never know enough, we can never finish choosing. And a by-product of such determined individualism is that you are personally to blame if you fail. So is it any wonder we have a society which is wracked with anxiety?

Perhaps a culture may be judged by what sort of lives people live by default. Our growing crisis in the U.S. is that the default is the polar opposite of the principles Dan Buettner learned on his travels: we don’t move naturally, we have the wrong outlook, we eat unwisely (to put it mildly), and we are increasingly disconnected from family and friends. I don’t mean to suggest that there is nothing we can do, just that the problem runs very deep, and if you want to make a difference for yourself and the people you care about, you will need to dig deep for an answer as well.

Getting Started in Software Engineering

2009-05-11T13:04:00.001-04:00

Since I wrote an essay about how to become a software engineer, people regularly email me for more advice. Here is a reply I wrote this morning:

The great thing about working in software engineering is that you only need three things:

a computer
reliable Internet access
the will to learn and expand your skills every day

The bad news is, #3 cannot be bought, and it cannot be given to you. But, assuming you have those three things taken care of, you get started by choosing a platform, downloading (in some cases, purchasing) your development tools, and seeking out some tutorials.

When I say choose a platform, I mean the kind of system that your software will run on. All the tools you use, tutorials you follow, books you read, and conferences you attend will be relative to the platform. Right now, there are only a handful of real choices: the Web, Windows, Mac, Linux, iPhone, Android, Blackberry, and maybe soon the Palm Pre.

Often, these platforms overlap. For instance, I develop Web applications on a Mac with Java, but the finished software runs on Linux servers.

If you haven't already chosen a platform, and you want to see the quickest results with the least hassle, use Google App Engine. It's a framework for hosting web applications which takes care of all of the infrastructure effortlessly. In other words, you don't have worry about setting up a server or figuring out to get everything online. You just write the code, and Google ensures that it will run on the Web.

And here's a book about it that will come out later this month. Charles Severance is a friend of mine: Using Google App Engine

Before you can begin programming for a career, you need to get some code under your belt. There's no time like the present.

Kindle 2, also WTF?!

2009-02-10T10:35:00.001-05:00

Amazon just announced the Kindle 2, and I’m pretty sure there’s going to be one in my house at some point. It looks awesome.

On the other hand, feast your eyes on this “Kindle exclusive” Stephen King opus they’re hawking for merely $2.99:

Written exclusively for Kindle, Stephen King reminds us why he’s still the master at the top of his game. In his new novella, UR, King is at his unsettling best as he examines the future of the written word—for better or worse. Following a nasty break-up, lovelorn college English instructor Wesley Smith can’t seem to get his ex-girlfriend’s parting shot out of his head: “Why can’t you just read off the computer like the rest of us?” Egged on by her question and piqued by a student’s suggestion, Wesley places an order for a Kindle. The device that arrives in a box stamped with the smile logo—via one-day delivery that he hadn’t requested—unlocks a literary world that even the most avid of book lovers could never imagine. Get it only on Kindle.

Um, yeah … I’ll get back to you on that one.

Overheard (2)

2008-11-19T11:16:00.001-05:00

Overheard in the corridor at the San Marcos Activity Center:

He’s really not a bad president — he’s just stupid.

Nebraska Woman Needs Better Coffee

2008-10-07T12:36:00.001-04:00

This photo appears on nytimes.com today with this caption:

Chris Kouba, the owner of the Downtown Coffee Shop, expressed frustration with the bailout: “Do you see my restaurant filled? Is anyone going to come save me?”

I think I can help. The problem may be the Folgers you’ve got behind the counter there:

Photo: Monica Almeida/The New York Times

Google Chrome

2008-09-02T12:10:00.001-04:00

Zowie! Google has published a technical document all about their new web browser, drawn by Scott McCloud of “Understanding Comics” fame.

Google Chrome: Behind the Open Source Browser Project

A beta of the browser for Windows is supposed to be available today!

Productivity Manifesto

2008-08-27T13:09:00.001-04:00

I have begun distilling and synthesizing approaches to productivity (also known as “effectiveness”) from various sources into a structure that makes sense for me. I have a lot more to learn on this subject, but I’m starting to see the framework.

I have learned a lot from Stephen Covey’s “7 Habits” and David Allen’s “Getting things Done.” If I had to boil it all down to two pithy lines, they would be these:

Decide what is important
Nurture the important

Ok, but maybe that’s a little too pithy. Here are some more specific guidelines I’m trying on for size. Notice that the scope for everything is a day. This is really a manifesto about how to run a day:

Whatever else has to give, you will not sacrifice your diet, exercise, and sleep.
Every day, you will decide what deserves doing and honor that choice.
You will fight the twin productivity gremlins: Fake Urgency and Fake Industry.
With the understanding that to achieve something dazzling takes more than a day, take a step toward dazzling every day.

I’ll have more to say about each of these in turn in future posts.

Greatest New York Times Headline Ever

2008-05-29T01:27:00.001-04:00

“Monkeys Control a Robot Arm With Their Thoughts”

Flying (And Landing) in Google Earth

2008-05-28T15:43:00.001-04:00

I feel like I was the last to know: Google Earth 4 has a built-in flight simulator.

Here’s a page with all the controls.

But as soon as I figured out how to fly, I wanted to land! I made a tutorial showing how to make it much easier and more fun. If the idea of pretending to land an airplane in exotic locales around the globe appeals to you, bon appetit:

ASUS Eee PC, First Impressions

2008-04-26T13:53:00.001-04:00

I took the plunge and bought an ASUS Eee PC, mainly for the option to take a very small, very light laptop with us to Costa Rica. I have read a lot about this new crop of mini-notebooks (I call it a knee-top!) and the top contenders of the moment seem to be the HP mini-note and the Eee PC 900 (with the larger 8.9” screen). I ended up getting the cheepy cheap Eee PC 701 because it’s a full $200 cheaper than its more impressive brothers. $341 for a refurbished model is down in impulse-purchase territory, whereas the $550 versions make me want to wait until the processors get faster and the batteries last longer.

I thought I knew everything about this machine when I bought it, so here is the list of things that I hadn’t already gleaned from the interwebs:

It was not really usable out-of-the-box. The trackpad was set to minimum sensitivity, and before I figured that out, I was afraid I had a lemon; the trackpad basically would not work at this setting.
The mouse button looks like one smooth button, but is in fact a rocker-switch, meaning that you push on the left side for a left click, and the right side for a right click. If you press in the center, you get nothing. This confounded both my four-year-old and my wife.
Unlike the various MacBooks in my life which renew my love every day, the Eee PC does not instantly wake from sleep when you open it. It’s a minor thing, but it’s a refinement I have come to take for granted.
It does not close Firefox gracefully when you shutdown or restart, which means you are frequently looking at the “Restore Last Session?” dialog. Luckily, Firefox allows disabling it like this.
The default terminal application is pretty lousy, but it includes a better one called konsole. Making konsole the default (among other things) is described here.
It took some doing, but I learned how to customize the menu screens. I made a special page for Graham with all his favorite movies, web sites, and of course, Tux Paint. You can learn about customizing your Eee PC desktop over here.
Unfortunately, some of Graham’s favorite web games use Adobe Shockwave, which does not have a Linux version, and probably never will. The Eee PC does have the Flash player, but not the latest version, so I had to do an upgrade.

In short, the Eee PC demands tweaks before it will purr like a kitten. Lucky for me and about ten million other geek dads, tweaking is fun! Still, it makes me wonder how this is supposed to be a computer for children and seniors who don’t have a Linux-mad nerd standing by to recompile the kernel for them.