travis.domain51.com

Open Source Icons - gcons Excellent set of open source icons.

Thu, 15 Jul 2010 09:57:42 -0600

Excellent set of open source icons.

"…This particular hashtaggery is weirdly amusing, because, for some reason, starting any phrase with..."

Wed, 30 Jun 2010 08:59:38 -0600

““…This particular hashtaggery is weirdly amusing, because, for some reason, starting any phrase with a hashtag makes it look like it’s being muttered into a handkerchief; when you read it you feel like you’ve had an intimate moment in which the writer leaned over and whispered “I would rather have a moose!” in your ear.””

- Free Range: Hash : The New Yorker (via manspeaker)

Cory Doctorow on CC license

Wed, 09 Jun 2010 21:07:39 -0600

Cory Doctorow on CC license:

“It’s hard to monetize fame, but it’s even harder to monetize obscurity.”

Django ProTip: unicode and getattr on Models

Sun, 06 Jun 2010 12:54:00 -0600

Just ran into a really curious situation. django runserver was dying the moment I would try to access a model I was creating. Didn’t give me any error, didn’t raise and exception, just died.

I opened up the console and checked, the value was in the database (objects.all().count() showed it). Then I got the error with a stack trace. I was causing a RuntimeError with a maximum recursion issue.

Turns out, if you implement a __getattr__ method on your model you should also implement a __unicode__ to make sure that you don’t accidentally throw yourself into this loop.

Lesson learned. Hope it helps you.

Does Social Entrepreneurship Have an Ambition Problem? - Change.org

Wed, 02 Jun 2010 08:26:32 -0600

Does Social Entrepreneurship Have an Ambition Problem? - Change.org:

This is a massive problem in the non-profit sector from my vantage point. People inside it get so focused on one particular task that they lose sight of the bigger picture. Rather than step back and look at the problem as a whole, they ask how they can fix one problem right in front of them.

The concept of “scale” is at the heart of many people’s definition of social entrepreneurship. The field is meant to produce organizations with transformational potential across the scope of a problem. At the same time, traditional community development and local nonprofit folks sometimes bristle (reasonably) at the notion that their work is somehow less important because they’re not trying to replicate their model in every city,

New project for the summer

Mon, 31 May 2010 20:12:33 -0600

According to the Nielsen Company, people spent an average of 6 hours, 43 minutes and 22 seconds on Facebook during April 2010. That’s 403 minutes (rounded to the minute) per user for that month; during March, it was 419 minutes. In February, about 388 minutes. Average those numbers together (and assume 4 weeks in a month), and that’s an average of about 100 minutes spent on Facebook per user, per week for the three most recent months.

That’s how Karl Stolley starts off his new project: While You Were On Facebook. The permise is simple. Instead of spending that time on Facebook, spend 100 minutes a week working on your own website(s). Add microformats, add PubSubHubBub, or just make it easier to figure out what you’re up to.

I made the suggestion we bump it to 105 minutes a week, or more easily digestible, 15 minutes a day. That’s a nice easy number, and something everyone can do (right)? So, starting tomorrow I’m going to spend 15 minutes a day working on my online presence.

First up, I need to wrap up my redesign of TravisSwicegood.com and get it deployed. Then I’ll start tackling some of the other pieces I want to add to it.

Mea Culpa

Fri, 28 May 2010 06:59:04 -0600

Mea Culpa:

I can’t count the times I’ve backed off of “really cool” designs because they weren’t going to be easy to explain or hand off to someone else.

Programming is an embarrassment compared to other fields of engineering and design. Our mainstream culture is one of adolescent self-indulgence. It is like something from Gulliver’s Travels, with the curly-bracketeers vs. the indentationites vs. the parenthesesophiles. The only thing that everyone seems to agree upon is how stupid all the other programmers are. Try googling “stupid programmers”. We have met the enemy, and he is us.

Programming will not grow up until our culture grows up. We can only patiently and persistently do our part to elevate the level of discourse, and share what wisdom we have gained.

Antipodean - Node.js chat server in CoffeeScript

Wed, 26 May 2010 21:01:18 -0600

Antipodean - Node.js chat server in CoffeeScript:

Very cool little chat server for Node.js written in Coffeescript. Hope to see a lot more things like popping up.

Rock Star

Wed, 26 May 2010 20:50:50 -0600

unsuck:

Unsuck it: Adequate programmer.

World Map Of Touristyness

Wed, 26 May 2010 20:49:16 -0600

World Map Of Touristyness

Why the new iPhone TOS would hurt Domain51

Thu, 08 Apr 2010 20:15:23 -0600

Earlier this year, we launched an iPhone app called Statehouse (iTunes link). It’s a simple app in its current form. The data had already been collected by Jake over at Kansas Grassroots, so the hard part was done. Over a beer on a Tuesday we decided we should make an app, it hit the App Store for download Friday afternoon that same week.

That would not have been possible for us to do without Titanium Mobile. That’s not to say it couldn’t have been turned around in the same amount of time using Objective-C and Cocoa Touch, but we couldn’t have done it.

Regardless of how much I like the Objective-X style languages, I’ve yet to do anything more than dabble in them. There’s a mental overhead in switching languages–it’s amplified if you’re not proficient in the language you’re switching to. Being able to do this app in Javascript is what made it possible to hack together an app over the course of a few days.

The new TOS are not poured in concrete, yet. Hopefully they’ll clarify their intent and tools such as Titanium will be deemed allowable.

If nothing else, though, this and the other announcements out of Cupertino today show the fallacy of putting all of your eggs in someone else’s basket. Two complete industries were undercut today and a third hangs in the balance.

Does this hurt Appcelerator?

Thu, 08 Apr 2010 13:37:00 -0600

I’m trying to parse this.

Applications may only use Documented APIs in the manner prescribed by Apple and must not use or call any private APIs. Applications must be originally written in Objective-C, C, C++, or JavaScript as executed by the iPhone OS WebKit engine, and only code written in C, C++, and Objective-C may compile and directly link against the Documented APIs (e.g., Applications that link to Documented APIs through an intermediary translation or compatibility layer or tool are prohibited).

Emphasis mine. You have any thoughts on it?

UPDATE: Looks like Appcelerator (who’s been quiet on Twitter about this) is wondering the same thing.

It’s clear that products like Titanium, Unity3D, Ansca, MonoTouch and others are now a bit in question for iPhone 4.0+ with this language. We’re all trying to get our heads around what this means and trying to reach out to Apple to get clarification.

Hang tight, we’ll try and give you more information as we can figure it out from Apple. We don’t want to make any false promises or claims – and most importantly, we want to make sure we’re abiding by Apple’s rules.

UPDATE 2: John Gruber picked up on this as well.

There was no mention of this change during the announcement event today, but the language in the agreement doesn’t leave much wiggle room. It could hardly be more clear if they singled out Flash CS5 by name. (Wonder what Adobe does now? CS5 is thisclose to release and the iPhone compiler is the flagship feature in this version of Flash. They’re pretty much royally fucked.)

Design Reset (via Nathan Borrow)

Thu, 08 Apr 2010 08:29:00 -0600

Nathan Borrow did a side-by-side comparison of the New York Times website on the desktop and iPad. The simplicity on the iPad is amazing and a much more engaging site. Couple that with some tools (sharing, favoriting, navigating, etc.) that quietly hide themselves when not needed and they would have a home-run.

Typical story on nytimes.com:

Same story on the iPad:

Beauty and simplicity shouldn’t reside on a single device. It’s time for a reexamination and return to what matters.

It's about the story, stupid! (non-profits online)

Sun, 04 Apr 2010 11:36:00 -0600

It truly is a shame that so many amazing non-profits are hidden behind horribly thought out websites. Most of these sites deluge their visitors with information, even though great sites such as Charity Navigator exist to provide raw statistics and facts about non-profits. The problem is that most non-profits are missing the point. Their websites are there to tell a story.

Let me say it again: a non-profit’s website is there to tell a story. Nothing else.

People are natural story tellers and are drawn to an authentic story. Each of the websites linked to above have an amazing story behind them just waiting to be unleashed. A story that engages their visitors and potential donors. A story that sticks with them while they navigate their life the next few days. A story that ends with another beginning. One the visitor is a part of—where they help chose the ending by getting involved and helping that non-profit reach its goals, whether those goals are getting girls back to school to defeat the spiral of poverty in East Africa; feeding the abandoned, mentally ill of India; or helping people afford water while lifting themselves out of poverty.

When I left Ning a year ago this day I set out to figure out how I could increase my impact on the world. Through a series of fortuitous events, I ended up working with non-profits, helping them tell their story online. I need to make sure I remember that.

Everyone has a story to tell. These organizations are trying to change the world with theirs, and we’re there to help them.

superamit: … Laptops have always been a compromise...

Sat, 03 Apr 2010 07:05:20 -0600

superamit:

… Laptops have always been a compromise solution. They’re awkward and unergonomic, slow compared to their desktop counterparts, have poor battery life, and are just as complex and confusing to operate as their larger brethren.

Enter the iPad. Simpler, more convenient, and for 99% of uses, good enough. See a pattern?

Yes, the first version will be flawed. Yes, it will be hard to tear your beloved laptop out of your hands. Yes, it won’t live up to all of its promises. Yes, it will take time. Maybe years.

And, like your cameraphone, it’s going to sneak up on you. But one day, pretty soon, you’ll realize that you haven’t used your laptop in days. That you tend to grab your iPad first whenever you need to visit a website or answer email. That your laptop never leaves your desk anymore.

It starts tomorrow.

A real person, a lot like you | Derek Sivers

Fri, 02 Apr 2010 07:53:00 -0600

A real person, a lot like you | Derek Sivers:

When we yell at our car or coffee machine, it’s fine because they’re just mechanical appliances.

So when we yell at a website or company, using our computer or phone appliance, we forget it’s not an appliance, but a person that’s affected.

It’s dehumanizing to have thousands of people passing through our computer screens, so we do things we’d never do if they were sitting next to us.

It’s too overwhelming to remember that at the end of every computer is a real person, a lot like you, whose birthday was last week, who has three best friends but nobody to spoon at night, and is personally affected by what you say.

Even if we remember it right now, is it even possible to remember it next time we’re overwhelmed, or perhaps never forget it again?

What does "scalable database" mean? | James on Software

Tue, 30 Mar 2010 13:05:30 -0600

What does "scalable database" mean? | James on Software:

There are two kinds of scalability: vertical and horizontal. Vertical scaling is just adding more capacity to a single machine. Virtually every database product is vertically scalable to the extent that they can make good use of more CPU cores^[1], RAM, and disk space. With a horizontally scalable system, it’s possible to add capacity by adding more machines. By far, most database products are not horizontally scalable.

But, people have been scaling products like MySQL for years, so how’d they do it?

Jake Lowen accepting the award for our work on Voices of Clean...

Sun, 28 Mar 2010 13:57:15 -0600

Jake Lowen accepting the award for our work on Voices of Clean Air Kansas.

NoSQL vs. RDBMS: Let the flames begin! – stu.mp

Fri, 26 Mar 2010 12:15:22 -0600

NoSQL vs. RDBMS: Let the flames begin! – stu.mp:

Do you honestly think that the PhDs at Google, Amazon, Twitter, Digg, and Facebook created Cassandra, BigTable, Dynamo, etc. when they could have just used a RDBMS instead?

Share on Tumblr - Google Chrome extension gallery

Fri, 26 Mar 2010 09:00:20 -0600

Share on Tumblr - Google Chrome extension gallery:

So meta. :-)

travis.domain51.com

Open Source Icons - gcons Excellent set of open source icons.

"…This particular hashtaggery is weirdly amusing, because, for some reason, starting any phrase with..."

Cory Doctorow on CC license

Django ProTip: __unicode__ and __getattr__ on Models

Does Social Entrepreneurship Have an Ambition Problem? - Change.org

New project for the summer

Mea Culpa

Antipodean - Node.js chat server in CoffeeScript

Rock Star

World Map Of Touristyness

Why the new iPhone TOS would hurt Domain51

Does this hurt Appcelerator?

Design Reset (via Nathan Borrow)

It's about the story, stupid! (non-profits online)

superamit: … Laptops have always been a compromise...

A real person, a lot like you | Derek Sivers

What does "scalable database" mean? | James on Software

Jake Lowen accepting the award for our work on Voices of Clean...

NoSQL vs. RDBMS: Let the flames begin! – stu.mp

Share on Tumblr - Google Chrome extension gallery

Django ProTip: unicode and getattr on Models