Don't Read This Tumblelog

The Myth of Prodigy and Why it Matters

Thu, 27 Dec 2007 15:02:59 -0500

Where there's muck, there's brass

Fri, 07 Dec 2007 00:20:11 -0500

From Joel on Software again. It’s worth it.

Work that makes you unhappy is what I mean by “a gnarly problem.”

The trouble is, the market pays for solutions to gnarly problems, not solutions to easy problems. As the Yorkshire lads say, “Where there’s muck, there’s brass.”

[…]

The one thing that so many of today’s cute startups have in common is that all they have is a simple little Ruby-on-Rails Ajax site that has no barriers to entry and doesn’t solve any gnarly problems. So many of these companies feel insubstantial and fluffy, because, out of necessity (the whole company is three kids and an iguana), they haven’t solved anything difficult yet. Until they do, they won’t be solving problems for people. People pay for solutions to their problems.

Go read it.

— marco

Must remember this.

Foodback

Thu, 29 Nov 2007 23:52:51 -0500

I slept at Josh & Ricky’s house last night, on the couch. I walked into work and grabbed breakfast at a place along the way, called Think. I haven’t been there in months. I ordered a cappuccino and a bagel with cream cheese, to go.

I ate it when I got to work. There was so little cream cheese, it was almost like a plain bagel. It was literally about 10% of the cream cheese you normally get on a deli bagel (which is about 200% of the ideal amount).

The reason I’m telling you about my breakfast is I wish there were a way to communicate to Think, right here, from my desk, that I wish they used five times as much. But it’s such a small complaint that it’s not really worth calling or emailing or writing a letter. I wish there were a stream of mini-comments; tiny blips of feedback, all the time, so businesses would have a better idea of what their customers want, on the microscope level. I kind of wish websites had that — just a box at the bottom of each page where you could type in some feedback.

— jakoblodwick

Something to remember for my own sites. Definitely useful.

How to Do Just About Anything

Wed, 28 Nov 2007 14:15:44 -0500

How to Do Just About Anything

Really Understanding REST (on Rails)

Wed, 21 Nov 2007 15:21:49 -0500

Really Understanding REST (on Rails):

A five part series that beautifully explains what REST is, and how Rails takes advantage of it. Not just for web designers, REST can be used for any sort of software design.

Maximizing (Programming) Productivity

Tue, 20 Nov 2007 21:36:08 -0500

Maximizing (Programming) Productivity:

Should be canon for any programmer.

I Love Actiontastic

Thu, 08 Nov 2007 20:53:06 -0500

I Love Actiontastic

"taking all of this one step further, consider the so-called “modern” web app. After creating these..."

Thu, 08 Nov 2007 20:43:19 -0500

“taking all of this one step further, consider the so-called “modern” web app. After creating these things for somewhere around a decade, the hackish nature of building interaction models on top of a “page viewing” legacy (bookmarks, back buttons, etc.) is starting to smell kind of funny. It’s not that HTML doesn’t serve its own purpose very well, buy why can’t we just use this HTTP-as-hash-pipe model to build ubiquitous data services and leave the application interfaces to rich clients like the soon-to-be-open-sourced Flex?”

- Jon [Kaboomerang]
Models - Data; Controllers - Send Data; Views - Everything Else. Controllers should be dumb, Models should be savvy, and Views should be smart. Why not offload all view code to the browser side? Sure, it would break all web conventions, but sooo cool. Instead of one server that tries to be everything to everyone (ie. all different clients), why not just serve up dedicated client packages (view bundles) based on the client?

Tumblr 3 Announcement

Thu, 01 Nov 2007 13:46:00 -0400

Tumblr 3 Announcement :

So apparently full tag support will be coming soon. The feature list does look impressive. The new Archive format has to be the coolest single feature ever. It’s like looking at a stream of consciousness over time.

Apparently tags do absolutely nothing right now. I can’t view or sort by tags in either the...

Thu, 01 Nov 2007 13:40:34 -0400

Apparently tags do absolutely nothing right now. I can’t view or sort by tags in either the dashboard, or in the public view.

Alright, I’ll tweak more when I have some posts to view.

Wed, 24 Oct 2007 15:52:36 -0400

Alright, I’ll tweak more when I have some posts to view.