Topics in ‘articles’

Pimpin’ [Software Projects] Ain’t Easy

I spent this weekend at CURUCamp—that is, Central European Ruby Camp—here in Vienna. It totally kicked ass, I got to hang out with friends, make new friends, and learn stuff. (Plus, thanks to Jürgen the organizer, I now know a place where I can get a decent mojito in stodgy old Vienna. Good thing, too, […]

Oh yeah, there’s a sugar pill for that.

Everybody knows about The Placebo Effect™. That’s what happens when you think you’re taking a medicine that will help you, and it does help you—but it turns out that it was a sugar pill, not a medicine at all. It was discovered by a clever, desperate nurse during World War II. She was running out […]

Jelly! Talk Excerpt 1: My Crusade, Twistori, & Elemental Design

This is the first in a series of 2 or 3 posts for the transcript of my Jelly! talk from SXSW. Jelly! talks are put on by Yahoo! and Jelly!, the casual coworking movement. This one was held in the lovely Austin coworking space of Conjunctured. Here’s a link to the video. My name is […]

Masturbatory "Design" semantics

Every design commentator, author, critic or blogger must at sometime pose the question “What is design?” and then give us his personal answer. It’s like the discovery of masturbation: everybody does it at some point (some later to the game than others), and everybody thinks they’re the world’s first. How amazing! Only most people have […]

Books aren’t dying either, OK?

Looks like it’s that time again! I’ve found another article that’s annoyingly devoid of green, leafy facts but full of sweet, specious seasoning. Reasoning. I mean reasoning. How’s this one start off? [Charles Petzold:] People are probably reading and writing more than ever, but a lot of this reading and writing is online. Consequently, book […]

Greatness, analyzed through love songs

Hey kids, it’s poetry explication time! Give me five double-spaced pages on Robert Frost’s “Nature’s First Green is Gold” by Friday or your grade is toast and your parents will disown you, you’ll never hold a good job, and you’ll die destitute and alone. Just kidding. I hated dissecting poetry in school, but loved the […]

Success at failcamp

Alex and I ran failcamp fast & loose and it worked. (Alex’s writeup is here.) Our guiding idea was to discuss failure, in all its guises. We wanted to hold a forum where it was not only OK to admit to not being glossy & perfect, but actually required. We wanted to discuss things practical […]

How I Got Started Programming

I got passed the baton by Giles Bowkett. In my flattery, I’ve decided to return the favor by aping his style. He also pinged a bunch of people, and thus far only Paul Dix and I have responded. How old were you when you started programming? I was six or seven when I began to […]

On being meta.

Be meta. Try to become a meta designer, or meta whatever area you are in. What being meta means is to look not just at the details of what you are doing, be it design or business or whatever, but take the big picture view, the ‘meta’ view, and see how every action you take […]

love & hate: from knuckle tattoos to the internet’s emotional pulse with Twistori

This is one side of the story of twistori. I will tell the other later. Anyone who knows me knows about my rants. I like to rant. I rant about a lot of things, and always have—but as the years have accumulated in me and changed me, so have the topics of my rants shifted […]

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Freckle Time Tracking
account?