Greg Knauss released Romantimatic last week and received a surprisng amount of indignation. I understand the need to draw conclusions about the intentions of others from our own internal dialogs, but it’s always surprising how far people take it.
I like Romantimatic. It’s a reminder system for sending kind little notes to the person I care about. It’s similar to birthday reminders in a calendar, but more intimate and focused on one single “sweetheart”.
Yuvi is a smart and honest guy that does some good stick figure art and better thinking:
You know, I mostly hear one narrative about taking risks, and it’s the story where you take a big risk and you succeed beyond your wildest dreams…but what’s on my mind right now are those stories where you take a big risk and fall on your ass and maybe there’s nobody there to pick you.
I link to Derek Lowe for this one because the first comment nails it (and I think Derek gets it too). I’ll quote the same bit Derek does because it summarizes my entire experience:
Compared with standard offices, employees experienced more uncontrolled interactions, higher levels of stress, and lower levels of concentration and motivation. . .
When interviewing “younger” workers, the original author notes:
But they believed that the trade-offs were ultimately worth it, because the open space resulted in a sense of camaraderie; they valued the time spent socializing with coworkers, whom they often saw as friends.
January is as good of an arbitrary marker as any to change the things I dislike. The beauty of age is that I’ve realized that most of the things I dislike emanate from within myself.1 I also tend to be realistic in my endeavors.
I’d love to be less cynical, but at the same time, I enjoy my cynicism immensely. I’d really like to take big risks but I have adult responsibilities.
In case you thought that it only takes a black mock turtleneck and an over-produced demo video to succeed, it apparently also takes not-so-subtle attacks on developers of pre-existing apps.
And in case you think their argument is valid, SyntaxCheck might change your mind1:
Small and dirty iOS demo showing NSLinguisticTagger live-detecting sentence structure in an UITextView.
But maybe it’s best to just let the market decide.
DisclaimerI don't like asshats.
I think the holiday season is a good time to stop and appreciate the stuff that makes life more enjoyable. But stuff doesn’t have any feelings. Instead, I’d like to thank the folks behind the stuff I like.
In general, I’m thankful for all of the developers out there that care about what they make. But I’m particularly thankful for the people that make the things that I use all day everyday.
Once a month our podcast Technical Difficulties will be doing an interview-like episode. Why not tackle the hardest problem most people tackle in their life on the first interview? Last week Merlin Mann joined us to discuss changing careers, either by accident or on purpose.
This is still a topic that fascinates me and I’m in awe of people like Merlin that successfully transition into multiple careers over and over. Also, check out the show notes.
I’ve become fascinated by the historical origins of Christmas traditions. I think this is an old-guy thing but I’m just going with it.
This article about Krampus was enthralling. Seems like “Krampus on a shelf” would be a better threat than Elf on a Shelf.
I’m also liking Atlas Obscura in general.
Scott Adams, has a moving article about how his father is dying inch by inch but forced to live through it all by the government.
A mean absolutely no disrespect to Adams or anyone else in his situation. I fully endorse his opinion. But, as someone who lost a father to cancer and many related complications, my opinion is that laws around health care are selectively enforced in this country. My father was left to die on a curb several times by his hospital and doctors because he lacked insurance and money.
This is a pretty cool Raspberry Pi project.
From the VillageScience info page:
It’s inexpensive. Fully assembled, we’re aiming for a cost of about US$65 per unit;
It’s efficient. Our device needs very little electricity to operate and can run on solar power, a battery, or even a water wheel in a stream;
It’s useful. VS-Pi comes “pre-loaded” with culturally-relevant, local language content from a variety of partners: educational texts, health videos, agricultural information, financial literacy training – all tailored to each community’s needs.
