links for 2007-04-30
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Impressive hands-on demo of Mootools Javascript libraries.
Archive for April, 2007
links for 2007-04-29
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Possibly interesting planting, from an Ann Arbor News article today.
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Just considering it. Might be good; might not.
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George muses about the Prime Directive of Retrospectives. I note that neither Retrospectives nor any of the principles of the PD are social norms in academia, even though professional development is the point there. How might that improve in future?
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Formalizing good habits in collaborative workflows
Testing TextMate-generated code and styles
Like all the best geek tools, TextMate will gladly do anything you want it to do, and a lot more. One interesting prospect for the programmy blogger is the ability (in the TextMate bundle) to generate HTML from code, and also generate a stylesheet from the theme you’re using. Let’s see how that works:
#!/usr/bin/env ruby myPoem = ENV['TM_SELECTED_TEXT'] newPoem = “<div class=\\”poem\\”>\\n<div class=\\”stanza\\”>\\n“ betweenStanzas = “</div>\\n\\n<div class=\\”stanza\\”>\\n“ myPoem.each do |line| if line =~ /(^ +)\\S/ indent = $1.length if [2,4,6,8,10,12,14].include?(indent) classing = “<p class=\”iindent.to_s\\”>“ else classing = “<p class=\\”FIXME\\”>“ end newPoem += line.chomp.sub(/^ +/,classing) + “</p>\\n“ elsif line =~ /^( *)$/ newPoem += betweenStanzas else newPoem += “<p>“ + line.chomp + “</p>n“ end end newPoem += “</div>\\n</div>“ print newPoem
It does go, but some observations: The code sucks (okay, it was just the first Ruby I had on hand). The backslashes need to be escaped for some reason: either MarsEdit or WordPress? There’s still that annoying tendency all browsers have, to let <pre> markup get too big for its bounding box.
Sayings for almost every day
“When life gives you lemons, make sidecars.”
“In the land of the blind, the one-eyed man should keep his goddamned mouth shut. These canes can leave a mark, you know.”
“Why shouldn’t I expect you to know everything?” [prominently displayed on my desk, and office door, in days long gone. Nobody ever understood that it wasn't a rhetorical question at all. Maybe you will, if you're prepared for it....]
“…[j]ust a tempest in a molehill.”
Those are mine, at least those of which I have been reminded on this sunny April day. You have others?
Potentially useful for manuscript reviews
Approximately due to Chet Hendrickson, heavily edited and somewhat enhanced in transcription, and to date not used in an actual review of technical work. So it’s available!
If you want to move beyond this recent tendency towards intellectual masturbation, you might consider intellectual autoerotic asphyxiation as an alternative.
But it could be the interlocutor might take this in a negative light. So use advisedly.
links for 2007-04-28
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Great TDD kata from UncleBob. Unfortunate it’s PowerPoint; would be nice if it were a PDF. But it’s legible.
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Note especially the quote from the local paper.
links for 2007-04-27
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Scary. Scarier than you think.
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Via Danny Yee.
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Some people cannot discern pedagogy from earnest geekitude. It’s a framing issue: people who think “this is trivial!” are clearly making that the truth, about their dismissal of others’ work… or themselves.
Left As an Exercise for the Web2.0 Entrepreneur: Listly
Keep online lists of all your online services and receive email, textmsg or web-based notification whenever you sign up for any new web2.0 online notification or list service! Maintain meta-lists collaboratively; include other notification services into your Listly Aggregated List Lister as if they were artificial friends sending you useful information! Save valuable time meta-organizing your organizational tools so you don’t need to waste it doing the items on them! Tag your Listly Activities with semantically meaningful clouds of words and phrases: no need to rely on short opaque telegraphic list items like “Clean house” and “Call Bob” any more! Aggregate your grocery list, Amazon Wishlist and LinkedIn links and decorate them with a single skin, for convenient self-branding remakes! Contact your friends, and do stuff that appears on their lists, through our new Listly Listification beta!
links for 2007-04-26
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My wife points out that when she worked at a Big Company, the org chart was protected information, and not to be disclosed under any circumstances by employees.
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Calling R language commands from inside Ruby programs.
Learning from left field
Sometimes when you’re explaining something important to an audience, somebody will nod and seem enthused, but then interrupt with a question which seems like it’s coming out of the blue. Some of us have a tendency to dismiss these questions as failures to communicate the core of our message clearly, or if we’re unsympathetic sorts we might dismiss the interlocutor as not paying attention.
On the other hand, if they’re asking a question you never anticipated, then they’re telling you about something you didn’t communicate to them. If it’s not pure explicit content, then it may well be they’ve missed the values and basic assumptions underlying your message.
If, for example, you tell them, “We’re going to do something very cool and change the fucking world,” and they ask you, “Where’s the money in that?” it may well be that you should have explained — first — why the money wouldn’t be important. Take the time to establish a rhetorical framework for your explanation in which the notion of the money is trivial, tangential, innocuous, absurd.
If they ask anyway, then just tell them you’re in it for the chicks. And move along to the next audience.
We don’t all have to understand everything.
Did I break Technorati?
I went from 150-something links yesterday, from other people’s blogs, to 455 links today, mostly (apparently) from my own blog.
Am I to be rewarded for self-linking, now? I can do that….
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