Blog Posts

February 2014

• 2014-02-26

  Jonathan Harris on being stuck

  Jonathan Harris is the creator of several really interesting web sites that in very creative ways combine art with computing. From his home page one might conclude that he’s a bit

  “This is the website of Jonathan Harris. I make projects that explore the relationship between humans and technology, incorporating computer science, statistics, storytelling, visual art, and other techniques. I see our species evolving into a single meta-organism, brought to life by the Internet, even as we live our individual lives, searching for meaning and beauty. My projects straddle these scales of existence—from the planetary to the personal. I make ...

  Read more →

  #design
• 2014-02-23

  The Cloud is Watching You

  It’s obvious if you think about it, but this article drives some points home. If you use some kind of web service to read, listen, watch, charge, use, borrow or share stuff, that company not only knows what you’ve (read, listened to, etc.) They also know much more specifically how you did so: Did you stick with it to the end, did you do it from a particular place, at a particular time? Did you do it in one sitting or over a day or a week or a month?

  If you then combine such observation across a farily large group of peope you can learn amazing things. Like how many people finish your book, or how far through it they get before abandoning it. Do they listen to the whole song? At what episode...

  Read more →

  #culture #software-engineering
• 2014-02-23

  Good Grades Certainly Don’t Hurt

  How to Get a Job at Google – NYTimes.com:

  Don’t get him wrong, Bock begins, “Good grades certainly don’t hurt.” Many jobs at Google require math, computing and coding skills, so if your good grades truly reflect skills in those areas that you can apply, it would be an advantage. But Google has its eyes on much more.

  #education
• 2014-02-03

  Blue Jasmine – Woody Allen

  I just saw Blue Jasmine, the latest Woody Allen movie. It is excellent and I recommend it. I also happened to read Nicholas Kristof’s column in the New York Times where he reprinted many of the allegations against Woody Allen repeating various allegations that make him sound really evil in his personal life. I also saw the Golden Globes telecast where they showed a montage about his career and hear Diane Keaton give a speech on Allen’s behalf.

  Suffice it to say that I was confused about what to believe but ...

  Read more →

  #culture
• 2014-02-01

  Interview Skills

  This article: The Only Interview Question That Matters” makes a pretty good case for this being the most important single interview question:

  What single project or task would you consider your most significant accomplishment in your career to date?

  #business

January 2014

• 2014-01-21

  Goodbye to BlogBridge…

  After a glorious run of almost 10 years, regretfully, I’ve decided to decomission BlogBridge. My longtime freinds and blog followers will remember that I and Aleksey worked on BlogBridge quite intensively for several years, and then gradually less and less.

  Over the last several years BlogBridge was more or less on auto pilot, but still with a decent set of devoted users. And every week and month brought in additional users. Not a huge amount but enough to keep it interesting.

  Our pricing model was very lopsided, w...

  Read more →

  #blogging #business
• 2014-01-18

  Aruba vs. Curaçao

  I admit I am always a little bit offended when I hear that a friend of mine (François?) chooses Aruba as a vacation destination. And it happens pretty regularly. Oh I always say that the two islands are very similar, but the truth is that I’ve spent very little time in Aruba, so… Anyway, for those of you who want to explore this delicate topic more deeply I present to you:

  Aruba versus Curacao: Caribbean Showdown – Curaçao Chronicle:

  At first glance Aruba and Curacao seem very similar. They’re both Dutch islands, they are about 75 miles apart from each other off of the coast of Venezuela and they even have most of the same cultural influences. But believe me; the two islands couldn’t be more different. These differences aren’t a bad thing; it’s just that some travelers will prefer one over the other depending on the type of vacation experience they’re looking for.

  #places
• 2014-01-16

  Box.com – 50 gig for free!

  Forget Dropbox, I just heard that Box.com gives you 50gig for free upon signup. I just signed up and it seems like I got it. Pretty cool:

  Box | Secure content-sharing that users and IT love and adopt:

  Box lets you store all of your content online, so you can access, manage and share it from anywhere. Integrate Box with Google Apps and Salesforce and access Box on mobile devices. Learn More

  But I wonder: how can they do it? Is storage so cheap now? Yahoo gives 100Gig free with Flickr.com.

  And I also wonder, who needs 50gig free for non commercial use on Box.com? My first idea was to fill it up with movies, tv shows and so on.

  But then I got to...

  Read more →

  #programming
• 2014-01-13

  Never go on deck alone

  This is just a great read.

  A Speck in the Sea – NYTimes.com:

  Looking back, John Aldridge knew it was a stupid move. When you’re alone on the deck of a lobster boat in the middle of the night, 40 miles off the tip of Long Island, you don’t take chances.

  #culture
• 2014-01-10

  Wikipedia’s tenets

  Flying back home yesterday I read this article about Wikipedia in the New York Times: Wikipedia, What Does Judith Newman Have to Do to Get a Page? – NYTimes.com:

  The three tenets of Wikipedia articles are “No Original Research,” “Neutral Point of View” and “Verifiability” — terms that, in and of themselves, are open to debate. At any rate, Mr. Wales wanted to make real the words of Charles Van Doren, one of the editors of the Encylopedia Brittanica, who wrote in an essay in 1962: “Because the world is radically new, the ideal encyclopedia should be radical, too. It should stop being safe — in politics, in philosophy, ...

  Read more →

  #blogging #culture

December 2013

• 2013-12-30

  Design Thinking vs. Lean Startup

  Point Solving Problems for Real World, Using Design – NYTimes.com:

  While the projects had wildly different end products, they both had a similar starting point: focusing on how to ease people’s lives. And that is a central lesson at the school, which is pushing students to rethink the boundaries for many industries.

  A fascinating article about the “Plattner Institute of Design at Stanford” also known as the D.School.

  Everyone knows that Design Thinking is great and the new hotness. I love great design, and am in awe ...

  Read more →

  #design #business #culture
• 2013-12-09

  If you appreciate this you’ve attended one too many corporate trainings

  

  #life
• 2013-12-07

  [Pro-Tip] When writing a delicate email, enter the To: last

  So, if you are writing one of those emails that you have to get right, and you plan to check and proof and think about, then don’t start by typing the To:. As long as you don’t type the To: you can’t accidentally send it out before you finish writing it. Once you write the To:, and accidental or careless send will possibly cause collateral damage if you’re not done word smithing your message.

  #internet
• 2013-12-04

  Getting an “A” at Harvard is e-z!

  Unfortunately students can be quite focused on their grades, and as a result I end up paying more attention to grading than I would like. By the way let me point out that ‘grading’ is more than assigning a grade to a bit of homework. Without going into detail, you have to decide and communicate:

  What all the gradable items of work are (e.g. a programming assignment, a reading assignment, a test, a presentation, a mockup or prototype, etc. etc.) Your logical scheme for assigning a grade to a work item. That is, what is an “A” for a programming assignment? For a particular presentation, etc.) What the relative weighting is of each grade is What formula you use to convert all the individual wo...

  Read more →

  #education
• 2013-12-03

  How well does higher ed prepare you as a ‘software engineer’?

  This article is a bit harsh/one-sided, but I still thought it was interesting to see an attempt at comparing programming as practiced in two very different contexts.

  What’s the difference between college-level and corporate programming? | Ars Technica:

  Programming in school and programming in the real world are so inherently different to the point where there’s actually very little overlap. CS will prepare you for “real world” software development like athletics training would prepare an army for battle.

  In a vaguely related article, think about this: In the moder...

  Read more →

  #education #software-engineering
• 2013-12-03

  Dear Consumer Reports

  From an email I sent, just because:

  “Dear CU:

  I bet you won’t print this one! But maybe you can respond to me personally.

  Check this out

  CU itself is a bad actor when it comes to magazine subscription renewals.

  I get misleading requests that my subscription is about to run out when it actually has months, as many as six months to go! And if I am not on my toes I could easily be fooled into a premature renewal and extension of my subscription.

  This is a very misleading practice.

  You say everyone does it, which is true. You say that it’s part of your business model and it really works to maximize renewals, which is also true.

  But it still very misleading bordering on deceitful and I bet you would call out another company for something similar or even less evil – for example, a simple typo in an advertisement which is a clearly sloppiness but not purposely deceitful.

  What say you?

  Pito Salas, longtime subscriber.”

  #business

November 2013

• 2013-11-25

  This post might have changed my mind

  Scott Adams is the guy behind the famous Dilbert comics. I’ve not worked in a big corporation for a while and I’ve not been reading Dilbert for quite a while too. But Scott Adams remains a brilliant humourist. This post however, is not meant as humour:

  Scott Adams Blog: I Hope My Father Dies Soon 11/23/2013:

  I don’t want anyone to misconstrue this post as satire or exaggeration. So I’ll reiterate. If you have acted, or plan to act, in a way that keeps doctor-assisted suicide illegal, I see you as an accomplice in torturing my father, and perhaps me as well someday. I want you to die a painful death, and soon. And I’d be happy to tell you the same thing to your face.

  Postscript: His Dad passed away a few hours after he wrote this

• 2013-11-20

  Intellectual Property on Wall Street?

  A fascinating although quite long article by Michael Lewis in Vanity Fair. Michael Lewis is an amazing non-fiction writer, best known to me for Moneyball (about baseball) and Liars Poker (about Wall Street.)

  Michael Lewis: Did Goldman Sachs Overstep in Criminally Charging Its Ex-Programmer? | Vanity Fair:

  A month after ace programmer Sergey Aleynikov left Goldman Sachs, he was arrested. Exactly what he’d done neither the F.B.I., which interrogated him, nor the jury, which convicted him a year later, seemed to understand. But Goldman had accused him of stealing computer code, and the 41-year-old father of three was sentenced to eight years in federal prison. Investigating Aleynikov’s case, Michael Lewis holds a second trial.

  #business #politics
• 2013-11-18

  Customer Service Ceremonies

  Nowadays, when I am done talking to telephone suport of any company, they seem to be trained to go through a long ceremony before letting me go:

  me: “Thanks, I am all set”

  They: “Did I solve all your problems”?

  me: “Yes, thanks”

  They: “Ok then thanks for calling XXXX”

  me: “You’re welcome”

  They: “Thanks and have a good day”

  me: “Thanks”

  Question: is it impolite for me to hang up before this whole ceremony is complete? Say “Yes, Thanks” and then hang up? Or am I being a rude, impatient, always in a hurry northeasterner?

• 2013-11-15

  Healthcare.gov not working yet (duh)

  I feel really bad for President Obama and I am still a big fan. But. As we all know now, this is a total disaster, on a lot of levels. For first hand experience, I tried to create an account on Healthcare.gov about the middle of October. After several tries I managed to do it. Yesterday I tried to log into the site to see how things were going, and after several tries and I managed to log in. But I didn’t get too far before I got a 404 error.

  Those of us who have worked on, or seen close up how a complex “web site” is built have a feeling of how complicated this is. And coupled with other factors and complications (like politics and buareaucratic ineptitude) we can’t say this is not a movie...

  Read more →

  #politics #life