04/24 New Book: Founder’s Dilemmas — This book looks good: “Founder’s Dilemmas: Anticipating and Avoiding the pitfalls that can sink a startup”. I came across it in the “Startup Lessons Learned” Blog, which may be the best blog about leann startups. This excerpt talks about a common scenario with startups, where the founders assume th...

04/18 Must See: “Luck of the Irish” at the Huntington Theatre — If you are a theatre fan I strongly recommend a play I just saw last night. It’s called “Luck of the Irish”. From a review on Boston.com: > “… It’€™s one of numerous instances in Greenidge’s superb, beautif...

04/17 New York Times Grammar and Style — Listen, I love the New York Times. I read it cover to cover (or pixel to pixel) every day and have it delivered in dead-tree format to my doorstep each morning. But so often I come across an awkward sentence which I have to read and re-read several times to understand. I’ve been noticing this ...

04/16 How far does idealism get you — David Brooks of the New York Times, in an article about (my interpretation) the limits of idealism: > “It’s hard not to feel inspired by all these idealists, but their service religion does ...

04/14 Don’t work. Avoid telling the truth. Be hated. Love someone. — Ok, I don’t agree with all of “Don’t work. Avoid telling the truth. Be hated. Love someone”: > “Resist the temptation to get a job. Instead, play. Find something you enjoy doing. Do it. Over and over again. You will become good at it...

04/07 Do you finish books? — I love this article. It’s by an actual authortalking about whether it matters if a reader reads a book through to the very end. He starts with the basics, claiming that serious (‘mature‘) readers don’t feel self-imposed pressure to read a book to its very last syll...

04/07 Why You Want To Be A Learn-it-All — A provocatively titled article (Why Youth Has an Advantage In Innovation) argues that to innovate you have to be an omnivorous and promiscuous consumer of new stuff. Try this li...

04/06 Americans Elect: Another Opinion — A month or two ago I read an article by Thomas Friedman introducing Americans Elect, an innovative concept for bringing a third major presidential candidate to the table for this year’s Presidential contest. I liked it so much ...

04/04 Email Rookie Mistakes — I’ve watched some people struggling with some email blow ups and frustrations over the years and I was just thinking about some of the ways I’ve developed to avoid them. I am not going into the best salutation or the best conclusion but more touchy-feely things. Here are my guidelines: - **Write th...

04/02 [GEEKY] Sublime Text surpassing TextMate? — I’ve been doing some more coding these days in Ruby. I’ve had great success and fun (especially when debugging) using RadRails, which is an Eclipse based IDE for Ruby and Rails. It’s quite nice. With introduction of [RVM](http:/...

03/28 “We might as well have a good time while we’re here, don’t you think?” — This is from a play we saw last year at the Huntington Theatre. The play is Prelude to a Kiss by Craig Lucas. It production was quite good but this particular speech struck me as the  best part of the play. Don’t read it as depressing just as really good writing and really true.

03/27 G+ Where Art Thou? — Here is a a really good commentary on Google Plus (G+).I have to say that analyzing such a large system and a phenomenon involving millio...

03/27 Whoa! Big Brother just rearranged the furniture — That’s my Gmail window. The black bar is Google’s toolbar. What does that PLAY button do?

03/22 [GEEKY] Capistrano Colors — A random, highly specific and geeky tip: > If you’ve used Capistrano before, you’re familiar with the large error logs. Finding errors is, well, a hassle. You’ve got a whole slew of text, some just saying what command it’s going to execute next, sometimes errors, sometimes just output from Bundler or whatever it’s running. (from Rails Tip #8: Capistrano Colors) Just follow the link to Rails Tip #8: Capistrano Colors) and your Cap life will be a little better. >

03/15 Paul Graham: Fear and Startup Ideas — Paul Graham’s new essay is “Frighteningly Ambitious Startup Ideas.” From my reading of it, it talks about great startup ideas, fear and cynicism. The meat of the article is a series of shall we say audacious startup ideas, most of which you’ve had yourself...

03/15 Art in Willemstad — An annual event, the streets of Willemstad (Curaçao)are covered with art by well known artists: http://www.flickr.com/apps/slideshow/show.swf?v=109615 (See: Willemstad Word Gekleurd)

03/13 Why doing design for Facebook is a thankless job — A friend of mine hates, HATES, the new Facebook timeline. She wants to turn it off, but can’t. I happen to think the timeline is really cool, well designed, useful. On occasion it even gives me goosebumps. But. She. Hates. It. Wants to turn it off. Can’t. I...

03/12 Now that’s a nice metaphor — I love this metaphor – or is it a simile – or a malapropism – who knows: > “It’s the cloud within the sterling silver lining” – Frank Bruni in the New York Times See what he did there? It’s inside out and upside down. Cool. Forgive me, the article is ok too, but that quote jumped out at me I had to spin up the ole blog machine.

03/08 Launch Conference, Day Two — Yesterday was great. The buzz in the place is unbelievable. This place is the Launch Conference. Organized and run beautifully by Jason Calacanis (who has become much more warm and fuzzy than I remember). Here is [Rafe Needleman’s summary of day one.](http://news.cnet.com/83...

03/07 Launch Conference: Day One — The Launch Conference is starting today. It is descended from many venerable conferences, particularly like Demo. I was a fairly regular attendee at the Demo conference over the years, and so far, Launch seems to be conti...