The rumor that Twitter is abandoning Ruby on Rails comes as no surprise to those familiar with Twitter’s shaky uptime record and its tendency to lose its mind in increasingly impressive and creative ways. So, new platform. Fine. Saw that coming. What continues to surprise me is this: why aren’t we more pissed when Twitter… more
I’ve been ripping on the mouse for years. The argument is one of precision. The mouse, while incredibly useful as a casual means of interacting with a computer, is not a productivity tool, because when you use a mouse you sometimes miss and missing isn’t productive. WAIT WHOA RANDS. PHOTOSHOP MAN. PHOTOSHOP LOVES THE MOUSE.… more
This article was written over a decade ago, and business has changed. You can read a much-updated version of this article here. You’ve had a small number of career-defining moments. These are the select few moments in time when the trajectory of your career changed instantly and drastically. I have two buckets of these: ones… more
I was introduced to Ask A Ninja via this podcast. In the podcast, the Ninja complains extensively about the release of Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man’s Chest. The gist: “Every single character has their own damned plot line and it’s incredibly hard to figure out what the hell is going on”. The third movie,… more
I’m at the end of a conference week and I’ve just moved hotels. This is normally a hassle, but the broadband in the prior hotel blew, which means I’m a week behind on everything. Once I’ve checked into the room, the first thing I do is fire up Safari and watch the first page load.… more
The presentation season kicked off for me with a week in New Zealand at the Webstock conference. I arrived early, which, as it turns out, wasn’t the best use of my time, as I spent two solid days of what should have been vacation stressing about slides. Among the many highlights was the speaker dinner… more
It’s the calm before the presentation storm. Over the next three months, I’ve got four different presentations at Webstock and SXSW. I’m also the best man at a wedding in Washington, all of which means I’m spending most of my down-time thinking up things I’m going to say in the future. If you’re looking for… more
I have an unnatural fixation with pixels. For two years I was a stalwart supporter of the 17-inch PowerBook/MacBook Pro. My argument was simple and ignorant: “You need as many pixels as possible because you need to be able to see as much as possible.” This pixel fundamentalism blinded me to the simple fact that… more
I remember the moment I stopped writing in cursive. Second period World History with Mr. Hickman. My thought as I stared at my writing, “I hate looking at my cursive. I’ve always hated my cursive. Why must I hate my own writing?” Monday, January 10th, 1984, 9:15am. Halfway though my inane essay on the Nazification… more
I’m a sucker for charts’n’graphs. The only thing better than data is data about data. Data about data is information that, in quantity, becomes knowledge, which is just a short hop away from wisdom. And when wisdom shows up, you know you’re this close to figuring it all out. As a nerd who erroneously believes… more