As I’ve written about before, Saturday morning is sacred. In weeks full of meetings, travel, people, and other productive distractions, having four consecutive hours to actually think is precious time – it’s time for writing. As a nerd afflicted with a decent case of NADD, this time can be problematic. It’s hard for me to… more
I’m once again writing with a product from the folks at iA — Writer Pro. I gave their first product, iA Writer, a good long try last year, but eventually gave up when I discovered I couldn’t adjust the text size to see additional text on my screen. It’s seems like a minor nit, but… more
On the list of ways to generate a guaranteed negative knee-jerk reaction from an engineer, I offer a single word: process. Folks, in order to make sure that we hit our ship date, we have a new bug triage… process. You’ve heard the groans and you’ve seen the rolling eyeballs and made the fair assumption… more
I remain steadfast in my belief that one of the best examples of the disproportionate value of the iPhone is the fact that we are able to completely ignore the fact that its form factor is horrible to use as a camera. Yes, the internals are amazing, the guts of the camera are terrific, but… more
In business, words are like fashion. You try a word on because important people around you are saying it and getting results, but you may not actually know what it means. Every group in the company has their own unique set of words and every group uses these words to verbally define who they are,… more
Max was a mess. We were on our third mojito at The Basin in Saratoga when it just came pouring out of him. The last 72 hours involved: Two days in Los Angeles babysitting a customer’s data center Four hours of sleep Two huge arguments with his wife on the cell phone A marathon conference… more
My first backup solution was a stack of 3.5 floppy disks. They contained every single Wordstar document I’d ever written, a copy of my bulletin board system, and small set of utilities that I’d knew I need if my feeble PC-AT decided to explode. Those disk are still around here somewhere. Every embarrassing word of… more
Two bad omens in one day. First, the San Jose Mercury reported last week that U.S. students are forgoing educations in computer science because of worries about jobs being shipped offshore. The second omen was a REAL LIVE college student sitting in my living room echoing the Mercury News, “Yeah, I’d like to study computers,… more
I’m not a huge fan of defining process for writing because I believe that once you start defining a writing process, you create unnecessary barriers for your writing. For example, I’m certain that I am incapable of writing well when I’m drunk. Why is this? Well, back in college, I got hammered on a case… more
