Funny post over at Mind Hacks.
Monthly Archives: October 2008
Effort Counts
Calvin Coolidge famously said: Nothing in the world can take the place of persistence. Talent will not; nothing is more common than unsuccessful men with talent. Genius will not; unrewarded genius is almost a proverb. Education will not; the world is full of educated derelicts. Persistence and determination are omnipotent. The slogan press on has solved and always will solve the problems of the human race.
Seth Godin: Is effort a myth?
Overcoming Bias: Make an Extraordinary Effort
All we can do is play the cards we are dealt the best we can. And try to do so with every hand.
Understanding the economic crisis
Lots of material out there to read to understand what is going on. Here are some of the more interesting ones I’ve found:
The Money Meltdown – a set of links that attempts to summarize the situation and how we got here.
Slate.com: Subprime Suspects: Puts to rest the idea that poor homeowners are somehow to blame for this.
60 Minutes: A Look At Wall Street’s Shadow Market
Megan McArdle: How did it all happen? – some cognitive science behind this.
Forbes: The Economics of Trust – Capitalism requires trust. Break the foundations of trust between people and institutions and something like this is inevitable.
And the best two explanations I have heard so far were on This American Life: The Giant Pool of Money and Another Frightening Show About the Economy
Delete Email With Python
I have a problem on my host. This came in handy.
Know any interesting charities that interest geeks/technologists/developers?
Google’s Matt Cutts asked this very same question a while back and followed up. Know any yourself? In particular, those that you can donate to via the United Way?
At one time I could speak Latin
Lawton Elementary was the exception to the norm of my Philadelphia educational experience. While I pretty much have forgotten everything of my 5th grade Latin studies, I bet it had a positive effect on my problem solving and communication skills. NYTimes: Latin Returns From Dead in School Language Curriculums
It’s a Uke world, we just live in it
I have some links to share about ukulelies today. Scroll to the end of the post for why 🙂
Metafilter Thread: The Ukulele Orchestra of Great Britain performs the theme to “Shaft” (SYTL). Really, is any description needed?
YouTube: The Ukulele Orchestra of Great Britain – Shaft
YouTube: Ukulele Orchestra of Great Britain – The Good the Bad the Ugly
YouTube: Ukulele weeps by Jake Shimabukuro
YouTube: Sci-Fi Ukulele: Doctor Who Theme
YouTube: Run to the Hills, Iron Maiden (on ukulele)
We bought Emma a Uke almost a year ago and she strums along while I play guitar or to just about any music playing in the house, but sometimes she just rocks out 🙂
Open Source Rich Internet Application Framework at CIM: OpenPyro
Check it out: OpenPyro: OpenPyro is a pure AS3 framework for creating RIA’s. Open Pyro draws a lot of inspiration from Flex but aims to be more expressive as well as have a smaller filesize and memory footprint.
Arpit Mathur, one of the most brilliant developers I know and a straight up Flash guru is leading the Open Pyro project. He recently posted about OpenPyro on his personal blog and includes a screencast of him using the framework to develop an app.
Kevin Fitzpatrick another CIM Flash master, and lead developer of another open source project at CIM, LogBook, comments about OpenPyro.
Bad times at two blogging networks
Tech Crunch: Big Blogger Pay Cuts At b5Media
Valleywag: Valleywag cuts 60 percent of staff
Gawker: Friday Is Always Black
Hopes and prayers for all those affected.
Some ummm… presidential links for today
In software engineering we have a concept called ‘Duck Typing’. Basically, some languages trust developers more so than others (lets say Python versus Java), and you can trust that if an object ‘walks like a duck and quacks like a duck, it’s a duck’.
You end up writing far less code due to the trust you have that things are what they appear to be.
In this year’s Presidential campaign, you have a candidate that looks like a normal Joe, walks like a normal Joe, and talks like a normal Joe, but whose income is anything but.
CNBC.com: Warren Buffet explains the credit crisis to Charlie Rose
FREE FOR ALL! the movie – watch it online. Roger Ebert’s review.
Andrew Sullivan: Confronting Racism Against Obama (Powerful video)
NYTimes: Tom Davis Gives Up
YouTube: SNL VP Debate (via akkamsrazor)
YouTube.com: 5 Friends Uncensored – Don’t Vote
YouTube.com: Bob Dylan: A Hard Rain’s Gonna Fall