YouTube: Mountain Goats, Best Ever Death Metal Band In Denton (via @Jack_Beitz – awesome lyrics!):
YouTube: OFF! – I Don’t Belong (Official Video):
YouTube: Rick Astley vs Nirvana Never gonna give/smells like teen spirit MSAH UP!:
Pew: Rate of people moving into Philly increasing, rate of people leaving decreasing
“Pew Study Finds an Increase in People Moving Into Philadelphia, Outpacing the Rise in Departures”.
We still have a long way to go, but it is proof positive that Philadelphia’s long march towards being a great place to live and work is starting to get recognized.
Check out these upcoming events: Ignite Philly and TEDXPhilly.
Update: I’ve modified the headline of this post (previously: “Pew: More moving INTO Philly than leaving”) to better reflect the report’s findings. Terrific progress being made nevertheless. Go Philly!
QR Code generating bookmarklets
These QR Code generating bookmarklets use chart.apis.google.com to render a QR Code for the URL you are visiting in your browser. A great way to load the page you you are viewing on your desktop browser, on your phone.
via @arpit
Some recent innovation in blogging
The Permalinks for paragraphs over at Press Think (mouse over the end of any paragraph for the link).
More at Nieman Labs and Scripting News (who has had this for a long time).
Congrats to Jay Rosen on the relaunch of Press Think.
RIP Tom Bosley
Tom Bosley, Mr. Cunningham on Happy Days, a fairly large presentation of what I thought an ideal dad could be while I was growing up without one, passed away last week.
Visualizations to measure your school
The Education Nation Scorecard provided by NBC News, the Bill & Melinda Gates foundation, and designed and built by Fathom.
Flowing Data has more on it.
Happy anniversary Mom and Dad
I wanted to offer this from my personal blog here on the Web. It was an honor to play a few songs for you on my old guitar. Your love has given me and all your children so much to learn from. Emma is here and she says hi 🙂
Programming practice links for October 18, 2010
mockyblog: “Programmers: how to make the systems guy love you” – common sense advice that you’d be surprised how many don’t follow.
InfoQ: Abel-Avram: “10 Suggestions for the Architect of an Agile Team” – if you are practicing an agile-lite process, are a senior developer on a team, and have helped usher systems to launch, you will have probably practiced these 10 pieces of advice. I’m not sure if these are applicable practices for architects and am not sure they are applicable for a team that is practicing pure agile.
Artima: Bill Venners: “Tracer Bullets and Prototypes: A Conversation with Andy Hunt and Dave Thomas, Part VIII” – a long rumination on the ‘Start with a vertical slice’ tip from the previous link.
On Visualizing Iterative Waterfall
Go read Jon Moore’s latest piece “The Power of Visualizing Iterative Waterfall”: “the most powerful reason to start visualizing the flow is that it shows you exactly what parts of your process you should change, and when. There’s nothing like being able to show a product manager that their availability is driving overall throughput to encourage spending more time with the team.”
I didn’t know who to go to for help – hunger in Philadelphia
The Philadelphia Inquirer profiles the lives of families going hungry in Pennsylvania’s First Congressional District, home of a few of my old neighborhoods, Kensington, Fishtown, Frankford in Philadelphia: “A Portrait of Hunger”.
There is no excuse for letting anyone go hungry in the richest country in the world. None. The article points to three main culprits: a lack of paying work, a lack of guidance to services that can help, and the bureaucratic complexity of applying for those services as root causes.
It was the same for us when I was growing up and when I was out on the streets, sleeping on trains, I didn’t know who to go to for help, or how.
The comments posted on the article really go far in showing how low our culture has become in kicking people when they are down and blaming them entirely for their circumstances.
We’re all in this together. For some great commentary on this, check out Susie Madrak’s latest post. Like her I can still remember when my family needed help. I can remember being in line for a block of cheese at Bridge and Pratt. I remember all too well the chuckles of some at school due to the quality of my Salvation Army and Goodwill bought clothes. I remember the Salvation Army Santa Claus visiting the family to drop off some toys to make our Christmas brighter.
None of us are 100% self made and choosing to belabor that some people need help, instead of offering TO help, does no one any good. Please, if you are able, find some way, any way, to lend a hand.
Resources: