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Thu Jan 7th

YouTube’s favicon, as redone by Miha, shortly thereafter acknowledged and adopted by Margaret Stewart, YouTube’s UX manager. Nice.

YouTube’s favicon, as redone by Miha, shortly thereafter acknowledged and adopted by Margaret Stewart, YouTube’s UX manager. Nice.

Wed Jan 6th

The difference between head and master

$ git log head --not master

Wed Jan 6th

This photograph, The Red Giants by Paul Octavious, makes me want to start going through my back catalogue of photos retrospectively creating some “projects”.

This photograph, The Red Giants by Paul Octavious, makes me want to start going through my back catalogue of photos retrospectively creating some “projects”.

Wed Jan 6th

Make This Year Awesome! by Dunny

Make This Year Awesome! by Dunny

Tue Dec 15th

This usage of a definition list is proof that writing W3C specifications and smoking crack are not mutually exclusive activities.

Fri Dec 11th

Here at Grad Hacker, we feel that simply being productive is not enough. What good is your inner, clandestine, productivity, if your bosses, colleagues, and you yourself don’t really know the extent of just how unbelievably productive, busy, stressed, in a rush, and important you really are? For these, reasons, we will periodically provide you with a tip on how to act productive.
— Great little collection of articles on how to act productive.

Fri Dec 11th

Asshole Driven development (ADD) – Any team where the biggest jerk makes all the big decisions is asshole driven development. All wisdom, logic or process goes out the window when Mr. Asshole is in the room, doing whatever idiotic, selfish thing he thinks is best. There may rules and processes, but Mr. A breaks them and people follow anyway.

Cognitive Dissonance development (CDD) – In any organization where there are two or more divergent beliefs on how software should be made. The tension between those beliefs, as it’s fought out in various meetings and individual decisions by players on both sides, defines the project more than any individual belief itself.

Cover Your Ass Engineering (CYAE) – The driving force behind most individual efforts is to make sure than when the shit hits the fan, they are not to blame.

Development By Denial (DBD) - Everybody pretends there is a method for what’s being done, and that things are going ok, when in reality, things are a mess and the process is on the floor. The worse things get, the more people depend on their denial of what’s really happening, or their isolation in their own small part of the project, to survive.

Get Me Promoted Methodology (GMPM) - People write code and design things to increase their visibility, satisfy their boss’s whims, and accelerate their path to a raise or the corner office no matter how far outside of stated goals their efforts go. This includes allowing disasters to happen so people can be heroes, writing hacks that look great in the short term but crumble after the individual has moved on, and focusing more on the surface of work than its value.

Wed Dec 2nd

There are no guarantees. I can’t keep her completely safe, ensure she’s happy and that nothing bad happens to her. I know her heart will be broken, and that she will face loss and death in the fulness of time. I know she’ll get hurt in all sorts of ways. I know there is always a chance I could lose the most wonderful thing in my life, and I know that she could lose me. None of this is a reason to cower in our houses. That bit of safety isn’t worth trading the adventures of the world that filled my childhood, and I hope will fill hers.
Parenting in the age of Paranoia - a great manifesto from Quinn Norton to her daughter.

Wed Dec 2nd

%a(href="http://haml-lang.com")
  %img(src="/images/haml.png")
— Just in case you missed it: HAML’s sexy new syntax, since v2.2. If you’re a HAML user I highly suggest perusing the HAML CHANGELOG for other new gems.

Wed Dec 2nd

There are three questions you have when you’re hiring a programmer (or anyone, for that matter): Are they smart? Can they get stuff done? Can you work with them? Someone who’s smart but doesn’t get stuff done should be your friend, not your employee. You can talk your problems over with them while they procrastinate on their actual job. Someone who gets stuff done but isn’t smart is inefficient: non-smart people get stuff done by doing it the hard way and working with them is slow and frustrating. Someone you can’t work with, you can’t work with.

Sun Nov 8th

I think Ruby is probably the best language because it has a cool name and my birthstone is the ruby. Perl used to be my favorite because I could say, “I’m programming in Perl. Yes, that’s the language I’m using… Perl.” My friends would comment on how that Pearl was a cool name for a language. I would then correct them and with a smug little dismissive laugh say, “No, no. You don’t understand. Its PERL. Its an acronym.” But now the more I think about it, Programming Python, by O’Reilly has a cool-ass snake on its cover. While I’m on the subway reading it on the way to work, I hope people will notice the book, the snake and think, “Now THAT guy is learning something cool.” I also like the Monty connection. ;-)
— A man named Christopher gives the most sensible comment on Perl vs. Python vs. Ruby

Thu Oct 29th

It’s the tie to go along with jQuery’s tux.

Scrapbook

toolmantim

I’m Tim Lucas, a user experience developer and maker of things.

I occasionally write, snap photos, present on various technical topics, tweet my going-ons, share teh codes and post tidbits to this scrapbook.

Work with me via Agency Rainford, or find my email on toolmantim.com and say hello.

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