Scree

noun : an accumulation of loose stones or rocky debris lying on a slope or at the base of a hill or cliff.

Tipping must die →

Published August 11, 2013  ·  All posts on Aug 11  ·  

If there’s no tipping, then how will the servers be motivated to do a good job?

When you step back and think about this for a second, it’s actually kind of hilarious. The person asking this question would have a full-time job as a software developer, or lawyer, or journalist, or doctor, always working to a pay rate that was negotiated ahead of time. We would never suggest that a code jockey or surgeon would be motivated to do better work by the thought that their clients, if pleased with the service, might toss in a few extra dollars.

~ Jay Porter from, «http://jayporter.com/dispatches/observations-from-a-tipless-restaurant-part-3/»

Hear! Hear! You should go read that whole series by Porter.

Then you should start talking about how we should include the cost of providing service in the price of the menu items, or include a line-item percentage service charge on the bill. Pay EVERYONE who works in the restaurant a fair, living wage.

ɕ

Network Theory applied to altitude sickness →

Published August 10, 2013  ·  All posts on Aug 10

They then mapped out the correlations between the various symptoms, creating a network. An increasingly standard tool in network theory these days is cluster detection–the ability to spot parts of a network that are more strongly linked together than others.

~ «http://www.technologyreview.com/view/512986/network-theory-approach-reveals-altitude-sickness-to-be-two-different-diseases/»

Acute mountain sickness (AMS) is a common problem among visitors at high altitude, and may progress to life-threatening pulmonary and cerebral oedema in a minority of cases. … These results challenge the accepted paradigm that AMS is a single disease process and describe at least two distinct syndromes following acute ascent to high altitude. This approach to analysing symptom patterns has potential utility in other clinical syndromes.

~ [1303.6525] Network analysis reveals distinct clinical syndromes underlying acute mountain sickness

ɕ

The obstacle is the path →

Published August 9, 2013  ·  All posts on Aug 9  ·  

The examples can go on forever, but the principle becomes clear: when there’s an obstacle, don’t go around it. Don’t run from it. Go into it. Work with it. Explore it. Learn how to be with it and deal with it, and you’ll have a skill for life.

And what’s more: you will no longer be limited by obstacles in your path.

~ Leo Babauta from, The Obstacle is the Path – Zen Habits Website

Elsewhere, this is 4uzeoa1. — slipbox

ɕ

Organizational skills for the win →

Published August 7, 2013  ·  All posts on Aug 7

When it comes to writing code, the number one most important skill is how to keep a tangle of features from collapsing under the weight of its own complexity. … [T]here’s always lots of state to keep track of, rearranging of values, handling special cases, and carefully working out how all the pieces of a system interact. To a great extent the act of coding is one of organization. Refactoring. Simplifying. Figuring out how to remove extraneous manipulations here and there.

~ James Hague from, Organizational Skills Beat Algorithmic Wizardry

Elsewhere, this is 4udaaa1. — slipbox

ɕ

It is use cases all the way down →

Published August 6, 2013  ·  All posts on Aug 6  ·  

The center of your application is not the database. Nor is it one or more of the frameworks you may be using. The center of your application are the use cases of your application.

~ Bob Martin from, Clean Coder Blog

Elsewhere, this is 4utiue3. — slipbox

What it means to be mortal →

Published August 5, 2013  ·  All posts on Aug 5

We, like all living things, want to live on — we want to project ourselves into the future, we have this will to live. And yet, unlike other living things, we have to live in a knowledge that this will is going to be thwarted, that we’re going to die. And so we might have to live with this sense of personal apocalypse — the worst thing that could possibly happen, will. This is what it means to be mortal.

~ Maria Popova from, The Philosophy of Immortality – The Marginalian

Elsewhere, this is 4ubaie7. — slipbox

ɕ

Work mind and vacation mind →

Published August 4, 2013  ·  All posts on Aug 4

They are two different things, and yet, what if we could have the vacation mind while working? We’d have to toss out the lazing around and the margaritas, but the mindset could be the same. The result would be a saner way of living, where we aren’t “working for the weekend” or looking forward to the little vacation time we have, but instead are happier throughout the week.

~ Leo Babauta from, The Practice of Work Mind & Vacation Mind, Simultaneously – Zen Habits Website

Elsewhere, this is 4uzeze1. — slipbox

ɕ

Craftsmanship →

Published August 2, 2013  ·  All posts on Aug 2

As aspiring Software Craftsmen we are raising the bar of professional software development by practicing it and helping others learn the craft. Through this work we have come to value…

~ Manifesto for Software Craftsmanship from, http://manifesto.softwarecraftsmanship.org

Over time, the ideal of craftsmanship was cordoned off to just the technical arts. Physicians and legislators no longer thought of themselves as craftsmen, but as philosophers and natural scientists who were more concerned with the theoretical as opposed to the practical. Such a shift is a shame, for the principles of craftsmanship truly do apply to every man, whether he makes furniture or crunches numbers.

~ Brett McKay from, Applying the Ethos of the Craftsman to Our Everyday Lives | The Art of Manliness

Elsewhere, this is 4uaome1. — slipbox

Try to ask a doctor or any engineer to do a crappy job in order to reduce costs. Engineers can change product’s materials to cheaper ones, they can change product’s final characteristics, but they don’t change their level of attention and their process of doing things the way they think it’s right. Doctors can perform simpler or different procedures by patient request, impacting somehow on the final result, but the attention, caring and cleanliness will be the same.

~ Caio Fernando Bertoldi Paes de Andrade from, Perception that high quality equals Rolls Royce

Elsewhere, this is 4ugodo1. — slipbox

ɕ

6th gen prog lang →

Published July 31, 2013  ·  All posts on Jul 31  ·  ,

6th gen prog lang: when you yell to a co-worker, “yo! email me that binary.”

ɕ

Sonder →

Published July 29, 2013  ·  All posts on Jul 29  ·  

The Dictionary of Obscure Sorrows — sonder
Urban Dictionary: sonder
sonder – Wiktionary, the free dictionary

The realization that each random passerby is living a life as vivid and complex as your own — populated with their own ambitions, friends, routines, worries and inherited craziness — an epic story that continues invisibly around you like an anthill sprawling deep underground, with elaborate passageways to thousands of other lives that you’ll never know existed, in which you might appear only once, as an extra sipping coffee in the background, as a blur of traffic passing on the highway, as a lighted window at dusk.

ɕ