Screw Star Wars! Make way for Vogon poetry!
Groupware Bad
Truer words (about software development) were never spoken. Typical of jwz to say something so profound and so utterly ignored by 99% of the sw-devs/sw-marketers in the world, to their peril.
Groupware Bad
If you want to do something that’s going to change the world, build software that people want to use instead of software that managers want to buy.
Swiss Memory USB
A post inspired by my friend Mary:
ThinkGeek has this Swiss Memory USB module/knife geek-thingy. Mary apparently saw it at some point and sends me this email saying she doesn’t know why it would remind her of me *wink*. Hmm… me either. (Not.)
Here’s what I said to her about the Swiss Memory USB geek-thingy:
I’ve seen this item before and it’s not quite geeky enough. I mean, really, what self-respecting geek walks around with less than a gigabyte of pocket-sized storage in a single device? ;->
Seriously though, I’ve been looking at these type toys for quite a while and can’t see anything less than 1GB being useful. Now that 1GB devices are available, I can’t think of anything I’d really care to use it for. That’s kinda like Willy Wonka being indifferent to chocolate and not knowing why, heh.
Whew, upgrade to WP1.5 completed!
A few minor plug-in related things to finish up, but mostly it’s done… four hours later. Not bad, I guess, considering all the plugins and other customizations I have installed. Not a lot of swearing at the computer either which is a pretty good measure of degree of difficulty/annoyance in the process. :) Of course, if you take WordPress’ word for it, it’s a 5-minute deal — sure, if you’re using nothing but what comes in the “box”, as it were, and, really, how many people are doing that? I know of a few; and by a few I mean “can count on one hand.”
Anyway, if ya notice anything clearly broken please post a comment on this article (hopefully SpamKarma will let you).
Speaking of comment spam: I apologize ahead of time but I’ve had to make it a requirement that all comment posters register and be logged-in in order for a comment post to be accepted. I thought the spamming was bad before but in the last three days there’s been so much (attempted) comment-spam posting that the machine is overall much slower to respond to anything. :(
Spiral learning
Spirals show up everywhere from fractals to nautilus shells. Software developers know the spiral as iterative development–a model in stark (positive) contrast to the old linear waterfall model.
One huge problem with the waterfall model is that in its traditional form, it’s not based in reality. It assumes that it’s entirely possible for each stage to be done perfectly (and permanently) and then thrown over the fence (or cubicle wall) to the next group in the system. Nice theory, that. The guys doing the requirements finish their job and then, hey, they might as well all go on vacation. Their work is done. And so on down the line until the product is delivered to the users. The name itself (waterfall) describes the key limiting characteristic of the waterfall model–it’s one way only. Water doesn’t go back up.
User experience designers (especially with games) often use a spiral model to keep cycling the user through stages of interest/motivation, engagement, and payoff (I described the user experience spiral headrush.typepad.com…
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