About time. And product. And being more deliberate.
I’ve ignored Rails Tests for too long. In fact, I’ve skipped over Test chapter in Agile Web Development with Rails in both the first and second editions. After fighting with the same bug over and over again, I knew now was the time for tests. On the surface, tests seemed very un-DRY1 – like I’m …
Continue reading “Framing Rails Tests: Tests are Requirements”
I’ve yet to perceive the dancer spinning counter-clockwise. RIGHT BRAIN FUNCTIONS uses feeling “big picture” oriented imagination rules symbols and images present and future philosophy & religion can “get it” (i.e. meaning) believes appreciates spatial perception knows object function fantasy based presents possibilities impetuous risk taking
Graeme pointed me to FeedHub – another next generation feed filtering service. On first glance, it reads like FeedRinse – import a bunch of feeds, apply some filters, drop the resulting aggregated feed into your regular reader. The difference, FeedRinse’s filters are manual and FeedHub’s are automated. My first hiccup with the FeedHub service: Registration. …
Continue reading “FeedHub: HAL, er MAPE, Filters Your Feeds”
If the kitchen renovation has told me 1 thing it’s: when you empty one room in your house, every room in your house gets more cluttered. While I anxiously await the finished kitchen so the rest of the house can get back in order, I’ll be tracking Erica Mauter’s Cut the Fluff 30-Day Challenge: “Every …
There are 2 major visual field distrations; inside the monitor, outside the monitor. First, inside the monitor: Since 1997, my desktop background has been “Solid Gray Medium”. I’ve played with other shades of gray, but always found SGM to be the most neutral, keeping the focus on the applications I’m working in and making screenshots …
Continue reading “Distraction Elimination Week: Day 4: Visual Field”
An email comes from you mom, your sister, your BFF. Does it matter what the subject line says? No, you open it right up. I suspect there are some commercial organizations you feel the same about. In my house, it’s DailyCandy, BabyCenter, Joyent, Amazon, our insurance agent, accountant, etc. Any one of those organizations could …
Continue reading “Email Subjects are Irrelevant, Only Sender Matters”
There’s a best practice in podcast-o-land: Don’t go public with your podcast until at least episode 6. Like too many local publication moves in this area – they’re far too focused on ad-supported page views to let the technology work for them – technology like RSS and downloadable files. At best what the City Pages …
Continue reading “City Pages – Exception that Proves the Rule”
I normally have around 10 different applications open and running at any given time – a persistent set of communications apps (Adium, Mail.app, SpamSieve), a couple browsers (Safari, Camino), and the 2-4 apps necessary for whatever I’m doing at the time. Adium’s Preferences really let you dial it’s presence down. In Advanced > Contact List …
Continue reading “Distraction Elimination Week: Day 3: Applications”
The human eye is extremely sensitive to changes in the visual field – especially in the periphery. The OS X Finder places quite a few distractions – changing things unrelated to the task at hand – in the edges of the screen. Let’s eliminate them. Start by opening up System Preferences: Dock: Check “Automatically hide …
Continue reading “Distraction Elimination Week: Day 2: OS X Finder”
“The amount of time our son is being required to spend memorizing whether Bismarck is the capital of North or South Dakota will dwarf the total amount of time he would spend in his lifteime looking it up at Google. This is information that adds nothing to this comprehension of the world. ” – David …