“A great leap in the dark” — Thomas Hobbs
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Turning Bold into Strong with Regex & NotePad++
I’ve been hand coding a site and I was a little lazy. Instead in using the strong tag to make text look bold I used the bold tag. Ok, that might not be a big deal to you but to some HTML fanatics the difference between <b>Hi There</b> and <strong>Hi There</strong> is ground for excommunication…
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Android SDK Compatibility with Eclipse and JDK
I recently switched my development workstation from a MacBook Pro to a Windows desktop PC. Yeah, I know, I’m going against the trends but it’s a sweet machine I assembled myself based on recommendations from Ash. Immediately I ran into compatibility problems with Google’s Android SDK and the current versions of Eclipse (Helios) and the…
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Communication Flavors
It’s not even funny how human networks and computer networks exhibit the same behaviors. I know we’re all patiently waiting for the singularity, for the event where computer networks become sentient and life as we know it changes forever. But given how the current example of networked sentient beings behave I fear that switching platforms…
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Volunteer Scrum Master Handbook
I have to disclose upfront that I am more of an Agile guy than a Scrum guy. Which is to say I feel more at home discussing Agile in general than Scrum in particular. (I’m not even sure how to capitalize it–SCRUM or scrum?) Over the years I’ve made my peace with Scrum and as…
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Agile Fables
I love a good fable. The kind that Aesop used to write with animals acting out human morality tales. Of course, if you do the research, you quickly find out that Aesop didn’t write most (if any of the fables) we ascribe to him and like Shakespeare he probably never existed. I don’t let reality…
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Managing the De-Motivated
It still amazes me how a process created by engineers for engineers can make so many engineers so unhappy. I’ve seen all kinds of responses to Agile from engineers. Some are immediately enthusiastic. Others are cautiously optimistic. Many are amused and cynical. And some are down right hostile. Over time the responses polarize and the…
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In Search of the Motivated
I’m doing a lot of hiring right now. So much that I’ve had to form a hiring scrum and treat it like an engineering project. The scrum is doing a great job. We now have a systematic way to write job descriptions, assign interviewers, evaluate resumes, perform phone screens, and conduct interviews. All this to…
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Human sacrifice, dogs and cats living together… mass hysteria!
What can we learn from Dr. Peter Venkman about the Agile development process? It’s true that Venkman was the less technical member of his team. Clearly Dr. Egon Spengler was the blue-sky researcher while Dr. Ray Stantz was the practical engineer. But Venkman brought a lot to the table: Charm, business acumen, and the…
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Improving Your Whuffie with Agile
Virtual currency like Cory Doctorow’s concept of Whuffie will probably replace real money in the next 100 years. Maybe sooner with the way our current economic crisis is going. Once all the hard currency in the world is spent it’s Gresham’s law FTW! You can get a head start by using Agile development principles to…
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The Shorter Timescale
I’m reading a very scary book right now: Heidegger and a Hippo Walk Through Those Pearly Gates. It’s a funny and informative look at how philosophers and religious thinkers deal with death. I don’t want to be a spoiler but the basic message of the book is that most people live in denial of their…
Got any book recommendations?