They tell that you’re crazy. That there’s no such thing. That you’ve been watching too many scifi horror movies. You couldn’t have seen such a creature skittering across the floor. They don’t exist. You couldn’t have seen such a thing eviscerate that man. Impossible. They assign an investigator to the case just the same. (After […]
Pay Only for Drugs That Help You An editorial in the New York Times by Samuel D. Waksal. There are some interesting ideas in there, some of which I even agree with. There is something very compelling about saying (w/r/t/ healthcare) "we should only pay when we get results". But it's also a slippery slope. […]
When you read Susan Cain’s Quiet, you must remind yourself of a few things: This not introverts versus extroverts; 1 she is not villainizing extroverts; she is not out to glorify introverts and introversion; and if it seems like she is making unsubtle generalizations, it’s because she has targeted a lay audience. With this in […]
Rails went off the rails “does Netflix run on Clojure?” a Compass convert “Search Term Haiku” is a series wherein I examine this site’s log files and construct one or more haiku poems from search terms and phrases that led visitors to the site. Where possible, I attempt to keep the search phrases intact. However, […]
The Sun is Setting on Rails-style MVC Frameworks At caines.ca/blog. Still digesting this one (and its B- comment thread). Short version of immediate gut response: aspects of MVC are bogus (e.g., some of the "magic", implementation details that throw "wrong" HTTP responses [if you want to be that pedantic]), but it seems to me like […]
Earlier this week, Jeremiah Tolbert (@jeremiahtolbert) started a Tumblr called “Write Me a Story About This” wherein he posts images that should provide good seeds for interesting little short stories. I’ve decided to play along; I want to do a flash fiction piece for each image that he posts, and hope that I don’t have […]
RE: Rails Went Off The Rails: Why I’m Rebuilding Archaeopteryx In CoffeeScript …by Giles Bowkett (@gilesgoatboy); via @al3x. I read this and did a lot of head-nodding, but there was something about it that did not sit right with me. And not just the inflammatory rhetoric. 1 There was something else… Fortunately, Reginald Braithwaite summarized […]
Valid JavaScript variable names Mathias Bynens going deep on the sometimes confusing world of JavaScript variable names. (tagged: javascript ) David Foster Wallace: The Big, Uncut Interview (2003) At Open Culture (via @fogus) (tagged: video culture interview politics literature David Foster Wallace ) Is Device-Friendly Development a Responsibility? Some musings from local dev Mike Fowler […]
Like children, living under your parents’ roof, but grown. Fully grown. But bouncing off the walls in this just-moved-into house. The house itself is largely long and straight, with many one-or-two-steps up or down into adjacent rooms, like it has been added onto haphazardly, and repeatedly. The house is empty except for you and your […]
If you are acquainted with China Miéville’s work, there will not be too many surprises for you when you read this novel. Which is not to imply that it is predictable or formulaic, but that it quintessentially one of his novels. It’s all there: the weird landscapes that are intimately, almost erotically detailed; how the […]