Author Archive
Long Live Safari Books Online
My Safari Books Online subscription just came up for renewal, and I thought it was worth a quick mention here. There are only a few products and/or services that are so good they make me happy to part with my money, but Safari is one of those. I am a technical books junkie. I used [...]
Facebook Platform
I just saw Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg’s keynote address from the Facebook developer conference. They have just announced a radical new platform for deploying social network applications, and I believe they are poised to take over the world. I have been fascinated by the implications of online social networks since Friendster hit the scene. Friendster [...]
Markdown 2 Confluence
I seriously heart Markdown, but on several of my projects, we use Confluence for documentation etc. Here is a script I wrote to convert from Markdown to Confluence markup: #!/bin/sh # Takes standard input in Markdown format and converts it to Confluence wiki format # Usage: # markdown2confluence.sh < markdown-file > confluence-file umask 077 TEMP1=/tmp/markdown2html.$$ [...]
Waltzing with Bears
Lately, I’ve been re-reading Waltzing with Bears. Remember that old jingle, “I’d like to buy the world a Coke™?” Well I’d like to buy the world an heirloom box set of “Waltzing with Bears” and Lister and DeMarco’s other masterpiece, Peopleware. These slender volumes both put the torch to all the familiar idiocies taking place [...]
Holy Zeitgeist, Batman!
Lance’s post about OpenID was the first time I’d ever heard of it (I should be reading TechCrunch, but I haven’t developed the habit yet). Man, how word gets around! Now it seems like I can’t go anywhere without tripping over OpenID. OpenID is one of those Internet Things that has to get big before [...]
Flat Spin #1
I have a Wacom tablet now, so I figure I may as well do something with it. In the spirit of this week’s discussion on the Sakai dev list, I give you the first installment of something I’m tentatively calling “Flat Spin.”
In the Black
I just deposited my first check made payable to Aeroplane Software LLC. Guess what? We’re cashflow positive! I would be super proud, except it was stupid easy. Here’s how much I spent to bootstrap this little runt: LLC filing fee: $308.10 Hays County Professional name certificate: $16.00 Domain name registration: $18.40 Credit union membership fee [...]
Say No to Sheepwalking
Seth Godin has just produced an eloquent summary of why I wanted to go into business for myself. Say no to sheepwalking! I was at a Google conference last month, and I spent some time in a room filled with (pretty newly minuted) Google salesreps. I talked to a few of them for a while [...]
Week Zero
I’m finishing up my zeroth week among the self-employed. Things are good. I have a client, so I don’t have to worry (yet) whether I can continue to put food on the table. On the other hand, all of the basic things you have to take care of to run a business are pretty overwhelming. [...]
Marketing: Dirty Word?
Among programmers, marketing is a dirty word. Often, you will find us apologizing for even uttering it. I used to feel this way, too. I have changed my mind, having figured out that reality is subtler than I imagined. In the programmer’s world view, marketing is synonymous with lying. Those of us in the software [...]