Value is created by doing
Value is created by doing. It’s easy to forget this. A lot of stuff feels like work—commenting on HN, tweeting, reading about other companies’ funding rounds, grabbing coffee, etc [1]—is not...
Where do you find the time for side projects?
You work 40 hours per week. You have family commitments. How can you work on your side-hustle, when you have a limited amount of energy and time?
How I made the print and eBook versions of my web book
It’s a funny feeling to spend nearly six years making something and then finally hold it in your hand. It’s simultaneously, “This is it! ” and “Is this it?” How can it be so small when it feels like such a big piece of my life?
Amusing ourselves to death
This is perhaps one of the most striking passages I have read for a while. It describes the modern world with startling accuracy. In our fear of an increasingly authoritarian rule, we have allowed …
Enough
I recently heard a story about a friend-of-a-friend who had a decent consulting career. Instead of leveraging his skills to make as much money as possible, he took a different approach. Each year he would accept consulting projects starting in January. His skills were in demand and so he was able to work extended…
Developer Anxiety, we’re not alone
CAEP international paid agriculture exchange programs.
Making Your Writing Work Harder For You
Using teaching -- via writing, speaking, and the like -- to sell more software.
Lazy Expert Syndrome
We all eventually suffer from "lazy expert syndrome." The best way to snap out of it and grow is to mentor someone new to your field.
Learning Online
That we’ll learn school-ish things on the internet seems inevitable, but most people seem not to learn very much or very quickly online; Sebastian Thrun admitted as much in a Fast Company interview a few months ago. To figure out how computers actually could help people learn, I spent the summer teaching students and…
How I resurrected my MacBook Pro by putting it in the oven
One late night I opened up my trusty MacBook Pro only to find it turned off. “That’s odd, I never turn it off. Must have ran out of battery or something”. Without a further thought, I pressed the power button and the computer promptly started booting up. Since I had an SSD, this process would only take a few moments……
Let's put the future behind us
To the eternal whine of the superannuated free-range SF geek ("dude, where's my jet pack? Where's my holiday on the moon? Where are my food pills? I thought this was supposed to be the 21st century!") can be added an appendix: "and what about those L5 orbital space colonies the size of Manhattan?"
We are not normal people
Is a product's technical complexity correlated to its revenue potential?
Early Days on Street View
A friend was asking about the early Street View timeline, which prompted a trip down memory lane. It's been at least five years for most of...
How to become a programmer, or the art of Googling well
*Note: Please read all italicized technical words as if they were in a foreign language. The fall semester of my senior year, I was having some serious self-confidence issues. I had slowly come to …
The Builder's High
When I am in a foul mood, I have a surefire way to improve my outlook – I build something. A foul mood is a stubborn beast and it does not give ground easily. I
How To Become Uber Productive While Working For Yourself
Note: I was introduced to this idea somewhere on Hacker News a few weeks back, though I haven't been able to find the exact discussion again [1]. I adapted the original concept to fit my own style, and it's changed the way I approach my work. Uber Productivity - How To…
Organic Lawn Care For the Cheap and Lazy
Lawn care simplified. Have the best looking lawn on your block with less mowing, less watering and less money. The cheapest lawn care AND the laziest lawn care.