Category: Uncategorized

I need to read more of Johanna Rothman’s product development blog. I forget who pointed me to one of her posts in the first place, but I’ve certainly found her point of view clear and appropriate for my job. I just found this older post, on the value of short iterations, and that rang the bell. Two quotes:

Short iterations are fun. Everyone gets to make progress and cross things off their list.

One week is probably too small. Six weeks is probably too long. Think about how much work you’re willing to throw out if it’s wrong, and that’s the right size of your iteration.

I need to segment the big project I’m trying to corral at work using some of this thinking.

Check out this two minute long ad for a Honda stationwagon. The funny part is that I just watched it and I guess I remember, barely, that it’s an Accord. Here are some details about how it was made, in a Daily Telegraph (UK) article. 606 takes. Ouch. [via Scoble]

Here’s the first book about Napster. I’m surprised it took this long to come out, honestly. I was wondering if John Borland would write such a book. I’ll have to check in with my friend Rich and learn what he thinks of this telling of the tale, since Rich was there for much of it. I’m not sure I’ll read this book, except to scan for people I know… I’ll have to borrow a copy somewhere.

Ten years ago, I would have been sitting in the six seat for H in this race (scroll down to the April 26th results). I honestly can’t remember whether or not we won 10 years ago, although I think my overall history at HYPs was not strong in my three years of the race… Sprints usually went better. I know I was stroking the eight when we lost at Y in 1991… after that race I was moved to the six seat. Ten years ago, in 1993… I don’t remember where it was (!), but I don’t think we won. In 1994, on the Charles, I can still remember the P coxswain saying “I’ve got John Roberts” somewhere in the last 500m. Yes, you’re not supposed to hear these things, but your name catches your ear even with your head in the boat. We didn’t win that race, as far as I can remember. Why is it hard to remember these races?

All my active energy is in the mornings. But my free time is in the evenings. Seems like a problem, doesn’t it?

In my adolescence, I read many of Anne McCaffrey’s books, especially the Pern books, which are about a world where dragons and dragonriders are real (eventually explained as genetically bred from small lizards… whatever!). The last of the three books I picked up at the library a few weeks ago is the newest Pern book, The Skies of Pern, published in 2001. I’m maybe halfway in, and it’s familiar, but I’ve clearly missed a few books along the way. Now there are dolphins and references to a computer which no longer works but passed along various technologies to the peoples of Pern. Just writing that makes it sound pretty nutty. It is, but it’s coherent if you know the characters… which I almost do, though I’m stretching. I don’t think I’ll be going back to read the ones I missed anytime soon.

By the way, I liked the Patrick O’Brian biography, although it was very factual and dry, just following the chronology of his life in a rote manner. It did convince me to go out and buy the next one in the series, Desolation Island. That’s only #5 of 20, so I have a long way to go.

Just replied to an email from a colleague from my college days, and it made me think about getting to know people in new contexts. I use the word colleague, but he was a friend, though never very close. We knew each other at the boathouse, without spending much time together for other reasons. But he’s in San Francisco now, and I’m looking forward to seeing if a shared experience 10 (!) years in the past helps connect the dots now. In a meeting at work today, my co-worker was surprised to be introduced to someone he knew in college. This person worked for another company we’re talking to, and the context was so different (meeting under NDA vs. college frat party), it really got us talking afterwards. How much do people grow up or change? Speaking for myself, well, I don’t know. What about you?

Steve Yelvington explains why the move to Cascading Style Sheets is a business decision, not a technical/standards decision. …if all things were equal, all sites should be CSS2-compliant. But all things aren’t equal. He also describes the business needs of most news sites as ‘presentational integrity’ which he defines as knowing where content AND ads will show up. He’s spot on. He expects that Morris Digital Works, his employer, will eventually decide to leave the legacy browsers behind. We’re going to do the same over the next year or so at my employer… but it’s not a real goal, just a by-product of other projects. I stole a ‘theme’ for this site that employs CSS, but I’m not making any bones about understanding CSS at the level that I understand ‘normal’ markup (read, HTML 4.0).

The San Francisco Public Library website is oh-so-slow. I’m trying to find out if the local branch, or any branch, has a copy of Desolation Island by Patrick O’Brian (I’m almost done with the biography). But in both Safari and IE 5.2.2 on MacOS X, the results are empty and slow. I haven’t used the library website for many months (a year?), but I don’t remember it being this poor. Interface looks the same, so I wasn’t expecting better or worse, necessarily. Copyright on the pages for the software is 1999, which may say it all.

The Lafayette Project is still under wraps, but MegNut and two other early bloggers are the founders, and at least in what little they say, I think they are tackling a real problem. That problem is “We want to help readers browse weblogs when they *don’t* know what they’re looking for.” (The entire admittedly vague explanation.) This problem is what I meant when I wrote

One challenge to part of Chris Anderson’s quote… “you fire the information out there, and interested people will find it.” I don’t believe it will always be found. In fact, I think that’s blogging’s greatest weakness — it’s not good at opening up to non-bloggers. (full post)