Chris Whitmore · Notes

Links

  • May 27 2011 - Timeline tools ...
    My memory is awful, it really is. I maintain a private personal blog which I use for capturing extremely short pieces of content that I want tagged and timestamped. Works well for those random thoughts that are maybe not suitable for sharing but which I want to capture nonetheless. Anyway, I'm looking for sometime similar to aid my memory at work and have been considering something more along the lines of a timeline of sorts where I can jot down major company moments, hires etc in a format that's easy to explore and I came across the following online timeline makers which all seem to fit the mold of what I need....



    http://www.timetoast.com

    http://timerime.com

    http://www.preceden.com/

    http://www.allofme.com/

    http://www.xtimeline.com

    Once I actually decide which one to go with I'll report back. Data portability will be important for me as I'll need to invest quite a bit of time into putting it together and would hate to lose it into the cloud. Easy of entry is probably second highest and visuals are third.

    Also check out http://moreofit.com, great tool for finding competing tools/solutions once you have found one you like. 
  • Sep 21 2010 - Engineering Management (link) ...

    Great article(s) on some of the management principles in the engineering group at Facebook from Yishan Wong who was at Facebook through some very interesting growth times. I found reading this to be inspirational so posting for posterity…

    http://algeri-wong.com/yishan/engineering-management.html

  • Sep 2 2009 - hanselman tools 2009!! ...

    Saw this on reddit tonight, hanselman has updates his legendary tools list for 2009. So what was going to be an evening of actual coding is slowing turning into an evening of trying out cool new tools that have made his list.  (I’m writing this blog post in windows Live Writer after seeing it in the list)

  • Sep 1 2009 - sometimes it's helpful to think about what NOT to do ...

    Came across this list of “anti-patterns” on wikipedia tonight. I’m tempted just to copy and paste the contents here but that would make me feel dirty.

    Definitely a good list though and something worth reminding ourselves of every once in a while when thinking about the systems we build.

    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anti-pattern

  • Aug 7 2009 - the rise and fall of myspace (and twitter) ...

    This is a great post on how myspace rose and fall and how the same thing applies to Twitter (and I’d imagine Facebook as well) Some really good thoughts. Getting popular before you have your mission can forever trap you into that identity vacuum where popularity is everything.

    http://codybrown.name/2009/08/06/myspace-is-to-facebook-as-twitter-is-to-______/

    A good read, and the level of blogging I’d like to work towards (more pictures!).

  • Jul 23 2009 - manager schedule vs maker schedule ...

    Popular comp-sci essayist and lisp hacker extraordinaire Paul Graham recently posted this article on the difference between a manager’s schedule and a maker’s schedule. This is really inline with my own views on this issue and really sums up a big problem we have where I work with meetings being scheduled with the makers and the impact that has. We’ve had tons of discussions around the cost of mental context switching, but even that’s an understatement of the problem…

    Great work, it’s always helpful hearing echoes of these types of thoughts beyond my own everyday sphere. Who knows maybe I can use to add some weight to my arguments.

    http://paulgraham.com/makersschedule.html

  • Dec 12 2008 - ajax for mac lovers ...
    Another Ajax Framework :  (or rather, an Application Framework)
    http://cappuccino.org/
    http://cappuccino.org/learn/

     Demo app built using it:
    http://280slides.com/
     
    And a teaser for all those interface builder lovers out there : 
    I came across this in reader this morning and was totally  blown away by how well the 280 slides application  worked. It's really impressive... on non IE browsers. I sent the link to a co-worker to check out and he basically dismissed it as too slow and unresponsive, "typical web app". It took a minute or two to realize the browser was the problem at which point I launched the app in IE 8 Beta (IE 8!) and it performed terribly.It looked terrible, it was jerky and generally just a big let down after the speed of Chrome. 






    Whatever the technical reasons are, it sucks. Let's hope the new generation of javascript engines (FF3.1 and Chrome) are able to push Microsoft into stepping up. I'm excited about Flex and Silverlight and JavaFX but really I want to believe we can keep pushing the browser without the plugin. 


  • Sep 3 2008 - From Chrome with Love ...

    A million bloggers all posting on the same topic, why shouldn’t I join in. The Google chrome team has got to be enjoying themselves right now. I read the comic yesterday and really enjoyed it. Seeing a company I can’t help but admire sit down and rethink the browser in so thorough of a manner is inspiring. Even just the QA involved is pretty damn impressive.

    I’ve been using the chrome browser for a day now and have to same I’m pretty happy with it. I can already feel a need for some of the firefox extensions that I rely on so heavily, but at the same time I feel more productive and less distracted in this browser than I do in firefox. It’s FAST, really fast on my machine at work. I can’t wait until this is available for my mac.

    I really enjoyed this article from John Siracusa, it sums up nicely what I find so inspiring about this and points out the real motivation for Google to create yet another browser.

    http://arstechnica.com/staff/fatbits.ars/2008/09/02/straight-out-of-compton

    (I’m almost regretting my recent commitment to developing an RIA in silverlight! Where oh where are my first class developer tools for browser based development…. )

  • Jun 14 2008 - Dynamic vs Static... no wait make that DBC! ...

    I need to blog this basically to toss it in my archive. There have been some interesting posts on the religious debate of static vs dynamic languages. I don’t know why I always get drawn into these lines of thought, but I do. (in fact I just added a “versus” label)

    I say drawn in because my underlying philosophy in all of these things is to choose the right tool for the job and leave it at that. I know, hardly original thinking, but despite the mantra and the collective nod that this is true we still get very heated on issues that are not actually at odds with each other.

    I’m NOT arguing that with you. I’m not arguing that with YOU. I’m not ARGUING that with you. I’m not ARGUING that with you Harry! Harry… Harry… Yeah Harry… but can he DO the job. I know he can GET the job but can he do the job?
    Mr. Waturi, Joe vs the Volcano
    Still there is fun to be had in the whole exercise. For the record I tend towards the static languages. Despite my recent fun with Python I have spent the last four years neck deep in C# and really am loving it. Our application uses over 75,000 lines of JavaScript, and every opportunity I have to decrease that number I will take. (Part of my excitement about Silverlight is just not having to write as much JavaScript anymore) I see the power in dynamic, I’ve done some really cool things with JavaScript and I’ve really enjoyed working in Python again…. but I believe there is less of a ceiling for static languages then there is for dynamic in terms of tool set, performance and the ability to handle large projects with large teams.

    Anyway, Mat Podwsocki presents a great summary of the debate with links to a few bloggers here :

    http://codebetter.com/blogs/matthew.podwysocki/archive/2008/05/28/static-versus-dynamic-languages-attack-of-the-clones.aspx


    The original Steve Yegge presentation is here :

    http://steve-yegge.blogspot.com/2008/05/dynamic-languages-strike-back.html


    And the response that I enjoyed the most is here :

    http://codebetter.com/blogs/gregyoung/archive/2008/05/18/revenge-of-the-statically-typed-languages.aspx


    I enjoyed Greg’s response because it just really got me thinking. I honestly know nothing about the design by contract research that’s going on, but it just feels like something that makes sense. I got excited just imagining seeing errors like the ones described showing up in our project at compile time. I believe that if we were using such a system we would see a real improvement in quality. I can see how some would see this as an unnecessary burden on the developer, but these are probably the same crowd not writing their unit tests.

    Design by contract is really a great example of what I mean when I’m thinking about the potential for statically typed languages in tool sets.

  • May 7 2008 - poetic words = exciters of nearby symbols ...


    In GEB Hofstadter mentions the complexity in building an isomorphism between two poems written in two languages.


    “In ordinary language, the task of translation is more straightforward, since to each word or phrase in the original language, there can usually be found a corresponding word or phrase in the new language. By contrast, in a poem of this type, [Jabberwocky, Lewis Carroll] many “words” do not carry ordinary meaning, but act purely as exciters of nearby symbols. However what is nearby in one language may be remote in another."

    Reading that acted as an exciter for my own interest in poetry. I immediately think about some of the poetry I have read which had the most impact for me and it did exactly this. The ability of a good poet to draw scenes by exciting patterns of shared experience and perception is really amazing. Choosing those “words that excite nearby symbols” is a bit of a game and for me what makes trying to write poetry enjoyable. It becomes almost technical or like solving a problem.

    I am often cynical that poetry can be really widely appealing if only because the most poignant and effective poems I’ve read require a familiarity with the writer and a shared experience that allows compact transfer of imagery. Then again, some of the power in the compression and lossy nature of these poetic images is that there is room for interpretation in the eye of the beholder.

    In a field at dusk, trees made short by distance, a line of black on blacker at a horizon pulled ever closer by night…

  • Mar 28 2008 - robots are your friends ...

    OMG, I so love this freaky dog robot thing… we need more like this! Truly exciting the kinds of things that are going on, I can’t wait to have a robot servant.

    Watch these all the way through, in the following order. The second one is f’n hilarious after you watch the first.

    The original