Recursive make

Read this awesome paper recently:  Recursive Make Considered Harmful.  it is suprising how often we carry broken things deeply into our lives in the name of "folk knowledge".

If first principles were more often reflected upon, we will create a more functional world. Things like vaastu and assorted indian rituals come to mind :)....

End to end arguments

Came across this design paper recently and it is a great read http://dl.acm.org/citation.cfm?id=357402

Art of unix programming

Came across this book recently  and it is totally worth a read! Unix would have made much more sense to me had I read this in college :)

http://catb.org/~esr/writings/taoup/

The Art of Unix Programming attempts to capture the engineering wisdom and philosophy of the Unix community as it's applied today — not merely as it has been written down in the past, but as a living "special transmission, outside the scriptures" passed from guru to guru. Accordingly, the book doesn't focus so much on "what" as on "why", showing the connection between Unix philosophy and practice through case studies in widely available open-source software.

The long tail

A very good read: The long tail

Site Build It

I was looking for making a website for my wife's clinic and stumbled upon something very interesting: SBI. These guys seem make it really easy to setup a good website and take away all the technical pain of running a small business website (hosting, dns registration, stats, search engine submissions, easy design and editing etc. etc...).

But what impressed me was that they have tools and information on what needs to happen *before* u choose your niche.

If you are thinking of puttin up a website, you should check it out: Site Build It

Investing...

Vipul is one of those few rare souls in my friend circle who actually have a plan, understand what they are doing and actually do it in the area of investing.
And he is blogging now. For some fun stuff : http://jebau.blogspot.com/

River side school

We need more schools like this: http://www.schoolriverside.com/

Can software 'compose' music?

Sample music included in the article:
http://www.miller-mccune.com/culture-society/triumph-of-the-cyborg-composer-850

Innovation

It is a very common thing in everyday conversation to attribute success or failure of tech companies to "ability to innovate". Scott Berkun takes a direct shot at this "easy reasoning" with a good article : 'Good' Beats 'Innovative' Nearly Every Time

E-Toys

Was directed to Alan Kay's work from some blog/book and that eventually led me to squeak and E-Toys. It is a great piece of software - both from the vision and implementation angles. You owe it to yourself to try it out for your kids/for the kid in yourself :)

It may take a little while at first, but once you have figured out a basic example, rest all flows with very little additional effort - an important sign of a of a well designed product/framework.

Main site: Squeak Land

Good article on api design.

My bro. forwarded this and it was a great read: API Design Matters .

From within, without trailer...

Dr Luc and Co are coming up with a movie on autism and homeopathy. Though I know of no one in my circle who has an autistic child, this made quite an impression on me.

Watch the trailer here.

Climate change

Pavlina has a great analysis on Climate Change that is worth reading.

....
A 2006 United Nations report found that the meat industry produces more greenhouse gases than all the SUVs, cars, trucks, planes, and ships in the world combined. If we’re going to combat global warming, doesn’t it make sense to work on the #1 source of greenhouse gas emissions? Shouldn’t we strike at the root of the problem instead of just hacking at the branches?
...

What's your name?

One thing I have observed as my daughter grows up is the number of times kids are subjected to the same questions like
"what is your name?", "what color is this?" "what is your father's name?"

I always thought that kids are a patient lot till my daughter flipped the bozo bit and started answering such questions with meaningless words like kumme, gumme (accompanied by laughter :) )!!

Another side effect is that she repeats whatever question she has tens of times thinking that its the way things work :)!

Unschooling

Got this through a forward, found it interesting (a little ra ra):

http://blogs.salon.com/0002007/2009/04/25.html

A good paper on design

It is not unusual for us to keep relearning the same thing over and over again in our industry. A friend pointed me to this "old paper" which documents design learnings across many projects. I found it to be a great (but slow) read.

Hints for Computer System Design

Story of stuff

An interesting video that got forwarded to me. Definitely worth 20 minutes of your time:

http://www.storyofstuff.com

Shortly after the World War 2, these guys were figuring out how to ramp up the [U.S.] economy. Retailing analyst Victor Lebow articulated the solution that has become the norm for the whole system. He said: “Our enormously productive economy . . . demands that we make consumption our way of life, that we convert the buying and use of goods into rituals, that we seek our spiritual satisfaction, our ego satisfaction, in consumption . . . we need things consumed, burned up, replaced and discarded at an ever-accelerating rate.”
And President Eisenhower’s Council of Economic Advisors Chairman said that “The American economy’s ultimate purpose is to produce more consumer goods.”

MORE CONSUMER GOODS??? Our [economy’s] ultimate purpose? Not provide health care, or education, or safe transportation, or sustainability or justice? Consumer goods?
...

Keyboard stuff..

Was trying to play a song from notes (piyu bole) and since it seemed too fast for such a slow song, I looked up on the web to see how people actually play that song. Found an amazing
version: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=atAzfF0M44s

Not beginner's stuff :).

Learning something new.

Looking at my wife churn out pleasant music on a keyboard with barely 2 weeks of classes, I wonder why I never invested any time in any of the creative fields (painting, sketching, music, photography...).

I think the basic issues for me are around

1. Getting out of the comfort zone. The existing mental pathways are easier to go along with.
2. Trying to look for "productive output".
3. A belief that any new field requires a huge amount of practice and dedication.

Due to this I always ended up spending my free time on the next "scripting language" or "programming model" :). So taking a different view point and approach, I am going to:

1. Focus on the joy of learning/exploring something new.
2. Commit a fixed time (say 30hours) to a given field and see where it goes.

At the end of it if I can enjoy/appreciate music or photography more, it would be more than worth it. RK's tip is a very practical fallback :)

Windows workflow

Looking at the samples and having some vague discussions at work about workflows got me a little irritated and frustrated about whats going on.

Luckily someone pointed me to this book: "Essential Workflow" and I must say that it is one well written book. It explains the "concepts" behind it instead of dealing with some vague design surface or cooked up examples. Basically WWF is a 'programming model' for long running resumable programs.

With fundas in mind it is much easier to make a call on whether WF is a fit for a given context.

You can find a sample chapter here: Sample Chapter