When I look around the world, the businesses that dominate don’t seem to be the ones that formed around process as a rallying cry. Rather, they adapted processes to bolster world-changing, market-creating ideas. The world doesn’t need a lean startup, or a developed customer, or a REWORK’d business; it needs solutions to problems, magic where previously there was darkness. How that magic happens is interesting and maybe even useful as a basis for other people running businesses to compare to, but it’s not a recipe for success.

Hacker News from Pinboard (Popular items from Pinboard) http://pinboard.in/popular/

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Unicode is now over 60% of the web from Pinboard (Popular items from Pinboard) http://pinboard.in/popular/

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Library for "flattening" Django templates. from Python Most watched today http://github-trends.oscardelben.com

For some reason, a number of projects are coming out of the closet this week. I mentioned Reuters 'Social Pulse' briefly already (not to self: write post describing how while many Reuters journalists have twitter accounts, no-one is tweeting...). Here is another : topheadlin.es (via Nieman Journalism Lab).

Wait. Is pinterest just tumblr for moms?

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However, Carr did not list the corresponding downside/upside of ebooks, but there are Four Fluidities of the ebook: Fluidity of the page — Can flow to fit any space, any where, any time. Fluidity of the edition — Can be corrected or improved incrementally. Fludity of the item — Can be kept in the cloud at such low cost that it is "free" to keep and constantly slipped to new "movage" platforms. Sense of growth — The never-done-ness of an ebook (at least in the ideal) resembles a life more than a stone, animating us as creators and readers. These are some of the things we gain. Will these fluidities be enough to outweigh the fixities we lose? Finally, both of these character sets, of fixity and the fluidity, are driven by technology, of paper and electrons. Paper favors fixity, electrons favor fluidity. There is nothing to prevent us from inventing another technology of text, a third way, that might be "in-between" paper and electrons, or might have some of the qualities of the first set and some of the second. I am not convinced that these are binary qualities, nor do they have to only be extremes. It may be possible to invent fixed electronic books, or rigid ebooks, or sticky text in between. from Pinboard (Network for voidfiles) http://pinboard.in/u:voidfiles/

version 4.0 of the venerable Python HTML scraping library is vastly improved -- it uses lxml as the backed for speed and has a significantly cleaned-up Pythonic API from Pinboard (Tag: python) http://pinboard.in/u:/

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AppStorm has a good interview with Dustin MacDonald of Acrylic Software. Acrylic makes Pulp and Wallet for Mac and iOS. I always like to read about the creative people behind these indie companies. These people are the life-blood of iOS and OS X.

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UIKit - Modern UI components for the modern web:

submitted by BauerUK[link] [1 comment] from writing http://www.reddit.com/r/writing/

The function of a newsroom in the future is to coordinate the voices of the world to produce a coherent news product. That job will be done in very much the model that Tumblr is doing it. You could have started with a blogging community or you could have started with a news organization, but they’re both heading to the same place.

Kruse: The line in the Twitter bio, though, comes from a belief in the value of the things people tend to say after they think they’re finished. I’ve worked at getting comfortable with what some might consider uncomfortable silences. It’s like the conscious opposite of cutting somebody off. People generally don’t like silence. They’ll fill it. Let them.

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How Designers Can Help Developers: http://t.co/i8VqGXcI (including good Photoshop hygiene!) #ui #ux #design from Pinboard (Network for voidfiles) http://pinboard.in/u:voidfiles/

David Smith:

Interview: David Karp, founder of Tumblr, on realising his dream from Pinboard (Popular items from Pinboard) http://pinboard.in/popular/

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Crawley is Pythonic Crawling / Scraping framework intented to change the way you think about extracting data from the internet. from Pinboard (Tag: python) http://pinboard.in/u:/

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I've read a couple posts here about which is the best VPS. Linode and prgrmr.com looked promising, however, I'm interested in something with unlimited bandwidth and unlimited disk space.

Currently, I'm using Dreamhost but they're giving me the run-around, killing my fcgi processes b/c of max cpu and giving me a line about how their graphs can't keep up (the graphs show my cpu usage at 50% at best). Google shows a lot of others with the same issue and the same bullshit from Dreamhost, so I'd like to take my money elsewhere.

I will be running: One small Node app, one SHOUTcast server, and two WordPress sites, hopefully on Debian.

Anyone with experience out there? Thanks!

"On my first run without technology, I remember noticing the discomfort was gone. I was several miles into the run and feeling fine. I let my mind wander to any thought that entered it and I explored those thoughts without limits. I was aware of the nature surrounding me and I was in tune with my breathing." Distance didn’t matter. Pacing didn’t matter. Alternatively, my experience during the journey mattered. Process mattered. from Pinboard (Network for voidfiles) http://pinboard.in/u:voidfiles/

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Journalists in Digital First newsrooms in Connecticut will earn bonuses as they master important digital skills.

rdiff-backup:

Beautiful Docs - Curated list of awesome project docs:

Skim:

Two things I’ve linked to recently got me thinking. I really dislike most commentary on the web.

Geeky as all get-out, but a creative approach that seems to be working well for him. Includes source code.

from Stellar Interesting's Stellar faves http://stellar.io/interesting

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The Dilemma of Being a Cyborg: from Pinboard (Network for voidfiles) http://pinboard.in/u:voidfiles/

Jampersand! Ampersands from @typekit fonts, by @owltastic: http://t.co/G4uqNIPY from Pinboard (Popular items from Pinboard) http://pinboard.in/popular/

What's Wrong With the Teenage Mind?:

So much can be said in 160 characters. As we've started to look at tailoring FrontlineSMS software for journalists, we've realized just how much potential there is to use text messaging as a news source.

I've been experimenting with my diet a little and considering a Paleo diet. What an amazing and selfish thing, though, for me to even consider or be able to change my diet in a fundamental way. Only someone who isn't worried about their next meal could explore that aspect of their lives without fear or concern.

One doesn't get to have certain luxuries until other more basic needs are met. Here's an interpretation of Maslow's hierarchy of needs:

 

I was talking to a customer a while back and one gentleman was deeply concerned about coding style, curly brace location, best practices in interface design and a bunch of important but arguably not urgent thing. Their unit testing wasn't well organized, their deployment was manual, their build was only marginally verifiable.

Stated differently, he was asking questions like "Am I eating enough veggies rich with Vitamin A" without asking the more fundamental "Do I have food for tonight?"

Now, apply the Hierarchy of Needs to Software and Technical Debt. Here's one, with my thanks to Phil Haack, Jonathan Wanagel, Paul Stovell for their help in brainstorming.

Bragging Rights - Change you are proud of

Paul put it well when he said to me: "The top of Maslow's pyramid is self-actualization...in some ways I think we like to achieve self-actualization through our code, [such that] in years to come, maintenance programmers will stumble upon this architecture and exclaim, 'Wow, Scott was here.'"

Are you writing software or crafting software?When does your craft become art?

This is a noble and certainly attractive goal, but is one that should be attempted only after the basic needs are met.

Refactorable - Change without fear

Is your code/system easy able to be refactored? Can you rearrange it without fear? Does it follow all the conventions and use the appropriate idioms of your chosen language? Do you have automated unit tests?

Maintainable - Change with verification

Is it able to change at all? Are bugs fixable? When you make a change is that change verifiably correct? Any tests at all?

Buildable & Deployable - Change in production

Can you deploy your system as easily as you can build it? Continuous Integration is effectively a must in today's software systems, but moving up in importance is Continuous Deployment - with rollback!

Revisable - Change

Is your system in source control with a clear workflow that governs contributions? Can you revert changes, stamp official changes, branch and merge? What? You're using zip files? Sorry, friend, you don't get to talk about class design or move around UML diagrams until you're using source control.

The importance of leadership

This underscores the importance of a strong and appropriately self-aware leader. Creating art is the fun stuff but it isn't always what needs to be done to move the project forward. The tech lead needs to recognize the right time to be an artist and the right time to invest in strong foundational processes.

Are we eating enough leafy greens as a team? Let's start with "are we eating tonight?" and work from there.

© 2012 Scott Hanselman. All rights reserved.

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Culture eats strategy for lunch: from Pinboard (Popular items from Pinboard) http://pinboard.in/popular/

I don't read very much, and I think that's part of the reason I have a lot of trouble determining my writing's worth or the validity of my 'voice'.

I'm not super duper serious about writing, but I would one day like to be at least serviceable at it. I know a lot of you are gonna say a writer has to read constantly, forever, but is there anything I could read or do to get started? Tips on how else to exercise your writing muscle would also be appreciated.

Just... assume I haven't read anything at all except coffee table books about Nietzsche.

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"GitStats is a statistics generator for git (a distributed revision control system) repositories. It examines the repository and produces some interesting statistics from the history of it. Currently HTML is the only output format." from Pinboard (Network for voidfiles) http://pinboard.in/u:voidfiles/

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id3shit:

Federico Viticci:

deCSS3 - Easily strip out CSS3 to test for graceful degradation:

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I discovered Crystal deodorant a few months ago. I had tried literally every other unscented deodorant on the market and could not find one that held up all day. It turns out that the damned rock you rub on your pits is the greatest deodorant ever, and it had been on the shelf the whole time.What other miracle products are sitting on the shelves at the market, unnoticed as I pass them by in favor of products that are more well known or have bigger advertising budgets? from Popular Posts Across MetaFilter http://www.metafilter.com/favorites/all

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“One of the reasons I like Svpply so much is I have found it to be helpful in buying fewer, but better, things. One way I use Svpply is to find high-quality merchandise from small businesses that manufacture goods in the US. When I actually buy something I find there, the digital shopping that takes place on Svpply is still helping to contribute to real-world consumerism, but perhaps a less-bad variety.”

The Californian & The New Yorker | J. D. Bentley.

Throwaway account because this isn't about me but about encouraging anyone who's looking for a way to put their writing talents to productive use. I'll get to the $198,000 in just a second.

Have you ever considered helping a local charity by writing grant applications for them? If not, I hope you will, because donating grantwriting services is a wonderful way to meet good people and help your community while building your craft. In my experience nonprofits are DESPERATE for grantwriting services.

OK, here's the part about today's payday. I live way out in the sticks, in a rural southern county of about 15,000 people, and as a sideline to my freelance and self-publishing work I write grant applications for free for local nonprofits and government agencies. In the five years I've been doing this I've helped these organizations get over $750,000 in funding, including $350,000 worth of personal protective gear for our local volunteer fire department through FEMA's "Assistance to Firefighters Grant" program, a $210,000 fire engine through the same program, two Dodge Chargers for the Sheriff's office through our state highway department (not to militarize them, but to replace cruisers that were fully depreciated and legitimately unsafe), and various smaller government and corporate grants for other groups.

And then this afternoon my phone rang and it was my state's US senator's office calling to tell me that FEMA was going to award the fire department I work with another $198,000 for a new tanker truck on an application I wrote…a tanker they badly need because only about 15% of our county has hydrant service.

I can't even tell you how happy I am right now.

And look: this is totally something you can do. Grantwriting is basic storytelling -- your character has a compelling need and you're trying to present it in the way your audience wants to hear it. "Here's what's wrong; here's how you could help us make it right."

I mentioned donating your services, but here's a thought. No, you won't get paid in cash for the services you donate, but once you have a few successes under your belt you can market your services outside your immediate area -- services for which you WILL get paid.

You'll also get certain intangible benefits from helping out locally. For instance, my state issues special EMS license plates, and as an honorary member of the fire department, I get one. It generates an impenetrable web of mojo that's proof against all speeding tickets. And think about your fire department: these are the people who are going to come and pull you out of your burning bed. Wouldn't it be nice if they'd hurry just a little more, en route? And what about those kids at the Boys & Girls club who'll have a clean, safe place to hang out in, in part because you pried some money out of Wal-Mart?

I'm telling you: if you want to move the world with your writing, think about first moving your community with it. I can't recommend this enough.

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