January 2012
1 post
SOPA for Non-Techies
By now, you’ve probably noticed sites such as Google and Wikipedia “blacked out” in opposition to a couple bills in congress called SOPA (Stop Online Piracy Act) and PIPA (PROTECT Intellectual Property Act).
There are quite a few good write-ups explaining exactly what SOPA is and what it’s implications are. I suggest starting with the SOPA Wikipedia page, or even...
July 2010
1 post
The Science Behind "Having a Bad Day" (and how to...
Update: This article was republished on Lifehacker on July 26, 2010.
Sometimes you wake up, and within the first hour or so, you know it’s going to be a bad day. It happened to me a couple days ago, and it happened to my girlfriend just this morning. So I’d like to take this opportunity to go on the record saying this entire notion of having a “bad day” is bullshit!...
May 2010
1 post
3 tags
Want to be an Entrepreneur? College May Help.
Caterina Fake recently wrote a post entitled “Want to be an entrepreneur? Drop out of college.” You may know Caterina better as the co-founder of Flickr, or more recently of Hunch.com. And she certainly has some good points. I especially like her observation that “College works on the factory model…” while “Entrepreneurship works on the apprenticeship...
April 2010
3 posts
New Release: jQuery EasyTabs Plugin →
Rails, Prototype, and JQuery in Harmony (or how to... →
3 tags
Equality and Governmental Responsibility
I recently read a great book called Capitalism and Freedom by Milton Friedman (on Amazon). One point Friedman touched on was that of graduated income tax and the redistribution of wealth. This struck a chord with me as I began to think of wealth, not just in a monetary sense, but as a measure of happiness. This line of thinking brings about some interesting implications.
Graduated Income Tax
...
March 2010
2 posts
Make Sure Your Rails Application is Actually... →
Performance Tuning for Phusion Passenger (an... →
February 2010
5 posts
Unless You're Changing It, Quit Your Bitchin'
Life Often Doesn’t Meet Expectations
Not to single her out, but this post resulted again from a conversation with my girlfriend a few weeks ago (much likemy last post). She called me, very upset with the results of an exam she had recently taken. I knew if she was calling me about it, it couldn’t be good. I remembered her spending a decent amount of time studying for that exam, and...
How to Include Your Rails App Layout in Your... →
Disturbing Misinterpretations: No One Knows What...
I recently published an article that talks about the tendency we have to feel ashamed for not knowing or knowing how to do something, entitled No On Knows What the F*** They’re Doing, which has received a lot of feedback and discussion. First and foremost, I’d like to thank everyone for all of their great feedback and contributions to the discussion.
Though 99.9% of feedback was...
How to Monitor Your Rails/Passenger App with Munin →
No One Knows What the F*** They're Doing (or "The...
Be sure to check out my follow-up to this post, clarifying and addressing a few misinterpretations that have been making their way around the internet.
Feeling Like a Fraud
Have you ever received praise, or even an award, for being great at something despite having no clue what you’re doing? Do you feel like a fraud, wondering what sort of voodoo you’ve unwittingly conjured up to...
December 2009
4 posts
Google One-letter Suggestions →
Cool Libraries for Ruby →
If You’re Nervous About Quitting Your Boring Job,... →
My new personal blog
Hello to everyone new to this blog, which is everyone, since this blog is new. In this blog, I will be writing about all of the things that interest me, including entrepreneurship, engineering, the web, auto racing, music, soccer, and observations of the world at large.
Hopefully you will enjoy the coming posts and stick around. It should be fun.
If you’re interested in finding out more...