Did you ever wonder about the origin of the !!! doctype directive that’s at the top of almost every Haml file? It must have some deep, historically significant meaning that pays tribute to Turing or Minsky, right? In May of 2006, Hampton and the of the folks at Unspace were really into !!!, The Go! Team , Sunset Rubdown , Tapes and Tapes , Clap Your Hands Say Yeah , Junior Senior and Stereolab .…
Several years ago I went through the laborious task of switching email addresses. This time I really wanted it to stick, because in addition to notifying everyone that I interact with about the change, it takes literally days to manually change the contact details for every web site I use — and that’s with a password manager providing me with a handy checklist. I can’t even imagine trying to make…
I got your note. I’d be happy to try and refer you to someone that can do your small project. Here are some questions that maybe you could answer first? What is the budget? What is the criteria for a successful project execution? Is this intended to be an HTML5 web and mobile app? A native iOS or Android app? Or something else entirely? What is the timeline? Is it a one-off or does it require…
“It was pretty commonplace.” There’s always a first time that you see a new turn of phrase enter the common vernacular. Remember when Jon Stewart brought “douchebag” back into regular use? Most of the time it’s much more subtle than that. It could be regional or perhaps it’ll seem like a phrase is taking off but then it doesn’t. The first time I ever heard the term “no homo” was in an awesome Jay…
I made lots of mistakes building Unspace . Advance warning will not give you immunity, but G.I. Joe taught us that “knowing is half the battle.” There is a chasm of sorrow that starts the moment you hire your first employee and lasts until your team is roughly 10 people How many founding partners do you have? Call that n . Stay n big as long as you possibly can. You will soon look back at this era…
Someone on Hacker News asked “ How do I tell my friend his startup idea sucks ” and as it happens, this is something I have a lot of experience with. Your friend is lucky to have a friend that is willing to tell them the truth; most people are cowards when it comes to saying the most important things until it’s already too late. We’re trained from birth to tell people what we think that they want…
Forget “eyeballs”. With so many eager Pebble clones on the horizon, could wrist real-estate bottleneck the Internet of Things? At 35 years old, I just barely sneak in at the tail end of Generation X — and most of my friends that are similar in age don’t wear watches. “Kids” younger than me? They really don’t wear watches. Like… at all. I didn’t wear a watch for many years, but I grew to really…
Last year, I bought my ex a purse that could get her killed. She’d seen Vlieger & Vandam’s “Guardian Angel” bag at MoMA , and finding the one she wanted to surprise her with became a quest. She was a design expert living in Netherlands, and I don’t know anything about handbags but I was happy to be with someone quirky enough to appreciate such a polarizing accessory. As soon as we had it in hand,…
Susan Cain’s “Quiet” educated people about the introvert’s social interaction patterns, specifically our need to balance social time with time alone to recharge. While accurate, this is a narrow perspective that ignores the role of what Dr. Elaine N. Aron describes as the “highly sensitive person”. Paraphrasing from Wikipedia : A highly sensitive person (HSP) is a person having the innate trait of…
I used to be a dyed-in-the-wool true believer in “time and materials” hourly billing. I’ve now come full circle, and you should too. You already have an hourly rate, so take that number and multiply it by your best estimate of the number of hours it will take to do the work. $150/hour x 100 hours = $15,000 Now, take that number and double it. Then round up to the nearest 4, in thousands. ($15,000…