El Compact Calendar de David Seah és ben mono, i sembla molt pràctic; és un excel per imprimir. Hi ha adaptacions, amb els dilluns on toquen i les festes d'aqui, en Excel i en Open Office.
Aqui altres calendaris ben macos, però amb aquestes extranyes semanes de cap de setmana partit.
Tanta il·lusió que em fan els calendaris, i tan nerviós que em posen.
Tags should be a good cue to tell us if a blog post should be read or skipped. I find puzzling that most (all?) feed readers just ignore tags. Surprisingly enough, I could not find any feed decorator.
Yahoo! Pipes to the rescue: after some copy'n'paste, a pipe that decorates feeds appending to every post title its categories (for atom and rss 2 feeds), and also adds the tags to the top of the post: http://pipes.yahoo.com/xverges/tagsintitle
This one does the same, but also adds the results from Yahoo! Term Extraction to the top of the post. I just cooked it, so I am not really sure if the list of terms is a useful addition: http://pipes.yahoo.com/xverges/tagsandtermextraction
Annoying side effects: the feed name, url and description become those of the pipe, so a bit of manual work is required after subscribing to a feed. I hope they fix it...
Another amazing video by Johnny Lee (or was it Leonardo?). This time on using a Wiimote for head tracking providing an amazing 3D experience.
If that was not enough, check out his video on foldable displays
Someone that names his blog Procrastineering has to be brilliant. And Johnny Chung Lee proves it by using a Wiimote to let you have low cost interactive whiteboard in a LCD or any surface where you can project your screen.
But not everything is about gadgets: check out the Community Splash project, co-authored by Johnny, that used a giant slingshot to throw paint filled ballons against a 18-story building in Pittsburgh. Do not miss the project's image gallery.
I just played a bit with Ripplerap, a tool to take and share notes during conferences. Brilliant. If downloading and unziping is too much for you to get an impression, take a look at Phil Whitehouse's ripplerap-is-about-to-be-born post.
It is in its infancy, and there are several things that need some ironing, but I believe that its simplicity gives it a huge potential. Good news for us compulsive note takers and/or conference-life-blogging addicts.
And I must confess that I did not see much of a point in one of Ripplerap bulding blocks, TiddlyChatter...
Update: It is a funny coincidence that the very same day that I played with Ripplerap for the first time, fellow IBMer Sacha Chua - tech evangelist, storyteller, geek - made me aware of this collecton of tips for conference bloggers.
The picture of The ThinkGeek WiiHelm I jokingly attached in my last post has suddenly made me wonder if the Wiimote could be a very cheap accessibility enabler for people with some specific mobility limitations... The Wiimote can interface with computers, but I don't know if its sensitivity is low enough.
I'm posting this just because I didt not get any obvious google hit on this.
Update: This post has reminded Josep Maria Ganyet about a video of a Wiimote being attached to a spring horse, turning the mostly static experience of driving videos into a sort of motorcycle simulator. Nice idea.
Wiis agotadas. Wiimotes/Wiimandos agotados; de 40€ de precio normal a 60€ + portes en eBay. Veo que amazon.fr vuelve a tenerlos en stock (40€ + iva + portes), lo que me hace suponer que la escasez no tardará en desaparecer y que ha sido una suerte contener mi instinto estraperlista.
Pero mucho más intersante que todo lo anterior es el origen de la palabra estraperlo.
Actualización:
Stumbled upon Jason R. Briggs' Snake Wrangling for Kids:
"Snake Wrangling for Kids" is a printable electronic book, for children 8 years and older, who would like to learn computer programming. It covers the very basics of programming, and uses the Python programming language to teach the concepts. Examples are presented for Windows, Mac OS X and Linux.
Dues coses que em fan la vida més fàcil:
Back from the first Barcelona Python Meetup Group event. The event was good, with two talks:
Dave Gifford created a very nice intro to TiddlyWiki. Going over the 20 first slides will take you less than a minute and will give you good reasons to read further and start using tiddlywiks.
El Ministerio del Amor (Minimor en neolengua) informa:
Sin la nación, todo se derrumba. El acuerdo fundamental es sobre la nación de Oceanía. Sin él todo lo demás se derrumba.
No se es de Oceanía a tiempo parcial. Oceanía, además de un deber, es una pasión y un sentimiento hondo. No se es oceánico por horas o a tiempo parcial, aunque no siempre estemos pensando en Oceanía. Bien es verdad que lo solemos hacer menos de lo necesario. El ser oceánico lo impregna todo, así de poderosa es nuestra nación. Si llegase a estar en peligro, sería tu propia entidad individual la que estaría en riesgo.
Ain't that cool? I hope it goes past the demo stage in a near future!
Interesting info and links in a post by Laura Cowen.
Everyone makes mistakes. Some times we are aware of them, some times we are not: looks like putting the blame of mistakes in someone or something is part of our nature. It's a pity, because we let pass by lots of learning opportunities.
In the past days I've been getting quite a few spam messages in my inbox. Not smartly disguised spam, but old plain lottery winning notifications and anatomy enlargement tips. Please, spam filter, get well soon: I miss you.
Ángel Expósito, en su Mirón Perplejo de hoy en La Vanguardia:
(...) que los periodistas sepamos tanto de todo. Absolutamente de todo. ¡Qué estupido es el mundo!, al no percatarse de que un solo tertuliano español podría ser secretario general de la ONU, director del FMI, seleccionador nacional de fútbol y número uno del ranking de toreros. Todos en uno.Y quién dice un tertuliano, dice un blogger. ¿Por dónde debe andar mi traje de luces?
The idea of millions of computers infected waiting for a supervillain to tell them what to do is, at least, disturbing. If you want to learn more about the Storm Worm botnet, go read the excellent article in Bruce Schneier's Cryptogram.
Fortunately, reading about DEranged Security's very fun bluetooth social-engineering experiment changed my worrisome mood. This xkdc strip about Bobby Tables helped too (geek humor warning for this link).
Martin Espinach, coffee machine and lunch mate, gave yesterday a very nice internal talk about how his previous project used bugzilla and Mylyn to help them plan, assign and track team tasks. Although they were initially excited about Mylyn's task-focused UI, none of the team members ended up using it; they did love Mylyn's ability to get notifications from bugzilla. It looked like a neat solution.
When his very detailed talk was almost done, he told us that, for their recently started new project, they are using IBM Rational Jazz. I felt like killing him, but I then I would have missed the chance to complain about his talk during every afternoon coffee in the next weeks.
And Jazz? So far, they are loving it. I'll have to ask him to demo it to our team.
Del catàleg de l'excel·lent exposició Educant infants, defensant els seus drets, que fins dijous està a l'Illa Diagonal:
Dret a la Innocència
Segurament t’hauran dit que a la vida hi ha coses molt importants. Algunes, però, fan
referència a un moment de la vida que no és el teu, per això volem recordar-te quatre coses realment serioses, que formen part del món de la infància i l’adolescència: Badar, riure, innocència i il·lusió. Deixa que t’acompanyin.
(...)
La infància i l’adolescència són uns moments molt interessants de viure.
Dret a la Descoberta
Els adults tenen tendència a la sobreprotecció, però tenir infants i joves en una bombolla de vidre implica negar-los la sensació de l’experimentació i la descoberta.
El risc a equivocar-se és necessari en tot procés de creixement. Tens dret a cercar, a fer preguntes, a buscar respostes i a experimentar.
Un descobriment de la meva petita equilibrista:
-Oi que tinc molta traça? I com ara la he fet servir molt, ara en tinc més.Guau! :-)
-Siiii!
-És al revés de la pintura: quan la fas servir, s'acaba. En canvi de traça s'en fa més.
I had some problems using XUL templates to populate a tabbox using a RDF data source: the tabs were created, but switching tabs did not work. Avoiding the use of inline templates and moving the template outside of the tabbox element solved this. Looks like the tabbox was confused by the <tabs> and <tabpanels> elements inside the <template> node.
<template id="tabTemplate">
<tabs>
<tab uri="rdf:*" label="rdf:http://multirunner.blah/rdf#name"/>
</tabs>
<tabpanels>
<tabpanel uri="rdf:*">
<label value="rdf:http://multirunner.blah/rdf#name"/>
</tabpanel>
</tabpanels>
</template>
<tabbox id="rdftabbox"
datasources="rdftabs.rdf"
ref="http://multirunner.blah/tabs"
template="tabTemplate" />
Tanto oir hablar de "subprimes" y crisis hipotecaria, y no había entendido qué demonios es esto de "subprime" hasta que Xavier Sala i Martin lo explicaba ayer muy claramente en La Vanguardia (mejor leer el artículo que mis citas):
La historia empezó hace cinco años cuando, al ver que los tipos de interés eran anormalmente bajos, algunos financieros listos vieron una oportunidad de negocio en las familias consideradas “peligrosas”. Es decir, familias poco solventes, con rentas bajas o con un historial de impagos catalogados como “clientes de baja calidad” (o, en inglés, “subprime”). Al no haber competencia de los bancos normales ya que no quieren tener nada que ver con esos clientes peligrosos, los nuevos financieros podrían concederles créditos hipotecarios a un tipo de interés elevado. El negocio consistía en pedir dinero a los bancos normales a tipos bajos y prestar a clientes peligrosos a tipos altos.Pero no todo ha sido malo:
(...) ofrecían programas de repago con cuotas muy bajas durante cinco años. (...)
Estamos hoy en el quinto año, las cuotas han subido y, como era de esperar, una parte de esas familias “peligrosas” no han podido afrontar sus pagos y los financieros se han visto obligados a quedarse con sus casas. El problema es que los precios de esas casas han bajado y los tipos de interés han subido con lo que esos financieros se han quedado sin negocio y con una enorme cartera de viviendas que no pueden vender.
Al fin y al cabo, aunque todo esto acabe en una crisis, el episodio del crédito “subprime” ha permitido que millones de familias pobres pudieran comprar casas. Y, de hecho, el 97% de ellas ha resultado ser lo suficientemente solvente para devolver el dinero e impedir que eso pueda volver a suceder sería un error.
As today, I'm the happy co-owner of a Lego Mindstorms NXT kit. The other shareholder is my son G., and he won't know about it until his 10th birthday next month. Will I be able to keep the thing in a box for so long?
I could use as an excuse that maybe he'll like better to get a working robot than to get a box full of parts... Or that it would be nice if a writing robot greeted him (at NXTLOG there are several samples that could get me started: Writer robot Final version, TurtleBot Drawing, Plotter-Bot 3000, plotbot).
Lots of learning ahead!!
As I was reading the excellent Virtual Worlds, Real Leaders by seriosity and IBM's Global Innovation Outlook (GIO) team, I was struck with the similarities of the leadership attributes that they found in MMORPGs (Massively multiplayer online role-playing games) and those that are familiar to me from working in agile software development projects.
I'm quoting two summaries that appear in the report:
Online gaming environments facilitate leadership through:
1. Project-oriented organization
2. Multiple real-time sources of information upon which to make decisions
3. Transparent skills and competencies among co-players
4. Transparent incentive systems
5. Multiple and purpose-specific communications mediums
In fast moving distributed environments, leadership can be:
1. A temporary phenomenon
2. Task-oriented
3. Dynamic and constantly changing
Em consten dos llocs a Barcelona on poden comprar-se kits de Lego Mindstorms NXT, així que actualitzo la meva llista anterior:
Foto de flickr de cackhanded, d'un hack day
Flip, flap, flip, flap... poques coses tan relaxants com gronxar-se. Si mai monto una empresa amb un local, caldrà que sigui gran, per què una de les primeres inversions serà un gronxador. I si els comptes anessin bé, hi afegiria un llit elàstic. Segur que si a totes les oficines hi havés un gronxador, el clima de treball seria molt millor.
Si no t'has gronxat des de que eres petit, tens un problema: ves de pressa al parc més proper i posa-hi remei! I si vols una gronxada de primera, els millors gronxadors que tinc localitzats són a la Platja del Prat, per què pots fer salts sobre la sorra.
No, no és que avui m'hagi gronxat, però he estat a l'aeroport de Barcelona i he caminat -boing boing boing, somriure d'orella a orella- sobre la cinta. Els pobres que es queden aturats i deixen que els arrastri no saben el que es perden!
Googling to remember again the key that allows a command history window to be opened in cmd.exe (F7, in case you care), I found the misstitled Stupid Command Prompt Tricks post. Nice. Things that I did not know and that I'm going to use often:
cmd /c start "MyCmd" cmd /k ...
Una idea simple y brillante para colgar los bolsos en lugares públicos. Y aunque es del año 2000, y está en el MoMA, no he visto nada parecido en ningún sitio.
vía el Crypto-Gram de Bruce Schneier, que enlazaba a una noticia de la BBC.
Do not miss (sorry, louder, DO NOT MISS) this TED Talk:
Patrick Awuah: Educating a new generation of African leaders.
It's not only about Africa. It's about entitlement[1] and responsibility, education, ethics, critical thinking, incompetence, economic elites, empowerment... in any part of the world. 18 moving minutes that will make you think.
I'm keeping a quote from it:
Every society must be very intentional about how it trains its leaders[1] I was talking about this to someone and could not think of a good Spanish term for "entitlement". He translated quoting something heard in lots of movies when the hero is in trouble while abroad: I am an American citizen. Not that I believe that Americans are worse than in my corner of the world in the entitlement disease, but I thought that it was a very funny and good translation.
XUL Elements have a persist attribute, that is documented as
A space separated list of attributes that are maintained when the window is closed. When the window is re-opened, the values of persistent attributes are restored. In Mozilla, persistent attributes are stored in the per-profile file localstore.rdf. Persistence can also be stored using the document.persist function. In order for persistence to work, the element must also have an id.I've learned some things about it today:
var rdfService = Components.classes["@mozilla.org/rdf/rdf-service;1"].
getService(Components.interfaces.nsIRDFService);
var rdfLocalStoreDS = Components.classes["@mozilla.org/rdf/datasource;1?name=local-store"].
getService(Components.interfaces.nsIRDFDataSource);
var rdfRes = rdfService.GetResource("uri of interest after about in localstore.rdf");
var screenXRes = rdfService.GetResource("screenX");
var screenYRes = rdfService.GetResource("screenY");
if (rdfLocalStoreDS.hasArcOut(rdfRes, screenXRes) &&
rdfLocalStoreDS.hasArcOut(rdfRes, screenYRes)) {
var screenX = rdfLocalStoreDS.GetTarget(rdfRes, screenXRes, true).
QueryInterface(Components.interfaces.nsIRDFLiteral)
var screenY = rdfLocalStoreDS.GetTarget(rdfRes, screenYRes, true).
QueryInterface(Components.interfaces.nsIRDFLiteral)
window.moveTo(screenX.Value, screenY.Value);
QueryInterface(Components.interfaces.nsIRDFLiteral) for quite a while of wasted time. In another piece of code that I wrote, this was magically called for me by checking if (target instanceof Components.interfaces.nsIRDFLiteral); I need to get a better understanding of Mozilla's component model mechanisms... I also failed to use "Value" with a capital letter, to add up to the waste. :-(
The Cloud Appreciation Society Manifiesto:
WE BELIEVE that clouds are unjustly maligned and that life would be immeasurably poorer without them.We think that they are Nature’s poetry, and the most egalitarian of her displays, since everyone can have a fantastic view of them.We pledge to fight ‘blue-sky thinking’ wherever we find it.
Life would be dull if we had to look up at cloudless monotony day after day.We seek to remind people that clouds are expressions of the atmosphere’s moods, and can be read like those of a person’s countenance.Clouds are so commonplace that their beauty is often overlooked.
They are for dreamers and their contemplation benefits the soul.
Indeed, all who consider the shapes they see in them will save on psychoanalysis bills.And so we say to all who’ll listen:
Look up, marvel at the ephemeral beauty, and live life with your head in the clouds!
Turn the computer off and read something new. Sit on a park bench and gawp aimlessly at the clouds or stars above you. Smile like an idiot. Count your blessings. Don't worry about the future. Don't think too much. Don't take life too seriously. Don't pay attention to a word I say.
Avram Hershko, Nobel de Química 2004, en la Contra de La Vanguardia:
No me gustan los grandes laboratorios ni los grandes presupuestos para investigar (...) Como yo no tengo que pagar a mucha gente, puedo dedicar mi tiempo a investigar y no a buscar el dinero para retribuir a mi equipo.
Detesto a los sí señor. Para darme la razón siempre, ya me tengo a mí mismo; lo que aprecio es que me lleven la contraria, pero con fundamento; que me hagan pensar... Ésa es la principal virtud de los buenos júniors, que no dan nada por aceptado y que plantean nuevas preguntas a las viejas certidumbres. (...) Que tengan iniciativa; que no esperen a que yo les dé órdenes, sino que me sorprendan con sus propias y nuevas ideas, y que tengan más ganas que yo todavía de investigar. (...) Necesito preguntas, no que me den la razón.
The SendTo folder is a simple and powerful tool to customize Windows Explorer to simplify some recurring tasks. If you often want to link to files in your PC from your TiddlyWikis, you'll like this hack. It creates two new items in the "Send To" menu:
I have a longish backlog of hacks worth cleaning up and publishing
You are free to do with this whatever you fancy, but you are expected to do some small à la Matt Harding dancing steps now and then.
If you are too serious to dance, consider changing some things in your life, or just use it under some form of beerware or Creative Commons licensing.
Vinc d'Hibernian Books, a Gràcia; està la mar de bé i m'he firat un parell de llibres:
Documentándome para dar una charla sobre la coparentalidad (término mucho más bonito que el de custodia compartida) y sobre la situación de indefensión de los hombres en los procesos de divorcio, me pongo a buscar estadísticas diversas.
Una que me sonaba relacionaba suicidio masculino y divorcio, lo que no me parecía descabellado. Pero, aunque no aspiro a ser como el gran Wonka, estoy bastante de seguro que la que he encontrado es un churro, al menos en lo relativo a cómo interpreta los datos.
Estos datos de la realidad nos están indicando una cifra de hombres (del orden de 9) que, cada semana, en España, están cometiendo suicidio específicamente por la causa de los procesos de separación/divorcio, absolutamente oculta en todos los mass-media no solo de nuestro país, sino en otros países occidentalesUno de los puntos de partida del estudio son las tasas de suicidio en función del estado civil.
My fat fingers used to fight against my cell phone's calendar application to add appointments and reminders while on the go. I also used to take unreadable notes in tiny pieces of paper whenever an interesting idea appeared while on a crowded subway.
I learned that my cell phone can be used as a voice recorder, and now I use my best Private Investigator looks while recording whatever I want to remember when I'm away of any decent writing gear.
Todo todo el día marcándome ridículos pasitos de baile, sin quitaremde la cabeza la música del vídeo de Matt Hardin bailando alrededor del mundo. Y encantado de la vida.
¿La culpa? De Malaprensa, por mencionar el formidable CPI (Curioso pero inútil), de CPI (Curisoso pero inútil) por su fantástico vídeo de homenaje a Matt, del "Sweet Lullaby Dancing Remix" y, por supuesto, de Matt por sus bailes. Gracias a todos.
De acuerdo, Trasme: me voy con Balearia, que nos quiere a todos.
Restoring a Firefox session accidentally told me that, when you open messages/chats in a new window, you get an url that you can bookmark/copy to another file. Nice.
Exploring things a bit further showed that gmail uses frames, so you can use the url of the inner frame to bookmark contacts, labels, filters, searches or any other thing that does not have the "New Window" link. In Firefox, use the popup menu, and "This Frame > Open frame in new tab".
Very handy for those of us that run our lifes in tiddlywikis.
Of course, Google is perfectly free to change these misterious urls not likely intended for public consumption...
Wonka y algunos de sus lectores se muestran escépticos sobre la conveniencia y/o la utilidad de la futura asignatura escolar de Educación para la Ciudadanía (EpC). Me pongo a buscar información sobre la EpC para intentar aclarar algunos malentendidos [1], y los mejores recursos que encuentro son
por más que intento juzgar con imparcialidad lo que dicen los que se oponen a la asignatura, me parece que están cayendo en un vicio que se extiende peligrosamente en la vida política y social española: juzgar intenciones. Intenciones que, además, no se conocen, sino que se sospechan (link)¡Y la de palos sorprendentes que recibe la pobre EpC! Un editorial de ABC critica que la EpC haga referencias al diálogo y la negociación (claro, ¿para qué intentar que cada generación entienda mejor la necesidad y los mecanismos del diálogo y la negociación si gritos y mamporros han servido desde siempre?).
Tal como entiendo la asignatura no sólo no es un adoctrinamiento, sino que debe preparar a los alumnos, mediante el desarrollo del conocimiento ético, jurídico, político y económico, y el fomento del pensamiento crítico, para que resistan a todo tipo de adoctrinamiento.Los hay que piensan que la escuela debe limitarse a instruir, y que educar es cosa de los padres. Pero se transmiten valores por acción o por omisión. Se educa siempre inevitablemente: bien o mal, pero se educa.
Moral es el sistema normativo de una sociedad. Hay tantas morales como culturas: católica, protestante, budista, musulmana, confuciana, etc. Entiendo por ética una moral transcultural, universal, pues bien, la EpC no puede ser una moral, en efecto, sino una ética. Y debe reducirse a aquellas cuestiones éticas recogidas en nuestras normas fundamentales. (...) Estas normas éticas –que protegen la libertad de conciencia y, por lo tanto, a las religiones y a sus morales- imponen también unas limitaciones: no pueden aceptarse aquellas normas morales que atenten contra derechos universales.JAM está convencido de que no tiene ninguna dificultad impartir la EpC en clave cristiana y le cuesta entender la fuerte oposición de la jerarquía eclesiástica
sería estupendo (...) que las religiones trabajaran –como han hecho a lo largo de la historia- para perfeccionar una ética universal. Una parte importante de esa ética procede de las propuestas de los grandes maestros espirituales. ¿Por qué no intentar que esa influencia cale en un mundo laico? Hans Küng y otros muchos teólogos cristianos están defendiendo esa ética universal. La ética laica no es enemiga de las religiones. Ha sido su gran protectora. No olvidemos que el reconocimiento del derecho a la libertad de conciencia, el derecho de todas las religiones a ser respetadas, no es, ni por esencia ni por historia, un precepto religioso, sino un precepto ético. La religión cristiana rechazó ese principio hasta el Vaticano II, no lo olvidemos.Reconocer esos puntos comunes, esa moral transcultural y universal, que no es lo mismo que relativsmo cultural, es crítico en una sociedad cada vez más diversa:
¿Tienen siempre los padres derecho a decidir la educación moral de sus hijos? Supongamos que los padres son nazis convencidos y creen que deben educar a sus hijos en la ideología nazi. ¿Debe el Estado respetar esa decisión? ¿Es que los padres tienen una sabiduría instintiva de tal manera que todo lo que ellos decidan sea infalible y respetable? ¿Y si pertenecen a la secta de los adoradores del sol, y deciden suicidarse? ¿Y si admiten la ablación del clítoris? ¿Y si casan a las niñas a los once años, como ocurre en alguna cultura implantadas en España? ¿Y si no se ocupan de su bienestar? (link)JAM prepara un libro de texto también para padres: lo espero con ilusión.
Vía Malaprensa, aprendo que las matemáticas no están de acuerdo con la creencia muy común de que el voto útil es votar a los partidos mayoritarios, aunque no sean tu voto "natural" (e.g. votar al PSOE cuando te apetecería votar a IU/ICV, votar a CiU en lugar de al PP o a ERC...). Pues no.
Esta presentación, basada en los votos al ayuntamiento de Valladolid, explica muy bien, con la ley d'Hondt, por qué, si tu minoritario tiene probabilidades de obtener representación, lo mejor que puedes hacer es votarlo, pues no puedes adiviniar dónde pesará más tu voto finalmente.
El autor de la presentación es el anónimo autor del blog Valladolid 2007: Vota Libre.
Y, ya que estamos tratando de creencias equivocadas sobre el sistema electoral, un link a uno de los distintos posts de Malaprensa en los que se demuestra que
salvo que uno defina sobrerrepresentación como "más representación de la que a mí me gustaría que tuvieran" no hay manera de defender que los partidos nacionalistas están sobrerrepresentados en el Congreso de los Diputados.
Just good an email from Christoph Steindl, a former IBM colleague, where he used to co-lead the Agile@IBM community and write an excellent blog.
Are you familiar with the Coding Wars in Tom DeMarco and Tim Lister's Peopleware?
They will be running the contest in Linz, Austria (with post food and beverages) and in Second Life (do avatars drink and eat?).Catalysts organizes a coding contest to go further into some of these questions.
- Who is faster? Who is more efficient? Who is more effective? Who is more productive?
- Does "Pair Programming" really make you faster?
- Does "Test-Driven Development" really lead to fewer bugs?
- How many ways are there to solve a problem?
- Is it right that good developers only write 30 lines of code for which mediocre developers need to write 300 lines?
Not that I'm disappointed by the concept of having zero-tolerance attitude towards assholes, but by Bob Sutton's book on it: The No Asshole Rule: Building a Civilised Workplace and Surviving One That Isn't
Maybe the problem is that before the first page I was already in agreement with the author, and I did not need the additional 170 pages. Or that I'm lucky enough of not having had to deal with assholes at work in quite a while. Or that I'm not involved in hiring any team. Or that I'm not a certified asshole.
Bob Sutton has done a very nice service making explicit the No Asshole Rule [3] and bringing focus to it. But I just did not need that many asshole stories and that much evidence about its virtues.
[1] A surprising book in improving my self asshole-ness awareness was Leadership and Self-deception: Getting Out of the Box
Your minimalist recommendation has made me read Leadership and Self-Deception: Getting Out of the Box . Thanks for that. I liked the storytelling approach, and, as "advertised" by you, it is really making me think. A lot.[2] All this writing about my asshole-ness may convey the impression that I'm a jerk. My mum and I think that I'm quite nice. But the asshole path is always there...
My 2c for anyone else feeling tempted by the book: it is a book for anyone dealing with humans, no matter if the leadership stuff has any appeal to you.
Ángeles Caso escribe hoy una buena columna en el dominical de La Vanguardia, sobre "la cultura de la pobreza" y, los que, como su propio padre, se rebelan contra ella. Me sorprende este párrafo:
Me cuentan mis amigos profesores que los hijos de emigrantes que acuden a sus clases suelen dividirse en dos tipos extremos: los que, desubicados y acaso angustiados, no tienen el menor interés por el estudio, y aquéllos -mayoritarios, según parece- que saben que sólo gracias a la escuela (...) lograrán salir de su predestinación de seres pobres, incultos y, por ello, manipulables. Me hablan de la pasión con la que muchos niños ecuatorianos, peruanos, senegaleses o rumanos estudian matemáticas, inglés, ciencias, historia y lengua española, agarrándose al conocimiento como la garantía de un futuro mejor. Y me describen cómo, frente a ellos, nuestros propios críos suelen acomodarse a la ley del mínimo esfuerzo, creyendo que la vida les deparará por sí sola bienestar.
Stumbled upon Nimbuzz, that brings instant messaging (IM) and mobile phones closer. Beyond its skype-like features (international calls at local costs), or its group calls, what I find specially interesting is their Buzz alert, a "conscious unsuccessful call attempt" that gives official status to lost-calls, one of the most used resources for any one scared about mobile phone rates in my corner of the world.
My most used features of IM is the ability to have the very short conversation "-ok if I call now? -ok/5 minutes, pls". Bringing that to mobile phones, much more intrusive than land lines, can only be a good thing.
Another thing that makes me consider looking into Nimbuzz is that maybe it provides a decent IM client. Yesterday I used for the first time Yahoo! Messenger from my cell phone, and the experience was just awful (e.g. once you read a message, it is gone forever). Having a semi decent IM client in my phone could be useful from time to time.
May 11 is Dalí birthday, so it looked like a good occasion for a bit of surrealist hacking: the Furry Happy Monsters bookmarklet will solve your frequent urge to view REM and The Muppets playing together while browsing.
You are welcome.
Want to use the terrific YourSearch plugin even when visiting a TiddlyWiki that does not have it installed?
A bookmarklet will make it simple.
Stumbled upon gotApi.com. Its Fast Api Search, covering HTML, CSS, JavaScript, C++, Python, Java, Flickr... is fast, pretty and extremely useful.
As promised, MochiKit makes JavaScript suck less. Small things like bind(), partial(), map() and filter() are making me fall in love with it. And the very extensive documentation. And how I think that I'm going to enjoy using its Signal, inspired on Qt's signal/slot system.
Back to coding.
Just heard for the first time The Puppini Sisters, via a twittering kellypuffs. Here singing Kate Bush's Wuthering Heights.
*Sigh* I bet used to hate the Andrews Sister when I was younger.
Update: Does not work any more.http://convert.viloader.net
I'm not much into poetry, but Rives seems to be monopolizing most of my rainy Sunday morning. Using June Cohen's words, "on the surface, it's light-hearted, but then he layers in unexpected depth and emotion".
Some cool things would happen if Rives controlled the internet, although I wish there were a transcript because he pushes my English skills a bit too far.
Mockingbird, including a TED 2006 remix that is not available in this text version, creates vivid surprising and pretty images on me.
But, my favourite, by far, is Compliment, in text and in beatboxer+poet+harmonica video. Mmmm, wait Xavier, that's dangerous stuff to listen to when you are happily and safely uninterested in that kind of love; so lets use a quote by George Bernand Shaw that I heard in Helen Fisher's TEDtalk The science of love, and the future of women:
Love consists in overestimating the differences between one woman and another
A toda prisa a la librería de la esquina [1] a comprarme Tropezar con la felicidad, de Daniel Gilbert, después de haber escuchado su divertida y sorprendente conferencia en TED Talks.
La idea básica de la conferencia es que somos muy malos en nuestras predicciones sobre lo que nos hará felices o no. Al parecer, tenemos las mismas posibilidades de ser felices tanto consiguiendo lo que deseamos como no consiguiéndolo.
Está llena de datos sorprendentes, como que, un año después de acontecimientos tan distintos como quedar parapléjico o ganar la loteria, las personas de los dos grupos muestran el mismo nivel de felicidad. O que mayores posibilidades de elección van en detrimento de nuestra felicidad (más sobre esto en la también sorprendente conferencia de Barry Schwartz The paradox of choice).
[1] Mi librero no tiene el libro, así que lo encargo y me llevo uno de José Antonio Marina. JAM siempre me gusta. La magia de escribir, escrito con María de la Válgoma.
Curioso: ¿por qué me da esta pájara de comprarme libros sobre escritura (Bird by Bird, The War Of Art, La magia de escribir)?!
I learned today about IBM Research's Many Eyes, available at alphaWorks. Although at first sight it seems simply a nice tool to create nice visualizations, its goal is to enable collaboration around visualizations.
In Fernanda B. Viégas' words, the intend is "to enable people to collectively reason about the trends and patterns they see on the vivid representations of data called visualizations", or "distributed data analysis and collaborative sensemaking".
How? You can upload data sets. You can create visualizations of them. You can discuss the visualizations, highlighting parts of them.
You are not sold into the power of good visualizations? Check out Hans Rosling's Debunking third-world myths with the best stats you’ve ever seen TEDTalk (aka No More Boring Data, as posted on youtube). Or play with a tool similar to the one that he uses in the presentation, at http://tools.google.com/gapminder.
And whatever you think about Many Eyes, Hans Rosling, logarithms or baseball, do go and check the improved TED site.
Update: It seems that Many Eyes is not the only project in this area. From an article by Fernanda and Martin Wattenberg,
We think that social data analysis is a lively area right now and we are not the only ones exploring this space - two other sites of note are Swivel and Data360. Each of the 3 sites has a different emphasis, but what we have in common is a belief that the web enables a new, social kind of data analysis; a type of statistical thinking that is both playful and serious.Social Data Analysis. Nice term.
One of Google's little secrets that has helped us to inspire our developers to write well-tested code: we write flyers about (testing techniques) and then regularly plaster the bathrooms all over Google with each episode, almost 500 stalls worldwide.
Stumbled upon this evangelizing technique in Introducing "Testing on the Toilet", while googling trying to decide which JavaScript unit testing framework use (yeah, shame on me, I've been doing lots of JavaScript lately without doing Test Driven Development).
We've received a lot of feedback about it. Some favorable ("This is great because I'm always forgetting to bring my copy of Linux Nerd 2000 to the bathroom!") and some not ("I'm trying to use the bathroom, can you folks please just LEAVE ME ALONE?")
They not only use a surprising evangelizing technique, but also have a great banner and motto for their blog: "Debugging sucks. Testing Rocks."
It is turn off TV week. Just do it!
And if it is not TV but your PC/phone what is keeping you from having green knees at the end of the day, it is a good week to give it a thought to this: who is in charge, you or your gadgets?
Buscant saber-ne més sobre les puputs, he ensopegat amb el Projecte Orenetes, que manté un cens dels nius amb la col·laboració de qui vulgui (una idea maca per a escoles). L'any passat vaig considerar comprar un niu artificial, però em van semblar molt cars; no és problema: aquest any en farem quatre!
If you are a tiddlywiki user and you have not installed the YourSearch plugin, you don't know what you are missing. Serious.
Els meus fills i jo hem tornat a veure un partit de l'UB Barça. I ja hi estem una mica engantxats. Buscant el resultat del partit de playoff d'avui, he vist que la Federació dona notícies en directe sobre els partits a http://baloncestoenvivo.feb.es/. A més de la lliga femenina, no sé per quines atres competicions ho fan.
Seguir un partit així no és la cosa més divertida del món, però l'aplicació Flash té la seva gràcia. Veus el marcador, les faltes, els punts, les estadístiques...
És particularment curiosa la part en la que pots veure des d'on ha tirat cada jugadora.
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