I asked y’all what you’d like to see a cheat sheet on for Ruby Advent; Lakshan, Ruby Advent Guy, started off a number of requests for ActiveMerchant. You ask, I deliver. Well, maybe over-deliver is more accurate. To the tune of 7 pages of content, ranging from the overall CC processing “life cycle” (cue Lion […]
Did you know there’s a Ruby Advent calendar this year? 24 days of Ruby goodness, leading up to what I fondly call “Giftmas” in my godless heathen way. The organizer, Lakshan Perera, has asked me to do a little somethin’ for it. Of course, I’m delighted. I want to do a cheat sheet. The day […]
Every design commentator, author, critic or blogger must at sometime pose the question “What is design?” and then give us his personal answer. It’s like the discovery of masturbation: everybody does it at some point (some later to the game than others), and everybody thinks they’re the world’s first. How amazing! Only most people have […]
You probably haven’t heard about freckle, unless you follow me on twitter. This is because this year is the year that Amy learned that the more she talks about something, the less likely she is to do it. My theory used to be that if I publicly committed myself, the external pressure would help. Turns […]
Hey kids, it’s poetry explication time! Give me five double-spaced pages on Robert Frost’s “Nature’s First Green is Gold” by Friday or your grade is toast and your parents will disown you, you’ll never hold a good job, and you’ll die destitute and alone. Just kidding. I hated dissecting poetry in school, but loved the […]
So I wrote this one a while ago but only just now cleaned it up because José asked me to rant. I was thinking about it because of this somewhat idiotic article, commenting on this incredibly idiotic article. For a historical look on my feelings on this topic, you can also read this article I […]
Pissing me off is one of the best ways to convince me to write something. Take, for example, the following. The setup We humans have a tendency to want to see in black and white. That concept is nothing new, referred to any time there’s some kind of moral dilemma, or religious war, yadda yadda […]
Two perspectives. Clay Shirky, writing on A Brief Message: Design is arrogance. The designer says, “I know what you want better than you. Here it is.” A designer offers judgment as superior; as Henry Ford said, “If I had asked my customers what they wanted, they would have said a faster horse.” Design is humility.Users […]
Karl Duncker was a brilliant psychological researcher in the early 20th century, and one of the important figures in Gestalt Theory movement. His seminal work was his book on “productive thought,” Zur Psychologie des produktiven Denkens”, as well as the English-language book *On problem-solving. Neither of which it is possible to get your hands on, […]
I hate feed readers. The idea for creativescrape was midwifed by that hate (a fiery, passionate hate it is). Like email, feed readers are almost exclusively uniform—and uniformly bad. They try to make everything in the world fit into the same mold, however cramped and unpleasant it may be. As developers we naturally find this […]
