Monthly Archives: March 2008

IT’s Recovering Complexaholics

This article would be funnier if it weren’t so true. “The first step is agreeing that you have a problem. The road to simplicity is not hard. There’s a standing joke that business people never have to ask IT how long something will take and what it will cost because they already know the answers: [...]

It’s a weakness – zombies

Yup – the undead shall not be suffered to walk the earth — well or something like that. Think I’ve watched too much ‘Dawn of the Dead’ in the last few days. The DVR calls to me – gotta love Ving Rhames in the remake. Anyway – this zombie survival clip caught my attention — [...]

Oh man – didn’t have toys like these when I was a kid

Ok this is even better… BrickArms toys — Lego compatible weapons and figures that you won’t find in any lego set. Gotta get the “M41A ‘Xeno’ Pulse Rifle” and the ‘Spy Bond’ figure. “All BrickArms toys are made of high quality ABS plastic – the same plastic that Lego uses in their own toys. They [...]

Somehow I think this explains alot…

Wired’s Adam Rogers wrote a lovely, sweeping obit for Dungeons and Dragons creator Gary Gygax in this weekend’s New York Times that included this flowchart showing how D&D was a gateway drug into every kind of nerd-dom <from BoingBoing.com>: http://www.nytimes.com/2008/03/09/opinion/09rogers.html?_r=3&pagewanted=all&oref=slogin&oref=slogin

Business on the Back of a Napkin

Check out the linked article below – always great to whip out the pen and make some magic. I guess I’m addicated to whiteboards too. “Who says doodling is a waste of time? Here are four ways to solve serious business problems with a simple drawing.” http://images.businessweek.com/ss/08/02/0225_doodles/index_01.htm

Checklists

Checklists – avoid blind spots in complex scenarios. Straight forward advice to make big screwups less likely. “Checklists are good because they can educate people about the best course of action, showing them the ironclad right way to do something.” The Heroic Checklist – Fast Company – March 2008  Beware of creep though — a [...]

Launch early and iterate

“There are two different types of programmers. Some like to code for months or even years, and hope they will have built the perfect product. That’s castle building.” … “Others prefer to have something at the end of the day, something to refine and improve the next day. That’s what we do.” Fast Company – [...]