New life, real life: Ella

Special times for close friends (pics):

I’ll meet her next friday. A nice way to see my circle of friends grow

Hack at home

Paul Graham in How to start a startup:

“Ever notice how much easier it is to hack at home than at work? So why not make work more like home?”

“I think hiring people is the worst thing a company can do. To start with, people are a recurring expense, which is the worst kind. [...] worst of all, they slow you down: instead of sticking your head in someone’s office and checking out an idea with them, eight people have to have a meeting about it.”

Pushing OOXML

Would you expect a technical specification to be human readable? Would you expect it to be even more human readable when it’s an “open” specification?

Now take a look at the picture below, would you consider this pile of paper — being the 6000 pages OOXML spec — human readable?

Source: NoOOXML.org

Someone is in a hurry trying to get a specification ISO certified, without having a correct, accessible specification.

Four weeks in Ghana

For those wondering where I’ve been lately: Ghana. Stories, pictures and even a movie clip on margaliti.blogspot.com (dutch).

I put some pictures online at sodutch.com.

Relaxing at Point7 in Tamale

Fabricating UTP cables in Akoma Computer School Tamale

Broodje ei (egg sandwich) in Hohoe

Breakfast at the Golden Beach Resort in Prampram

View from our room in Fort Lijdzaamheid (Fort Patience)

Don’t worry about people stealing your idea

Don’t worry about people stealing an idea. If it’s original, you will have to ram it down their throats.

– Howard Aiken, found in The Myths of Innovation

Think intimate

What should you focus on when trying to deliver added value? Think helping your users getting into bed. With someone they fancy

Found on reddit (of course)

Desire

Tis easier to suppress the first desire than to satisfy all that follow it

– Benjamin Franklin in Way to Wealth

From pick the brain, found via reddit

I should have quoted one about staying away from debt

Dee Dee Dee

All work and no play makes Jack a dull boy.

In The Shilly Night - Karin Fredrika

via Frits Abrahams (dutch, pdf)

More Anti Patterns

Scott Berkun and commenters summed up undesirable methodologies like Development By Denial, Never Ending Story Development and Learned Helplessness Development.

Although I believe it’s best to focus on the positive, by visualizing how things should be done, recognizing failing strategies can be fun. And instructive.

Mr. Berkun happens to be the author of The art of project management and The myths of innovation. Both on my wishlist.

Via Vattekkat Satheesh Babu on Planet Python.