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A Pamphlet On Surviving the Web Development Wilderness
February 8th, 2010
So here we are on the eve of a public beta launch for a project we have all been working extremely hard on. In a flurry of excitement and anticipation we have spent the last few weeks buttoning up absolutely every tiny detail we can to muster the strength and time for. My team is responsible for a web app interface (built on rails) to our new service. In the current push to get everything in order and prepare ourselves for the onslaught of real users we have been repeatedly telling each other how lucky we are that we have good test coverage and an excellent work-flow.
Make It Work, For You
February 4th, 2010
I’m a big fan of Project Runway, the reality TV show where fashion designers create a new look and fashion piece every week with a limited amount of time and materials. I admit that I’m not a fashionista like the show’s host, Heidi Klum, but I do have ‘girly girl’ tendencies like an insane love for accessories and shoes. However, I’d like to think that my girlish ways aren’t the only things that contribute to my obsession with the show. I consider myself a fan because I enjoy watching the creative process each designer goes through. To witness the inspiration behind an idea and then watch it evolve and come to life is intriguing.
The Perks of Being a Wallflower
February 2nd, 2010
One of the scariest things you can do is put me in a room full of one hundred strangers and tell me to mingle. You probably wouldn’t guess that if you met me, but I’ve once been described by a friend as the most social anti-social person they know. I like to stand back and take in the room, observe people and eavesdrop on as many conversations as possible. That doesn’t mean I don’t like people. It’s just that I get extremely nervous, turn red and stumble over my words when people look at me. Hence my unhealthy love for Twitter.
Old School
January 28th, 2010
Let me start by saying, I’m With CoCo. To those of you who have been living in a bunker below Mount Whatthewhat for the past month, Conan O’Brien is no longer the host of The Tonight Show. To those of you who have been living in a bunker below Mount Whatthewhat for the past year, Jay Leno is still the host of The Tonight Show. I’m not here to breakdown the parties involved, as that has been done ad naseum.
However, I did want to take pause to recognize how Conan ended his reign as host of the most storied franchise in television.
How a fish became a girl...
January 26th, 2010
Taking risks is scary. Every day, we analyze costs, risks, time, potential success, and a host of other variables, to balance the analytical and the creative. But, every once and a while, you see things that seem so insane, you’re not sure how they got past the number crunchers and risk analysts.
For me, that’s the movie Ponyo.
Stateless Tests in a Stateful Protocol
January 25th, 2010
Lets suppose you want to test the correctness of a protocol. I know I do, all the time; get me that input fuzzer. A typical way to start might be a minor variation on how I learned to test my code in CSE 142 and hadn’t really thought too much about since: plug in some “representative” values and see if it does the right thing. But let’s suppose someone came over with a pile of documentation and said “Here. Some genius in the back room made this insanely complex server that apparently speaks this protocol, and somehow managed to do it without so much as a single unit test. Can you test it? By the way, we want some guarantees about security.”
No Headphones Thursday
January 22nd, 2010
Fun fact: I moved to Los Angeles from Chicago for a job that I couldn’t tell people about.
As you can imagine, I get asked about my job a lot. Most people are naturally curious. Family members just want to make sure I didn’t run off and join a cult. My tech-savvy friends are especially interested, hoping they get first dibs. No matter the person, I always answer with “I love my job.” And I do!
When you are in the dark, you can see the stars
January 21st, 2010
I would be highly surprised if I had any new information to add to the Internet.
But therein lies the principle of this entry. What if the point of this entry was to encourage others to subtract from their ever-expanding body of knowledge?
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Latest Comments
I guess that explains why you always avoid me. That’s cool! jk.
This is awesome…another idea in the same area is that of macro systems: compile time code-generating code. Here syntax starts to really matter, and convenient easy-to-generate and easy-to-parse syntax rules the roost. It is no coincidence that Lisp dialects have long had macro systems that could do amazing things in this area.
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