Et Cetera | Miscellanea of technology, cognition, and the philosophy of the future.

4 Sep

The Human Solution to Design Process

Note: when I say designers below, this can apply to any technical+creative types, such as engineers, product designers, etc. You put five designers in a room with a big free slot of time to let them solve a challenging and...
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13 Jun

The Future: A Short Anti-Complaint

It’s a common complaint that “the future isn’t what it used to be”, and I don’t disagree: I demand cheap flying cars, a personal robot staff, convenient interplanetary travel, an end to world hunger, and total immunity to disease. But...
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4 Jun

CSS Cursor and the Modern Web

The W3 specification for styling the cursor provides a surprising amount of flexibility. You can do any of the following, and then some: Specify an alternate cursor for an arbitrary element, e.g. cursor: se-resize; Use a PNG image, e.g. cursor:...
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28 Apr

Tricks for Writing Readable GitHub-Flavored MarkDown

John Gruber, the creator of MarkDown, has written: For any markup that is not covered by Markdown’s syntax, you simply use HTML itself. A lot of people seem to miss this important point, and the results are practically unreadable....
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14 Apr

How to Stay Productive on Personal Projects: An Integrated Strategy to Avoid Failure

I get wrapped up in a lot of personal projects. Some of them are as small as writing a new post or article (check!) and some are big, long-term software ides. It’s easy to get involved in a project, but...
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29 Mar

Workaholics: Turn “want” into “must” to save your health.

It’s past midnight as I write this, so I know what I’m talking about when it comes to working hard. It’s surprisingly easy to get addicted to work and productivity (workaholism?), to the extent that any moment spent idle feels...
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15 Feb

Inspiration

Inspiration is a funny thing. Sometimes it comes and goes at a whim, rising and ebbing in the background until it hits fullforce like a wave, pushing you at its forefront toward your goals. Other times you feel it coming...
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7 Dec

On Persistence

There is a quote from one-time president Calvin Coolidge that I try to live my life by. The quote goes: Nothing in this world can take the place of persistence. Talent will not; nothing is more common than unsuccessful...
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28 Sep

Failure in Focus

When I was between jobs and applying to new new ones daily, I maintained digital sticky notes on my laptop with info on my progress on each potential position, to stay organized. Then, whenever a job didn’t pan out,...
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26 Sep

Developers Need Better Onboarding — Make Learning a Guarantee

Initial setup: Most systems need setup. Don’t even discuss work before this gets completed. Make sure the new dev is where they need to be. Stressing out about getting work done while struggling to get your system working is a...
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