Konigi

Categories embedded in infrastructure.

I’ve recently recognized a nasty coding habit I seem to be developing. It’s been developing for a few months now, and while I kick myself every time I discover myself doing it, the habit itself is remarkably hard to kick.

I’ve been working on enhancing our internal Queen Bee application, this time making it so we can more easily track the performance of our Job and Gig boards. The change itself is pretty straightforward, but I found that when it came time to build the actual UI, I got stuck.

I kept chasing my tail. I’d look at the existing reporting UI that we have for our other products, and then I’d start thinking what needed to change to adapt it for the Jobs/Gigs reports. That would then lead me to think about potential refactorings in the code needed to support the (hypothetical) UI changes. Thinking about the code refactorings would lead me back to the UI, where I would think some more about the visual impact of the code refactorings, and so I would go, loop after loop, ad nauseam.

It’s ironic that, even after nearly 4 years of drinking the Getting Real message almost every day, I’d get stuck in such a trap, because the solution really is to just stop pretending and make something. In my case, I had to sit down and just mock up the page, throw together some HTML with fake data in it, and see what it looked like. And it turned out that I didn’t need to change the existing UI or code much at all—the new stuff was actually independent enough that it stood almost completely on its own. Oh, the bitter, bitter irony! I had wasted almost two days worrying about a non-issue.

So, if you ever catch yourself playing mind games with your code, just stop and make something. Pretending is poison. Stop drinking it!

We have been known to use SubEthaEdit for collaborative note-taking during interviews and meetings. But EtherPad has some nice new features. See if this works for your team.

37 Signals points out an example of defensive design built into the new MacBooks.

PC Magazine is shutting down the print version of their popular publication. It will be available online only. It’d be nice to see it on devices like this.

Google brings the entire LIFE archive of photos (10 million!) to the web. Available via Google Image Search, this is a wealth of history waiting to be explored.

Hoefler writes about pixel-based typography from a 1567 embroidery guide.

And, finally, if you’ve ever wanted to cook a hot dog by plugging it into a wall, this guy can help. In Russia, hot dog cook you!

Quietly announcing the Gel Videos redesign: I've been working on this for months and am finally about to launch.

Official launch and assorted hoo-ha coming soon. Meantime, enjoy the initial videos.. -m

Pizza pie charts from The Economist’s “Get a World View” campaign. Philly pizzerias distributed the boxes which display pie charts with statistics related to world food distribution, emphasizing those used in pizza production (e.g. global wheat consumption, world cheese imports, arable crop land, etc.).

A complex system that works is invariably found to have evolved from a simple system that worked. A complex system designed from scratch never works and cannot be patched up to make it work. You have to start over, beginning with a working simple system.

—John Gall

Arrington is right, the new Google stuff sucks, I’ve been trying my hardest not to click any of the bazillion new little buttons on the search results page.

It’s always hard to customize your technology for a specific culture. Customize your features and UI too much, and you loose the advantages of scalability (speed, cost, …), customize too little and you’re open for local competition that is focused more on how the local market is different.

Here’s a good example: Google India now has a specific cricket item showing when you search for cricket (India is cricket-crazy). (A regular Google search just shows the Wikipedia result for cricket first).

I like it. It’s subtle, culturally-specific and non-intrusive.

Here we go, http://prezelect.com

Obama is the prezelect (383 hits on a Google search for prezelect)?