Fun Links for Literate Geeks

Today's been a good day for dredging up cool stuff on the net.

While searching for evidence of the rumour i've heard that emitted light (from CRT screens) reduces our ability to concentrate, I found
Reflections on the Computer Screen
http://www3.iath.virginia.edu/pmc/pmc-talk/essays/heim.pt1

The Feng Shui of Virtual Environments
http://dc-mrg.english.ucsb.edu/research/Heim.FengShuiVirtualEnviron.html

and - way cool! USB Rocket Launchers (thanks Felyne!) Dear Santa... i WANT one!
http://www.cherryflava.com/cherryflava/2006/12/nasa_staff_part.html























listening to System of a Down | Viscinity of Obscenity

What it's REALLY like to work at Microsoft

Geek alert: skip this if you're not into software project management/development

A fascinating blog and opinions at http://www.drizzle.com/~lettvin/2006/11/windows-shutdown-crapfest.html

I was interested by those who diss the ubiquitous Joel Spolsky - I like what Joel writes but, like all of us, he's not perfect.

Reminds me of Conway's Law: "Any piece of software reflects the organizational structure that produced it".

IMO it is also a law that "Any piece of software reflects the organizational CULTURE that produced it."

Happy, cool, innovative, high morale teams produce correspondingly nice software.

(See here for more http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Conway's_Law )



listening to Air | Modular Mix

Adding Manpower To A Late Software Project Makes It Later

This aphorism is known as "Brooks' Law", after the guy who wrote about it. Geeks and project managers will benefit from reading this

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Mythical_Man-Month

All others, go clip your toenails or something.


listening to U2 | City of Blinding Lights

Willkommen to GeekWorld

This blog will be much more than about geekworld, that just happens to be the headspace I'm in right now.

Jef Raskin, one of the pioneers of modern computing, accomplished musician and aeronautics expert died last week, Feb 26 2005. He devleoped the first Macintosh, and founded the idea of cognetics, "the ergonomics of the mind" .

He wrote some pretty darn interesting stuff. This is not a bad place to start:

Jef Raskin meets Merlin