I'm a platform pedal kind of guy except for a short stint riding my brothers Cannondale racing bike during my high school days. Clip-in pedals have always scared me for some reason and wearing clip-in shoes isn't my style nor are they very versatile. Given I've been riding hard core MTB for a year now I decided to invest in a set of platform pedals and new mountain bike specific shoes.
I drove to Columbia (south of Nashville) yesterday to participate in a Trek demo day. This is where biking enthusiasts can test ride the latest Trek bikes in the woods and on the street.
We redesigned our business cards at Dataium and the new ones came in today. It's embarrassing how long it took us to decide on a design and I bet people wonder why when they see the result. We wanted to go the super simple and clean route and the final result is quite nice even if anticlimatic.
For the past few months I've been planning on writing a post about the services that make this site possible. I've read these sorts of posts on other sites and they seem very marketing heavy. They're often titled "sponsor post" or something equivalent. This post is different. I'm genuinely a fan (and customer) of all of these services and in most cases I pay for them monthly. After the break I discuss each service/app I rely on to power this site. I put each service within category blocks such as: the server, the app, backups, uptime, etc.
I've been an Apple iPhone user since the first version was released in 2007. I upgraded to an iPhone 3GS when it was released and I've been immensely happy with the device for three years. But that's all about to change as I'm switching to Android.
I ordered an HTC Incredible nearly a month ago and have been patiently awaiting its arrival. With the Droid X announcement I decided to cancel my Incredible order and wait a little bit longer for a device with a 4.3 inch screen. While I continue to wait for July 15 - the date the Droid X becomes available on Verizon - I want to talk about why I'm switching to Android.
Hey everyone, here's a video where I talk about the last two days in our flooding saga.
Jason Fried and David Heinemeier Hansson, founders of 37signals, had their new book Rework hit stores today. I heard about this book several months ago and setup an OmniFocus reminder to notify me of its release. I've already sent a sample of the book to my Kindle and will be digging into the text a little later today.
If given a choice between investing in someone who has read REWORK or has an MBA, I'm investing in REWORK every time. A must read for every entrepreneur.Mark Cuban, co-founder HDNet, owner of the Dallas Mavericks
Two weeks ago today I brought aaronwest.net live bringing all my content from trajiklyhip.com and trajiklyhip.com/blog to a brand new, consolidated interface on a new domain. Before I talk about my new site and what I like about it, I want to give a (somewhat) brief overview describing my sites evolution over the last 8 years. Keep reading after the break.
This is just a quick video of the snow that's falling here in Nashville, TN. It's the second snow we've gotten in about nine days and I'm loving it!
As of the date/time of this blog post I am no longer supporting Internet Explorer 6. That's right, I've joined the IE6 No More campaign. If you're reading this blog post because you accessed my blog and were redirected here, then you are using an ancient, ancient Web browser and you need an intervention. A nice one. =)
It's time to upgrade. It's time to see the light. It's time to get into the modern age of browsers. So please, take a moment right now to click one of the logos below and download one of the fine browsers out there. If you don't, a litter of puppies will die, a thousand fairies will have their wings pulled off, and a hundred unicorns will perish of african sickness. You don't want all that on you do you?
Update: Over the last several weeks other organizations and countries have announced their lack of support of Internet Explorer 6. All of this is further reason to get a better browser:
This so-called "quadricopter" is too cool! I recently purchased two small mini RC helicopters (here's one of them) and they pale in comparison to this puppy. If you're into remote control stuff - or just cool tech - check out this video. Did I mention the AR.Drone is built on a totally open platform? It's initially going to be controllable via iPhone (and probably iPod Touch) but developers can use an API to build a Blackberry, DROID, or other interface.
This is just a quick post to let everyone know I've been posting content - what I'm calling "digital bytes" - on Tumblr. A friend recommended I use Tumblr a few months ago and I've been posting content ever since. I like how easy Tumblr is to use and how there's an iPhone app (iTunes link) I can use to post photos, videos, and links. The reblog feature of Tumblr is also quite nice. If I see something someone else has posted that I really like I can reblog their content, placing it on my Tumblr page, with a few clicks of my mouse.
I view Tumblr as sort of a mini-blog and will continue to post content I think is relevant and interesting. Check it out and be sure to follow me if you also use Tumblr.
Several years ago I read Understanding the Psychology of Programming by Bryan Dollery. The article was written in 2003 but you'd never know it unless you saw the date. It talks about how programming is a creative activity and how the environment of a programmer plays a large role in their creativity. I've referred to the article dozens of times over the last 6 years when conversing with other technical managers and today I want to share it with you. If you're a programmer or you are directly or indirectly responsible for the management of programmers you must read this article.
Understanding the Psychology of ProgrammingContrary to popular belief, programmers more frequently resemble artists than scientists. If you want to maximize the creative potential on your development team, you've got to start thinking about the psychology of the programmer and be willing to back it up with management policy.
Read it here.
The presenter was on stage and had gotten past the requisite introductions and background information. It seemed like he was nearing the part of his presentation described in the conference schedule and I was looking forward to what he had to say. Before getting to that, he took time to explain why he prefers programming in his language of choice. His first point was his language was incredibly dynamic. He didn't mean his language had a dynamic personality or anything like that. He meant he could do a ton of stuff in his language and it was pretty easy to do so. Continuing, he discussed how his language is best suited for rapid application development. Using his IDE (Integrated Development Environment) he could whip out code fast, code that created serious value and integrated with many other services. He talked about the tooling and the community, how everyone chipped in to increase the value of the language and what the language provided developers. He went on for a few more minutes speaking with great conviction about his love for his programming language of choice.
What language was this gentlemen referring to? Was it PHP? ColdFusion? Ruby? He wasn't talking about ColdFusion, but I'm not sure the actual language matters.
© 2012 Aaron West. All rights reserved.
