Just one more thing…. could you…

One of the professions near and dear to my hear is that of graphic design. I’m still not sure if it’s Brigadoon lost or a bullet dodged, but either way, I pay attention when I can. I recently encountered a gem of a Laugh Out Loud moment courtesy of Speak Up, namely [...]

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That TransCon Rails Ta(il|le)

Nathaniel Talbott is really rocking my world with his recent essay comparing the transcontinental railroad with the ruby-on-rails phenomenon. As he points out, there are some surprising similarities in enabling markets and disintermediation– the physical railroad opened up new territories and new markets, and the rapid development cycle of ROR is enabling software customization [...]

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"But will it scale?"

Doing some remedial reading on this summer’s Great Twitter
Scaling
Kerfuffle, found a great quote from Phil at Progressive Data Solutions, in his writeup on Railsconf:
“To me, this question is a “shark-attack” question. Sure, you could get attacked by a shark if you go swimming in the ocean, but you should probably worry about other things [...]

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Mind the Gap

Go watch Hans Kessler presenting his mind-blowing data visualization of world health, economy, and myth debunking at TED 2006.
Using the nonprofit GapMinder Foundation site’s tools and database access, it should be possible to create similar correlations between results of conservation efforts like acquisition of permanent easement land by conservation trusts, annual bird and wildlife [...]

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