Matthew Lock

Interior: Mies van Der Rohe likes Barcelona | Ultra Swank

2010-03-30T17:34:00.000-07:00

Interior: Mies van Der Rohe likes Barcelona | Ultra Swank

Interior: Arne Jacobsen for your Office | Ultra Swank

2010-03-29T21:55:00.000-07:00

Interior: Arne Jacobsen for your Office | Ultra Swank

sounds

2010-03-12T18:00:00.000-08:00

sounds

Selgas Cano Architecture Office - today and tomorrow

2010-03-11T22:33:00.000-08:00

Selgas Cano Architecture Office - today and tomorrow

Free Advice: Boosting Productivity By Ditching the Boob Tube

2010-03-03T21:24:00.000-08:00

Free Advice: Boosting Productivity By Ditching the Boob Tube

Scavengers of the Physical Universe - Jeffrey A. Tucker - Mises Institute

2010-02-16T17:21:00.000-08:00

I had a friend once who moved from Russia to the United States in 1987. He moved from a place where offices chained typewriters to desks because they would otherwise be stolen. Citizens would brag about their private collection of paper clips. Spare parts for washing machines and cars were gold.

So when he first arrived, he got an apartment and began to fill it up. I visited. He had typewriters and stereos. He had washing machines and car parts. He had tables and chairs and desks piled high. He had vases and bowls and plates and cups. He had moose antlers mounted on a big piece of wood. He had golf bags with clubs, wooden and plastic bats, stuffed animals, music boxes, toys of all sorts, and piles and piles of shoes that didn't even fit him. His apartment looked like a thrift store or the refuse of two dozen yard sales.

I was aghast and I asked him why he was accumulating all this ridiculous junk. He explained that in Russia, everything here was treasure. He was vaguely aware that it was not valuable here but he had to have his fling, for he was in a constant state of shock that he could buy all this stuff so cheaply. He begged for indulgence. He just wanted to get through this stage in life, this period of adjustment. Fine, I said. Then he took me with him car shopping. At the end of the day, he was the proud owner of three used cars that barely ran.

Scavengers of the Physical Universe - Jeffrey A. Tucker - Mises Institute

Talk at Yale: Joel on Software

2010-01-13T00:28:00.000-08:00

I noticed that the really good program managers at Microsoft were the ones who could write really well. Microsoft flipped its corporate strategy 180 degrees based on a single compelling email that Steve Sinofsky wrote called Cornell is Wired. The people who get to decide the terms of the debate are the ones who can write. The C programming language took over because The C Programming Language was such a great book.

Talk at Yale: Part 3 of 3 - Joel on Software

Secrets of the Economist's Trade: First, Purchase a Piggy Bank - WSJ.com

2010-01-07T22:55:00.000-08:00

Secrets of the Economist's Trade: First, Purchase a Piggy Bank - WSJ.com

Tom's Planner | Gantt Chart Software | Faster than Excel easier than MS Project

2009-12-15T17:25:00.000-08:00

I'm starting to see the advantages of Gantt charts these days as the timeline view is so useful for scheduling and seeing when you are going overtime. I'm planning to try out the free beta of Tom's Planner soon.

When and How to Micromanage

2009-12-10T20:04:00.000-08:00

When and How to Micromanage: "Five Whys is a problem-solving technique developed by Toyota after World War II to improve its manufacturing process. The idea is to ask 'Why?' five times to get to the root of any failure, so you fix the core problem instead of the symptoms."

Groupware Bad

2009-12-02T23:39:00.000-08:00

Groupware Bad: "If you want to do something that's going to change the world, build software that people want to use instead of software that managers want to buy."

Comfort food reduces stress: scientists

2009-11-25T21:23:00.000-08:00

Comfort food reduces stress: scientists: "Prof Morris, from the University of NSW School of Medical Sciences, conducted a study of rats which showed the effects of past trauma could be erased through 'unlimited access to yummy food'."

The Henry Ford of Heart Surgery - WSJ.com

2009-11-24T01:27:00.000-08:00

The Henry Ford of Heart Surgery - WSJ.com

Objectified: A Documentary Film by Gary Hustwit

2009-11-16T01:32:00.000-08:00

Objectified: A Documentary Film by Gary Hustwit:

"Objectified is a feature-length documentary about our complex relationship with manufactured objects and, by extension, the people who design them. It’s a look at the creativity at work behind everything from toothbrushes to tech gadgets. It’s about the designers who re-examine, re-evaluate and re-invent our manufactured environment on a daily basis. It’s about personal expression, identity, consumerism, and sustainability."

Working Environment at Fogcreek

2009-11-11T21:55:00.000-08:00

Here's a sure fire way to make you unsatisfied with your current working environment:

For ten years, Joel Spolsky has been teaching millions of programmers how to make better software.
Now, you can look inside his company and see how it’s done.

Make Better Software: The Training Series

Notice the motorised desk!

Stack Overflow Careers

2009-11-09T18:31:00.000-08:00

"You’ve maxed out your machine. Now upgrade your career.

Professional software developers build CVs on Stack Overflow that combine their portfolio with their peer reputation — and share them with the world, absolutely free. Hiring managers can find great developers, see what they’ve done, and even check out the answers they've written on Stack Overflow.

Unlike traditional resumes, a Stack Overflow CV gives hiring managers insight into a developer’s real work and skills instead of just a list of acronyms.

Stack Overflow Careers helps the world’s top developers get noticed by the world’s top employers."

Stack Overflow Careers

Does Slow Growth Equal Slow Death?

2009-11-03T18:33:00.000-08:00

"if you're not taking any risks, you're pretty much guaranteed to fail. Somewhere, there's someone out there who is taking more risks than you, and that person's business is growing faster than yours, and that person's business may one day come to dominate your industry while yours withers away."

Does Slow Growth Equal Slow Death?

Startup School on Justin.tv

2009-11-02T16:43:00.000-08:00

Startup School on Justin.tv

Capstone projects and time management - Joel on Software

2009-10-26T17:47:00.000-07:00

I finally learned that long-term deadlines (or no deadlines at all) just don’t work with professional programmers, either: you need a schedule of regular, frequent deliverables to be productive over the long term. The only reason the real world gets this right where all-student college teams fail is because in the real world there are managers, who can set deadlines, which a team of students who are all peers can’t pull off.

Capstone projects and time management - Joel on Software

Does music really make you more productive?

2009-10-22T01:29:00.000-07:00

Does music really make you more productive? The answer falls somewhere between 'Listening to Mozart makes you a genius' and 'Just be quiet and work.'

The Best Sounds for Getting Work Done - Music - Lifehacker:

The Tim Ferris way of Testing ideas and how I did it.

2009-10-20T02:03:00.000-07:00

"Build a two page website. The main page describes what the product or service will accomplish. It has a strong call to action to buy the product. The second page is a signup page for the product clearly stating the price. The signup page also contains a web form that takes all the users information.

The next step is to buy $100 worth of Google adwords, limit the daily rate to $20 as well as the price you are prepared to pay for a click"

The Tim Ferris way of Testing ideas and how I did it. | Docley Blog:

What is the minimum viable product?

2009-10-19T19:09:00.000-07:00

Why do we build products in the first place?

In the end, we hope to be able to launch product to lots of customers and have them give us money so that we build a great business.

One approach to solving that problem would be, let’s build a product with the maximum number of features that will maximize our chance of success in the end. But the problem with that is you won’t get any feedback until you’ve already built all those different products.

All those different features, so you ship this product with a ton of features, and generally, by the time it’s done, it’s too late to make sure that you are on the right track.

The alternative would be, let’s do the release early, release often thing, and let’s get feedback as we go. The issue there is, if you just follow the release early, release often mantra, you find yourself running around in circles, because you ship code, you get some feedback from people, you do a focus group.

What is the minimum viable product? - Venture Hacks

Be lucky - it's an easy skill to learn

2009-10-12T21:17:00.000-07:00

Be lucky - it's an easy skill to learn - Telegraph

Using 2 Computers to Avoid Distractions

2009-01-13T20:02:00.000-08:00

In Disconnecting Distraction Paul Graham writes:

I've found a more drastic solution that definitely works (in reducing distractions): to set up a separate computer for using the Internet.

I now leave wifi turned off on my main computer except when I need to transfer a file or edit a web page, and I have a separate laptop on the other side of the room that I use to check mail or browse the web.

Disconnecting my work computer from the Internet isn't really possible for me since much of my work requires me to be online (phpMyAdmin etc). But it got me wondering whether I couldn't reduce distractions by installing all the distracting software and sites (Skype, Pidgin, iTunes, Facebook etc) on a my laptop, (the Distraction Machine!), and removing all the distracting applications from the my desktop and then placing the laptop right next to my desktop.

I am using Synergy so both computers can be controlled by a single keyboard and mouse and share the same clipboard.

Now when I really needed to concentrate on work I shut down the Distraction Machine and carry on working. And the effort required to boot the laptop, login, and start each distracting application has massively cut down on the amount of timewasting each day.

After trying this for 2 weeks later and my distractions have been reduced to the

New Version of Keynote

2008-12-02T20:01:00.000-08:00

Great! There's a new version (fork) of my favourite open source PIM, Keynote.

The fork is called Keynote-NF http://code.google.com/p/keynote-nf/

Will cPanel be the next IDE?

2007-04-17T20:14:00.000-07:00

Will cPanel, and phpMyAdmin on cheap hosting accounts become the next generation of IDEs? I'm starting to think they will. I've used phpMyAdmin exclusively for years to maintain my MySQL database and while it's a bit clunky it gets the job done.

Now imagine a future cPanel/phpMyAdmin-like control panel with a Google Documents style Ajax text editor, (maybe even an Emacs style one like 9ne) and some basic revision control like Site5's Flashback and you will start to get a pretty okay IDE. It may never be quite as good as Visual Studio or Eclipse, but the low cost and remote access would be pretty compelling. As would be the ability to immediately have your work running on the Internet.

And since your IDE's now on the Internet why not include discussion forums, and Freenode IRC chat rooms, and even collaboration so more than one programmer can work on the code at once? You could even have context sensitive help information based on the code, like Google Adsense.

Whatever happens I'm sure that a whole new generation of programmers will find the ability to create Web 2.0 style LAMP applications for a few dollars a month much more compelling than paying $1000 for Visual Studio, and then again for SQL Server or Oracle. And possibly another nail in the coffin for Microsoft's API.

Wayback Machine Bookmarklet

2007-02-02T17:27:00.000-08:00

One of my favourite features of the Google Toolbar is the ability to see a cached snapshot of a web page that is currently down. This has reduced the frustration no end when researching information on the web.

As if Google's cached snapshot feature wasn't useful enough, the Wayback Machine goes one louder and lets you see cached versions of a web site up to 1996. As an example Yahoo's homepage from October 20th, 1996.

As soon as I found the Wayback Machine I wanted a button on my browser to view previous versions of a web page I was looking at. So I thought I would build my own button on the toolbar using a bookmarklet. A bookmarklet is a just a URL bookmark (favourite in IE ) that contains Javascript that runs when you click it.

By placing bookmarklets on the browser's links bar you can effectively extend your browser with little Javascript programs. By creating a bookmarklet with the following Javascript you can view previous versions of the current page in your browser:

javascript:window.location="http://web.archive.org/web/*/"+window.location;

Installing the bookmarklet

To install the bookmarklet either bookmark the following link, or better yet drag the following link onto your links toolbar.

Wayback Machine Bookmarklet

IE will issue a security warning when adding links that contain Javascript, but bookmarklets are usually quite safe.

How it works

This bookmarklet works by constructing a URL from the Wayback Machine's URL and the browser's location. It's very easy to build other bookmarklets which can perform other tasks by constructing urls based on the browser's location.
For example here's a bookmarklet that shows similar pages for a URL you are visiting.

javascript:window.location="http://www.google.com/search?q=related:"+window.location;

Google Similar Pages Bookmarklet

More on bookmarklets

There are quite a few bookmarklet sites on the web:

Using Wildcard's in Windows Explorer

2007-01-30T16:36:00.000-08:00

I always wished that Windows Explorer allowed wildcards in the address bar, but there is a poor-man's way to do that. Let's say you want to filter a folder by *.doc :

Navigate to the location you want to search in Windows Explorer
Press the Search button on the toolbar
Enter the wildcard into the search criteria and press search. You have to put the wildcard in quotes. For example "*.doc"
Notice that it's filtered the files by wildcard. You can control whether to search through subfolders or not from the "More Advanced Options" menu above the search button.