Looking at the site for San Francisco Comic Con, and I see their guest list. First, there’s “Celebrity Guests”, which are a mixed bag. Then come “Comic Creator Guests”: folks named Steve, Allen, Gerhard, Arvell, Casey, Joe, Jack, Erik, Bob, Steve, Mike, Paolo, and so on. There is a Trina. And then, right under that, there’s […]
Category Archives: Uncategorized
Installing Software From the Internet
Wednesday, June 15th, 2016 – 6:22 am
I’m getting ready to spin up a few new web development projects. I think I want to do them on Ruby On Rails. That means getting a good RoR development environment installed on Finrod. About 5 levels of yak-shaving later… it looks like I should install RVM so I can get the version of Ruby I […]
Paying a Fair Wage Is the Opposite of Slavery
Monday, April 25th, 2016 – 10:33 am
I just found out about Alex St. John’s ridiculous article on VentureBeat claiming that developers who object to working uncompensated overtime have “a wage-slave attitude”. Ummm, what? It sounds like he’s trying to use emotional terms and “snarl words” to make people think that “whatever a ‘wage slave attitude’ is, it must be bad!” But look […]
Things That Are Immune to Warrants
Monday, April 4th, 2016 – 9:38 am
The US government, in the persons of the FBI and Department of Justice, has been claiming that new levels of iPhone encryption turn those phones into “warrant-proof” zones, and that shouldn’t be allowed. But in that case, we have to make sure nothing else is a warrant-proof zone, either. Which means all of these things: The […]
Reasons to Use Ad-Blockers
Monday, March 14th, 2016 – 9:37 am
There’s been a lot of talk lately about the rise in use of ad-blockers, and the various strategies publishers and the online ad industry are using to try to convince people to turn off their blockers. But almost all of this has been framed as a case of people wanting to be freeloaders, wanting to […]
On jQuery’s .data() Call Syntax
Monday, February 22nd, 2016 – 9:10 am
I recently had a developer on my team who had some trouble with jQuery’s $(…).data() syntax. In case anyone else has trouble, maybe I can clarify things a bit. I’m anonymizing all the code involved, of course. We wanted to make certain items have certain behaviors under certain circumstances. And so we set up a “whatToDo” […]
“In a Wheelchair” Doesn’t Mean “Paraplegic”
Tuesday, February 9th, 2016 – 9:31 am
A lot of people get surprised any time someone in a wheelchair manages to stand up or walk a few steps. Somewhere along the way, the idea got popularized: if someone’s in a wheelchair, their legs are flat-out paralyzed. They’re physically incapable of standing, and they probably can’t even sense anything below the waist. Well, that’s […]
Asking for Self-Ratings Guarantees You False Information
Saturday, January 30th, 2016 – 9:19 am
How many times has an interviewer — either for an actual employer or for a recruiting agency — asked you: “On a scale of 1 to 10, how would you rate yourself at $insert_skill_here?” If you ask candidates to rate their own skill levels — on any scale; it doesn’t matter if it’s 1-5, 1-10, or “beginner, intermediate, […]
Let’s Unpack “Professional Victims”
Thursday, January 14th, 2016 – 8:12 am
The only thing more annoying than a phrase that’s overused to the point of cliché is when that overused phrase isn’t even remotely accurate — and in fact, borders on completely nonsensical. The one I’ve heard far too many times in the past year is the all-purpose favorite of Red Pillers, MRAs, GamerGaters, and other defenders […]
Why Do We Care About The Force Awakens?
Wednesday, December 9th, 2015 – 7:53 am
It’s less than two weeks until The Force Awakens hits the theaters. The promotional team has been doing a bang-up job of building advance buzz, with everything from product tie-ins like two flavors of ice cream to getting Pentatonix to do a medley of Star Wars music alongside a 75-piece orchestra at the American Music […]