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I have to admit to being in awe of people who can both code and whip up a kick ass looking design. Particularly one that looks good and has good user experience. While I can code backends, I’d say my design skills are pretty paltry, particularly when it comes to doing things like lightbox overlays, fades, zoom in overlays and other jQuery goodness. But I’m not proud about it. It’s something I’m kinda embarrassed about (and have a stack of reading material to deal with - that I’ll get through one day).

One of the things I really love about the ruby community is its inherent sense of fun. Beside the fact there are a lot of really smart, talented and very creative devs in it and at the RailsCamps (at least here in Aus), and some of the best stuff is just the things they whip up in their more whimsical moments.

One of these has to be rubywarrior (thanks to <Ritchie K. for introducing me to this one at Railcamp 7 in Canberra). Written by Railscasts stalwart Ryan Bates it’s there to teach you Ruby. And it rocks.

Well, since I don’t really ever plan to retire like a normal person, this may not be applicable, but apparently the [million dollars to retire goal] (https://www.thestreet.com/retirement/1-million-doesnt-cut-it-for-retirement-10701792 ) is no longer applicable according to most financial analysts. People in my age bracket should be looking to double retirement savings to $2M (Gen X::27-42). 22% of advisors suggested $3M.

Apparently, the blame lies with these online retirement calculators that often assume you’ll need 70%-80% of your work life income.

Watch this. It’s worth it. Listen to the Sagan.

Consider again that dot. That’s here. That’s home. That’s us. On it, everyone you love, everyone you know, everyone you’ve ever heard of, every human being who ever was lived out their lives. The aggregate of all our joys and sufferings; thousands of confident religions, ideologies and economic doctrines; every hunter and forager; every hero and coward; every creator and destroyer of civilizations; every king and peasant, every young couple in love; every mother and father; hopeful child; inventor and explorer; every teacher of morals; every corrupt politician; every supreme leader; every superstar; every saint and sinner in the history of our species, lived there—on a mote of dust suspended in a sunbeam.

I actually tried to negotiate a sabbatical after five years before coming to the new gig (particularly since I’d just given one up leaving Amnesty at the end of three years). No dice. Great little talk on the benefits of taking time out from work.

Of course, what happens is I just take mini-sabbaticals in between jobs though would really like to plan for one in a few years time from this gig (though often think I am kidding myself that I’ll ever take time off properly - when will those books get written?).

Great little video from Jason Fried (ostensibly flogging Rework, 37Signals’ new book) on why modern offices are constructed to optimize interruptions and why you and I spend all our time on weekends and after work getting real work done.

Offices are optimized for interruptions and interruptions are the enemy of work, creativity, and productivity.

And yeah, the fact, I am working at home while penning this, instead of out surfing today, is probably a good indication of it as a truism.

Really liked this post on whether employment contract are needed . (I can hear all my HR friends gasping now and sharpening their pitchforks/lighting their torches).

At least, it’d work for most small places I’d like to believe. I remember at my last place the minute detail we were adding to every job description in the default which made it impossible to separate out what a person actually did from the jargon-eze. I know I quipped at one point that we don’t put that we expect people to wear clothes to work in the JD at one point since I thought the convo had jumped the shark.

I know this is data geekiness on an incredible level , but I actually find the issues with the US Census (which is horrendously important from a representation by population and funding perspective) to be really fascinating.

It should be noted that the census is baked into the US constitution to occur every 10 years.

Really like this simple, clever campaign video.

And as an extra bonus, it must’ve been really cheap to make.

This makes me ill. If you ever needed even more argument that waterboarding is indeed torture of the most insidious and despicable kind (precisely because some people don’t think it is torture and condoned it), go spelunking through these Salon memorandums on what was done to Guantanamo detainees.

Waterboarding for dummies - Torture - Salon.com

… what should occur in each two-hour waterboarding ‘session.’ Interrogators were instructed to start pouring water right after a detainee exhaled, to ensure he inhaled water, not air, in his next breath. They could use their hands to ‘dam the runoff’ and prevent water from spilling out of a detainee’s mouth. They were allowed six separate 40-second ‘applications’ of liquid in each two-hour session - and could dump water over a detainee’s nose and mouth for a total of 12 minutes a day. Finally, to keep detainees alive even if they inhaled their own vomit during a session - a not-uncommon side effect of waterboarding - the prisoners were kept on a liquid diet. The agency recommended Ensure Plus.