Links & notes for this month

• • Richard Saunders's Weblog : Weblog
    "We're all under pressure and obviously since I was promoted I paid attention to the things that mattered." Well, if the claims of the former colleague are true, it doesn't sound like that's the case...
    (tags: programming development workplace promotion)
• • nick - HasFinder -- It's Now Easier than ever to create complex, re-usable SQL queries
    How I've not seen has_finder before I don't know. Looks very handy, and nice and succinct, too.
    (tags: rails plugins rubyonrails activerecord finder)
  • Cash Flow Management For Small Business - Pulse
    "Pulse is a web-based cash flow management tool that allows you to easily monitor the heartbeat of your small business - your cash." Has Basecamp integration, too.
    (tags: business finance money management webapps project)
• • Pew Internet: Teens and Social Media
    Lots of interesting numbers here...
    (tags: research society teens socialmedia web20 culture trends)
  • This Blog Sits at the: How social networks work: the puzzle of exhaust data
    Exhaust data is, I think, a clear case of "phatic communication." This is communication with little hard, informational content, but lots of emotional and social content. [It] doesn't get much said, but it has social effects so powerful, it gets lots done
    (tags: phatic communication twitter facebook community social culture)
  • Talk at Yale: Part 3 of 3 - Joel on Software
    "The main thing you don’t learn with a CS degree is how to develop software, although you will probably build up certain muscles in your brain that may help you later if you decide that developing software is what you want to do."
    (tags: software development article joelspolsky education learning teaching)
• • Mr Splashy Pants Update
    "in the 'sentences we never thought we’d be writing at the start of the campaign" category comes "Make the Japanese Fisheries Agency promise not to harpoon Mister Splashy Pants." Very thoughtful responses from Greenpeace.
    (tags: blogs media marketing viral wordofmouth)
  • SlideShowPro / Products / SlideShowPro / SlideShowPro for Lightroom: Web engine for publishing Lightroom content
    SlideShowPro is now available for Lightroom. Looks very impressive, especially at the level of its integration.
    (tags: lightroom plugin photography slideshow web export)
• • The Brothers Brick - LEGO Blog » Blog Archive » I call dibs on Norman Mailer’s LEGO
    'Apparently, Mailer built “a vast Lego city, incorporating some 15,000 pieces, known as the city of the future, seeming to take as much pride in it as in any of his other creations.”'
    (tags: lego writers normanmailer)
• • Antisocial networking « Adam Greenfield’s Speedbird
    "From where I stand, the only sane response is to keep our conceptions of friendship and affinity from being polluted by technical metaphors and constraints to begin with." Superb post by Adam Greenfield. Makes me question a lot of my recent design.
    (tags: socialnetworking society networks friendship anthropology community)
• • evhead: Will it fly? How to Evaluate a New Product Idea
    "I've been thinking about a number of new product ideas lately. In doing so, I've been trying to come up with a way more structured way of evaluating them. Here's a first attempt at defining that." Evan Williams on product.
    (tags: business startup strategy product design innovation)
  • yndi halda | about
    "We started when we were children - we met at school. We started writing enjoy eternal bliss when we were around 17 years old, and finished it when we had just turned 20." Yndi Halda's "Enjoy Eternal Bliss" is, frankly, stunning.
    (tags: music yndihalda postrock)
  • weplaythis
    Nice looking site for perhaps the more grown-up gamer looking to connect and share with others; the focus on sharing the spaces you play in is a really interesting touch. Can't wait to try this.
    (tags: games play society space)
• • almost effortless » Graceful 404s in Rails 2.0
    An explanation of #rescue_from, which was added in Rails 2.0, and is a really rather lovely way of handling all kinds of custom exception and making them not suck.
    (tags: rails ruby rubyonrails routing redirect)
  • Declarative exception-handling in your controllers - Rails 2.0 a feature a day #2 - redemption in a blog
    "...this feature is one of the few nicest features in Rails made by a contributor outside of the Rails core so I couldn’t resist mentioning it." More on #rescue_from, with some nice use cases.
    (tags: rails rubyonrails ruby exceptionhandling exceptions)
  • : RADIOHEAD STORE :
    "Strictly limited edition 4Gb USB stick, shaped in Radiohead’s iconic "bear" image and housed in a bespoke deluxe box." Full .WAV files and some natty packaging, to boot.
    (tags: radiohead marketing branding audio mp3)
  • Sanskrit: Rich Textile editor
    "Sanskrit is a rich-text editor that outputs Textile instead of XHTML." Also has nicely unstyled 'button' controls, making it easy to custoise the UI.
    (tags: css javascript richtexteditor rte richtext html editor textile)
• • CR Blog » Blog Archive » The Bible According To Google Earth
    "God’s Eye View portrays four key Biblical events as if captured by Google Earth." Striking, jarring; curiously impersonal. Parting of the Red Sea is, to my mind, the best.
    (tags: art projection maps biblical)
  • IS - Dan Hill
    Dan Hill: "The Well-Tempered Personal Environment" Dan's talk from Interesting South. Something to watch when I have a bit more time; it looks like a wonderful concept.
    (tags: danhill sustainability interesting design video environment community society)
  • Unilever Centre for Molecular Informatics, Cambridge - Brighten the Corners » Blog Archive » Over The Ice
    "There’s always the feeling that you’re not seen as either a real programmer or a real scientist; you kind of fall between two stools." Some great thoughts from Andrew on the problems you get when people aren't interested in mixing paint.
    (tags: software development science)
  • Chris Heathcote: anti-mega: blog all dog-eared pages: Truth, Lies and Advertising by Jon Steel
    "There are a lot of similarities between design and advertising, notably the treatment of real market feedback and the opinion of the client, and I think this book nails when and how to do proper user research."
    (tags: advertising analysis nonfiction book commentary)
• • [this is aaronland] Things I Am Not Talking About
    Aaron had two talks turned down; both, from their abstracts alone, sound fascinating; from his fuller explanations, they sound like they had the potential to be fantastic. Still reeling from some ideas. Disappointed there's not space for this in the world
    (tags: internet making art culture craft talk presentation abstract)