Geoff




I'm doing 19 things
 

Geoff's Life List

  1. 1. Mountain bike more
    56 people
  2. 2. learn processing
    1 entry
    37 people
  3. 3. try Django framework
    2 people
  4. 4. learn python
    754 people
  5. 5. Learn Cocoa
    181 people
  6. 6. master Ruby
    1 entry
    179 people
  7. 7. Learn Perl
    1 entry
    249 people
  8. 8. Master UNIX core utilities.
    1 entry
    1 person
  9. 9. Become a better programmer
    951 people
  10. 10. Read more books
    11,010 people
  11. 11. live abroad
    1,314 people
  12. 12. remodel the kitchen
    31 people
  13. 13. Clean the house
    101 people
  14. 14. become a morning person.
    1,457 people
  15. 15. Develop a personal web portal
    1 person
  16. 16. Develop a portfolio site
    1 person
  17. 17. Build an arcade cabinet
    32 people
  18. 18. Write more
    3,502 people
  19. 19. Make something useful
    1 entry . 1 cheer
    4 people
Recent entries
make something useful
"Make something people want." 2 years ago

Paul Graham in his essay Why smart people have bad ideas said that while creating t-shirts for the Y Combinator program they originally considered the phrase “If you can read this, I should be working” but decided to go with the phrase “Make something people want” in the end. Since reading this essay that idea has been stuck in my mind for a while. It played along nicely with what Richard Hamming had to say in his talk at the Bell Communications Research Colloquia Series which has been titled You and your research. Hamming says he asked his peers what is the most important area in your field and then asked if they were working in that area. If the person said no he would simply ask why not.

I don’t think I’ll ever be able to check “make something people want” off of my list of things to do because i hope i’ll always be working on something useful.

(cross-posted)



learn processing
Untitled 2 years ago

I’d been hearing about processing for a while but ever since seeing what Robert Hodgin had managed to do with some of his visualizations I’ve been hooked. Hopefully soon I can make time to sit down with this and put it through its paces.

Anyone else have any cool examples of processing at work?



contribute to an open source project (read all 2 entries…)
Untitled 2 years ago

I ended up starting two of my own in the ruby community. Monkey Test which is a test runner for ruby/rails tests which provides prettier output and flickrb which will eventually be a yet another flickr library for ruby. Sadly Monkey Test is experiencing some issues right now and i need to carve out some time to sit down and iron all of them out. Flickrb is also in a state of disrepair and has yet to see the light of day. Someday soon.



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