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Irrationality & Design
I am often derided for being too logical. Indeed, a recent personality test I took at work identified me as an INTP, the hallmark of which is apparently logic. On the other hand, the following personal...
View ArticleBiases, part 1
It's all in the brainThe world is full of biases. Some of my favorites are cognitive, which frequently result in people (myself included) misinterpreting information, or making poor/wrong decisions,...
View ArticleBiases, part 2
It's always about moneyAs well as cognitive bias (see Biases, part 1), there is also plenty of physical bias in the world. A simple example is a weighted coin. A regular coin has a 50% chance of coming...
View ArticleMass Media is Dead (to me)
It has been a long time since I've had a television. Apart from perhaps the odd occasion at other people's houses, I haven't really watched television since I lived at home 6 years ago.Partly this is...
View ArticleUpper Bounds
One of my favorite lecturers from university was Dr Iain Lindsay, who taught 4th year Digital System Design. Judged against most of the other lecturers, who droned along to a set of dry powerpoint...
View ArticleA few live coding tips
Last night at Scotrug I live coded some of ToDoMVC in Backbone.js to introduce Rubyists to Backbone and how it looks & feels.Since it went surprisingly well, I thought I'd share a few quick...
View ArticleGeneralists, Founders and the Impostor Syndrome
As the technical co-founder of a web startup, it's easy to think of yourself as a software engineer first and a founder second. This is patently wrong and potentially dangerous for your mental...
View ArticleFounder depression, and a meetup proposal.
As both a capital-F founder and developer, the last 12 months have been tough. I have personally been stuck in some pretty deep lows, and of the assumption that I was the only one struggling with a lot...
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A Shakey Victory: Culture Hack Scotland 2012
Having just returned home from Culture Hack Scotland 2012, I can safely say that it is one of my favourite tech events of the year. Since anyone who wasn't there will have seen all my tweets without...
View ArticleGiving up on self-defeating self-talk
The mind is a powerful thing. It can convince us that ghosts exist; that the position of the planets demonstrably affects our lives; that the answer to the Monty Hall problem is not "choose the other...
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The making of Shakey: a Realtime, Massively Multiplayer, Shakespearean...
At Culture Hack Scotland (#chscot) last weekend, we won most playful and the grand prize for a real-time game we made using Rails, JavaScript and Pusher. For a bit of background read this post.I...
View ArticleVows
In case you missed it, Hilary and I got married recently, on what was easily the best day of my life.As it was a non-religious ceremony in Scotland, we had a lot of freedom about what we could say...
View ArticleLightning
I researched and talked about lightning today, here is what I learned. Caveat, I am not a meteorologist. I have embedded the slides, and I've roughly transcribed some notes to go along with...
View ArticleRejection
I was at the pool, waiting to dive, behind maybe 6 or 7 others, all younger than me, mostly female.A young guy, maybe 16, steps up to the diving board. In my mind his name is Alex. Alex is a cool...
View ArticleAnonymous Pen Pals
I've recently been thinking a lot about Tech Support and how exactly to get that ball rolling.I've also been thinking about the role the internet plays/can play as a support network. The internet has a...
View ArticleWhere is truth?
Over time, I have been lead to believe, or I have led myself to believe, that truth lies within our own heads, in our minds.For some questions of truth, this seems to be a good approximation. Ask me...
View ArticleLive as if you'll die in ten years
I learned recently that two of my friends are going to die. Not today, hopefully not tomorrow, but in all likelihood they will die before I do.This was shortly followed by another realisation: all of...
View ArticleStartup lessons learned after two and a half years
Two and a half years ago I wrote my first line of code.Two years ago we incorporated "The Float Yard Ltd"20 months ago I quit my job13 months ago we had our first paying customerLast month we hit 100...
View ArticleStop looking for a co-founder
A question I am frequently asked by almost every new or aspiring entrepreneur is "How can I find a (technical) co-founder". It's frequently, though not always, asked by somebody who is non technical...
View ArticleThe dev team of one: accountability
Being in a technical team of one can really suck sometimes.One of the problems I have is accountability. I am not directly accountable, nor working with, anyone in particular. The only people I am...
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