Shanti’s Dispatches

You keep using that word. I do not think it means what you think it means.

- Inigo Montoya, in The Princess Bride

The word agile, I fear, has lost its meaning. Originally it referred to a specific practice of software development, that contrasted itself with the Waterfall model of development.

Under Waterfall dev, you spend elaborate amounts of time up front, building 50+ page design documents, wire-framing, etc.

Perhaps I’m so far removed from Fortune 500 companies and non web-based applications, that I’m missing the forest for the trees here.

No one I know does Waterfall style development anymore. Getting Real is pretty much the new manifesto for how its done these days.

So now when I hear the word agile, my eyes tend to glaze over.

After all, if you’re not agile, what exactly are you trying to be?

Here are some antonyms for the word agile that I found online:

brittle, clumsy, stiff, inactive, unintelligent & stupid

Via synonym.com and answers.com.

After all, can you really hear someone saying something like?:

We prefer to be less nimble. For each iteration, it is our goal to have to refactor as much code as possible. Be like the Elephant, not the Cheetah — that’s our development philosophy.

No, of course not. Everyone thinks they are “agile“.

It looks like DreamHost just had the biggest wtf ever.

The thing is, accidents do happen. This was, however, one helluva blunder.

But this kind of thing happens when people are tired and not thinking straight. Forced 80 hour a week startup machismo cultures, for example, often result in this kind of stuff.

I’ve been there — luckily never made a mistake that led to over-billing by $7.5 million freaking dollars! Lulz.

* met a Canadian who worked for OSHA, who helps ensure & train workers on safety surrounding tires of huge machines like that pictured above (and bigger)
* he’s been visiting & working in and around the north pole for the past 20 years — the climate change, he says, is simply undeniable. The only controversy surrounding that issue now is the extent to which it is caused by humans vs. the natural cycles of the planet.

* NYC cab drivers can make roughly $1,000 per week (take home, I believe) - but that’s working 12 hour days, 7 days a week
* That comes to roughly $12 per hour. Not bad, but an 84 hour work week!?! How can spoiled Americans compete?!? (they don’t)

* Spoke to another Pakistani cabbie who believed Osama bin Laden is dead
* He said the players in the West created a major problem by funding the mujahadeen (indeed)
* Once the war with the Soviets was over, they simply looked for their next target. Combined with Islamic fundamentalism, you get some pretty nasty stuff.
* Kashmir is like the Jerusalem of central Asia — Pakistan, India & even China, claim ownership over parts of the territory

Some of the best new blogs of 2007 were carved from simple ideas, executed brilliantly.

I Can Has Cheeseburger? :

Hot Chicks with Douchebags :

And Passive Aggressive Notes:

Check out this one. (to a cop)

I was talking to a friend recently about how I’ve been won over by the Apple style of approach to product development.

Not that all of my stuff is nearly that good — but that it’s something to strive for. In the context, we were talking about a business that was basically a play on cost savings.

i.e. a small or medium-sized firm might hire us or use XYZ service and you can save $X per month that way.

Silicon Valley could give a rats ass about any kind of business like this. Unless it was game changing, like Skype, no one here would really care.

Part of the culture is wanting to impress your peers. That’s what helps keep the machinery flowing. Already sold your startup and sitting on $3M worth of cash? Okay, so you can sit on the couch and play Halo 3 for a few months, but even that will get old after a while. So for your next startup, part of what you’ll be wanting to do is both: A) impress your peers, and B) hopefully eventually have it become a huge success (see A).

This place has the best freakin’ blintzes ever:

You can view the rest on Flickr.

These are licensed as Attribution Share Alike - which means you can use them, sell them, mash em up, etc so long as you also share them under the same license. You’re also supposed to credit the original producer (”Attribution”) but I don’t even care about that. (some people do, a lot)

ps - you can use this page to batch update your Flickr photos to use whichever Creative Commons license you prefer. Hat tip, WikiHow.

Getting a little tired of seeing this when adding / logging into Facebook apps. This is really hurting the Facebook App cause.

Now everytime you think about adding an app, you’re a little bit more hesitant because you’re worried it’s just another Ponzi scheme like Oregon Trail. The Oregon Trail app doesn’t even let you play until you’ve invited a bunch of friends. No thanks. Optional friend spamming? Fine. But don’t extort my app invitations, thank you very much.

Oh and btw, Zeke still has dysentery.

Dominiek outlines how he Built a .com in 24 Hour in this excellent writeup on the making of Wigitize.

As readers of this blog no doubt know, I’m a huge rapid application development fanboy.

I’ve blogged briefly about this before, but in early december I developed apps at the clip of about 1 per day for a week. Later I went back and put some polish on them, but it’s motivating to be able to see the finish line within 10-12 hours.

The genius of Dominiek’s strategy was to thoroughly blog the process. I will go ahead and call Bull$hit that he both: 1) created the app (including his slick photoshop designs, etc), setup the server, deployed it and documented the entire process, all in the course of a single day. In 2-3 working days (or ~ 24 hours non-stop), perhaps, sure, I’ll give him that.

The reason I can say that is because documenting things well (like he’s done) can be even more time consuming than writing the actual code. Still, not taking away anything from his accomplishment — it’s a major coup.

When I have the time, I’d love to do an app a day for a whole month, blogging the entire process & releasing much of the code as open source. From my experience though, it would have to be 1 app per day + 1 day to document the process nicely.

Barack Obama continues to tear up the polls in the race for the democratic party nomination.

What you might not know, though, is that the Obama 2008 campaign used Mailroom to jumpstart this process.