crazed monkey » links

How to Grow Your Own Ginger Beer Plant

Ian Stevens — Tue, 07 Feb 2012 23:17:55 +0000

I’ve often wanted to try making ginger beer at home. My Dad sometimes spoke about having a ginger beer plant in his childhood farm home in England. They kept it in a closet.

Introduction to the OpenAM RESTful API

Ian Stevens — Wed, 11 Jan 2012 00:31:38 +0000

Protecting Java EE Applications With OpenSSO Policy Agents, Part 1: Basic Steps

Ian Stevens — Wed, 11 Jan 2012 00:24:04 +0000

An Overview of Sun OpenSSO Enterprise 8.0 (Sun OpenSSO Enterprise 8.0 Technical Overview)

Ian Stevens — Wed, 11 Jan 2012 00:22:02 +0000

An old document on OpenSSO. I’m not sure how it still applies to OpenAM.

What to do when PyPI goes down

Ian Stevens — Fri, 30 Dec 2011 21:31:16 +0000

Avichal’s Blog – Focus on building 10x teams, not on hiring 10x developers

Ian Stevens — Sat, 17 Dec 2011 13:40:09 +0000

Avichal Garg argues that hiring a well-rounded, well-coordinated team which plays off its members’ strengths goes farther than hiring a single well-rounded developer.

I like the concept, but it’s light on evidence. Is there supporting data, not anecdotes, that hiring such a 10x team is more economical than hiring a smaller group of so-called 10x developers? How much more likely is it that one could find 6-7 complementary developers than a handful who just get shit done? And that their increased quality and output outweigh their extra cost? Without evidence, the argument Is just a lot of hand-waving.

Still, hiring complementary team members is something to keep in mind. But how does one gauge the personalities required to complement an existing team? How does one spot a “Pinocchio” in an interview? What about rebalancing the team as each individual grows or others leave?

David Mark’s Essential Javascript Tips – Volume #8 – Tip #47E – Attaching and Detaching Event Listeners

Ian Stevens — Fri, 16 Dec 2011 03:29:39 +0000

David Mark, that JavaScript curmudgeon, wrote a detailed approach in comp.lang.javascript to the attaching and detaching of event listeners, depending on context and browser. It’s quite possibly more information than you require, but a great resource with no doubts to its accuracy. I’m bookmarking this so that I may confirm the existence of prior volumes … Read more

mxcl/homebrew Issue #899: readline should build a ‘universal’ binary

Ian Stevens — Sun, 27 Nov 2011 02:55:58 +0000

If you ever get an error message of “configure: error: C compiler cannot create executables” when executing brew install readline, then do what’s suggested in a related Homebrew issue:

brew edit readline
Comment out the line which starts with ENV.universal_binary.
Re-execute your previous brew install command.

The above also applies to the following packages:

jpeg

Apparently the configuration specifying a Universal or PowerPC build target for libraries is in the library itself, not passed to it. If the library author wants to stop people using it on PowerPC, he/she can.

Da Vinci kept to-do lists too

Ian Stevens — Thu, 24 Nov 2011 02:50:26 +0000

I like to-do lists. Every day I’m either making one or maintaining one. I don’t trust my brain to remember lists, so I write them down. Big whoop, you say, and so do I. Lists are nothing special. And yet, many people don’t take advantage of lists and instead keep their to-do items in their head.

Leonardo da Vinci also made lists. A sample of one was translated and illustrated for NPR’s Robert Krulwich. While it’s a daunting to-do list, what strikes me is that, with the exception of “Draw Milan”, each item is un-ambiguous. Da Vinci details what he wants to do, and who he must speak to or where he must go to get it done. Each item is so precise, da Vinci could easily delegate most of them to someone else and have them report back to him.

The other interesting thing about da Vinci’s list is how he addresses himself in the second person. “Get Messer Fazio to show you about proportion.” Each item speaks to him, orders him even.

I wonder how many of these to-do items da Vinci finished.

Martin Fowler on how to safely grow a development team

Ian Stevens — Fri, 11 Nov 2011 21:23:48 +0000