If you use a task management app on your computer or your phone, and you find yourself adding tasks and marking them as “low priority”, stop!
Quit the app. Uninstall it. Wipe it off your routine. Because if you are spending time jotting down what you think are ‘low priority’ tasks, you are wasting your time. Use the time to get some actual work done.
Newsreaders still feel it is worth a special and rather worrying mention if, for instance, a crime was planned by people ‘over the Internet.’ They don’t bother to mention when criminals use the telephone or the M4, or discuss their dastardly plans ‘over a cup of tea,’ though each of these was new and controversial in their day.
– Douglas Adams in How to Stop Worrying and Learn to Love the Internet
via Edward O’Connor
My Gmail is a priceless hoard of us making plans, telling inside jokes, calling each other “snoodle” and “bubbies.” I type his name into the search field and enter a world of the unscripted dialogue that filled our 9-to-5 existence. I become immersed in the coziness of our union. In hundreds of chats automatically saved to my account, we express our love for each other readily and naturally in our own private speech. This is a history of our relationship that we didn’t intend to write, one that runs parallel to the one authored by his uncontainable illness.
– Rebecca Armendariz in Chat History.
A heartbreaking story of losing someone to cancer and then reliving those memories through the chat logs. It’s a story of love in the face of death. A slow, painful death. It’s hard not to shed a tear after reading.
25-year friend. One of the most poignant pieces by Mark Pilgrim.
How many 25-year friends do you have? I think I have four. I think.
The industry talks about ‘educating customers’ so that customers understand products. But we believe if you have to educate customers before they understand your product, you’ve already lost the opportunity.
– Brett King in The Reboot of Banking.
He is building a new bank. A bank without any plastic cards. A bank that uses game mechanics similar to that of Foursquare to reward customers. Cool, innit?
While it’s true that we hire people because they fit the job description, it’s important to always remember that we hire people, we don’t hire job descriptions. The people we hire have other skills, desires, and passions; smart companies utilize the whole person, not just some pre-conceived piece of them.
– Edward O’Connor in You are not your job description
You know what’d have been cooler than being a plumber? These.
While out on a walk, I saw a boy and a girl scampering across a busy street, giggling along the way. When they were about to reach the sidewalk, the boy shouted, “Jump!”, and the girl, as if waiting for her cue, jumped on to it. Both of them turned to face each other. They looked happy. Cheerfully, she screamed, “Oye! — ”, and then something in a language I don’t understand.
He had a smug grin on his face, and the girl flashed the most radiant smile I’ve seen in a long time. And then I realized… she was blind.
Thank you, Dennis Ritchie
Isaac Newton once said, “If I have seen a little further it is by standing on the shoulders of Giants”, and in the hotbed of technology, Dennis Ritchie was as gigantic as anyone can get.
His contributions to technology are behind everything from today’s greatest smartphones to humdrum washing machines. And almost every other thing we build today.
Thank you, Sir. We owe you more than we can fathom.
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Tagged idols, linux, programming, unix