Category: tao

  • Making and Questioning Assumptions: Falsehoods WordPress Developers Believe

    Making and Questioning Assumptions: Falsehoods WordPress Developers Believe

    When building software you need to constantly make and question assumptions. You make assumptions since you can’t operate with perfect information and waiting for that perfect information would take an infinite amount of time. These assumptions can lead to falsehoods. Akin’s 33rd law of spacecraft design: A good plan violently executed now is better than a perfect plan next…

  • Random Thoughts On…Product Engineering

    Random Thoughts On…Product Engineering

    For the past 5.5 years, I've been a part of the product engineering leadership at a couple of organizations. While I'm not sure if these ideas translate to client services, I know that they have all been valuable to me as I work long term building products and brands. It's important to periodically reevaluate your…

  • Akin’s Laws of Spacecraft Design Modified for Websites

    I have long been a believer that as creators and creatives working on websites, we can learn a lot of other fields.  One that I am constantly looking at for inspiration is spacecraft and astrophysics. Akin's Laws of Spacecraft Design are a collection of axioms collected and maintained by David Akin, a professor at the University…

  • Laugh, Think, Cry

    “If you laugh, you think, and you cry, that’s a full day. That’s a heck of a day. You do that seven days a week, you’re going to have something special.” – Jim Valvano

  • Getting Involved and Giving Back As A Beginner – Lisa Yoder – Ela Conf 2016 

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nXIIW8TusWw “We are all cereal beginners. It’s not to say you are not an expert, but if we are not all trying new things we kind of stagnate and get boring” I listened to this talk while painting, where I am a beginner and fee like it often.  I makes me want to figure out…

  • OK, But There Are Two Rules

    “OK, but there are two rules:  1. You can’t change the recipe.   2.  You can’t do anything that anyone else has done before.” With those two options off the table, the only alternative was to invent something completely new, or do nothing at all.  Long story short….the distiller got to thinking, invented an entirely new…