A Year Well Sliced – My talk from QS Amsterdam Conference
I somehow missed that my talk from 2013 was posted online. In this talk I discuss my analysis of a year’s worth of LifeSlice photos, seeing how I spend my time in front of the screen. My photo is taken...
View ArticleHandy Bird: Play Flappy Bird by actually flapping your hands using doppler...
It’s almost too crazy to believe. A web page can bounce sound off your hand and hear changes caused by your movement. Play it now here: https://wanderingstan.github.io/handybird/ Does not work in...
View ArticleStagnation of computer creativity and lessons from the automotive industry.
Thesis: Tech is following the path of the auto industry. Perhaps this is a standard phenomena. In the early days of the automobile, there were hundreds of carmakers. New ideas were coming out all the...
View ArticleFreedom of movement, brain drain, and rich getting richer
My friend Henry recently returned from Argentina. Along with the incredible natural beauty, he told how incredible cheap everything was since the country’s economy is terrible. “En route to be the...
View ArticleCoding styles: Are you Lewis and Clark or building an interstate?
tl;dr: Software projects exist on a continuum between the Lewis and Clark expedition, and laying down freeway. Knowing what kind of project you’re on can be the difference between success and failure....
View ArticleGood code balances efficiency, readability, flexibility, and brevity
tl;dr: There are four goals you can prioritize when coding: efficiency, readability, flexibility, and brevity. In English, we understand that “good writing” means something different between a novel,...
View ArticleThe evolution of developer experience in the 20th century
A marketing friend once looked at my screen while I was coding and remarked, “That’s so scary looking!” This got me thinking about how we got to this strange-looking multi-colored-words-on-black...
View ArticleWhy are there dumb* people in our smart society?
tl;dr: Increases in societal knowledge enable increases in tolerable levels of individual ignorance. Credit: The Far Side Reflecting on the anti-vax, homeopathy and other examples of modern ignorance,...
View ArticleVideo phones, VR, ChatGPT and what we really want
Why are we often so wrong about what we think we want from technology? I’m thinking about the triumph of texting over video calling, and think VR will similarly be eclipsed by AI. Swedish Prime...
View ArticleProsthetic Gods at play in the tragedy of the commons
Dall-e input: “An ancient god posed like a comic book, wearing headphones, adorned with many mechanical and electrical gadgets, including a cell phone, electric drill, and leaf blower. Dramatic high...
View Article