jared tame

You can think and debate about stuff all day long or you can try stuff out and see what works. From my experience, the latter approach is a much better one.

fred wilson

http://blog.pengoworks.com/index.cfm/2009/4/21/Fixing-jQuerys-slideDown-effect-ie-Jumpy-Animation

if you're looking to build something like steepster's sliders (which uses jquery ui), you can pull it off using technique #4 from this css position guide.

- iterate over a list of scores

- for each score, create a new div, like this:

<div id="tick" style="position:absolute; left: <%= item.score %>px;">&nbsp;</div>

- when you're finished, wrap everything in a container, like this:

<div id="ticks_container" style="position:relative"></div>

so the finished product would look like this in ruby on rails:

<div id="ticks_container" style="position:relative">

<% for item in @items %>

<div id="tick" style="position:absolute; left: <%= item.score %>px;">&nbsp;</div>

<% end %>

</div>

calculating the scores could be done with a case statement, or some multiplication and addition.  this is a really cool rating system, big ups to steepster.

“This guy from EMI is interested and going to be presenting it to the VP.”

“We’re in talks to do a pilot for the fall.”

“I’m getting ready to work on some new material with a writer from Friends.”

Of course these are the things some people have to tell themselves to be hopeful when facing another day of challenges.

But of course nothing materializes. You never hear it mentioned again, and you politely don’t ask. (Surprising circumstances always foiled the certain event.)

I felt like wearing a t-shirt that says, “TELL ME WHEN IT’S ACTUALLY HAPPENING.”

So now when I hear a future-tense sentence, my ears shut down. I’ll say “cool!” and hope it helps, but I don’t believe a word.

- derek silvers, don't speak in the future tense

interesting video interview with max levchin suggested that start-ups not hire outsiders for executive-level positions, but instead promote existing members of the start up to those types of positions.  excellent advice.

I was an over-confident punk, thinking I had the answer, and everyone else didn’t.

But it worked.

And in fact, isn’t that kind of confidence absolutely required to get anything done?

Isn’t the role of the entrepreneur to be the bold, daring, audacious one? The over-confident reckless one who says, “Screw it. Let’s do it!”?

Yes! Of course! It’s the essential final lesson: that all this learning means nothing until you make something happen.

- Derek Silvers on Confidence

easyslider is a terrific jquery plugin for condensing lots of information into a few "slides" that the user can jump to.  demo is here.

the problem is when you have a long list of items to display.  if i have 10 items, and i want to jump from item 1 to item 10, there is a very long delay.  currently, easyslider uses the current formula to calculate how long it takes to do a jump:

var speed = diff*options.speed;

so if there's a difference of 9, it says 9*1000, or 9 seconds for the jump to complete, assuming 1000 milliseconds is your default pause time.

there's a better way to handle this, IMHO.  for example, using the formula below:

var speed = Math.abs(options.speed/(diff/2));

let's use a few examples to show how this is a bit faster.

• if you jump from item 1 to item 10, your difference is 9.  if you divide by half of that, your jump time is 1000/4.5, or 200 milliseconds.
• if you jump from item 1 to item 5, your difference is 4.  1000/2 will result in a delay of 500 milliseconds.

you "schedule" meetings and even say in the e-mail "I'll CC my secretary", and you actually forget to CC your secretary... awkward

when in october, you send this e-mail: "we should get together and chat, how does February 5, 2010 @ 2pm sound?"

you tell someone how much you loved their presentation when they didn't even present

you use the words "big", "idea", and "execute" in the same sentence, sometimes more than once in the same e-mail

you compliment the product, but you still have no idea what it even does or how to spell it

you use the words "entrenched", "player" and "space" to describe the biggest competitor

don't like typing? setup aliases in ~/.profile (used to be .bash_profile) and restart terminal.

some cool examples for ror devs:

http://www.themomorohoax.com/2009/03/24/bash-aliases-for-rails-cucumber-developers