Subtraction.com: Dear Designer, You Suck
http://www.subtraction.com/2009/04/09/dear-designer-you-suck

A friend of mine who happens to be a famous designer (this person shall remain nameless) said something not long ago about one of my projects that really pissed me off. At the time, I objected to this person’s tone and delivery, thinking it inappropriate. After all, we’re friends! But given some distance from the event, I realize now that, the formal qualities of the remarks aside, this person had a point. They weren’t necessarily right, mind you, but there was a legitimate criticism at the core, to which I should have paid attention. In retrospect I realize that getting hot and bothered about this person’s tone said something much less flattering about me than about the person.

The notion of speaking openly, honestly and objectively about work is inherent to learning how to be a better X...."This is why art, film and architecture have achieved such great heights in our society: those art forms are economically robust enough to support a vibrant critical class."

"To put a finer point on it: are we being honest with one another?" - also designer zu designern

The importance of honest criticism (in every profession).

Good article on being hypercritical.

Knowing what's wrong is a prerequisite for fixing it. That may sound trite, but...

As far back as I can remember, I was told I would grow up to be an artist. By age six, my obsessively detailed renderings of Mechagodzilla, et al. were already drawing attention from adults. By the time I was eight years old, my parents had been persuaded by teachers and friends to enroll me in private art lessons. I recall the informal "admissions test" with my first art instructor. A scale model of a bull was placed in front of me on a table and I was asked to draw it. The plastic bull was a faithful reproduction, full of muscles and knobby joints. It was an ugly, forlorn thing, far removed from my normal subject matter. After a few minutes, the resulting drawing was roughly in proportion, the details were well represented, and the perspective was pretty close. I was in. Thus began eight years of regular art instruction. I progressed from pencils and pastels to watercolors and acrylics, and finally to oils. The content was mostly classical: lots of still lifes and landscapes. Meanw

Interesting piece, via S.teave

John Siracusa on the role criticism plays in design.

Very Interesting

Software Engineering: Dead?

If there's a key to what the 21st-century novel is going to look like, says novelist Lev Grossman, this is it: the ongoing exoneration and rehabilitation of plot.

Good Novels Don’t Have to Be Hard Work - WSJ.com http://bit.ly/X9oM4 [from http://twitter.com/dcouturepdx/statuses/3680002494]

However, despite its negative connotation, criticism often presents an excellent opportunity to grow as a designer. Before you can respond effectively, you need to understand what those opportunities are.

o understand what those o

esson in humility Never underestimate the importance of humility. Although criticism can bruise the ego, it keeps you grounded, making you easier to work with and mor

Critical discussion about unit tests. It's important not to dismiss his core argument, that unit testing isn't the only testing you should be doing.

Don't feel bad, it's okay not to write unit tests. But Unit Tests Work For Me! First, are you sure you're really unit testing? Unit testing is all about testing unitsindependent pieces of logic. According to Michael Feathers, a real unit test cannot

Poor SQL; even with DSLs being the new hotness, people forget that SQL is one of the original domain-specific languages. It's a little verbose, and you might be bored with it, but it's much better than writing low-level mapreduce code.

do you get the application up and running on your development environment. If you’re lucky, there’ll be some up-to-date instructions for getting it to kind of start up. Then you’ll get one of the other developers to show you how to run a few

http://www.developers.org.ua/archives/vseloved/2009/07/03/weekly-linkdump-182/

# Do nothing I cannot defend. # Cover, write and present every story with the care I would want if the story were about me. # Assume there is at least one other side or version to every story. # Assume the viewer is as smart and as caring and as good a person as I am. # Assume the same about all people on whom I report. # Assume personal lives are a private matter, until a legitimate turn in the story absolutely mandates otherwise. # Carefully separate opinion and analysis from straight news stories, and clearly label everything. # Do not use anonymous sources or blind quotes, except on rare and monumental occasions. # No one should ever be allowed to attack another anonymously. # And, finally, I am not in the entertainment business."

Do nothing I cannot defend. Cover, write and present every story with the care I would want if the story were about me. Assume there is at least one other side or version to every story. Assume the viewer is as smart and as caring and as good a person as I am. Assume the same about all people on whom I report. Assume personal lives are a private matter, until a legitimate turn in the story absolutely mandates otherwise. Carefully separate opinion and analysis from straight news stories, and clearly label everything. Do not use anonymous sources or blind quotes, except on rare and monumental occasions. No one should ever be allowed to attack another anonymously. And, finally, I am not in the entertainment business.

Last Friday evening, Dec. 4, was the final broadcast of what has been known for many years as The NewsHour with Jim Lehrer. The following Monday, Dec. 7, the new-look version of the venerable, one-hour, weekday nights, news broadcast made its debut as the PBS NewsHour. Lehrer was still in the anchor chair but his name was gone from the logo and some things had changed.

"The most accurate and important pre-war stories challenging the Bush administration's on-the-record but bogus case for Iraqi weapons of mass destruction were based on anonymous sources. Many of those stories, in part because they were based on anonymous sources, got buried or underplayed by newspapers at the time. Many of them never got reported at all on television, including the NewsHour. But there are times when there are mitigating circumstances — like internal threats within an administration or maybe jail time for leakers — when some sources must remain anonymous and when editors need to trust their reporters. And often you don't know if the occasion is "rare and monumental" until it is too late"

dell'11/12/2009, di Michael Getler. "One of the things that has not changed, however, is Lehrer's unwavering approach to journalism."

This is an excerpt of a large-scale guide to the inner workings of The Shining. The written probe here (we have a patterned visual probe for printing later) is evidence of a conscious attempt to create motion-glyphs out of seemingly mundane and unrelated forms, signs and symbols of two continental systems. In essence a primer for a new form of visual cognition, The Shining eschews all formal genre conditions of horror crafting a vastly unseeable new genre, one that has yet to be fully integrated into our culture as re-cognition.

Smashing Magazine

Keep this as a reference to common couch FUD :)

Ignore your critics /Seth's Blog/ - If you find 100 comments on a blog post or 100 reviews of a new book or ... http://tinyurl.com/cupjf9 [from http://twitter.com/jorgefsb/statuses/1411642918]

something to think about

So, who should you listen to? Your sneezers. You should listen to the people who tell the most people about you. Listen to the people who thrive on sharing your good works with others. If you delight these people, you grow.

Ignore your critics and fans...You should listen to the people who tell the most people about you. Listen to the people who thrive on sharing your good works with others. If you delight these people, you grow.

Ignore your critics. Ignore your fans. Listen to your sneezers. You should listen to the people who tell the most people about you. Listen to the people who thrive on sharing your good works with others. If you delight these people, you grow.

Hi Lyle, I think that's what he's getting at; Listen to your fans as they will get you more fans. He's a bit difficult to understand sometimes. There is a god point he made a while ago; Don't listen to those people that make the most noise, but those people that bring you the money. I have found that working with the 'shouters' takes up much more time than your good clients and costs you as lot more. Something to keep in mind for when you start working. Cheers, Ian All understood and agreed, i understand that its not wise to listen and take what they say to heart but what of your fans? Are they not the ones you seek to please? Can they not offer you constructive criticism?

Dealing with negativity online can be tough, which was why we were all ears when Tim Ferriss, author of The Four Hour Work Week, took the stage at The Next Web ‘10 event in Amsterdam to discuss how to learn to love haters. While Mashable recently offered you advice on how to deal with negative feedback specifically in the social media realm, Ferriss takes the concept a step further with advice on how to contend with — and benefit from — criticism across all platforms. We caught up with Ferriss backstage at the event to find out more about his seven principles for dealing with haters. Read on for some interesting ideas and let us know which work for you — as well as your own strategies — in the comments below.

Tim Ferriss' "7 Tips for Dealing with Haters" is brilliant. I'd just add "listen well enough to know when you're wrong" http://bit.ly/cRbab2 – Chris Anderson (chr1sa) http://twitter.com/chr1sa/statuses/13312105642

I’m agitated. This kind of publish is probably crabby. Certainly not the usual ticket. By pass it

When you're ready to launch your website, you'll want to give visitors the best user experience possible. Learning to evaluate a website effectively is part art and part science, but it's a skill that can be learned. To develop an eye for what works on a website and what doesn't, there are few simple techniques that help you critique your website in 30 seconds or less.

Interesting article on how Twitter delivers disproportionate attention/audiences to recommended users, and why that flies in the face of fair Web practice.

Why it's time to break out of Twitter

"Why it's time to break out of Twitter" - Dave Winer (Scripting News) http://tr.im/hjy4 [from http://twitter.com/kenmat/statuses/1319637185]

Why it's time to break out of Twitter First, so there are no misunderstandings, I am using Twitter, I will continue to use Twitter and I will recommend Twitter to others, as I have been for 2 or so years. This is not me slamming the door on the way out, something I dislike intensely. If you're leaving just go. But I'm not leaving. Permalink to this paragraph There was an event a few weeks back that convinced me that it's time to break out, like jailbreaking an iPhone. I don't like the relationship Twitter-the-service has with Twitter-the-company. Yesterday I was talking with a Twitter board member, Bijan Sabet, someone who is becoming a personal friend, and said that it was good that the phone company wasn't part of the conversation. That's exactly how I feel about the company he is on the board of. Yet they are very much part of the conversation. Permalink to this paragraph

Funny review of SATC2

SATC2 review

the BEST SATC2 review EVAR http://bit.ly/dfu2zB [thanks @doclorraine @doctorcdf @BangsandaBun]

sex and the city review

Via http://silentwordsspeakloudest.blogspot.com/

A delightfully snakry and scathing review of the latest entry into Carrie Bradshaw's episodic stretch-mark-ridden monster series...

Kermode on SATC2 http://bit.ly/bstWN7 The Stranger piece http://bit.ly/beslgb and VC for good measure http://bit.ly/bOV89A

The making of cow clicker, and a look at the trend of social games

In which he describes the hows and whys.

Une excellente crique et analyse sur les "jeux" sociaux.

Compulsion explains the feeling of struggling to return to something in spite of ourselves. Its flipside involves the disrespect of time that we might otherwise spend doing more valuable things—or even just pondering the thoughtful and unexpected ideas that an asynchronous game might raise. Social games so covet our time that they abuse us while we are away from them, through obligation, worry, and dread over missed opportunities.

"You get a cow. You can click on it. In six hours, you can click it again. Clicking earns you clicks. You can buy custom "premium" cows through micropayments (the Cow Clicker currency is called "mooney"), and you can buy your way out of the time delay by spending it. You can publish feed stories about clicking your cow, and you can click friends' cow clicks in their feed stories. Cow Clicker is Facebook games distilled to their essence." -- Reminds me of the game where you do the dishes.

The dialectic between theory and practice often collapses into a call and response panegyric. This in mind, I thought it might be productive to make an example that would act as its own theory.