Stumbling upon the future

» The "paradox of choice" is not robust

I missed this one while traveling, so I am grateful to the loyal MR reader who pointed it out to me:

… the psychological effect may not actually exist at all. It is hard to find much evidence…

» DC Mythbusting: Metro Map to Scale

‘Metro_Compared’
courtesy of ‘Don Whiteside’

Hi, and welcome to another edition of Mythbusting! After our last feature busted some misconceptions about the busiest Metro stations and…

» CodeSOD: For the Ease of Maintenance

Shared by Matt McKnight
It always ends this way.

Ryan Thompson works on a project where all database queries had to go through “stored procedures”. Now before you call me out on extraneous…

» imathis's fancy-buttons at master - GitHub

Shared by Matt McKnight
nice fancy

Using fancy buttons on your site?

Add a link to the wiki

Demo

screenshot

Without CSS gradient support:
screenshot

Install

Install the plugin:

sudo gem install...

“ My Schedule Should Be Terrible…I should have an overwhelming, Malox-guzzling, stress-saturated schedule. Here’s why: I’m a graduate student in a demanding program. I’m working on several research papers while also attempting to nail down some key ideas for my dissertation. I’m TA’ing and taking courses. I maintain this blog. I’m a staff writer for Flak Magazine. And to keep things interesting, I’m working on background research for a potential new book project. You would be reasonable to assume that I must get, on average, 7 - 8 minutes of sleep a night. But you would also be wrong. Let me explain… For Some Reason It’s Not… Here is my actual schedule. I work: From 9 to 5 on weekdays. In the morning on Sunday. That’s it. Unless I’m bored, I have no need to even turn on a computer after 5 during the week or any time on Saturday. I fill these times, instead, doing, well, whatever I want. How do I balance an ambitious work load with an ambitiously sparse schedule? It’s a simple idea I call fixed-schedule productivity. Fixed-Schedule Productivity The system work as follows: Choose a schedule of work hours that you think provides the ideal balance of effort and relaxation. Do whatever it takes to avoid violating this schedule. This sounds simple. But think about it for a moment. Satisfying rule 2 is not easy. If you took your current projects, obligations, and work habits, you’d probably fall well short of satisfying your ideal work schedule. Here’s a simple truth: to stick to your ideal schedule will require some drastic actions. For example, you may have to: Dramatically cut back on the number of projects you are working on. Ruthlessly cull inefficient habits from your daily schedule. Risk mildly annoying or upsetting some people in exchange for large gains in time freedom. Stop procrastinating. In the abstract, these all seem like hard things to do. But when you have the focus of a specific goal — “I do not want to work past 5 on week days!” — you’d be surprised by how much easier it becomes deploy these strategies in your daily life. Let’s look at an example… Case Study: My Schedule My schedule provides a good case study. To reach my relatively small work hour limit, I have to be careful with how I go about my day. I see enough bleary-eyed insomniacs around here to know how easy it is to slip into a noon to 3 am routine (the infamous “MIT cycle.”) Here are some of the techniques I regularly use to remain within the confines of my fixed schedule: I serialize my projects. I ke

— Study Hacks » Blog Archive » Fixed-Schedule Productivity: How I Accomplish a Large Amount of Work in a Small Number of Work Hours

» Paper Boat

works

» Why You Can't Use Personal Technology at the Office - WSJ.com

yeah

» Praise Results

I am deeply honored by Tyler Cowen’s blog post “In praise of Robin Hanson.” My first instinct is to respond in kind, but doing so now would seem forced; better to wait until no one expects it….

» Ron Artest on tossing Ariza’s shoe off the court the other night: “As soon as I toss it off the court, it’ll buy me some time. I come back down, Trevor is trying to put his shoe on and I politely hit a three in his face.”

Shared by Matt McKnight
“I don’t speak to his feet so I don’t know what his feet are thinking, I don’t know what his toes are thinking”

All I can say after listening to this interview is wow. …

» MF Bliki: SunkCostDrivenArchitecture

Shared by Matt McKnight
Yes. Sadly Common.

I find this to be a sadly common architectural style. Your company buys some very expensive piece of infrastructure software. You are then told you must…