"The ability to make stuff has been leached out of our society," he says. "It's sad. No, it's worse than sad -- it's almost a criminal act. Because when you think about what has happened -- the rendering down of a population to be consumers -- what you're really doing is rendering people unable to think critically." He decided his next company would address this deficit: It would make it easier to make stuff.
The Future of Manufacturing, from Inc.com
A good lesson for entrepreneurs:
He saw one problem: Ponoko was not focused on profitability. "A lot of people come to Silicon Valley and they get confused about who they're selling to," says Durham, who invested about $50,000 in the company and now sits on the board. "Is it the press, the VCs, or the customers? And for Ponoko, the customer was third on the list." Durham told ten Have to cut costs and focus on making existing customers happy.
This is much like the waterfall method of software development versus the Agile method - the waterfall method is to create a big plan, then break it up into small manageable steps, and implement the little steps, perform testing, and ship the final product. The Agile method focuses on rapid iteration of code, never getting very far away from code that will actually run and perform some sort of function - no matter how small.
I see the "position the company towards VCs" as equivalent to the waterfall method - you start with your "requirements" based on market research, create a big "design" (business plan), and then try to get VCs to give you the resources you need to implement your plan. Durham's suggestion is to do more of an Agile approach - start trying to make money immediately by satisfying customers. Build up from there - organically growing your business.
Monday, January 25, 2010
Accumulation and Attachment: Finding Balance
From the Get Rich Slowly blog
Non-attachment is letting go of the belief that your happiness depends on holding onto things you think you own.
That's a lot of energy that goes into worrying, protecting, and spending. Your Stuff starts to own you. Attachment and possessiveness can extend beyond material possessions, too. Most of us know someone who tried to hold on so tightly to their partner that the relationship crumbled. We've all seen celebrities who cling to their youth through plastic surgery, the result being anything but youthful.
The idea is not to give up all of your possessions; rather, it is about letting go of the clinging and fear of loss. Because nothing in life is permanent, clinging and fear of loss only cause us to suffer. Focusing on Stuff that can be easily damaged or lost will ensure continual stress and worry until we let go of the attachment.
Non-attachment is letting go of the belief that your happiness depends on holding onto things you think you own.
That's a lot of energy that goes into worrying, protecting, and spending. Your Stuff starts to own you. Attachment and possessiveness can extend beyond material possessions, too. Most of us know someone who tried to hold on so tightly to their partner that the relationship crumbled. We've all seen celebrities who cling to their youth through plastic surgery, the result being anything but youthful.
The idea is not to give up all of your possessions; rather, it is about letting go of the clinging and fear of loss. Because nothing in life is permanent, clinging and fear of loss only cause us to suffer. Focusing on Stuff that can be easily damaged or lost will ensure continual stress and worry until we let go of the attachment.
Good Graphs
Post at the Win-Vector blog
The important criterion for a graph is not simply how fast we can see a result; rather it is whether through the use of the graph we can see something that would have been harder to see otherwise or that could not have been seen at all.
Summary of advice:
The important criterion for a graph is not simply how fast we can see a result; rather it is whether through the use of the graph we can see something that would have been harder to see otherwise or that could not have been seen at all.
Summary of advice:
- Make important differences large enough to perceive
- Make important shape changes large enough to perceive: Banking to 45 degrees.
- Make sure all the data is equally well resolved.
- If you want to analyze the difference between two processes, then graph the difference, not the processes (or graph both).
- If you are interested in rate of change, then graph rate of change.
Mirror Neurons: Why Watching Others Succeed Won’t Help You Succeed
Blog post at The Simple Dollar
To put it simply, we often get the same feeling from watching someone else do something that we would get from doing things ourselves.
And, quite often, those emotional rushes are enough to fulfill us, reducing our drive to actually accomplish things.
Let me put it as simply as I can. If you want to succeed, do. If you want to follow, watch.
A TED talk by Vilayanur Ramachandran briefly explains the biology behind mirror neurons:
To put it simply, we often get the same feeling from watching someone else do something that we would get from doing things ourselves.
And, quite often, those emotional rushes are enough to fulfill us, reducing our drive to actually accomplish things.
Let me put it as simply as I can. If you want to succeed, do. If you want to follow, watch.
A TED talk by Vilayanur Ramachandran briefly explains the biology behind mirror neurons:
This one sentence almost completely sums up my approach to working
From The Leaper, on Rands in Repose
Life in a big or small company is an information game where you are judged by the amount and accuracy of your information.
Life in a big or small company is an information game where you are judged by the amount and accuracy of your information.
Thursday, January 7, 2010
Friday, November 13, 2009
R Choropleth Challenge (color-shaded maps)
Link to the original FlowingData post
There are about a million ways to make a choropleth map. You know, the maps that color regions by some metric. The problem is that a lot of solutions require expensive software or have a high learning curve...or both. What if you just want a simple map without all the GIS stuff?
Oh my, that was fast! Less than 24 hours after the Choropleth Map Challenge was laid down, no fewer than 5 hackers responded with complete solutions for plotting the US unemployment data on a color-coded map, each in less than 20 lines of R code.
There are about a million ways to make a choropleth map. You know, the maps that color regions by some metric. The problem is that a lot of solutions require expensive software or have a high learning curve...or both. What if you just want a simple map without all the GIS stuff?
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