We had a discussion at work about "throw away" code. One of our developers was very against developing any code that would be thrown away afterwards. He referred to this as a waste. In my view sometimes the biggest gain can be in developing code that is meant to be thrown away. It can be used to try things and, more importantly, learn things that can shape the code that is kept. This article sums it up much more eloquently than I can.

I have used the "5 whys" approach multiple times to get to the root of some question. This article advocates adding a time dimension to the decision. Not only should we consider why we are doing something, we should also consider why we are doing something at a specific point in time. It also twists this around and suggests we should consider "What is the danger of not doing this right now?" - what would we lose or miss?

This is an old post (March 2009) that someone retweeted but still holds true on how to work out if an expert is really an expert. It also is a guide how not to fall into common traps that so-called experts fall into.

This is a pretty amazing demonstration of animating an aspect of a 2d photo. This even includes pulling out bodies and animating them moving away from their original scene.

Nearly every technology that has been developed has been used for both good and bad. Developments that look like they could have a massive impact on civilization have usually also spun off a side effect that has a detrimental effect. This could be the latest technologies such as genetic engineering and artificial intelligence or older technologies such as the automobile.

I read a lot of books and once I start reading a book I normally finish it. This article proposes that it may be more valuable to have a bunch of books that are unread. Not sure I completely buy in to the proposition that "Read books are far less valuable than unread ones" however maybe I won't feel so guilty buying a book and then leaving it unread.

Just a reminder of the starting point for setting up SSH with Github so I don't have to keep looking for it each time.

This has a great summary of what to do when things go wrong when using Git. Added here so I know where to look in moments of panic.