Misc. links Nov 25th - Dec 12th
One of the founders of Netscape demolishes the ‘startup work ethic’: while some poor geek kills himself in a orgy of work and stay-awake drugs, some venture capitalist reaps most of the rewards while doing nothing. It’s true a few of these geeks will eventually get rich, but no human being should be thought of as a race horse. People should work 100 hours a week if they like it, not because someone sold them this idea it’ll get them rich - do yourself a favor and go buy some lottery tickets if you believe that, at least you’ll get your destiny sorted out far quicker. ¶
Malcom Gladwell writes about Steve Jobs’ Real Genius. I know, I know: I too get sick when I read my feeds and see yet another article about Jobs!? Still, this one is good, and one of the few I’ve seen that demonstrates Steve Jobs was, first and foremost, an insufferable mix of perfectionist and plagiarist - a dictator who happened to be in business, not politics. ¶
The Curse of Xanadu. An entertaining (and long) read about the long and fruitless development of Ted Nelson’s Project Xanadu hypermedia system, going on since 1965 and which had its first (kind-of) release in 2007. Classic Wired from 1995. ¶
Two good ones from Thought Catalog: No One’s Real Anymore muddles through Modern Man’s lack of coherence (even though you could argue - successfully - that’s not a ‘bug’, but a ‘feature’); and Losing Your Metaphorical Virginity, which is said to be regained whenever people find themselves in love (and I think I do agree). ¶
Lightworks looks set to be the first decent open-source video editing software. I’m yet to invest real time in it, but so far it feels a little weird: the UI is too messy, and I found it shares the Avid philosophy of taking over an entire hard drive and pre-converting every single piece of media you import. Which is good if you are using Lightworks in a dedicated machine, but is an awful idea in my laptop. Anyway, the feature set is impressive - I’ll still try editing some small projects in it. ¶
This looks like a very well-conceived HTML and CSS course. I’m tempted to watch some of the classes myself. ¶
Dochub.io indexes HTML, CSS, DOM and Javascript/jQuery documentation in one convenient place with a nice simple interface. File under Extremely Useful. ¶
A good list of tips and resources on improving a website’s performance. ¶
The Arty Bollocks Generator writes tedious artist statements for you. How long until someone gets a text generated here published? You know it’s bound to happen. See also: acb’s Postmodernism Generator. ¶
PDF-Mags.com. Exactly what it says. ¶
