trenchant.org

Photo by Lisa

The quality of software developed is inversely proportional to the amount of time a product manager is forced to spend on it.

Yes, I actually did design it, print it, and wear it to the office.

Fuck you I’m fully vested.

Perfecting my "internet entrepreneur asshole" look long before I even knew what the internet was.

My parents circa 1985, scanned from an old photo I found

Not my cat

Not my cat

On display in Craig's apartment

Craig's uncle made this custom Rancor for him a long time ago. It's still awesome.

Garbanzo bean "burgers." The bun is in your mind.

I disabled CSS in my browser and everything was simpler. More beautiful.

“I have nothing to write anymore.”

“You were writing like crazy last Friday!”

“That was just the Mexican Coke talking.”

I wish I had spent more time learning visual communication.

Lacking natural talent at drawing as a child I inadvertently closed off whole worlds I grasp at now because art and design seemed too frustrating.

“There’s no time. I’m running out of patience.”

“Patience or non-salary compensation?”

About a year ago I was working on a different project and I sat in an office with two engineers and we did a lot of stuff and one of the best things we did was to keep a weblog documenting small and large decisions after we’d talk about things.

The top of the page had this:

[redacted] DECISIVE DECISIONS

WE MAKE [redacted] PRODUCT DECISIONS AS FAST AS POSSIBLE AS RARELY AS POSSIBLE AND SOMETIMES WE WRITE THEM HERE. ALL DECISIONS ARE EITHER BINARY OR NOT BINARY. THIS SITE WAS FORMERLY KNOWN AS “MAKA MAKA IS A LESBIAN MANGA.”

There’s a lot of interesting stuff there, but here are some of my favorites that I can safely post now:

—

How to play MP3s?

1. Use CRT tempest to generate signals a radio can pick up

2. use a flash based MP3 player

DECISION: flash

—

Should we show names in the UI instead of just pictures?

Yes.

I think my original plan of not showing them was interesting but also doesn’t work. —abm

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error messages

Error messages when the server fails should include

Something went wrong. Probably involving Joga and shoes. Sorry! Please try again soon with other footwear.

I had to go to Target and buy hangers and a Swiffer Sweeper just so I could feel some sense of accomplishment for the day.