- Chart: Things are Looking Up
via McSweeney’s Internet Tendency: Ben Greenman’s Graphs About Charts and Charts About Graphs: Graph #1..
- HOW TO: Get your web browser gestures back in OS X Lion
If you’re like me and have a magic mouse and use the internet much, you’ve probably gotten used to using the two-finger swipe to navigate forward and back in your history in Firefox and Chrome instead of using the back button. Apple has changed the default behavior in OS X Lion to swipe between fullscreen apps. Which means suddenly when you’re trying to go back to the previous page, you end up looking at your dashboard or something dumb.
To get your two-finger swipe navigation back, just go into the Mouse preferences and over to the More Gestures section. Change the first option (Swipe between pages) to use two fingers.
This will disable the full-screen swiping and get you back up and running. Doing the same thing on your laptop should work as well, except you’ll pick three-finger swiping instead of two.
Enjoy.
- What Motivates Us To Do Great Work?
“On days when workers have the sense they’re making headway in their jobs, or when they receive support that helps them overcome obstacles, their emotions are most positive and their drive to succeed is at its peak. On days when they feel they are spinning their wheels or encountering roadblocks to meaningful accomplishment, their moods and motivation are lowest.”
As creative thinkers, we want to make progress, and we want to move big ideas forward. So, its no surprise that the best motivator is being empowered to take action.
When it comes to recommendations for creative leaders, Amabile and Kramer don’t mince words: “Scrupulously avoid impeding progress by changing goals autocratically, being indecisive, or holding up resources.” In short, give your team members what they need to thrive, and then get out of the way.
via What Motivates Us To Do Great Work? :: Articles :: The 99 Percent.
- the “Zombie Team” test
… the “Zombie Team” test for figuring out whether or not someone is ready to work on an intense project, be it a start-up or otherwise. The test is this: If zombies suddenly sprung from the earth, could you trust the perspective team member to cover your back? Would they tell you if they got bit? Most importantly would you give them the team’s only gun if you knew they were the better shot? If the answer is no to any of those questions you need to let them get eaten by the cubicle wasteland of corporate culture, because they aren’t ready for this kind of work.
- Life is too short…
Life is too short…
via Hugh MacLeod at Gaping Void
- Aha! The trick to getting custom named routes!
It was frustrating me that I had to hardcode strings like
/activate/#{user.activation_token}when using link_to and other constructs with wacky custom routes (because they wouldn’t auto-generate a named route). The trick is to add:as => 'routename'to your routes.rb match statement. This will then exposeroutename_urlto the rest of your app so you can doroutename_url(user.activation_token)to get the proper url.It’s easy when you know how… Also,
$ rake routesis essential to understanding the magic under the hood. Use it!
- Running Rails 3 using RVM
Getting RVM installed and managing two ruby environments (ruby 1.8.7 + rails 2.3.8 / ruby 1.9.2 + rails 3.0.0) went better than expected. This gist pointed me in the right direction. Now hopefully the process of migrating a rails 2.3.8 app to 3.0.0 will be as quick and easy.
- 99 Excuses For NOT Making Ideas Happen
Common excuses for NOT making ideas happen:
1. I DON’T HAVE ENOUGH TIME.
Extra time, like money, rarely just materializes out of thin air. We have to work for it. If “finding creative time” is a struggle for you, consider getting proactive about carving it out, and doing the most important work first.
2. I’M AFRAID OF FAILURE.
If we really push ourselves, we will fail more than we’ll succeed. But that’s how we gain experience, how we learn, how we grow. The greater failure is to never risk failure at all. Choreographer Twyla Tharp: “If you do only what you know and do it very, very well, chances are that you won’t fail. You’ll just stagnate, and your work will get less and less interesting, and that’s failure by erosion.”
3. I’M NOT INSPIRED.
Inspiration comes from action, not the other way around. Our friends at Red Lemon Club shared this insightful tidbit from leadership guru John C. Maxwell: “”The whole idea of motivation is a trap. Forget motivation. Just do it. Exercise, lose weight, test your blood sugar, or whatever. Do it without motivation. And then, guess what? After you start doing the thing, that’s when the motivation comes and makes it easy for you to keep on doing it.”
[... to see 4-99, read the rest of the article]
via 99 Excuses For NOT Making Ideas Happen :: Tips :: The 99 Percent.
- Running my own Private Git Host with Multiple Users
Maybe I’m just cheap, or maybe I have a run-my-own-servers fetish, but instead of using GitHub for my private personal and small-team projects I’m now hosting the Git repos on my own servers. Two excellent blog posts explained the first step of setting up a private Git server on Ubuntu and the second step of using gitosis to manage multiple repos and users with access.
Took about an hour to set it up and test with two users and three forks. One note: you might want to use GitHub-style fork names like “cgooley/whirlfood” to keep things better organized if you plan on having many projects.
