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Monthly Archives: June 2016

Europe.

Tuesday, June 28, 2016

I feel European. If I shared any of cousin Dirk‘s talents, I’d qualify to play football for 3 countries. I grew up speaking English at home, Dutch at school, and Frisian with my friends in the playground (though I never got the hang of Sneekers). Growing up, school and music trips went to France, Belgium […]

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Project management job number one: land the f****ing plane

Monday, June 27, 2016

I’ve been making software for a few decades now, and worked on all sorts of projects – small, large, complex, simple, fun, and not-so-fun. One of the biggest problems with software is the amount of information a developer needs to keep in his head (I believe Dijkstra once wrote that software developers were unique in […]

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My kids don’t watch TV. How will you sell them anything?

Wednesday, June 8, 2016

Disclaimer – views entirely my own, nothing to do with my employer. Familiarity ≠best Advertising seeks to persuade human beings to make one choice over another. A big part of this has been taking advantage of our tendency to substitute hard questions (“which can of beans would be the rationally best choice?”) for easier questions […]

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The tragedy of the mega-pixel

Tuesday, June 7, 2016

A few years ago, I met an executive from a large camera company. Before digital photography came along, this company’s marketing (and manufacturing) emphasis had been on the quality of their lenses. This is  subjective field – you can use focal length and aperture as a proximate measure, but no serious photographer would equate a […]

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