Chris Burnor Philosophical Nerd

You Can't Have No Process

Process is a concrete instance of that effervescent multiplier in a startup: execution. It certainly is not execution itself, but is a repeatable (and repeating) building block of a current execution strategy – especially in a particular aspect of the business (sales, dev, market validation, etc). It is the day-in and day-out patterns of behavior that your team makes into habit until they are virtually invisible. A lot of teams think that you heavy process is bad and os they aim to be ’lightweight’ saying things like ‘we don’t want to come up with a process to slow us down, let’s just do stuff’.

Walkers

When I was in elementary school, there was a division among students based on the mode of transportation used to get to school. Those who took the bus were called ‘Riders’ and those who walked to school were ‘Walkers’. As I lived so that our backyard adjoined the schoolyard, I was, naturally a walker. The first week or so, my mom would walk with me to school, but after that I was pretty much on my own for the five minute stroll.

Terminals: Finally a New Hope

I just wanted to make a quick follow-up to my previous post ranting about the state of modern terminal emulators. Hacker News recently had a link to an awesome project called FinalTerm. I can’t say that I think it’s perfect (not thrilled exactly about terminal autocompletion – that should be the shell’s business), but it’s the most promising terminal improvement I’ve seen in a long time. Sadly there’s no OSX support on the horizon.

Humility, Technical Skills and Context

When I started blogging, I imagined that my blog would end up like many of those that I follow and value: filled with little technical tidbits, tutorials and analyses. Starting off out of college, I recall being in awe at those who knew All The Things and would so generously share them with the world. At that time, I was reading blogs more about how to set up a Wordpress site or install Google Analytics.

Grand Expeditionary Forces

​I played a lot of Risk as a kid (well, actually as a teenager and adult too) and observed the emergent strategies that players take in that game. Most players, after the first few terms tend to be holed up in one area of the board: Australia, South America, Europe. They don’t have a continent per say, but they at least control a foothold in an area, which they defend vigorously, dumping all their armies on every term.