eriksmartt.com/blog

Erik Smartt

User Experience Lead and Creative Technologist -- helping clients solve business problems using technology.

A few of my other projects:

tinyLinkFeed - RSS feeds for links posted to Twitter.

jsmacro - A JavaScript preprocessor written in Python.

cssreflow - A CSS formatter/beautifier written in Python.

tinyexpander - Service to expand compressed URLs.

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Recently read books:

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  "Coders at Work" by Peter Seibel -- A fantastic collection of interviews with 15 famous programmers. Contains some great history and insights on the field of "computer science."
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  "Secrets of the JavaScript Ninja" by John Resig -- It's still in "early access" (ie., not yet published), so it's a little rough, but there are some nice JavaScript examples in its' study of various solutions to common challenges and patterns in web development.
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  "Geek Mafia" (PM Fiction) -- Geeks, drugs, and deception. An entertaining look into the (fictional) lives of techno con artists, and how a recently-fired comic book artist get pulled into their inner circle.
• 
  "Even Faster Web Sites: Performance Best Practices for Web Developers" -- Particularly useful reference when trying to eek out a few extra milliseconds of load times in older browsers.
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  "The Caryatids" -- Interesting tech, and somewhat engaging, but disappointing ending (or lack thereof.)
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  "Emergency: This Book Will Save Your Life", by Neil Strauss -- An engaging, first-person account on transforming from an urban writer into "Jason Bourne."
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  "Little Brother", by Cory Doctrow -- A high school hacker fights the 'Department of Homeland Security' to reclaim American civil liberties after anti-terror tactics are taken to a new level.
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  "Sketching User Experiences: Getting the Design Right and the Right Design" -- Techniques-for, and the value-of sketching interactivity before developing products. Good ideas. OK book.
• "Blue Ocean Strategy: How to Create Uncontested Market Space and Make Competition Irrelevant" -- About finding untapped opportunities in your market and repositioning yourself to capitalize on them. Easy to grasp; Longer then it needed to be.
• "JavaScript: The Good Parts" -- A thin book with some good best-practices, but a little disappointing. Perhaps it's JavaScript's fault, not the author's ;-)
• "Web Form Design: Filling in the Blanks" -- Good overview of usability issues in designing HTML forms, backed by examples and eye-tracking research. I bought the digital edition, which was slightly cheaper. (You can use code: WFDDE to get an extra 10% off any purchase on the publisher's site.)
• "What Got You Here Won't Get You There: How Successful People Become Even More Successful" by Marshall Goldsmith -- Discusses interpersonal skills (and how to identify and fix them) that most commonly hold executives back in their career advancement.
• "The Simplicity Survival Handbook: 32 Ways To Do Less And Accomplish More" -- Lesson: Cut the corporate B.S. and stop wasting your time. Focus only on what matters most.
• "Crucial Conversations: Tools for Talking When Stakes are High" -- Lessons on handling tough conversations: firing people, relationship problems, hostage negotiations (well, maybe not that last one.) Wasn't an exciting read, but I've been paying more attention to "turning points" in conversations since reading it.
• "Practical Django Projects" -- Lessons in building reusable ("pluggable") Django applications. Assumes you know the basics of Django and Python.
• "Bargaining for Advantage: Negotiation Strategies for Reasonable People 2nd Edition" -- I really enjoyed this one. Lots of suggestions and strategies for negotiating.

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Popular Posts:

• Using the Python for Series 60 Bluetooth Console from OS X
• Arduino development on Ubuntu PPC (and command-line Arduino)
• Passing JSON via the X-JSON HTTP header with Django and Prototype
• Ubuntu + Hildon UI = in-Car PC UI
• Moving my blog from WordPress to Django; Part 2: Migrating the data
• Cold weather fuel leak (2002 Subaru WRX)