Defining Design Patterns

My friend and colleague, Paul M. Jones, calls me out as a bully. Apparently from the way interviewees complain to their headhunter about me, I am.

Like W after 2004, and fully intend to use this new capital accumulated by my just-annointed “bully-mandate” to tell him (and the interviewees) off as being sore losers who can’t handle the new asshole I tore in their shit last night. 😉

In the real world, when a candidate fails to answer a question, I say, “Don’t worry. It’s okay,” and move to a different topic area as I have lots. I’ll also point out that none of these candidates actually were around when I gave my evaluation. They’d see that the only trouble they get into is if they lied to me or express something wrong with absolute confidence. Those show a lacking the ability to be able to work well in teams or learn new things. The question is designed to test those qualities in a candidate—not whether they can recite some book definition of a design pattern.

Okay, fine, but what about Paul who stands up to The Great Bully? Well let’s get down to the nitty gritty of defining (programming) design patterns…

Three Wise Monkeys

Three Wise Monkeys
District Bar, South of Market, San Francisco, California

Nikon D3, Nikkor 24-70mm f/2.8G
f/2.8 at 1/50 sec, iso 12800, 29mm (29mm)

Continue reading about Defining Design Patterns after the jump

Posted on by tychay 9

Challenges and Choices (Making Frameworks Suck Less Part 2)

As promised, as the election is over, I will get back to blogging non-political things.

And hey, I haven’t posted a continuation of my web frameworks presentation yet!

Good thing too because, if you don’t know, I’m giving a talk on that tonight at CBS Interactive (CNET) in San Francisco. Come see it or watch online at 7:30PM Pacific.

Software is about making choices

"Making Frameworks Suck Less" 2

Challenges and Choices

So the second thing is Challenges and Choices. When I wrote my Rant on Rails, some people jumped on me, but I don’t think they gathered the basic assumption I was coming from.

It is not so much an assumption as a fact: when you develop software, it is about making choices. It is about tradoffs. You can do “A” but you can’t do “B.” You can’t have both A and B. I know it sounds like it’d be great and I’d like to have my cake and eat it too, but really, I’d rather be playing Counterstrike—I only have so much time to devote to writing software, that software can only execute so many times, things like that. I can’t make something do everything.

One example of that is in design patterns.

Continue reading about More part two after the jump.

Posted on by tychay 9

Elane Photography

A friend of mine, a colleague and excellent photographer who happens to be a defense-of-marriage person posted a status update that erupted into a firestorm of comments on Facebook. His claim was that people like me are “intolerant” of his beliefs.

To those people, I might say disagreement is not intolerance. I’m not asking you to change your beliefs, I only hope that you be tolerant to others theirs. As for the bible, it says many things about marriage, some of which you’d be hard pressed to defend now. Some of “the other side,” you know, love us some scripture too. 😉

But more interesting than that rehash would be the part I find fascinating. In the course of the comments he brought up an interesting case that apparently has been making the rounds:

A same sex couple in Albuquerque asked a photographer, Elaine Huguenin, to shoot their commitment ceremony. The photographer declined, saying her Christian beliefs prevented her from sanctioning same-sex unions. The couple sued, and the New Mexico Human Rights Commission found the photographer guilty of discrimination. It ordered her to pay the lesbian couple’s legal fees ($6,600). The photographer is appealing.

Hmm, at first blush, I side with the photographer. But then a little thought breaks it all apart.

Continue reading about The first amendment defense after the jump

Posted on by tychay 14

Voting in America

California is the swingiest of swing states. In recent memory, two Republican presidents were governors here. Now it is bluer than the balls of all those fratboys voting for Sarah Palin. Even though the Presidential election in this state is a foreground conclusion, you still get a lot of mail

Voting mailers

Election mailers
North Beach, San Francisco, California

Nikon D3, Nikkor 24-70mm f/2.8G ED AF-S, Canon 500D diopter
1/80sec @ f/2.8, iso 360, 28mm (28mm)

Especially egregious is the phone book the city of SF gave me. Not that the California ballot measures were that thin either. Luckily, I had a stomach flu this morning, so I had time to read and research this stuff.

Election packet

Election Packet
North Beach, San Francisco, California

Nikon D3, Nikkor 24-70mm f/2.8G ED AF-S, Canon 500D diopter
1/80sec @ f/2.8, iso 320, 32mm (32mm)

There was no line at my polling place. It was next to Trader Joe’s.

My polling place

My polling place
North Beach, San Francisco, California

Panasonic Lumix DMC-LX1
1/200sec @ f/4, iso 80, 6.3mm (28mm)

Yes, I voted for “That One.”

Yes, I’m voting for “That One.”

Yes, I’m voting for “That One.”
North Beach, San Francisco, California

Panasonic Lumix DMC-LX1
1/30sec @ f/2.8, iso 80, 6.3mm (28mm)

After I scanned in my ballots, I grabbed an “I Voted!” sticker. At the street corner an old lady noticed me holding it and thanked me.

I’ve never been more proud to be living in America.

Posted on by tychay 5

The party of ideas

I was reading this article which makes reference to something I just had to look up.

Ahh, yes! The unlicensed monkey with the plunger telling me that a 3% increase in the marginal tax rate is somehow equivalent to collective ownership. Oh so amusing…

Graphic and text from SadlyNo:

Obama’s proposed hike of the top marginal rate to 39.6 percent doesn’t represent the highest it’s ever been, not by a long shot. Joe the Plumber might be interested to learn that, in fact, when the top marginal rate was lots and lots higher, America did all sorts of cool shit, like win two world wars, invent the Internet and play golf on the Moon.

Now it may be that Joe the Plumber, John McCain and Sarah Palin don’t like kicking Nazi ass, cheap porn, and Tang. But real Americans do, even if they sometimes forget how we got to do and have those things. It took tax money to achieve the national greatness we all know and love. Conversely, when we stopped taxing rich people, lots of terrible crap happened

Favorite comment:

I’m worried about being taxed more under Obama, because I was planning on winning the lottery in the next couple years.

Posted on by tychay 5

Defending Montana

For the last three years, a number of people of both parties have ridiculed the 50 State Strategy adopted by Howard Dean and Barrack Obama.

Recently, the Republican National Committee just spent half a million defending McCain in Montana. Montana! And remember, that’s money put there because the McCain campaign is outspent because of fundraising limits. Remember when, not more than a few years ago, it was taken as a given that the Republican campaign had much more money than the Democratic one?

Some people need to own up and admit they were wrong about campaign strategy. The Democratic Party has been in denial about this ever since Clinton and the party suffered for two decades. If the Republican Party doesn’t changed their time in the wilderness will be much longer.

Leaving you with a photo of a terrorist fist bump training camp taken by Joe Raedle of Getty:

56014365

Favorite comment: “Black secret service agent, black car, black candidate hitting a small, white child who is grimmacing in terror. What next America? The negrofication of America has begun.”

Hmm, looking at the picture, it looks like I’m going to have to add the Wall Street Journal to the list of liberal rags.

Posted on by tychay 2

The economy is not an Ayn Rand novel

We were up all night at my house working on the school newspaper. It was my house because I was the only person in the entire high school who had a copy of Pagemaker and a laser printer.

The other editors started to complain about which things would be caught by our faculty advisor this time and we would be forced to change. One of them started calling her the “Fat Raging Bovine” or FRB for short. At that moment, I had a gap in the layout that no amount of finagling could cause me to get rid of. I filled the tiny space in with a line drawing of a bull overlaid with the text “FRB” crossed out.

We laughed, and moved onto the next page.

I never did get around to removing it.

Continue reading about I’ll get to the economy stupid after the jump.

Posted on by tychay 5

On Proposition 8

In my state Propsition 8 will try to amend the constitution to eliminate gay marriage. It will most likely pass.

I would normally use this as a launching pad into the utter stupidity of direct democracy. It is a shame that I can vote on propositions that can pass with a slim majority and have the force of a constitutional amendment.

But then others might say that, of course I’d have this view against Prop 8, I’m from the only part of the state that is opposed to the measure or some other assorted ad hominem.

In reality, I think that this shows how far I’ve come.

Continue reading about Teh Gay after the jump

Posted on by tychay 9

To that seven-year old Muslim-American kid

I’m also troubled by, not what Senator McCain says, but what members of the party say. And it is permitted to be said such things as, “Well, you know that Mr. Obama is a Muslim.” Well, the correct answer is, he is not a Muslim, he’s a Christian. He’s always been a Christian. But the really right answer is, what if he is? Is there something wrong with being a Muslim in this country? The answer’s no, that’s not America. Is there something wrong with some seven-year-old Muslim-American kid believing that he or she could be president? Yet, I have heard senior members of my own party drop the suggestion, “He’s a Muslim and he might be associated terrorists.” This is not the way we should be doing it in America.

I feel strongly about this particular point because of a picture I saw in a magazine. It was a photo essay about troops who are serving in Iraq and Afghanistan. And one picture at the tail end of this photo essay was of a mother in Arlington Cemetery, and she had her head on the headstone of her son’s grave. And as the picture focused in, you could see the writing on the headstone. And it gave his awards–Purple Heart, Bronze Star–showed that he died in Iraq, gave his date of birth, date of death. He was 20 years old. And then, at the very top of the headstone, it didn’t have a Christian cross, it didn’t have the Star of David, it had crescent and a star of the Islamic faith. And his name was Kareem Rashad Sultan Khan, and he was an American. He was born in New Jersey. He was 14 years old at the time of 9/11, and he waited until he can go serve his country, and he gave his life.

—Colin Powell endorses Barack Obama on Meet the Press

Posted on by tychay 2