Just get it!
It’s interesting that Merge launched the full album on it’s site for listening a couple of weeks ago, but didn’t release it for download until today. I guess they were trying to drive fans to their website. It worked with me. I’ve been listening to M. Ward’s new CD Hold Time on the Merge Records site for a couple weeks now. It’s been a tough wait for my hard drive.
M. Ward is awesome 
Seth’s “Strategic Quitting” has much more “stick” than Drucker’s “Systematic Abandonment”. But they are the same beast. Easy to say and very very hard to do 
The bottom line is that focussing/prioritizing without quiting/abandoning the low priority items IS NOT FOCUSING/PRIORITIZING.
This is such a simple book, but it really get’s my blood flowing. It brings up too many painful memories of managers/executives (me included) chanting the mantra of FOCUS and PRIORITIZATION. Then the meeting moves on to the side projects. These people just don’t get that they’ve lost all credibility when they are unable to quit the side projects. It just proves that they don’t believe in the main focus. They are not committed. The whole team knows it.
This focussing of resources ( personal or team ) is the route to achieving Gladwell’s 10,000 hours. Here is Seth’s take on. 10,000 hours » Seth’s Blog
Parting Note: I love how Seth’s new skool is so in synch with Drucker’s old school.
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Posted by Iain Verigin
I’m really liking Eric Ries’ blog Lessons Learned. He’s got a great post, Achieving a failure. It starts with a description of a “sure fire” strategy that achieved –> huge failure. He then describes a list of “shadow beliefs” that undermined that strategy.
He says, “These shadow beliefs have a common theme: a lack of reality checks.“
I’m sure that you’ve encountered these beliefs before and will again 
This post is a good “reality field” enforcer. It’s evil and good 
all in one package.
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An essay on Clayton Christensen’s work on developing frameworks for managing disruption and innovation in the chip industry.
I like the three tiers of competition
We divided the road map into three tiers based on the circumstances (not attributes) of competition in the industry. The three tiers provide a workable framework for more-detailed analysis. One outcome of the road map was to show how the basis of competition would evolve in the different tiers and which competencies would be needed in order to gain traction in those tiers.
It’s definitely high level, but interesting. Here is the link: EETimes.com – Bracing for disruption: Brian Fuller (02/05/2007 9:00 AM EST)
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There is hope – we can be happy managing a “high-end strip club” 
Link to the WSJ article.
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Posted by Iain Verigin
I’m finding it interesting to apply the lens of “Work Life Balance” to Warren Buffet as described in Alice Schroeder’s “The Snowball: Warren Buffett and the Business of Life”.
Work - She describes a man intensely focussed on his work. Honing his skills from a young age. His dedication to his “craft” is far in excess of Gladwell’s 10,000 hours. Simply incredible.
Life - ______________________
Balance – None
If you’re looking for “Work Life Balance” tips. Wow! This is the “HOW NOT TO DO IT BOOK!” Every corporate star in the “Buffet Galaxy” seems to exhibit the following ratio : Work = 100 and Life = 0. Every event is part of the business. There is no separation. It’s a culture. Not surprising at a high level. The details of such a life choice are very interesting.
As the author states in the title: It’s the business of life..
Web Site Traffic: Hackintoshes Possibly More Popular than Linux » Lifehacker – interesting. I’m really tempted to build on of these OSX86 machines. Don’t know why … just seems interesting.
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Posted by Iain Verigin
The Hubble Heritage Project posts a new image every month. These are so cool Warning the site is a major major time sink
.
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Posted by Iain Verigin
You are currently browsing the Iain's Chips & Tech blog archives for February, 2009.
Uber Geekness ! Perl 6 Periodic Table of Operators
February 19, 2009Steve L’s keeping me abreast of the real world
I laughed, and then proceeded to dive into it for a few too many minutes. The RHS ( the Apocalypse side) is interesting with operators that change from Perl 5 to 6. I mainly use Perl for search and replace scripts so I thought I’d be safe from change. But my goto operation the pattern match operator =~ has changed to ~~.
thx for the tip Steve