I think the last time I posted a link dump, I was flaking from my new tattoo. This week, I’m flaking from the tattoo’s touch-up! Much less pain for the touch-up, but the itching may drive me nuts if it doesn’t end soon.

Luckily, it’s healing very quickly.

Have some good reading:

• Tony and Hilary’s Tiny Loft Apartment – I feel like it's been forever since I read The Tiny Life blog, but what a purdy little house to come back to.
• Six Thoughts On The Case Of The Breast-Feeding Professor | Alas, a Blog – "The child was allowed to crawl on a floor! Shocking! She had to take a paper clip out of its mouth! Shocking! Etc, etc. Makes me wonder if these people have ever met an actual infant. Seriously, the things are like a cross between a stumbling drunk and a vacuum cleaner."
• Emptyage — Yes, I was hacked. Hard. – The more personal telling of the @mat hacking.
• S.Lott-Software Architect: Performance "Tuning": running in 1/100th the time – "The idea of 'tweaking' a working program to improve performance is generally misleading.  It might happen, but the impact is minuscule at best. [...] Generally, reduce Cyclomatic Complexity." Keep reading >>

I have a friend who’s looking to become a marketable developer fairly quickly, but is essentially trying to go from zero to hero. Despite starting a project in Python to randomize wedding slideshows, he’s never really done development, nor does he understand its core concepts (classes vs. objects, for instance).

He kinda just needs a job, plus the ability to make useful tools for himself.

Folks are telling him Java and *.NET, and I (mostly) agree for the simple purposes of 1) easy desktop or web development, and 2) using keyword-heavy languages to reinforce programming concepts. Not strong reasons, no. If he just wanted a job, I’d recommend UI development.

Plus, for marketability in Charlotte, NC–home of plenty of Big Banks–diving into quasi-enterprise development can get you a cube (albeit maybe shared) and a comfortable paycheck. Good luck finding a Python gig here.

But where does he start? Keep reading >>

This week’s internet cruising:

• Questionable Content – Tool reference!
• What does English sound like to foreign ears? – The Blogs at HowStuffWorks – An absolutely amazing song and video by an Italian comedian faking English, plus some adorable animal sounds.
• Why CRUD might be what they want, but may not be what they need – Reading this sent me back to an old client’s site (from almost two years ago), remembering the CRUD-based admin console I developed that was such an incorrect way to go about giving them the functionality they needed. Oy.
• Renaming Many Files At Once with Pattern Matching in Bash | Andy Regan – This proved very handy in renaming about 40 files quickly at work.

Video interlude! This video convinced me to start playing Mass Effect (the first) tonight.

So far, it’s a blast, and not too chock-full of grumpiness. Just enough to be fun.

Keep reading >>

This week’s internet cruising:

• Microaggressions submission – I love microaggressions.com, and this one is actually cute.
• Learning from Fable III’s UX Mistakes | UX Booth – A nice look at the usability issues of Fable III.
• Email Management Made Fun | The Email Game – Okay, this is a cute and fun spin on the (in my mind) GTD principle of fast processing an inbox. I got 2375 points in my first game, and 2250 on the second.
• Make Love, Not Flamewars – bitquabit – I don’t care about mercurial vs. git (I use and enjoy both), but I like the approach of giving up the silly flamewars and debates over which is best. Pick the right solution for the job you’re on. Learn the tools to give you options. All else is moot.
• An Integer Programming Model for the Sudoku Problem – I spent quite a bit of time pouring over this and related Wikipedia articles in tandem with some new thinking on the granny squares solution I posted last week.

And, by one of my favorite choreographers:

There’s a bit of everything in week’s internet cruising:

• The higher-education bubble (continued): Students are drowning in debt – How's this for ridiculous: student-loan debt now surpasses credit-card debt.
• Literary Agent – Traditional Versus Self-Publishing – Ted … – Amanda Hocking and Barry Eisler on their strategies of traditional- and self-publishing.
• 10 Tips on Growing Your Garden Without Growing Your Expenses – Given my gardening bug this year, this is a handy read.
• On Digital Identity, Technology Dependents, and Death – Much like the comprehensive backup solution I linked to so long ago, this is a great guide for getting started with digital identity management. 1Password is also great on Windows.
• 45 of The Most Popular and Awesome Sci-Fi Wallpapers – I'll confess a weakness for gorgeous backgrounds like these, if I can get them large enough for my desktop screens.
• Open ID Is A Nightmare – A powerfully-written article on a small company deciding to not support Open ID anymore. Cross-provider compatibility, downtime, API changes, the addition of multiple steps, etc. He raises very valid points that have me rethinking the time investment of implementing Open ID solutions in products.

  Deliciously antagonistic comments there, too. Jeff Atwood chimes in.

• Editorial: Last Guardian’s Girl Trouble – IGN – The maker of a new "Shadow of the Colossus"-like game doesn't think young girls can be acrobatic or wear pants, evidently.
• For All Humans to Play – I'd never heard of Sophie Holden before–she's an independent game developer–but this interview takes an good look at her development processes and opinions on marketing small games.