If you can read this, then I’ve been able to rsync my local blog directory up to my hosted space. I was originally planning on using WebDAV, but my preliminary tests produced some annoying ._ artifacts. Rsync was fast, smart and easy – once I built a fresh binary and got the hang of the trailing directory slashes. Here’s the command that I’m using:

1
2
3

rsync --verbose --recursive --times --links --hard-links \
        /local_path_name/blog/ \
        username@host:public_html/blog/

Sooner or later, the time comes to delegate code. You may be an order of magnitude better than your colleagues, but you can’t deny that 10+n>10 for positive values of n. And unless you have exceptional people skills and/or your colleagues are extraordinarily self assured, you’re likely to rub them the wrong way. The unconventional techniques for managing geeks include:

• Focus on goals, not tasks.
• Recognize the “knowledge inversion” - your separation from the nuts and bolts.
• Give up on power.

For most of us, the problem is our insistence on poking inside the box. Did you consider this? Why are you using alpha instead of omega? It’s almost impossible to ask those questions in a non-adversarial manner. Which is where Test Driven Development can come to your rescue.

Guiding your team with tests pulls you out the box where you don’t belong and into the connections where you do. It directs the focus to goals [tests] and it explicitly separates you from the implementation details.

Back to What I could have learned from XP.

I flipped the switch and the name server propagation is under way. If I’ve done my homework correctly, then the move should be transparent. And if I’ve mucked it all up, then you have my apologies.

The new host is TextDrive. The old host did right by me. But the opportunity at TextDrive was just too tempting. I will try to keep both hosts up to date for the immediate future.

Former President Reagan dies at 93. He was the first President that I ever voted for. And the Presidential vote that I have the fewest doubts about. His legacy as a President may await the verdict of history, but his legacy as a leader is clear. A great man rode off into the sunset yesterday.

Fred Wilson wants Cookies in Feed Readers to intelligently serve ads in feeds. Seems to me that Greg Reinacker’s feed redirection trick is a better solution. It works with the existing infrastructure, shares an overcounting problem from duplicate subscriptions in multiple news aggregators, and adds an undercounting problem when subscription lists are shared. All in all, a clear win.

One thing to remember is that ads are not right for everyone. I think the ratio of ads to content will need to be less than 20% by number and word count to prevent mass defection. Most weblogs can only achieve that by holding back posts – losing value by eliminating freshness.

The other thing to remember is that paying for clicks rather than impressions will make this all moot. I think the power readers who use news aggregators will be very adept at filtering/ignoring ads. Making pay per click more attractive for advertising buyers.

There’s no turning back now. Josh Childress has hired an agent and will not return to Stanford for his senior season. He’s projected as a top 10 pick in the NBA draft and it’s hard to turn that down.

This is new territory for Stanford. Basketball players used to stay the full four years. Now, Stanford underclassmen have joined the parade to the NBA. I suppose that it’s a good sign - proof that Stanford can now recruit the very best. But I can’t help but feel that something good has now been lost.

We’ve all grown up hearing the maxim “If it is worth doing, then it is worth doing well”. How does that reconcile with XP’s “Do the simplest thing that could possibly work?” One applies to quality while the other applies to scope. We seek quality components within the constraints of the whole.

I started using “good enough really is” as a ward against my streak of perfectionism. It served as a reminder that a task was done when it satisfied its role within the whole, not when it became an exemplar to live forever. With the cult of reuse bearing down on me, it was a hard lesson to learn.

When I participated in an enterprise software startup, I realized it applied to companies as well. You always want first class people, but you don’t always want first class departments. Our startup needed to provide first class consulting services. But it didn’t need a first class consulting group. Consulting existed to deploy seats, not to become tied up in long term engagements.

Of course, “the simplest thing“ goes a step beyond. It reminds us that while we may think we know what’s important, we don’t really know until we observe it as part of the whole. All in all, a better maxim than mine. But I learned “good enough really is” the hard way, I think I’ll keep it.

Back to What I could have learned from XP.

I’ll be at the New York Geek Dinner. How about you?

We’re having a New York Geek Dinner. June 16th. 6:30 p.m. At the original Mendy’s (across from the Empire State Building). If you are coming, please RSVP by sending me email to robertscoble@hotmail.com.

In case anyone else is coming down from Connecticut, I’ll be catching the New Haven line at South Norwalk. And for Saturday Night Live fans, the train board in the background of this season’s set was showing a New Haven train.

[JBoss is the first winner for their] ham fisted attempts at Guerilla marketing [that] should really be called “Gorilla Marketing” because of [their] unimaginative fumbling efforts at creating buzz.

I’m tempted to nominate RSS and ATOM for the next award. It may not be deliberate, but the results speak for themselves. It’s past time for a compelling new application built on top of syndication rather than this endless throwing of brickbats.

I’m waiting for the keys to my new TextDrive space. Right now, I plan to use WebDAV and the Radio Userland fileSystem upstream module to maintain the site.

11:45 am: I forgot to mention that TextDrive is offering a special roll-out offer until 7 June – buy a year’s worth of TextDrive’s best hosting plan for $199 and pay $199 per year for as long as you stay with TextDrive. That gets you one gigabyte of disk space, 10 gigabytes of bandwidth per month and compression to make your bandwidth really count.