Life, The Universe And Everything

The Egg - a short story by Andy Weir - provides an intriguing perspective on cosmology (that as someone told me more or less corresponds to Kashmir Shaivism) I'm not sure if the Buddhist term kōan technically applies here but this certainly is a tale made to both confuse and delight. As stories that question your world view go, another interesting one is The Last Question by Isaac Asimov. A bit longer but also very much worth the read. Read more

Paper

Recently, I registered for Flinkster - a car sharing service operated by Deutsche Bahn. At first, I was pleasantly surprised at their rather straightforward online registration process. Little did I know then that their registration process also involved handing in a printed and signed document for confirmation of identity. Turns out I was in for a Kafkaesque farce of a process. Not only was I required to also hand in my passport and driving licence for identity verification, which could easily have ... Read more

Leaving your comfort zone

Leave your comfort zone is an oft-heard piece of advice on how to grow personally and generally get better at doing whatever is relevant to you. If you only ever stick to things you already know you deny yourself the opportunity to learn and experience something new. Why is leaving your comfort zone so hard then? Well, it should be. Doing something you're uncomfortable with initially means that the likely outcome is failure and failure is embarrassing. Sure, failure is an opportunity ... Read more

Houdini – Automatically Generated Web App Tests

Houdini is was a new SaaS product - currently in private beta - that "watches you using your site and automatically generates end to end tests that run continuously in the cloud". After having added some JavaScript code to your web app Houdini will follow and record your clicks, inputs and actions. These recordings are then used for automatically generating tests that run continuously. So, if a code change breaks your app's front end behaviour you will be informed about this. This is ... Read more