Another take on the 4-Hour Workweek

Tim Ferriss' seminal book on rethinking work and living an independent, self-determined life always is worth another look. On his blog SpartanTraveller Clayton Cornell wrote a rather lengthy but very insightful post about the Myth of the 4-Hour Workweek and the very practical implications such a groundbreaking lifestyle change has. Digital nomadism, travelling the world, working from anywhere sure sounds like fun but it's easier said than done. Not only does it require determination and hard work but also very mundane obstacles like ... Read more

FnordMetric and ChartSQL: Create Charts Directly From SQL

FnordMetric is an interesting new software package that allows you to create good-looking charts (in SVG format) directly from SQL using a query language called ChartSQL. The are quite a few examples available here. A typical ChartSQL query for a timeline series chart for instance looks like this: DRAW LINECHART WITH AXIS BOTTOM AXIS LEFT; SELECT 'data' AS series, FROM_TIMESTAMP(time) AS x, value2 * 1000 AS y FROM example_data WHERE series = "measurement2"; The software currently is ... Read more

EstiMate – Accurate Crowdsourced Software Development Estimates

Following up on last week's post I've launched a product site / MVP for EstiMate: Software development effort estimation probably is one of the more difficult tasks in software development. Even the most experienced engineers' estimates are off, too every now and then. Being a somewhat disliked task far too often effort estimation is neglected or done in a rather haphazard way. EstiMate tries to solve this problem with a measurable and reliable method for effort estimation that's based on actual data ... Read more

About the Pitfalls Of Software Development Effort Estimation

Software development effort estimation probably is one of the most disliked, even feared tasks in software development and computer science in general. However crucial, even the most experienced engineers succumb to common pitfalls from time to time or their estimates are off, too every now and then. This is an especially striking phenomenon because software development effort estimation actually is a well-researched subject that a plethora has been written about. Starting in the 1950s IBM did a tremendous amount of research on ... Read more