It's not a web app. It's an app you install from the web. -
Spend hours—hours!—mashing on your app with your big, clumsy fingers. Tap things twice. Swipe at things that shouldn’t be swiped. Touch things that shouldn’t be touched. Mush it and squeeze it and scrape it. Do it when you’re lying in bed, in the bathroom, walking down the street. Over, and over, and over again. You’ll find all sorts of little UI glitches that way. Each one needs to be investigated, and its cause rooted out and repaired. Be warned: it’ll be awfully tempting to tell yourself those little glitches don’t matter, that it’s just something weird with your phone, that real users won’t encounter them. But do not give into temptation! The devil is in the details, and we’ve discovered major structural flaws with our code by investigating seemingly innocuous little bugs. This may double the development time of your app, but it’ll be worth it.
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According to Fernando J. Corbato who worked on Project MAC in 1963 his team is the first to use the term daemon. The use of the term daemon was inspired by Maxwell’s demon, an imaginary agent in physics and thermodynamics that helped to sort molecules.[8]
We fancifully began to use the word daemon to describe background processes which worked tirelessly to perform system chores.
In the general sense, daemon is an older form of the word demon, from the Greek δαίμων. In the Unix System Administration Handbook, Evi Nemeth states the following about daemons:[9]
Many people equate the word “daemon” with the word “demon”, implying some kind of satanic connection between UNIX and the underworld. This is an egregious misunderstanding. “Daemon” is actually a much older form of “demon”; daemons have no particular bias towards good or evil, but rather serve to help define a person’s character or personality. The ancient Greeks’ concept of a “personal daemon” was similar to the modern concept of a “guardian angel”—eudaemonia is the state of being helped or protected by a kindly spirit. As a rule, UNIX systems seem to be infested with both daemons and demons. (p.403)
A further characterization of the mythological symbolism is that a daemon is something which is not visible yet is always present and working its will. Plato’s Socrates describes his own personal daemon to be something like the modern concept of a moral conscience:
“The favour of the gods has given me a marvelous gift, which has never left me since my childhood. It is a voice which, when it makes itself heard, deters me from what I am about to do and never urges me on.”
—Character of Socrates in “Theages”, Plato[10]
(Source: lovelyandbrown, via katieaaberg)
I want to visit. Promise not to sneeze around the components.
Inside Patek Philippe’s new state of the art watchmaking facility overlooking 5th ave in NYC. (at Rockefeller Center)
Objectively good places to work rarely end up being so in their faultlessness, quiet and well-equipped studies have a habit of rendering fear of failure overwhelming. Original thoughts are like shy animals. We sometimes have to look the other way – towards a busy street or terminal – before they run out of their burrows. — Alain de Botton, A Week at the Airport
It has been said that being a good researcher is 90% compulsiveness and 10% intuition. I am not so sure about that. Richard Feynman wrote about ‘the pleasure of finding things out’ and I think it is this pleasure that drives a good researcher – in psychology or elsewhere. So to me doing research is fun – we do it not merely because of that as we hope to make a contribution to understand serious issues such as anxiety or racial prejudice, but being a researcher is certainly one of the few occupations where pleasure comes with a salary. — Ottmar Lipp, psychology professor @ University of Queensland
Aaaaaand this is sending me on a Freddie Mercury binge today. kthxbai.
(Source: dainty-as-fuck, via crystallized-blood)
On a moonless night it was like flying through an ocean of ink. — Marty Knutson, on flying the U2 over the Ural Mountains, 1959.