The term “data driven decision” is something that is said more and more around offices lately, and it makes perfect sense at a certain level. Make decisions that best affect your agreed upon KPIs. The one thing that data driven decisions doesn’t account for, is taste. Design, aesthetics, brand standards, or experience aren’t analytics that are collected and analyzed. Data only cares how users interact with something. Black or white. Did a user do the thing, or not? This excerpt from …
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Dave Mark recently wrote on The Loop about his problems with Siri on the HomePod to play a specific album that he wanted. Dave doesn’t believe this is an issue with Siri and her (its?) ability to translate and parse text, but a collaboration issue. Now, you might think this is a complaint about Siri’s ability to parse my spoken words. Not at all. I find Siri to be excellent at translating spoken word to text. And: …I see the …
Kottke.org, one of my favorite blogs, has a recurring feature called “Media Diet” where Jason Kottke lists out all of the media he’s consumed in a given time, and shares the worthwhile ones. I love that idea and want to copy it. So I am. With the clever name – Media Bites – which will hopefully be a monthly thing. In these posts I’ll include movies, music, comics, television shows, books, articles, whatever I come across that’s worth sharing. They won’t …
There is a lot of talk about https versus http, especially in the post-Snowden world. This article from Dave Winer came across my feed. In the article, Dave writes: I want to make it easier and easier for people to run their own web servers. Google is doing what the programming priesthood always does, building the barrier to entry higher, making things more complicated, giving themselves an exclusive. This means only super nerds will be able to put up sites. And …
Wow, what a shit show 2017 was, huh? Daily doses of idiocy from Trump and administration, countless mass shootings, hurricanes, Net Neutrality being destroyed, and so much more. But, there were a lot of great things too. We kicked off 2017 by meeting our newest nephew TJ in March, and our second niece Gia in November. We now have 2 nieces, and 5 nephews, ranging from 9 (10 next year) to 2 months. I can’t believe our oldest is going …
Like most Americans, I’ve been distraught since the election last year. For the second time in my life, the majority of votes were not heard, and the minority candidate won. I know I needed to do something. To be more involved, I just wasn’t sure how. When I heard about the Women’s March on Washington I thought that maybe Ali and I could be a part of it, but the logistics were difficult. When they started expanding the march to other cities with …
Man, 2016 was a rough year. We’ve lost so many important people. Losing Bowie alone was crushing. But the rest of the musicians, actors, athletes and dignitaries that died compounded that feeling. And then add the train wreck that is President Elect Trump and man, 2016 was just the worst. I usually hate seeing end of the year posts on social media because the same people complain year after year that current year was awful and they can’t wait for …
Man. What an absolutely shitty couple of weeks it’s been. Donald Trump winning the election was nothing short of a punch in the gut. I’ve been able to sum up some of my emotions about the election in the following gifs. Trump is going to be an absolute train wreck for this country. White supremacists and the KKK are applauding this victory and even planning parades. He’s even appointing racists and white nationalists to top positions in his White House and cabinet. The biggest …
It’s almost June so that means that Apple’s World Wide Developers Conference is right around the corner. That means it’s time for my WWDC 2016 wishlist. watchOS I don’t have an Apple Watch, but I’m very strongly considering buying one whenever the second generation comes out. That said, I’m not incredibly familiar with the operating system, but from what I’ve read I’m hoping for an update to watchOS that adds some speed , plus makes the Apple Watch rely less on …
Another year come and gone. Some big changes for the Rastiellos in 2015, namely I said goodbye to my friends at LyntonWeb and joined Rackspace. On top of that, we traveled to Arkansas, Chicago, and Memphis, and New Jersey twice (not to mention several road trips within Texas). We saw my youngest sister get married, and our awesome niece and nephews grow even more awesome. We celebrated Ali’s 40th birthday, and my mom’s 60th. We saw a ton of concerts, …