Posts

• May 27, 2012

  How to Turn Small Talk into a Conversation

  A cool Ask LifeHacker piece that suggests 4 tips on how to convert small talk into conversations.

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• May 24, 2012

  Running PHP on Heroku with a Custom Build Pack

  Currently, Heroku supports running custom 3rd party languages on their Cedar stack through the use of custom “build packs”. Build packs are git repos that contain instructions for the Heroku “slug compiler”, which tell the slug compiler how to deploy the HTTP stack. This way, with a custom build pack, one can instruct the slug compiler to download and deploy a custom build of Nginx+PHP-FPM stack with any number of PHP extensions, if so desired.

  To this end, as part of my internship, I’ve created a custom build pack for the Heroku Cedar stack that incorporates Nginx, PHP–FPM, with APC, memcache, memcached, phpredis, and newrelic modules. You can find the repo here.

  To use, fork, make your own changes, and read the included README file.

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• May 23, 2012

  Peacetime Wartime CEOs

  Ben Horowitz:

  In peacetime, leaders must maximize and broaden the current opportunity. As a result, peacetime leaders employ techniques to encourage broad-based creativity and contribution across a diverse set of possible objectives. In wartime, by contrast, the company typically has a single bullet in the chamber and must, at all costs, hit the target. The company’s survival in wartime depends upon strict adherence and alignment to the mission.

  When Steve Jobs returned to Apple, the company was weeks away from bankruptcy—a classic wartime scenario. He needed everyone to move with precision and follow his exact plan; there was no room for individual creativity outside of the core mission. In stark contrast, as Google achieved dominance in the search market, Google’s management fostered peacetime innovation by enabling and even requiring every employee to spend 20% of their time on their own new projects.

  Peacetime and Wartime management techniques can both be highly effective when employed in the right situations, but they are very different. The Peacetime CEO does not resemble the Wartime CEO.

  A fascinating and astute analysis of the two main types of leadership styles, depending on context.

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• May 23, 2012

  Why an iPhone Charger Costs What It Costs

  Ken Shirriff:

  Apple’s power adapter is clearly a high-quality power supply designed to produce carefully filtered power. Apple has obviously gone to extra effort to reduce EMI interference, probably to keep the charger from interfering with the touchscreen. When I opened the charger up, I expected to find a standard design, but I’ve compared the charger to the Samsung charger and several other high-quality industry designs, and Apple goes beyond these designs in several ways.

  …

  Apple’s design provides extra safety in a few ways that were discussed earlier: the super-strong AC prongs, and the complex over-temperature / over-voltage shutdown circuit. Apple’s isolation distance between primary and secondary appears to go beyond the regulations.

  This demonstrates why Apple chargers cost what they charge.

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