Tactics to Spark Creativity

May 6, 2013

This study apparently validates my methodology while late-night programming…

Moderate drinking can also relax inhibitions in a way that seems to let the mind range across a wider set of possible connections. It can also help a person notice environmental cues or changes that a sober brain would block out, Dr. Wiley says. In a 2012 study at University of Illinois at Chicago, students who drank enough to raise their blood-alcohol level to 0.075 performed better on tests of insight than sober students. Other research suggests watching funny videos can spark the positive moods linked to higher creativity.

via Tactics to Spark Creativity – WSJ.com

Looking for a new Boulder-Denver StartupDigest curator

April 29, 2013

I’m looking for a replacement to curate the Boulder-Denver StartupDigest. If you’re actively involved with local startups and have interest, let me know and we can discuss.

My startup, StatsMix, was recently acquired and I’ve decided I need to take some time off. After three consecutive startups and many years without a real vacation, it’s time for a little break to figure out what’s next. That’s why it makes sense to hand off curating the digest to someone else.

Currently, I’m helping StartupDigest find a replacement for the Boulder-Denver area curator. The main requirement to curate a digest is being actively involved with a local startup.

I have a comprehensive process and list of events I check each week and I’m happy to meet with you, give you all my resources, and help in the transition any way I can.

If you’re interested, just email me at tom at thestartupdigest dot com and we can discuss.

Lean Startup Machine Boulder

May 23, 2012

Due to an extra busy schedule last week, I wasn’t quite able to attend most of the Boulder Startup Week events I wanted. But participating as a speaker and mentor at Boulder’s first Lean Startup Machine event on Saturday made up for it. Lean Startup Machine is a three-day workshop where attendees use customer development [...]

Adapt to Your Customers

January 17, 2012

Tom Preston-Werner, founder of Github, on adapting to your customers and their requests: And that’s the secret. Don’t give your customers what they ask for; give them what they want. via Ten Lessons from GitHub’s First Year

Pixelate part of an image in Photoshop

January 16, 2012

I recently had to update some screenshots on the StatsMix marketing site and needed to remove some personal information like API keys from the image. I wanted to just gracefully pixelate the data, keeping the image looking nice. I’d done it before, but couldn’t remember what steps to take. After a some trial and error, [...]

The Black Triangle

January 16, 2012

Not sure where (or when for that matter) I stumbled on this article, but after cleaning up tons of tabs in Firefox I thought I’d share this: We came to refer to certain types of accomplishments as “black triangles.” These are important accomplishments that take a lot of effort to achieve, but upon completion you [...]

Are the Green Bay Packers the Worst Stock in America?

January 14, 2012

Great sports franchise, bad investment… It costs $250 a share, pays no dividends, benefits from no earnings, isn’t tradeable and has no securities-law protection. Although the offering document calls the shares “common stock,” they confer almost none of the advantages of a traditional stock. The document warns that buyers “should not purchase common stock with [...]

TextMate Preview Shortcut Trick

September 21, 2011

I recently learned a new shortcut within the TextMate editor (used daily for all my text editing as well as programming) that has made me much more productive. You can preview any formatted document (so far I’ve tested HTML and Markdown) by simply holding down control-option-command-P Here’s an example from within TextMate while working on [...]

Ruby is the Twitter of programming languages

August 19, 2011

Great quote on Ruby: Ruby is the Twitter of programming languages, capable of expressing its purpose with little dialogue. via 3 areas where MacRuby shines vs. Objective-C – The Ranger Station

The Rise Of JSON

May 23, 2011

An interesting perspective on why JSON has become so popular compared to XML from MIX Online: The Rise Of JSON: There is the simple fact that JSON is smaller as a payload than XML. And no doubt JSON is less verbose than XML.  But there’s much more to it than just size.  The crux has to [...]

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