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- March 17, 2011
Book Review: “Eat People” by Andy Kessler
March 17, 2011Read moreI just posted a book review of Andy Kessler’s Eat People, a business book about the kind of entrepreneurship that leads to wealth generation on a massive scale. Kessler identifies 12 rules (I think of them more as themes) that he’s observed in his work as an engineer, investment analyst, and tech journalist. While at first I was put-off by the gimmicky title and anecdotal style that sink many books of this type, what puts it apart for me is the way that Kessler pursues his basic question: where does wealth come from? how is it created? And who are the people that really made wealth in history and today? His inquiry into the topic, expressed as his twelve rules, is both intriguing and thought-provoking.
Stylistically, Eat People reminds me more of a crime novel than a business book, but it’s also an insightful book that’s given me some new ideas about how the world of business can be divided into different kinds of profit-generation. Kessler is interested in only one kind of business: the kind that generates wealth through increased productivity. Learn to recognize the conditions that favor this kind of business, and you could do very well.
Check out my full review here.
- March 17, 2011
Review: “Eat People” by Andy Kessler
March 17, 2011Read more
I’ve often wondered how business people think differently than other people. To date, I’m most familiar with the world view of engineers and artists. As an engineer, I find I’m drawn to the minutia sequencing action to produce results. As an artist, I’m drawn to the interplay of my senses and thoughts with other people’s life experiences. But business? I have no idea. The offer to review Andy Kessler’s new book Eat People came at a good time, as I’m going to have to figure out this business stuff if I want to make a living doing my own thing.
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- March 15, 2011
Installing Mercurial
March 15, 2011Read moreIt’s been a while since I’ve posted in the Agenceum blog, but I’m now actively building new infrastructure and this is the place to post it.
Currently on the plate: using a different revision control system…Mercurial! The reason for switching to Mercurial from Subversion (SVN) was that I actually lost the old repo when moving servers; it was one of the services that didn’t automatically transfer. I have backups of everything in it, but I figure…why not start anew with the latest? Mercurial is a “distributed revision control system”, as opposed to Subversion which uses a central repo. The advantage is that Mercurial maintains a complete history of the repository, quite compactly, on each computer. You have multiple backups. You can designate one repo as the “central one”.
I was having some trouble getting my head wrapped around the differences until I came across Joel Spolsky’s HGInit website. Spolsky is one of the clearest writers on programming topics today, and thanks to this single link it all is starting to make sense.
- March 11, 2011
Attending PAX EAST 2011
March 11, 2011Read moreI’ll be heading down to Boston for two days, maybe three, for the East Coast edition of PAX. It’s a public video game convention founded by the two guys who make the enormously-popular video game webcomic Penny Arcade. For once I’m going to not bring any computers with me. I’ll just have the iPod Touch, which doesn’t count. Does it?
- March 10, 2011
Groundhog Day Resolution Review Day 03/03/2011: More Goals
March 10, 2011Read moreThis is seven days late, but I have used the time to think more carefully about what it is I’m trying to define as a goal. After all, to have a resolution one must have an achievable goal.
After several days of this, feeling fogged and overwhelmed by so many competing theories, I have stopped to remind myself to take my own analytic medicine. The reason why I haven’t been able to make a set of achievable goals comes from the belief that the goals must be in alignment with my values, which then are used to create a set of constraints that ensure whatever goals I pick are well-suited to my skillset and personality. While that sounds like good thinking on paper, it turns out it might not be necessary. (more…)
