Colin Steele's Blog: Archive

Room Key is Hiring →

Feb 16th

“I do not know which to prefer, The beauty of inflections Or the beauty of...”

– -Wallace Stevens This is the fifth of Stevens’ famous “13 Ways of Looking at a Blackbird,” and my favorite. Stevens knew how to break a line, didn’t he? Reminds me of sillage, the word for the scent a perfume leaves behind when the person wearing it has walked past. (via fishingboatproceeds)

Feb 12th

314 notes

“The force that through the green fuse drives the flower”

– Dylan Thomas - The Force that Through the Green Fuse Drives the Flower

Feb 10th

Lucid Imagination » NoSQL, Lucene and Solr →

We hate labels (like NOSQL), but we love us some SOLR.

Jan 14th

Hotel giants come together to launch Room Key... →

I can finally say what the heck I’ve been working on for the last 6 months - hotelicopter has been acquired by the 6 biggest hotel chains, and we’ve come together to launch RoomKey.com!!!

Jan 11th

Jan 7th

1 note

Dec 18th

“You’re an adult. You know how to prioritize your time to do your job. So...”

– Flexible vacation policies are here to stay

Dec 8th

How DIY Health Reform Can Help You Win The Talent... →

I’m pushing our company to move to address issues like this, which have a significant impact on my ability to acquire the talent we need. When I left Microsoft 8 years ago, my wife expressed only one concern — losing health benefits. At the time, I told her that it’s just a matter of paying those costs directly. The reality has been that it’s been a significant hassle and cost that we’d...

Nov 29th

AppMobi open-sources its mobile HTML5 technology —... →

At hotelicopter, we’ve long figured that HTML5 is the way to go for mobile.

Nov 26th

‘Twine’ Foreshadows A Future Where All Objects... →

Keeping my eye on this “Internet of Things” thing.

Nov 26th

Money Won’t Buy You Health Insurance - NYTimes.com →

I’m in the individual market for health insurance, too, and let me tell you: it’s a jungle.

Nov 22nd

Now Hiring: Senior SysAdmin/Operations Lead. IT... →

Our latest Charlottesville IT job posting! We’re hiring!

Nov 14th

Nov 12th

Nov 11th

Magit Cheatsheet →

Very useful shorthand doc for Emacs’ Magit.

Nov 8th

Watch

Finally I’ve found Magit, a git mode for emacs that I really like. Meet Magit (by Alex Vollmer) is a nifty introduction.

Nov 4th

Nov 1st

Oct 31st

IT Jobs in Charlottesville - Join hotelicopter!

We are still looking for badass programmers for the team at hotelicopter. I’m looking for software craftsmen (or women!), and I know there are more of you out there in Charlottesville (and NoVA and Richmond and Blacksburg). Very interesting things are happening at hotelicopter. We need a QA automation engineer, front-end (CSS/HTML/JS/JQuery), back-end (big data, distributed systems,...

Oct 31st

Simple Made Easy →

Although quite technical and rooted in a discussion about programming in particular, I think Rich Hickey’s view about how we conflate “simple” and “easy” is worthwhile for practitioners of a variety of disciplines. Check it out. At the office, we particularly like the “knitted castle.”

Oct 29th

Planet M.U.L.E. →

One of the best games I have ever played. I still have vivid memories of playing it in 9th grade on my high school buddy’s C64. Yay retro!

Oct 25th

“…basics of a resource system are resource collection and...”

– Oxeye Game Studio » Blog Archive » RTS Game-play Part 2: Resource Systems Oxeye Game Studio » Blog Archive » RTS Game-play Part 3: Build Options Oxeye Game Studio » Blog Archive » RTS Game-play Part 4: Macro Limits

Oct 23rd

“Marc Andreessen thinks that the clock is ticking on Oracle and other old-line...”

– Marc Andreessen: The “Clock Is Ticking” On Oracle

Sep 29th

“…can you now avoid the complexity of scaling out over large clusters of...”

– High Scalability - High Scalability - Big Iron Returns with BigMemory

Sep 19th

“Lifehacker Jumps the Shark…. Errr…. I mean… How to Survive a...”

– Lifehacker Jumps the Shark How to Survive a Gunshot Wound

Sep 19th

“While we have Q&A over pudding, while you have your day tomorrow, and every...”

– My speech to the IAAC | Ben Hammersley’s Dangerous Precedent

Sep 14th

How will we design products for the Internet of... →

From time to time, someone asks me what I see as a technology trend - maybe one that would be interesting to take advantage of in a startup. I’m always flattered. This - the “Internet of Thing”, is one that I have my eye on now.

Sep 14th

Trippy: Bringing Your Friends And Social... →

Yet another doomed startup in the travel-by-social-recommendation space. I am amazed how many new companies try to do this, year after year, none seeming to be aware of the trail of failed predecessors. None seem to realize that there the density of reviews in any one person’s social graph will never be high enough to support this model. Pity.

Sep 14th

Are You Building The Right Product? | TechCrunch →

“Product astrology.” Gotta love Ries.

Sep 12th

Standing Desks Are on the Rise - WSJ.com →

See, see! A trend! And I’m part of it!

Sep 2nd

RT @Kurt_Vonnegut: What do men want? They want a lot of pals, and they wish that people wouldn’t get so mad at them.

Aug 31st

Calling a function with variadic "named argument"...

;; Problem: You have a fn which uses map destructuring to effect ;; "named argument" behavior, and that's nice for callers that want to ;; use it like (foo :a 1 :b 2). But, what if you want to stage up the ;; arguments using a map, and then call foo at your convenience. You ;; have a map now, not an array of args. Here's how you call that ;; variadic named-argument function with your...

Aug 29th

hotelicopter is hiring - again!

Once again, I’m a trying to hire badass programmers for the team at hotelicopter. I’m looking for software craftsmen (or women!), and I know there are more of you out there in Charlottesville (and NoVA and Richmond and Blacksburg). Really, really good and interesting things are happening at hotelicopter. You definitely want to get on this ride.

Aug 16th

Note from the Trenches (of a seller in Charlottesville) | RealCentralVA.com - Life in the Central VA real… http://t.co/H5LWIMz

Aug 16th

Note from the Trenches (of a seller in... →

Life in the Central VA real estate market.

Aug 15th

Watch

Asleep at the wheel

Aug 7th

Jul 28th

Congratulations to Henley Middle School & the Albemarle County School Board process http://t.co/6c8OyED

Jul 16th

I said, “If love is a crime, put me in jail.” That was my first mistake.

Jul 15th

Amazon.com: The 2007-2012 Outlook for Public... →

This is a serious page turner. I highly recommend it.

Jul 14th

beauty

Beauty before me. Beauty behind me. Beauty below me. Beauty above me. Beauty beside me. Beauty within me. I see beauty all around. In beauty may I walk. In beauty may I see. In beauty may we all be.

Jul 1st

Jun 27th

Jun 20th

Jun 15th

RT @learnclojure: Run your browser from #Clojure: (doto (java.awt.Desktop/getDesktop) (.browse (java.net.URI/create “http://clojure.org”)))

Jun 3rd

opally asked: Re the nursing stool: how does that work? Do you put one leg on the stool, to shift your weight right or left?

May 26th

May 25th