Simple RedisToGo connection

I did this many times before, but it keeps cropping up (I’m not at all sure why.) Here it is…

require 'rubygems'
require 'uri'
require 'redis'

#RedisToGo gives you the "redis://" uri.
uri = URI.parse('redis://username:password@host:1234/')
unless uri.nil?
  p uri.host
  p uri.port
  p uri.password
  p '---'
  r = Redis.new(:host => uri.host, :port => uri.port, :password => uri.password, :thread_safe => true)
  p r.info
end

Writing

Writing: Communication skills are so important in life. The investment I’ve made in my communication skills over the past eight years is paying huge dividends for me now. I want to help my kids make the same investment, just much earlier in life. I know it will come in handy and I know it will be a great source of pleasure for them thoughout their life.

[We’re trying to help Noah get this as well.]
Source: A VC

Stop Censorship

Stop Censorship:

Today, Congress holds hearings on the first American Internet censorship system as part of SOPA and the PROTECT IP Act. There are a lot of different ways to characterize these bills, but the thing that sticks out to me is that these even though these bills were designed to protect big copyright players—people I have no love for even though I make part of my living by making content—they go one step further and enable massive censorship tools, the kind of which would be valuable to any totalitarian government.

(watch on Vimeo)

We’ve already got enough of those tools, such as the Patriot Act, which have been abused to our detriment. We don’t need another one, no matter what the good excuse. Not to mention that protecting big copyright holders is a piss poor excuse. Make no mistake about it, these provisions do nothing to help the creative class. Instead, it puts sites like Vimeo and Flickr at risk. It puts FaceBook and YouTube at risk. It puts any blog at risk.

Learn more. Now. Act now. Quickly. Call your congressfolk. Don’t leave it to somebody else.

[Righteo. Done. Join!]
Source: James Duncan Davidson

Don’t ever learn how candy is made. (A comment to Matt Taibbi)

A comment to Matt Taibbi: If we are going to castigate Steve Jobs and every other consumer electronics company for this behavior, then just like drug addicts, we need to blame ourselves as much. We want our toys cheap, and if some brown or yellow kids have to suffer, well, what can you do? For every point you give Steve for Foxconn, we deserve at least a half point, if not more than a point. We, the american consumer demanded this stuff as cheaply as possible, and now that Apple and other companies are delivering, we suddenly get a case of the vapors about the ugly details? Don’t ever learn how candy is made.

[All design is about compromise. Some of those compromises can be ethical.]
Source: bynkii.com

Steve Jobs: The parable of the stones – Fortune Tech

Steve Jobs: The parable of the stones – Apple 2.0 – Fortune Tech: That’s always been in my mind my metaphor for a team working really hard on something they’re passionate about. It’s that through the team, through that group of incredibly talented people bumping up against each other, having arguments, having fights sometimes, making some noise, and working together they polish each other and they polish the ideas, and what comes out are these really beautiful stones.

[Earlier I wrote about trying to focus the passion and limit the drama that goes with reaching for high levels of execution. But I was referring to the mean dismissal of people’s attempts to accomplish and deriding their work. Not the impassioned reaching that I feel is described here. This stuff is gold.]

Occupy Wall Street

Occupy Wall Street: The problem is not the end of the industrial age, the problem is a lack of aggregate demand. We have a lack of aggregate demand because finance is mismanaged, both at the industrial level (“Finance industry”) and at the Governmental level (“deficit spending” and “financial regulation”). The reason that finance is systemically mismanaged is because the academic paradigm of finance is simply wrong. Economics professors are not good at accounting, they consider it beneath them, so they simply do not know that their macroeconomic models do not follow double-entry bookkeeping and are therefore wrong.

Accountants don’t notice that macroeconomics is wrong because they imaginationless grinds.

[Right or wrong Zimran never pulls punches.]
Source: Zimran

Steve Jobs and the Founder’s Pain

Steve Jobs and the Founder’s Pain: And that’s why I like Jony Ive. He too clearly feels that pain (he once insisted they hold up an entire product launch because he didn’t like the polish on the screws) but he doesn’t lash out at people about it. Instead, he sits down with the people involved and works to fix the problem until they get it just right.

But does it require so much pain? My hope is that I can be just as exacting, demand work just as good, without emotionally destroying people in the process. I want to be a perfectionist and a nice guy. I want to be Jony Ive. I hope it works — for my sake, and Apple’s.

[As I’ve said before. I feel the same way. Sociopath or no, I’ve certainly done my fair share of yelling and bi-polaresque it’s great/sucks sort of thing. And still the hardest part remains finding the passion and will to care at that level and yet not allow that to create pain for others. It may not be Ive’s nature, but it is a part of many of us. We can all do better, and learn from those who don’t try to control this.]
Source: Aaron Swartz: The Weblog