Category: Burningbird

Recovered from the Wayback Machine.

Found this one at Scripting News also:

Charles Cooper wrote on the independent developer’s struggle from being overwhelmed by the big companies such as Microsoft, SAP, and Oracle.

He asks the question, “As for the remaining independents still fighting the good fight?”

There has been, is, and will always be big companies. One time, even Microsoft was nothing more than a couple of college kids. Dorky college kids. The key issue that I’m most concerned about and that Cooper discusses is the standards organizations tied-at-the-hip attitude about the big players. If anything bothers me, that bothers me.

What to do?

Look around you. If you build something good, people will use it. If you build something new, people will be interested. If you open doors, generate interfaces, and make something lighter, faster, more workable and exciting—you won’t be ignored forever. You’ll see the prize at the end of the techie rainbow.

If you just schlep along subsisting on BigCo crumbs, all you’ll ever see is their ass in your face.

Recovered from the Wayback Machine.

Dave has this Disclaimer  on his weblog today.

Well, truth in advertising –

Burningbird’s Disclaimer: I’m a C, Look, Listen, C++, F-, Java, Mocha, Python, PHP, ASP, JSP, NRA, AA, AAA, LOL, BBC, Perl, Ada, Martha, Joanne, George, Modula II, Prolog, Lisp, Stutter, Icon, Monument, Basic, Intermediate, Advanced, Snobol, Chance, InHell, Fortran, Heran, Sheran, ECMAScript, JavaScript, VBScript, PerlScript, MonkeyScript, BushScript, MovieScript, BullshitScript, MeScript, WeAllScript, ForScript, IceCreamScript….programmer.

And you will laugh at this because I am a mad woman super-geek on the loose, and I know your IP addresses!

😉

Shelley, isn’t it about time you gave up all this independent nonsense and went out and found a real job?”

So goes the virtual mother in my head. I had to make up this mother to nag me because my own mother would never nag me like that. She was stifled in her youth and was determined that I be allowed to follow my own paths and make my own decisions.

In fact, I’ve been remarkably nag-free all my life, surrounded by people who have basically said that I should do what I want, and that they’ll support me no matter what I do.

Bummer. No one to blame when I screw up.

Recovered from the Wayback Machine.

Most webloggers post links to interesting tidbits or other weblogs, inserting comments as appropriate. Other webloggers post notes to their blogs about events in the day — writing to a diary in the sky. There are funny weblogs and mad weblogs and work weblogs and awards weblogs and so on.

And then there are the ones like me, who drop everything in your lap with the ease of the clumsiest of waiters. I’m blue, you’ll hear about it. I’m sad, you’ll hear about it. I’m mad — well, we already how much you hear of that.

With me, you’re all peeping toms, except instead of peeking through a window and seeing my naked body, you’re reading my weblog and seeing my naked soul. On a daily basis, I scrape part of my existence off, and serve it to you on toast made of cosmos and thinly stretched wire. Shelleymite.

Good, now that the squeamish have left, we can get down into some deeper talk.

I walked along the beach tonight as sunset folded into the darkness and thought about the funny directions my life has taken, and the directions it will be taking. I thought about my decision to move to St. Louis and what that meant, and I knew that this was a path I’m no longer meant to take. My direction lies elsewhere now. I’ll make my home as best as I can in the shadow of the bridges.

I thought about my writing and my weblog and about you, who are reading this.

And one final thing I thought of: I will no longer celebrate my love of life and my delight in people by allowing ugliness on this weblog. I may write of things that aren’t pretty, and I may be shallow or twisted and I may burn and I may laugh and cry or pontificate and tease and joke and a host of other things — but I will not allow ugliness on this weblog again.

My guarantee. Not to you, no offense. To myself.

Shelleymite — tastes just like chocolate.

Update: And all my regular weblog readers are going “Yeah. Right. We’ve heard this before. Pull the other one, Shelley.”

No seriously. I mean it this time. Honest. Cross my heart. <edit />