A common (and small) task is reformatting a file that's in some variant of CSV. It could be a SQL database extract, or an export from an application that works well with CSV files.

In Python 2.x, a CSV file with Unicode was a bit of a problem. The …

Read this in Forbes: "Innovation's Return on Failure: ROF".

Also, this: "The Necessity of Failure in Innovation (+ more on CDOs)".

This, too: "Why innovation efforts fail".

While we're at it: "Accepting Failure is Key to Good Overall Returns on High-Risk Development Programs".

I can't say enough about the value of …

Watch this: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u6XAPnuFjJc Brilliant summary of what really motivates people. The most important advice: provide a sense of purpose and get out of people's way so that they can do the right thing. Micromanagement, incentives, annual performance reviews and the like aren't as useful …

Saw this recently.

Why do most gov websites look like they were created by someone's 10 year old nephew yet cost millions to make? — Steve Dekorte (@stevedekorte) December 29, 2011

I think this aptly summarizes the results of a waterfall methodology.

1. You wrote a lot of requirements, not fully understanding …

Wow. Just wow. See "LANGSEC explained in a few slogans". Short, easy-to-grasp explanation of why complex protocols create new problems. I'm happy with REST and the stack of stuff under it (HTTP, TCP/IP, etc.) Once upon a time (2001), I invented by own version of a RESTful protocol outside …

I've been refurbishing an older project -- written in 2008. Probably with Django 1.0.1. Certainly with Python 2.5.

The Django 1.3 release has been around since March. The change underscored the importance of technology refresh.

The best part was to delete code. There were two significant reasons …

I worked with this a few years ago to tweak up some web pages. http://colorschemedesigner.com/ I just rediscovered it. It's a cool toy. You get some colors that all "go" together. If you're careful with your .CSS definitions, you give people this page and let them fuss around …

This isn't the OWASP Top 10 list, but it's still very handy. Top 10 Dumb Computer Security Notions. I'm particularly fond of the "security can't be perfect; since it can't be perfect, why bother?" approach. One other notion that amuses me is the silliness of changing a password every 90 …

Years ago, when designing an interface to a vendor's web services, I did the following. This isn't a genius move, but it's worth emphasizing how important it is. And what's most important isn't technical.

1. I built a simple spike solution to access their service.
2. I morphed this into a "sanity …

Some folks love the twin ideas that (1) "someone" might break the API rules and (2) they must write lots of bonus code to "prevent" problems.

Sigh.

There are three distinct things here.

• API definition - something we do all the time.
• "Defensive Programming" - something that may or may not actually …