Who would have guessed that when you remove Garfield from the Garfield comic strips, the result is an even better comic about schizophrenia, bipolar disorder, and the empty desperation of modern life?
http://garfieldminusgarfield.tumblr.com/

Yeah, that’s right. The fine folks over at 37 Signals (creators of Backpack, Basecamp, Campfire, and more) have decided to try a few different things to “be one of the best places to work, learn, and generally be happy”, namely 4 day work weeks. I’ve seen quite a lot of posting about this announcement in my travels, and I didn’t really want to bother posting it again, but I just can’t help myself.

It sounds cool enough, and they have some really good rationale behind it, but I personally don’t see the need for it. The way I see it, most of the cool companies I’ve worked for have just gone by an even simpler rule: Make sure you get your work done, and do what you got to do afterwards. Beyond that, if you or your employees are TRULY passionate about the work that’s being done, the work week becomes irrelevant. I know that I’ll personally get engrossed in a project when it’s something cool, and work on it every moment I have.

So, I think the better solution to keeping people happy is to not work on things that suck… as much as possible. If your projects aren’t stupid or a waste of time, then you won’t have to worry about productivity, it takes care of itself. Don’t get me wrong, I’m not really knocking these guys, it just seems like a superficial proposition. Most of us don’t have the money to play around three days a week anyway.

They do have some other really good ideas that I agree with like funding their employees extra-curricular interests and discretionary spending accounts. They’ve got a lot of good things to say, so why not check out their article and let me know what you think?

37 Signals: Workplace Experiments

Yeah, it’s not really relevant to development, but still cool.  Make a flash diffuser out of an old film canister:
Article on Photojojo

This has to be one of the coolest things I’ve seen in a long time. Browse photos in a 3D environment for many popular sites like google images, flickr, and much more.
http://www.piclens.com/

I’ve been stuck in somewhat of a rut blogging / personal development-wise for the past months for many reasons, none of which are all that negative. While I have enjoyed my time working on such sites as Cellware and some other projects for the last 10 months, I feel like I’ve lost sight of a lot of things that are important to me in my life. To that end, it’s time for some changes…

What’s New

I’ve accepted a position at Aptana, and will be working on some pretty cool stuff with some of the brightest people in the industry. Look for a lot of really interesting and exciting things to come as I spend more time with them. This position will require me to move across the country (Florida to California), and I’m looking forward to a change of scenery (and lifestyle).

What’s more relevant to most of my readers (thanks to everyone who visits), is what’s going to change with my content. I’ve decided to go over every article I’ve posted on here, and get rid of anything that I’m not happy with. This will take me some time, so please be patient as I work through everything. My goal is to have nothing but great content up, and none of the other half-assed or weak articles that are scattered throughout. I’ve also changed the look of the site and upgraded to the most recent version of Wordpress.

What’s Not New

The thumbnailer project is still up, and I hope to be able to update it soon. If you came here looking for it, just check out the projects page, and you’ll find your way to what you need. I’ve also decided to wipe out all the comments I’ve received. As much as I love everyone’s feedback, it’s entirely too difficult to port these over from the old blog, so I’ve decided to start over.

I’m very happy to be able to get back to doing what I love… learning new things, working with developers that are like-minded with me, and writing stuff that (hopefully) ends up helping people out. I’ve said it a million times, I’ve only made it to where I am in large part because of everything I’ve learned from the community on the web, and I feel it’s important that I give back and help everyone out in whatever ways I can. Stay tuned, as I’m going to be updating a lot more often, and working on some really cool things!