equilibrium
— issue #15 {July 2015} —
.editorial
Hello, and welcome to the fifteenth issue of Equilibrium.
In the last couple of months, I'm in the process of closing down some old servers that I am running for years, in favour of moving to others set up to current standards (latest PHP version, etc). During that migration process, I decided to shut down a few of my old projects. That wasn't an easy decision, but it was the right one.
Speaking of that, I'll share a quite relevant part of an article I wrote at the beginning of 2014. It was written during the time I decided to drop some of my domain names.
Why did I do that? Because sometimes you have to let things go.
To let some of my undeveloped domains expire, I had to convince myself of the following:
- Some ideas are just bad. They may look great for a few hours or days (and usually this is the time that you buy the domain out of impulse), but after some time you realise that the idea wasn’t as good as you thought it was. Therefore, you don’t need that domain. Stop updating it!
- Motivation deflates. You are initially passionate about a project, but sometimes if you don’t act on it quickly, the motivation just fades away, and you’re left with a half-made project which will never be released. Just admit that you’ll never going to complete it, and loose the domain. If you change your mind after a few years (although chances are that you won’t) and the domain you dropped is not available anymore, you can get another one; it’s not the end of the world.
To be honest, dropping the undeveloped domains was not that bad. The hard part was to admit that some already developed domains containing projects I spent from hours to months building them, weren't even worth the renewal fee.
It’s not because they didn’t generate any income; I am not really bothered about that since the projects I’m most proud of are completely free to the public. It’s because I’m actually feeling embarrassed for them for multiple reasons. So embarrassed that I don’t list them anywhere and I rent a cheap shared hosting account separate from my other servers with the only purpose to host those "zombie" projects.
Enough is enough, they should been gone years ago, and -most of them- finally are.
And I’m feeling good. :)
As always, enjoy the issue!
– Stathis
.blogs (interesting reads from around the web)
Dear Google Mail Team — plus.google.com/+LinusTorvalds, 2015
Recently, I've noticed that Gmail marks as spam several emails which are not, and leaves emails which are clearly spammy to reach my mailbox. Linus Torvalds noticed the same, in a greater scale, and wrote about it.
Launching a product, in just 3652 days — benediktdeicke.com, 2015
You have to admire his perseverance!
Your cyberpunk games are dangerous
— boingboing.net, 2015
"On January 17, 1980, FBI agents descended on a small business in Wisconsin to investigate a plot against the life of an American business executive in Beirut, Lebanon, named William Weatherby. (...) When investigators arrived at the offices of this company, TSR Hobbies, they learned that William Weatherby did not exist: he was a non-player character in a new espionage role-playing game called Top Secret, which TSR was playtesting."
What happens when you freeze water in a container so strong the water can't expand into ice? — todayifoundout.com, 2014
"The short answer is that the water still turns into ice; however, if it genuinely cannot break the bonds of the container it is trapped inside, it turns into a very different kind of ice than we’re used to seeing."
How a password changed my life — medium.com, 2014
"Back in 2011, when everything had gradients, iOS icons made sense, and people used deodorants, I was stuck in middle of a pretty bad depression due to my divorce..."
The Untold Story of the World's Biggest Diamond Heist — wired.com, 2009
"I may be a thief and a liar, but I am going to tell you a true story."
.podcasts (sometimes is better to listen)
The Consulting Pipeline Podcast — consultingpipelinepodcast.com
The Consulting Pipeline Podcast, is hosted by Philip Morgan and is focused on building your consulting pipeline through positioning, education-based content marketing, and marketing automation.
.newsletters (food for your email)
PHP Weekly — phpweekly.com
As the name indicates, PHP Weekly includes articles, news, podcasts, and tools related to PHP.
.tools (of the trade)
MP3 Splitter — mp3-joiner.net
Although more rarely these days, I still find myself in need to either split or merge MP3 files. MP3 Splitter is a free tool for Windows that does that job very well.
.videos (for education or entertainment)
The User is Drunk — youtube.com, 2013
"An entertaining reminder about good UI."
.non-profits (for a good cause)
The Smile of the Child — hamogelo.gr
The Smile of the Child is a Greek voluntary organisation for children. The Organisation’s main concern is defending children's rights, providing services to children on a 24-hour, 7 days a week, 365 days a year-basis, working for their physical, mental, and psychological stability.
Due to the humanitarian crisis that Greece is experiencing at the moment, donations coming from Greece are not enough, therefore the organisation recently launched a worldwide campaign which can be found here.
#SOS #SaveOurSmile
.bye
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Photo credits: "Let go the dark side of you" by Heng Swee Lim; Cyberpunk by dges; Bank vault by Brook Ward.
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