My Ninja, Please! 6.27.11 : Frederick Kaufman : Wallmart to the Farm
After the the e-coli scare, people decided to self-regulate food metrics, what follows is an interesting journey of the tomato…what is sustainable food?

Posted: June 27th, 2011
at 3:46pm by mnp
Categories: myninjaplease,green,business,mnp is for the children,weaponry,grub,science,diy,development,health,innovation
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10,000 Hour Myth?
Continue reading here.
Posted: June 24th, 2011
at 2:25pm by mnp
Categories: life,games,weaponry,9th dan,science,2 hours on the internet,boredom killer,"ninja",diy,development
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Is There a New Geek Anti-intellectualism?
Posted: June 7th, 2011
at 6:17pm by mnp
Categories: hood status,myninjaplease,life,weaponry,fo' real?,real life news,9th dan,science,boredom killer,"ninja",internets,philosophy
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Why its Better to Be a Woman in Tech
Posted: June 4th, 2011
at 12:36pm by mnp
Categories: computers,web,weaponry,"ninja",development
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How to Be a Public Speaker
Speaking begets speaking. Once you’ve created a presentation (or two) that’s closely aligned with your book and will be entertaining to your target audience, practice more than you think is a sane amount of practice. Then keep going. Not so that you sound like an automaton, but so that you know the material so well, you can adjust it in the moment.
When Close Isn’t Good Enough
For a lot of engineering problems, "almost right" isn’t good enough. Remember the Mars Climate Orbiter? Traveling through space for nearly a year, and covering 700 million kilometers, the Orbiter disintegrated after entering the Martian atmosphere at an altitude just one-hundred kilometers lower than planned. That’s like a $100 million dart exploding when you miss the bullseye by less than the width of a human hair. A less dramatic — though more common — failure is the embarrassing auto-correct. After countless convenient corrections, there is inevitably a mistake that calls into question the overall utility of the system. For one contributor to this blog, that moment occurred when the intended "wild beasts" was publicly disseminated as "wild breasts" — on the bright side, that "correction" did seem to increase interest in the text. via
Posted: June 1st, 2011
at 12:09pm by mnp
Categories: weaponry,science,"ninja",development
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How to Start a Group
It seems that there are two ways to create a group. And when I say "group" I mean a software team, a band, a company, a project, or whatever.
One way is for one person to have an idea and start working on it. Soon he drags in another guy and they work on it until there’s a solid foundation to the group and things are rolling. Pretty soon other people start to notice and ask to join. They join one by one and are indoctrinated to the philosophy of the group. The hard decisions have been made, so the only people who are attracted are those who want to actually contribute.
The other way is for one person to have an idea and broadcast, "Hey everyone! I’ve got this idea and I think we should start a group to do it! I’ve created a mailing list for it, so everyone who’s interested should subscribe and we’ll all create something great!" A bzillion people join, there’s lots of enthusiasm and energy, and they argue so much over the name of the group and what the icon should look like that nothing gets done.
Every time I’ve seen approach #1 it has worked out pretty well, and every time I’ve seen #2 it’s fallen apart. Examples of #1 are Linux, MacBSD, most bands, HTML, Apple, the United States, and Microsoft. Examples of #2 are MacLinux, the PDI band, NeXT, the Perot campaign, the European Union, and VRML 2.0.
People are quick to volunteer work and slow to work. The quickest way to kill a project is to attract people who will grind it to a halt with their enthusiastic non-action. Slow assimilation works best.
Posted: May 30th, 2011
at 5:32pm by mnp
Categories: weaponry,et cetera,development,internets,ninjas are everyehere
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Going Paper-Free for $220
It’s 2011. Personal computers have been around and popular for well over a decade now, and yet we still have to deal with a huge amount of physical paper.
I’ve been wanting to go paper-free for a long time now. The advantages are obvious:
-Paper takes up physical space in our homes that digital files don’t.
-Digital files, if properly encrypted, are far more secure than sheets of paper that could be stolen.
-Digital files can be searched in an instant, while papers have to be laboriously sorted through.
-Digital files can be backed up perfectly and easily.
Posted: May 26th, 2011
at 10:00pm by mnp
Categories: computers,weaponry,development,innovation
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Crowdsourced Gardening
Bhut Jolokia, the hottest pepper plant known to man at over 1 million Scoville units, is also one of the hardest to grow. However, in John Gordon’s basement, the Bhuts have a carefully tuned environment controlled by automated heaters, watering pumps, fans, and lights. The system is all controlled by an Arduino and the data is sent to Pachube for monitoring (John likes to make sure the Bhuts are safe and sound when he’s at work).
Posted: May 25th, 2011
at 4:04pm by mnp
Categories: weaponry,grub,development,blogs,innovation
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