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Eels - Spectactular Girl

In less than a day I’m addicted to the new album, Tomorrow Morning

It always takes me 3 days to really get into a vacation state of mind.

I need to improve that.

kite & kids

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Kings of Convenience - Gold In The Air Of Summer

Technical Debt

I spend a lot of time with technical founders and engineering managers in startups.

I like how the best ones think.

During this summer in particular, I’ve heard many talk openly about their growing technical debt

In many ways it’s not surprising to see early stage startups with technical debt.  The first version of their application was built either as a hack or very quickly built as a prototype that was never meant to scale. And that very code base is now supporting a growing community of users.

Then the question becomes, do you add more things to that code base to give users additional features and a better experience (and increase the technical debt) — or do you start paying down the debt by doing that re-write of core parts of the system.

It’s a tricky one for sure - especially the timing. I was trained in the VSCF way of thinking. So that’s how I think about product priorities. 

But at some point the debt has to be paid. While some folks may find this daunting or a put off to a new investor I think it’s refreshing & often inspiring to have an intellectually honest discussion about these issues. 

My Top 5 Artists (Week Ending 2010-8-22)

Date night. Provincetown, Cape Cod.

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fred-wilson:

Love Reign O’Er Me - The Who - Quadrophenia

this goes out to my friend @bijan who is stuck on a rainy beach vacation

this record is a soundtrack to a rainy day on the beach. i love it so much.

Thanks Fred! Love the who. When I turned 40 last year I bought a turntable and this was in the first batch of vinyl I ordered.

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newspeedwayboogie:

Sufjan Stevens - Arnika

From the new EP, All Delighted People.

Gorgeous song

“I’m tired of life/I’m tired of waiting for someone/I’m tired of prices/I’m tired of waiting for something”

Thanks for sharing this one Andy. I needed this.

“According to a Times/CBS News survey “found that people under the age of 45 were about four times as likely as those 45 and over to say Internet video services could effectively replace cable.”