Victor
-
Another book?
•
2 min read
I was talking with some folks the other night, one had written three books, another five. “It’s like having a baby,” they said, “it hurts so much you swear you won’t do it again, but you forget the pain.” I can proudly declare I stopped after one book. But but… there’s all these books that…
-
I just wrote up some of the lessons we learned building a prototype of a personal financial planning service: What Do Consumers Really Want From Financial Planning?
-
What’s Next for Digital Product Design?
•
1 min read
Working in the fast-changing world of digital product design, there’s always some new and exciting tools and techniques to learn. The flip side of this coin is that you must keep learning to keep up with the industry or your skills become irrelevant. So naturally it would be helpful to know how our practice will…
-
Designing Faster
•
2 min read
I’m at an inflection point in my career of building digital services and reflecting on two things: How can we design better? How can we design faster? While the thoughts are still in flux I’m going to set them down here and stew on them a bit. A Cadance is a cycle like a sprint,…
-
Here’s a chord chart for instruments that have three strings tuned D-A-D like the Seagull Merlin, Grand Strumstick, & DAD Dulcimers. Also known as key of D, or diatonic D. I had a few goals when designing this: Correct chord names Include chords in the root position (root note as the lowest note) and inversions…
-
It’s a brave new world of auto loans out there with many customer-friendly features that traditional banks lack. Some of the new student loan companies for example will pause your payments if you’re out of work. How nice is that? So when I was researching loans for a used car we wanted to buy, I…
-
Drugs I Like
•
1 min read
I like how this School of Life video reframes what a drug is and encourages us to embrace the drugs that make our life better. And that got me thinking about which drugs I enjoy. When I was younger I liked some which for several reasons we won’t mention. My needs are tamer now, I…
-
In my continued quest to simplify my life and reduce expenses, I discovered the MVNOs like Ting and Consumer Cellular that lease infrastructure from the big carriers have come of age. They have straightforward pricing plans that are a fraction of the cost, better designed websites, and better customer service as reported by Consumer Reports.…
-
Yes, You Can Upgrade The iPhone 4s to iOS9
•
2 min read
OK, there’s not much info on the web about this so I can confirm that yes, you can run iOS9 (9.2.1 in my case) well on an iPhone 4S. It’s not slow, it’s not weird. That wasn’t always the case with old iPhones and new OSes. For me it’s the same speed, and some of…
-
I Refinanced My Auto Loan
•
3 min read
Last year we refinanced our home mortgage and saved a bunch of money, but at the time it didn’t occur to me to refinance my auto loan. In preparation for replacing our second car I was reading The Biggest Lies Car Manufacturers and Dealerships Tell to Sell You a Car and I recognized one: You…
-
Balancing My Budget with My Desire
•
2 min read
In my work on Nickel I want to avoid giving the same old tired advice that a lot of financial advisors give — manage your money well, then go out and life your life with whatever money is left. That’s not how most of us live. For example, my family is planning on going on…
-
Raise the Bar
•
2 min read
Perhaps the single most useful thing a manager of a design/development team can do is to raise the bar of quality. By extension, I think this also holds true for clients of design agencies. By ‘raise the bar’ I don’t simply mean saying, ‘This isn’t good enough’ or ‘work harder’, or this… Raising the bar…
-
Docker and Containers Summarized
•
1 min read
Just as container ships can carry more cargo because they use a standard form factor for storing the cargo, software containers can run more apps on each server by using a standard way to share the operating system without all the wasted overhead of virtual machines. How? Containers bundle together all the pieces you need…
-
Channeling my inner Edna Mode
•
1 min read
Whenever I feel downtrodden and powerless I channel my inner Edna Mode and imagine it’s me, not Elastic Girl, she’s whacking over the head… Confront the problem! Fight! Win!
-
Podcast! Getting The Right Design, Part 1
•
1 min read
Thanks in advance for beta testing my new podcast. I’d love to hear what you loved and what you think sucked. You can email me at victor (at) victorlombardi.com. Subscribe to the audio version on iTunes Listen online on SoundCloud Watch the video on YouTube, or right here…