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Dave Rapoza

Dave Rapoza

Igor Kieryluk Illustration inspiration | #197 In From up North’s inspiration galleries we present the latest of our findings from the wonderful world of design. Amazing high quality artworks in various categories from great designers all over the globe. Jennifer James – Submitted by Spiro imaginefx cover – Submitted by C-Bell Toking Graceful Hit – Submitted by Brad Free College: How to Audit Courses From 7 Elite Schools Online Danny Gallagher is a freelance writer, reporter and humorist who also contributes to TruTV's Dumbasablog.com, Playboy's TheSmokingJacket.com and TheFW.com. He can be found on the web at dannygallagher.net or on Twitter @thisisdannyg. Getting accepted to a prestigious Ivy League school has its perks — and its price tag. But thanks to the Internet, you don’t have to take on mountains of debt to snag a piece of that educational pie. SEE ALSO: How Online Education Is Changing the Way We Learn [INFOGRAPHIC] Image courtesy of Flickr, Paul Lowry

ijustdraw randis on deviantART OpportunisticRefactoring refactoring tags: From the very beginning of when I started to talk and write about refactoring people have asked me how it should be incorporated into the wider software development process. Should there be refactoring phases in the software development lifecycle, what proportion of an iteration should be devoted to refactoring tasks, how should we figure out who should be assigned to refactoring duties? What this means is that at any time someone sees some code that isn't as clear as it should be, they should take the opportunity to fix it right there and then - or at least within a few minutes. This opportunity can come at various parts of implementing some new functionality or fixing a bug. As you add the functionality, you realize that some code you're adding contains some duplication with some existing code, so you need to refactor the existing code to clean things up. Sometimes you see an opportunity when you're in the middle of something else.

Terese Nieslen Vanderstelt Studio How to Measure a Company's Most Elusive Element: Culture Your organization has a set of values and a culture, whether it was engineered or not. Most organizational cultures tend to revolve around the personal values of the founders, even if the company has been around a long time. Young companies tend not to think much about culture because they are too busy focusing on customers and shareholders. As companies' age and the founders retire or die, they tend to do more inward looking and often want to make sure that the values that made them great in the beginning still characterize the company. Southwest Airlines is one of those rare companies that has maintained it culture of humor, focus on the customer, and efficiency, long after founder Herb Kelleher stepped down as CEO. 3M is also a company that has been through leadership changes, yet stays focused on the core value of innovation. Most mature companies tend to see a major culture change in a negative direction when the founder steps down.

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