{tech}.Ben Buckman.net

GitHub developer Zach Holman wrote a great post a month ago, Why GitHub Hacks on Side Projects (discovered via Signal vs Noise). It's about having a culture that encourages quirky side projects, "automated inefficiencies," to give the mind breathing time between big challenges, to promote camaraderie, and to make people smile. I recommend anyone who does creative or technical work read it. Snippet:

You should build out a side project culture. A Campfire bot is natural for us, since we spend so much time in Campfire, but there’s plenty of other areas. Hack on your continuous integration server. An app that picks where you’re having lunch that day. A miniapp that collects and stores employee-created animated gifs. A continuous integration animated lunch machine. It doesn’t matter what it is; if it improves the lives of your coworkers or makes them laugh, it helps build a stronger company culture. And that’s cool.