Michelle Minkoff

I’ve been in a rather dark, pressure-filled place in my journey the past couple of weeks.  You can tell, more posts here about my feelings, rather than code.  Less posting on Twitter about anything work-related, or anything at all during the work week.  The usual “How are you?” is greeted with an exasperated sigh, rather than my usual “Life is awesome!”

It’s something to do with another level I’m trying to attain in my career, a lack of balance, a frustration with not being able to do what I wish I could.  Many have tried to help me out of this funk, and just as I start to feel better, another monkey wrench is thrown my way.  My medical problems — I can deal with.  High blood pressure, take a pill. Leaking protein – take some chemo.  Fine.  But this general discomfort is hard. I don’t know the end goal, nor the path.  I’m horrible at hiding my emotions, so I say things I shouldn’t, things I don’t truly mean.  I hope the team knows that. (more…)

Some people make New Years' Resolutions.  Some people make them before January 2.  I would not be one of these people.  But, instead, I publicly declare (for accountability's sake), that this year is going to be different.  2011 was the year of extremes. Life is great! (I learned so much!) Life is horrible! (Anything to do with needles and hospital beds Read More...

After my approach to a nervous breakdown last week, kind people in the community have helped me get back on track.  I have restructured my current big project so it no longer includes a "miscellaneous" function, and is sorted into logical pieces.  I am also seeking to learn the actual vocabulary fo what things in programming are called, because conversations like this are not really a good thing: "Then, I put it into the thing with the curly brackets, and then I tried to access the thing with the other thing, and there was an error, which mentioned another thing that I didn't understand Read More...

Learning to code with editorial intent has been a pet project of mine for years by now, but this week was the first time I literally found myself in tears, because I couldn't get something to work.  My father has a great story from his educational days, about how he changed degrees because he saw the first time, he didn't like school Read More...

I've recently gotten a few questions about Fusion Tables via email.  I'll keep the questioners anonymous, but I think it's worth sharing these answers with the community. Some questions paraphrased. Can I embed something with HTML/CSS/JavaScript using the Layer Builder on my Google Sites page/page that doesn't play well with JavaScript? This is part of my usual argument of why it's a good idea to host your own website Read More...

UPDATE: More of my thoughts on this are peppered in the comment section of a fantastic post on this subject by Matt Waite, posted after I published this.  I think he may have a solution to the issue I lament here.  You go read now.   But before you do, I'd also like to make clear that this ramble is not a comment against any particular professional organization Read More...

Conferences. They're a time to reflect, to break out of the bubble. The Online News Association conference always seems to fall at a weird time for me. Last year, a week after I started PBS. This year, a month after I started at the AP (the team literally branded my big blue hat with an AP pin. I get it, you own me Read More...

I always said I wanted a challenge. People told me to go where I could learn. And now that I've been thrown into the Washington bureau of the Associated Press, I got my wish. And let me tell you, I've had some of the toughest days (intellectually) in the last two weeks. Because this work I do, this complicated data/programming/journalism thing, it's tough Read More...

I spent the last week in New York getting acclimated to my new journalistic home -- The Associated Press. I am overwhelmed, exhausted, exhilarated, excited and oh-so-grateful to have landed there. How to describe it? I feel like we're leading a revolution, reminding me of a certain passage from Les Miserables: "Who will join in our crusade? Who will be strong and stand with me? Somewhere beyond the barricade, is there a world we long to see? When the beating of your heart Echoes the beating of the drums There is a life about to start when tomorrow comes!" At the AP, moving toward that tomorrow is happening today Read More...

I've recently become very, very intimately acquainted with the advanced innards of Google Fusion Tables in a very unhealthy way. You think I'm joking, but I'm not. One of the coolest visualizations Fusion Tables (I'll say FT from this point forward) is capable of would be its Intensity Map option. Automatically pull in the shapes of various countries or states, match up a certain number (population, incidents of something, etc Read More...