I wonder... what percentage of Emacs users actually prefer video to text? I'd think that particular demographic would lean toward "I can read faster than you can demo, so just get on with it already".
389 karma · joined February 19, 2011
Reach me at <my nickname>@binaryredneck.net
I build something for one or more of these reasons:
* I'm scratching a personal itch: fixing something that bugs me or creating something I want to use.
* I'm making money to take care of my family with.
* I'm creating something that I feel will make a lasting difference in the world, in some way that is important to me.
Though there's just something wrong with a "hacker test" that starts counting at 1 instead of 0.
The 14 was much more comfortable to use on a plane (I flew much more often back when I bought it), but I rarely fly any more.
What I have done a lot of lately is take "working vacations" where my laptop becomes my only computer for a couple of weeks while my son and I decamp to my folks' farm on his breaks from school. I love that my job makes that possible, but doing it with the 14" laptop got old after awhile.
My son uses a 10" netbook -- more because it's a good fit for his 8yo hands than for portability. He's still a bit small to type well on a full-sized keyboard.
(I voted both of my laptops, not his)
Anyone who can operate a search engine will quickly link my nickname to at least one of my names (maiden/married). That's a good thing. However, there are situations where it's worked in my favor that it took a few minutes for $random_irc_person to realize that I'm female.
I happen to work in a field where eccentricity seems expected (web development), so it's never been a negative as far as I know.
It's less expensive than a trendy standing or, even pricier, adjustable desk. Drafting chairs can be quite comfortable, and are tall enough that you can sit at a standing-height desk without trouble. Also, keeping my feet under one on the ring under the drafting chair seems to make me sit up straighter.
^^^ How many things can you say that about? ;)
My point was merely that co-founders with very different lifestyles may not be terribly compatible, and that age is not a good predictor of that.
The perfect start-up for me looks a lot like this:
* I get to keep my family in Indianapolis (and actually spend time with
them).
* I need to analyze problems and create solutions -- not just code things
on a checklist that we all know how to do.
* I make enough to get by, and have a tangible stake in the company.
* I get to work with top-notch people whose talents compliment my own.
* I'm making something I'm proud to show off.
* The corporate culture is very hacker-ish, by which I mean that we
subscribe to "best idea first" and are passionate about solving
real-world problems.
Something interesting I observed at Startup Weekend here in Indy last fall:
When it came time to form teams, all the young'uns grouped with one another, and the four of us codgers with responsibilities worked together. The line wasn't drawn according to age: there was one 30+ guy in another group, but he was single; two of the four members of my group were still in our 20's, but we were the primary sources of income for families with children, and I think that led us to fit in better with our 40+ cofounders.
With a few exceptions, I'd find it uncomfortable -- if not unworkable -- cofounding with the bouncy 20-something who has no outside responsibilities. When team building means getting drunk together on a Wednesday night, work hours are noon-8pm, and the company culture is low on planning and high on "nothing to lose", a company is just not going to be a good fit for me.
I'm fine with economic sacrifice, and with working hard. Because I'm looking for a new startup to join, I've tooled down my living expenses such that I could do an extended period somewhere between the two guys in that article. Because I've always been a hard worker, I've made my work schedule part of my family's life: I work a normal 9-3:30 in the office (currently home office, but I'm flexible), then after school, my son brings his homework to my office and we do our work together for a couple of hours. I tend to get in another hour or two in the evenings after he goes to sleep. I never get drunk, let alone on a weeknight when I have to get a first grader up for school in the morning. I'll never end up in an incubator because I'm not changing my son's school, leaving his speech therapy program, leaving our dojo, and generally up-ending his whole world in exchange for a few months of help for my startup.
I often meet people at my stage in life (kids, responsibilities, etc.) who say they don't do start-ups because they perceive "bouncy without responsibilities" to be the expectation of all startups. Their loss. I have to look a little harder, but I find other "codgers" out there in the entrepreneur community. I have to wonder if the people held back by the stereotype really have whatever that spark is that makes us take risks on new things anyway.
Oh, and I almost forgot.... GET OFF MY LAWN!
Building something like this has been on my "someday, if ever I have free time" list for a while now -- I know plenty of people who would use it, but only about 1/3 that I've shown it to have registered, all citing the need to make yet another new account.
Integrating a multiple auth solution like Janrain Engage[1] should take no time at all, and it might help texchannels get traction.
The late stages of the editing process (where I was working with the publisher's .doc files instead of just sending them text) were so painful that I vowed to learn Tex and/or LaTeX before helping my mother self-publish her upcoming quilting book.
Italic is far superior to any kind of looped cursive.
* This is just nifty.
* You want people to agree to an empty ToS? WTF? Fill it in or eliminate the checkbox.
* It would be very nice if OpenID could be used to create an account / login.
* This is something I'd actually use.
* Can moderators ban trolls from a channel by nick and/or IP?
* Can moderators choose individual posts to make "featured", (i.e. sticky at the top of the channel) for a limited period (12 or 24 hours maybe?)
Even a $100-$200 fountain pen is far more cost-effective than gel pens in the long run due to their longevity and how inexpensive bottled ink is.
I actually kept track one year. I went through $418 in gel pens my first year of college. That's more than my four favorite pens and my entire ink collection combined, despite my penchant for exotic and limited edition inks. It would take me about five years to use up all these inks.
Cursive is so problematic in the US not because it is hard to learn, useless, or requires a massive investment of time. It is problematic because we are terrible at teaching handwriting!
Almost all US schools have standardized on forms of looped cursive (e.g. Parker Penmanship, Zaner-Bloser) -- a set of letterforms designed not for handwriting, but for the movable type printing press! Looped cursive was made to be attractive with the fewest unique joins possible so that printers needed to stock fewer pieces for their movable type presses. Looped cursive is slower, less legible, and more difficult to learn than forms of writing actually made to be written (such as cursive italic).
Additionally, almost all US schools not only require that young children learning to write use pencil, but a relatively hard lead (HB lead). These pencils require too much pressure to use, and catch on the paper too much, making it much harder to learn to write properly -- especially in cursive, which has fewer lifts.
When I began using fountain pens, and learned to write in cursive italic, my handwriting became effortlessly quick and neat. My RSI even improved! This is how I taught my son to write, and he has arguably the best writing in his first-grade class, despite a severe speech disability which caused a delay in his learning to read and write.
We aren't the only family who have figured this out -- almost all of the home-schooling families we know use the same cursive italic my son and I learned, and I've seen a couple of private schools adopt it. Right now, it seems that the "cursive revival" seems limited to education-focused families with young children, writers, and doctors, but I think that if more people became aware of exactly how kludgy the writing they were taught is, they might give real handwriting a try and love it as much as we do. :)
Note: The italic and cursive italic we learned was Getty-Dubay italic -- I used the grown-up book "Write Now", and my son is learning with the first-grade book. Their web site is: http://handwritingsuccess.com/
It doesn't necessarily mean "look, I did it in a weekend!" but "hey, I was messing around with this in my spare time..."
I bought "Learning Python" because it covers both 2.x and 3.x, but found it absolutely unnavigable as a reference. It might work well for people who want a tutorial they can go through step by step, but for someone who just wants to quickly find and absorb info in the process of doing something else, it doesn't cut the mustard.