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backwardm

88 karma · joined September 1, 2011

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backwardm··on Rackspace lays off 200 locals in company-wide cuts
I agree. Their support is always really great. Was the battery causing the time to drift or something, so that the SSL stuff saw the wrong time & broke? Just wondering how a battery could mess that up!
backwardm··on Mailtrain.org, self-hosted open-source Mailchimp clone
The Litmus templates are really well made and look great in all email clients I've tried them in. https://litmus.com/resources/free-responsive-email-templates
backwardm··on At 83, I Decided to Develop an App
The single comment on that post is great: "It’s amazing what people can do when they’re not being tortured to death!" —Evan Engel. +1 Evan.
backwardm··on Show HN: Recreate NASA's Apollo Space Beeps (Quindar Tones) with Web Audio
Pretty neat! I've heard those beeps a lot but never knew what they were for. Also, is it me, or do the sounds in the example recording sound the same? (frequency-wise?)
backwardm··on YouTube Red, a $9.99 Site-Wide Ad-Free Subscription with Play Music
I thought it was "red" for red band trailers.
backwardm··on Cry My IP
My IP address seemed extra sad. :( Maybe if it had a little more stability—wasn't so dynamic...
backwardm··on Show HN: Search Explorer – A new kind of WMT-based SEO tool, needs alpha testers
Just a quick note... the icon in use for "Segment Your Queries" is the Bitbucket logo. https://bitbucket.org/ Might want to change that? Maybe the cubes icon would work well for that item: http://fortawesome.github.io/Font-Awesome/icon/cubes/
backwardm··on Why Startups Love Moleskines
I personally can't use Moleskines. Not because of the paper or binding lacks quality, but because they _are_ so nice—I can't bring myself to "mess up" an expensive notebook with my notes. I much prefer to use regular copy paper. That way, I can freely get ideas out without worrying about messing up a relatively expensive notebook.

Once as an experiment, I bought a Moleskine, unwrapped it and promptly scribbled like mad on the first page in an attempt to get past that. Didn't work—I still felt really bad about it.

backwardm··on Show HN: RIFT – A procedurally generated FPS game in the browser
Got it. Thanks for the hint.
backwardm··on Show HN: RIFT – A procedurally generated FPS game in the browser
Mashing down keys as fast as I could to stop the spin... had to leave before getting too dizzy. :)
backwardm··on Show HN: PSequel – a free PostgreSQL GUI Tool for Mac OS X
I've also really enjoyed PGCommander. Updates often and works well with remote connections via SSH.
backwardm··on SlimerJS – A scriptable browser for Web developers
Just FYI, I found a script (typekit.js) that allowed me to get PhantomJS to render TypeKit fonts nicely: https://github.com/bramstein/phantomjs-typekit
backwardm··on Amazon Echo
Excellent. Seriously, that was fun to read. Thanks.
backwardm··on Kippo Honeypot Video Gallery
Just watched your talk... really cool. (Yes, Raspberry Pi's are awesome!) When you have your Kippo guide done, I'd be interested in setting one up myself. Be sure to include those beefy cpu and meminfo's your buddy sent you.
backwardm··on Kippo Honeypot Video Gallery
Here's another question... do honeypots like this one intentionally leave the password blank? (I'd think that would be a pretty good red flag for the attacker to not stick around... maybe that's what the hit & run guys were doing)

It was really entertaining to watch the drunken typist give it his/her best. :)

backwardm··on Show HN: Upmin – An Admin Framework for Ruby on Rails
Dang! I thought I saw a real glitch. :)
backwardm··on Show HN: Upmin – An Admin Framework for Ruby on Rails
Just a quick glitch-in-the-matrix report... in your video about using your own widgets, the state of the shipment was "out for delivery" or something like that. But when you added the widget and refreshed, it showed as a few states behind.
backwardm··on Show HN: Upmin – An Admin Framework for Ruby on Rails
My first impressions are really positive. I'll give it a whirl ! Thanks for making and sharing this!
backwardm··on Show HN: Famous Outfits
I wonder how they know what socks the celebrities were wearing? They are nice socks, I just can't see them in the actual photos.
backwardm··on Show HN: Famous Outfits
How do you know what socks they were/are wearing?
backwardm··on Show HN: A simple-to-update dynamic DNS service
Thanks for building this! I set up something like this with dyndns for my Raspberry Pi, but thought it was silly that I had to log in every n days to keep the account active.
backwardm··on New DuckDuckGo design
Just switched my default search engine to DuckDuckGo for a self-initiated 10 day trial. All the work you've put into the new layout / results look great.
backwardm··on ‘Alien’ creator H.R. Giger is dead
I know this won't add much to the discussion, but I really hope he designed his 0wn casket using his signature style—that would be really fun to see and a great way to show one last piece of artwork.
backwardm··on Glenn Greenwald: The NSA tampers with US-made routers
I'm curious to know if using a different firmware would be a valid way to secure a (potentially compromised) router, or is this kind of tampering done at the hardware level—in some hidden part of a microprocessor?
backwardm··on How I wrote Game Programming Patterns
I started out as a graphic designer as well, then gradually moved into programming. I have four kids (evenly spaced between 2 and 11), so I know how you feel about extra time for fun hobbies like drawing. (we are a few weeks away from our first dog too.)

Your post reminded me that I shouldn't be spending all of my time in code working on client projects. Yes, it pays the bills, but I should (need to) do a little drawing each day to keep that part of me alive. It's not as big as writing a book, but it will be fun to see how long I can keep the chain going.

I also agree with your comment about screens vs. paper—I have one of those fancy Wacom drawing tablets, but it doesn't come close to the feel of a nice sharp 4H pencil or Pilot v5 pen on copy paper.

Thanks again for the inspiration.

backwardm··on How I wrote Game Programming Patterns
Thanks for taking the time to write this post. It was incredibly motivating to me. A weird side effect is that I now have a scanner in my Amazon shopping cart. Once it arrives, I will start a chain where I doodle something every day, scan it and post it online. I am going to read your book so I can learn more about programming patterns in general—I'm not so interested in programming games yet. Reading the first few chapters, I can tell I'm going to learn a lot.

Also, you can put your own animal drawing on your cover now—and you get to choose which animal!

I'm looking forward to reading new posts about how you need to call your bank every few days to make more room in your account due to all the book sales. Congratulations on getting to done.

backwardm··on Sketch 3 released
I think Pixelmator is an excellent replacement for Photoshop, but right now Sketch is more of a replacement for Fireworks than Illustrator in my experience.
backwardm··on Sketch 3 released
I see the exact same with .png images exported (as web files) from Fireworks. The size reduction varies though—it's not always a 3x reduction with Fireworks. I'm guessing they are both storing a lot of non-image data inside the .png files even though I haven't peeled any of them open to see.
backwardm··on Show HN: Trianglify – low poly style background generator with D3.js
Nicely done! The noise option really makes for a great looking pattern.
backwardm··on 'Tor Stinks' presentation – read the full document
After reading many of these articles about the NSA I keep wondering if they have an office specifically tasked with thinking up code names for these projects. I personally would find it difficult to keep them all straight—this article, for example, contained a new one to me: ONIONBREATH.

Just an odd image in my mind of a group of top-security clearance, extremely well trained, able-minded people who think up silly code names like these.

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