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collypops

1,090 karma · joined October 13, 2010

Colin Gourlay. Interactive story developer.

Twitter: http://twitter.com/collypops GitHub: http://github.com/colingourlay Web: http://colin-gourlay.com

[ my public key: https://keybase.io/colingourlay; my proof: https://keybase.io/colingourlay/sigs/7Ic7ptXi2LNANBHOyuDgu4FRhQs3-ZkFgZYu_3QE4zM ]

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collypops··on Nintoaster
Somebody’s not impressed. Thanks for your contribution to the conversation.
collypops··on [dead]
I (someone who knew nothing about cryptocurrency trading) followed these instructions and ended up with $3650 AUD in my bank account after all was said and done. Of course, some of you are more likely to put it to better use on the market, but I’m not one to look a gift horse in the mouth.
collypops··on Heat and drought turned Australia into a tinderbox
Thanks for posting this! Our team produced the story, and I also developed the story format and scroll-based visuals.

This required more code for gathering/processing than for the presentational aspects, but I enjoyed learning heaps about satellite imaging and fire front/burn scar visualisation in the process of pulling everything together.

I'm happy to answer any questions about it, or point you in the direction of sources/people know far more than I do.

collypops··on Gobby: A Collaborative Text Editor
Randi isn't _that_ surprising
collypops··on Star Wars: every movie (well the first six anyway) in XKCD inspired chart form
I'm trying to furiously cram as much into my head as possible, as I've run out of time to marathon the movies ahead of tomorrow's cinema trip!
collypops··on Show HN: Ramble on – A simple tweetstorm composer with instant formatting
I'd love to get some feedback on this, particularly what you found obvious/intuitive about the experience, and what confused/discouraged you.

Thanks!

For those unfamiliar with the term 'tweetstorm', it's the name given to the practice of posting multiple (numbered) tweets in a linked thread (usually by replying to yourself) to share longer thoughts.

It's a bit of a clunky process, so I've tried to take away some of the discomfort with Ramble On.

collypops··on Some Functional Programmers Are Arrogant
We don't write software in a vaccum. When we come up against barriers of language understanding (and this is something EVERYONE will face), we seek help from the community to break through and eventually wield that language more effectively, and thus make better software with it.

The community you're joining will greatly affect how competent you become in their respective language, so anyone who partially bases their language choice on community is being completely logical.

collypops··on I won't be using Angular for my next project
Where's the cancer comparison...

scrolls

...where is it...

scrolls some more

...ah, there it is.

collypops··on You Don't Know JavaScript Book Series
It wouldn't be a Hacker News thread without the top comment being an "Am I the only one...?"
collypops··on 16 Things
I don't see selfie sticks anywhere in that list.
collypops··on Is JavaScript getting worse?
That just gave you up as someone who didn't follow the link.
collypops··on BBS – Text-Only Online Community
"for useless chatter"

You'll fit right in, then.

collypops··on Introducing GIFV
I can tell this thread is gonna be a gold mine for Shit HN Says
collypops··on Latest Ebola Statistics
Here's another visualisation I put together, based on the same data collected on Wikipedia. It tries to mix a narrative with the growing number of cases/deaths.

http://www.abc.net.au/news/2014-07-31/ebola-timeline-deadlie...

collypops··on What We See When We Read
There's a curse that comes with watching a movie adaptation of a book before reading it, in that you can't not picture the faces of the actors that portray the characters.

I'd attempted to read The Fellowship of the Ring a few times as a kid, but never got into it. I watched the movie before I started it in earnest, and I feel I was kind of cheated by all of the visuals I wasn't able to conjure up myself. For that reason, some of my favourite parts of the book were those that were cut from the movie, such as Tom Bombadil and the Barrow-downs.

Thankfully, I went on to read The Two Towers and The Return of the King well before the movies were released, and enjoyed them much more because I got to inject a lot more of my imagination into them.

collypops··on Fiverr Raises $30M for Online Services Marketplace
That's $29,999,995 more than it needed.
collypops··on The March Towards Go
It's more like Zed Shaw leaving Ruby for Python.

That happened. So did lots of other stuff. Same as it always was.

collypops··on SF people, you are hypocrites using services like Uber and Lyft
> young and single, or at least no kids.

I'd say that was exactly who he was picturing...as people who use Uber & Lyft.

I think the point he is making isn't that cities can get rid of cars. It's that the majority of people who use these new services can _probably_ just use public transport.

collypops··on HomeKit
HomeKit, for the authentic "lock-in" experience
collypops··on Apple Designer Jonathan Ive Talks About Steve Jobs and New Products
I love the difference in rhetoric when things are written about Ive compared to Jobs. It's subtle, but shows how much we throw around credit:

"Ive helped transform computing" vs "Jobs transformed computing"

collypops··on Update on Julie Horvath's Departure
Thank god you're here. This topic is saddening enough without people making grammar errors too.
collypops··on CSShake: Some CSS Classes to shake your DOM
I could see this being put to good use in interface tutorials, to subtly hint at what new users should be interacting with to progress, without resorting to lightboxes, tooltips and buttons.
collypops··on Show HN: Hacker News with categories and popularity
Isn't that just news.ycombinator.com?
collypops··on React: Finally, a great server/client web stack
Actually, it gave up on performing _everything_ client-side, and now renders the first page server-side, and then handles subsequent rendering client-side.

It found a performant happy medium, which is something I hope React will enable a lot more people to do with a lot less work.

collypops··on Web design trends for 2014
They forgot "everything will be teal".
collypops··on Taxi protest in Paris turns to guerrilla warfare as Uber car attacked on freeway
That was my point, as subtly as I hinted it. Some people just don't have a sense of humour though. Or maybe I'm not funny. Or maybe they're too attached to what I'm poking at. Who knows.

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7049636

collypops··on Taxi protest in Paris turns to guerrilla warfare as Uber car attacked on freeway
That's what I call disruption
collypops··on Silent Technical Privilege
This was buried ridiculously quickly. It fell from the front page to position 153 in a matter of minutes.

Can anyone think of an explanation why?

I know there were special rules in place for NSA stories. If the same rule applies to stories on privilege or equality in tech, I'd be worried.

collypops··on Show HN: Write the best headline for your content with this simple app
That's definitely something I'm interested in doing.

The way I see it is, you'd provide all the actors (people, places, objects), actions, and it would generate a maybe 4 or 5 to get you started by mixing in different styles of headline, from spoiler-style right through to linkbait. You can then carry on, depending on the style of your website.

There's better people than me out there to attempt that kind of stuff, but I'd enjoy taking a stab at it myself.

collypops··on Show HN: Write the best headline for your content with this simple app
Yeah, it's in early stages, so I've not gone as far as writing hints/instructions into it to set expectations. It's based on the TodoMVC apps, so you can double-click an existing headline to edit it, but I'm still working out how to best enable that functionality on mobile.
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