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fizzfur

59 karma · joined May 6, 2010

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fizzfur··on The Case for Using Mad Lib Sign Up Forms
Can't read the article as the big popup is in the way and the X is microscopic on my phone.
fizzfur··on Show HN: Backyard.io - We applied to YC (W12) and need some beta users
look intresting, but seconding the "why" posts...

what advantage am i getting for having these all under one roof? how are the integrations going to help me?

fizzfur··on The Periodic Table of Videos
cool, I know so little about materials. Time to watch one of these day.
fizzfur··on This is a story of caching
hehe, all software documentation should come in 3 forms: Reference, Tutorial and Pop-up Book
fizzfur··on Ask HN: What does "the Cloud" mean to you?
If my mum starting using The Cloud in sentences she would mean "The Internet", she doesn't have the concept of a server, and doesn't really need to, she just knows it's "Out there somewhere".

I think it would be unlikely for one of my peers (mostly developers) to mention "The Cloud" unless they were trying to be intensionally buzzwordy for comedy effect. They would be more specific.

I/We would however say:

  a cloud to mean clusters machines (probably split into VPSs)
  xxxx's cloud to mean xxxx's server infrastructure/platform
I like The Cloud as a common term to mean "Stored/Processed out there in the internet somewhere", not as a well defined technical term.
fizzfur··on Need a pronounceable random n-character string?
I can probably get my brain to generate one faster than visiting a web page :) .... but here's something similar in python:

    import string
    import random
    
    def random_pronoucable(minpairs=8,maxpairs=10):
    	consonants='bcdfghjklmnpqrstvwxyz'
    	vowels='aeiou'
    	password=''
    	for x in range(1,random.randint(int(minpairs),int(maxpairs))):
    		password += consonants[random.randint(1,len(consonants)-1)] + vowels[random.randint(1,len(vowels)-1)]
    	return password
fizzfur··on ASK HN: Review My Startup: PopFeedback - learn about your customers
I also smirked a little when I saw that.

Not sure if it's a big deal or not.

fizzfur··on Standard Screen Patterns
ditto

http://www.patternry.com/

and (more design oriented)

http://patterntap.com/

fizzfur··on Please check out our side project, OhLife (from MeetingMix, YC S08)
great now I have des'ray in my head.

interesting idea... I'll give it a go for a while until someone realises I email myself everyday. Does it get angry if I don't reply?

mini feedback on home page: The 'see example' link needs to scroll the page down for me, I didn't spot the page grow and was waiting for it to load.

fizzfur··on I just released F.lux for Ubuntu (fades your screens at night)
I installed the osx version of flux ages ago and never looked back, stunningly unintrusive.

Although waking up in the morning to find your beautiful late design is bright cyan is a bit of a shocker sometimes.

fizzfur··on UltraEdit for Mac nears beta... First look
It's not for me, (mate & vim have yet to fail me), but always nice to see development.

Anyone else think it looks like it was made for MacOS 10.1 though?

fizzfur··on Please review this fun side project - like literally
The 99p Challenge had a section like this ... might have to go re-listen to these now

http://www.bbc.co.uk/comedy/99pchallenge/

fizzfur··on Fake - Mac OS X Web Browser Automation and Webapp Testing Made Simple.
I hope this continues to develop.

At the moment it seems there is a need to know the ids/classes of your entire page by heart - or resort to looking at your own source, it would make it _much_ less painful if when you click in a box that expects an element ID that your cursor could then be used to click an element, to generate the xpath (like webinspector/firebug).

fizzfur··on Ask HN: Is there anything Google App Engine could improve?
no SSL for our own domains is the one killer for me at the moment.... be nice to know a bit more about the timescales of the items on the roadmap, maybe which releases things are being aimed for just to get more of an idea of priorities.
fizzfur··on Microsoft – InstaLoad Battery Installation Technology
cool, it doesn't care........... wait... on second thought the only time I've hit the problem this solves is when a device has poorly labeled the contacts.

Pretty sure this is more expensive/waste of components versus a big clear [+] icon on one side.

Guess it could help devices for the blind?

Or devices where you have to _throw_ the batteries in from a distance :)

fizzfur··on A few fun python lines for your deploy script if you're on a mac
If you've got Growl installed (and if you've had your mac longer than a day - you probably do), then you can use growlnotify to dump messages on your screen.

I use it in long running scripts (like deploys).

    growlnotify -t "Deploy" -m "Complete"
fizzfur··on How I "hacked" Dustin Curtis's Posterous.
Yeah, as soon as I saw this post I thought of SPF and DomainKeys.

Seems simple:

If your mail/DNS is setup to support either of these, then cool you don't need to confirm.

Else, you must "ok" each post.

DONE

fizzfur··on The Page Load Paradox
I'll happily wait 20 seconds for gmail to load, since I'm not going to close it again until I reboot.

If I'm revisiting a site I know, I'll cut it some slack, and be pretty patient.

But.. if I'm picking off results from a search, the sites have mear moments before I hit that back button

fizzfur··on What the Hex? Guess the color.
awww me3 ... I was enjoying that
fizzfur··on Review my startup: Mixlr
looks interesting, I'm not sure the signup/intro page quite put across _why_ I should use the service enough, I only 'got it' a bit later. But as a set hosting service I would probably use it anyway.

few thoughts (some already covered):

  * buttons look disabled, I was waiting for them to un-ghost
  * the "skip" links should be more prominent during signup since at the time it slowed me down.
  * signup/design was generally very friendly
  * please don't alert me to sign-out, I know what I'm doing, and it's not that bad if I made the mistake
PS: enjoy my set http://mixlr.com/chrisfarms/euromuxer
fizzfur··on HTML5 Web Standards Tests for IE9
Fine, it's bias.... but I like the attitude and love the fact that a primary competing factor between vendors is how compatible with the HTML5 umbrella they are! It's win all round.
fizzfur··on Tips for startups and small business: Creating your first screencast
tip: when making a screencast make sure your email notification is turned off so that your viewers don't keep going off to check their mail ;)

Very professional screencast, it looked great. I think there is often still some value in the less-scripted approach, (along with mistakes), I think it can sometimes make it feel less like you are not being sold to, and show some personality – of course depends on the audience.

fizzfur··on The Best Industries For Starting a Business Right Now
wow that site thoroughly broke my back button
fizzfur··on Bending over: How to sell to large companies
some kind of open EULA for various common SaaS models would be a great resource.

If there isn't one maybe those of us who are having to pay to have one written, could instead pay for an open one to be commissioned?

fizzfur··on Zencoder (YC W10) Wants To Be The AWS Of Video Encoding
So is zencoder _only_ for h264 encoding? Site didn't make the output formats very clear.