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ianoxon Ask HN: What are you passionate about at the moment?

That Huberman Lab episode had a similar effect on me. I've barely touched alcohol since.

Link for anyone who is interested: https://www.hubermanlab.com/episode/what-alcohol-does-to-you...

ianoxon Where we're going, we don't need headphones

I've been using brain.fm[1] when I need to focus.

ianoxon Ask HN: OS X (local) Time Tracker

Ultimate Time Tracker is pretty good: https://github.com/larose/utt

I like the way you add a task after you've finished working on it. It then works out how long you spent on it based on the time you finished the previous task / start of your day.

ianoxon Ask HN: encrypted cloud file storage for iOS/Android?

I quite like https://mega.nz - free accounts come with 50gb storage too.

ianoxon The Beauty of Clojure

I saw http://www.4clojure.com/ mentioned elsewhere in this thread. That'd be as good a place as any to start.

ianoxon Ask HN: How do you meditate?

Have you tried the guided meditation on http://www.calm.com ?

ianoxon Ask HN: Where can I start contributing to open source efforts?

You could help out on Mozilla: https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Introduction

ianoxon Ask HN:What are the best online resources to learn Python?

One that hasn't been mentioned yet is http://www.pythonchallenge.com, where answering each challenge correctly leads you on to the next one.

ianoxon Ask HN: How do you capture and manage ideas?

I've tried a few systems and apps, but time and again I find myself coming back to a notebook and a pen.

ianoxon From Vim to Emacs

Are there any other former vi/emacs users (like, hardcore - I used to browse the web in emacs) who ditched it for an IDE?

Whenever I have to use Visual Studio, the VsVim extension gives me the best of both worlds.

ianoxon Ask HN: Can you help me make an argument against Wordpress?

I moved my personal site from Wordpress to Octopress a few years ago, which is a small site - approx 70 posts - and gets a small amount of traffic.

Pros:

* Cheaper / simpler hosting - no need for a database, etc. (you can even host on GitHub)

* No updates to install on the server, as you're serving static files

* Less concerns over security

Cons:

* Not as simple to add a new post. With WordPress you can just login, create a new post, and publish. With Octopress you run a rake command, edit post, save, preview, git commit, then git push / rsync.

ianoxon Ask HN: Can you help me make an argument against Wordpress?

I hadn't heard of postach.io before. It looks pretty good - thanks. I take it you use it yourself?

ianoxon Ask HN: How do you backup your pictures and videos?

Dropbox via Camera Upload, plus Time Machine, and a 2nd external hard drive I use to create bootable backups of my MBP.

ianoxon Firefox, Heal Thyself

> At least with Chrome there is the built in Task Manager.

And the about:memory page, which shows you memory usage of all your extensions too.

ianoxon UK Government passes “Instagram Act”

The article mentions: "The Act contains changes to UK copyright law which permit the commercial exploitation of images where information identifying the owner is missing"

Does your username in the URL e.g. instagram.com/username, constitute "information identifying the owner"?

ianoxon Show HN: Usability checklist – catch common problems before user testing

Looks good. It should help raise awareness of common issues and help make more user-friendly web sites and applications.

Minor gripe: shouldn't it be alt attributes, instead of tags?

ianoxon Feature request: phones automatically switch to silent at night.

Yep - if the OP is wondering, in iOS it's in Settings -> Notifications -> Do Not Disturb, from where you can schedule when you want this turned on.

ianoxon Facebook Hires Fired Apple Maps Executive

The mashable URL works fine: http://mashable.com/2013/04/17/facebook-apple-maps/

ianoxon Ask HN: Do you use a debugger?

Especially when debugging JavaScript in an environment without any built-in browser debugger. If you ever have to debug JavaScript running inside a .NET WebBrowser control the debugger statement will help you keep your sanity.

ianoxon The beauty of Git in Dropbox

I've created bare git repositories on Dropbox before and haven't had any problems using them as git remotes. They've only been used by me though, so things might get more tricky if you need multi-user access.

A few have mentioned syncing issues, so if you try the Dropbox approach, think about what the worst that could happen might be? If you can live with that, then give it a go. You can always setup other git remotes for GitHub and / or Bitbucket as well, in addition to a Dropbox remote, if you worried about syncing issues (although you'd obviously have to manually push / pull to these).

ianoxon A Better To-Do List: The 1-3-5 Rule

This reminds me of a blog post by Scott Hanselman where he mentioned the Rule of Three [2], which seems like a similar approach to todo lists in that it helps you narrow your focus onto the most important things you need to get done.

[1] http://www.hanselman.com/blog/ProductivityVsGuiltAndSelfLoat...

[2] http://sourcesofinsight.com/the-rule-of-3/

ianoxon Ask HN: which are some good self-help books?

The Now Habit - http://www.amazon.co.uk/Now-Habit-Overcoming-Procrastination...

Mind Hacks: Tips and Tricks for Using Your Brain - http://www.amazon.co.uk/Mind-Hacks-Tricks-Using-Brain/dp/059...

Mind Performance Hacks: Tips & Tools for Overclocking Your Brain - http://www.amazon.co.uk/Mind-Performance-Hacks-Tools-Overclo...

ianoxon Things I've quit doing at my desk

I remember reading somewhere once that warm drinks are more easily absorbed by the body than cold drinks. Maybe it's something to do with that?

ianoxon Chrome Killed UserScripts.org

>> Add-ons can do a ton of damage, and you'd be amazed how many people click through the install warnings without thinking

That reminds me of the bit in 'Windows Vista Airlines' from 'If Operating Systems Ran The Airlines...'[1]:

"After answering yes to so many questions, you are punched in the face by some stranger who when he asked "Are you sure you want me to punch you in the face? Cancel or Allow?" you instinctively say "Allow"."

[1] http://www.tensionnot.com/jokes/operating_systems_and_airlin...

ianoxon Ask HN: For a first-time Apple owner, what development tools do you recommend?

> If you're planning on doing Ruby on Rails web dev then get this 1-click installer to simplify setup: http://railsinstaller.org/

Also, YMMV, but you might want to look at Ruby version managers such as rvm [1] or rbenv [2]

[1]: https://rvm.io/

[2]: http://rbenv.org/

ianoxon Ask HN: Learning flask, I need a small project to make. What can you suggest?

You could try building your own URL shortener. You could make it as simple as you like to start with, then choose to add more features as you get more familiar with Python and Flask.

ianoxon 500px Terms of Service

Agreed. Plus the terms do state that all copyright remains with the user. Someone seems to have amended the basically text to reflect this:

  Your photos will preserve whatever copyright they had before
  uploading to this site. We will protect the copyright and
  will not sell your photos without your permission.

ianoxon Best tools for remote collaboration?

How about tmux (http://tmux.sourceforge.net/) for remote pair programming?

ianoxon Kevin Fox on recent Google UX changes: from strange-to-me to just-plain-crazy

Yes, good point - I can't think of any reason, let alone a good reason, to remove the '+'. Fortunately, when using the keyboard, Ctrl+T or Cmd+T tends to work the same cross-browser.