kellishaver

My own experiences with Facebook have been pretty disappointing. I ended up reconnecting with old friends I'd lost touch with over the years, only to find out that with the exception of exactly one of them, they all had political, religious, and social views vastly different than my own.

A large number of them also apparently spend what I would consider a very unhealthy amount of time on Facebook posting angry, racist messages that just seem to continually make them angrier and more racist as they feed off of one another. I've lost a lot of respect for a lot of people because of the things they put on Facebook. It's like, they log on to the site and all filters go off.

I've found that with the exception of 2 or 3 people who only seem to communicate with the outside world via their Facebook account, everyone that I follow whom I genuinely want to keep up with are ones I was already talking to through other channels.

Myself and most of my friends use Skype quite extensively for keeping in touch. Others email and use Google Talk.

I'm looking forward to this, but right now the find anything menu is crashing all over the place for me on OS X 10.8.2

I'm confident they'll sort it out and I'm happy to pay them $30 when they do, but it looks like I won't be beta testing for a while. :/

Sinatra is great for simple REST APIs. Throw in ActiveRecord (or DataMapper, but I prefer ActiveRecord's migrations), and RABL and it would be perfect for making small APIs for single-page apps.

In my case, it's mostly a matter of browsing HN late at night, so I come in late to most discussions and usually don't have anything to add that hasn't already been said. Replying with "I agree" doesn't exactly add to the conversation, so I just upvote and move on.

I've never felt any sort of discrimination on HN, or in the industry in general. There was one occasion (working on a contract at a young startup) where I felt out of place, but it wasn't intentional alienation, just different interests/priorities, and it had as much to do with age as it was gender. I had probably 10yrs on almost everyone else there and was just at a different point in my life.

My 10yr old had a lot of fun with this: http://cards.codecademy.com/codecards/tzBPG/full

It's also on Netflix.

I don't do it all the time, but when I do it's usually to increase contrast, or to mark my place in long text that I'll need to come back to.

I also do it to find the mouse cursor. The text cursor is thin and not always easy to find amongst a large wall of text, so I'll click and start dragging and look to where the page is highlighted in order to find it.

Oh, good point. Hmm..... Well, if they are not real, then it seems even more pointless. Yeah, color me confused.

I get/like the idea of trying to engage people in conversation about important social issues and technology, which is what I thought the site is trying to do (just doing it quite horribly)..... but I'm really not so sure now.

This is an interesting idea with a horrible landing page.

But right now it's just profiles of three (interesting) people. Their messages and vision are great, definitely something I could get behind, but there's nothing there to engage in discussion, encourage others, or really give the site a purpose beyond "showing off the efforts of three people."

It's a portfolio. With a really bad landing page.

My step mother goes midnight shopping every year. I went with her last year, due to a temporary lapse of sanity. It had been weeks since I'd been out of the house due to medical reasons and I thought well, it was something to do.

The stores were almost too packed to move. Getting anywhere took forever, and while most folks were generally nice, it got really pushy around some of the bigger displays. We left shortly after witnessing a fist fight over bed sheets.... Yeah.

That said, as insanely crowded as it was and as ridiculous as some people were behaving, it wasn't an angry, frenzied mob. The vast majority of folks were laughing, talking, and helping one another out. There was just a lot of them.

I'm opting out this year, though, despite her efforts to convince me to join her again. I didn't hate the experience, but I have no need to go and large crowds are difficult to navigate and a little intimidating when you have no peripheral vision.

Do you get much flak from others for your sensitivity to noise?

Some noises bother me a lot. Anything that's repetitive will annoy me to the point that I basically cannot function and get extremely angry, and it only takes a minute or two to get to that level. Sometimes sounds (and not necessarily loud ones) are physically uncomfortable.

I have similar issues with some textures (in food, clothing, etc.) and am very sensitive to smells (the cause nausea and headaches).

All my life I have been told I need to "get over" this, which I have certainly tried to do, but there seems to be only so much I can do about it. People who don't experience this level of sensitivity just think I'm being difficult and that I do this by choice. Frustrating.

> After spending some time in Taiwan, I found myself slurping tea and hot pot by default. I came to realize slurping has it's advantages – in particular, you don't burn your lips and tongue on hot liquids.

Slurping sounds generally annoy me, but I'll admit I slurp that first sip of coffee because I'm never quite sure exactly how hot it will be.

I think it's the repetition more than the actual slurp that bothers me, though. Any repetitive sound can send me into a rage after about a minute.

That's great. Surround yourself with as many good mentors as you can and take full advantage of their experience. I've probably learned more over the years from great bosses than I did in school.

Congrats on publishing the module. :)

Here's my (rather opinionated) setup. I'm quite visually impaired, so getting my editor just right so I can code comfortably is important. Most of my changes have to do with making things easier to see.

http://kellishaver.tumblr.com/post/29158801106/sublime-text-...

On OS X, the "Fred" voice is pretty close.

say -v Fred Hello. My name is Fred.

This was my first thought, as well. This would be nice for building a clean, minimal UI for a phonegap app or a mobile web site.

I used to not like syntax highlighting, but then I started writing more complex, lengthier code in a variety of languages.

Instant feedback for error checking aside (which is incredibly useful) I like the "texture" syntax highlighting adds to the code.

Indentation is great for organizing code into individual chunks, but if it's all the same color, I find that it still starts to feel a little overwhelming when the code starts getting long. Colors help create a visual flow and, at the very least, break up the monotony, thus prevent the "wall of text" effect.... which is fine for a book, but source code isn't a book. It doesn't function like a book, you don't interact with it like you do a book, so it really shouldn't look like a book.

I've never experienced it either, but maybe it's regional influence.

I've worked on a lot of teams over the years, often as the only female on a project. Only once have I felt in any way "different" from anyone else on the team, be it in a positive or negative way, and I don't think that was intentional. It was a startup ran by young, single guys, and I was a mid 30's mom. We just had different priorities and interests and the culture wasn't a good fit. But there wasn't anything negative or sexist about it, just differences.

One - that I've been using for 12 years.

This is all true, but when your barista explicitly reminds you to tip them it still feels pretty pushy and tactless.

That said, I think a lot of people may not realize that baristas make server's wages, so it may not occur to them to tip, or that tipping is as 'necessary' to a barista. Something like a "please tip your barista" sign hanging up in the store or something would feel less intrusive.

The whole server's wage/tipping situation, in the US, is pretty messed up. You're expected to tip your server for doing their job--something that their pay should compensate them for naturally. Only it doesn't, so restaurants can keep food prices low, otherwise no one would ever go out to eat... but then once you get there, you're expected to tip, making the meal more expensive anyway.

Tipping becomes expected behavior that you're made to/left feeling guilty over if you don't do, rather than what it should be; a nice little bonus as thanks for good service. If you want to do that, it just means you must leave a bigger tip.

I look at it more as mood lighting than functional light you'd fill your whole house with. I might get the starter kit for my home office. It's a bit pricey, though.

I believe it's built on ZigBee protocols so hopefully it would be possible to create 3rd-party controls. The bulbs are supposed to last 15yrs - I somehow doubt the app will have such a lifespan.

Cake generally excites me, regardless of the source.

Have you heard anything about what they plan to do with the 8gb when this happens? I've heard they'll stop making them, but it'd be nice to buy one of the leftover stock at a reduced price. I have an 8GB and it's fine for my needs (still 4.7gb free) since I mostly use it for online content.

I thought this was weird, too. The reason I bought a Nexus 7 was because of the 7in screen. Saying "It's a smaller iPad, but bigger!" just wasn't doing it for me. Maybe it was an attempt to sell people on the higher price tag.

What we tried was a system very similar to what was described in the post that yes, I did in fact read.

That's interesting, because I have not touched my iPad since getting a Nexus 7, except to test websites on it.

I use it for reading ebooks, some browsing the web, reading email, managing my calendar, and very occasional casual gaming. It's fast and responsive, and as far as seeing it, the display is sharp and bright. It's not an issue (which is saying a lot--I'm legally blind).

The display and responsiveness are no better than the iPad, and the retina display on the new iPad is a bit crisper, but I prefer the 7in form factor (lighter, easier to hold/use with one hand) and the customization options that Android offers over iOS.

I know Google had a lot of problems with them initially, some of which effected performance and display... maybe you got a dud?

Other than testing, I've barely touched my iPad since getting the Nexus 7.

Flashcards didn't work for my daughter at all. She just can't learn that way.

What we did for spelling and math facts was just to have her write each word/fact in the list X number of times (usually 5) and then we would quiz her on them. If she got them right, she was done. If she missed any, she would do them another X times. The rest of the week, we would quiz her each day before she started and she would only have to write the ones she got wrong. Usually she had everything down by Tuesday or Wednesday and her motivation was the progressively smaller amount of time she had to spend studying instead of playing.

I feel similarly. I studied art in school-my degree is in fine art, with an area of focus on design. I spent a lot of time after I graduated working as a frustrated designer. My clients were happy, but nothing was ever "good enough" in the feels really satisfying sense.

Then I shifted my focus to development and I get a lot more satisfaction out of it. I find that it suits my particular brand of creativity and attention to technical details. I love the problem solving, and conjuring up working software out of nothing.

I still do some design work, and I still enjoy it, but I do it on my own terms, or I do things like interfaces - again, more technical in nature.

I quite like doing the occasional pencil or marker drawing, because it's good stress relief.

But it's programming that really satisfies my need to create.

I think there are (intentionally) qualities to the game that can be addicting to some people, but that's common of a lot of video games and not unique to WoW - though they do seem to have the formula down to a T. It comes down to the person playing, though.

Me, I can play a video game for 20 minutes and stop and go on to something else and not care. My husband used to play WoW for hours and hours at a time at the expense of work and family, to the point that it was having a negative impact on his health, his relationship with our child, and putting a huge strain on our marriage.

But I think WoW was just feeding the problem, not causing it. I think it was a reaction to a deeper depression and WoW was just something to get sucked into and escape reality.

He stopped playing WoW, switched jobs, and is going back to school, has friends over on a regular basis for some real interaction and is happier than he's been in a long time.

Now he sits down some nights and games for an hour or two after the kid's in bed and that's that, unless we have something else planned, and then he doesn't. The tendency to get sucked in for hours at the expense of all else has disappeared.

I think, in the wrong circumstances, that escape that WoW offers can be addicting, dangerous and damaging, but I think it's less often the game that's the actual root cause of the problem.