mattyfo

Page loads pretty quickly for me in Chrome, that should count for something.

This is actually a pretty old scam. I remember one time I helped a guy get a 'greyhound ticket' but the second time (weeks later) he asked me for money for the same thing I said no.

Although I am glad to hear that there are good people that give out there.

I've always had this problem but a few months ago I borrowed a poster from my dad (career Marine, epitome of focused, determined and successful) and it's helped me keep my focus. It gets me out the door to run (I've never worked out before), it helps me pick up the statistics books I have (course I failed in college) and and it reminds me to do my best at work everyday. It's quickly becoming my mantra and maybe it will help you but you might also find it to be extremely trite so take this for what it is.

CONSISTENCY By George H. Allen (Only NFL coach to never have a losing season)

Consistency is the truest measure of performance. Almost anyone can have a great day, or even a good year, but true success is the ability to perform day in and day out, year after year, under all kinds of conditions. Inconsistency will win some of the time; consistency will win most of the time.

Consistency requires concentration, determination, and repetition.

To be at your best all the time, you must: Take nothing for granted. If you aren’t “up” every day, some thing, or someone, will knock you down. Take pride in what you do. The things you do well are the things you enjoy doing. Take setbacks in stride. Don’t brood over reverses; learn from them. Take calculated chances. To win something, you must risk something. Take work home. To get ahead, plan ahead. Take the extra lap. Condition yourself for the long run. The tested can always take it. Don’t take “no” for an answer. You can do what you believe you can do.

PS…Celebrate after the victory!

Totally amazing, something designed to work for three-months is (possibly) still working after six years. Now if only my iPod was just as reliable.

Yeah this is the best solution I've found for putting dynamic content on a Facebook Fan Page. It requires a custom solution but I'd like to eventually build an app that allows anyone to add a custom/dynamic tab to their fan page.

I agree and since the link doesn't seem to work for me, I can't comment on the article.

Perhaps learning music changes the brain in a way that is different than say, learning how to cook French food or to fix a computer?

Since I've learned to play guitar (and studied music theory) my mind has opened up to the possibilities of learning and I feel like a smarter and sharper person. I can't say with any scientific evidence how music has changed my mind but I'm going to agree with that general statement.

Additionally, I find that when programming a short musical break will rejuvenate my mind and get me right back into the flow of code.

As a guitarist this is a very painful spot for me and good instruction is worth a lot. If you can figure out a model that connects people like me with quality content efficiently then you win.

Even though I drive a Ford Explorer I think I would have enjoyed getting a repair manual for it. I derive way too much pleasure from fixing my own car.

I got a cool Threadless shirt (101 cameras), a nice vest, a David Sedaris book, a nice light, 'The Ruby Programming Language', 'The Definitive JavaScript Guide' and a wonderful day with family.

I'm digging into the JS book now and loving it, very comprehensive.

I recently purchased a linode account for the same reason and am really enjoying it. For $20 I have a linux server to toy with and have been learning a lot from it. The one really nice thing about their setup is the management console that makes deploying whichever distro you want really easy and then monitoring really easy.

Also as Jaddison said, they have some a really solid community and the support is excellent.

Hey there, I've (re)learned to program over the course of the past year, listening to what your've said these are three books I think can help:

Start with Learn To Program 2nd edition as it will get you familiar with programming concepts. (I worked halfway through this book before I realized I understood most all of it) http://www.amazon.com/Learn-Program-Second-Facets-Ruby/dp/19...

Next I feel Beginning Ruby is a good place to get in depth with Ruby (I'm still getting into this book) http://www.amazon.com/Beginning-Ruby-Novice-Professional-Sec...

Last is Simply Rails 2 which is one big long Rails tutorial and will take you through the process of building a Rails app (it took me about two weekends to work through and has given me rudimentary understand of Rails) http://www.amazon.com/Simply-Rails-2-Patrick-Lenz/dp/0980455...

In addition, as other people have recommended you should try small programming exercises when you have a chance. For further brain teasers, I recommend working through the exercises in http://mitpress.mit.edu/sicp/

Well there's a specific lesson plan that I think is geared towards your business goals. I'm not sure what your time constraints are like but if you spend some uninterrupted time with these books you should be able to tackle them no problem.

Anyhow, good luck, I hope you find the time amongst everything else to dive into this material.

PS Programming is a lifelong project, give it time.

I agree, we may be doing things to our brains that are irreversible but I also believe that it's something that we can control and manage.

I used to be an obsessive everquest player but am not anymore because I realized how unhealthy it is. Albeit, that's one small anecdote.

I think the real takeaway here, and I can't say if this article addressed it (because I refuse to read this) is that we as conscious beings have to take time to be self-aware and regulate our activities in a healthy way.

IE Eat your fruits and veggies, exercise, don't smoke, wear seatbelts, don't watch too much TV, spend a limited amount of time on computers, get outside, meditate, play music or draw, explore, expand and be creative and don't read too many alarmist articles.

I stopped reading after the quote: "If our attention span constricts to the point where we can only take information in 140-character sentences, then that doesn't bode too well for our future,"

This seems like a predictable 'woe is technology & future' article.

Yes we use shorter messages and the way we write is different but if that's a problem for you then take a day off and go hike in the woods; it will do your mind wonders.

Yan, I added you to the Philly discussion, hopefully you'll get the email.

Anyone care to comment about what can be done with a hacked Wii?

I assume I can play downloaded games/imports. Could I write my own software, etc?

download is extremely slow, perhaps a mirror somewhere?

I couldn't agree more entirely. Some 97% of internet users use email on a daily basis while only some small bubble of a demographic use twitter.

Awesome idea and thanks in advance! http://mailhide.recaptcha.net/d?k=01tymUEVw9PoB1WOQpJw-mfw==...

We just went through a lot of these questions ourself while founding Baltimore Node (http://www.baltimorenode.org) which is now a small hackerspace in Baltimore.

From what I am hearing from you I think what you want to do is three fold: (1) have a workshop for people to work in, (2) have a coworking facility (office space) and (3) to have a hackerspace.

The first one requires space and expensive tools.

The second requires a comfortable office space to work in.

The third requires a solid community that perceives the value of sharing ideas and having a place exclusively for workshops.

I'm not going to say that serving all three goals is not possible but as we explored them we found that without a donation of space and/or serious capital investment the first two would be somewhat difficult.

We opted to go with the third option and stick to it (some tools in the space though) and we are now profitable with 19 members at a $50 a month membership fee. I think the real benefit to a hackerspace is being part of a community that is about encouragment, sharing and doing.

It's been a blast so far and I am really glad to be part of this crew, I strongly recommend if anything that you try to establish a simple non-profit hackerspace to encourage general hackery.

Also, not sure why this hasn't come up yet, http://hackerspaces.org

I agree, this article hardly provided any useful information or anything relatively new. It hardly even discussed the hack of it.

Hmmm, modular, clusterable and able to reprogram each other. Is this the rise of the borg?

I made a Gmail checker based on a project I did with my local hackerspace, step by step guide is below,

http://www.matthewforr.com/index.php/how_to_make_an_led_ardu...

I would like to see statistics first only because I would start to use it.

Will your project include samples and practice problems to make sure readers understand concepts?

My first thought was that great, now I can get spam in all kinds of languages

I have also accepted that I am not good at designing but I will not accept that I cannot get good at it.

In the last couple of months I've come along decently (working in the few spare hours I have!). I recommend that you narrow down to ONE package, IE Photoshop, and then start doing online tutorials.

There is a wonderful collection available to start with, my favorite place are the *tuts.com sites. psdtuts.com or nettuts.com

Beautifully composed. Makes me a little more graphically talented...

Such a great concept for innovation or possibly naming a phenomena that has happened and is happening.

Thoughts on how I can move towards becoming a program manager? I have the communication skills, I'm learning to program (ruby) and I'm learning to design webpages.

I'm not very interested in becoming a full on hacker but I want to help build programs and webapps because I feel I'm good at getting 'the big picture' and advocating for users/customers.

Thanks hotpockets, I guess it's time to study now :)