mcantor

Wouldn't the same idea be Facebook releasing a Chrome extension for their "Like" button...?

Just sayin'.

I think one of the big reasons this is effective is because when you're not talking, you're listening, and this lets you figure out which stuff actually matters.

Even if you don't, reading the book will probably still give you some insight into your own personal habits!

EDIT: No, seriously. If someone has no idea who Gruber is and they click through to his site, tell me where on the screen they would see information that answers the implicit question "Who is Gruber and why would him finding out about this problem aid its resolution".

PICK ONE, GUYS.

When I finally began learning about ADD, I was startled by how standard my story was. Reading Driven To Distraction was a watershed experience for me; at times I was convinced that they had simply copy-and-pasted my academic transcript: "Dreamer," "Has a creative mind that would produce incredible results if he applied himself once in a while," "Inconsistent. What happened to the A student sitting in my classroom last year?"

In perspective, so much suddenly made sense; not just my experiences in high school, but beyond that as well. I failed only one class in my entire academic career, a programming course in my second year of college. How ironic and confusing that my only failure would be in the subject for which I had the most passion. Now it made sense. Only two or three years ago from today, I almost lost my job because my output was so inconsistent. I barely scraped by and recovered, but the experience shook me. Now, I understood.

There are many forms of treatment, all of which I have experimented with. When it comes to medication, it took me a long time to settle on Adderall, which lets me focus like a normal person without any appreciable side-effects. The drug was a game-changer for me, like the first time I put on glasses.

I think I'm glad that I wasn't medicated as a kid, if only because of a deep uncertainty about medicating something as malleable as a child's brain. Conversely, going 25 years without diagnosis has also drastically affected every part of my life. (I have no idea how my dad dealt with it for almost 50 years.) This was also something that I grew to understand as I learned more about ADD; undiagnosed, it can lead to perennial struggles with depression, self-esteem, poor impulse control and a host of others. I think the most important thing about ADD isn't necessarily medication or even "treatment" but simply awareness.

"Laziness" is a symptom, not a root cause. If we can be mindful about the signs of ADD in childhood, we have already taken a huge step towards improving the quality of life for people with the disorder, and everyone they interact with. I'm sure there will be debates about how to treat it for many years to come, but simple awareness can only help.

(This isn't a "look how cool command line junkies are" comment; I was just musing.)

The two things which will probably give you the biggest bang for your buck are:

  :ls

  :b

You'll need to do

  :set hidden

Delete to the "black hole register", "_". For example:

  "_dd

Use the "expression register", "=". You can even use variables. For example:

  ^r=5325*30<ENTER>

Paste, edit, and re-yank its register. For example, hitting "qq" will record to register "q". If you want to edit it, you can do "qp, make your changes, then visually select it and do "qy.

- How to access prior contents in the clipboard:

Use registers 0 - 9. For example, "0p will paste whatever was in the clipboard register before you yanked whatever's in there now.

BONUS ROUND:

- In command mode, how to insert the word currently under the cursor:

  ^r^w

- Insert a register's literal contents: For example, if you have a ^m (newline) character in the a register, but you want to input the ^m character instead of an actual newline while in insert mode:

  ^r^ra

  ^r^f

On-Topic: Anything that good hackers would find interesting. That includes more than hacking and startups. If you had to reduce it to a sentence, the answer might be: anything that gratifies one's intellectual curiosity.

Weren't they?