Hacker News Reader

Comment by conesus | Hacker News Reader

I tried to show how the onslaught of visitors from my Hacker News link last week had an effect on both the server (as shown in all of the 7 day munin graphs), and the project (how I'm responding to feedback and planning the course of NewsBlur for the next few months).

I'm just so close to NewsBlur being profitable. I am 35 premium user accounts away (for a total of 80 accounts). Once NewsBlur goes profitable, that's when the real hard work starts. I would then have support issues, broken features in edge case browser/OS configs, and the headaches of keeping a server running for high availabaility, while on a shoe string budget and working super-part-time. (I write most of NewsBlur on the A train, 35 minutes each way from Brooklyn to midtown).

View on HN

Wait! How the hell do you code in the A train? Actually this is worthy of a blog post - "How to code during the NYC subway commute". But seriously, I am curious what you do when there is no place to sit or when u r tired (its easy to fall asleep in trains)or what kind of laptop you use!

I have a 15" MacBook Pro. It's the width of my legs.

The hardest part about coding on the A train is when dancers/singers come on. I love watching performance theatre, especially on a train. I just stop coding, put the lid down, and enjoy the show. And if you know the A train, you know this happens once a week.

Otherwise, I am just so in love with coding NewsBlur that I can focus. I talk to myself a little (quietly), drawing in the air with my finger, and am just a little NYC crazy that nobody questions me.

I get a seat 19/20 times. (That's once per two weeks that I have no place to sit). I bring a small book, just in case, so that I at least have something to do on the train.

I've missed my stop a few times. It happens, but it gives me an extra 5 minutes to work, so I don't sweat it.

Hmm, coding on the subway as a blog post. Brilliant! Ok, next week it is.

Look forward to the blog post. After reading your answers, I feel like there is no excuse about finding time to do side-projects.

A train buddy! I live all the way out at 88th st, so I always get a seat.

I also used to sing in NYC trains, not the A though. I made about $100 every 6 hours.

Nice! It's a shame there's not a way for a developer to make some quick bucks off the cuff like this ;-)

Somebody asked what I am using to generate those server graphs. The answer is munin. I love munin so much. I use it to monitor both the server and any custom numbers I have.

Here are all of the custom graphs that I make through munin: https://github.com/samuelclay/NewsBlur/tree/master/utils/mun...

Thanks for the postmortem, it was very inspiring (especially the image in my head of someone hacking on the subway)! The idea of an intelligent aggregator is something that I have thought about often so I find the idea of NewsBlur to be very interesting. I'm going to check it out.

I write most of NewsBlur on the A train, 35 minutes each way from Brooklyn to midtown.

This is fantastic, and very inspiring.

I got the idea from Paul Ford, also known as @ftrain. He wrote a substantial piece of work entirely on the F train, which makes me think he lives in Park Slope, Brooklyn, and commutes to somewhere along 6th Ave in Manhattan.

I take the A train because it's closest to my apartment, but also because of Ella Fitzgerald singing "Take the A train." Now, if you're form NYC, you'll know that the A train is an express train, so when I see the C train, which is a local train, I'll take it to squeeze 5 more minutes out of my commute. The other benefit is that when folks see both the A and the C pull into the station, they all run to the express train, leaving me a greater chance for a free seat on the local train.

(I write most of NewsBlur on the A train, 35 minutes each way from Brooklyn to midtown)

Maybe its just me, but, there's something nice about working on a train. There's no wifi (at least, on trains run by the MTA) and the train sounds make for nice white noise.

I used to have a ride on the LIRR from Nassau into Penn for an internship. I'd bring my laptop with me and get a good hour's worth of coding, per direction. At least, when I got a seat.

I am unclear on how 80*12 dollars is profitable, altho, I guess if you only worked on this 70 mins a day for a year, I guess that comes out to 4 dollars an hour, but you must have worked on this on the weekends as well...

I guess you are only factoring the cost of servers, not your own time.

Heh, I am not counting my time as a cost. I am merely factoring in the cost of servers and bandwidth.

3 servers:

    - App server: 1GB, $40 / month
    - DB server: 512MB, Postgres/MongoDB, $20 / month
    - Task server: 512MB, Celery/RabbitMQ, $20 / month

If you're using Rackspace (the costs above are similar to it), you can use reserved instances on EC2 and save yourself quite a bit of money.

Maybe he meant breaking even? I don't think a salary is included in that figure... at least I hope not ;-)

I'm impressed you could do this sort of work on a train. In trains/airplanes my working capacity seems to be limited to emails, reading, and brainstorming. Sketching designs is the closest I can get to coding.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com