This might be a good question to ask everyone by posting it here because there are a lot of people in this community that have achieved or built impressive thing.
What is something impressive you have built or achieved?
(But given the nature of this site, I wish I could post something really intellectual or otherwise related to hacking instead.)
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Addenda:
very frequently asked questions: What was the mileage per day? About 80 miles. The shortest day was 38 miles, the longest was 120.
What was the group size? About 50. The average age was 58, which surprised me. I expected to see a bunch of retired people, but I was the only recent college grad. The youngest person was a girl who had just graduated from high school; the oldest was an 80 year old man.
What was your fitness level prior to the ride? I ran at the gym for maybe 10 minutes, perhaps every other week. I was not especially fit, had never done any sports and was generally unathletic. Imagine my surprise when the tour booklet came two and a half months before I was to leave, recommending a year of training prior to the ride. =( Anyway, I put in about 1000 miles of training in those two and a half months. I was so afraid they would kick me out for being unfit that I didn't even dare ask them if they had that policy, lest it be true. It was pretty dumb of me to worry, in retrospect, since they'll just pick you up in a van if you can't make it to the next checkpoint, but I wanted the trip so badly that I avoided the thought of failure as much as possible.
How fast did you ride? The strongest riders probably averaged 20 mph. I think the 80 year old man averaged 12-13 mph in the hilly places like Oregon. He was terribly slow at going up hills, but the descents made up for it a bit. I started out averaging 11-12 mph, but with lots of help and mentoring I moved up to 14-16, depending on the terrain and wind.
I didn't lose any weight from training, probably because I didn't train enough.
But I think I discovered a lot of role models on the trip (I'm only 21). Surprisingly, this is only the second group of people where I've felt like I've fit in really well. A few people adopted me as a sort of surrogate daughter, and I've become really good friends with them.
Most of the people were quite well to do--we had a lot of retired engineers, doctors, and a real estate lawyer. We had a couple crazy wealthy people, but they behaved like anyone else. On the whole, they were very gracious people, very kind, and generally good-natured. Some of them acted like they were 60 or 70 or whatever, and some of them could have fit in at a frat party if they looked younger.
I didn't really have time to go off on my own much. I really sucked for the first four or five weeks, and I barely came to the next motel in time for a shower and the overview of the next day's route. Also, they usually put us up in motels located in strip malls, so we were often a couple miles away from downtown. Even if I'd been inclined to get back onto my bike, urban riding is still something I don't want to do if I don't have to. Even if you're a strong rider who's able to fit in side trips and still get back in time, the sightseeing opportunities are limited.
I recently unicycled 300 miles across Africa. Photos here: http://www.matthewwegner.com/africa-unicycle-photos/
This was a vehicle-supported tour organized by Escape Adventures, who are absolutely awesome. They usually do bike tours; this was their first unicycle tour. I'd highly recommend them for any foreign tours: http://escapeadventures.co.nz/
I called him from the office to ask him for the password so I can check my email. I played some music, stood there and decided to take a look at his business software. The rest was history. We did a lot of apologizing to people later, and we lost 5% of our clients, but the feds where paid, we kept the family business, and we paid people back within a month.
Since then, I have fucked up and fucked up big. Me and him fought repeatedly. He disapproved of my life choices and sometimes we didn't talk for weeks, but STILL, every time I screw up he tells me I am a very gifted screw-up and loves me very much.
(That's the coolest way I could phrase interning at NASA)
I think it's just good to be creative and productive. By my standards, it's impressive to be doing things like this rather than merely sitting around watching TV or making inane chit-chat at bars, like so many Americans seem to do. (Though there's value in doing even those in moderation.)
Live, love, think, create, do, repeat. A life full of that is what impresses me.
HN discussion: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=654107
What, not the answer you were looking for? :)
I'll go with: first to write a mainstream article with the word "Internet" in 1992 (at least where I lived at the time).
To add some balance: first to miss the Internet revolution in 1993, sounded like old news to me :-)
Started Sparkred.com and have been profitable while competing against much larger established players.
Built a woodshed that didn't fall over from the snow last winter. Built a closet that makes my wife happy. Built a desk that makes me happy.
How: I have a small website that attempts to answer that question: http://www.healthgazelle.com
To sum up my point of view: White people are more vulnerable to sunburn than darker-skinned people but "pale skin disorder" does not doom you to be chronically sunburned to the point of peeling and does not doom you to die at an early age of skin cancer. Similarly, cystic fibrosis makes one more vulnerable to infection, but one does not have to accept being sick all the time as their only fate. It takes both pale skin and sunlight to cause sunburn. It takes both CF and germs to make one deathly ill. The environmental and lifestyle part is what we can control. So far, so good.
My skin likes pastured (grass fed) butter, coconut milk/oil and very dark chocolate. Vitamins D3 and a DHA & EPA (Omega 3s) source like fish (krill oil) should do the skin well too. Also green and white tea w/ lemon no sugar killed acne.
Favorite health blog: wholehealthsource.blogspot.com
If you think you know better than the current literature, get someone to research it. Go talk to your local university, get someone excited. Or do it yourself during a summer scholarship. If you are right and can prove it you'll help a lot more people.
But the reality is also that most CF patients are prisoners of the mental models used by medicine. Ex: Zithromax is very commonly prescribed as a prophylactic antibiotic and to control inflammation. It also competes with magnesium. So taking zithromax tends to make one magnesium deficient. Magnesium is an alkaline mineral. Thus magnesium deficiency leads to excess acidity, which leads to inflammation, which promotes infection, for which doctors then prescribe drugs like zithromax. It's a vicious cycle: Once you start taking zithromax, you tend to become dependent upon it because it worsens the underlying issues which cause the thing it is treating for. Most doctors seem to be completely unaware of stuff like that. I have never had a doctor tell me what nutritional supplements I needed to take or what foods I needed to eat to combat the side effects the drugs cause. Getting off the 8 or so prescription drugs I used to take has made me feel strongly that the solutions doctors prescribe -- and which most patients blindly and obediently follow to a T -- are part of the problem.
I wish the picture were prettier. But my CF specialist expressed zero interest in what I was doing to get myself well. His response to my improvement was to schedule me fewer appointments because other patients needed his help more. If anyone is going to get well using the information on the site, it will be a grass roots movement. Doing some kind of research on it when it is already helping people (me, my son, others with CF that contact my via email) looks to me like a huge waste of time -- kind of like a recent article about avoiding spending undue amounts of time writing your business plan.
Thanks for the feedback. I will make a mental note of it for future reference as the site gets improved. :-)
There are drug guidelines for a reason: they are evidence based on the current literature. Of course they follow the path with the most evidence behind it.
My take would simply be collect some evidence. Then get someone excited. Someone wants to make their mark - this would be a relatively simple study if what you say is repeatable amongst the general CF population.
B) I hear back from other people using the information and the feedback suggests it is potentially repeatedly. The issue is that most folks won't go to the lengths I have gone. And I do not believe anyone should ask them to. It needs to be a choice. The site is intended to be descriptive, not prescriptive. I believe the top-down model is part of the problem. So I have zero desire to replicate that model. I would rather do nothing than contribute to the current (clearly failed) paradigm.
In recent weeks, someone familiar with the site did become desperate enough to try more than most folks have. Initial results are astonishingly good. This is an individual with an antibiotic resistant infection who was basically out of conventional options. Over time, I imagine word will spread. The way it spreads is important. I'm satisfied with the current direction of things.
Note: I don't know how its performing now because I switched jobs.
jpwagner [at> mit <dotty] edu
Thanks!
Have you thought about getting ahold of them to find out how it performs now, just for curiosity's sake?
I never really considered asking them how it was doing now; I have been so busy working on other projects but I would like to know.
Wrote an spreadsheet, and interactive disassembler, in BBC BASIC and 6502 assembler when I was sixteen. Still seems the most impressive thing I ever did... but perhaps it wasn't actually. Um ah.
In terms of hacks, the thing I like the most is Hecl: http://www.hecl.org
menumunchies.com - for those interested
Ended up with fractured C3 to C5 and ripped ligaments and had 2 major operations and a halo device. I was 15 yo.
First was Wisconsin, second was Lake Placid.
Another system - "it must tell us everything about e.g. nanotechnology and Japan". Recognised countries, technologies, projects, did implicit search on internal document databases, internal project databases, CIA world factbook, stored URL's, Google's API etc. Showed links, e.g. team X went to Japan in 2004, team Y dealt with nanotech in 2001, there are two reports here that deal with X, Bob stored these related URL's, etc.
May not impress some, but I really enjoyed those projects and they were helluva challenging!
Ok, I'm still learning (and always will be) but I went from absolutely hating dancing to being a competent social swing dancer in a year - just coming up to the anniversary of my first lesson in fact.
:)