HNHacker News
TopNewBestAskShowJobs

Beanblabber

78 karma · joined January 22, 2009

submissionscomments
Beanblabber··on Ask HN: What are your best life hacks?
On the topic of doors. I have a hack that speeded up transit and benefited many many people daily.

There was a main entrance gate at my old high school. There was four sets of double door that opened out, that allowed students into the campus. These doors are damn heavy and one night I was cruising with my friend and I told him, I got an idea. I refused to answer any of his inquiries.

We arrived at the high school, I climbed up onto the top of the gate. On each door was the little hydraulic system to stop the doors from slamming shut ( know what I'm sayin?) These hydraulic arms were just little planks of metal. I pushed them down with my foot. This created tension when the door closed on the two arms. Instead of sliding freely(and the door closing), the arms rub and create enough friction to hold the door open.

Now instead of the doors swinging close, they remain open daily, until they are closed for the night. Every day I would walk through them, and see every other student walking through my simple little hack that got the doors to stay open all day.

tl;dr: Hacked some doors at my old high school so they would stay open instead of closing.

Edit: My logic is: I used the doors... four times a day average. Took three seconds to open and walk through vs one second to just walk through. So two seconds to open. About 180 days of school times four years.

180x4x2/60= 24 minutes

While not substantial, I just saved a person 24 minutes of their life.

Beanblabber··on Ask HN: What are your best life hacks?
Now, this is the part where you elaborate and tell us how you did such things.

Honestly, your post is more suspenseful than a cliche horror movie.

Beanblabber··on Ask HN: What are your favorite books of 2010?
Pathfinder - Orson Scott Card

Not only is it written by the author of the epic ender's game series ( which is a must as well), but it mixes genetic mutations of time control, ancient(objectively, not subjectively.) civilizations and plain ol good sci-fi together for one hell of a ride.

Beanblabber··on US Government Censors 70 Websites
ter·ror·ism Noun: the systematic use of terror especially as a means of coercion
Beanblabber··on Traditional schools aren't working. Let's move learning online.
Relevant:

http://www.soilandhealth.org/03sov/0303critic/030301studenta...

Beanblabber··on Traditional schools aren't working. Let's move learning online.
But kids are lacking motivation for a number of things. One of which is the mandatory, boring subject matter and the way it's taught. It's also common society's mindset to think of "learning" as bad. Or at least that's what a lot of kids think. Some figure it out, but many remain with the attitude that learning is bad. These students also get so accustomed to being given every piece of info, they don't know or care how to find and learn on their own.

Is slides really worse than lugging a ten-pound book around all day and reciting emotionless, boring, seemingly irrelevant information? Perhaps the slides will be no different.

If any benefit of online education, it's the saving of our next generations backs. Most backpacks average 30 pounds. Is their a reason to carry such large amount of weight on our back through out the day, for 3/4ths of the year?

Beanblabber··on Traditional schools aren't working. Let's move learning online.
Kids need to be able to work at their own speed. If a kid can and has the will to complete high school in one year, then he should have the choice. School need to stop being mandatory in the sense of actual school time.

When the teacher unions are causing halts of online schooling, you gotta think... Who really cares about us students anymore?

If people want to change the world, start where everyone begins, in the school system.

Beanblabber··on Dear Bay Area HNers: I will cook for you
I'm a student who loves programming and food.

I think I'll come.

Beanblabber··on MyGoogle makes Google search perfect for MySpace Fanatics (WebMynd YC W08)
Better design than myspace ever had.
Beanblabber··on Ask HN: Reccomend essays to a young, inquiring mind
Politics and The English Language by George Orwell.

http://www.ourcivilisation.com/decline/orwell1.htm

Beanblabber··on The Google Electricity play
He who controls the electricity...
Beanblabber··on Ask HN: A site that allows you to create programs other people ask for?
I was thinking along the lines of free.
Beanblabber··on TSA redaction fail: hidden text easily readable via copy & paste
Or perhaps a bit too blunt.
Beanblabber··on Ask HN: A site that allows you to create programs other people ask for?
Hmm, not exactly what I was looking for but close nonetheless. I'll check out your site though, looks good.
Beanblabber··on Nerdkit - an electronics kit for hackers
I've been looking for something exactly like this. I'm trying to get into the physical side of EECS and this is perfect because it comes with the board, controller, instructions, and everything else you need to make a simple project. All the others cost too much and don't include what this does.
Beanblabber··on Happy Programmer Day
I failed.
Beanblabber··on Happy Programmer Day
By that logic...

the 2nd,4th,8th,16th,32nd,64th,128th days

are all days of the programmer.

I guess we're just cool enough to get "sum(x +=x while x < 256)" days each year

Beanblabber··on How a Minnesota programmer figured out that a NYT photo was altered
He seems to also like the build beams that connect to form a triangle that in no way assist the ceiling.
Beanblabber··on Playing Whack-A-Mole With Data: The Pirate Bay Lives On
The only thing Global Gaming Factory got out of this deal is the domain name.
Beanblabber··on Ask HN: Math for hackers.
MIT Opencourseware is really good. They have almost every class they teach on there.

http://ocw.mit.edu/

Beanblabber··on Ask HN: Math for hackers.
This would be absolutely awesome. I'm 14 and going into 9th grade. I'm taking algebra 2 / trig next year but I hate how they teach it so I use the internet to teach me. This would be a really cool idea, I'd definitely use it.
Beanblabber··on 11-year-old college grad: I’m no genius
I'm 14 and in highschool and I believe we spend way too much time on things that have no affect on increasing our knowledge. The textbooks are also surrounded by bureaucracy and they sound like they were written by robots. Every emotion, opinion, or different view of an event is thrown out. Math textbooks just give you a proof and some examples. Most of the time they don't give you why or how you would use it, nor the underlying proofs that were used to come to theorem or proof.
Beanblabber··on Ask HN: How much do you sleep at night?
I get anywhere from 12+ to 5 hours of sleep, depending.

I'm 14 and I go to bed when I'm tired. I wake at 7:30 on weekdays for school and sleep for as long as I like on the weekends. The reason for my fluctuation of sleep is that I think most clearly during the night, which is when I get most of my hacking done. So I like living a night life when life is centered around the day and that screws up your sleeping.

There's nothing quite like being alone in a quiet house at 3 am in a room with nothing but a linux terminal.

Anyways, my sleeping habits don't affect my school learning(the days we actually learn stuff), nor my social life.

Beanblabber··on Ask HN: your favorite obscure Firefox extensions?
Abduction: https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/3408

Let's you take a picture of a part of your page by rearranging a square. Helps so you don't have to go to paint or photoshop to crop your recent screenshot.

Beanblabber··on Ask HN: How old were you when you got your first computer?
Once my mother was working on a big project for her work in word. So, she was pretty much done when she hit Ctrl-A + spacebar. She panicked. All that work wasted. My 4 year old self heard her yelling in the other room and I came in. She explained what happened and I just pressed Ctrl-Z. Everything was back. She thought I was magical.

My first computer was about when i was 3. Well, I always had computers around but I started using them and surfing the web at around 3(which pretty much amounted to silly little games). But I knew the ins and outs of Windows and how to get around and figure stuff out.

I got my own personal computer at around 10.

Now, I'm 14 and I'm just getting into programming and Linux.

Beanblabber··on Ask HN: Programming language power and 10 years to mastery
I think the correct question is what actual evidence is there against it?
Beanblabber··on Ask HN: Things They Don't Teach You In Computer Science
Of course there is no silver bullet to help you overcome such things; they have no effect on vampires.
Beanblabber··on My introduction to web world. Your suggestions to accelerate learning curve?
1. Proper grammar. 2. Proper spelling. 3. Proper punctuation. 4. google
Beanblabber··on [dead]
Well, it wasn't exactly the topic of the day. It was the community being smart asses. It was a nice laugh though.
Beanblabber··on Louis CK: Everything's amazing, nobody's happy
This is already on the top page.

Though this is the youtube link.

Page 1 of 2Next →