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DaveChild

228 karma · joined January 31, 2009

PHP developer / SaaS entrepreneur ( more work at https://addedbytes.com/ ) from the UK. I built readable.com and cheatography.com and far too many others to mention.

Internet addict, developer, cyclist, squash player, astro-nerd, woodworker and OU physics/maths student.

Say hi: dave@aloneonahill.com

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DaveChild··on BritCSS: Fixes CSS to use non-American English
I have nothing but good things to say about the author of that piece.
DaveChild··on Ask HN: What's the coolest physical thing you've made?
Pah, amateur. I made two at once.

Well ok, my wife did most of it, but I was definitely a contributing maker.

DaveChild··on Tell HN: Twitter is now rate limiting accounts
Funny, isn't it. They ruin API access and overcharge for it, so everyone scrapes, and in trying to stop that they ruin the product for the users, without whom it's worth nothing.

Reddit, take note, this is you in 6 months.

DaveChild··on If PHP Were British (2011)
I see you've played poundy, spoony before.
DaveChild··on If PHP Were British (2011)
Thank, fixed.
DaveChild··on If PHP Were British (2011)
> The author is British?

What ho, old bean. Yes, I am.

DaveChild··on If PHP Were British (2011)
That's amazing.

I did consider suggesting replacing the semi-colon with "innit" at the end of each line, but it didn't really fit with the theme.

DaveChild··on If PHP Were British (2011)
It's funny, I wrote it very much tongue-in-cheek of course, but as someone who grew up writing HTML and then CSS and using "color" all the time there's probably a little nugget of genuine pent-up irritation hidden in there somewhere.
DaveChild··on If PHP Were British (2011)
It's morning here, but thankyou all the same.
DaveChild··on If PHP Were British (2011)
No, it's a joke.

Source: I wrote it :)

DaveChild··on If PHP Were British (2011)
Thanks for letting me know my site was down :)
DaveChild··on If PHP Were British (2011)
Well, bugger.
DaveChild··on If PHP Were British (2011)
If I ever get around to updating the article, this is going in :)
DaveChild··on Regular Expressions – Mastering Lookahead and Lookbehind
When I was learning my way around regexes, I found a cheat sheet helped. I made my own - you can download it free from here:

https://www.cheatography.com/davechild/cheat-sheets/regular-...

DaveChild··on Ask HN: What do you discuss in your one on ones?
I've been on both ends of 1:1s. For a manager, they seem great - a regular meeting, a chance for staff to talk about things. But they're not. They're window dressing. If you need the 1:1 to see what mood your staff are in, you're not paying attention. If you need the meeting for your staff to be able to tell you what they could do with to make their work easier, you're not approachable.

From the perspective of a developer, they are an unwanted interruption, and a great example of the kind of make-work that gets in the way of productivity. You'll waste an hour in a 1:1, plus whatever time it takes to get back to what you were working on, and that is time that you usually can't spare.

DaveChild··on Ask HN: Those making over $1K/month on side projects, what did you make?
I made https://readability-score.com/ - a site for measuring the readability of text. It's been a bit of an accidental success, but it's proving to be a great project.
DaveChild··on Keeping Personal Cheat Sheets as a Software Engineer
Cheatography is awesome, and the developer who built it is really cool and talented and handsome and me. :)

Thanks for mentioning Cheatography. It's a bit of a labour of love, and I wish I had more time to put into it.

DaveChild··on What Should a 4 Year Old Know? (2010)
Why are people incapable of using gender-neutral pronouns? Using "they" makes for a much easier read than alternating "he" and "she".
DaveChild··on Offer HN: I'd like to help Freelancers win more clients - no charge
Thanks! :)
DaveChild··on Ask HN: Freelancer? Seeking freelancer? (August 2013)
SEEKING FREELANCER - LaTeX nerd, remote is fine (I'm based in the UK)

I've been tearing my hair our with a LaTeX template generator and builder. I need help, while I still have some small coverage of my head. I'm looking for someone who knows their way around LaTeX, especially if they have worked with complex nested tabular layouts, UTF8 issues, and so on.

Email me at dave@addedbytes.com for more details.

DaveChild··on Ask HN: Alternatives to HN
Me too, if I'm not too late, please :). dave at addedbytes dot com
DaveChild··on Ask HN: Freelancer? Seeking freelancer? (May 2013)
SEEKING WORK - Brighton and London, UK

Full stack PHP development. LAMP setup, app coding (happy with MVC systems, framworks like CodeIgniter or Zend, etc), e-commerce (Magento and OpenCart especially), CMS sites (MODX, Drupal, Wordpress) or full bespoke builds.

Check out my site for more about me, previous work and so on:

http://www.addedbytes.com

DaveChild··on If PHP were British
I read HN every day. And yet, somehow, I miss my own work appearing here. Typical. I was probably too engrossed in drinking tea and eating scones to see it.
DaveChild··on If PHP were British
> this isn't British English, this is "I looked up some random stuff online" English

The author is a Brit. I know, for I am he. You're welcome to dislike it, of course. My humour isn't the same as everyone else's. But "pompous" is a bit much. Except for the bits where I was aiming for pompous.

DaveChild··on If PHP were British
Absolutely old chap. For some reason lots of people seem to think that I'm American and complain that my representation of British people is inaccurate. I think they miss the joke.
DaveChild··on Programming Cheat Sheets
There's Cheatography.com (my site), where you can make your own cheat sheets.
DaveChild··on Treadmill desks: How practical are they?
I made my own ( http://imgur.com/a/BczGu#26 ) and it's great to work at. If you're buying one, I'd recommend picking a good desk without the motorized bits. Instead of getting something that goes up and down (so you can sit at a normal chair when you don't want to stand), get a tall stool for when you want to sit.
DaveChild··on Ask HN: How do you ask a similarly-named company to change theirs?
> dibs on the trademark

My understanding (IANAL) is that while you could register the trademark, you can't use it to stop people who were already using it before then.

DaveChild··on Ask HN: Freelancer? Seeking freelancer? (October 2012)
SEEKING WORK - Brighton, UK (or London)

I'm a freelance full stack PHP dev, happy with front end dev (HTML, CSS, JS) and back end dev (PHP, Linux, Apache, MySQL).

Plenty of experience with e-commerce, especially Magento, MODX, Drupal, OpenCart and WordPress.

My portfolio and more info are on my site at: http://www.addedbytes.com

DaveChild··on I did the scariest thing I can imagine: I resigned
I'm in almost exactly the same situation. Scarily similar. Also 32. Wife is pregnant with our first baby, due February. And I've spent the last few years in the same company, but have reached the point where I want to achieve things that I can't do where I am. So, I handed in my notice a few weeks ago, and my last day is friday.

On monday, I start down a new road :)

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