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DrOctagon

195 karma · joined March 11, 2019

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DrOctagon··on Claude's code comments – too much or just enough?
I have something to the effect of ‘no narrative comments’ in my Claude.md that mostly sorts this out
DrOctagon··on What I learned about creativity from a man painting on a treadmill (2024)
My wife commissioned a painting of my dog from John Kilduff after I made her watch some Lets Paint TV.
DrOctagon··on Ask HN: What Are You Working On? (June 2025)
Next month :)
DrOctagon··on Ask HN: What Are You Working On? (June 2025)
I’m working on a collection of mini games designed to be played/powered by the Concept2 erg
DrOctagon··on Soviet Shoe Factory Principle
See also VO2 max
DrOctagon··on Grim Fandango
Nicely done
DrOctagon··on Why shouldn't you give money to homeless people?
I don’t know why people tie themselves in knots over this. If you have money and you want to give it to a homeless person then do it.
DrOctagon··on It Sure Looks Like Phones Are Making Students Dumber
I blame the move to lead free fuel.
DrOctagon··on Ask HN: More Co-op games I can carry my 5 year old through?
My 5yo enjoyed Alba: A wildlife adventure. It’s not co-op but it’s not skill based and impossible to ‘die’. The camera angle can be hard for a little one to manage and I had to read all the dialogue. We still had fun with it though.
DrOctagon··on A Grand Theft Auto III Re-Implementation
What does clean room mean in this context? Never decompiling the target?
DrOctagon··on We have used too many levels of abstractions
This is not a FE thing. Plenty of BE devs who don't know HTTP from their arsehole.
DrOctagon··on Ask HN: Most interesting tech you built for just yourself?
I love this. I'd love to hear more on how you build this
DrOctagon··on Why is it so hard to pull off a lunar landing?
Because landing on the moon is hard
DrOctagon··on Where have all the laid-off tech workers gone?
We need a descriptor for the ideas people come home from Bali with :). I'm teasing, but in good spirit. All the best with your new path!!
DrOctagon··on Ask HN: What have you created that deserves a second chance on HN?
You do post it in every one of these threads :). I respect your persistence!!
DrOctagon··on Portable replacement for a $60k VO2 Max machine
It’s been a while since I’ve read much about this but one explanation I’ve heard is that Vo2 was elevated to importance because it could be accurately measured and therefore studied.

Also unlike aerobic fitness, which can be improved with year after year of consistent training, an athletes peak Vo2 max (for their given fitness) can be maxed out over 4 - 6 weeks of specific training. Doing much more specific Vo2 training can result the athlete (at least in running) becoming ‘flat’.

That said Vo2 measurement can provide a great deal of useful information but for most recreational athletes getting the basics right is more important than having an exact Vo2 measurement.

DrOctagon··on New Zealand to ban smoking completely under radical plan
Welcome to society! Believe it or not some possibly enjoyable experiences are already regulated/illegal.
DrOctagon··on Ask HN: What's a good transactional email service for small projects?
https://ohmysmtp.com/ Was mentioned in another HN thread the other day. Looked good enough for me to bookmark it.
DrOctagon··on Show HN: My wife is pregnant; naturally I made a baby-name app to prepare
Only time I’ve watched TV/movie credits attentively is when we were trying to come up with a name for our kids.
DrOctagon··on Typography of 2001: A Space Odyssey (2014)
I was flying from LA to Sydney a few years ago and 2001: A Space Odyssey was available on the entertainment system. After a few hours and a couple of glasses of wine I put it on and fell straight asleep. I awoke groggily some time later to this[0] frame from the movie. The next second and a half I experienced pure terror until I realised I wasn't plunging to my death in the middle of the pacific ocean and how the pre-flight safety briefing really sugar coats the reality.

[0]: https://typesetinthefuture.files.wordpress.com/2016/06/2001_...

DrOctagon··on Python 3.11
I wanted to install python on a new Mac last night and just couldn’t get up and running. Closest I got was with using anaconda but although I could get the right env in the terminal I couldn’t get either paycharm or vscode to pick up the correct interpreter/packages etc.

I’d almost guarantee there was something simple I was missing but for someone not familiar with the ecosystem getting python set up to do more than just hello world is a shitshow.

DrOctagon··on In software, when an engineer exits the team
I'm looking at moving from Sydney to Adelaide, any way I can reach out to you to get an idea of the industry over there? I'm hoping to do a remote job from Adelaide too, but would still like to understand the lay of the land.
DrOctagon··on Ask HN: Whose using web based development environments?
I often use repl.it or codesandbox to explore the seed of an idea but will soon switch over to local dev if I decide to work on it further.
DrOctagon··on Ask HN: How to find motivation for personal projects after work?
Put on some music you like and work for as long as it takes to drink two beers. Work with joy.
DrOctagon··on John Carmack visits Starbase
John is going to Mars. Why?, you ask...
DrOctagon··on My tiny side project has had more impact than my decade in the software industry
In the interest of full disclosure it was a government org. Your point still stands though.
DrOctagon··on My tiny side project has had more impact than my decade in the software industry
Quite a few years ago as a (very) junior FE dev I used mammoth.js to automate the generation of a biennial report. Three months had been earmarked for the task as this is what it had taken in previous years (due to bad tools and lack of expertise). I had it done in less than a week by using mammoth. Mike was also very accommodating with questions I'm pleased I cant remember as I'm sure they were embarrassingly simple.

The project still took three months as it was one of those special type of organisations, but it wasn't due to the HTML generation :)

Thank you for mammoth.js!

DrOctagon··on Ask HN: How do you bounce back after vacation?
A week off is always followed by an off week. - An old boss of mine.
DrOctagon··on Plover is a free, open-source stenography engine
Think Danny Glover and that’s how most Australians would pronounce it.
DrOctagon··on Show HN: I created Make.rs – a place where makers show what they've made
I had a similar issue once with an app hosted on Azure. Large images were triggering the WAF sometimes as a ‘chunk’ of the image would falsely match a default firewall rule.

The CORS error was because the ‘request blocked’ response was a html page without cross origin headers.

Worth checking for that

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