avgarrison

When designing the procedural rocket engines in Juno: New Origins (formerly known as SimpleRockets 2) this site was one of the resources I kept coming back to while learning the underlying math.

It's also just a beautiful example of the old web at its best. Simple layout, no distractions, lots of substance. Truly a gem for anyone interested in rocket science.

How are they going to deal with the heat dissipation problem?

Are you referring to the Chinese Room? I've always had an issue with that argument. Instructions are immutable, but neural networks certainly are not.

This is what I have found. I started indie game dev a back in 2009, and I'm finally to the point where I'm making a very comfortable living, but by no means a millionaire. However, having a small company with some fellow devs is now in the realm of possibility, which is a long-time dream of mine.

Edit: My games are mostly mobile. I am really excited about the figures he posted for Steam. I just got one of my games greenlit on Steam (SimpleRockets) and I hope I can sustain further development on it.

Great job handling the traffic spike by still giving us links so we can check out your game.

You might like the book "Nothing to Envy: Ordinary Lives in North Korea." There's quite a few jaw dropping stories from people who defected from NK. It's such a mysterious country, I am completely fascinated by it.

edit: a word

What color do you see? I never realized that the bar changes color.

Very impressive, especially for a weekend "hack". What did you write the site in?

It wasn't covered in the blog post, but it is also interesting how slowly WordPress performed compared to DotNetNuke. I never felt there was a performance problem with my web site until I moved from DNN to WP. I suppose it could also be GoDaddy's MySQL servers vs their SQL Server servers. Maybe their MySQL servers are bogged down.

Edit: added a missing word.

I've used it on a few projects. I have never used NHibernate, so I can't really compare them, but I really like EF. I don't have a great deal of SQL experience, so I'm much better at writing queries with LINQ methods and prefer it over SQL. It's great having strongly typed entities and the intellisense is awesome, but that's probably true with any ORM.

This is one of the problems I have with SQL Azure. They have yet to implement a satisfactory backup option: http://www.mygreatwindowsazureidea.com/forums/34685-sql-azur...

Thanks, I had no clue how this trick worked until I saw your link.

I disagree that we should not allow such a thing if it existed. I think humans are a bit past the need for biological evolution. Technology can provide us with the ability to adapt to new challenges and environments, and can do so much more quickly.

Yesterday I climbed from 51 to 36 in the US app store and received 4,119 downloads.

I pop up a dialog asking for their e-mail after 3 app loads. I'm not actually sure what the rate is (signups per impression). I have surprisingly little analytics in my apps, I really should incorporate some of that. Do you know of any good services for that?

I actually used a home-made framework that I have been kludging together since my first app, BridgeBasher. Back then, Cocos2D and Unity3D weren't as awesome as they are today. It worked out well though, having my own framework really lets me dig into the nuts and bolts and change any aspect that I need.

I have an email list of about 80k subscribers that I've accumulated from my other apps. About 28% have opened, and about 25% of those who opened actually clicked the link.

Yesterday I clocked 3879 downloads and landed at #52 in the charts. I'm not sure how many downloads I've gotten today.

I decided on the $0.99 price point because of the large e-mail list.

Good idea. What subreddit would you post something like this on?

Direct Links Trailer: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fzk5WVb3JcE&feature=playe...

App Store Page: http://itunes.apple.com/us/app/dummy-defense/id460832678?mt=...

I feel responsible for derailing this thread, but FWIW samstave, I did chuckle at your comment.

What is your startup?

My post was rather misleading. I have been working on the side for the past 3 years now on iPhone apps. I have 6 months of savings, and I have a daily income from existing iPhone apps that matches my current corporate job. I'm releasing a new app in a couple weeks that should hopefully boost that daily income significantly.

Good luck! I'm quitting my corporate job on 4/3/2012 so I'm very interested in your post at the moment. I only have about 6 months of runway + 2 kids + wife + 2 dogs....maybe I'm crazy? Probably. I suppose I can sell the dogs if worse comes to worse.

Interesting find. Now I am very skeptical of this site. Does anyone know if Linus really said this stuff?

What is this site? It's full of what appears to be anti C++ propaganda. I am left wondering, did Linus really say any of this?

I agree with this. The #1 reason why I have been reluctant to leave my current job is because it will cost an extra $700 / month to get health insurance through my wife's employer. Not to mention the risk of what would happen if she somehow lost her job.

Beautiful website. Also, I don't normally read the About section of websites, but your Founder's Story was excellent. Very well written, couldn't stop reading it: http://www.cheekswab.org/about-cheekswab/founders-story/

I don't have any technical feedback for you on the site, but I will say that it has finally pushed me over the edge. I just ordered the kit. Thanks for putting the site together, I think you've made a very nice contribution to the web and to humanity.

I suppose I can't disagree with you. The technology around space exploration should continue to advance, however I think that we won't make any real progress on colonizing the universe, or even the solar system, until we are much less fragile.

I thought that R. Kurzweil's book, The Singularity is Near, really had a compelling argument against space travel in the short term. There's nothing more ridiculous than sending biological life into space. Let's shed some of our biological baggage, merge a little more with technology, and then work on sending a much more versatile and durable human v3.0 into space.

Whenever I'm stumped and turn to google with a programming question, it's always such a relief to see SO as the top result. No other site has the same quality of answers, IMO.

I didn't realize it wouldn't turn that URL into a clickable link. Here's the link to the game:

http://itunes.apple.com/us/app/santas-engineer/id465563485?m...