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bgraveson My dad taught me cashflow with a soda machine

I wouldn't read so much into this. It's a personal anecdote about the entrepreneurial spirit being encouraged in a young kid. All good parents want their kids to reach their own personal maximum potential. It doesn't sound like Mr. Robfitz was forcing his son to adhere to strict GAAP accounting principles, hustle for cheaper product, or make deals for prime vending machine real estate. This is equivalent to having a paper route as a kid -- which isn't really an option these days.

bgraveson My dad taught me cashflow with a soda machine

That's awesome. I have a 9 year old son right now (4 kids total ranging from ages 16 to 4 years old) and think this is a great story. Thanks for sharing!

bgraveson My dad taught me cashflow with a soda machine

Rob - how old were you when this started and how long did this venture last?

bgraveson Show HN: A storebuilder contained in a single text area

wow - I really like this and would be interested in beta testing for a small store that I'm involved with. Online sales is something we've wanted to do, but never had a good enough store front.

In general:

* ebay - big, bloated, complicated, high shipping costs

* craigslist - too scammy/spammy

* shopify - considered it, but seems overly complex for non-geeks

* etsy - what we were going to try next

bgraveson Can TTAGG Create Stock Market Alpha?

What is your technology stack? I am particularly interested in the graphing library.

bgraveson The Rands Test

just signed up -- looking for a better way to track my status updates than Excel spreadsheets.

bgraveson Show HN: BestSFBooks, Mashup of the Best SF/Fantasy Books

Thanks! I've been doing some scraping projects lately and really like it a lot. There's a pretty steep learning curve, but it gets easier and easier as you go along, I think.

1. Caching pages is definitely a great idea while debugging. Especially if the data source has a request limit :)

2. I've never heard of Nokogiri, but it looks like BeautifulSoup for Ruby. I've found that Python has worked for everything I need so far, but thanks for the reference.

3. I suck so bad at regex, but using it more will help me climb that mountain.

4. One tip I've used is writing out the "INSERT INTO TABLE..." statements along with the scraped results. I definitely use CSV (and Google Refine) for general clean up and spot checking.

5. You should write a 'Data Scraping One-liners Explained' ebook :)

bgraveson Show HN: BestSFBooks, Mashup of the Best SF/Fantasy Books

"As always, data acquisition and cleanup was the hardest part."

I'm most interested in this piece of the project. What were your particular tools and methodologies? How long did it take you, once you identified your data sources? Any interesting stumbling blocks or problems that were solved along the way?

bgraveson AVOS’ Delicious Disaster: Lessons from a Complete Failure

I would love to hear Maciej's take on all of this (not to mention his server stats for the past few days!)

bgraveson Annual Developer Income Report

You are welcome :)

1. I meant to ask how you might be able to streamline/automate your monthly reports like BCC has done.

2. What is your idea generation process? If that really is the sticking point, then consider reducing the friction or cost of going from idea to MVP. My example of going from idea to MVP in 6 hours is very streamlined. If I had enough money to spend on AdWords, I could potentially test 1 idea per week and dump the low performers. My point of friction here is traffic. The only honest, reliable way to get traffic (and potential interested customers) is with AdWords, which is not free.

3. Very good to get your personal experience on this subject.

Thanks as always...

bgraveson Annual Developer Income Report

Chris - your posts are one of the highlights of Hacker News for me. A few comments/suggestions:

1. It would be great if you could organize your revenue/expenses a bit more. Something like BCC Stats [1] would be great. Perhaps just take the metrics you are tracking now, put them in a Google Spreadsheet, and create some simple Google Charts that are automatically updated and published. It would take a few hours to set up, but your stats would be much easier to gather and publish going forward.

2. Have you thought about ways to make website flipping more passive? What are the sticking points on this income stream and how can they be removed? I have given this a lot of thought and was able to go from a website idea to gathering sign-ups on a website in less than 6 hours. My idea was not successful, but I wasted very little time/energy by using ThemeForest, AdWords coupons, and a simple email script to validate it. If the site became popular, I would have developed it more fully and perhaps sold it or just collected income passively.

3. On a more personal note, how does your wife/family view this "work" situation? I assume that they are happy, but I have found that sometimes family and friends do not understand how this type of stuff works. I'm married with kids, too. In my experience, most people equate hard work with high pay -- but we have found a way to work smarter not necessarily harder.

Thanks for sharing this information!

[1] http://www.bingocardcreator.com/expenses/profitability-pie-c...

bgraveson How to teach my 8 years old son programming

http://pythonturtle.org/

Make a little turtle icon move in any direction you choose!

bgraveson Ask HN: What should I do with WhatIsTheUSCreditRating.com?

* Do your best to summarize the implications of the US downgrade on Friday.

* Maybe put together a quick video for easy sharing.

* Use the free $80 AdWords gift certificate to run a 5-day , high-CPC campaign (strike while the iron is hot).

* Put up AdSense for a small amount of income and put links to your main site or other projects to take advantage of the traffic.

I'm no expert in finance, but take a look at some relevant KhanAcademy videos [1],[2],[3]

[1] http://www.khanacademy.org/video/treasury-bond-prices-and-yi...

[2] http://www.khanacademy.org/video/banking-12---treasuries--go...

[3] http://www.khanacademy.org/video/american-chinese-debt-loop?...

bgraveson [dead]

It appears to be just a screenshot and a signup form at this point. Any demo video or demo account for HN users?

bgraveson Pinboard.in service limited - FBI raided hosting company and pulled equpiment

One thing that does work is our export page, and if you're feeling nervous about your data I encourage you to use it. We have fresh backups (from one day ago) safely stored on S3, but in these matters you can't be too careful.

+1 Maciej. I am glad I paid for an account.

bgraveson HackRSS - browse HN posts visually

perhaps a Google Instant Preview style extension where you hover over the default view link and a screenshot is displayed on the side? That would be a great browser extension!

bgraveson HackRSS - browse HN posts visually

I agree. This is more of a proof-of-concept / demo of the url2png api. If the post looks interesting to you, just hover over the image thumbnail to view the title.

bgraveson Url2png - Website Screenshot API - Beautiful, Zippy, Reliable

I've been beta testing url2png.com for a few months now and it's finally been released and opened to public sign ups. The service isn't free, but having the option to avoid the many other screenshot services out there is worth the cost, imo.

Code examples (PHP, Python, BASH, Ruby): https://gist.github.com/1007737

bgraveson Google's Street View starts mapping India

Yes, I agree that it's valuable and will eventually lead to revenue. Perhaps the "mystery" stops right there.

Sometimes it can be difficult to clearly communicate in short forum-style posts. I don't always qualify my posts, but in this case, I didn't want HN readers to think my posts boiled down to ripping on this Google Street View announcement. I should let my posts speak for themselves and work on being more concise. ;)

I feel like there's been an increase in this type of behavior since points were removed from individual posts.

bgraveson Google's Street View starts mapping India

I love Street View and cannot believe I'm living in a time and place in history that makes it possible to see such a massive amount of culture and everyday life from virtually anywhere in the world.

One question I've had since Street View was first released is how does this make business sense for Google? I can see how it relates to Google's stated mission statement ("to organize the world's information and make it universally accessible and useful"). But how can Google justify spending vast amounts of cash on what seems to be a glorified pet project? Is it simply a desire to build the best mapping service, thereby attracting visitors and eventually generating advertising revenue?

btw, I'm not trolling or flaming -- it's been a genuine curiosity of mine for years now.

bgraveson What's in name?... and a tag line.

Use Google Trends (that's what I do when searching for the most popular terms)

http://goo.gl/SKdJC -- assuming your in the UK

bgraveson Ask HN: Hacking your body?

Well, for me, it's always about being aware. So, I may not eat 100% slow-carbs all the time (it just isn't possible given my particular situation). But, when possible I avoid white foods (dairy, bread, pasta) and eat fiber rich foods (legumes especially). For example, I used to eat low-fat yogurt with granola and fruit every single morning. I've given that up with a low-sugar high-protein bar and it's really made a difference (400 calories / high sugar to 180 calories / low-sugar for breakfast). I also have hypoglycemia issues so it's better to avoid sugar anyways.

I wish I had more hard data to share, but I don't.

bgraveson Ask HN: Hacking your body?

Awesome! Sounds like you had a very systematic approach to figuring out what works and what didn't. I would be interested in reading more about what you tried and the results you got. Did you capture any interesting data with your experiments?

bgraveson Ask HN: Hacking your body?

This is good advice, but what about non-fitness goals? I think it's helpful to have a systematic approach to all aspects of your life, but figuring out where to start can be difficult.

For instance, if you feel sleepy or sluggish and it's a problem that you'd like to correct, you might be inclined to adjust your sleeping habits. But what if your sluggishness is a function of your eating habits or your mattress quality? I agree that there's no perfect formula that one can follow, but I think it's more of finding a "system" that you can apply to your life to break down the problems and correct them one by one. So, you might call up your area mattress shops with a 30-day return policy and pick one out that suits your budget. Sleep on your new mattress for 30 days and return it if it doesn't produce the desired results. That's body hacking.

Finding the "system" is what intrigues me most about body/fitness hacking (and hacking/technology in general)

bgraveson Ask HN: Hacking your body?

Well, here's how he did it [1] I would be interested in your opinion -- you aren't the first to be dubious of his claims.

http://www.fourhourworkweek.com/blog/2007/04/29/from-geek-to...

bgraveson Ask HN: Hacking your body?

Sorry, you come off as just another "hater" looking to pick apart a basically good book on hacking ones body. It's not just about weight loss or gaining strength. There are chapters on sex, sleep, free diving, etc. that would probably interest many people on HN.

-------------------

  >It's a prime example of good 21st century marketing, so at least that's something of use for a lot of HNers. The scientific and nutritional parts are a "bit mixed", to put it nicely. If I remember correctly, parts of it basically went "this is scientifically proven because Wikipedia says so".

I don't think one should read it as a scientific or nutrition text book, but it's not fair to dismiss it as pure marketing either. There's lots of works cited and professional observations through out the book. You can't write a 500+ page NYT and Amazon bestseller based off of information you pull from Wikipedia articles no matter how good the marketing is.

  >His "slow-carb" diet is basically a easier to digest low-carb diet mixed with a bit of CKD.

To me, the slow-carb way of life differs from the low-carb way of life in that you don't avoid all carbs, but be smart about the ones you choose. That's an important distinction. For instance, choosing dense nutrient-rich vegetables like spinach and broccoli over corn and green beans. He really encourages legumes like lentils and beans in the book, which I haven't seen as much in other low-carb style books.

  >Kettlebells are good, but surely not the workout panacea he promises (and actually somewhat risky for people with back or knee problems who are doing this without proper supervision).

Yeah, if you have serious health issues, please consult a physician. Every diet/health/fitness book has this basic disclaimer in the front pages. If it hurts, you are probably doing something very wrong.

  >You should be able to get most of that info on the net, and there you often have some much-needed perspective and discussions about it.

Scouring the net for this information from various sources of questionable authority is a very bad use of one's time/money. Purchasing a 500+ page book for less than $20 which contains all of the information you need to get started on your body-hacking journey is a very good use of one's time/money.

  >And those are the moderate parts of the book. If I can poke some holes into that, I don't even want to know what might be wrong with the more risque parts (injury prevention, bodybuilding, supplements). And the sex chapters would fit in nicely into drivel like "The Game"...

I'm not so interested in the "risque parts" and I wouldn't knock the sex parts until you've tried them ;) Really, you can avoid those parts if you want and still have loads of material to dive into and research farther.

  >Don't get me wrong, I would love to have a "body hacks" book, but I'd prefer if it were done with a bit of scientific rigor, not just "this worked for me, control group: me".

Honestly, I was skeptical at first too. But Tim really doesn't say "this worked for me, control group: me". There are dozens of on-the-field and in-the-lab experts he mentions (you can research their credentials/expertise further very easily, as I did) and hundreds of subjects. Again, it's not a scientific thesis -- it's a guide book on hacking one's body in a very efficient manner.

bgraveson Ask HN: Hacking your body?

I made my own kettle bells and love them

http://diystrengthgear.blogspot.com/2011/02/diy-kettlebell-h...

bgraveson Ask HN: Hacking your body?

In a nutshell, get Tim Ferriss's book: The 4-Hour Body [1]

I got it last December and have slowly, but steadily implementing some of the strategies he prescribes. You don't necessarily have to follow everything he suggests (and probably couldn't) but it's full of good advice.

[1] http://goo.gl/38rZ6 (amazon affiliate link)

bgraveson What's in name?... and a tag line.

I'm assuming this like a definition style description -- took me a few minutes to figure that out in this post.

You need to be more concise, especially with a tag line.

  SmugOwl: Curated audio content for the busy urban commuter.

  SmugOwl: Music, podcast, and audiobook recommendations you're going to love!

bgraveson Lexadecimal - colour codes with meaning

I really like the "I want a T-shirt!" button. I wonder if those button-clicks are being tracked or only emailed requests. I think tracking both would be smart.