chops

Missing a key one, which I would self-classify:

The not-sure-what-to-do-so-I'm-not-going-to-do-anything. Your plate is so full of things to do, and none of them are obviously higher priority than others. You could do client work, or you could work on your startup, or you could work on open source. So rather than just picking one thing to doing it, you other things, while trying to figure out which of the real tasks should be done first.

I know I've had moments where I just say, "I don't even feel like figuring out what I want to do, so I'm just going to play video games and go to sleep."

Those are the worst days...

I remember reading that a variant of this technique was used way back to coax Beethoven to perform for guests. He was known to not want to play on request (iirc, it was a pride "I do what I want when I want, I'm not your dancing monkey" kind of thing).

So if you wanted to get him to play for you, you merely had to poorly play one of his works, and he would be so annoyed that he would react by playing it the right way).

I wish I remember where I read this (hadn't thought of it in years, so I may have details wrong, but the premise is the same).

I don't think it's flippant at all.

It comes across as very succinct and matter-of-fact to me. His focus is elsewhere, so it's not a great fit for him to work there anymore, even if he is the founder.

He is definitely Hellbanned. He made a poor-taste attempt at humor on a mental health post (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=407576) which was voted to oblivion, and every post since then is [dead]. Looks like it took him a few months to find it (I had to go back like 10 "more" clicks to get to his non-dead posts).

Semi-relevent xkcd: http://xkcd.com/1279/

With its packaging system called Einhorn.

I don't use HN site on Chrome Browser anymore because the app Hacker News 2 is so good: https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.airlocksof...

I'm guessing it's inspired by the video "MongoDB is Web Scale"

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b2F-DItXtZs

Quake Done Quick is an ultra classic, and it's awesome it's gained enough fame to get its own Wikipedia page . It was amazing way back in the day, but it's still no less amazing.

My little claim to fame is I used to play QuakeWorld quite regularly with one of the founders of QDQ. Before it was called Quake Done Quick, it was called "Nightmare Speed Demos" (http://web.archive.org/web/19970719050959/http://www.planetq...). Radix (who at the time, went by "Lord of Radix") was a member of the "Deadly Venom Clan", and was one of the last keyboard-only holdouts in Quake, and despite using the keyboard for everything in Quake, was still a force to be reckoned with in deathmatch.

Anyway, I always smile when I see QDQ mentioned on the internet. Every few years, I dust it off an watch the whole thing and amaze myself in how precise all those actions are. Quake was such a fantastic game mechanically, and I wax nostalgic over the long-lost sense of community it bore, compared with the ridiculously disrespectful nature of internet nerd assholes these days (It probably doesn't help that I mostly play League of Legends these days).

Kinda-sorta-related: 10 years ago this month, I quit my job to finish my first product: a server monitoring system that I ultimately never launched. I did a little writeup of it earlier this year: http://sigma-star.com/blog/post/esonar-resurrection

So every time I see a post, ad or anything about server monitoring systems, it makes me smile. It's one of those projects that everyone has: "One of these days, I'll work on it."

This is a project I recently fleshed out to a full version from a proof of concept I've been running for a few months.

Basically, I was tired of typing

   cd path/to/my/code
   vim registration.erl

I wanted to just edit registration.erl from anywhere in a project's directory structure, so I wanted something short[1]. I wanted to be able to type

   fed reg

From anywhere in the project and the command-line should just know. No tab-completion necessary.

Similarly, if I had to edit an image, I didn't want to have to open Gimp and navigate to the file, or just like the above example, navigate to the file and type "gimp filename". If I wanted to edit some/path/myimage.jpg, I'd rather just type

   fed myim

And know that fed would find it, or ask me which file I mean if there's an ambiguity.

Anyway, I thought I'd share.

[1] My main problem with the name is just that the E and D keys are used by the same finger, Fes would have been superior in that regard, but I think Fed is just fine.

There is the flag option.

Reveal.js is great.

Up until recently, I was putting slides together using Google Docs (ugh!), and thought there had to be a different way so I started looking around. Reveal.js looked the best to me, but I wanted two things:

1) It running on a server reading new slideshows automatically, and

2) To write the slides in pure markdown (like how some others use `---` for slide separation).

I ended up hacking together a quick Erlang-based slideshow server called Sliderl[1] that lists all slideshows (showing a quick preview of the first slide), and has a simple text-search. And of course, all the slideshows are rendered with Reveal.js.

1) Make sure Erlang is installed

2) clone the repo

3) put your slideshows in its "slideshow/" directory (slideshows must end with .markdown)

4) make

5) make run

6) Open browser to http://127.0.0.1:8000

I suppose it's simple if you have Erlang installed already, but if you don't have Erlang installed, you probably don't want to install it just to show some slides. A running example with some of my slide decks is at http://slides.sigma-star.com/

[1] https://github.com/choptastic/sliderl

A lot of folks are posting bars with similar or better macro-nutrients, but in doing so are missing the point of these bars: their primary market is the paleo crowd. All the ingredients are natural and the list is short, basic, and acceptable to a paleo diet: almonds, dates, coconut, honey, crickets, cacao, vanilla, and sea salt. Compared with the ingredients list for a MetRX bar[1] posted elsewhere in this thread, it's an obvious choice for a follower of the "paleo lifestyle", even if the macros are comparable.

Even the Quest bars, which definitely have better macros than these bars, are pretty good for someone doing a ketogenic diet, but not acceptable for a paleo diet due to the use of peanuts, milk, chocolate, and sucralose.

[1] Metamyosyn® VPP Protein Blend (Whey Protein Isolate, Milk Protein Concentrate, Casein, Calcium Caseinate, Hydrolyzed Whey Protein Isolate, Egg White, L-Glutamine), Maltitol Syrup, Soy Protein Isolate, Fractionated Palm Kernel Oil, Cocoa (processed with alkali), Maltitol, Glycerin, Fructose, Invert Sugar, Natural Flavor, Water, High Oleic Sunflower Oil, Corn Syrup, Fructooligosaccharides, Polydextrose, Tapioca Starch, Vitamin and Mineral Blend (Calcium Carbonate, Calcium Phosphate, Potassium Lactate, Magnesium Oxide, Ascorbic Acid, Ferric Orthophosphate, d-Alpha Tocopherol Acetate, Niacinamide, Zinc Oxide, Copper Gluconate, d-Calcium Pantothenate, Vitamin A Palmitate, Pyridoxine Hydrochloride, Riboflavin, Thiamin Mononitrate, Folic Acid, Biotin, Potassium Iodide, Cyanocobalamin), Unsweetened Chocolate, Cellulose, Enzyme Modified Soy Protein, Salt, Soy Lecithin, Pectin, Sugar, Sucralose, Soybean Oil, Maltodextrin, Carrageenan.

Ever since watching a few episodes of Hoarders, I've become acutely aware of all the clutter and crap I own, and the line from Fight Club ("The stuff you own begins to own you") resonates with me quite well.

I'm also given a regular reminder by my parents who have a nice plot of land in the suburbs, a pool, hot tub, and whatnot, and all the time that's spent keeping up their impeccable lawn, keeping their pool and hot tub clean, frankly, I'd rather just pay my $14/mo for a gym membership to have that pool and hot tub when I want without having to dick around with maintenance.

That said, I still have a stack of old decommissioned servers that I just can't bring myself to throw away despite the fact that a cluster of a few Raspberry Pis will be just as powerful for significantly less power. I need to just bite the bullet and scrap them.

Xubuntu for 90% of the time (development and general stuff)

Windows for gaming

Companies are usually improving the community in some way (that's why they make money in the first place). Grocers sell food to the community, hardware stores sell tools and supplies for making things, even the dreaded oil companies have sold the primary source of fuel for a century (and made money hand-over-fist for it). Random acts of kindness (e.g. open sourcing projects for no reason other than "We could"), while cool, are tangential to the purpose and specialty of the company.

That scene was actually the inspiration for the app (if you notice in the photo I posted, it's actually the first image from the Mad Men presentation).

It's interesting the throwback trend to the old slide projectors.

A friend of mine has an app for iPad and AppleTV that mimics the old slide projectors called "The Carousel" (https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/carousel-slide-projector-for...). Basically, it uses the iPad like an old slide projector (complete with the chunk chunk sounds, visuals, and controls), and then "projects" the slides to AppleTV (which is then made to look like a projector screen). And I believe it also streams the pictures from Instagram, but I'm not positive.

Screenshot: https://sphotos-b.xx.fbcdn.net/hphotos-ash3/553590_359166274...

I don't think there's anything ridiculous about drinking 2 quarts of water per day. I easily drink 48-144oz of pure water per day with the 48oz bottle I carry with me everywhere I go (http://store.nalgene.com/Silo-p/2178-0048.htm)

Saying it's necessary to drink that much water might be ridiculous, and perhaps that's what you meant, but I don't think there's anything ridiculous about the activity itself.

The Relevant EEP can be found here: https://github.com/psyeugenic/eep/blob/egil/maps/eeps/eep-00...

The discussion related to the "Maps vs Frames" proposal is fascinating and enlightening, for those with the time to read the (currently 70 posts-long) discussion.

Maps are being presented as a generalized datatype that can serve as a replacement for many of Erlang's container types (Records, Dicts, Prop lists).

Personally, I'm very excited to play around with them with the R17 release.

The language in that video is Erlang using the Nitrogen Web Framework (http://nitrogenproject.com)

This is something I actually offer to my clients, and I do it for fun. I guess I was inspired by watching some of Notch's screencaps over a few days.

So I capture it with RecordMyDesktop (I run xubuntu), and run through an ffmpeg script (https://github.com/choptastic/watchmecode) that resizes the video to be the same length as an MP3, and makes an X minute screencap montage for the client.

Then it produces something like this, which I did while working on a specific feature[2] for my sports league management system[1]: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Hwn7mfmo0SQ

In my experience, my clients basically find it interesting seeing a snippet of how a programmer works. I had one client who would show the video around in his office like it was the greatest thing since sliced bread. At first, I thought the reaction was sarcastic, but I realized after the 3rd time showing another employee, and his elderly father, that he was just genuinely impressed by it.

THAT SAID, if a client required this of me because they wanted to monitor me (to make sure I'm working or whatever), I'd let them know that "sure, I can do it for the most part, but I have to disable it when checking my email, and any time spend curating the video due to privacy concerns will be billed to you as well."

But if a client asked it of me to satisfy their own curiosity of my workflow (which is unlikely, since I typically just volunteer it anyway), I'd be more than happy to do it.

[1] http://bracketpal.com (homepage is still embarrassingly sparse, as I've been working one-on-one with customers, a landing page redesign and online customers are coming first).

[2] The video above is the screencap of the implementation of this feature: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zxTfaSfa_dQ

If you're looking for some rapid development with Erlang, you've got a few options at your disposal:

Nitrogen Web Framework (http://nitrogenproject.com): Event-driven development. You can do almost complete development in Erlang and writing very minimal javascript or HTML (it's generated by the framework). Nitrogen doesn't provide a database abstraction layer, but Erlang does have database integration which works just fine. You could also use BossDB (below).

ChicagoBoss (http://chicagoboss.org): Rails inspired MVC for Erlang. Has a lot of stuff baked in: BossDB (ORM for a handful of different database servers), mail server, Django templates.

Zotonic (http://zotonic.com): The Erlang CMS. Lot and lots of stuff.

One of the most comprehensive resources for this is the Framework comparison put out by Evan Miller (the maker or ChicagoBoss): https://github.com/evanmiller/ChicagoBoss/wiki/Comparison-of...

Happy to:

Change the div#TOC rule the following:

  div#TOC { 
    float: left;
    width: 25%;
    font-size: 10pt;
    background: #eee;
    margin-right: 15px;
    margin-bottom: 15px;
    line-height: 15pt;
  }

I hope that helps!

The spacing (or lack thereof) on the site is very distracting. The left menu has zero pixel spacing from the content, and so the side menu basically runs right into the content. The table of contents on the right isn't obvious that it's a table of contents for the article, it just looks like another menu of some sort on the right.

I did some quick restyling just to satisfy my curiosity with some notes. I know it kind of makes it looks like wikipedia, but wikipedia is easy to read.

http://imgur.com/G5QfOua

Two-step authentication, especially for something as prominent as twitter, is always a good thing. So, kudos to them.

If I can find the time, I'll try to put together one for Nitrogen (http://nitrogenproject.com) as well.

http://steadfast.net offers customizable resources (CPU dedication, CPU cores, Memory, Storage, Network interfaces)

In Aliens, they were officially called "Colonial Marines"