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cunninghamdon Do Things that Don't Scale (2013)

So... while I respect avoiding shameless self-promotion, referencing your hobby project, or at least including it in your "About" info would be cool, for those interested. :)

cunninghamdon The Free Stack – Running Your Application for Free on AWS

I think the complexity of AWS's pricing is what led me to use the simplicity of AWS' lightsail offering.

No free tier, but the free tier is frought with potential for overrun. Lightsail is not.

https://aws.amazon.com/lightsail/

cunninghamdon Tell HN: I miss the old internet

I echo your rant.

Looked up effnet stats the other day to find out there's only 20k users there these days. Not sure how many it was back in the day, and I was more of an undernet guy... but seems small today.

Contact details are in my profile... we can reminisce via email (which is effectively going the way of the Old Internet, especially as the millennials take over).

cunninghamdon Self Taught Web Dev -What Should I Do?

Read a book called The Google Resume. I think it'll help you position yourself better in the market.

cunninghamdon Ask HN: I have $2k for books, training and confs. What should I spend it on?

If you want to work for Microsoft or Google, while you likely can't get away with using your employers's $2K, the best books to read are Cracking the Coding Interview and Elements of Programming Interviews. Both books have very solid algorithm questions which you can use to go research the various algorithms and learn them. Although, I'd wait for Elements of Programming Interviews v2 which will include Java samples, as opposed to C++, but that's just me.

McDowell's The Google Resume also has some useful tidbits in it.

cunninghamdon Tilde.Club: I had a couple drinks and woke up with 1,000 nerds

I've been totally missing that green rotating skull and cross bones! I used that thing everywhere!

cunninghamdon I'm looking for a full-stack job like Mike Ross has at Pearson Spector

Hi Mike Ross,

I was (am) you. I skipped college/university 15 years ago because I felt it couldn't teach me anything.

On the one hand, I now sit beside someone with a Masters in Computer Science in a lateral position to him, so I've done OK.

On the other hand, if there's one thing I've observed about mentorships, etc., it's that they don't exist out in the real world. Companies are there to _do their business_, whatever that might be. They don't have time to hand-hold you. IF you want to make great connections, find great peers and mentors, go to college or university and talk to everybody. Do the tedious grunt work... and get the credentials while you're at it.

Entering the workforce with your (supposed) capability AND a degree will make you unstoppable. Also, chances are you may bail on the degree, but you should only do that if you and a couple peers are making something super cool.

Good luck!

cunninghamdon Ask HN: What is the newest hobby you have picked up?

Brewing beer.

cunninghamdon Ask HN: You want Atom invites/you have invites to give?

I could be too late... but I'd love an invite too. I'm excited to experiment with extending Atom using Javascript, since I'm a web developer. cunninghamd@nosleep.ca.

cunninghamdon Ask HN: How much disposable income should you have?

Dollar value of disposable income. Retirement is a good consideration (per the other poster), however I do have a pension plan, so I'm slightly less concerned about that.

Ultimately, I'm considering financing or leasing a (pretty expensive) car, and wonder how short I should leave myself.

cunninghamdon JQuery Notebook – A Medium-like editor wrapped inside a jQuery plugin

Now it's a race, if jQuery Notebook gets up to snuff by the time I need it, I'll use it, if not, Medium Editor it is (personally, I don't care if I have jQuery or not, I'm a pragmatist).

cunninghamdon JQuery Notebook – A Medium-like editor wrapped inside a jQuery plugin

Love it!

But, you need lists. In fact, I'd either document the exact commands you have implemented, or implement all the commands Medium offers, since you're inspired by Medium:

https://medium.com/help-center/128f049a7ad

I want to use this, but I need lists before I do. I'll be using it to write interviews with breweries around the world in a brewery site I'm building.

* Note: I've never used Medium, so needed to Google what commands it has to offer.

cunninghamdon Gmail was down

down for me too, in Ontario, Canada.

cunninghamdon Ask HN: Any interest in a modern QBasic?

Couldn't you just wire up a graphics library in Python, and give him a Sublime Text editor configured so that CTRL+B runs his python script? I'm not sure reinventing the wheel on this one makes sense, considering the power and simplicity of some of the environments out there, PLUS, python would provide him with real-world skills.

cunninghamdon Think Complexity - free book on complexity science, data structures & algorithms

Looks a little more digestible than CLRS http://www.amazon.ca/Introduction-Algorithms-Thomas-H-Cormen.... :)

cunninghamdon I will do 5 hours of web programming for you, for 1 bitcoin.

Actually, I have many hours free, every evening and/or weekend... AND I want to get into bitcoin. :)

It's actually a modest goal: I want at least 1 bitcoin, and I want to sit on it, and watch it fluxuate with the market, or do whatever it will do.

cunninghamdon Ask HN: Why have a side project?

Yeah, I do web development in my 9-5, and my side projects were generally web development or software development oriented.

The shorter term idea is related to beer, and I'm a homebrewer, so that keeps it close. The longer term idea is related to a game I enjoy playing.

I won't be so much putting a solid 10-20 years into something, as I will be waiting 10-20 years for information to be distributed and produced using my software. The software itself should take less than a year of part-time development (if the ideas required succeed), and then idle maintenance/improvements over the course of the 10-20 years required to achieve the final result.

If you're more curious than my broad rambling fulfills, email me and I'm happy to provide specifics. I'm not trying to be secretive, other than I'd like to have something to show before I make any sort of "announcements".

cunninghamdon Ask HN: Why have a side project?

I used to do side projects to earn extra income, but it became difficult to predict, and kind of a pain in the ass with invoicing, overdue clients, bug fixes, scheduling headaches (evenings and weekends working for mostly 9-5 companies), fatigue, family life, vacation time, etc.

The work dried up, partly "naturally", but also partly because I wasn't pursuing new work. I've been in a somewhat dead-state for almost a year, and have recently stumbled on two ideas that I've made my "passion projects". Neither idea has a (directly foreseeable) method of making money, but both ideas are near and dear to me.

I work on these ideas when I'm not too tired in the evening, or can find a stretch of time to concentrate on the weekends. So far it's hit or miss, but I'm progressing. One idea challenges me mentally, and has a near-epic scale result at the end of it's very long yellow-brick-road, it's a vision that in addition to all of my coding effort will take 10-20 years to come to fruition.

The other idea is effectively a CRUD system for a specific market demographic that's not being serviced the way I think it should be.

So far, neither is ticking, but give me time, and they will. :)

cunninghamdon Lime – Experimental Sublime Text clone

Not being able to program is the illiteracy of this century.

While I agree with this sentiment, I think it's patently false. The vast majority of people have a hard enough time using Word or Excel, let alone being able to understand programming concepts or actually being able to program!

cunninghamdon Ask HN: I have no problems to solve

I know!

I was the same, no real "problems" to solve, and the few ideas I did have amounted to fairly straight-forward CRUD-style solutions. I started implementing one of them, and then started reading an Algorithms book.

From there, a few very old ideas coalesced in my brain, and exploded. Now, I'm not solving a MY problem, so much as solving a challenging problem that I think will hold my attention for awhile. I'm hoping to have something to push out to github in the next few weeks.

Morale of the story: search for problems to solve, and you'll solve the problem of not having a problem to solve. :)

cunninghamdon The Georgia Tech Online Master of Science in CS is now accepting applications

I disagree here.

What GATech is showing with this introduction of the course is the start. There are numerous links in the page referencing the College of Computing Website, which in turn discusses the Project Option and Thesis Option of the MS CS degree. As such, it seems likely to me that GATech will be putting their online students through the same ropes as their offline students.

cunninghamdon Cheap, spray-on solar cells developed by Canadian researchers

OK, great, where can I buy a spray-can's worth?

Now, as facetious as that may sound, I'm quite serious. I've been watching Nano Solar and their promise of $1/watt solar energy for years, and I have yet to see it in practice. I'd honestly love to be able to drop $50 on solar cells and know that I can produce 50 watts of power (at peak), but since Nano Solar is only selling to industry, the end consumer is left in the (coal) dust until this stuff catches on.

I guess ultimately, I'll be watching this company now, too. Maybe I can become Walter White, and start "cooking" solar cells at home based on their article.

cunninghamdon Git plus Dropbox, The Easy Way

1. I'm still relatively new to git, so haven't looked into branching, etc., yet. Worst case scenario, add other branches to the post-commit file. 2. It really is intended as a "backup", if I was looking to interact with more machines, I'd setup a central repository that everybody could commit to, and individuals could still use this to backup their local repos.

cunninghamdon Copy

Yes it is. I wondered whether the HN community would be bothered by that, and ultimately concluded that the community seems to enjoy seeing new product announcements, etc.

Also, I did a google search to see if Copy had been announced on HN yet, and it hadn't, so I felt that while I was going to prosper from providing the info, I was also contributing more signal than noise to the HN community.

cunninghamdon Copy

Great to hear!

I'd be an active Google Drive user, however the app kept crashing on my macbook, so I had to give up. I even spent a few days troubleshooting it with Google support to no avail.

So long as the copy.com program doesn't crash on me, this will be my online storage of choice for the foreseeable future.

cunninghamdon Copy

Why don't you create a truecrypt file, and store it in copy.com? For me, copy.com solves my storage needs as they grow for a decent price, then truecrypt would privatize my files leaving them 100% in my control.

cunninghamdon Appcubator Helps Beginning Developers Easily Create Their Own Web Applications

I'm very interested in working with this, despite being a full time web developer. I have a couple ideas I'd like to execute, but neither the time nor attention span to build them out in the evenings. This gives me a good base app to build from, and if I need to get fancy, I break into the django code and do so.

I'm really looking forward to getting started!

cunninghamdon Ask HN: How to get major websites to cover your startup?

Or use technorati's search engine, and work through the top 100 backwards. That's the suggestion I recently read.

cunninghamdon Millionaire's Math

I used to use a similar method to remove risk from projects. I'd take my hourly estimate, multiple by the percentage I felt I was right, and come up with a total.

cunninghamdon Ask HN: New MacBook Air or Windows laptop?

Honestly, just use the CAPSLOCK key as a CTRL key.

1) it's more comfortable.

2) Now, the place of the FN key doesn't matter anymore! :)