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ecornflak

221 karma · joined August 2, 2019

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ecornflak··on Ask HN: Should I learn COBOL at 14yo in 2025?
I’m old enough to have learned COBOL at university, although that was the mid 90’s and says more an about the university than my age.

It was good fun and interesting, so if you have the time and interest I’d go for it.

ecornflak··on Sneakers Film Promotional Floppy
You don’t happen to remember the name of an Amiga game where you navigated a little robot around via CCTV while avoiding security guards, in order to break into a safe?
ecornflak··on Ask HN: New team with old members rejecting tech lead
A lot of great suggestions here.

My two additions would be starting weekly one-on-ones or if you are already doing them, using them to roll out changes individually with each contributor

This allows you to individualise your approach but will also help you get to know your team better.

No one is so busy they can’t spend 30mins a week having a chat.

The manager-tools.com has good resources to help with rollout

Secondly, figure out everything you want to change and then pick three. Dont change a single extra thing until those things are done.

ecornflak··on Film Review: BlackBerry
I might be late to the party but I think if you watched BlackBerry you’d like the Tetris movie too.

It’s a bit silly but in a good way.

ecornflak··on How many of you have memorialized an IP address?
203.21.30.124 and .125 were the IPs of the DNS servers for the ISP I worked at in the late 1990s

So many hours talking customers through DNS settings on the help desk.

ecornflak··on Ask HN: Share your personal site
https://mrjamesbell.com is my blog.

It’s the first personal website I’ve ever felt happy about. Every so often I’ll get inspired and write a post but I have quite a few ideas in draft.

ecornflak··on Jean-Michel Jarre’s ‘Oxygene 4’ Recreated with 19KB of JavaScript
Beat me to it for some NZ perspective, but while we’re here, I was introduced to Jean-Michel Jarre at one of the first Laser Tag places in NZ in the late 80s.

I can’t remember what it was called, but it was next to Leisure land/Footrot Flats theme park in Te Atatu. Laserforce maybe?

It was multi-level, filled with fog and Star Trek style doors that opened when you shot them, and Jean-Michel Jarre played as a constant soundtrack. It was truely magical for a space-and-sci-fi obsessed preteen.

My friends and I only went a couple of times before it turned into paintball, which wasn’t as much fun for 11yr olds!

Subsequently Rendez-vous was one of the first records I ever bought and played over and over again on weekend mornings when my parents were still in bed.

Fourth Rendez-Vous was my favourite.

ecornflak··on Ask HN: What is the best income stream you have created till date?
Curious about micro coaching - can you explain a bit more about how this works?
ecornflak··on If you unscrew your belly button, your bottom will fall off
My father was originally from Manchester and there is a good chance he borrowed heavily.
ecornflak··on If you unscrew your belly button, your bottom will fall off
It’s interesting to find this out!
ecornflak··on If you unscrew your belly button, your bottom will fall off
My Dad was an avid sci fi reader, I feel this is probably where he borrowed from :)
ecornflak··on Ask HN: Thinking about Leaving Gmail
The one thing stopping me doing this is finding my own domain name that I want to use for email.

You’d think with the number of domain names I own I’d have one I liked

ecornflak··on Ask HN: What platform are you building a niche site on in 2023?
Every once in a while I go through an “I want a website” phase and try something new, but always end up back with Wordpress.

Ultimately I wanted to write content and play around with CSS making it look nice, and Wordpress handles that. Many of the other options felt like I was forever tweaking things or upgrading a dependency or something - very much mike the old days of Linux where making the modem work was an achievement.

If I couldn’t use Wordpress I’d probably go with Jekyll or Ghost.

ecornflak··on Ask HN: Which are the best newsletters for job seeking?
Interesting to hear this exists. I’ve got a lot of knowledge about job seeking (through years of coaching and recruitment) that I want to share but wasn’t sure how much interest there would be.
ecornflak··on Why have a blog? (2020)
I enjoy the same sense of accomplishment as I did running a BBS or installing Linux (and getting the modem driver to work) back in the day.
ecornflak··on Find a good available .com domain
I genuinely thought instantdomainsearch had been consumed by GoDaddy
ecornflak··on Everyone should learn the slide rule (2021)
Its a little off-topic, but my dad passed away last year and left behind a collection of about 40 slide rules.

Aside from his personal slide rule from university and his first job (working at ICL in Manchester designing multiplier boards for mainframes) I don't really want the rest of the collection.

Does anyone else want them?

ecornflak··on Tell HN: You are not alone this Christmas
My mum died in January and my Dad died a couple of weeks ago. We didn’t do much for Christmas as a family but I keep thinking of the interesting things to tell my Dad about that he’s not around to tell.

He’d almost certainly be watching the James Webb Telescope launch

ecornflak··on Ask HN: Any less known but cool places you want to visit one day?
I really enjoyed visiting the United Nations building in New York. The tour was interesting and if they weren't in session they too you into the various meeting rooms.
ecornflak··on Ask HN: What do you do when management is wrong and you are right?
The manager-tools.com podcast is excellent for things like this. Start with the Professional Subordination one: https://www.manager-tools.com/2010/12/professional-subordina...
ecornflak··on New Zealand eliminates Covid-19
Nah, its not common. She's a "cool" science communicator complete with pink hair to appeal to the kids.

(That's not to undermine her at all, she's fantastic.)

ecornflak··on My blog is a digital garden, not a blog
ok so this is helpful because I'm planning on starting a blog and want to use it to document some of the cool things I've done in the past.

Would you (as a reader) prefer my trip to Norway to be dated when it happened, or when I published the article?

I am mostly wanting to blog to curate my memories of things I done or thoughts I've had but I'd be lying if I didn't also hope it might help me make 'friends' online and find people with common interests.

ecornflak··on Basecamp's Guide to Internal Communication
To be honest I stopped reading after the initial focus on writing vs having a chat with someone.

Maybe that works for some organisations but I'd much rather my team talk through a problem than engage in long protracted email threads.

ecornflak··on Ask HN: Any fun books about working in tech / SV?
I went through a few back in the day. Some suggestions:

The Hacker Crackdown

The first 20 million is always the hardest

The Nudeist on the Late Shift

What should I do with my life?

(Po Bronson is a theme I guess)

ecornflak··on Highlights from “The Checklist Manifesto” by Atul Gawande
Please include a function to print nice looking versions. My not-for-profit is still quite paper based and when the checklist is online and the paper it relates to is offline the checklist doesn't get used.
ecornflak··on Ask HN: What wiki/intranet do you use at your company?
I've been looking at using this in my not-for-profit. Do you give everyone a login to edit/add content?

I'm trying to figure out the best way to not have everything public but let my volunteers access info without needing an account