evlapix

I have a ZuneHD and didn't even realize there was a swipe interface except to switch songs (when playing music).

pedalpete is still right though. If you tap the center of the screen when playing the song, you get an overlay that is separated into quadrants. Tap the top of the screen, volume up. Bottom, volume down. Left, previous track. Right, next track. Center, pause/play. I never look at my screen.

Most crafts require tools. Where do you draw the line?

Even with bushcraft you start with a knife and axe which are likely manufactured, not handmade.

Making something from nothing has always given me the greatest high. This video reminded me that it is that high that got me into software development.

When I was young (and had no money):

  - Made origami
  - Learned sailors knots
  - 3d sculptures of science fiction aircraft from index cards
  - Bow and arrows from q-tips and underwear rubber
  - Sailboats from 2x4's, coat hangers, plastic garbage bags, and fishing line
  - Skateboard ramps (usually bigger than I was capable of using and with
      none of the right tools)
  - A workbench
  - Peg board (hand drilled from scrap wood)
  - Dozens of hand drawn replicas of video game/anime art
  - Repaired the broken fin of a surfboard purchased at a garage sale (never used)

In high school I exploited my auto shop classes:

  - Replaced the rear differential on a 80's Mustang
  - Removed a motor from an early 90's Camaro
  - Built and installed a roll cage in an early 90's Camaro
  - Taped and sprayed flames on a fiberglass replica 32 Ford hood 
      as a demonstration of a new paint line for local body shops 
  - Completely dismantled the engine of 87 honda civic
  - Resurrected an 80's Volvo with 300k miles on it
  - Made a functioning 6" cowl induction hood for my 89 SR5 Toyota Corolla

From there I got a job at a hot-rod shop:

  - Teardown of a 52 Chevy Bel Air
  - Teardown, body work, and assembly of a split-window Corvette 
  - And countless others

In college majoring in Mechanical Engineering (what a joke):

  - Built a marshmallow launcher
  - Convinced a big angry muscle man with a knife to my throat not
      to hurt me, and steal a keg from a party instead

Once admitted to college, I was given a computer:

  - Pirated software
  - Converted drawings to vector graphics
  - Made techno songs
  - Made 3d models
  - Designed album covers
  - Frankenstein'd countless scrap computers

After I dropped out of college I became a restaurant server:

  - Documented everything I could about HTML/CSS
  - Created custom MySpace themes (and never made a dollar for it)
  - Built my profile in Flash to overcome MySpace's limitations
  - Hid all of the generated MySpace content (minus comments) 
      and built my profile from scratch

From there I became a developer. Software has been an incredible way for me to create and learn. Sadly, the projects my employers provide aren't always challenging enough. Additionally, the complimentary benefits of working with my hands versus sitting at a computer have drawn me to other projects:

  - Built an engine lift
  - Restored a 1987 19' Galaxy boat that I bought 
      for $200 on CL (engine had collapsed into the floor)
  - Bootstrapped a prototype analytics app for the last year (not launched)
  - Insulated, ran electrical, and drywalled my garage
  - Built a workshop (bench, storage, etc) in the garage of my new house
  - Buy/restore/sell furniture on CL

Currently I'm restoring a pool table I bought for $100 on CL:

  - Built strong/true cabinet from cheap construction grade lumber
  - Carved, antiqued, and stained the cabinet to make it not
      look like cheap construction grade lumber
  - Built a slate sled for moving the 1" thick slate pieces up to the 3rd floor

  The plan? To release approximately 25 videos over the
  course of the next year sharing 37signals'
  stories inside the office and out.

Sounds like a reality tv show to me. Something like Pawn Stars or Orange County Choppers.

I understand your concerns, but in this case I think extent of usage and progressive enhancement are the real considerations.

I love arguments like this, but feel like they're useless in our culture. Specifically, the "value of time lost" argument. Most Americans take the hour or two that they gain and piss it away in front of a television anyway.

One way you could streamline your rename/relocate process in Sublime Text is to install DTerm. It's basically an in program keyboard shortcut that gives you a command line interface for the current directory that your program is accessing.

So.. if I'm working with index.html and need it to be index.php, all I need to do is: cmd+ctrl+return, then: mv index.html index.php

I was surprised to see that they put so much emphasis on the searching in the demo. The real value is in the "Goals" interface - which is well designed.

I'm with you there. I would feel comfortable with the idea that an experienced front-end developer should be able to design and implement components of a website - since they should have a reasonable amount of UI/UX experience. But to design the full look/tone/feel?

Agreed. If you were to add up the number of seconds a designer spends chasing that pixel color with the color picker, or drawing that selection/slice bounding box, or selecting that path handle... I'm sure it adds up over the year. Not to mention, there will be an immense amount of satisfaction derived from having overcome these obstacles time and time again.

It seems to me that if you really want to experiment with this niche, price the product according to the value those customers will obtain from it.

Poll: Your YCNYC application response?

http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2987514

> More details to follow.

I want to live off the grid and be self sustaining.

I use to be a mechanic. I liked figuring things out, learning. That's how I stumbled into programming. Unfortunately, programming makes for a really good living in a culture I largely don't enjoy.

I want to get that satisfaction on my own terms. I want to give myself what I want.

Thanks latch. You're right. I genuinely feel like an idiot for asking such a vague out of place question in this forum.

To save myself some embarrassment though.. I did outline that my use case was "web analytics" and "real-time". I also suggested I was looking for high level insight.

Still though, I can understand how you might be confused. Let me be clear. I based my expectations on this list:

http://kkovacs.eu/cassandra-vs-mongodb-vs-couchdb-vs-redis

I'm not so sure you get it. Yes.. you can subscribe to a lot of different mediums. But unless I use one medium for each audience, there will be overlap.

For instance.. barrybe may be in a "Friends" circle and a "Programmers" circle. In a programmer to programmer relationship, I only want to hear relevant topics. As a friend though.. I may want to be subjected to your waves of pictures highlighting your 2nd childs 1st steps. There's no way to keep the kids crap out of my "Programmer" stream.

The same is true for your blog. Unless I can subscribe to particular tags, I can't keep our interaction focused. I may get a rant, a story, an educational post.. it could be anything.

So the next best thing is organize all content by topic (for me). And here we have it.. "Hacker News". Except.. this environment is far less personal and far more intimidating.

I used Protovis for about 6 months and then switched to D3 about 2 months ago. In those 2 months I reimplemented everything that I had built in Protovis, cut down on complexity and lines of code, and have not seen its limitations (and I would consider my use cases extreme).

There have been core design changes to the library that have given it this ability. This page - http://mbostock.github.com/d3/tutorial/protovis.html -demonstrates very well how impressive the author and library is.

Technically, yes.. waving your command line wand IS a solution. But also, technically, there isn't any reason why you shouldn't be able to keep 100+ small remote git repositories active for less than $100/month.

Also, Github doesn't require you to know how to use tar, S3, or have any other Linux experience. So why should this particular use case? Why wouldn't a business be able to cater to that market?

This is a business, and as such, should be measured as one. Why are we criticizing the "technical necessity" of the product? Are we under the impression that HN is the target audience?

Also D3, which evolved from Protovis.

http://mbostock.github.com/d3/tutorial/protovis.html

I think the difference is that your clients/end-users don't know how to create/update documents in a database. This makes it easy for them to manage a database of which the developer will query.

I'm a little confused about why this is targeted specifically to mobile. I've been looking for a back-end only CMS for years now. Originally, I didn't mind just having my front-end share a database with my CMS, but it would be even better if it used a RESTful API like you've got here.

Maybe I'm missing something? The closest thing I've found to what I'm looking for is: http://www.pureedit.com/ and storageroomapp.com seems very similar (although much better) judging by the Introduction Video.

Phew.. I made the right call then. Thanks!

I thought for a second that this poll was way too vague and didn't properly capture the range of options that would yield interesting feedback. I was going to fix it.. But I decided to keep coding instead.

Thanks for chiming in despite that!

I remember reading the terms of use before implementing some ideas I had. I'm no attorney, but it seemed pretty clear that this kind of thing wouldn't fly.

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Thanks. A much better choice of words.

Reading back over old comments like this reminds me why I don't comment.

This is probably for the sector of HN that hasn't quite gotten their yet.

How do uncontacted people view us? They seem to be mesmerized by the plane, and even chase after it for a longer look. Can't we just ask them how they want to relate with us? I'm sure we can find some way to discuss the matter with them and still not be invasive.

I have challenged myself with the same question. After giving Ubuntu another chance, I realized how frustrating its inconsistencies are. For example: "cmd+,".

Maybe I haven't been with Ubuntu long enough to see through these slight details, but they make all the difference for me.

Another solid advantage is that when you hit a wall on Ubuntu and start googling around for a solution, you typically need to sort through several pages of "What's your configuration". On OS X, there is no such issue.

Disclaimer: I'm probably not a power user by HN's definition.

At the wrong angle on my MBP screen, the logo is completely invisible.

I'm guilty of taking this myth literally myself. Until recently, when I experienced the complex scenario that "ideas don't matter" represents. A better way to communicate this might be: "Ideas don't matter unless proven otherwise".

My experience with "ideas don't matter":

A few months ago I pitched an idea to my idea buddy. We are very committed to financial independence, so he took me seriously. And he asked all the questions he needed to clearly understand what I was suggesting. Still - despite his respect for me - he shrugged it off as me being silly and grasping at straws.

In the weeks that followed I took my hands off my "big" idea to see how well this "little" idea would turn out. The holidays where coming and I needed a smaller project to focus on for the shorter more inconsistent periods of programming time I'd have to invest in a project.

A few weeks later I emerged with a hacked together prototype. I thought to myself.. "I was right, this is cool!". Proud of my programming abilities and pleased that my idea "worked"; I presented the prototype to the same friend.

To my surprise he pretty much flipped out. He went on and on about how simple and brilliant it was. How he had not envisioned of how great the idea was based on my original pitch. I took a step back and related with him, then realized I might be on to something.

After a few more weeks of polish on the prototype, he forced me to present my idea/execution at one of our local developer Meetup's. After boring the 25 participants with other programming topics I presented my prototype. The room lit up with energy and participation, questions fired off from all corners of the room, and the presentation went on to extend past its allotted timeframe. Again, I was caught off guard.

I come up with 5 ideas a week, and there was no reason for me to believe this particular idea was any more promising than any other I spout off at random. I just picked it because it was fun and convenient. Looking back I'm in awe at how this idea was almost as useless as the rest of the ideas I file away. And while I don't yet know if this idea is a "diamond", it has already positively impacted my life for the coming months.

I can definitely relate to this with a point of reference. A freelance project I worked on this year was funded by an overly prideful MBA coming out of Sun Microsystems. He was very stubborn and refused to continue work until he could secure a patent despite my warning.

$5000 later his lawyers warning came by phone. It is clear to me now that he was just following some MBA checklist.