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figured

671 karma · joined May 30, 2008

I work at a University
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figured··on Ask HN: Braintree (payments gateway) alternative for startups outside the US?
Here are previous threads :)

http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=948036

http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=526517

http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=432284

figured··on Ask HN: What charts javascript library to use?
http://g.raphaeljs.com/

http://www.highcharts.com/

http://www.jqplot.com/

http://plugins.jquery.com/project/gchart

http://vis.stanford.edu/protovis/

http://polymaps.org/

http://code.google.com/p/flot/

figured··on How not to Pitch To Y Combinator (2006)
I believe Redpoint Ventures invested 2m in Couchio in 2009, the company Damien is CEO of.
figured··on Ask HN: Cover letter techniques for software development positions.
"Only maybe 40% of the content of the letter came from my template"

This cannot be stressed enough, tailor each cover letter for the job, do not copy and paste.

figured··on Ask HN: Looking for paypal alternates, recommendations?
Here are previous threads

http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=948036

http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=526517

http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=432284

figured··on Ask HN: Are you happy, well-rounded? (dealing w/ depression/lack of motivation)
point noted, I just thing like most things in life you have to find something that suits you. But I would recommend that if you don't have a pleasant experience the first time out switch doctors. I think sometimes people forget that not all care is the same, and your health is your responsibility. So find someone that fits you, instead of sticking with someone even though you are feeling that you are not getting anything out of it, or quitting altogether.
figured··on Ask HN: Are you happy, well-rounded? (dealing w/ depression/lack of motivation)
"I am going to make an appointment with a psychologist"

Make the appointment tomorrow morning! The people here not advocating seeking professional help, are the same people who have never received help. Trust me, seeing a psychologist is the single best thing you can do. If you had a physical illness, this type of question would not even be asked, mental health problems are just as serious and should be treated that way.

Also if it doesn't work out with the first psychologist, don't get discouraged. Just make another appointment, and find one that fits your style. Dude, lots of people have been in your position, but the ones that are happy today are the ones who treated it as seriously as they treat all other aspects of their health.

Good luck,

Edit: as much as it is good to talk about this with friends and family, they really don't have the tools to help you overcome this. People think you just need to cheer up, or pat you on the back. Happiness is journey, for some its easy and for some it takes time and effort.

figured··on Ruby Best Practices (full book available for download)
I recommend this book whole heartily. I have been reading the chapters as they have been released, an excellent resource.
figured··on Ask HN: What's your favorite scientific paper?
I am quite surprised that I don't see Roy Fielding's "Architectural Styles and the Design of Network-based Software Architectures" on this list (aka his REST PHD paper). I have not read many dissertation, in fact i think this is the only one, but I found it very approachable.

http://www.ics.uci.edu/~fielding/pubs/dissertation/top.htm

figured··on Almost a third of our portfolio is under attack by patent trolls.
"Almost a third of our portfolio is under attack by patent trolls."

That quote astonished me, I never really knew the extent of the problem.

figured··on Rackspace vs. EC2: Performance Analysis
Fine print: "The Bitsource conducted an independent, third-party performance analysis of Rackspace CloudServers and Amazon EC2 on behalf of Rackspace Inc. The results were not influenced in any way by Rackspace Inc. as presented using the methods in this analysis."
figured··on Ask HN: Is there a cheap way to get money from customers (Not PayPal etc)
Two previous threads:

http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=526517

http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=432284

both have good info

figured··on The worst things startups do
the best part of the post for me, was the interview with Posterous. Amazing how much they have done, with a four man team.
figured··on Ask HN: Introduction to NoSQL?
Here are a few resources for Couchdb:

* an intro: http://aimee.mychores.co.uk/2008/09/07/post/320

* a use case: http://kore-nordmann.de/blog/couchdb_a_use_case.html

* CouchDB Implementation: http://horicky.blogspot.com/2008/10/couchdb-implementation.h...

* joins in couchdb: http://www.cmlenz.net/archives/2007/10/couchdb-joins

* peepcode: http://peepcode.com/products/couchdb-with-rails

figured··on Ask HN: Screencast software for demos?
previous post: good comments http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=443542
figured··on Ask HN: Ruby or Python for a Startup?
I know you are asking about ruby and python, but I don't think their strengths lie in interfacing with bluetooth, gps hardware devices, and running background jobs. You might want to look at some more industry standard languages.
figured··on Sam Ruby: Keeping Up With Rails
"It is this type of change that has lead me to automate my regression testing"

Maybe I am wrong, but I think this post from Sam is about making sure you automate your test environment, so you can keep up with changes. Not complaining about how fast Rails changes.

figured··on The evolution of a website design
The way he worked through the design really resonated with me, especially when he would break away from his original only to come back to it later on.
figured··on Ask HN: how do you process payments?
http://www.zuora.com/

http://www.braintreepaymentsolutions.com/

http://aws.amazon.com/fps/

previous HN thread http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=432284

figured··on Ask HN: Why do non-techies simply not "get" the idea of a wiki?
the fckeditor plugin handles this problem, we use it at our business and people seem to like it.
figured··on Ask HN: CSS vs table based layouts
HTML is the metadata around your content, and CSS is the style that you apply to your content.
figured··on Startup now 100% on AWS (they're using AMQP, PostgreSQL, pgpool-II and Rails)
axod, you set yourself up with the 10 to 1 comment. I work every day in C# and we are currently moving all development to Java, at home I code in ruby. I will tell you from experience that your language plays a very small part in how fast your web app works. I will say without a doubt that programmer competence is the real factor. How the code is written will determine more how it runs. But for the sake of argument I can guarantee that if you wrote a web app the exact same way in Java and then ruby, or basically any modern language, one would not consume 10 times the resources of the other. Other factors will start to bottleneck you long before that, bandwidth, memory, cpu, etc.
figured··on Startup now 100% on AWS (they're using AMQP, PostgreSQL, pgpool-II and Rails)
"Some webapps might need 10 servers if you write it in php or ruby on rails, but may only need 1 server if you write it in c/java/something else"

@axod, this statement is completely out to lunch. I don't even know where to start.

figured··on Clever table design
boo to being mod'ed down.

I am I the only one who noticed that she was wearing business attire with flip flops?

figured··on Clever table design
flip-flops?
figured··on What is the most intrusive wart on your favourite programming language?
submitted to reddit, here is the thread:http://www.reddit.com/r/programming/comments/7hv0j/ask_progg...

has some good responses

figured··on Ask HN: what tunes are you working to at the moment?
Tell me by Ron Sexsmith
figured··on Review my side project: www.recreationparks.net
Dude, the very first thing I did, was press the first button I saw (the search button).

"The page you were looking for doesn't exist."

Needs a little more testing

figured··on Reflections of a YC Dropout
Honestly, it seems like you treated "your team" more like employees than co-founders. I think this was your critical mistake.
figured··on Yahoo Mail fucking sucks
Yahoo mail hasn't been down once for me today. I think the "outage" isn't as wide spread as you think. Have you checked your firewall?
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