gaustin

Yeah. That's one of the better sites. It's responsive and well-organized.

It could be improved. It would be nice if prices and a primary characteristic or two, like weight for hammers, could be moved up a level. Or at least add search filters like New Egg does for each spec of a component.

E.g., Hammers -> Straight Pein -> 1-2kg

Tools and supplies for my bladesmithing hobby. The supply sites that do exists have really terrible web presences and they still do much of their business with paper catalogs.

Most of the stores don't have items categorized more than one level deep nor by the properties of the item. There are all sorts of options for something as simple as an anvil or a pair of tongs.

God help you if you need handle hardware. You have to go through 40 pages of little, crappy pictures of items to find what you're looking for.

When you go to checkout, you're lucky if you can complete your order without reloading your cart a half-dozen times.

Then there's the whole quality thing. There are vanishingly few reviews on these sites. If you could aggregate reviews on similar items, it would be great.

But a problem with aggregating reviews is that a certain part might be imported from China on one site and the same part might be laser cut in house on another site. There's no real way to tell the difference without having the two items in hand.

Edit to add some links to examples: http://www.knifemaking.com/Default.asp http://www.piehtoolco.com/ http://www.usaknifemaker.com/

> Does the USDA inspect your meat?

Not like they used to.

According to my grandfather (now 89 years old), who was a USDA inspector at a couple of meat processing plans from the end of WWII until he retired (in the late 1980s): There used to be an independent USDA inspector in virtually every processing plant. That inspector could shutdown the entire facility if he saw fit. Now most plants are self-regulating and only get pre-scheduled spot checks by the USDA.

He was pretty upset by the change in the system and the associated decline in the safety and quality of meats.

I think what was intended was "Why did anyone ever hire us for $500/hour in the first place?"

I'm not the author of the post, so I'm not authoritative but that would be my reading.

You're right about the definition of FTA in this context. But TFA means The F(ucking|ine|*) Article in this context.

I bet it's not a typo.

I got a BA in Computer Science (with mediocre grades) in college because I wasn't mature enough to apply myself in the difficult mathematics courses. I'm not sure if I can manage to do interesting/valuable things without going back to school.

My entire career has consisted of making and maintaining more or less the same applications for 10 years. I know I could just self-teach it all, but I do much better with a peer group and a little structure.

Sad, but I don't see a way out of it.

Excellent readme for that project. It details several issues of which I wasn't aware.

Thanks for that.

(edit: It wasn't the readme, it was the wiki page. Still, excellent documentation.)

The load times are remarkably short on my machine. There is an almost imperceptible flicker at save checkpoints. Though it is kind of a monster.

DNF is exactly the game my teenage self was hoping for. As an adult, it's a little flat but I can't see it as heinously bad as many reviews are painting it.

What do you mean stop at steel?

Search for Tai Goo, Tim Lively and Wayne Goddard. Primitive knifemaking is another good term to search.

<a href="http://www.aescustomknives.com/>Ariel Salaverria</a> doesn't do primitive as far as I know, but he does have some tutorials for making some things that most makers buy/outsource. Tutorials for resin impermeated handle materials, like denim micarta.

This cool post showed up when I Googled "primitive knifemaking" <a href="http://paleoplanet69529.yuku.com/topic/40386#.TfYp7UfW5oE...;

If you (or anyone else, for that matter) is interested in talking about this stuff, shoot me an email (it's in my profile).

Just to follow-up. If you search for Tai Goo and Tim Lively you will get a lot of information, pictures, videos and such about making blades from found material. Some of the processes are pretty crude--making glue from pine sap and deer feces.

People already do this. Some only go so far as stone blades, or allow modern tools for certain steps. Others bootstrap the whole process from stone-age to steel.

I've never done it. It's incredibly time consuming but satisfying, from the first hand accounts I've read. You can cut hours or days off of your work time by using modern tools for some of the most seemingly trivial steps.

To turn it into something that isn't a lump of steel.

I'm an amateur bladesmith. This guy posts regularly on one of the forums I participate in. He's chronicled his research there in very accessible, but rich detail. Really brilliant stuff (from my layman perspective).

I've recently taken up hobby blacksmithing (focusing on blades). The skills required were completely alien to me at first.

At this point, I can hardly make nails. But stretching myself in such a dramatic way has really fueled my creativity, even when it comes to developing software.

No matter how much I struggle, I know that in 20 years of systematically pounding away on evenings and weekends, I'll have enough skill to make some good stuff. I'm confident that I can become a ABS Journeyman, and perhaps a Master if I live long enough.

I just bought a 260 lb. high quality anvil. It will be an excellent anvil for at least 200 years (if not 300 or 400 years).

How's that for longevity?

I avoid all of the fuss.* I work for a State agency in a low population state. There's a published ceiling and floor on salaries (based on pay band). All salaries are public record.

* Tongue firmly in cheek.

I'm a big fan of MooTools.

It's very modular and consistent. It's easy to pick and choose just what you want to include. You can do it by hand or use the builders on the MooTools site that let you roll custom distributions of the library.

It's like having a micro- and full-stack library in one package.

> I would strongly recommend against doing this, for the simple reason that they will need to know your last salary so they can calculate your tax.

Not in the US.

I compared a few items and that gives you less of a discount than the Education store. (Just choose a school. You don't actually need to have attended.)

Am I missing something?

Same here. I call it Error Driven Development.

>How about the reason that it is Apple's? And why would they not want to have their rules on their channel?

The only viable channel at this point is Apple's. If there were a way to access non-Apple blessed applications without rooting your device, then people might not complain so much. Savvy consumers don't appreciate monopolies.

I hate to reply to my own post, but in this case I think it's good form.

I'm going to give notice as soon as my boss is back from wherever he's gotten off to.

I do have another job offer that I'm debating. I think it's probably better to turn that down and finally get out of this backwater (a city of ~40k people in a mountainous US state).

That means moving in with my parents in Nebraska until we get things together for a move somewhere more startup and tech friendly. While I'd be happy moving to the Bay area and eeking it out in a one-bedroom place, I'm not going to drag the wife and dog (can you even find dog-friendly places out there?) into that.

I hope none of the affected parties reads this...

Good for you.

I promised myself I would give notice today. I don't think it's going to happen. Maybe it's just because I'm older (28) and have more inertia (wife, dog, a bunch of stuff to pack or get rid of and moving) to overcome.

I have to echo some of the comments from TFA. If you mark it, no matter how, the curious are going to explore it. Even if they understand the danger they may unearth.

The exception is if you have an advanced culture that stumbles upon it. They'll know what it is and perhaps how to deal with it better than we do.

I have to admit that I find it hard to imagine an alien mind not having curiosity or the urge to explore.

Not as much as I should.

Yes and yes. But I don't spend any/enough effort on them.

Very. I live in a pretty remote low-population part of the USA. The people I want to work with will probably only ever get to know me online, until I move somewhere more in line with my goals. Offline presence is important, too, but there's not much opportunity for that here outside of the 3 or 4 possible programmer workplaces.

Link broken? All I get is "Portal Not Found"

Maybe an extra hour, if you don't worry about making it too slick and pretty.

The article talks about two types of programmers. The passionate type and the type that programs because it's a way to make money to fund life outside of work. Then it points out that many of the latter type write poor code.

I've found that if you engage your non-passionate co-workers and try to educate and inspire, you can really help them improve their skills. Nobody wants to be bad at what they do. A guiding hand can do wonders.

It makes their life better and it makes your life better.

No separate challenge for the in-between folks, or did I just miss it?

Use what you like and are comfortable with. It's pretty much a matter of taste.

There's nothing you can do in Django that you can't do in Rails.