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ghiotion

505 karma · joined February 18, 2008

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ghiotion··on Yes, I can connect to a DB in CSS
Old school quality shit posting all the way down. I appreciate you man.
ghiotion··on People don't work as much as they say
Exactly. I spent a decade plus in a job where emails came in routinely until 9-10 at night and often the CEO would send out something on the weekend. Even if I wasn't required to respond or the response was short, this is _absolutely_ work. Over and above that, spending a decade being literally unable to get away from work in that way is like arsenic poisoning. It was like "I'm fine. I'm fine. I'm fine. I'm dead." It's insidious and terrible.
ghiotion··on Cannabis use produces persistent cognitive impairments: meta review
Haha. Fair. I've got this morbid curiosity about right wing authoritarian conspiracy fiction. Apparently Ben Shapiro has several novels in the same vein. Genuinely curious... why'd you read it in the first place? Are you part of the worst book club in history or something?
ghiotion··on Cannabis use produces persistent cognitive impairments: meta review
Oh goodness. Thank you for introducing me to Shadow Wolves. It sounds positively dreadful. I want to read it but I don't want to pay for it. Either monetarily or cognitively.
ghiotion··on Kung Fu, Once Central to Hong Kong Life, Is Waning
Yeah, I think that's exactly right. And it's hard to reach for a weapon when you can't move your arms.
ghiotion··on Kung Fu, Once Central to Hong Kong Life, Is Waning
It's a really interesting question. Jiu-jitsu unquestionably works in "uncontrolled" environments. I'd wager large money that if more police officers trained in grappling and submission techniques there'd be far fewer shootings.

I don't have specific experience with Krav per se, but the self-defense I learned getting my Karate BB was kravesque. Krav is fine, but I think of it a little like crossfit; it's mostly a marketing thing. In my estimation, krav can be great for self-defense. But anything where you focus on one or two practical defense moves is great for self-defense. Get good at one or two things and drill it 10,000 times.

ghiotion··on Kung Fu, Once Central to Hong Kong Life, Is Waning
I earned a black belt in Karate last year, have messed around with TKD, Judo, and Kali, and this year got reasonably serious about BJJ by starting in a belted program.

It's impossible to overestimate the role MMA/UFC has had on martial arts in the past 20 years. The internet has allowed that knowledge to spread far and wide, but UFC #1 dramatically changed the face of martial arts forever. Before that, you could argue about which one was the "best". After UFC #1, it was pretty clear how dominant Gracie jiu-jitsu was if you wanted to win a fight.

All the traditional martial arts have a place. Simply analyzing the phrase "martial art" should give you some indication of its intent: discipline and beauty. Most traditional martial arts schools are on the decline and, for those that aren't, the caliber of student they get is nowhere near as high as it was 25 years ago. Point sparring tournaments are a shell of their former selves.

MMA and, to a lesser extent, BJJ are more a fighting system than a martial art. There's no bowing, there's little formality, there aren't any forms, and it's ruthlessly focused on the practical.

Toward that end, if you want to learn how to fight, study american boxing for punching, muay thai to lean to kick, and BJJ to learn how to grapple.

If you want a "martial art", then you're probably looking for something more traditional. You can learn decent self defense in them, but there's a lot of non-practical stuff you learn as part of the package.

ghiotion··on How to read Korean in 15 minutes
Wow. That is really neat.

I've always believed that spoken languages that are constructed/contrived are doomed to failure (esperanto, klingon, etc). I'm not saying that Korean itself is contrived, but it's fascinating that the alphabet was created like that.

ghiotion··on Django Dash 2010 Results
That's really neat. Cool use of the twillo api.
ghiotion··on I hate computers: confessions of a sysadmin
His issue doesn't seem to be with computers _per se_, but rather the interaction of all the junk that comes either on a new Windows system or via the default installation process for new software. Even a well maintained Windows machine accumulates crapware over time. It's just the cross you have to bear if you want to run Windows.

While I disagree fundamentally with the heavy-handed approach Apple has taken with the iPhone, I think part of their motivation is to protect the phone's ecosystem from threats. Imagine a world where we have malware infection rates on cell phones equal to, or greater than, the infection rates on personal computers. It would be ugly indeed.

ghiotion··on Django Template Tag to protect E-mail addresses on your website
What's one of the reasons? That Django makes it incredibly easy to write functional, interesting template tags?
ghiotion··on A cool way of finding a good web developer
I'm not sure what the deal is with all the criticism on here. Yeah, it wasn't all that hard - but that's the point. This is a good test of a basic level of skills one needs these days to be a Web developer (Firebug, parsing HTTP headers, deciphering Javascript, jQuery). And, it was fun.

All the hate reminds me of the quote: "Criticism is an indirect form of self-boasting."

So, if you read HN and you were able to get through step 5, congratulations! You're at least an average Web developer.

ghiotion··on I was an Ambassador and Taken Hostage by Militants
I'm a little embarrassed to admit this, but I've been quietly following you on the net for quite some time. You seem like one of the nicest people I've never met. Can I buy you lunch sometime? :)
ghiotion··on When to Stop Reading a Book
When to stop reading a Web page. When there's a next button at the bottom.
ghiotion··on Dear YC: Please stop downvoting thoughtful comments you disagree with.
I'll second this with one minor caveat. They're not necessarily "downmodding offenders" until proven as such by the data you're requesting. They're just the top 50 downvoters.
ghiotion··on Plenty of Drupal Jobs for Computer Science Students
That's a CMS, so long as you limit your definition of "content" to photos and video.

Also, I find it poor form to expose the Django admin interface to your users in place of developing your own templates and view logic. Seems like a "srsly" bad idea.

ghiotion··on Plenty of Drupal Jobs for Computer Science Students
Your comment is great. Can you expand on your 3rd paragraph? Why will you never work with it again and what byzantine constraints did you find? I'm wondering if there's some aspect of Drupal that I'm missing and if I'm not doing myself (and my clients) a long term disservice when I recommend Drupal. Have you found other, non-PHP CMS's better?
ghiotion··on Plenty of Drupal Jobs for Computer Science Students
It seems like Drupal always gets dumped on for having a crappy codebase (see xinsight's comments as an example). Admittedly, I've not spent a lot of time in the Drupal codebase, but I've used Drupal extensively on a number of projects. I've looked at a lot of other CMS's (e.g. Joomla, Plone, IBM's WCM). Drupal kicks the crap out of the other alternatives. Plone is so strange, it doesn't even seem like Python.

The point that I think a lot of folks miss about Drupal (and CMS's in general) is that they are REALLY hard to write. If you're a RoR or Django developer, sit down some weekend and try to reproduce the Drupal core functionality. Get back to me in 6 months when you're ready to test.

I'm a Django developer by trade, but when I come across a client that needs a CMS, I'm not going to reinvent the wheel. Drupal is fantastic and very sophisticated. You can do amazing things with CCK and views.

ghiotion··on Chinese Say They're Building 'Impossible' Space Drive, the EmDrive ('Relativity Drive')
The Chinese also said their female Olympic gymnasts were 16 years old. I think it's a good policy to take what the Chinese say with a grain of salt.
ghiotion··on Graphical display of VC money disbursed per state
What the heck is going on in Minnesota? That's the one that really jumps out at me. Anyone know?
ghiotion··on The small-minded vision of the technology elite
Seth's blog seems to always make it pretty high on HN. Am I alone in wondering why? They usually have great titles, but are seriously lacking in content. I'm not complaining necessarily, but I admit I don't get it. Can someone explain?
ghiotion··on Google Chrome running on OSX and Linux
I'm running this on Hardy and it runs... OK. More of an interesting POC than anything else. However, I think it forcefully demonstrates one of two things:

1) Wine is amazing.

2) Wine is a mess.

I dunno. Maybe both. I know, I know. It's Codeweavers. Still, that's Wine.

ghiotion··on Ask HN: What does Ruby have that Python doesn't?
I chose RoR over Python/Django for one simple reason: RoR's tight integration with the Prototype AJAX javascript library. Personally, I like Python as a language much better than Ruby. But if I'm going to code up a Web app, I want easy AJAX integration - I don't want to hand craft a bunch of javascript. It's not that I've got anything against writing javascript, but I hate, hate, hate trying to debug it.
ghiotion··on My Startup project: ErrorKey.com, a tool for hackers.
Absolutely. I can't tell you how friggin' sick I am of inadvertently clicking on an "Experts Exchange" link in a google search set. The microsecond it takes my eyes to register an EE site and click back is one too many. I'm pretty sure EE owes me about 10 years of my life up to this point.
ghiotion··on Steve Fossett may be alive, investigator claims
Don't know why you're being downmodded. Personally, I think that's hilarious.
ghiotion··on SQL Injection Part II (Make Sure You Are Sitting Down)
I got hit with this very same attack over July 4th weekend. I inherited an abortion of a site written in "classic" ASP. The attacker inserted javascript links into every VARCHAR database table it could. Took me hours to clean out everything. Taking me even longer to go through and validate all the form posts.

People complain you ought to need a license to have a kid. This kind of crap makes me think you need a license to write a web app.

ghiotion··on [dead]
I'm not necessarily for it, but the OP brings up an interesting point. If people are creating "one off" accounts for sensitive issues, there may be a need for this. Perhaps there could be an option to obfuscate the ID of the poster?
ghiotion··on Mod_social_skills, mod_rationality
This is the thing that throws me. At some point, good social skills came to mean "extrovert". I don't accept that definition. I'd much rather spend my time in deep conversation with one or two people than flitting around like a social butterfly having silly micro-conversations with total strangers. I don't think this makes me anti-social, just more selective.
ghiotion··on Hulu is kicking Youtube's Ass
Thank you for pointing that out. I felt like I was losing my mind as I was reading Cuban's blog. Can someone direct me to the place on Hulu where I can upload my kid's gymnastics video so I can send it to my folks living overseas? Oh yeah, that place doesn't exist.
ghiotion··on My New Instant Karma Plan
> Whatdya think?

I think this represents a violation of the spirit of HN.

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