greaterscope

I love this idea! Bookmarking "Terraform Graph Algorithms" and "HTTPie Download Progress" for later. Thank you!

I've been creating something akin to Minecraft creative mode in the browser since 2016: https://github.com/alanszlosek/voxeling. It all started when I found the VoxelJS project. The possibilities really hooked me so I forked it, learned a ton about WebGL, then started my own repo and rewrote nearly everything from scratch. I've been having a blast. There are endless opportunities for optimization (must maintain 60fps!), which is extremely rewarding to me.

Last year I started making videos showing the code and the improvements I've made: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLGonE3T1sorRgdHNBGhpj...

That's just one of my projects, but the one I'm most proud of. Even if the code isn't conventional or pretty. :-)

Great timing on this post as I'm looking for something to replace my aging Dell Inspiron 1420n from 2008. Thanks for asking! It sounds like you just need something to run an editor (maybe VIM?), PHP and a browser... Like others have mentioned, if you need to run docker it will require something quite modern.

What's your budget?

Can anyone chime in about the Asus Eee PCs, or the Dell Inspiron Mini series? Or anything else near the 10 to 11-inch form factor? Would they be hard to type on for someone under 6ft tall?

I'm personally looking for something that can run Linux (perhaps even as slimmed down as Puppy Linux), Vim (or maybe VSCode) can run a browser (preferably Firefox but Pale Moon or other might be fine). Just bought an Asus VivoBook X202E on Ebay, but that's an 11.6" display, so I'll see how it goes.

What I'd really love is to find a blog post of the "Best Linux-compatible Netbooks Through the Ages". Has anyone come across anything like this? Would help me search Ebay for successively older machines until I get to the price point I'm looking for.

I second the point that it's helpful to know the actual landscape, so the division within GE should definitely be listed. After all, if they end up contributing something positive it deserves visibility.

And your mention of Zipcar, Maven, etc makes me think it'd be great to include the entities that own or fund each organization. Definitely means there's more information to hunt down, but crowd-sourcing can lessen that pain.

You made me lol. Thank you :-)

I wrote a self-hosted tool that fills this need for me. Been using it since 2008. Content is written in markdown, though it doesn't have a fancy editor. Supports tagging and searching too. Since you mentioned self-hosted, I thought you might be interested.

Screenshot: http://greaterscope.net/files/tracker.png Github project: https://github.com/alanszlosek/tracker

Seconded. He was on episode 199 of Software Engineering Radio two years ago (http://www.se-radio.net/2013/12/episode-199-michael-stonebra...), which I thoroughly enjoyed. It was so informative that I took a page of notes while listening! Really great stuff.

Two projects you may want to review for ideas are Redis and toybox.

Redis comes to mind because it started out as largely a single file of code that has since been split and organized into multiple files. The code is quite approachable; you'll likely understand how most of it works after a day of causal browsing. http://redis.io

Toybox comes to mind because it's insanely modular, and aggressive about code re-use. The logic can feel a bit dense at times, but he's going for size and speed. I'm a big fan of Rob's efforts. http://landley.net/code/toybox/

Wish were able to download our ebs snapshots, which are supposedly hosted on S3. What does everyone else do?

Recently bought the box-set of this series .... love it!

hilarious. but maybe a few people will participate (fall for it) and thus indirectly donate to jquery, postgres, or apache.

Sounds like you might have become disinterested in your project? Maybe there's too much on your plate? Maybe there's not enough risk/reward pressure going on?

I don't think a piece of software can help you. What about bringing someone else on-board that's a naturally hard worker to help pull you more in that direction?

starting off with "it's a sad state of affairs" sets a smug tone, begging for a smart-ass response. and the "FAIL" just turns it hostile.

i'm not defending the station, but i do think customers should be as civil as companies are expected to be, if they want civil treatment in return.

We, my long-time girlfriend and I, are moving to Portland, Oregon, from Lakeland, Florida, in 1 month. A friend sent me that article a few days ago and all I could think was, "informative article, but it doesn't matter." We're moving anyway. And we've never been. Like wallflower, everything we've read and heard points to Portland as a place we need to be, or at least live in for a while.

The company I work for has no problem with me working remotely. I pointed my boss to RandsInRepose's excellent article (The Pond) about remote workers, so we've started the discussion about things we'll have to work through. Needless to say, I'm incredibly thankful and lucky to HAVE a job, especially one that's willing to keep me around as I move.

My girlfriend is a painter (website; http://daubery.com etsy store: http://hollypaints.etsy.com), and has had little luck finding work in Lakeland. So if she doesn't find work out there it won't be much different.

Paul Graham's "Cities and Ambition" article really hit home when I read it a year ago. It made me think about how deeply where I live affects my quality of life, my future, my happiness, my creativity, my productivity, my resources. Lakeland is a "settle down, raise a family, go to church" type of place. It's not for us. I want to run a software company of my own, hire great people, and be involved in a community of artists, musicians, programmers, designers, and makers. My girlfriend needs to be around artists that don't bullshit, have creativity from within, and aren't in constant competition with each other.

Moving to a new place is going to be invigorating. We're hoping the people we find in Portland will continue to inspire us once the newness of a new city wears off. Wish us luck.

If you have advice, or live in Portland, don't hold back.

From my post here: http://www.greaterscope.com/blog/2008/11/11/intentional-soft...

Back in 2002 I thought of "Intentional Software" as a company name. It was supposed to imply that we wouldn’t be creating haphazardly designed products. But then again, I'd only been coding for a year or two at the time, which doesn't seem like enough time to be doing anything other than haphazard development.

All of that is beside the point, because Charles Simonyi came along a few years later and started a company of the same name. He was born well before me so he had a killer head-start. Plus, as the originator of "hungarian notation", he knew how to not program all willy-nilly.

My ideas for a company name progressed, especially once I stopped using the space bar. Out came "Greaterscope" as a possibility. The encapsulation of optimistic, forward-looking, expansive ... a chord was struck. Or rather, a saw was wobbled to make a sound. But don’t worry, the saw’s teeth are clean. (Yeah, that was a stretch, but I had to reference Scope mouthwash somewhere, since you probably thought of it upon seeing our company name)

Excellent, excellent movie. It always inspires me in some strange quirky way. Or maybe it just inspires me to be quirky.

amazing. i'm all for a less-cluttered field of choices.

anyone know of another high-profile project that has merged with a "competitor"?

There are many products and services for small/standard storefronts ... but we're innovating elsewhere. I've tried to outline some of our differences on the website but it surely needs further clarification.

We're targeting shops that need the type of features you have to design for at the beginning.

We're also not a hosted solution, as that limits the ability for other developers to customize our product.

To the parent: This where I've been. I've built many of my own tools and frameworks. Problem is, they're still related to the space that I no longer enjoy being employed in. It was fun work, with plenty of great challenges, and proved to be a great strategy for securing most of my sanity. Elevate anything to a "higher purpose" and you'll find some extra motivation to get the job done.

To edw519: This where I'm going (in addition to looking for another line of work I might enjoy more). I've been making my own tools for about three years. I guess that's my "breaking point". I'm using them personally, but I don't want to be at shops without some kickass tools and practices already in place. I like my tools, but working at a place without any useful abstractions is no fun. In the meantime, I'm trying to make the best use of my tools and talents on my own dime, for my company (http://greaterscope.com). There I can solve the problems I want to solve, without restrictions (until I get customers). Hopefully it'll be a much better ride and I won't post another similar thing in another five years.

You're right. It's just not for me. I'm a big self-motivator, and am learning more of what makes me happy and unhappy.

I might be a bit ashamed ... it's a big shock to find yourself on the path to nowhere when you feel you have so much more potential, hence the article.

I'm definitely on the lookout for something I might like more.

Most of the the side-projects I started were definitely interesting to me in some way. They were a way for me to explore how something could be made easier, how it should be done, and how it could help me get more done.

For my company/startup (http://greaterscope.com) I'm also building online storefront software, which has plenty of interesting problems. It can involve massive datasets (for me), clever algorithms, etc. It has been the perfect opportunity for me to harden and field-test my tools. This is written in PHP, because it's the language I know best, and I feel like the problem isn't "solved" for PHP yet.

But those are beside the point because I've started to think more about "what I really want to do" and how to "not get stuck doing something I don't want to do". So I defintely feel the need to find something I like doing even more than storefront software in PHP.

Thanks for the technology recommendations. Python is high on my list at the moment. I'm on the lookout.

in my case, the timeline for "leaving to work on a startup soon" is hopefully within 6 months. or maybe i should just take out a loan?

Damn, people are still commenting here and I forgot to mention the non-commercial stuff I'm doing. It all lives at http://greaterscope.net. I'm taking a stab at:

* Creating a foreign key based ORM for PHP5 * Creating a PHP5 database abstraction layer that's easier to use than PDO or the alternatives * An abstraction layer for html forms that generates, validates and even supports deeply nested "arrays of fields" * A console terminal multiplexer (GNU screen, but split-screen) in C for Linux

Disclaimer: There are existing projects similar to many of the above, but I'm striving to make my APIs cleaner, code readable and more concise. Plus I enjoy learning by doing.

I'm also extremely interested in wireless mesh ... anyone working on that?

sounds interesting and probably something I could use since I plan to offer email-only support at first for my online storefront product.

i'll be keeping tabs on you guys. :-)

A friend of mine runs http://www.udm4.com and we've talked about running an ad on there since its primary audience is developers (nevermind the fact that I don't really like the menu). Other than that, try to partner with good development shops that do online stores ... I have a few in mind.

Any other ideas, besides taking out the obvious ad on google? I really don't want to screw with trying to get high keyword ranking via the SEO black-magic route.

but that's kinda rigid (gotta choose your interest category) ... doesn't do the work of pairing you up with others based on a broad range of interests.

is anyone aware of any non-dating sites that do a good job of helping you meet other like-minded people?

I've been working on an online storefront product that should serve as a great starting point for web developers that need to roll some custom functionality for clients. All text can be multi-lingual, support for complex product options and pricing, multiple storefronts using the same code, and more. nothing to show yet, but more info here http://greaterscope.com

I don't like those agreements, but luckily I have an employer that was willing to rework the agreement with me to a way that favors both of us. We changed the wording to cover that which relates to actual work done for my employer, in effort to lessen the likelihood of them trying to claim something unrelated to their business. Our agreement explicitly assigns to me the ownership of the project I began before taking employment with them. Much better than the "we own you and your mind" approach.