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jhen095

61 karma · joined August 9, 2010

http://www.hackernewsers.com/users/jhen095.html
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jhen095··on Show HN: Codecademy.com, the easiest way to learn to code
Agreed with all of the above points. Beautiful and easy to use.

The "You're doing great! To continue, you'll need to register or sign in. Otherwise all that awesome progress you've made will be lost. Sign In\Register (it's free)" dialog is most definitely a road block as there were no links available to go back to the home page.

Only two options were sign in or register. So yeah, there should be a cancel, or return to homepage

jhen095··on Ask HN: Realization that i am not a "Programmer"...
Haven't felt like this, but as sp332 says "Programming is a big field". I would broaden that even further to I.T. Is a big field.

Why not think about such sub-categories such as DBA, Analysis/Reporting/Sharepoint Services developer, or even pre-sales roles. These involve some coding but a lot of customer interaction, giving advice/ideas, designing solutions and improving the customers business.

jhen095··on Why I Quit My Job to Start a Tech Company
My interpretation of this "slight" is that Warren Buffett uses money as a measure of success. It does not imply any sort of lifestyle just that he strives to be more successful and that means having more dollars. After having read a biography on Mr. Buffett I agree with OP on this and disagree that it is "unmerited and undeserved"
jhen095··on Ask HN: Review my first serious product (WP-FotoTag)
An 11+ minute demo video? IMO it's a tad long, should be between 1-3 mins.

Also, perhaps the screenshots need captions explaining what they are? E.g. what's with the one of the faded out garden and the highlighted flower bush. I don't get its significance or what it is trying to show.

Then again I'm not your target market. Otherwise nice work.

jhen095··on Dressed for Success
Being from New Zealand the first thing I look for on e-commerce sites is the currency of the quoted price and the availability (and charges if applicable) of international shipping.

I could find neither on your site.

Apart from that it's a great site and lots of fun designing different shirts. Hopefully I can buy something from you in the future :)

jhen095··on Clear Desk, Clear Mind
I think it's worth posting the original here; http://www.zurb.com/article/623/clear-desk-clear-mind
jhen095··on Color
I'm from one of those countries where 'color' is spelt 'colour' and I'm glad to see www.colour.com is owned by them also. I doubt it cost as much though.

It would also be interesting to see if searching for 'colour' in the respective app stores also brings you to 'color' so that they are truly interchangeable

jhen095··on Man creates kinetic sculpture that moves and lives on its own
Theo Jansen, hacking together Engineering and Art. More links via YouTube...

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WcR7U2tuNoY

Very interesting.

jhen095··on iPad 2 wasn't Apple's big March 2nd announcement
You got to take away Steve Jobs?!? :O :D
jhen095··on Steve Jobs' reality distortion takes its toll on truth
Perhaps a case of selective hearing or hearing what was expected/wanted?
jhen095··on Man upgrades Windows 1.0 to Windows 7 (video)
Not in itself. The interesting bit would be playing with different UI's and testing backwards compatibility of settings and apps. Such as the OP video does between upgrades.

I wouldn't mind seeing the same video idea with Ubuntu. Somehow I don't think it will be long before a copycat does this :)

jhen095··on Ask HN: How would you design/manufacture an Android tablet?
Start with specification requirements, what CPU (power consumption, speed), mobo (size, features, weight), memory (size, speed), screen (resolution, toughness, size), etc.

Once you have a list of constraints (not necessarily specific, but bounded), think about how these will work as shock-proof, water-proof. Will it just be the case that is shock/water proof or will the components be as well.

The screen is probably the hardest bit to make rugged since being a tablet it will probably be a reasonable size and therefore easy to crack/scratch/break. So a large amount of focus should go here.

Just as a start

jhen095··on Ask HN: You have 8GB to store for the future. What do you keep?
My personal photos. Always the first thing to be backed up and always the first thing to save in a disaster.

Either I can use the time-capsule as a safe backup and come back to it in 60 years. Or someone else will find it in another time (far distant future) and it will be an important archeological find. Oh to be immortal.

jhen095··on The Dilbert Black Swan Portfolio: a skeptical/practical guide to investing
I disagree. A high PE ratio in general is not a direct expression of my 'insight' in general. However in this case it probably is. Thanks for pointing that out, I hadn't looked at ARM's figures previously.

I guess I was 'overplaying', although I still think that the average Joe Blogg would be yet to realize the 'edge', hence it would still be an advantage making ARMH more of a very light gray horse.

jhen095··on The Dilbert Black Swan Portfolio: a skeptical/practical guide to investing
I agree that the pro's trading ARM will have already figured out its significance ... however (based on no evidence what-so-ever) there is surely many more people that haven't figured this link out. When/If ARM hits the spotlight in years to come, multitudes of people will be there to bull rush the price. And the people who figured the link out early will benefit.

Knowing that an iPhone has an ARM chip does constitute an edge. Not an edge against everybody, but an edge against most.

jhen095··on Teeth LEDs
These would be pretty cool with a few extra features. Say flashing in time with music or sound as you are speaking. Or wirelessly connected so that they sink and can act out 'symphonies' of light displays. Great for advertising!
jhen095··on Powerful Ideas
Reminds me of Terry Goodkinds 'Wizards First Rule'

"Because people are stupid, they will believe a lie because they want to believe it's true, or because they are afraid it might be true."

Although the wording from the book is quite strong, essentially 'people are more likely to believe things if they want them to be true, or if they are afraid of them being true'.

So far I have found it an important and practical lesson for many situations.

jhen095··on Real time lightsaber tracking and rendering on the Kinect
disappointingly there is still a bit of lag in there. Though I'm sure that can be improved in time. It would be interesting to see him swing the stick around faster, see if the rendering can keep up an still track the stick when it is a blur.

Looks like fun!

jhen095··on Avoid DRY for Product Development
I agree. Balance is key here. A bit of DRY to keep things tidy and a bit of copy/paste to get things moving and working as quick as possible.

The company I work for has been very much anti-DRY. They copy and paste pretty much everything and have quickly brought a working product to the table. Funnily enough the code base is HUGE. Me, however, new to the company and fresh out of University have been fighting the good fight and trying to introduce DRY. However this slows down development as I refactor, and can sometimes break existing stuff while merging two inconsistent branches.

So I have learnt to pick my battles. There is a balance. Don't fix what ain't broke and if copy/paste will get things moving along, do not hesitate.

jhen095··on Ask HN: A potential employer said he will get back to me, how long do I wait?
I agree. This discussion prompted my question.

I just read your comment there and I take it you think a week or two before following up with them is a good length of time?

jhen095··on Ask HN: What are you working on right now?
Job: C++ and Java developer working on development tools in the data warehouse and BI space.

Extra curricular: An AJAX site on a LAMPP stack for aiding in teaching Computer Science. Students can create exercises and answer other students exercises. Academic purposes only.

Also working on a start-up in the Rural/farming sector to help with the sharing, transparency and analysis of information.

And planning out my next venture.. something to do with a service providing templates, distribution and collection of vouchers/coupons for small and medium businesses

jhen095··on The reverse job applicant
Sorry, I must say it is kind of funny. With this reverse approach you don't get the chance to turn him down.
jhen095··on Ask HN: Cost of living across the world (Ramen PPP Index for hackers)
Auckland, New Zealand - NB: everything below has been converted to USD

Expenses:

  * rent - small 1 bedroom in CBD - $1000 p/m

  * food - cheap 1 person - $300 p/m

  * electricity - $80 p/m

  * internet - 10Gb p/m - $30 p/m

  * supermarket ramen - $1.1 per meal

  * big mac meal - $6.8 per meal

  * coffee long black - $2.6 per cup
total = ~$2000 p/m (incl. some entertainment + travel costs etc. NB: depends on lifestyle)

Income:

  * graduate salary - $3150 p/m gross
or

  * median developer salary - $4800 p/m gross

recently #2 on list of easiest places to start up a business - according to a story from HN
jhen095··on Ask HN: What do you do when you lose motivation?
To further your first point, since this is what I often do. When planning out the project and its timeline and fitting in what needs to be done, I will manage the tasks so that big and small tasks are alternated.

For example, I will schedule time to tackle a hard back-end problem, the results of which aren't easily visible (except perhaps for better performance, scalability, or correctness), knowing that this will suck the motivation out of me. After that I can look forward to some easy tasks like refactoring or adding some new features to the GUI or something trivially easy and which provides immediate feedback (GUI stuff usually does this).

With time management like this you can work through the hard stuff with cool stuff to look forward to, and during the cool stuff, regain motivation to work on the next hard task.

jhen095··on Greeks are sure of one thing: they can’t trust their fellow Greeks.
haha, me too. Every time. Probably also very true, someone should blog about this.
jhen095··on Ask HN: what does Microsoft sell that you can't get for free?
XBox? I would be keen on any free/open source gaming consoles if anyone has any suggestions..