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mstudio

147 karma · joined January 29, 2014

https://www.linkedin.com/in/alex-motzenbecker/
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mstudio··on I went to America's worst national parks so you don't have to
Thank you for this -- I needed a laugh today. I do have to say that we visited Zion in Nov and it was amazing -- beautiful weather and no crowds. I think it's all about timing.
mstudio··on Ask HN: What Are You Working On? (Nov 2025)
This is hilarious. Well done!
mstudio··on I tried every todo app and ended up with a .txt file
Somewhat similar situation here, but I use a .diff file:

! heading here

+ item to do here

- item completed here

the !+- prefixes auto-highlight/colorize in editors. I use Sublime Text.

mstudio··on Show HN: I built a task manager that separates "do" and "due" dates
Looks great! Cool idea and a very clean interface. One note on the website: the "Calendar / Todo / Project" nav buttons throw 404 errors when clicked.
mstudio··on Coding interviews are stupid (ish)
This looks really great. I love the presentation style. Clean and simple. Nice work!
mstudio··on Show HN: I made a tool which fixes broken JSONs
Very cool! One note: the random sample marked: 'Using a string "true" instead of a boolean true' leaves "true" as a string after parsing, instead of converting to an actual boolean.
mstudio··on How to Get Out of Vi (2015)
Thanks for clarifying. I understand this is a bit different, but if folks are using vim, the best resource (in my opinion) for novices is vimtutor. Just type "vimtutor" in the console. It uses an interactive tutorial to explain the basics of editing, saving, moving around — plus the various modes.
mstudio··on How to Get Out of Vi (2015)
What's wrong with using :q ?
mstudio··on Ask HN: How do you optimize your focus?
* update my hosts file to block sites that suck me in (youtube, reddit and maybe even this one).

* listen to music with no vocals. For whatever reason, vocals distract me from thinking. I often use brain.fm or a "synthwave" set of songs on Spotify.

* write my ideas for architecture/code down on paper and check them off one-by-one. Then handwriting helps me.

Good luck!

mstudio··on Create More, Consume Less (2021)
Love this. Reminds me of Kurt Vonnegut's "make your soul grow" letter to high school kids - https://news.lettersofnote.com/p/make-your-soul-grow
mstudio··on Cellular outage in U.S. hits AT&T, T-Mobile and Verizon users
My ATT Phone is in SOS mode. However, ATT's outages status reports:

  > All clear! No outages to report.
  > We didn’t find any outages in your area. Still having issues?
https://www.att.com/outages/
mstudio··on How to center a div in CSS
Great article. Love the interactivity. One thing that really helped me understand CSS positioning (and centering) years ago was reading about the box model. Understanding the box model helps you determine flow within the DOM. The `display` and `position` CSS properties are also fundamental to learning about positioning. MDN has great articles on these!

https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Learn/CSS/Building_...

https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Learn/CSS/CSS_layou...

mstudio··on Toolong: Terminal application to view, tail, merge, and search log files
Just wanted to say thanks for creating this. Wonderful tool!
mstudio··on Toolong: Terminal application to view, tail, merge, and search log files
This looks great. I spend a good amount of time each week grepping through Kubernetes log files. Looking forward to trying this out next week. I particularly like the pretty-print and merge options.
mstudio··on Ask HN: Are height adjustable desks worth it?
I have a Flexispot standing desk. Before I purchased, I was concerned about how sturdy the desk would be in standing mode — but it's actually sturdier than my old sitting desk. I love it. Look for sales. They have quite a few throughout the year. Their optional accessories do seem overpriced though. I attached a cheap ikea wire shelf underneath to hold all the cables instead of buying a $50 "Cable Management Mesh"
mstudio··on What happens when a school bans smartphones? A complete transformation
Great, but this is a private boarding school. I'm more concerned about the (over) use of Chromebooks in public schools. It's trivial for kids to tab over to Youtube or a gaming site in the middle of class. I would've done the same thing if I'd been given a laptop for 6 hours a day in school. When I see my kids trying to write math equations or use a virtual ruler/compass to do math homework, it really pains me. Let's go back to writing things by hand.
mstudio··on Most states start school too early in the morning
The article addresses this here:

> Early school starts are not the only cause of teenage drowsiness, but they are a crucial factor—especially because natural sleep cycles make it difficult for post-puberty teenagers to fall asleep before 11 p.m.

mstudio··on Do I need to get out the soldering iron again? (2018)
Really interesting write-up and some funny rants about Apple/Spotify. I'd never heard the term "PP3 battery" before. Wikipedia tells me that this is the standard rectangular 9V/0.5 Ah battery you can buy at the store (in the US, at least). https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nine-volt_battery
mstudio··on I've overlayed stays on a light pollution satellite map
Great visualization! For those in the Northeast US, Cherry Springs State Park in PA is a wonderful place to visit for night viewing (and camping). It's one of the best places (darkest night sky) on the eastern seaboard for stargazing. We camped there in the summer and saw the Milky Way like I'd never seen before. Be sure to look at the moon phases when planning -- try to plan for a new moon so you have a dark sky: https://www.dcnr.pa.gov/StateParks/FindAPark/CherrySpringsSt...
mstudio··on FTX "insurance fund" calculated by multiplying trading volume by random number
Someone needs to run a `git blame` on that line of code!
mstudio··on Paul Reubens has died
"You don't wanna get mixed up with a guy like me. I'm a loner, Dottie. A rebel."

Almost 40 years later, Pee-Wee's Big Adventure is still one of my favorite movies.

mstudio··on Deadly heart attacks are more common on a Monday
Thank goodness it's Tuesday!
mstudio··on Ask HN: Resources for older developers?
If one exists, I'd love to be part of it. Many of these comments really resonate with me (in my 40s as well). I find that I'm more effective as a developer now than I was years ago – partly because I know myself better. I understand that I love building things hands-on while collaborating with other engineers, designers or stakeholders. I understand that, in the end, people are using these products we build and that I need to keep that in mind.

I also know the things that I either do not enjoy or am not good at, like management. I'm happy to keep coding for as long as my brain will allow it.

mstudio··on A Whale-Oiled Machine
Great tip. I hadn't heard of that museum and will have to check it out. If anyone else is interested in whaling, particularly Nantucket's past sperm whale industry, "In the Heart of the Sea: The Tragedy of the Whaleship Essex" is a great read.
mstudio··on Motors for Makers: A Guide to Steppers, Servos, and Other Electrical Machines (2015)
I came here to say exactly the same thing. I'd love to find a kit or gearbox than can gear up/down a simple stepper motor for Arduino projects. The HDPE laser cut is a good idea though, I'll give that a try.
mstudio··on A Vim Guide for Advanced Users
You might find the ":NERDTree" plugin useful for project/directory navigation:

https://catonmat.net/vim-plugins-nerdtree-vim and https://github.com/preservim/nerdtree

mstudio··on A Vim Guide for Advanced Users
I recently picked up a copy of "Practical Vim" https://pragprog.com/titles/dnvim2/practical-vim-second-edit... based on a recommendation from a comment on HN. The first chapter mentions the built-in `vimtutor`

I never it existed! It was incredibly helpful with some features I'd never used such as Put, Replace and Visual mode. If you have vim, you should just be able to run `vimtutor` in the command line. If you have trouble, you can run `:help vimtutor` within vim.

mstudio··on Vietnam to make Apple Watch and MacBook
Is this a fact (or have other co's done this)? I'm genuinely curious. I assume they'd hire Vietnamese employees though.
mstudio··on Ask HN: Can I see your scripts?
I sometimes leave a process running on a port for webdev and then try to open a new one resulting in the error, "Error: listen EADDRINUSE 0.0.0.0:NNN", e.g. 0.0.0.0:443.

There are many ways to search for the process, but here's what I use:

   lsof -iTCP -sTCP:LISTEN -P | grep [PORT NUMBER]
Look for port num and kill the process with:

   kill -9 [PID OF PROCESS YOU WANT TO KILL]
Note if running as root user, you will need to prepend the above commands with sudo
mstudio··on What's TypeScript compiling? Use a treemap to find out
This was my question as well. The article does answer the question, but off the bat I'd assumed the author was talking about output/dist. The web treemap cli is a great tip. If you are using webpack, webpack-bundle-analyzer is a helpful tool for quickly finding bloated packages. It's definitely helped me cut down my build times: https://github.com/webpack-contrib/webpack-bundle-analyzer
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