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nzjames

62 karma · joined October 12, 2009

https://twitter.com/nzjames

http://nzjames.com/zombiesahead

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nzjames··on Poll: Do you use an Adblocker?
I don't use an Adblocker, but I did recently disable plugins by default because I was getting some massive performance issues from Flash (Chrome on Ubuntu 12.10).

It has massively improved my browsing experience having grey place-holder boxes where mostly ads were before.

nzjames··on Rdio 2.0 Design
I'm enjoying the new mobile design.

My initial reaction was not positive, I saw the similarities to the FB mobile app with the swipe right menu and I thought "oh no." But quickly I found it much more intuitive to use than the previous grid layout.

I've modified my opinion that the style of revel navigation is not bad but I previously didn't enjoy it because of Facebook's unresponsive implementation.

nzjames··on Scott Forstall leaves Apple
I'm from New Zealand but have travelled in the US and lived in the UK. The difference is service.

You get it in the US. I remember it in every store. Initially I thought it was intimidating because I was not used to it. But after a few months and some great experiences I really enjoyed it.

You don't get it in the UK. High street stores, especially noticeable in places like shoe stores where you need service to complete a transaction. You could easily wait 10 minutes until someone was available to help you. And it could take another 10 minutes per pair of shoes you wanted to try on. So painful.

nzjames··on Nestle Embeds GPS Trackers in KitKat Bars for Promotional Campaign
The best outcome of this campaign would be for someone to identify the tracker chip without opening the chocolate bar. Then post it somewhere else in the world.
nzjames··on How did we come to believe saturated fat and cholesterol are bad for us?
Check the ingredients on anything that you think is mostly wheat. It will have soy in it. All bread from the super market for example.
nzjames··on ODROID-X is like a quad-core Raspberry Pi for $129
I think one of the great things about the Raspi is that it is not competing on being powerful, it's got an community aiming at an accessible and fun experience.
nzjames··on I'm Pirating the Next Version of Windows
This is really interesting for me. I've infringed a bit of copyright in my time. Cassettes when I was young, VHS from TV (I cut the ads out - does that count?) my high school physics teacher gave us photocopied exercises with clear copyright notices in the footer, IRC, Napster, torrents.

I remember before it was called stealing, because we were doing it without mass attention on a young internet. I've learnt to gloss over stealing and theft when reading about piracy because I've always seen it as hyperbole because I knew the net before was labeled that. I put it in the same basket as hacker vs. cracker, as much as I wanted everyone to know the difference - they don't care and its a boring argument.

It seems (correct me if I'm wrong) that people have been exposed to copyright infringement == stealing from so much media for so long that it is accepted by default. It didn't used to be this way.

nzjames··on My husband is a programmer; I have no idea what that means.
I just asked my wife and she said she just tells people I'm a spy. When I pressed her for why she said what I do is too technical therefore I'm keeping it hidden from her and that must mean I'm a spy.
nzjames··on Firefox – tons of tools for web developers
The ReCSS bookmarklet does a pretty good job of this too. http://david.dojotoolkit.org/recss.html
nzjames··on This is what happens when one guy practices art every day for nine years
This reminds me a lot of Penny Arcade, I started reading it 10 years ago for the video game commentary but I've really enjoyed watching the quality of the writing and comics improve to such a world class level over time.
nzjames··on Introducing the New Commodore 64
I may be the only one who likes this. I've recently been looking for an old commodore 64 for nostalgic reasons, there is no practical reason to own one unless you're a demo purest. But I'm also in the market for an HD media player and the specs look up to the task. I can get my retro gaming and media fix in one package and decommission my xbox1.

Sure the price will be inflated but I can imagine leaving this sprawled out on my lounge floor provided there are some decent retro usb/wireless joysticks to go with it.

nzjames··on Collect HN: Aprils Fools
Just watched the kickstarter video but with my headphones pluggeded into 'The Prodigy: Fighter Beat' by accident. It made their video very cool. Sorry for the lack of value - I just wanted to share.
nzjames··on I took "abusing the HTML5 History" to the next level.
Entirely tech-savvy people use the navigation bar as sort of a launch bar for their whole browsing experience also. Chrome enables this fantastically.
nzjames··on Y Combinator’s Paul Graham On The $150K Per Start-Up Offer
I much prefer ramen profitable, I think it will be a shame if Pizza profitable becomes wide spread. I'd never heard it before the article, and I stopped reading to come and comment. It's obviously something we all relate to considering it's already the top comment.
nzjames··on Sproutcore vs jQuery +backbone.js
I've got to +1 for YUI3.

I started researching the space for building real Javascript applications fully biased on doing it with x and JQuery. But after a bit of research and prototyping I was sold on the quality and coverage of YUI.

- It has simplified DOM selectors like JQuery

- A solid Base class to extend for everything

- A fully extensible widget class/lifecycle

- Datatable has just hit beta http://developer.yahoo.com/yui/3/datatable/

nzjames··on What will kill Facebook?
4chan anyone?
nzjames··on Ask HN: Inspirational movies
I watch Hackers about once every two months and listen to the soundtrack every other week. Sometime for a change I watch Antitrust.
nzjames··on Is there such a thing as a sustainable todo system?
My issue with GTD and trying to use a todo system is there seems to be an assumption that you are able to quantify the time/effort to do each of your daily tasks.

Developing software and solving problems all day I can't often gauge by looking at a list how long different tasks are going to take or how much they'll make my head hurt.

I can do the straight forward things quickly, I try to stay on top of things I need to do but have been putting off. But I always seem to get stuck and fill up todo lists with thing's I've go no idea how to get off the lists and I don't believe it is as simple as breaking them up into actions.

I don't need a method for managing tasks, I need something to structure and support arbitrary problem solving.

nzjames··on Ask HN: how many years have you "wasted" on failed startups? And any regrets?
Sometimes I wonder whether I'd have be better off if I had a low paying second job rather than wasting countless hours outside of my 9-5 trying to boot strap start ups.

I'm lucky I just love hacking.

nzjames··on Google Kills Wave
Do you mean Google Apps for your domain? It does work. Quite well in fact.
nzjames··on Where is the new Hacker News?
I definitely think HN has become somewhat of an Apple PR centre as of late. Anyone on here is surely going to get that news from another outlet aren't they?
nzjames··on Ask HN: hacker day jobs in NYC?
good luck with the novel. I was gutted bubble city was never finished. http://www.aaronsw.com/weblog/bubblecity1
nzjames··on Ask HN: maintaining a code portfolio and personal app store
I'm happy with the technical stuff. I've used Trac, BitBucket and tried Git Hub before. I haven't run Git on Dropbox but I could see how that makes the backed up repo nice and easy.

But making projects presentable to potential clients/users is where I'm coming up short.

nzjames··on Ask HN: What are your thoughts on this idea?
Will this not lead to a lot of spam? Maybe not on the scale of automated botnets but still someone spamming their friend list everyday.
nzjames··on Ask HN: Please review ebay mashup
not at all. you're hip and not afraid to publish subtle memes for the sake of others who get the joke.

If this just a fun mashup with no future use no loss. If it's a start of something bigger I got a bad first impression. Your not serious about the site.

I honestly thought you got xss until I saw the image was in img/smallpedo.

nzjames··on Ask HN: Please review ebay mashup
bad first impression.
nzjames··on Ask HN: Please review my new website
I'd drop the description on the Music/Movies overview page and add a recent/popular review. get the content of the site one step closer. when the user drills in then give them the description/synopsis.

Have faith in your content! Thats why you want people to visit.