ptn

Contacts autocompletion - cool. The lack of this feature is what kept me away from text-only email clients.

The beauty of it is that it's always "today".

I'm thankful for having the opportunity to chase my dreams, instead of being forced to steal or worse for mere survival.

3 times this year? It's 3 times a week for me.

Seconded. Word processor isn't any better than text editor.

I know there's stuff out there that I won't get, like Google Voice or anything with SMS notifications, but all I asked was a 2-line description.

I wonder where you got "entitlement to free services" from.

I live in a country with one of the slowest Internet connections out there, I'd really rather read a 2-line paragraph description than watch a 45-sec video.

Besides, YouTube is blocked in most offices - like mine.

Gateway - Frederik Pohl

Rails 3 guides

As long as you say interesting stuff...

OTOH, if you say stuff that's considered interesting here, you are probably not trying to sucker us into reviewing your app.

pg: would you show an example of an impressive answer to the question about hacking a system to one's advantage?

Nope, sorry.

Job: SugarCRM customization for a client. Own: building a website for file administration and sharing, to learn Rails 3

I'm in. Should we set a fixed date? I propose the 28th, last Sunday, so we have more time to iron out the last details and to check each other's apps.

Keyword: "hopes"

So long you are not completely, entirely alone, you are fine. Know yourself, accept who you are and work to get a comfortable environment instead of trying to change; never mind if that's now how things are "supposed" to be and forget about those pesky extroverts.

"Programming in anger" is a very odd way to put it. I think it's best to say "programming because you need it".

CentOS is on 2.4

A little off-topic: I love how in the side panel of the page the sub-title fades in and out as you scroll.

Yes, but that's not equivalent to Esc, use this:

inoremap <C-c> <Esc>

One thing that continues to impress me is how much bigger than popular belief Vim is. There is a plethora of options you can set in your vimrc file (just now I found out about wildignore, and I'm kind of a Vim addict) and there are fucking lot of commands (try [I ), and that's not considering Ex mode.

Customization is way easier than in Emacs, you just unzip an archive in your .vim dir and (99% of the time) it works. I have plugins that do everything I've seen in Emacs that has to do with code, and then some.

Vim is no more the tiny start-quick-edit-close editor that it used to be.

Edit: I don't want to start a holy war here. Emacs is great, and I in fact have it opened right now. It's just that it's supposed to be able to do amazing stuff that Vim can't, I'm saying that that's probably still true, but to a way lesser level than before.

A bit off-topic: that page looks awful.

Commiting the CSS and HTML for all his webapps.

My problem with riding my bike to the office is that I arrive all sweaty. I can change my T-shirt (I don't have to wear a suit), but I'll still smell afterwards.

Counter-productive byproduct: I'm gonna be checking my email until I see that alert come up...

I'm about to learn Rails 3, please, which parts of it you think are complex, over-designed and over-engineered?

He probably even read it here and then twitted it.

I'm confused about Bundler and rvm's per-project ruby and gemsets, what's the difference?

If you have nobody to practice with, you are gonna get nowhere. If you don't know anybody who speaks the language, can't get reading material written in it or don't have a TV channel in it, it's gonna be a rough one. You don't learn a language by reading a book, you do it by using it. Ultimately, if the language isn't useful to you, don't learn it (useful as in you plan to travel there or do business with them).

Unless you want company, don't take group classes in an institute. It's a waste of money and time, because you learn at the other's speed; schools are only useful if you need to take an exam and get a diploma.

You are way better off getting a couple of books with grammar and tapes that you can play over and over again until you finally get it. This step is cheaper than an institute. After a while (not that long), hire a private teacher who can correct your pronunciation, answer your questions, teach you about idioms and slang and, if he's a native, tell you cool stuff about the country (which will wet your curiosity and thus keep you going). This step is more expensive. Beware natives who aren't teachers, they are only useful to get some practice (after you know a little and can actually have a conversation).

Use flash cards to learn new words. These are pretty useful and pretty much mandatory when learning to read and write Chinese and other languages with weird characters - like Arabic.

Grab a regular index card and cut it in half (or more if you are pinching pennies); write on one side the meaning of the word, on the other side, write it in your target language and then upside-down write it's pronunciation. This way, in one card you have the writing, pronunciation and meaning of a word. Keep a batch of them in you pocket/wallet at all times; to practice, simply grab some, read one of the sides and: a) if you read it in the target language, make sure you pronounce it correctly and know it's meaning (this is why you write the pronunciation upside-down, so you can read the word and test if you can pronounce it without peeking); b) if you read the other side, make sure you can pronounce the word and write it correctly.

(If you are learning a language with a Latin alphabet, make sure you use different colors for each side of the card, so you can tell them apart and sort them quickly.)

Use drills. These are exercises developed during WWII to teach Japanese and German to Americans when time was short and teachers were the enemy.

There's 3 kinds of drills:

a) Patterned response drills: ask a question, answer it; change some word in the question and ask it again, answer using the same pattern than before, but with a change that reflects the one made in the question. Example (in Spanish): 1. ¿Ya comiste? (Q) Estoy comiendo ahora mismo (A) ; 2. ¿Ya corriste? (Q) Estoy corriendo ahora mismo (A)

b) Substitution: Given a sentence and a replacement word, re-write the sentence by correctly using the replacement (you have to know what to substitute). Example (Spanish): 1. José va a comprar un carro (sentence), avión (replacement) -> José va a comprar un avión (result); 2. José va a comprar un carro (sentence), nosotros (replacement) -> Nosotros vamos a comprar un carro (result).

c) Situational: Imagine a situation where you need to chat with someone else, and go ahead and write that conversation down. It's like writing an essay.

Do a couple thousand of drills and you are ready for anything :-)

I can recommend a guy called John Berardi, specifically these 2 articles:

http://www.johnberardi.com/articles/nutrition/masseating_rl_...

http://www.johnberardi.com/articles/nutrition/7habits.htm

Productivity pr0n - it´s the number 1 productivity killer