Hacker News Reader

rocktronicaon Web Browsers on Video Game Consoles

Yeah, that's the first thing I thought of too. It came out in 1997 and predates all the Game Boy stuff. IIRC there was a "Game Boy don't TOUCH the net!" marketing campaign but I can't seem to find find it now. The commercial is a fun nostalgia trip: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y-ON6wxHtUE

Even if you got the extra modem gear, tho, the browser was text-only. I doubt many kids got it; I did not.

It was ambitious of Tiger (a movie-tie-in LCD game company) to try to rival the big dogs, and it makes sense but is a shame it couldn't. I'm sure there's a lesson in there somewhere.

rocktronicaon Ask HN: Recommend resources that helped your game dev journey?

If you'd like to get out of the weeds, "The Beauty of Games" by Frank Lantz (of Universal Paperclips fame) is a thought-provoking read. The basic premise is that games are the aesthetic experience of systems and reason, cause and effect. If dancing is your body's way to explore music, games are your brain's way to explore logic. A little academic, but pretty interesting!

The other thing I want to say is that game feedback should be taken with more than a grain of salt. The worst feedback I've ever received was on a handmade, physical roll-and-write that I gave someone for free. Gamer culture is strongly opinionated and quick to hyperbole... but not always right.

rocktronicaon Ask HN-Beginner Arduino Kits

Agreed with other commenters' advice to err towards good documentation. Don't just go for cheap.

Another consideration is community: I think the Adafruit guides (https://learn.adafruit.com/) are really great, especially for folks just starting out / who are more project-focused. Poke through there with your kid and see if anything sparks interest.

Shameless self-promo, if he's into music: I make an Arduino-compatible "synth" electronics kit. It does require soldering (so maybe isn't the best choice just yet) but is a nice step towards making something that looks like a real, finished product. https://www.oskitone.com/product/scout-synth-diy-electronics...

rocktronicaon Ask HN: What's your quarantine side project?

I've picked up indoor gardening and designed some 3D-printed, self-watering planters that screw into jars.

https://blog.tommy.sh/posts/adventures-in-self-watering-plan...

rocktronicaon Timelapse video with an iPhone and CLI

I was surprised this didn't already exist, so I made it... even though it's honestly just a wrapper around curl and ffmpeg!

rocktronicaon Amazon Echo Spot

Believe it or not, lots of folks use Youtube as a music player and just waste the video bandwidth

rocktronicaon Show HN: Logo Crunch – Multi-resolution logo maker

That would entail them permanently storing the images, which they probably don't want to do.

rocktronicaon Show HN: Logo Crunch – Multi-resolution logo maker

This is incredibly useful, regardless of the veracity of its "computer vision."

A technique that seems to work well for it with simple drawing style icons is to thicken and simplify as the image gets smaller, so it seems like the stroke of the drawing is consistent across sizes.

rocktronicaon Bunnie Huang’s “Hardware Hacker” book is in print

There are a lot of great photos and PCB closeups that obviously won't translate into narration.

rocktronicaon Facebook says it sold political ads to Russian company during 2016 election

Regardless of legality, it will be interesting to see how this is spun if/when Zuckerberg runs for public office.

rocktronicaon Al Gore's Home Energy Use Surges Up to 34 Times the National Average

http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php/National_Center_for_Pub...

Regardless of its veracity, I'd rather not have ExxonMobil-funded propaganda on HN.

rocktronicaon Ghost 1.0

Looks like a "paint" font on top of a filtered stock photo

https://blog.ghost.org/content/images/2017/07/DJI_0006-Edit....

rocktronicaon Ask HN: Share Your Raspberry Pi Project

I have three Pis currently "deployed":

1) Internet radio w/ an amplifier in a cigar box. It was a gift for my gf and only plays the station she listened to in college. https://github.com/rocktronica/curpi

2) Timed camera and GIF maker for my cat feeder. https://github.com/rocktronica/feedergif

3) OctoPrint server for my 3D printer http://octoprint.org/

[edit: formatting]

rocktronicaon Older fathers have 'geekier sons'

Sure seems like correlation to me.

Older fathers are more likely to have established careers, establishing higher socioeconomic status, affording a lifestyle that engenders "geekiness".

rocktronicaon Show HN: Monica, an open-source CRM to manage friends and family

This looks great, and I see the utility of it. Really, honestly, well done.

May I ask what made you settle on the name "Monica" instead of something more gender-neutral?

rocktronicaon Show HN: EE Concierge – Custom Hardware Parts On-Demand

Glad to see your concierge service decoupled from Upverter, as nice as Upverter is. It will make it easier to try w/o the full commitment of changing software.

rocktronicaon JQuery Transit - CSS3 animations for jQuery

Lazy, sure, but not always a worse experience for the end user.

Testing w/ Modernizr _will_ use client resources, and sometimes it's faster, cheaper, and less costly to make assumptions than run those tests.

Terrible case in point: "position:fixed". It's not supported in older iOS and IE6, and CSS fallbacks don't work. Testing for it w/ JS is too costly to be worth it, so UA checking is a better compromise. (That is, if it's mandatory to degrade well...)

rocktronicaon Dotfiles.github.com - A guide to dotfiles on GitHub

With respect, a guide to dotfiles should explain what dotfiles are.

rocktronicaon Crockford on Bootstrap's semicolon omission: “insanely stupid code”

Learning the minutiae of a language is important, sure, but I can't fathom why you'd willingly introduce unnecessary fragility or overthink into your codebase.

Ideally, your goal as a hacker is to make cool shit. Your goal is not syntax.

rocktronicaon Evolution of a Web Developer: From PHP Newbie To Python Ninja

Entirely agree. Sometimes real evolution is slightly horrifying. :)

rocktronicaon Tmpltr - jsFiddle clone for realtime JSON templating

Thanks! Took me about two weekends.

rocktronicaon Browser Market Pollution: IE[x] is the new IE6

Kinda sorta.

"Edge" rendering on X browsers is still X different ways for all those stuck-in-time browsers to decide what "edge" meant at the time of their release or last update.

That meta tag is a good practice but not the ultimate solution.

rocktronicaon The Milo Criterion

That's not the point and you know it.

http://www.douglasadams.com/dna/pedants.html

rocktronicaon Show HN: Pulse — A simple pulsating indicator.

CSS beats graphics because it can be changed programatically. Browser supporting, _all_ the parameters can be changed to suit the rest of the UI. If the designer writes their CSS in browser like I do, it's instantaneous and immensely powerful.

With images, it's, well, you know, slower.

rocktronicaon Remembering a relationship, one chat at a time

Same reaction here.

Actually made me remove a filter I had to trash all chats. Saving, resources allowing, from here on out.

rocktronicaon Captchas To Keep Idiots Out Of Comment Threads

And that the question randomizes pretty well. Otherwise posts could be automated.

rocktronicaon Show HN: My WWDC-inspired project. A Markdown editor for Lion

Wondering how this will stack up to emdee.app (still in development).

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=foE-dXgTHoU

rocktronicaon The Mythical Man-Finger

Fair enough, but I think you'd appreciate the point more if you were imagining Zork instead of Linux.

rocktronicaon How Do You Stack Up Against Other Developers?

Please don't make me create yet-another-account to see a number.

rocktronicaon The idea ain't the hard part. One writer finds out hard it is to create an app

"The Dunning-Kruger effect is a cognitive bias in which unskilled people make poor decisions and reach erroneous conclusions, but their incompetence denies them the metacognitive ability to recognize their mistakes."

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dunning%E2%80%93Kruger_effect