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sandrae

34 karma · joined September 14, 2011

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sandrae··on Learning another language may be one of the best ways to keep your brain healthy
I logged in just to second your recommendation. If you want to learn Spanish (or or French) 'Dreaming Spanish' is just excellent.

In addition it seems to be a good way to get rid of short video addiction. I don't use instagram or tiktok myself, but have a friend who did. Now she watches Dreaming Spanish instead. She is eight month in. Her husband just told me the whole family was flabbergasted when they where in Spain this summer and she answered in Spanish to a waiter in a restaurant.

My 10 year old daughter uses it, too. She likes to watch the Let's play videos and has watched the Stardew Valley series twice. So thats 66 hours x 2 = 130 hours watching Spanish videos. Her vocabulary is now a bit strange for a beginner, though. We recently walked through a garden and she was pointing out la regadera, la semilla, plantar algo.

sandrae··on Don't avoid workplace politics
So, since people will play the games anyway, companies should design the office politics in such a way that the company makes more money, and therefore it can afford to pay the team members more money too. Everyone in the company is therefore better off. Did I get that right?

How would such a positive-sum game look? I'm lacking imagination because I've never worked in an environment with such a positive game.

sandrae··on My Microsoft Experience (2013)
The friend said "No loss for Microsoft", showing that he cares about Microsoft.

A real friend might have said "From my perspective you could improve as a programmer. Your weakest point is field x and therefore I recommend that you read the following book."

sandrae··on Pencil – Multi-platform GUI Prototyping and Wireframing
I've been using Pencil for some years now to pre-visualize new features for our Saas app. It's a great piece of software. Before that I used Balsamiq mockups and I'm glad I changed over to Pencil.
sandrae··on I need a product
Onenote will give you a diff. And it has some hotkeys. It's a good program, but in its core it is made to be used with a mouse - so it might not be what you are looking for.
sandrae··on Ask HN: How do you manage your personal paper documents over the years?
I have an USB stick for every year. The USB stick has a metal surface and I write the name of the year on the stick.
sandrae··on Ask HN: Are tablets worth owning?
We own two tablets for businesss use - an iPad and a Google Nexus 7.

The iPad 4 is quite heavy, so I mostly use the Nexus 7 for private stuff.

- Quickly checking information on the web if all computers are turned off. - Adding listings to our local Craigslist equivalent. This is so much faster if you don't need to transfer pictures from the camera to the computer and then upload the stuff. - Playing games that are made for tablets. - Reading websites for fun while lying in bed. - Showing pictures and funny videos to friends.

I prefer the tablet over the smartphone for this because of the screen size.

sandrae··on Ask HN: How would you change your life if there was a basic income?
I imagine this would be similar to the life in the GDR.

- I would invest in my house or flat and probably buy a second house or a vaction home to combat inflation. - Rarer items would be only available for bartering, so I would spend a lot of time exchanging stuff for other stuff like the people in the GDR did. Probably always driving around with a hanger, just in case something becomes available that I need for my house. - I would learn a trade to have something that other people want in exchange for the things I want (e.g. sanitary installations, woodworking). - You didn't state in your questions if the basic income is world wide, so I assume it is only in my country and I'm not allowed to leave (like the GDR had to prevent their people from leaving). So I would take a lot of vacations seeing old castles and hiking. I would never fly again, always going by car or train.

sandrae··on YouTube Founders to Sell Delicious, a Social Bookmarking Site
I migrated from delicious to pinboard.in two years ago and I can wholeheartedly recommend it.
sandrae··on Ask HN: Do you have a side project you want to sell?
We would like to sell our casual PC game Gemsweeper - released in 2007.

http://www.lobstersoft.com/gemsweeper/

It's a nonogram puzzle game and it made a fair amount of money on portal sites like Bigfishgames and Real Arcade. Since the market has changed a lot and it is not promoted any longer, it now only makes a couple of hundred dollars a month.

Initially we intended to release a sequel and even created great new levels. Since our other software business is quite time consuming, we haven't worked on the game since 2008.

sandrae··on Stock Photos That Don’t Suck
I'm 36 and I've already decided on my brand of toothpaste, toilet paper detergents years ago. I will not buy another brand as long as these brand exists with the same price and quality level. I would be a very bad target for advertising.
sandrae··on Startup sales negotiations 101 – how to respond to discount inquiries
It's my job to to create the quotes and offers for our SaaS software. The tip in this article does not match with my personal experience.

This is something that happened to us some time ago: Someone phoned us asking for an offer. We told him to try the software instead to see if the company likes it. He said that he will do that.

A week later we followed up with him. He said that his boss, for whom he collected the offers, had a meeting to which he wasn't even invited. In that meeting, his boss and some other managers compared all the offers they received. There was no offer from us because we told them to try the software instead. According to the person on the phone, the managers just looked at the printed quotes. They picked the three that seemed best to them and proceeded with that short list.

Since that day we always send out a standard offer when someone asks for it. Of course this quote is changed later if the company has needs that are different from the standard.

Often the person collecting the offers is not the person trying the software, but an intern who is pre-selecting for someone else.

If you don't want to be crossed out in that list the intern gives to the manager as "didn't submit an offer", you need to submit something.

sandrae··on Show HN: Codewars
I just finished the Javascript and JQuery course at codecademy.com three weeks ago and since then I take challenges at coderbyte.com to continue learning.

So I was very interested in your site and signed up. Here are some of my first observations and comparisons:

- codecademy.com lists lots of males and females from young to old, from different countries with all kind of professions on their Success Stories pages. I felt very welcome their site. The name of your site and the constant use of the word Kata indicate to me that your audience are young males. As a woman in my thirties I don't feel I fit on your site. It seems a bit to aggressive to me.

- The second Javascript problem description was not very good. The second problem basically says "Something is wrong - correct it". I like clearer instructions like "write a function to reverse a string".

- Compared to codecademy.com the site took longer to check my code.

- I have no problem giving my e-mail address to anybody that provides a service I want to try. I like to get the onboarding mails from codecademy.com and think they should send out more because they are motivating. So I think that it is good that you are asking for my e-mail address and I hope you make good use of it by sending me interesting stuff. If not, I just filter you with a click.

I'm going to spend some time on your site. If you want further feedback, just send me a message.

sandrae··on Ask HN: What services are you paying for every month and how much?
- 30-80 Euro a month for a German telephone answering service. Best decision ever. - a book keep service, the price depends on the hours worked in that month, a couple of hundred Euro