soc

Happens to a lot of us.

Lately just for fun I been working with unreal engine. You can do some really cool stuff quickly and customize in C++.

Now that VR is becoming in bigger and bigger might be marketable some day. That startup magicleap seems to be doing lot of stuff around this area.

Can pair unreal with houdini and do some python scripting / 3d math learning.

nice talk... One question, he mentioned he didn't have any money but then said he bootstrapped his first company ? How did he live for the first year or so. Would like to hear more about the challenges.

Regardless of hacks to make real progress you will need to spend a lot of time. Here's some quick tips...

    1. Move most of your media consumption over to the new language.  Movies/books/internet/twitter/etc..

    2. Plan on an hour a day of active study 

(can be 30mins morning/night). And atleast an hour of non active study (listening to some dialogue, media consumption, etc)

    3. Learning phrases is much more effective than learning words, although eventually you will need to do both

    4. Learning by audio is much better than reading 

atleast in the beginning (for an advanced learner reading would make more sense to get more advanced content)

5. My suggestion is after you get 200 or so basic vocab and phrases down then make some short dialogues of things you want to know how to say / converse. Get those translated or checked by a native (lang-8, etc). Create an audio recording of those and listen and repeat over and over every day till you have deeply learned them. They will become automatic and you will be "fluent" at those.

6. Rinse / Repeat.

yea, couldn't agree more. For most employee's and employers alike it takes 3 months to really bond with the company.

Can see where both sides are coming from but sounds like they lost a good one.

feel free to shoot me a message.

5000? I have close to 8000 in japanese and I consider myself still a beginner.

Native is at least 20000-25000.

As long as you are continuing to learn then 5000 is a nice start, but you are not going to read novels and speak about broad topics with that vocabulary.

yep, i did. i found out that you go from $ to 0. And it's very hard to make the first .01 cent. But you will learn a lot, so take it as having fun for a year and learning more than you learned in Univ. and you will be ok.

Actually I wish our profession wasn't just 0 or big chance payout but had some in between too.

Probably learning a new language. Wanted to develop a JP site so after 2 years and lots of studying starting to get a handle on the lang, and having lots of fun doing it. Very rewarding so far.

Financially, probably China. Only problem is can't convert RMB -> USD so it's like monopoly money. Maybe one day can buy gold and send it over on a container vessel :)

Very interesting... I have a friend in china that produces steel beams for the comm. construction industry. I really have no idea about how to sell though so probably nothing I can do with it. Also, I think you need a import license from the govt. atleast for steel.

yea, I agree with remember the kanji by Heisig for kanji study and also lots of reading.

Anyone taking the JLPT this year ? I'm skipping jlpt3 this year and hoping for 2 in the future.

On a startup related note. This site http://www.japonin.com/ has a really nice interactive chat for teaching. Will really improve your speaking. Would be nice to see other languages taking off using a similar design.

Also seems the lots of new language related startups are doing quite well... lang-8, smartfm, and japanesepod101 to name a few.

そですね、僕も

I agree. When I first meet someone over the phone or in person I'm in a social mood and prefer to talk rather than do a code dance for them.

Once I'm alone at my desk though it's easy to get down to business.

Think it would be cool if companies just said show up to work, and you work for free for the first week. After that both parties can decide if they want to continue.

I'm about 8 months in on learning Japanese. I pretty much follow the method of alljapaneseallthetime(.com). Learning grammer, kanji, and set sentences. An SRS program like anki helps a lot with these. Then just immerse yourself (tv, music, books, games). Couple of helpful sites out there too (smart.fm, japanesepod101)

What is really needed is to have all vehicles, roads, lights, and stop signs linked together.

For example, a car should refuse to let the driver proceed thru a light/stop sign unless it's clear. Imagine all the money that would be saved from property/medical damages.

I was worried about that too, but yes it's allowed.

I had a similar background and it took just a couple of weeks to get the basics down. I would just start by trying some of the online tutorials for obj-c/iphone and/or an iphone sdk book.

Start writing a few simple apps and you will be up to speed in no time.

Also, if you are interested in gaming the cocos2d library is very helpful.

Sounds like a good candidate for a new app. After my game is finished will take a look :)

make my first 1$ after 6 mos. development (1500 hours):)

yea, good idea. We were planning on including the postal code in the post flow so once we have that people could browse based on proximity.

True, I've had some interest from some regional car dealers so definitely going narrower is an option. To really use the social features you have to be logged in and have a profile in mylistbite, but still want to expand the social network part. Also, trying to include it in facebook as an app which hopefully will give some traction.

True for things like games you may not care, but for furniture, cars, and personals you probably do care. I think we will probably just show a map in the future and you can pick which region/town you in from there.

good question. We are trying to be more of a social classifieds site where for example users can chat online with the seller or private message them. Sellers can also upload a profile so buyers may feel more comfortable with them.

Also, we are aggregating other sites such as cars.com on the us site and other local classifieds data, so it's easier to find stuff in one place.

But definitely that where the challenge lies.

Thx, For the UK site we picked locations based on area and population, but definitely can refine it some.

ha ha, good article.

I had it done about 5 years ago and it was the best money I ever spent. Not sure why people say go for the best Dr.. What you really need to do is go for the best laser as the laser does all the work. The Dr. just swabs your eyes and lets the machine do the work.

It could be an advantage. It's nice to have one person in the family with a stable income you can fall back on, while trying to get things off the ground.