squeakynick

Years ago, when recruiting for a tech support position, I had an agency send a bunch of 'pre-screened and qualified' candidates through. Most were fine, and we could start straight away with conversations about debugging AUTOEXEC.BAT and CONFIG.SYS (this probably dates the time period!) One candidate, however, looked like a deer-in-headlights, and was clearly out of his depth. In the end, I asked "There is a computer in this room, can you point to it?", and he sheepishly pointed to the fridge!

I felt really bad for the poor guy; it was not his fault. We finished the interview early, had a friendly chat, and I sent him on his way with some bus fares.

I then got on the phone and tore the agency a new one. They had wasted his time, and my time, by 'doctoring' the qualifications. I never used them again.

I'll plug my own -- http://datagenetics.com/blog.html and one I enjoy -- https://www.redblobgames.com/

Author of article here. Thanks for kinds comments.

Yes, it's possible to stabilize bottle rockets with fins (to adjust the CP), but as the article hints, the stick is multipurpose in helping with launch, as well as stability (plus being easy to manufacture with low precision).

I just published a follow-up article talking about bigger rockets. http://datagenetics.com/blog/july22020/index.html

Aeronautics is a complex science and my articles are intended to pique interest, not oversimplify or belittle. It's a hard balance to explain things in a few hundred words. I hope you enjoy them and, if there is interest, they become the catalyst for you to learn more. It's a fascininating subject.

Nerdy articles about math, coding, and data science, in a style as homage to Martin Gardner.

http://datagenetics.com/blog.html

I write the blog: http://DataGenetics.com

1. Process: I keep a task list (using google tools) with a list of topic ideas. When I think of something I want to write about, or find interesting links, I place them there. There's typically about two dozen ideas at any time incubating.

2. Start: I started the blog about a dozen years ago as a way to add depth to my website that was the front-end for my consulting business. I stopped consulting shortly after starting, and am now retired, but I keep the blog up on that site; I've built a following. It was easy to start. Ideas are easy; the hard part is finding the free time to write!

3. Motivation. I love doing it. I get pleasure from writing. When I was a kid, I loved reading the works of Martin Gardner. I hope my blog could be seen some way as an homage to his works.

4. No real struggles, but I made a conscious choice to not enable comments on my site. Comments will get you down. Everyone is a critic. Jerks will say "that's not special, I could have don that" (hmmm, but you didn't). My email address is not hard to find on the site if you want to get in contact with me. Don't fret too much about publishing; do what is right for you. There is a whole spectrum of 'advice' from people saying regular rapid cadence (even if you have nothing to say), through to only publish gems. I typically average about one post a week. Some of my posts are lightweight, others are heavyweights.

Writing simple multiplayer games using just Notepad++ as my dev environment. Two games so far:

Multi-Armed-Bandit http://datagenetics.com/blog/may12020/index.html

Space Miner http://datagenetics.com/blog/april12020/index.html

I write about math, coding, and general geekery in a style similar to Martin Gardner. http://www.datagenetics.com/blog.html

Half of these designs are simply scaled up drones which, according to simple physics and engineering, is the wrong direction.

Details: http://datagenetics.com/blog/february62019/index.html

How can organisations this large get it so wrong? When is someone going to tell them that the Emperor is not wearing any clothes?

If we are allowed to self promote, then I'll put forward my blog http://datagenetics.com/blog.html

There's currently about 360 articles about math, science, programming, data-mining, geekery ... in style similar to a hero of mine, the late Martin Gardner.

I make about $50-$70/month from Adsense on my blog. I use a single Auto ad unit in the middle of each article. It would be nice if it were more. They payout every couple of months when the balance gets over $100. When they payout I get a 'report' that tells me they reduced my payout because of 'invalid traffic' (with no details about what/how/when). This deduction varies from about 5-20% of the payout.

It depends on how you intend to 'score' the estimate.

Are you looking for the answer that is the 'most likely', or one that has the 'lowest least squared error', or maybe one that is 'unbiased' (mean error)?

http://datagenetics.com/blog/march22014/index.html

Thanks for the compliment. </blush>

It will also turn pedestrians into jerks! http://datagenetics.com/blog/january42017/index.html

You're right. I'll fix this later this afternoon! Thanks. /\/ick

I write the blog http://datagenetics.com/blog.html

In 2016, it delivered 4.3 Million PVs

I have a single Google AdSense advert on most pages and revenue generated in 2016 was $1,124.95

It pays for hosting, and the occasional steak dinner, but no, it's not a fulltime job :)

(Author here)

Matt, I'm very sorry. It was a genuine mistake. I always try hard to attribute sources (as you can see from the references in the doc, and on the couple of hundred other articles on my blog). It was nothing personal, it was an oversight :)

I've corrected this now on the site. Sorry again. Thanks for bringing this to my attention.

Regards

/\/ick

Awesome article. I just read with my morning coffee, and I have a big grin.

I’m happy to share my data too. I’ve been blogging for half a dozen years at http://datagenetics.com/blog.html and have slowly built my traffic up to about 300k PV a month.

A couple of years ago, I installed a single Google Adense skyscraper advert on each page. As others have mentioned, it doesn’t pay much more than a couple of beers a week. On a good month I’ll generate about $100/month from these adverts (which is, at least, enough to cover hosting costs).

I’ve had an RSS feed forever, I’m not sure it does a lot. I’ve recently put up a link allowing people to sign up for a newsletter. This mailing list has grown to about 750 recipients. Open rates on mailings are 30%-40% and click-through rate has a higher variance and ranges from 8%-20% (If you are going to experiment with email, I highly recommend a product called Sendy, it works great). Of course, I have a Facebook page to promote each article, and I also tweet a link to each article (where I have just a couple of thousand followers). The biggest generator of traffic is being featured on places like here on Hacker News, Reddit, or being featured on one of the large portals/news sites; these bring supernovae spikes in traffic for the time the links are in the sun. I also get a non-trivial amount of traffic from localized versions of my pages; People seem to like to translate my articles into foreign languages and usually put link-back credits, which is how I find out (I guess there could be people who do it without giving credit, and for those, I’m just ignorant about!)

I’ve embedded the occasional link to Amazon to allow users to purchase, if I mentioned a book I like. Amazon’s affiliate program gives me a small percentage cut of anything a user buys within a short time after following the link of my page. It works, and I get some revenue, but in total, it’s not yet broken $100 total lifetime earnings. As regards content, I try to publish a new article every week.

Bottom line - until I can get, at least, two orders of magnitude increase in traffic (or CPM), it will remain a hobby 

Thanks for bringing back so many fond memories of the Beeb. Does you mother know you're doing this?

Anyone else remember ILTDN and what it stands for?

Yes, it's true. I did use curly braces! Well spotted :)

These pictures were taken from my visit six years ago.

Haunting is too weak an adjective to describe the experience.

Are we allowed to mention our own blogs? :) http://datagenetics.com/blog.html

No indication is given about the next to fire (at least that was never implied, or explicitly mentioned), it's about the probability. The shaded red disks simply show which chambers might have rounds in, and which might be blank. Rather that enumerate all possible combination of the "6 choose n", I showed the canonical form of "two together" (of which there are 6 cases), "one chamber inbetween" (ditto) ... etc

I tried to make that clear with the phrase "without loss of generality"

He's also the mathematician who worked on the Manhattan Project and was asked to confirm the calculations that setting off the first test blast would not create a fireball that would burn up all the oxygen on the planet!

Try it out; select an article from here ...

http://datagenetics.com/blog.html

Shameless plug :)

I'm embarrassed to say that I still hand write my blog directly in HTML using Notepad++ and manually FTP changes to the hosting company. Most of my blog is static HMTL, with a smidgen of script for analytics or occasional interaction. Every now and then I'll use some light PHP (typically when I need interaction with a database on the server).

Didn't "The Terminator" use 6502?

Case closed :)

I guess both of you are right. But then even this is open to the side attack if someone looks over your shoulder and views the state of the coins and knows the protocol :)

I wrote the example thinking that people were filling in the survey in private (sort of like you, probably, do when voting).

Anyway, you get the concept :)

/\/ick

I thought I was adding discussion. My point was that it's about business execution, and that at the end of the day success will be measured by sales and not about people saying "But this is a better product". It's the tastes of the fish, not the tastes of the fisherman, and there is more to product and desire than the tangible parts.

I wrote this down as an essay. I thought it easier to post a link rather than regurgitate the same text. I'm sorry if I offended.