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woolcap

108 karma · joined September 3, 2014

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woolcap··on The Dawn of a New Era for Supernova 1987a (2017)
Brings new meaning and scale to the idea of a RUD.
woolcap··on Double-Entry Bookkeeping for Hackers
I learned double-entry bookkeeping from the GnuCash "Tutorial and Concepts Guide"

https://www.gnucash.org/viewdoc.phtml?rev=5&lang=C&doc=guide

woolcap··on Ask HN: How do I balance all my 200 interests in life?
You could consider ditching (most of) the power tools and just do hand-tool woodworking. Much quieter, less sawdust and mess, relaxing (usually) and much lower possibility of losing a finger.
woolcap··on Made an app that summarizes recent popular stories from Hacker News
Found this that summarizes comments as well as the article: https://hackyournews.com/
woolcap··on Made an app that summarizes recent popular stories from Hacker News
Particularly if it summarized the key points of arguments on both sides of any debates.
woolcap··on Vincent van Gogh's paintings and drawings
What I like about Van Gogh's work, is the 'vibrant energy' in his paintings. But I had to experience his work in person to come to appreciate and perceive that. Prior to my first in-person experience with his paintings, I was in the 'meh' camp. It was a similar story for me with the work of Georgia O'Keefe.
woolcap··on Sold a Story: How Teaching Kids to Read Went So Wrong
An excellent book. I taught all of my kids to read with it. All are strong readers. By lesson 70 or so, most of them had caught the gist and didn't need to finish it out. Highly recommended.
woolcap··on Show HN: Sail a historical full-rigged ship in real global weather
Also recommend A Sea of Words, which is a lexicon of the nautical terminology from the books.
woolcap··on SEC charges the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints
Having lived through the dot-com bust, my wife and I around the same time (20+ years ago), began to set some funds aside for the "rainy day" of not if, but _when_ I might lose my job in tech, given the often volatile nature of the industry. We've been fortunate not to have to need to dip into those funds for that purpose over that time, but I think it's a wise practice, one that the church teaches, and follows.
woolcap··on SEC charges the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints
Some info about how the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints uses its donations:

https://newsroom.churchofjesuschrist.org/article/humanitaria...

I suspect most of its investments are targeted towards the same ends.

woolcap··on Show HN: Interact with the terminal in plain English using GPT-3
Ask GPT-3 for its opinion, "does this command look potentially dangerous?"
woolcap··on Ask HN: Has anyone here turned around their life in their 40s?
Another vote for CBT. CBT has made a big difference for me, helping me to find my way out of some very negative patterns of thinking, and allowing me to feel real joy, despite a number of ongoing difficult circumstances in my life. I'd recommend it to just about anyone, at any age.

I didn't go through CBT with a therapist. I just read the first few chapters of The Feeling Good Handbook, then tried to establish a habit of confronting my negative feelings, and the thoughts that were feeding them by identifying the distortions in those thoughts.

YMMV, but it may be worth a try.

woolcap··on Ask HN: Comment here about whatever you're passionate about at the moment
For a few years I've been learning about woodworking. I'm particularly interested in hand-tool woodworking (planes and chisels and mallets and hand-saws and such). I've enjoyed restoring old tools that are rusty and roached out, and bringing them into working order again to give them a new life. Nothing like using a well-tuned 100-year-old Stanley #5 to get a glass-like surface on a piece of wood. Also love woodturning, mostly making bowls. Turning a chunk of wood into a beautiful, useful object is deeply satisfying.

I recently took some small-craft sailing lessons. The balance and flow of wind in the sail, tension on the sheet, sitting on the thwart, with one hand on the tiller, and gliding over the water with the setting sun turning the sky golden, was an amazing experience.

So now I'm looking to combine the two interests, and have plans to build and sail my own small wooden boat.

woolcap··on Ask HN: Favorite Thing Built to Last?
I've rescued a few Stanley planes from the rust pile. Bringing them back to life and use is a joy. 100+ years old, and with cleanup and honing, can still take wispy-thin shavings, leaving a glassy-smooth surface on wood.
woolcap··on Ask HN: Neurological Effects of Computer Programming?
I once had a dream where I could 'pipe' physical objects through a bash command-line...
woolcap··on The Colorado River is shrinking
nit-pick, but only a tiny portion of Utah is in the Mojave desert.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mojave_Desert

woolcap··on Cărturești Carusel Bookstore - now one of the most beautiful bookstores
This bookstore's cousin, Cărtureşti Verona, is also a gem, https://carturesti.ro/librarii
woolcap··on As U.S. schools shuttered, student mental health cratered, survey finds
I find it repugnant to define the 'worth' of an individual solely in terms of 'economic output.' The elderly have much to offer society. I think of my own parents, now into their 80s. They planned well, are not an economic burden to their children, and continue to contribute in meaningful ways to their family and their community. Any 'burden' they may be in my life is far outweighed by what they sacrificed and provided for me throughout my life so far.
woolcap··on Athenian Democracy in the Political Imagination
I assume it's an argument of how you define 'socialism', but in my mind, the body count and accompanying oppression, enslavement, genocide and theft committed by regimes with socialist roots doesn't exactly inspire much confidence in what it has to offer.
woolcap··on Kube Doom, Kill Kubernetes Pods Using Id's Doom
Reminds me of http://psdoom.sourceforge.net/, from way back when, using 'Doom' as an interface to manage Linux processes.
woolcap··on Old, Good Database Design
Just about anything written by C. J. Date would be worth your while in this regard. It will give you a solid grounding in the relational model, which you can then apply to any RDBMS. Here's a good list to start with:

- Database in Depth, O'Reily (2005)

- Relational Theory for Computer Professionals, O'Reilly (2013)

- SQL and Relational Theory, 3rd Ed, O'Reily (2015)

- Database Design and Relational Theory, 2nd Ed, Apress (2019)

woolcap··on Consider getting a “DIY” degree online instead of a traditional CS major
I found an Anthropology class very eye-opening, helpful to become aware of one's own ethnocentrism.

I'd echo the vote for Physics.

woolcap··on Cloudflare was down
Redundant DNS is possible, but challenging when you're making use of features like geo DNS that don't lend themselves to easy replication via zone transfer.
woolcap··on Largest Known Maya Structure Found
I'd point out that the article referenced above comes from a group that could hardly be said to be 'dispassionate observers' themselves.
woolcap··on Giving every IPv6 address a name
Kinda like https://what3words.com/. Question is, how long would the string of words have to be to enable such a scheme for the entire IPv6 address space?
woolcap··on Comparing Database Types
One way to think about it is with a mathematical relation, like 'X > Y'. A relational database relation representing this relation would consist of a header tuple, <X, Y>, and a set of tuples whose values satisfy the relation, such as <10, 2>, <8, 3>, <9, 4>. In more common terms, the rows of this table would contain pairs of numbers in which the value of the X attribute is greater than the value of the Y attribute. This table describes the relation(ship) of certain pairs of numbers.

"Each tuple in a relation represents an n-ary relationship...among a set of n values..., and the full set of tuples in a given relation represents the full set of such relationships that happen to exist at some given time--and, mathematically speaking, that's a relation."[1]

[1] Chris Date, Database in Depth, page 46

woolcap··on Comparing Database Types
> Relational databases get their name from the fact that relationships can be defined between tables.

Relational databases get their name from the mathematical concept of a relation, used by the Relational Model, "an approach to managing data using a structure and language consistent with first-order predicate logic, first described in 1969 by English computer scientist Edgar F. Codd, where all data is represented in terms of tuples, grouped into relations." [1][2] (emphasis added)

Recommended Reading: Database In Depth, by Chris Date.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Relational_model

[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Relation_(database)

woolcap··on Software Architecture Is Overrated, Clear and Simple Design Is Underrated
"I ignored..." = I was aware, but consciously chose not to address it, but perhaps softer than, "I consciously chose not to address it. "I ignored the fact that the sun was out, and returned from the beach sunburned." (I knew the sun would burn me, but went out anyways, with perhaps a shade of not realizing how much I would get burned.)

"I was ignorant of..." = I was unaware. "I was ignorant of the fact that the sun causes sunburn, and returned from the beach sunburned." (I didn't realize the sun would burn me.

woolcap··on Why I’m Learning Perl 6
The Perl 5 equivalent is Damian Conway's Perl Best Practices