NoBSWebDesign's comments

Backblaze. Very easy and well integrated into Mac OSX system preferences.

This is great. I have already setup my couple-page-long capistrano scripts to setup my slices, but this would have definitely prevented me from needing to do that.

I'd also like to see a munin package install (with Rails-specific plugins). Does this use Passenger for Rails installation?

I built a predictive model for finding the maximum temperatures of the core components of heavy-duty alternators, which cut the alternator testing cycle for the biggest Tier 1 automotive supplier in the world down from 3 months to about a day and a half. Two PhD's had been trying for 2 years before me to accomplish this. It was meant to be an educational exercise, but last I heard, they were still using it to get new business.

Working on http://www.ratemystudentrental.com and a new tool that stemmed from our internal systems, http://www.leadnuke.com

I'd recommend keeping "kick-ass" on the homepage if it reflects your, and thus your company's, attitude.

I recently (about 4 months ago) quit my job as a Marketing Engineer, which I had taken when I graduated with Mechanical and Electrical Engineering degrees. I am now supporting myself full-time with my consultancy while I work on my startup (http://www.ratemystudentrental.com), which offers a Web-based rating system for student rental housing, with a management system for landlords and a private-label housing portal for universities.

I also just recently launched a new service that spawned from an internal RateMyStudentRental system I had developed, after a few people who incendentally saw me using it just "had to have it." And that one is called http://www.leadnuke.com.

I'm also trying to finish getting our band's first album mastered (just finished recording and producing), so we can post it on our site for downloading (http://www.moirocks.net).

And my new goal I just set for the next six months is to transition from running in typical cross-trainers to being able to run barefoot :-)

Two things strike me about this question.

1. The fact that you're asking others if you should give up lead me to advise that you probably should. In my own business, I'm too convinced that I have something that works and will continue to improve to listen to anyone telling me I should give up. This can be both a very good and a very bad trait to have. But if I do end up a financial failure, I neither ask nor give any apologies.

2. If it is a business worth risking your financial stability for, couldn't you find a co-founder to help share the burden of both cost and responsibility? This could provide you enough resources to continue on for a year before attaining profitability.

I would rather replace my trackpad with a numeric pad.

I usually try not to compare myself to others too much (too many variables in life experiences make such comparisons difficult anyway). But if anything, I feel superior for having accomplished what I have with graduating from a "no-name-brand" school.

I really am curious as to how you arrived at this equation. It is a vast over-simplification of the problem.

The equation I came up with is as follows:

y1 = [l/(2b(1/tan(a)^2 - cos(a))] * [x - l/cos(a) + b/sin(a)] + l/cos(a) + b/sin(a)

where you plugin b, l, and x based on your parameters, and find the maximum value for y1 when a goes from 0 to 90 degrees. That maximum value should be less than y for the box to be able to fit around the corner.

Yeah, this is one of those edge cases where it doesn't satisfy the string test from above, but there is still a chance it could fit.

sqrt[ (57/2)^2 + 22^2 ] = 36", which is greater than 31"

I began working on this problem this morning, and my calc equations kept getting bigger and bigger, then after I had about 2 pages filled with equations, I saw your post.

I feel much better now knowing I wasn't missing something obvious, and I can finally move onto my actual work for the morning after seeing the solutions. Thanks!

I believe this is technically incorrect, but it errs on safe side. I.e. if the string sweeps through the arc, the box will fit, if it doesn't swing through the arc, there is still a chance that the box will fit. I'm assuming this is what you are referring to by "edge cases".

Mathematically this "string theory" (sorry, couldn't help myself) is saying the following:

sqrt[ (l/2)^2 + b^2 ] < min(x,y)

where l = length of box, b = base of box, and x and y are the respective widths of the two hallways.

However, this ignores the fact that the pivot point on the box around the corner can slide as you push the box around the corner. So the pivot point could essentially slide from one end of the box to the other (at some point sliding through the midpoint you are measuring for), which allows a lot more leeway for the box's acceptable dimensions.

I worked on this problem a bit this morning, but I don't have my trusty TI-89 calculator to help out. This is actually a calculus problem that I have a difficult time explaining without posting some sketches. Maybe I'll do that in the near future.

If you're looking for student rental housing by any chance, that's what our startup is for... http://www.ratemystudentrental.com

For non-student housing, I use http://www.mapskrieg.com

This looks very useful. We actually need something like this for our startup. Any plans for an API (or would you be interested in working to develop one)? Email me please if you could.

I would be seriously interested in helping you take on this project. I have spent the last year and a half developing RateMyStudentRental.com for reviewing on- and off-campus rental housing and dorms.

We have developed solutions to many of the problems you're contemplating (school email confirmation, conditional anonymity, etc.), so I think there might be a good opportunity to collaborate here.

Just as we've developed a way to involve landlords and school administrators in the site without compromising the students' anonymity, I've thought of how much opportunity ratemyprofessors is missing out on. Their business model is horribly outdated, and there are so many other ways they could be leveraging their information. Imagine if the site partnered with education specialists to help the poorly-rated professors improve their lessons and teaching. And a comment I had often heard from my professors was that until the site gave them a chance to respond (much like we've done with landlords), they would never take it seriously.

Not to mention the fact that there'd be an excellent opportunity to partner with schools (much like our School Partnership Program) and allow them to incorporate the ratings and website into their online registration process (or offer them an online registration process entirely).

I could go on indefinitely, so I'll just stop here. You get the idea. Please let me know if you're interested and serious about pursuing this venture.

As long as it's relatively unobtrusive and has a prominent "remove frame" button, I don't see what the big deal is. If it weren't for their link to you (framed or not), that user would not have found your content in the first place. I would be grateful for them driving traffic to your site and move on to more important issues.

I dual-majored in Mechanical and Electrical Engineering at a 95% engineering school. Cheating occured very often, and I would venture to guess that a majority of the students cheated at some point during their college career, usually in the form of finding a "crib", or previous test from that professor and memorizing the answers.

In my opinion, the greatest cause for cheating was severely unrealistic expectations from the professors. They often expected a far greater amount of memorization and understanding than could possibly be accomplished in the amount of time given to learn the material.

When confronted, their answer was almost universally that "you will have to know it in the real world, and people's lives could depend on your work." However, this logic is severely flawed in that, in the real world, we are given more than 2 hours to complete a set of tasks. And we have the internet and textbooks at our grasp if we need a refresher on a specific equation or concept. And others will be checking our work, especially if people's lives depend on it.

This discrepency between professor expectations and real-world expectations I think gave many students the view, "if the professors aren't playing fair, then why should I?"

As a result, I saw much much less cheating when the professors "played fair", meaning they made the tests open-book and/or open-note. However, there was probably also much less legitimate understanding of the material come test time. So, I'm not really offering up a solution. Just my observations.

Is it really a waste of time if it entertains you and stimulates your thoughts, when used judiciously?

I'm the lead guitar for Ann Arbor-based rock band, Moment of Inertia (we all happen to be engineers... computer, electrical, mechanical, and aerospace between the 4 of us).

http://uk.youtube.com/watch?v=8umukDN_PVE

We've been a band for 5 years now, and this is definitely my top activity right after running our startup and right before autocrossing (oh, and my girlfriend fits somewhere in there too).