ajlburke's comments

I used to be a Lotus Notes specialist, and one interesting thing I noticed is that from the earliest versions it was designed specifically to be a "step up" from a spreadsheet (Lotus of course also made Lotus 1-2-3, which was the original killer-app spreadsheet before Excel took over).

Notes still let you see data as rows and columns and had very spreadsheet-like functions, many of which could be transferred directly from Lotus 1-2-3 - but it was a full client-server system which supported decentralized replication, built-in messaging and email, and a solid security model (yes yes I know it was also a crazy confused mess and a UI nightmare but that's a different topic).

Back in the day, organizations had teams going around finding the most useful ad-hoc spreadsheets and converting them into simple Lotus Notes databases. Other organizations would sometimes also give staff training in building simple Notes databases - not a whole lot more difficult than doing a spreadsheet - and then have expert teams come in and polish them up as needed. This made business software bottom-up rather than top-down, which turned out to be a whole lot more useful in a lot of cases.

In many ways, even after I left the Notes world for PHP and Rails and JS, my career in business software has still mostly been about converting spreadsheets into more "proper" applications.

Spreadsheets are the 'blue-green algae' of the software world: the simple base level that's everywhere and surprisingly essential.

I usually use one large monitor with my MacBook as a smaller sidecar for little things like music, billing timer, notes, etc. but there's one time when I've found two monitors come in really handy: if I'm mixing local terminal work and server-side terminal work. The most important thing when doing this kind of work is to ensure that you always know if you're working on your local or on a server. I've used different terminal colour schemes, even different terminal applications - but for me it's even better to have local on one screen and remote on a completely different screen.

(I've sometimes dug out an old machine so I would even have to use a completely different keyboard - but those aren't always available.)

But as a developer, I'm generally more happy with lots of terminal windows on one big screen - but that's just me.

You can still see clocks in the UK from the late 19th century which have two minute hands: one for the local time and the other for the official Greenwich time.

The Bristol Exchange has a big one with the hands ten minutes apart, since that's the difference between local noon in Bristol and noon at Greenwich.

Supposedly in Oxford you can still be 5 minutes and 2 seconds "late" for classes or meetings since that's the offset between there and Greenwich. I've only heard this third-hand - are there are any Oxonians out there who can confirm?

They're called "Gregorian Chants" because they were compiled by the much earlier Pope Gregory I (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gregorian_chant)

My apologies

If you're on a Linux/MacOS/BSD machine, "ncal -p" on the command line gives you a nifty list of when various countries switched to Gregorian.

Interesting factoid: Russia's "October Revolution" actually took place in November in most of the rest of the world!

(edit: I had originally said ncal works on all "POSIX" systems but that turned out to be incorrect)

'Now, we shall receive four minutes warning of any impending nuclear attack. Some people have said, "Oh my goodness me — four minutes? — that is not a very long time!" Well, I would remind those doubters that some people in this great country of ours can run a mile in four minutes.' - Peter Cook, Beyond the Fringe, 1960

The original Star Wars movies were largely shot in Britain, and used British actors for many of the roles, especially the Imperial officers and officials. Carrie Fisher's family had worked in Hollywood during the "golden age" of the mid-Atlantic accent and she had been sent to an elocution school in the U.K. just before being cast for Star Wars - although she admits that her accent changed a lot in the first Star Wars movie.

Have you BEEN to Kansas City? I got sent there for work meetings once and I have to admit I dreaded it - but it's got lots going for it, with lots of great cultural history (Jazz!) and some awesome food (BBQ!) and some really interesting places downtown. The people I met there were a whole lot more genuinely nice than most Bay Area folks, too.

YMMV obviously, but if you dismiss most of the rest of the continent as "geographically uninspiring" you're going to miss out on a lot.

Canadian banks have generally been much more regulated than US ones. Through the 90s and early 2000s they constantly complained about too much government regulation getting in the way of their profits etc. - they seem to have shut up about that since 2008.

One funny side of this is that a fair number of Trader Joe's "house brand" items have been available as "President's Choice" or "Black Label" in Canadian Loblaws stores - often both made/imported by SunFresh of Mississauga and then rebranded.

(Note: I caught onto this several years ago and haven't been to a TJ in a while - it's entirely possible TJ's and Loblaws have changed their suppliers since.)

You might want to check out "Orphan Black" then - it's a Canada/BBC co-production and really really good.

Christianity wouldn't have spread nearly as quickly or as far if it hadn't been able to piggyback on the Roman Empire's infrastructure. On the flip side, after Rome's political influence left most of Europe, the parallel church structure was still there to help maintain civilization at least a little bit during the barbarian invasions and general collapse.

[Leaving out Mithraism, which also spread in similar ways, as well as any discussion of what exactly constitutes "barbarian" vs. "civilization" since it gets fuzzier the closer you look.]

I'd argue that if you're only 10 minutes away from work by car, then you're not really living the "big wasteful" suburban life. Real sprawl (I'm unfortunately quite familiar with the kind outside of Toronto) involves long drives and frequent wrestling with slow traffic to get anywhere, especially during rush hour. Suburban houses are cheaper precisely because they're far from places people want to be.

That said, with Skype, remote work, Netflix, and Amazon Prime, I guess who really needs to go anywhere these days anyhow?

Labels are troublesome, but the specific use here seems appropriate: it's a man who is in a technical field and who people see as having an immature attitude towards women and perhaps even life in general.

Sure, "not all men" and all that - but, well, yes this man.

You know, this whole "wow, what's it like to win the lottery?!" attitude is what makes the startup world so destructive and, I'll say it, exploitative.

Yes, live an intense life building something cool - but don't forget that most startups fail, and even the ones that succeed often end up having most of their money go to investors and partners rather than the founders and builders.

Also, as other commenters here have noted, you would get a lot more mileage out of limiting your lifestyle and expenses than in focusing on the big payout. Bonus: if that payout comes, it'll last longer if you've grown a realistic approach to life.

I've known a number of people who made "set for life" fortunes, and some of them have blown those fortunes surprisingly quickly.

"The work you did a year or more ago couldn’t possibly still be relevant today."

Are you 16 years old?

Tech changes quickly, but not that quickly. A GitHub repository with older projects would be useful to show depth and variety of experience. Just because it's not all using the latest Rails 4.1 doesn't mean that it won't show insight into professional skills like, say, well organized code, playing well with others - not to mention a longer-term outlook that isn't just chasing the latest shiny thing.

I recall something like this happening during the dot com boom of the 90s: Someone organized a big mixer so imported women could meet rich Silicon Valley guys - but it turned out to be the same day as Comdex, so no guys showed up.

(Couldn't find the full story anywhere, though. Anyone?)

It's 15 years later and we're still stuck with nerdy rich guy and gold-digger woman stereotypes. Except now we also have 'brogrammers'. Sad.

But isn't everybody in the Bay Area too busy "crunching it" to date anyhow?

The basic emacs shortcuts even work on iOS, if you're using a Bluetooth keyboard. Now the muscle memory works everywhere.

Note that Apple now keeps the previous version of the app around for users on older OSes. Of course they won't get any of the upgraded features, but at least there's still something there for them - and you won't have to worry about all that messy code for supporting multiple versions.

My next app updates will also be iOS7 only, since I know the iOS6 version will still be around. Makes it much easier to decide to use newer features.