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boggles | 16 years ago | on: Teen Inventors Fight Tinnitus

Their business is based on selling an mp3? If the music industry is any guide, it won't be long before their therapeutic sound recording is all over the file-sharing networks.

boggles | 16 years ago | on: Ask HN: I want to learn Ruby

You can't go wrong by picking up a copy of "The Ruby Programming Language" and "Agile Web Development with Rails". Between those two books you should be a master in no time.

boggles | 16 years ago | on: Guinness celebrates 250 years of stout brewing today

If you're not in a bar, the Guinness can (rather than the bottle) is the best way to approximate the flavor and experience that is particular to the pub tap.

Guinness put 20 years of research into the can method.

The 16.9 ounce can (containing 14.9 ounces of beer) is fitted with a small plastic device (Guinness calls it a "smoothifier") which sits in the bottom of the can. This device has a pocket or cavity which is open to the atmosphere via a pin hole in its top. The can is evacuated of oxygen and filled with beer. Prior to sealing the can, a dose of liquid nitrogen is added to the beer. The can is closed and as the liquid nitrogen warms a pressure is created. The pressure forces about 1% of the beer and nitrogen into the plastic cavity.

When the can is opened, the pressure is released and the small amount of beer in the cavity is forced back through the pinhole quite violently. The agitation created by this "geyser" mixes the nitrogen with the beer in such a way as to reproduce the tap handle character.

Prior to serving, the beer must be chilled. Guinness suggests a two hour stint in a refrigerator, with a target serving temperature of 45-50 degrees (if opened while warm, the beer gushes with excess force). This is the one area where flavor will be variable since most American refrigerators hold their temperatures closer to 35-40 degrees.

The colder the beer, the less the flavors are perceptible. The entire contents should be emptied into a 16 ounce glass. The head which forms is exactly like that of the draught version. It should last to the bottom of the glass.

boggles | 16 years ago | on: Why Google AppEngine sucks

"Disclaimer: This article is not about "I am so clever, Google is so stupid". This article is about some Google AppEngine problems (or peculiarities) which might not be obvious for newcomers."

It would be nice if the title reflected that sentiment.

boggles | 16 years ago | on: Our corporate WebSite runs on Clojure and Google App Engine

I assume they have a cron job running to keep the site alive - Google App Engine for Java has a nasty habit of putting your app to sleep and then it takes 20 or 30 seconds to wake it up (at least that's what happens with JRuby - I don't know about Clojure).

boggles | 16 years ago | on: How FlightCaster (YC S09) built multi-platform scalable apps on Heroku (YC W08)

I find the non-free options no Heroku to be vastly more expensive than hosting options elsewhere such as Slicehost, Dreamhost and Amazon ECS.

They provide a valuable service in terms of taking administration issues out of the picture and letting you just focus on developing your app.

But my feeling is this is not targeted at hackers who are surviving on rice and beans but rather those who are more likely to either have well-paying day jobs that can subsidize their startup hobby on the side or have enough VC capital to not bother with the mundane details of hosting administration and its associated time and financial burdens.

Not that there's anything wrong with that - Heroku has come up with an ingenious business model because it really does satisfy a need in the vanity hosting market where cost is not an issue - but belonging to the rice and beans category myself at the moment, I just find that I'm sadly not their target demographic - as much fun as it is to use Heroku's free option for little toy apps.

Deploying to Heroku really is a delight and I think we will see more services like them start up over the next few years.

boggles | 16 years ago | on: Ruby apps development readied for Android

This article is about JRuby's support for Android. I have nothing but respect for Charlie Nutter and the JRuby team but they are extremely short-staffed and spread quite thin with the ambitious agenda they have set. For that reason I would not count on a lot of support for any Android features they are able to roll out.
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