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ecaroth's comments

ecaroth | 13 years ago | on: Boosted Boards (YC S12) Unveils Its Magical Electric Skateboard

I have been longboarding for 10+ years, and riding Loaded boards for most of it (the company that makes the deck they are using). Loaded decks are friggin amazing, and i'm super excited to see a product like this exists. If they can make it function with similar flex as the normal loaded board, and disengage the motors as needed to ride like a normal longboard this could be the best short-range commuting vehicle ever!!

ecaroth | 13 years ago | on: Why I wear the same shirt every day

so if there are any similarities in your "personal brand" and your company's brand, I can assume that you lack creativity, are hesitant to try new design and features, and that your look/feel will soon stagnate?

ecaroth | 13 years ago | on: Cross-browser add-ons are a reality with Trigger.io (Zemanta example)

Holy hell I wish this existed when I wrote addons for Safari, Chrome, and Firefox. Just the idea of IE support with no extra work is awesome - and the idea of having a single codebase is great too. I tried to modularize as many components of my addons as possible to make them all easy to update but it just wasn't perfect. I went as far as building a messaging class to extend for the communication across platforms and boy was that a hack and a half. DEFINITELY trying this out next time I'm building an addon!

ecaroth | 14 years ago | on: Humiliation in Startups

I would also add "don't be a complete asshole" as an additional requirement. Obviously that was not good code, but good managers encourage people to make mistakes so they can learn from them (as long as it isn't mission critical stuff)

ecaroth | 14 years ago | on: Announcing The Simple iPhone App

Looks awesome... can't wait to try it! Been on the wait list for what feels like (and probably has been) 1.5 years though... Plans/ETA for android version?

ecaroth | 14 years ago | on: Show HN: Visualize Fitbit steps with Notch

I use it every day, including tracking separate workouts so it should be loaded w/ data. Now it's telling me 'something is wrong with my username' when trying to login. Where can I find your email?

FYI - on a side note, I'm the creator of fitbolt.com, which also integrates w/ FitBit. It's cool to see the different uses of their API people are coming up with!

EDIT: found your email.. must be friday ;-)

ecaroth | 14 years ago | on: Anyone else deal with burnout at a corporate gig?

Not sure where in the midwest you are, but I live in the Minneapolis MN area and there is a blossoming tech scene, and many new startups eager to hire ambitions developers that are willing to learn. I have heard similar things about Madison, and Chicago is a tech hub with many prominent startups.

ecaroth | 14 years ago | on: Anyone else deal with burnout at a corporate gig?

Dealt with this myself. The side projects only go so far to help you deal with this. I also found myself so into the side projects that I would often find myself distracted from my actual job. I'm sure you plan on sticking with your career field for many years to come. If you absolutely need the money/stability, stick it out (at least for a while). But if you are ready & willing to take some chances, ask yourself first if this corporate job is teaching you skills you can continue to use, and move up/forward, for the rest of your career or are you a 'worker drone'. A corporate job can teach you boatloads about how to run stable apps at scale, but usually stifle innovation & creativity. Working at a startup or smaller shop will usually get you much more exciting and creative projects and challenges, however the tradeoff is that you usually have to accept much more responsibility for what you build. You won't always have a rigorous test suite, QA department, and week-long rollout cycles. I can tell you though, from somebody who came from the exact same place, working at a startup is 20x more rewarding and fulfilling.

ecaroth | 14 years ago | on: Paul Graham consistently says ‘um’ ~7 times per minute

Ha - funny, this is the first thing I noticed when watching the video of this presentation, and it drove me so crazy I only made it through the first 3 minutes before I had to stop watching. Wish it wasn't the case, would have loved to watch the whole thing, but it was maddening....
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