greaterscope's comments

I love this idea! Bookmarking "Terraform Graph Algorithms" and "HTTPie Download Progress" for later. Thank you!

I've been creating something akin to Minecraft creative mode in the browser since 2016: https://github.com/alanszlosek/voxeling. It all started when I found the VoxelJS project. The possibilities really hooked me so I forked it, learned a ton about WebGL, then started my own repo and rewrote nearly everything from scratch. I've been having a blast. There are endless opportunities for optimization (must maintain 60fps!), which is extremely rewarding to me.

Last year I started making videos showing the code and the improvements I've made: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLGonE3T1sorRgdHNBGhpj...

That's just one of my projects, but the one I'm most proud of. Even if the code isn't conventional or pretty. :-)

Great timing on this post as I'm looking for something to replace my aging Dell Inspiron 1420n from 2008. Thanks for asking! It sounds like you just need something to run an editor (maybe VIM?), PHP and a browser... Like others have mentioned, if you need to run docker it will require something quite modern.

What's your budget?

Can anyone chime in about the Asus Eee PCs, or the Dell Inspiron Mini series? Or anything else near the 10 to 11-inch form factor? Would they be hard to type on for someone under 6ft tall?

I'm personally looking for something that can run Linux (perhaps even as slimmed down as Puppy Linux), Vim (or maybe VSCode) can run a browser (preferably Firefox but Pale Moon or other might be fine). Just bought an Asus VivoBook X202E on Ebay, but that's an 11.6" display, so I'll see how it goes.

What I'd really love is to find a blog post of the "Best Linux-compatible Netbooks Through the Ages". Has anyone come across anything like this? Would help me search Ebay for successively older machines until I get to the price point I'm looking for.

I second the point that it's helpful to know the actual landscape, so the division within GE should definitely be listed. After all, if they end up contributing something positive it deserves visibility.

And your mention of Zipcar, Maven, etc makes me think it'd be great to include the entities that own or fund each organization. Definitely means there's more information to hunt down, but crowd-sourcing can lessen that pain.

You made me lol. Thank you :-)

I wrote a self-hosted tool that fills this need for me. Been using it since 2008. Content is written in markdown, though it doesn't have a fancy editor. Supports tagging and searching too. Since you mentioned self-hosted, I thought you might be interested.

Screenshot: http://greaterscope.net/files/tracker.png Github project: https://github.com/alanszlosek/tracker

Seconded. He was on episode 199 of Software Engineering Radio two years ago (http://www.se-radio.net/2013/12/episode-199-michael-stonebra...), which I thoroughly enjoyed. It was so informative that I took a page of notes while listening! Really great stuff.

Two projects you may want to review for ideas are Redis and toybox.

Redis comes to mind because it started out as largely a single file of code that has since been split and organized into multiple files. The code is quite approachable; you'll likely understand how most of it works after a day of causal browsing. http://redis.io

Toybox comes to mind because it's insanely modular, and aggressive about code re-use. The logic can feel a bit dense at times, but he's going for size and speed. I'm a big fan of Rob's efforts. http://landley.net/code/toybox/

Wish were able to download our ebs snapshots, which are supposedly hosted on S3. What does everyone else do?

Recently bought the box-set of this series .... love it!

hilarious. but maybe a few people will participate (fall for it) and thus indirectly donate to jquery, postgres, or apache.

Sounds like you might have become disinterested in your project? Maybe there's too much on your plate? Maybe there's not enough risk/reward pressure going on?

I don't think a piece of software can help you. What about bringing someone else on-board that's a naturally hard worker to help pull you more in that direction?

starting off with "it's a sad state of affairs" sets a smug tone, begging for a smart-ass response. and the "FAIL" just turns it hostile.

i'm not defending the station, but i do think customers should be as civil as companies are expected to be, if they want civil treatment in return.

We, my long-time girlfriend and I, are moving to Portland, Oregon, from Lakeland, Florida, in 1 month. A friend sent me that article a few days ago and all I could think was, "informative article, but it doesn't matter." We're moving anyway. And we've never been. Like wallflower, everything we've read and heard points to Portland as a place we need to be, or at least live in for a while.

The company I work for has no problem with me working remotely. I pointed my boss to RandsInRepose's excellent article (The Pond) about remote workers, so we've started the discussion about things we'll have to work through. Needless to say, I'm incredibly thankful and lucky to HAVE a job, especially one that's willing to keep me around as I move.

My girlfriend is a painter (website; http://daubery.com etsy store: http://hollypaints.etsy.com), and has had little luck finding work in Lakeland. So if she doesn't find work out there it won't be much different.

Paul Graham's "Cities and Ambition" article really hit home when I read it a year ago. It made me think about how deeply where I live affects my quality of life, my future, my happiness, my creativity, my productivity, my resources. Lakeland is a "settle down, raise a family, go to church" type of place. It's not for us. I want to run a software company of my own, hire great people, and be involved in a community of artists, musicians, programmers, designers, and makers. My girlfriend needs to be around artists that don't bullshit, have creativity from within, and aren't in constant competition with each other.

Moving to a new place is going to be invigorating. We're hoping the people we find in Portland will continue to inspire us once the newness of a new city wears off. Wish us luck.

If you have advice, or live in Portland, don't hold back.

From my post here: http://www.greaterscope.com/blog/2008/11/11/intentional-soft...

Back in 2002 I thought of "Intentional Software" as a company name. It was supposed to imply that we wouldn’t be creating haphazardly designed products. But then again, I'd only been coding for a year or two at the time, which doesn't seem like enough time to be doing anything other than haphazard development.

All of that is beside the point, because Charles Simonyi came along a few years later and started a company of the same name. He was born well before me so he had a killer head-start. Plus, as the originator of "hungarian notation", he knew how to not program all willy-nilly.

My ideas for a company name progressed, especially once I stopped using the space bar. Out came "Greaterscope" as a possibility. The encapsulation of optimistic, forward-looking, expansive ... a chord was struck. Or rather, a saw was wobbled to make a sound. But don’t worry, the saw’s teeth are clean. (Yeah, that was a stretch, but I had to reference Scope mouthwash somewhere, since you probably thought of it upon seeing our company name)

Excellent, excellent movie. It always inspires me in some strange quirky way. Or maybe it just inspires me to be quirky.

amazing. i'm all for a less-cluttered field of choices.

anyone know of another high-profile project that has merged with a "competitor"?

There are many products and services for small/standard storefronts ... but we're innovating elsewhere. I've tried to outline some of our differences on the website but it surely needs further clarification.

We're targeting shops that need the type of features you have to design for at the beginning.

We're also not a hosted solution, as that limits the ability for other developers to customize our product.

To the parent: This where I've been. I've built many of my own tools and frameworks. Problem is, they're still related to the space that I no longer enjoy being employed in. It was fun work, with plenty of great challenges, and proved to be a great strategy for securing most of my sanity. Elevate anything to a "higher purpose" and you'll find some extra motivation to get the job done.

To edw519: This where I'm going (in addition to looking for another line of work I might enjoy more). I've been making my own tools for about three years. I guess that's my "breaking point". I'm using them personally, but I don't want to be at shops without some kickass tools and practices already in place. I like my tools, but working at a place without any useful abstractions is no fun. In the meantime, I'm trying to make the best use of my tools and talents on my own dime, for my company (http://greaterscope.com). There I can solve the problems I want to solve, without restrictions (until I get customers). Hopefully it'll be a much better ride and I won't post another similar thing in another five years.

You're right. It's just not for me. I'm a big self-motivator, and am learning more of what makes me happy and unhappy.