homecoded's comments

Thanks!! Yes, I have planned a couple more. The code is not obfuscated, so you can have a look that them. It's heavily based on my audio-experiments which are open sourced here https://github.com/homecoded/js-synth.

I'll add the "sound of html" there, now that you mentioned it!

Here is a thing I built a while back: An 'HTML to 8-Bit-music' converter. This transforms a URL to a Bytebeat formula and uses the HTML of the page behind the URL as input.

http://lazerbahn.com/soundof.html?url=https://news.ycombinat...

The news ticker at heute.de was pretty sure about it, saying there are two holes each eight square meters in size in reactor 4. Of course I can't say how much truth lies in that statement.

Making things simpler on the net is probably a good thing. I'm worried though about what will happen when the same bad programmers who make mem-leaking and performance consuming flash ads now will jump on the JavaScript train. Flash is in a shell: no messing up the global namespace, no interfering with the rest of the website code.

It has been said before: not Flash is the devil. It's people who program but who have no clue how it's done. They have destroyed the reputation of a not-too-bad platform.

Good point. But: The library records will have an actual eye witness, though. In that case a real person can confirm that the 'bad guy' got the book personally. That is not the case with online search.

The problem I see is that it makes people easier to frame if 'soft evidence' suddenly becomes 'hard facts'.

Here is a highly constructed unlikely case as an illustration: Suppose, someone sneaks into someone else's house. He performs a few searches on fundamental religious topics and bomb building and plants some large quantities of questionable substances in the garage. Then the intruder tips off the police anonymously. How do you think the home owner will get out of this?

I don't know. I'd be at least a little bit worried.

This is completely weird!

Worst of all: 45 gardeners and no garden? Brilliant! I'd really like to hear their explanation of how these people ended up on their pay-roll. Maybe they all made offers the hospital could not refuse?

I don't really see a problem here. I think your are on a great path.

Well, talk to them. Just don't do something you don't feel like doing. If you want to open-source your stuff do it. Put it under a business-friendly license and there should be no worries.

I guess, they just saw a lot of potential in your abilities. They're probably interested in powering up their work force a bit.

If you get a bad feeling about what they propose: don't do it. And don't make any decisions on right the spot. Don't let the pressure get to you.

If you should bring people or not depends on what kind of meeting it really is and what they want. Can you find out more about them? Well, they are talking about collaborating, so I'm fairly sure you don't need to bring a lawyer IMHO. I'd go alone.

There were two websites that really impressed me: apple.com and amazon.com.

Amazon has hardly changed. Wow, it already looked great back then!

And Apple ... um ... really has gone a long way in design since then. Phew, that Apple page was ugly!

We actually talked about this today in our team since we are trying to find a good name for the new company we are about to form. We decided against hyphens mostly because we thought it's 'just not cool'.

There are other things to consider. If you spell out your domain name over the phone, a not-so-techie person might not know what to do when you say 'hyphen' (as in spell it out or use "-").

Besides, since the word 'hyphen' is usually only used when you spell out the domain (it's not actually part of the company name) people will probably forget about it.

I admire your dedication! You don't have too much to lose, but a lot knowledge to gain. Your bootstrapped approach is great and your time-frame reasonable for a smaller project. Good luck!

If I should ever do a start-up again, I'll go for boot-strapped as well. If people give you big wads of money they often try to influence your business too much ... sometimes even beyond recognition. Aw... ugly memories.

Ok, it's working now. I like the idea and the sound is pretty good. Most free synthetic keyboards you can get (as in Vst plugins) sound worse. Good job!

Unfortunately, I seem to have terrible latency problems in Chrome and Firefox. I also do not really understand how the keys are mapped to the notes as there seem to be strange gaps. I would have expected a setup as you can find it in most trackers.

Well, great experiment. I would not yet use it for live performance, though.

I loved Lemmings. Is used to write the level codes on little post-it notes and stuck them all around me. After a few days my room looked like Mr. Nash's garage in 'A Beautiful Mind'.

Aww, I get a 403 Forbidden error. I'd love to see this.

* working with an investor who wants to do all of your customer relations for you

-> This leads to a situation where you see customers asking questions in a forum and you (as a developer) are not allowed to answer because this is what the investor's support team is supposed to do. Thus, answering will be slow and of low quality. This builds a bad reputation. I will never do that again.

What is it that you don't like being a software developer?It is kind of hard to completely do something else.

I have questioned my being a software developer also in the past. I seriously thought about going back to university to become a teacher. I decided against it. Mostly because of the financial losses this would have caused and because I just try to find outlets for my desire to teach in my current job as well as spare time.

It's usually a shame if you basically throw away 4.5 years of working experience to do something completely different. Unless you really hate what you are doing, I'd recommend trying to slightly steer you career into the direction you want to explore. Drastic changes often come with high losses.

You can always try an NDA. It won't keep anyone from stealing but with a bit of luck you have a bit more meat if you want to take legal actions after someone stole your idea.

In the end, it boils down to "an idea isn't much worth. It's the execution that matters." Just try to be quick.

One thing that we did was, we gave all the people who started our company a small share. With this, everyone involved in the early stages had a good reason to keep quiet about our prototype. Worked for us. May not be the best for every start-up though. Especially if you want to hire people abroad.

Well put.

I totally agree! I'd even go one step further and say that you'll be "overworked and underpaid" even at your own start-up.

I just had that. No fun! Right now I am going back to a regular day job. And I'm actually looking forward to it.

I'm still going to work on new projects ... but I'll do that in my spare-time also.

I'd say this is about right. Even mobile devices have great JavaScript abilities nowadays. Think Android or iPhone. I am still using an ancient Sony Ericsson with Opera Mini and JavaScript works surprisingly well.

Besides, I like you attitude. Making stuff work for everyone is a great and noble goal! Unfortunately, that's only worth your time if your goal is to learn, not to earn money.

Mhh, not really but that's just me. The email folder works great for me. As I said: The effort of keeping track of my online purchases is not huge. So, another tool is really not necessary. Again, that's just me. ;-)