intractable's comments

intractable | 8 years ago | on: 24/192 Music Downloads Are Very Silly Indeed (2012)

This is true, to a certain extent. But it doesn't mean that masters for vinyl always have more dynamics left intact.

More often than not these days, the same compressed master is used for the vinyl. To combat the groove-jumping problem, the overall level is simply dropped.

intractable | 10 years ago | on: 'Hackers' at 20

> Robert Redford, Sydney Poitier, River Phoenix, James Earl Jones, Dan Aykroyd

Don't forget Ben Kingsley, another Oscar winner.

intractable | 12 years ago | on: Project Tango

> But in absence of this conflict, or the external meaning that is the cause of the (perceived) conflict, they wouldn't know what to do with their own existence

What nonsense.

> "Google" is nothing more than a tightly-bound collection of humans.

Yes, and collections of humans tend to exhibit emergent properties / behaviours which are not necessarily ideal in all respects.

Discussion of these properties / behaviours, and their desirability, is not a bad thing.

> They see the world in a black and white. "Us" and "them".

This is humorous to see in a post expounding a false dichotomy between the "two" types of people in the world.

intractable | 12 years ago | on: How Much to Charge as a Freelancer

I'm interested to know how you manage the risk inherent in project-based billing.

In my experience it is simply unworkable: the client will provide the vaguest of specifications and providing them with a set-in-stone price raises unrealistic expectations. The requirements are simply too fuzzy at the outset of a project to be able to price it accurately.

Of course the solution only becomes more concrete as the project progresses and requirements change and crystallize based on feedback. This is expected behaviour of course, but I've never been able to reconcile it with project-based billing.

Do you simply allow a certain buffer zone and take the good with the bad?

intractable | 13 years ago | on: Emacs is Dead (2010)

    > underline an arbitrary line of text with '=' characters. In vim that's 11 keypresses across 3 operations
Sounds like a vimgolf challenge to me. Here's my entry:

YpVr=

intractable | 13 years ago | on: Pin Payments is Australia’s first all-in-one online payment API

I would imagine that it would be much easier for Stripe to acquire local Stripe equivalents and rebrand, rather than trying to navigate the labyrinth of financial regulations in each location. Maybe that's the game plan for Pin?

From another Perth guy, more congrats to the Pin team (I actually discovered them when I had the same idea, googled it and found that it existed already - in my own town!)

intractable | 13 years ago | on: Florida Teen Charged With Felony After Science Experiment Goes Bad

No, the analogies are spot on.

Anything in the preceding comments which seems ridiculous has been introduced by the concept of "zero tolerance", which precludes common sense.

Zero means zero. If the rules are enforced as written - arguably as intended - this is what you get. The preceding comments just take the concept to its logical conclusion.

intractable | 13 years ago | on: Thinking of starting a Health IT company? Here are top three industry challenges

In my experience, one of the most significant hindrances has been access to and communication with medical personnel:

- Medics, especially specialists / surgeons, have extremely busy schedules, often holding down both public & private patient responsibilities as well as performing duties for their specific colleges etc.

- The level of IT-savvy amongst healthcare pros is generally low.

- They seem to have a different logic to us IT folk, answers are nebulous for non-medics and hard rules are very difficult to pin down. Ask the same question n times and you will get n different answers, from the same respondent.

When you find a medic who is willing / able to help and towards the positive on all the above axes, you must hold onto them with a death grip.

intractable | 13 years ago | on: Things in C# you might have missed

This is one which had escaped me for years:

    private static bool GreaterThanOne(int @int)
    {
        return @int > 1;
    }
However, it would seem to me to fall into the "never, ever use this" category.

intractable | 13 years ago | on: The Joy of Quiet

I agree 100%. I too walked the Camino de Santiago, in 2009.

Probably the best thing I've ever done. I came back centred, happy, relaxed and motivated. I met great people, had great times (and trying times - like walking 40km, into a town with no spare beds, and then walking another 10km to the next town, to again find no beds) and really challenged myself.

Walking alone through those fields is something I'll never forget. Hours of walking brings about a meditative state, and inner quiet which is rare to find.

Start by yourself, this will bring you out of your comfort zone and you'll meet more new people.

It's a great metaphor for life - you meet people, you lose people, you say goodbye, you learn to rely on yourself.

I recommend it to anyone.

intractable | 13 years ago | on: Plugins you should put in your vimrc

The rage these days seems to be to keep your own dotfiles repo, complete with some kind of install mechanism.

My own is here [1] but it covers my whole homedir, not just VIM. I use Rake tasks (originally inspired by @holman, I believe) for install / update / clean.

There is a bootstrapping problem when using Vundle with many plugins [2]. The only way to have your Vundles install cleanly the first time is to split up .vimrc into two separate files, which is what I have done.

[1] https://github.com/anthonywilson/dotfiles

[2] http://www.gmarik.info/blog/2011/05/17/chicken-or-egg-dilemm...

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