josh_nyc's comments

What kind of pricing are you thinking of, for say, 20 hours / week remote help in maintaining an existing system for a small shop? (LAMP / AWS stack)

I kept expecting it to turn into some kind of message-retention quiz. The kind that would prove we only absorb 10% of what we're shown, or some other counterintuitainment.

Nice typography and highlight hue.

I love this also.

Any way to prevent TAB from unfocusing the textarea? Perhaps a javascript in the URL?

http://www.soundassociation.com/work showcases some audio scores we created.

My team and I run a boutique production studio in NYC and we love composing music to visuals. Shoot me an email at "josh at soundassociation dot com" and let's discuss your project!

SEEKING FREELANCER - Remote (NYC a plus)

I'm looking for a talented, self-managing back-end PHP developer who has experience with the Lithium PHP framework. Communication skills and fast learning are a must.

Our site is a fast-growing pet product discount site with thousands of active members and real revenue every day. We've built the site solidly and with growth in mind, and now it's time to make that growth happen and I need more dev resources!

Tech stack on this project is Lithium on PHP 5.4, MySQL, Apache, on EC2 with ELB, etc. We are open to embracing additional AWS (and other) solutions as we scale up.

I'm a back-end developer myself, and our small team has a terrific designer/front-ender and another back-ender. Compensation can be hourly or by monthly retainer, and there will be performance-based bonuses as we hit deadlines and deliver terrific features.

Please shoot me an email at joshchurgin at g mail dot com if this interests you. Looking forward to hearing from you!

"What do you love?"

Seems to work in all kinds of situations. Occam's Razor, anyone?

In New York State, try the Freelancers Union. http://www.freelancersunion.org/insurance/index.html

I used this a few years ago while working for a startup and I got a full plan (comparable to the average full-time job's plan) for half price (at that time, around $250 a month).

Worth a look. They are always expanding and trying to provide more and more benefits for the W2-challenged.

I'd want to hear about the intricacies of their new audio advertising program.

What have they learned about listener preferences through tweaking the length, frequency, and targeting of audio ads? Are they making demographic inferences based off of music genre?

I'm also really curious about the creative on those audio ads. Do ad buyers know alongside which genres their ads will be broadcast? Do they adjust creative appropriately, i.e. hip-hop audio ad creative on a station of hip-hop music? I realize that each "station" is really an instance of user preferences, but still...

I could go on and on... I wonder if there is a cool side-business opportunity for supplying their ad buyers with creative (via a network involving independent commercial musicians/producers). This could help their ads become more effective and turn into something interesting itself.

I was introduced to Catan during college and we quickly had a weekly game going. The interplay of luck and skill is intrinsically woven into the gameplay, which kept things very dynamic. The "wheeling/dealing" aspect of the bartering keeps things interesting when it isn't your turn.

Just when things would get boring on the skills side (someone was far ahead of everyone else), luck would rush in to make things interesting. Just when things would get boring on the luck side (a series of bad rolls), there would be opportunities to strategize around it.

I haven't played it in years, though (not near that group of people anymore), so it was a pleasure to see this pop up on HN. And it is pretty relevant insofar as the "programming" and game loop is quite clever.

There are some great online versions too (asobrain, jsettlers, etc... would provide links but I don't know what the best online versions are today).

Well, all I know is I enjoyed the article and that I believe I can find value and knowledge from disparate sources regardless of their topical relevance.

I also realize that HN is trying to remain topically focused.

To much of the world, the thought of making life more difficult by forging your own path/company/livelihood/etc, as opposed to settling for an easy job, seems akin to choosing make your life more difficult through addictions. I know it may appear I'm stretching it, but it's a fun mental exercise.

Shot in the dark:

Maybe there's a connection between the narrator's struggle and an entrepreneur's struggle. Both seem to enjoy the fight to overcome mediocrity and strive for their goals despite hardships and constraints, but the narrator's hardships and constraints are entirely of his own making. Check this quote:

"I loved the feeling: Floating slightly above everything but still able to cope with the world, sensing that I was somehow special, or at least different, that I belonged to a secret and exclusive club."

Couldn't that apply to a hacker? At least in the abstract?

Food for thought...

Wow.... for what it's worth, I was laughing out loud.

He'd get better traction over at reddit, though.

Exactly... and therein lies the difficulty: "standing apart from yourself." I guess that's why vocalizing your thoughts aloud to a confidant can help you "see" your thoughts outside your head.

All I can offer here is a personal observation:

Many times in my life when I've asked people for advice in choosing between several options, I've found myself secretly hoping they'd guide me to a certain option... hmm...

When I was a teenager, I'd ask my dad for advice and find myself asking leading questions and almost arguing to get him to advise me to pick a certain option. He would get annoyed and end the conversation with "if you already know the answer, why are you asking me?"

As I got older and our conversations got calmer, he would often end with "well it sounds like you already know what you want to do."

I find that when asking for advice (or venting about a tough decision), this pattern persists.

Now I try to have that conversation with myself, knowing I should trust my intuition. It saves a lot of time and frustration! Then, when I ask for advice, I'm actually ready to listen to it.

I think they are referring to the fact that students new to programming learn to "always" rely on stringing together pre-existing libraries (namely in Java) rather than gaining experience by creating some functionality, algorithms, etc. from scratch.

FWIW, I took a class taught by Shonberg (about OOP) when I attended NYU. Ironically NYU CS majors are required to take several classes that use Java, so I guess he wasn't able to convince the administration of his views. However, I learned a tremendous amount from the algorithms and OS courses there, and there were some great classes still using C and C++.

Exactly... I have been mining the ""mundane"" areas for ideas, since I know everyone else is riding the two point oh thing.

It's hard to force out-the-boxedness, though.

I am in a heavy brainstorming phase as of late, thinking and mulling over various "idea areas" that pertain to my domain, software I would use, etc. Not really a set process though...

But much to my delight a few days ago, I was with a friend and we were talking about a service we both use, and some of the utility it lacks. I said "Oh man, I wish somebody would make that! Why has nobody done that?" He then asked, "Why don't you make that? You told me you were trying to think of a good project."

Duh. So, like many things, sometimes the ideas come to you when you aren't mining for them, and the people around you can help point out the obvious.

(The particular idea wasn't that exciting, but it was a real surprise that such an obvious improvement to something I use a lot didn't surface while I purposefully mined for ideas).

Manhattan here. I love the energy. It's great for inspiration!

Wow... really cuts to the heart. I am guilty of some of these "productive procrastinations" as well (including the beloved HN) and find that when I close all not-super-necessary tabs (even gmail), I can focus way more on the famous 20% stuff.

Yes, this 80/20 advice is nothing new, but the "case study" with his actual protege is a great way to really see it in action.