keanemachine's comments

"I hate to admit it, but I have never found a way to become comfortable with the name "Hacker News"." My web filter in work is uncomfortable with the name "Hacker News" too. Thankfully, it has no problem with the URL http://news.ycombinator.com though :-)

Sometimes it's good to push yourself when tired. In the book 'Founders at Work' (Jessica Livingston), there's a chapter on Steve Wozniak where he says that he hits a new creative gear when working on a problem for three days and nights straight. Not directly related to writing well, granted, but an interesting point nonetheless.

Incidentally, the only two things I actually liked doing in school were writing short stories and drawing sketches. I would spend hours blissfully writing or drawing when given it for homework, and it was never a chore. The best ways to feed the imagination is to simply read, read, read. It's plain and boring advice, but it works. I was lucky when young as I was always encouraged to read, for many people my age (early twenties), reading is very boring, but that's because they are poorly versed in it and have poor imaginations as a result.

It's a cliche, but it's simple practise at anything that makes perfect - apparently Tiger Woods gets up at an ungodly hour and practises for 5-6+ hours every day; Tyson in his prime would get up and jog in the middle of the night, and conducted a tough training regime other boxers wouldn't engage in. After the last Olympics, Phelps famously said that all he does is "eat, sleep and swim". There's only so far natural ability will take you after all.

County Meath then, is it? (joking)

Dublin, Ireland. I believe there's a Dublin, California too, but not there unfortunately.

A great resource for working out the (monthly) income to do what you want with your life is at Tim Ferriss' blog (author of the Four Hour Work Week).

http://www.fourhourworkweek.com/blog/lifestyle-costing/

I've read the book and I dont't agree with everything he says, but I found this particular part really interesting. Tim advocates writing down all the things you want to do (cars, holidays, house(s), travel, etc),working out how much all these will cost per month; then mulltiplying that figure by 1.3 to give yourself a nice 'cushion'. According to him, there's no point in 'a million' or 'two million' or any other arbitary figure in the bank, most people don't actually want to be millionaires per se, it's the 5-star lifestyle that is attractive to them.

The monthly expense calculator is at:

http://www.fourhourworkweek.com/blog/expense-calculator/

Obviously you need to work out what you want from your life fist, more info on that if you read the first link. Hopefully this will help you make a more informaed decision.

p.s. I'm not affiliated to Mr. Ferriss in any way, I've just finished his book and there's some great advice in there, you may wish to consider getting a copy.

Wired Top Stories Lifehacker http://blog.startupprofessionals.com/ PG Essays http://www.techstars.org/ Seth's Blog - some brilliant marketing nuggets in there Dilbert - of course http://www.startbreakingfree.com/ - takes you through step by step as this guy built several sites from the ground up. http://www.lifeoptimizer.org/ Mashable Smashing Magazine http://www.collegemogul.com http://carsonified.com/ TED Videos http://www.ted.com/talks/browse The Register (El Reg) http://www.theregister.co.uk/ http://wealthpilgrim.com/ http://www.joelonsoftware.com/ http://www.chubbybrain.com/blog/