rocktronica's comments

rocktronica | 1 year ago | on: Ask HN: Recommend resources that helped your game dev journey?

If you'd like to get out of the weeds, "The Beauty of Games" by Frank Lantz (of Universal Paperclips fame) is a thought-provoking read. The basic premise is that games are the aesthetic experience of systems and reason, cause and effect. If dancing is your body's way to explore music, games are your brain's way to explore logic. A little academic, but pretty interesting!

The other thing I want to say is that game feedback should be taken with more than a grain of salt. The worst feedback I've ever received was on a handmade, physical roll-and-write that I gave someone for free. Gamer culture is strongly opinionated and quick to hyperbole... but not always right.

rocktronica | 3 years ago | on: Ask HN-Beginner Arduino Kits

Agreed with other commenters' advice to err towards good documentation. Don't just go for cheap.

Another consideration is community: I think the Adafruit guides (https://learn.adafruit.com/) are really great, especially for folks just starting out / who are more project-focused. Poke through there with your kid and see if anything sparks interest.

Shameless self-promo, if he's into music: I make an Arduino-compatible "synth" electronics kit. It does require soldering (so maybe isn't the best choice just yet) but is a nice step towards making something that looks like a real, finished product. https://www.oskitone.com/product/scout-synth-diy-electronics...

rocktronica | 5 years ago | on: Ask HN: What's your quarantine side project?

I've picked up indoor gardening and designed some 3D-printed, self-watering planters that screw into jars.

https://blog.tommy.sh/posts/adventures-in-self-watering-plan...

rocktronica | 8 years ago | on: Timelapse video with an iPhone and CLI

I was surprised this didn't already exist, so I made it... even though it's honestly just a wrapper around curl and ffmpeg!

rocktronica | 8 years ago | on: Amazon Echo Spot

Believe it or not, lots of folks use Youtube as a music player and just waste the video bandwidth

rocktronica | 8 years ago | on: Show HN: Logo Crunch – Multi-resolution logo maker

That would entail them permanently storing the images, which they probably don't want to do.

rocktronica | 8 years ago | on: Show HN: Logo Crunch – Multi-resolution logo maker

This is incredibly useful, regardless of the veracity of its "computer vision."

A technique that seems to work well for it with simple drawing style icons is to thicken and simplify as the image gets smaller, so it seems like the stroke of the drawing is consistent across sizes.

rocktronica | 8 years ago | on: Bunnie Huang’s “Hardware Hacker” book is in print

There are a lot of great photos and PCB closeups that obviously won't translate into narration.

rocktronica | 8 years ago | on: Facebook says it sold political ads to Russian company during 2016 election

Regardless of legality, it will be interesting to see how this is spun if/when Zuckerberg runs for public office.

rocktronica | 8 years ago | on: Al Gore's Home Energy Use Surges Up to 34 Times the National Average

http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php/National_Center_for_Pub...

Regardless of its veracity, I'd rather not have ExxonMobil-funded propaganda on HN.

rocktronica | 8 years ago | on: Ghost 1.0

Looks like a "paint" font on top of a filtered stock photo

https://blog.ghost.org/content/images/2017/07/DJI_0006-Edit....

rocktronica | 8 years ago | on: Ask HN: Share Your Raspberry Pi Project

I have three Pis currently "deployed":

1) Internet radio w/ an amplifier in a cigar box. It was a gift for my gf and only plays the station she listened to in college. https://github.com/rocktronica/curpi

2) Timed camera and GIF maker for my cat feeder. https://github.com/rocktronica/feedergif

3) OctoPrint server for my 3D printer http://octoprint.org/

[edit: formatting]

rocktronica | 8 years ago | on: Older fathers have 'geekier sons'

Sure seems like correlation to me.

Older fathers are more likely to have established careers, establishing higher socioeconomic status, affording a lifestyle that engenders "geekiness".

rocktronica | 8 years ago | on: Show HN: Monica, an open-source CRM to manage friends and family

This looks great, and I see the utility of it. Really, honestly, well done.

May I ask what made you settle on the name "Monica" instead of something more gender-neutral?

rocktronica | 8 years ago | on: Show HN: EE Concierge – Custom Hardware Parts On-Demand

Glad to see your concierge service decoupled from Upverter, as nice as Upverter is. It will make it easier to try w/o the full commitment of changing software.

rocktronica | 13 years ago | on: JQuery Transit - CSS3 animations for jQuery

Lazy, sure, but not always a worse experience for the end user.

Testing w/ Modernizr _will_ use client resources, and sometimes it's faster, cheaper, and less costly to make assumptions than run those tests.

Terrible case in point: "position:fixed". It's not supported in older iOS and IE6, and CSS fallbacks don't work. Testing for it w/ JS is too costly to be worth it, so UA checking is a better compromise. (That is, if it's mandatory to degrade well...)

rocktronica | 14 years ago | on: Dotfiles.github.com - A guide to dotfiles on GitHub

With respect, a guide to dotfiles should explain what dotfiles are.

rocktronica | 14 years ago | on: Crockford on Bootstrap's semicolon omission: “insanely stupid code”

Learning the minutiae of a language is important, sure, but I can't fathom why you'd willingly introduce unnecessary fragility or overthink into your codebase.

Ideally, your goal as a hacker is to make cool shit. Your goal is not syntax.

rocktronica | 14 years ago | on: Evolution of a Web Developer: From PHP Newbie To Python Ninja

Entirely agree. Sometimes real evolution is slightly horrifying. :)

rocktronica | 14 years ago | on: Tmpltr - jsFiddle clone for realtime JSON templating

Thanks! Took me about two weekends.