stevenbrianhall's comments

Wow, I am 100% in agreement. I'm an American living in Mexico and find it much harder to be in confrontational situations in Spanish.

My Spanish is good, but I've had almost the exact same "workman" situation happen to me. I'm positive that a native speaker would have picked up on the subtleties of the conversation and not made the same mistake, but pressure like that does not lend itself well to thinking things through carefully while trying to navigate the landscape of a non-native language.

On top of that, I'm highly sensitive to the "Americans are loud and uncultured idiots" image that seems to persist in lots of places, so I tend to err on the side of being polite to counteract that, even to my occasional disadvantage.

I can testify to this, actually. I had gotten burned out after years of hard grind, and left to go work on a ranch in central California.

It only took a few months being away before I couldn't contain it anymore, and would catch myself building solutions for things in my head, excited to get back to my apartment and code it all out.

It's not always practical, but a break from it all can be really healthy.

Clickable: http://recikeep.com

Regarding #1, an update from Linode was just posted:

"Our investigation has revealed a customer support interface was used to access your account. The compromised credentials have been restricted and we are discussing policy changes to prevent this from recurring."

This is incredible PR, in my opinion. Prior to this interview, all I had known of Kim Dotcom were from photos and videos of him in private jets, on the beach, in expensive cars, etc. He seemed like a playboy who was above the law.

In this interview he strikes me as highly intelligent, metered, and well versed in the various copyright laws. It seems like he has managed to operate his business from within a legal loophole, and it will be interesting to see how that plays out in court.

I try to watch this video about once a month. It never ceases to relevant to my life and work, I just wish I had seen it ten years ago when I was first starting.

Thanks for the reminder this month!

I have some positive and negative feedback:

"Yes, it's true, most other blogging platforms are free. We charge money for ours because we want writers, not advertisers, to be our customers."

First off, I think this is great. If I were a more serious writer, I think I'd enjoy being on a platform, knowing that other people in the network were also serious writers. The idea of having a blog I'm committed to enough to pay a bit for is appealing to me. I think there might be a market there.

However, what people are saying is correct - the product is overly simple. Before you charge for something, people are going to need to see the advantage over starting a Wordpress blog like everybody else. If the design was elegant and the community (as mentioned above) were proven, I could see asking $9/month.

Apart from that, congrats for having launched. Take the feedback (of all kinds) in stride, listen carefully to what people are saying, and iterate like crazy.

Would you consider staying in México for the same offer? I'm an American in Guadalajara, and getting ready to launch my Rails-based start-up, and would be interested in a trial run.

This just replaced my previous Hacker News client. The interface is quite nice, and the navigation is thoughtful. Well done.

"Who are the customers Braintree decided to write off? “It was a fool’s errand to try selling medicine to those who hadn’t yet experienced pain. Payment processing is complex. It’s difficult for inexperienced merchants to recognize value. We’d spend countless hours trying to explain ‘pain’ and our cure but some just didn’t care because they hadn’t felt it yet...'"

That's money right there. And noted for the future of my business. People will pay for you to take away the pain of their bad experiences with an inferior service/product.

I imagine it is, but the bi-directional reviews show that the company has thought about that from the beginning.

I'm MUCH more likely to book a place that is reviewed well, and I am sure that my reviews play a role in the renters decisions to accept me, as well.

Sorry for the metapost, but it would be helpful for a potential renter to know - has anyone here had a really negative experience with Airbnb? (Briefly) Sharing = Caring. :)

I've done my part, renting 4 places in Zurich, Milan, Barcelona, and Strasbourg over the last 2 weeks. I have yet to have a bad experience, and as soon as I move into my place, will absolutely be listing it.

In fact, I'll be looking for an apartment with with an extra room, specifically to rent on Airbnb. Not just for the monetary aspect, but I've met some incredible folks over the past few weeks. The model just works.

This method displays personality too often lacking in standard text-based CVs, so I like the idea of breaking the mold, but also agree with comments about not taking the idea far enough.

Facebook just recently changed the way Facebook pages operate, and you can now embed a media within an iframe. http://developers.facebook.com/blog/post/462

I say keep FB (because, as you say, people will be checking for it) but throw in an intro video and some links to a CV and past work, and you'll be able to make the experience that much richer.

I've been at this for about 10 years now, off-and-on.

These past two weeks I've been stuck in the grind with a mountain of projects, just growing tired of clients and growing scope and blah, blah blah.

Seeing your enthusiasm is helpful to me. It reminds me why I started in the first place. I do love what we get to do, and I hope you file what you've written away and look back on it from time-to-time to remind yourself why you're doing what you do.

Merlin Mann and Dan Benjamin have a great podcast out called "Back to Work" (http://5by5.tv/b2w), and Merlin had a great part around 20 minutes of episode 4 where he talks about getting bummed by deadlines, and by how much work he has to do, and how hard it is, and then he says:

"Then I caught myself and said 'waaitaminute', I dick around on the internet for a living and write about whatever I want. Oh my God, I am so not allowed to be that sad about this. If I can't figure out how to be happy doing what I'm doing, I might as well give up."

Good reminders. Thanks for posting, and for your enthusiasm. :)

I've been in the process of converting for several years. I certainly wouldn't claim to have "arrived" yet, but I think the process has been very good for me.

It seems trite to say, but I believe that it's all about doing it. The most useful thing I've found (and I do this not just with design, but with programming) is to find something I like, and then re-create it. I'll see a shot on dribbble (http://dribbble.com) and decide to create something similar from scratch, by playing around in Photoshop until I get it right (or close). If I get stumped, my last line of defense is to look up a tutorial on the look I'm trying to achieve.

I would never publish anything I've created through this method, but the act of purposeful creation gives me tools and techniques to use down the road.

I think this trend is disturbing. I've seen a few "revenge revisions" here over the past few days, and though I understand the frustration of not getting paid (I've been freelancing for 8+ years), this is not the way to deal with the problem.

I'm a big fan of using a staging server that I'm in control of for changes to sites. We'll agree on a scope for an individual project or revisions, then I'll make the changes on my server and send you a link. If the changes are to your liking and the scope has been met, I'll bill you. Upon receipt of payment, I'll upload the changes to your live site, and we'll start again ad infinitum.

That looks awesome. Thanks¡

OP can correct me if I'm wrong, but I believe he just wants you to market yourself a little. :)

I worked at a start-up in Boston about a year and a half ago. It was my third go-round in the start-up world across the span of several years, but the first for my co-workers.

I went into the whole situation telling them "I've been through this before, and I will absolutely work hard, but not at the expense of my work/life balance". They agreed, and we got to work.

Sadly, they were shocked after about a week when I actually followed through and refused to work through the night, every night (we would definitely pull all nighters when it was necessary, but they wanted me to pull 12-14 hours a day every day as the sole technical co-founder). This issue became a large reason why I ended up needing to leave the team, regrettably.

Do you know right now that you need a balance between your work and your life? Sure you do! If it's your first time in the start-up game, will you actually put that into practice? In my case (and I would be willing to guess that a lot of you are the same), the answer is no. Some lessons must be learned the hard way, and this was one of mine.