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New
The latest blog posts to take off on Hacker News. 7,746 posts.
Life, Learning & Writing
Any year
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Seven Minutes in Ubuntu: A Mac user's first impressions
For a while now, I've been using my home machine with MAMP to develop a research prototype. But last week, I got my hands on a PC to use as a web server. Before I could get started on it though, I needed an operating system to install — ideally one that would get the
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Finding Love Optimally
Like many in operations research, my research interests often creep over into my everyday life. Since I work on scheduling issues, I get particularly concerned with everyday scheduling, to the consternation of my friends and family (“We should have left six minutes ago: transportation is now on the critical path!”)…
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One of the Best Bits of Programming Advice I ever Got
Years ago (early 1992), I attached myself to this crazy skunkworks project that was using this weird language called Smalltalk. "Object Orie...
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What I learned on a round-the-world yacht race
11 years ago this month, I stepped aboard a 72-foot racing cutter affectionately called The Good Ship Logica and began a 10-month round the world yacht race, the only one to go around the world against the currents and prevailing winds. Below deck, I was the geek, making sure the satellite could broadcast despite 90ft…
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Feynman On The Importance Of Playing
I'm reading " Surely You're Joking, Mr. Feynman " (very good read). What he says about burnout, playing and doing the things you love is pr...
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The Teacher
I was fortunate enough to help organize the Strange Loop 2011 conference , but this post is not specifically about that. During the confere...
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Tricky Programming Concepts Aren’t
What Teachers do Wrong Teachers use subversive language. They say things like “this is a bit tricky” before introducing a concept. It’s in...
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Why Entrepreneurs Can't Sleep
For those of you that know me well, you know that I have terrible, horrible insomnia. In high school, I would go to sleep around 3am and then struggle to get up at 6:30 am. I would drink a dozen Mountain Dews everyday just to stay awake. In college, my schedule shifted further so that I was falling asleep around 6am…
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Practicing 2000 hrs (The Dan Plan: a 10,000 hr deliberate practice experiment)
One year, 5 months and four days = 2,000 hours (strange math, but it adds up) of deliberate practice. 2,000 hours spent literally over a ball working on something in my swing/putt and learning how to play golf. 2,000 hours of aha moments, setbacks, mini-triumphs and determination to get better. 2,000 hours of…
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Why I regret going to TechCrunch Disrupt
Several months ago I decided to bring my startup from Ottawa, Canada and exhibit in Startup Ally at TechCrunch Disrupt. What better place than Disrupt to absorb insight, meet visionaries and explor…
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The Document Which Was Formerly Called The MIT Guide to Lockpicking
Which is too bad in a way. I thought it was a cool piece of urban folklore no matter where it came from, and it contributed to giving college students everywhere a reputation for healthy rebeliousness.
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Humble pie.
Thank you to everyone who has been supportive of me with this blog since I started it last year. Many of you have voiced your appreciation for posts that you’ve found helpful. It’s been a really fun experience and a nice way to pay it forward as so many people have mentored me on my own path. The fact that…
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Technical Papers Every Programmer Should Read (At Least Twice)
Let me preface this post by saying that no programmer should feel compelled to read any of these papers. I list them because I think that they provide a breadth of information that is generally useful and interesting from a computer science perspective. What you do with that information is your prerogative, including…
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