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Life, Learning & Writing
The most popular blog posts about life, learning & writing on Hacker News. 7,743 posts.
Coping strategies for the serial project hoarder
I gave a talk at DjangoCon US 2022 in San Diego last month about productivity on personal projects, titled “Massively increase your productivity on personal projects with comprehensive documentation and …
Have you restarted your computer this week?
There’s something about restarting my Mac on a …
The Amish health care system
I. Amish people spend only a fifth as much as you do on health care, and their health is fine. What can we learn from them? A reminder: the Amish are a German religious sect who immigrated to colon…
Anti-If: The missing patterns (2016)
Software development blog of Joe Wright
What’s the best non-smart TV sold today?
With the industry-wide transition to smart TVs many of us have felt like there is no option but to get one. And the walls are closing in -- it seems like almost every TV sold today is a smart one, which means a lack of control of what's happening on our device, the possibility of
A Failure, but Not of Prediction
I. Vox asks What Went Wrong With The Media’s Coronavirus Coverage? They conclude that the media needs to be better at “not just saying what we do know, but what we don’t know”. This rai…
Bye, Gemini
The Gemini protocol was a big part of my COVID-19 lockdown experience. Discovering this underground, small protocol, having long discussions on the mailing list, and most importantly for me, developing software. My terminal Gemini browser, Amfora, was my first public FOSS project, something actually intended for a…
In Praise of Memorization
As I've gotten older I've started to understand that memorization is important, much more than we give it credit for.
The Homely Mutt
Now that Sparrow is effectively dead many of its users will be looking for a new email client. If you're not afraid of the terminal you may want to give Mutt a try.
My Dream Computer
🥇 Thanks to maya.land and goofpunk for sponsoring the blog! If you'd like to learn how to support my writing and get a shoutout here every week, check the sp...
Enough
I recently heard a story about a friend-of-a-friend who had a decent consulting career. Instead of leveraging his skills to make as much money as possible, he took a different approach. Each year he would accept consulting projects starting in January. His skills were in demand and so he was able to work extended…
Documenting an 1115 ft radio tower climb
Some broadcast engineering tasks are a bit too daunting for me to consider. Climbing the massive towers that power radio and TV stations is one of them! Your browser does not support the video tag. Recently, local engineer Aaron Cox had the perfect set of conditions for a drone flight to capture some of that risk, as…
Why the iPhone Timer app displays a fake time
While building a timer app I came across a peculiarity with displaying time and found out that the iPhone timer addresses it by showing you a fake time.
Deep Work: A welcome kick in the butt
Based on this tweet by Enrico Bertini: Little project I developed during the break looking back at 2016: "Quantifying and Visualizing “Deep Work”" https://t.co/s3d9Zn685Q— Enrico Bertini (@FILWD) January 3, 2017 … after having been successfully primed by this one some weeks ago (because locals!): I also recommend…
You are the scariest monster in the woods
We shouldn’t worry about AI destroying society because there’s something scarier out there (it’s us)
Why did bar ends go away from mountain bikes?
For a little over a decade, they enjoyed strong popularity among mountain bikers, but then the feelings got cold.
Every person on the planet should have their own website
Every person on the planet should have their own website, on their own domain name, and blog about whatever they want.
On the destruction of America’s best high school
[C]hildren with special abilities and skills need to be nourished and encouraged. They are a national treasure. Challenging programs for the “gifted” are sometimes decried as “eli…
They make USB-C cables with displays now
How to turn something as ordinary as an USB-C cable into something that a lot of nerds will want to buy.
Developer Anxiety, we’re not alone
CAEP international paid agriculture exchange programs.
Making Your Writing Work Harder For You
Using teaching -- via writing, speaking, and the like -- to sell more software.
Tokyo mechanical keyboard meetup photos
Last sunny Saturday, there was the biggest keyboard mee…