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Little things/tools that improved your work or life lately?
visitor4rmindia: Screen: started using it because of this thread: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=848821Now I really cannot imagine working without it. The ability to detach and re-attach to named sessions is fan-tas-tic. Add the ability to run multiple named processes within each session and it makes working on mu...
Little things/tools that improved your work or life lately?
mchadwick: http://ditz.rubyforge.org/A self-contained issue tracker. I switched from hand-hacked TODO lists to Ditz a few weeks ago, and haven't looked back. I'm able to organize my tasks as I would a codebase (components, releases, comments, et cetera). I saw an immediate and sustained increase in my productivity.I...
Little things/tools that improved your work or life lately?
bwr: rlwrap to fix the awful command line interface of sqlplus.
Little things/tools that improved your work or life lately?
yangyang: org-mode for Emacs (http://orgmode.org).It's made a big difference to my life. I've finally got a reliable place to keep notes, a good way to schedule stuff, nice todo lists, a quick way of publishing stuff to HTML / PDF, all accessible (and customisable) in a highly efficient way from Emacs.
Little things/tools that improved your work or life lately?
spudlyo: Recently I've been having to do a lot of editing inside a Firefox text widget in order to update some Wiki documentation. The stupid mediawiki editor rebinds a lot of my emacs keys, which makes it really hard to for me to edit. I found this great firefox plugin called "It's all Text" that puts a little edit ...
Little things/tools that improved your work or life lately?
davidcuddeback: QuickSilver (http://www.blacktree.com/) -- Lets you do just about anything by just typing it on a Mac. For example, to email a document to a friend, I start typing the name of the document. It shows up, so I hit tab and type "email", hit tab, and type my friend's name and hit enter. That composes an ...
Little things/tools that improved your work or life lately?
gruseom: I bound Super to the Fn key on my Macbook in Emacs.
Little things/tools that improved your work or life lately?
gcv: After years of using Emacs, I only just discovered that incremental search works within the ordinary find-file (C-x C-f) function. Try it: C-x C-f, then C-r, and search for a piece of a filename you opened in the recent past. Try C-M-r, and it works with regexes, too.
Little things/tools that improved your work or life lately?
maxklein: 1. Setting all the Step-Over and Step-Into shortcut keys to be the same in eclipse, Xcode as well as the Visual Studios2. Going through my life-todo list and just getting rid of a lot of stuff that I am not going to ever do3. Deciding that instead of the vague 3-4 foreign languages I wanted to learn in my lif...
Little things/tools that improved your work or life lately?
polvi: Setup git bash completion + put the branch name in your PS1 (previously mentioned on HN).http://www.simplicidade.org/notes/archives/2008/02/git_bash_...
How does Gemcutter support itself?
jpcx01: Not sure either... how does RubyForge stay afloat?
Little things/tools that improved your work or life lately?
saurabh: In gVimau WinLeave * set nocursorline nocursorcolumnau WinEnter * set cursorline cursorcolumnEverything http://www.voidtools.com/ for searching files fast in Windows ( it makes use of the USN journal so doesn't need reindexing)Reinteract http://www.reinteract.org/trac/ for hacking Python code. It can re-evalua...
Little things/tools that improved your work or life lately?
MikeCapone: Quicksilver on OS X.I know it's far from obscure, but if you still haven't tried it, it's worth it.
When or if do you think the dollar will collapse?
bgnm2000: I'm making a lot of web sites just in case.
Little things/tools that improved your work or life lately?
sidmitra: i'm on Win XP so:1. PomoTime: One of the new things i'm into for productivity based on Pomodoro technique Although i don't follow it religiously, but i still get manage to get a lot more done than before.2. Microsoft OneNote: i jot down almost everything and anything there before it slips my mind.I am fan of...
When or if do you think the dollar will collapse?
nostrademons: I can't predict when. I think it will, at some point, but I can't tell whether it'll be a gradual slide or a catastrophic panic.As for what to do about it - own assets that generate continual revenue streams denominated in foreign currencies. International bonds are the obvious ones, but stocks of compa...
Little things/tools that improved your work or life lately?
yannis: (01) Pixel ruler has been with me for a couple of years http://www.mioplanet.com/products/pixelruler/index.htm(02) Reverse image search, good if you sitting with a hardisk full of images and want to use some on your bloghttp://tineye.com/search/1c6e572120c79bf875264447d3f08eb9fbe...(03) Answering emails on odd ...
Little things/tools that improved your work or life lately?
nfnaaron: http://puttycm.free.fr/cms/ multiple putty sessions in one tabbed application.Related, get cygwin ssh server running on your windows box (and set it up to disallow password login, only keys). If you use putty then you'll like being able to use putty for shell access to your own machine. You'll also like putty...
Little things/tools that improved your work or life lately?
cpg: Using Putty (Windows) or iTerm (OS X) in full screen. Or use Visor in OS X http://visor.binaryage.com/.This allows distractions from other stuff to vanish for a while.Also, I don't check the email as often ... productivity^2
What was the worst bug you've ever solved ?
MaysonL: Probably the worst bug I ever encountered was a documentation bug.Back in 1970, I was at my first programming job, working for a very small consulting company. The contract was to convert a large system from 1401 Autocoder to System/360 Cobol. However, instead of the source code for the current system, we were...
When or if do you think the dollar will collapse?
yannis: It can have a catastrophic effect on the web. Javascript validation would not be able to handle all the digits. I wonder how the Zimbabweans handled it?Seriously don't worry. It will have to adjust sometimes to reflect the real economy and the deficit. I lived in South Africa for quite a few years. At one stage...
When or if do you think the dollar will collapse?
jacquesm: Please define 'collapse'.
Little things/tools that improved your work or life lately?
zackattack: TextMate~esc for function name autocomplete //todo: comments in the source appear when you hit ctrl-shift-t cmd-shift-t search by method name cmd-shift-f search for phrase within entire project ftp+ssh bundle
Little things/tools that improved your work or life lately?
rguzman: Keeping short ToDo lists for every project (not necessarily software) that I do which contain only the next 5-8 things to do next. Writing down a little note along with the todo to help me restore state next time i work on the project.
Little things/tools that improved your work or life lately?
bgray: Exercise. Seriously, it keeps you healthy, gives time to think (away from a computer) and keeps your mind fresh.
Little things/tools that improved your work or life lately?
kvs: * Exercise* One day without computer (mediafast) (thinking time)* iPhone/Simplenote/Things* Snow Leopard/Quick Silver/Things/Dropbox* Friends & Family* Absence of scheduled TV (no cable or disc) Hulu instead
When or if do you think the dollar will collapse?
newacc: i guess gold and silver are the best bet.. though i dont know its a right time to buy right now as prices has shot in last couple of years... dollar crash may also result in to stock-crash and someone who can predict this can also buy 'short' ETFs. Dollar crash will also create demand in Oil which in-turn will ...
When or if do you think the dollar will collapse?
buugs: I don't think the dollar will collapse, if it does however many people other than the US need to be very worried.If I'm wrong: I live in the mountains have plenty of trees an axe, a gun, and a stove.
Little things/tools that improved your work or life lately?
bbhacker: Water...all I can say is water....While I knew that drinking more than 1-2 glasses of water is good, I never thought that the impact of drinking 1-2 liters of water a day could have such an significant impact on my ability to concentrate and focus on programming.My suggestion: drink at least 1-2 liters of wat...
Little things/tools that improved your work or life lately?
Dilpil: Windows Key + D = minimize everything. Most of you probably know this, but for the few that do not... you are welcome.
Can you recommend a Cloud host to us?
byoung2: I use all of Rackspace Cloud's offerings (Cloud Sites, Cloud Servers, Cloud Files) and I've been satisfied so far. I also use GoGrid for more advanced applications, as they offer free hardware load balancing and mountable cloud storage.I'm assuming you're interested in Cloud Servers vs Amazon EC2? Depending ...
Can you recommend a Cloud host to us?
jnaut: The answer is - "It depends", on a lot of parameters like: 1. Do you need a dedicated box or a virtual OS on a shared box will do? 2. What are your avg monthly usage requirements- box and bandwidth? And how these requirements shall change of time. 3. You want to customize you box's configuration before u rent it...
Can you recommend a Cloud host to us?
geuis: I recently switched to Slicehost. For me, it's exactly what I want. A flat monthly fee for a server instance and easily upgradable as needed. They provide a choice of Linux systems, and from there you're free to build as you see fit. They offer reverse dns, which is vital for running mail servers and not availab...
Little things/tools that improved your work or life lately?
bgnm2000: BOXING! I haven't gotten in the ring yet, but its an amazing workout on top of my usual regiment (granted, I'm an exercise junkie).
Can you recommend a Cloud host to us?
fuzzmeister: Does anyone have any experiences with Rackspace Cloud Sites? Is it a good way to get scalable hosting without worrying about provisioning new instances and such?
Little things/tools that improved your work or life lately?
codedivine: Food processor and a multifunction rice cooker and steamer. No more burger king :)
Little things/tools that improved your work or life lately?
RK: Obviously they get a lot of love here, but I'll list them again:DropboxI find I am majorly neglecting by USB thumb drive. And sharing files with random people is much easier now.
Little things/tools that improved your work or life lately?
dwynings: Things for Mac OS X and the iPhone.I'd never really kept up with a to-do list before (I usually just used a piece of paper at my desk), but I'm able to do more things now because I want to get rid of the red reminder icon.
Can you recommend a Cloud host to us?
ahlatimer: I use Linode for my sites and haven't had any problems. I've heard that Slicehost has a better control panel (Linode has practically nothing apart from allowing you to provision your resources), but I didn't really need those. I just needed a VPS with root access that wouldn't break the bank, and Linode fit ...
Little things/tools that improved your work or life lately?
prawn: StrokeIt - mouse gestures in WinXP.
Little things/tools that improved your work or life lately?
sid0: I've started using AutoHotKey recently, and it's a wonderful little tool to automate things.Also, this great file search tool called Everything. Basically like locate on *nix, except it uses NTFS tables directly to search (it indexed the names of the ~600k files on my laptop in less than a minute, and searches th...
Little things/tools that improved your work or life lately?
jtuyen: If you're a Linux user, try out tasque + gnome-do w/ tasque plugin + remember the milk screenlet. This is how I manage to sync all my GTD throughout my computers and laptop on the go.Klok time management software. I like know how much time I'm spending on each project/task. This can be sync'd between machines...
Little things/tools that improved your work or life lately?
dkokelley: Not trying to take all of my school notes on my tablet. There's an extra layer of complexity/distraction that hurts my ability to learn.De-consolidating my email accounts. Instead of using Gmail to access all of my accounts, I keep them each separate. It makes categorizing my emails much easier. Wonderful on...
Can you recommend a Cloud host to us?
shpxnvz: I've used and had good experience with both platforms. The only performance issues I've ever had were with SimpleDB when it was in beta.For support the nod would have to go to Rackspace, in my opinion. The two times I've needed help I was talking to a real person in San Antonio within twenty seconds or so, w...
Little things/tools that improved your work or life lately?
dunham: In Safari, Cmd-1, Cmd-2, etc. activate the first, second, etc. bookmarks in your toolbar. Great for things like readability. (e.g. Cmd-1 to make the current page readable.)
Can you recommend a Cloud host to us?
moe: One thing to consider is that rackspace doesn't seem to have an EBS (elastic block storage) equivalent. You can not mount any of their NAS offerings to a cloud server.This means a few things: 1. Your cloud servers top out at 620G storage per instance. 2. You can not scale the storage separately from RAM/...
Little things/tools that improved your work or life lately?
jseliger: I'm now using a Kinesis Advantage keyboard, which is awesome in ways I didn't appreciate till I tried it; see more here: http://jseliger.com/2009/07/20/kinesis-advantage .DevonThink Pro is a tremendously useful program that I didn't appreciate till I began organizing bits of my life around it.
Little things/tools that improved your work or life lately?
rabidgnat: If you're writing software as DLLs, the venerable Depends.exe is critical:http://www.dependencywalker.com/If there was something that made debugging linking errors this easy, then C++ development would be a snap... kind of...
When or if do you think the dollar will collapse?
drhowarddrfine: Your question is like those who boo sports players when they have a bad year. An economic downturn is not uncommon anywhere and having one now is just letting the wolves howl at the moon and salivate. The best players bounce back and so will the economy and the dollar. All this has happened before, many...
Can you recommend a Cloud host to us?
rgrieselhuber: Here's what I'm doing at the moment:Slicehost for web server, backend processing and db. This allows me to scale each major part individually. The processor agents store a bunch of stuff on S3.I'm probably going to change this to using the backend systems on Slicehost just as schedulers and do the actual...
Little things/tools that improved your work or life lately?
icey: Totally unsexy, but a notebook that has gridlines instead of regular ruling and a pile of pens (some people really hate them, but I love Pilot G7 pens).Having grids makes it really easy to flesh something out on paper, take notes, etc. and you are forced to pay attention to things in sequential order.
Hiring
jrockway: Sure. Don't you want people who can form opinions and then communicate them with others?
Little things/tools that improved your work or life lately?
10ren: Taking two days off per week, one for rest; one for self-development.
Little things/tools that improved your work or life lately?
10ren: vim: Recursively load all java files (i.e. in all subdirectories): :args **/*.java Refactor a package name throughout the project ("e" suppresses the "No match" error message): :argdo %s/oldpackage/newpackage/e
Can you recommend a Cloud host to us?
dstorrs: I haven't used Amazon myself, but a good friend of mine has done quite a bit with it. When I asked him about it, he said (IIRC) that one thing to be aware of what that you couldn't run a MySQL DB on one of their small instances--you needed a large instance. So, something to keep in mind.(Please do verify thi...
Little things/tools that improved your work or life lately?
neovive: Signing up for a third-party hosted Subversion account. The prices are so low these days, there's no need to manage the SVN server on your own. I tend to use SVN more now that I don't have to worry about managing it.The sharing features of Google Docs has also been a big time saver.
How to deal with a niche idea, that can be part of an existing service?
ddemchuk: Why not execute on your idea, get users, then contact a company that you think could also copy your idea and strike a partnership/advertising arrangement with them?
Little things/tools that improved your work or life lately?
pizza: Working with special-needs kids with soccer every Saturday.
Little things/tools that improved your work or life lately?
pasbesoin: Windows environment:Ditto clipboard manager/history. This helps both in avoiding context changes (alt-tabbing back and forth, etc.) and in retrieving older items. Quite configurable.Winsplit Revolution window size/position manager. Put windows where you want them with a single chord. Quickly get windows ...
When or if do you think the dollar will collapse?
cmars232: Lots of guns and canned food. Works equally well for zombie outbreaks and post-nuclear apocalypses too.
Little things/tools that improved your work or life lately?
brianobush: Read HN a little less often - serious here. I am trying to read news (I feel like I am addict sometimes) a little less these days. Productivity gains are obvious and my time is sliced up less.
Why cloud computing?
st3fan: Depends on what you mean with 'The Cloud' and 'apps'.Hosting something 24/7 on for example Amazon's EC2 is barely cost effective. On the other hand doing regular hosting combined with EC2 for peaks is extremely cost effective.
Why cloud computing?
Kaizyn: The main drivers are cheaper startup costs and less of a need to manage hardware yourself (usually including backups).
Why cloud computing?
sachinag: There's actually an element that's way overlooked: peace of mind. Let's say AWS goes down. 1) You can't do anything about it, so while you're upset, you're not losing sleep driving to your colo and back at 3am. 2) Many, many other companies - some of whom are infinitely larger than you - are also down. No...
Why cloud computing?
richardw: Personally, because it reduces the skills base I need on board. I can ignore most issues below the app level and focus on what I do best.I've used Google App Engine and Azure but am focusing on GAE because of costs and the ability to ignore instances. When I'm not there and the server falls down, the App Engi...
ASK HN: I'm lost -- need direction
vaksel: No it's not, use your age to your advantage. All the kids are focusing on YATA or YAIA(yet another twitter app or yet another iphone app)...use your old age and life experience and develop something for the baby boomers.I dunno, a site to create bucket lists with reminders emailed every 24 hours, something like...
ASK HN: I'm lost -- need direction
cwan: Absolutely not - but it'd probably be a good idea to find (hire or partner with) those who are strong where you're weak. Check this out - http://www.scribd.com/doc/17772299/Anatomy-of-an-Entrepreneu... - it gives an outline of what the typical entrepreneur looks like. For starters, a typical entrepreneur isn't...
ASK HN: I'm lost -- need direction
sachinag: This is the question I always ask: do you want to be an entrepreneur or do you want to work for yourself?Being an entrepreneur is about being so passionate about a product or service that you, and only you, can produce that you're willing to move heaven and earth to get it out there. Working for yourself mea...
ASK HN: I'm lost -- need direction
hwijaya: No. I read somewhere, median age of founders are 40. Use your experience to your advantage. Get yourself a great cofounder and start kick some ass.
ASK HN: I'm lost -- need direction
markbao: > In fact, twice as many U.S.-born tech entrepreneurs start ventures in their 50s as do those in their early 20s. - Kaufmann Foundation for Entrepreneurship, http://www.kauffman.org/Details.aspx?id=1784 "New Study Challenges Popular Perception of Founder Makeup of Technology and Engineering Companies"The idea ...
Little things/tools that improved your work or life lately?
ashwinl: Spamgourmet.com I've been using it for years to register and try out new services (online and offline) that require an email address. I'm surprised why it hasn't gained more traction.
ASK HN: I'm lost -- need direction
gruseom: Now it seems time is running out.That stops being true when you stop thinking it.
ASK HN: I'm lost -- need direction
rjurney: Its not too late, you just can't afford to be in Ramen mode unless you save money ahead of time or your wife has enough income to float you on a startup salary.My advice: get in a startup as early as you can afford to. If that means being employee 10, so be it. You'll still have a good time. If you can affo...
ASK HN: I'm lost -- need direction
skmurphy: Save your money, adjust your lifestyle to allow you to live on a lower spending rate. Make sure your wife is supportive of starting something.Take your time and find at least one partner. If you don't know them well do some smaller projects together first.Older entrepreneurs bring social capital, commitment, ...
ASK HN: I'm lost -- need direction
akkartik: To everybody quoting the result that most entrepreneurs are in their 40s: that includes entrepreneurs in clean energy, hardware, other kinds of engineering. I'm not sure there's a study out there about just software/web entrepreneurs. Vivek Wadhwa's study (http://www.techcrunch.com/2009/09/07/when-it-comes-to...
I've tried lots of things but haven't finished any.
DanielStraight: You're 18... give it time.
I've tried lots of things but haven't finished any.
MikeCapone: You're young and you still have lots of time to figure what works, but you seem to be doing the right thing by trying lots of things that interest you. This will give you lots of experience quickly and teach you about yourself.You seem to be on the right track. From what you've written, doesn't seem like yo...
ASK HN: I'm lost -- need direction
callmeed: Have you found a problem/pain point (at your current job perhaps) that you want to solve and turn into a startup? That's the first thing to consider. The two companies I've started began with "we need to solve this problem" and (in one way or another) then evolved into "hey, this could be a business" ... if y...
ASK HN: I'm lost -- need direction
stakent: From my point of view (a dozen or so years of work wearing many hats, no marketing experience):Look at your commitments towards you employer, formal and informal ones. If your commitments permit: start on side something noncompeting with your employer. If it works, then its the Decision time.Do not burn bridge...
I've tried lots of things but haven't finished any.
numair: Dude, you're 18. The more important question is, are you carrying out meaningful social experiences with people your age? Are you making really great friends who have nothing to do with your career? Are you engaging in dramatic, possibly-hopeless romantic endeavors with cute 18 year old girls (or boys!) that...
ASK HN: I'm lost -- need direction
timothychung: I think it is a matter of financial planning. When you know the cost of doing a startup, you will know whether you want to jump into it.Just assume things fail and go against you will give you a good bottom line perspective. At least you have enough buffer to expected failures.All the best to you. Cheers.
When or if do you think the dollar will collapse?
Chronos: This current crisis felt like we came to the brink of hyperinflation, but managed to scramble through it without quite tipping the balance. Nothing is fundamentally fixed, though, so I expect the next big crisis 5 or 10 years down the road to end with the revaluation of the dollar, Zimbabwe style.Gold is over...
ASK HN: I'm lost -- need direction
jerome_etienne: i dont see it as a too late or not. more about a risk management issue, especially with kids. They cost money and time. Startups require significant time and doesnt provide much money (in early stage).can you do it on the side of your day job ? can you financially afford not to have a day job ?About the...
Little things/tools that improved your work or life lately?
Clemens: PhraseExpress. It is a clipboard manager and text inserter (like Autotext).
ASK HN: I'm lost -- need direction
Zarathu: Not at all! Wisdom (usually) comes with age.You're also more likely to have a better partnership with someone young. My partner in my current startup is 55, and I'm 19. We get along great.I'm looking to start a new project. =]
ASK HN: I'm lost -- need direction
selfemploy: Any entrepreneurs interested in co-founders contact me at selfsemploy AT gmail.com.Location : bangalore
I've tried lots of things but haven't finished any.
quizbiz: Unlike the rest, I ask, "why wait?".I'm sure the school you go to has great resources. I'm a freshman at Emory and even though there is no reputation for startups here, the business school and the library still offer extraordinary resources. I've been emailing around searching for local business men to connect...
Little things/tools that improved your work or life lately?
bearwithclaws: 1. Switch from PHP to Ruby (on rails). 2. Switch from Windows to OS X. 3. Meditates.
ASK HN: I'm lost -- need direction
thaumaturgy: Why do you want to an "entrepreneur"? What does that mean to you?I don't see a passion for any particular project or idea in your question. I would expect that someone that really wanted to be an entrepreneur, right from their college days, would have moved in that direction somehow -- either by saving fun...
Little things/tools that improved your work or life lately?
imperator: Scheduling my day the night before in Google Calendar. And then when I don't meet the schedule, I alter it so that the schedule then becomes a journal.It offers amazing perspective and turns vague concepts like when I got to sleep, and when I actually played video games into solid temporal events.
Little things/tools that improved your work or life lately?
surki: Wanderlust (Emacs Email client).I use it with gmail imap interface. Completely changed the way I manage emails.http://www.gohome.org/wl/
I've tried lots of things but haven't finished any.
joecode: Yes. There seems to be a common thread here. You are taking on way more than you, or really anybody, can handle. I mean, seriously---a program to model the stock market? That's why everybody else keeps bailing out. Anyway, if you get a bit more realistic (don't read: less ambitious), then I'm sure you'll ...
I've tried lots of things but haven't finished any.
ramanujan: Hey -- as someone who thought similar things at that age, you probably have quite a few skills from all those bruises. Very few people are writing multiple web apps, multiple papers, etc. at 18.My advice to you would be to seek out a mentor who sees themself in you. That could be a graduate student, a young ...
I've tried lots of things but haven't finished any.
carpo: Maybe you're trying to do too much? Perhaps you could find something which you are really passionate about and work at doing it the best you can.Looks like a lot of the time you've been doing things for or with other people. Why not think of something you are really passionate about and do it exclusively for a w...
I've tried lots of things but haven't finished any.
codexon: You are not focused.If people gave up after one or two failures, nothing would get accomplished.- Wrote a program to model the stock marketEveryone wants to do this, but unless you have insider information like Goldman Sachs or some rare mathematical insight that a million PhDs have overlooked, you are likely ...
I've tried lots of things but haven't finished any.
fuzzmeister: To be honest, I say keep trying and don't get discouraged. While joecode is correct that you might need to be more realistic about some of your goals, if you keep trying, you will find success, even if it's modest.If you're interested in doing another webapp, I say do one start-to-finish completely on your...
I've tried lots of things but haven't finished any.
thaumaturgy: It's hard to tell just from your post, but so far it sounds like you're more of a "starter" than a "finisher" -- you're not following through enough on your projects to keep them going. I'm not an expert on your life, so this is just a guess.However, the one that really stands out for me is: "Did another w...
I've tried lots of things but haven't finished any.
bk: 1. It's a good idea to partner with people, but pick projects where you don't depend on your partners to finish. Pick a problem/domain where if everything else failed you could at least push out a minimal version to see if you can get traction.2. For abandoned projects, salvage the scraps - publish the drafts or pa...
Why cloud computing?
dangrossman: Moving from physical servers to EC2 (with reserved instances, that cut the hourly prices significantly) saved me $300 a month.And I feel much less stress now that I'm "in the cloud". If a server breaks, one click starts a new instance with the apps and configuration already in place. If a virtual hard driv...
ASK HN: I'm lost -- need direction
megaduck: It's never too late. As most people have pointed out, most entrepreneurs are older than you expect. The kids who build successful businesses at 20 get all the press because they're the exception, not the rule.There's lots of examples out there: Jay Adelson founded Digg at 34 and Revision3 at 35. William H...