Fliko

Personally I'd split practice into 3 phases:

1. Hanon's Finger Exercises, mistakes are unacceptable during practice, 'specially while doing these. Use a metronome and master each exercise. Start slow and work your way up.

2. Learn music theory, I'd burn through Mark Levine's 'The Jazz Piano' book, don't skip anything in that book including the little excerpts of songs.

3. Learn your favourite songs by ear (after you learn your favourites be diverse and learn other genres by ear), and pick one great musician you like to study to death. Learn all their songs by ear, every single note in every single solo etc.

If you want to learn piano quickly then make sure you practice everyday for a long time deliberately. If you want to learn piano extremely quickly then find a really good teacher and take lessons, often teachers are invaluable until you get to the point where you can give good self feedback.

Don't worry man, I have this Nexus One phone where the touchscreen registers touch on the side of the phone, and the advertised multitouch doesn't even work, never mind not receiving updates for the rest of my life (my hardware bugs cost me over $600!!). Your game has no chance to work on my phone, why don't I see a "What the Fucking Fuck, Google" post. All systems are plagued with bugs, and a lot of them get neglected forever. Instead of aggressively attacking a company (Apple hateboy?), expecting them to fix something after some f-bombs were dropped, why not write a meaningful blog post.

No it's not, quite a few teachers work everyday to 'improve themselves', sucks that you got the shitty lot of the teachers but the fact is at the end of the day what matters most is what you teach yourself.

Actually, a lot of parents I know talk about how ridiculously expensive it is to put their kid through college/university and to help pay for housing when compared to when they were young.

I don't know what shift managers you know, but the ones I know don't pull much more then what the standard employee gets.

I hope it takes off! The front page seems pretty crowded though, have you guys thought about having it take more of a focus on the content instead of recent comments, login, etc. in the center?

No I don't really find it interesting, if you read the comments you would see someone else had an issue with renewing on the app store.

The blog not only doesn't go into any 'background information', but it reads like a bad experience mixed with a shameless plug.

There are no juicy details to get excited about; nothing thought provoking. The only interesting detail I could find is that people really do tell more people about their bad customer experiences then their good customer experiences.

Yeah it sucks, but posting this on HN is a bit much. As the guidelines say "On-Topic: Anything that good hackers would find interesting. That includes more than hacking and startups. If you had to reduce it to a sentence, the answer might be: anything that gratifies one's intellectual curiosity."

Your account probably got shut off by a bot by accident, and it will probably be fixed when the weekend is over.

Screw the other people, I can relate and I know many other people who can too. Some people think it's better to tie someone onto a hospital bed and medicate them so they don't commit suicide, and then they call suicide a selfish act.

The lack of empathy in the responses to your post is actually pretty sick, the best thing you can do for someone who is depressed is to try to understand, to listen to them, and to help them relax.

I think people sometimes forget what it feels like to be depressed, and how great the need to not be depressed can be.

I also find it hard to believe that some people live their life without at least considering suicide once. It doesn't mean I think it's near the best answer to life, but it's a lot better then some other things people do in life, and I think people have the right to decide what happens with their life.

If I may suggest something, you should go read Alan Watts' "The Wisdom of Insecurity". He was a very influential man who thought that some ideas in Zen Buddhism could be used as very powerful forms of psychotherapy, and on a more personal note I've found that some of the ideas in that book have helped me feel very peaceful and at home in the worst of my times.

It's the only book of his I've read so far, but it was really great (and short) and I plan on reading more. In 'The Wisdom of Insecurity' he talks about how too much people compare their present with their expectations of an impossible future, and with a misrepresented past. He talks a bit about God and religion, but I don't think it was so much a religious book as it was a book about a way of life.

For some extra Hacker News cred he liked to discuss about cybernetics, semantics, quantum physics, and sex. Seriously, if you ever contemplate suicide or even just feel inadequate then go to a library on a Saturday, and get the book; you can easily read it in a day and I think it'll make you feel better.

Saul Williams has always said he was very happy with the result despite 80% of downloaders taking it for free.

Trent made a point later on the nin forum that allowing people to choose how much your product is worth really devalues it, but offering it at a cheap but fair price (say $5) doesn't devalue it.

Personally I think the best model is setting a cheap bottom line that people can pay for your product, and letting them pay more if they feel it is worth more (adding extra stuff for the people who pay more is good too, like a physical copy of the CD for people who pay $20). You don't have to use your bandwidth to give it out for free, the pirates will do that and I think it's safe to say that if someone pirates your album they are probably going to turn into a fan (or be turned off).

It would be very inconvenient for the entire world but I totally support it, and I hope it happens soon because it would send a very powerful message to many people around the world about bills like SOPA.

Learning about group dynamics and social situations is probably the most important part of middle/high school, and more often then not homeschooled kids are at a disadvantage in these situations when they finish school then when compared to non-homeschooled kids.

This isn't always the case, and social awkwardness can go away after x amount of time, but I know that I am glad I wasn't homeschooled despite the occasional bad experiences at high school. Knowing how to deal with people face to face is an extremely important skill.

I totally agree, picking someone as a cofounder that will be taking leave for their newborn baby is insane, but I had 'lower' positions in mind when I was talking about flexibility.

This might be accurate with some people, but it can't be applied to everyone. I am working towards everything I want, and honestly I think the journey is much more desirable then the end result. A big part of Zen is killing your ego, and I think this is a very powerful mentality to have.

I find it ironic that you would say this about a type of business that is usually praised for it's ability to be flexible with work hours, granted that the employees finish what they are expected to finish.

This obviously varies with position to position, but flexibility shouldn't be thrown out of a window because it might be an inconvenience. It's important to treat your employees well!

I think it is important to be wary of who piracy actually hurts though. I very strongly believe that piracy does hurt someone in the music industry, not the artist, but rather the major record labels.

I remember seeing stats 4 years ago that the income of a musician is actually going up pretty drastically because musicians are starting to go independent (book their own shows, record and release their own records, get their own shirts made to sell).

It takes a lot more work, and a lot of musicians just want to be in the music industry for the music, but they have to (and are starting to) accept that taking part in the business side of the industry will help put more food on their plates and give them nice places to live.

The major record labels will probably stay around for a long time thanks to highly commercial pop/rap artists, but it currently looks like they are attacking everything around them in a desperate attempt to keep all these artists going independent, and to keep the (relatively small) amount of revenue lost from piracy.

It is absolutely nuts that musicians used to get 5 cents for a record sale, and it is an absolute blessing that independent artists are getting most of the money from their record sales!

For purposes of what I posted I think it's good to consider artists who sell music via Topspin, Tunecore etc. as independent artists.

Over in Vancouver at BCIT I know that there are a few business diploma programs where the students end up studying just as much (and sometimes even more!) then the engineering diploma programs. This is clearly a special case but I think it's interesting to note.

Exactly! Jobs is great but Gates' work is so much more important then Jobs' iPhone that it's incomparable.

Pretty much everyone I know in College only order online due to it's convenience. Domino's isn't the best pizza in the world but their website is built pretty well, and as a result most pizzas you find on the college campus I am thinking of are either from the school pub or from Domino's.

Yes you save more people in the short term but the risk for disease transmission jumps up quite a lot. I'm sure that not even the doctors really like the fact of the matter but they have to accept it because they must save lives and not take them away for short term benefit.

I don't have enough fingers to count the amount of people I have met who refer to their customers as 'dumb fucks' (or something similar). Instead of holding him accountable for what he said 7 years ago lets hold him accountable by his actions I think this is more fair.

I was just making a joke about some of the stereotypes people hold for hillbillies.

I know some corn/soy bean farmers but not very well. All the farmers I know really well (and have to a point grown up with) are livestock farmers, and they live on a farm and do farm work because they love it. It is not their primary job, most of them do contracting, some are mechanics, some are auctioneers, and others are nurses.

Despite farming not being their primary job, they still make a few thousand dollars a year from sales, which I believe should classify them as a small scale farm.

Farmers don't make a lot of money at all, and they tend to get screwed a lot, this is why you always hear of the angry hillbillies taking over the city. It's kind of like musicians making a living. (Farmers are more important because they provide food, but that's not the point).

As far as industrial machines taking over the business, this is just the nature of needing a lot of food in the world. The morals of these industrial machines are questionable at times, but in the end we need food and most people aren't willing to vegetarian so I guess we are going to have to suck it up until we have better methods. Small scale farms also fill a niche market with local meat/produce and often end up trading/selling their products to other farms.

Back to the point of the main topic; your father wasn't scammed out of his life because he worked hard on a farm. I'm sure at some point he realized that he could sell the farm, move to the city, get a desk job and work less hours much like many other people did in rural areas.

I don't know your father, but I would go as far to say that he probably made a conscious decision to stay on the farm for probably a multitude of reasons. Maybe he liked the life, maybe he liked rural areas, maybe he felt a kid would be better raised on a farm doing lots of hard work, it could be anything really.

Farm work isn't smart work because it requires lot of hard hours with little benefit. Doesn't mean someone is wrong in choosing to do it because it is not only necessary for society, but some people really do like it.

It's still pretty dangerous even if it doesn't send keystrokes.

Don't know if I would want to work for a company who can't accept that I've have been dressed up as a chick, then 'forced' to drink with a bunch of other dudes dressed up with chicks. What if they see that photo of me throwing a cupcake at someone's face?!

In 2003 it reports that small farms that have $10,000 - $249,999 in sales to be 34% of all farms (in 2003), which is still quite significant compared to the 4.8% that industrial complexes (1.7%) and very large family farms (3.1%) hold.

Everyone is free to express themselves, being accused is just a side effect of expression. Hell, Arrington took a stab at jwz in his response.

jwz's advice is extremely valid, it doesn't matter if it's about VCs or vending machines. You have to work hard, but you also have to work smart and be wary that there is always someone waiting to profit off of what you built, he never said it's always the VC.

Small family farms represent 91% of all the farms in the US. 59% of food production in the US is in due thanks to large family farms. There are actually very few industrial food complexes in the US, although it is interesting to note that most of the food production is from these complexes.

http://www.ers.usda.gov/publications/EIB12/EIB12c.pdf?

Make sure you don't eat bananas either!

Most people I know who work all day on a farm do it because they absolutely love it and would imagine living no other life.