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You are right about upper ear response.

I can tell the difference with my now-old ears, if it is a good recording of real-world instruments in a common space.

That is a lot of qualifiers, but on playback you can ‘feel’ that other space.

I believe that it is because of the way that the higher frequency components of the sound interact with the environment and effectively down-transpose and affect the rest of the signal before they hit the listener’s ear.

I second the Dodge Caravan suggestion, but would also suggest that you make sure that you get the Stow-and-Go seats option.

My wife and I find it invaluable.

It also allows placing one child in the middle row and two in the back with one middle seat stowed for when 1 adult is driving the kids around. This makes it easy to pull over, get in the side door and deal with whatever crisis has come up.

Baby genius? 15 years ago

Sorry, in trying to be succinct, I came off as harsh.

I'm not questioning your motivations.

I just think that it is healthier to make statements like 'I want to help my child to realize their creativity' or 'I want to help my child realize their programming potential' than to say that 'I want to help my child to do X by Y years'.

Baby genius? 15 years ago

I think that you are using the wrong metrics.

Defining the results achieved by a certain age is a different thing than defining the qualities that you seek to nurture.

By setting results based goals, you are putting your child in a subordinate pass/fail position.

Who are you to define success for your child? It is their life.

By defining some qualities that you would like to nurture in your child, and implementing strategies to help them develop, you would be acting as a supportive participant in their development.

Milestone thinking can be very dangerous in this context.

I really can't understand how the people that are participating in this discussion (on AVC and elsewhere) are failing to see this - especially given some of their CV's...

Fred has made three posts about marketing this week, and has missed the point on all three, despite being corrected by Seth Godin on the first day.

Am I alone in thinking that this is really scary?

I can't believe that there have been three days of posts with a wealth of intelligent discussion, and still Fred Wilson is conflating Marketing and Promotion.

This makes me a little bit sad...

Ok, I kinda piled on Fred Yesterday: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2262682

He is softening his position it seems, but he is still seeing marketing as something other than it is.

Marketing is the act of identifying a market's demand, and optimizing your offering to capitalize on that demand. It is what drives revenues in business more than anything else.

The problem is that advertising agencies and other firms that offer other promotional or consulting services have co-opted the term 'marketing' for themselves.

Promotion is a tactic that can strengthen your marketing efforts. Fred's point seems to be that paying for promotion is unwise for a startup. I generally agree.

He might also be saying that paying a costly consultancy firm to advise on your offering's market fit as a startup is unwise. I would agree with this also.

It looks like Fred has seen the term 'Marketing' on the wrong side of the balance sheet one too many times.

He is downplaying the importance of marketing for startups. I think that this is very damaging to the young entrepreneurs that are listening without understanding the context.

I am largely ad blind. I only notice them when they are annoying, and when I do notice annoying ads I generally leave the site.

It is hard to comment on your situation without a link to evaluate. I would suggest that if you are thinking this way, you probably already know what the answer is.

Perhaps some A/B testing is in order to tailor your site to your audience.

Marketing 15 years ago

I find it a little bit scary that Fred Wilson might not be able to differentiate Marketing from Promotion.

He must be having an off day.

Every business needs to have vision for how its products and/or services relate to its customers and the wider marketplace. Marketing is fundamental to business.

However, I do agree that for many startups, costly promotional efforts probably wont offer enough return to justify the expense.

>>ADD/ADHD can be crippling, but for very smart people that manage it (or find way to become productive), it might be actually be beneficial to their creativity and give them and edge.

I am adult that has been recently diagnosed with ADD, and have to say that the comparative problem solving and creativity advantage has been apparent all of my life (not just to me :) ).

>>One comment that you hear from people that start taking Ritalin due to adult ADD, is that while they are a lot less distract-able and are able to perform and complete a lot more tasks, they feel less creative, and more a bit like robots.

I was afraid that this would happen to me, but thankfully that hasn't been my experience. I'm hardly a robot, and really just as prone to distraction. I am, however, better able to modulate my attention. On the drugs, I can choose what I pay attention to so that distractions are less of a problem.

I am 'middle aged' (oh, God...) and have a wife and two young kids. I first had someone mention to me that I might be ADD this past April/May. After a bunch of research, I convinced myself that it might be true. Iwas officially diagnosed in August and have been on drugs since then. So it is early days for me...

The plan for me is to use the drugs long enough to cement behaviors that help me manage the condition within my current situation. For most of my life, I haven't had a 'straight-job', a marriage and two kids to raise. I structured everything so that I could basically do anything that I wanted, whenever I wanted. Now that I have to manage having family and a job (at least job in the short term), I need to have some way of maintaining consistent behavior. Right now the drugs are working for my situation.

I know the thinking-difference that this condition brings is a comparative advantage to others. I am way more creative, and much better at solving problems than others are. I just kind of suck at being reliable right now.

Personally, I have no side effects that I notice (none at all) with correct dosing and control of my behavior.

Within the first few days of being on Concerta, I had a stressful rush-job on one of my files at work and slipped into my 'work-zone' behavior (my main symptom is overfocus). The combination of the new drugs, and the adrenaline / anxiety was a strange sensation, probably what most experience when being on amphetamines. I just don't put myself in that situation anymore.

Other than that, I've nothing to report.

You might consider that it was not the drugs alone that were keeping you awake. You may have a great deal of latent anxiety that only becomes a problem once you 'wake your frontal lobe up'. That anxiety is what I used to stay sharp before drugs. Maybe massage or meditation would help you get to sleep when you start on the drugs.

I do not claim to be an authority on the research, but I believe that the statistics are that more people die from using Asprin every year than medical stimulants (not that death should be the only measure).

There is evidence supporting good outcomes for the medical use of stimulants dating as far back as the 1930's - longer than any other class of drugs. The medical consensus is that they are safe.

First off, don't beat yourself up - 20 min is good. Just make sure that 20 min work periods are punctuated with 5 min break periods.

I have ADD (not ADHD), but here is what works for me.

1. Drugs - After much resistance to the idea as well as near exhaustive experimentation with alternative therapies, I tried Concerta and was amazed at the results. On the night of my first dose I had what felt like the best sleep of my life.

2. Awareness and understanding of the symptoms - If you are like me, you are not procrastinating because you lack focus -- you are procrastinating to achieve focus. You are effectively self-medicating with adrenaline. The resultant constant anxiety about both not working and upsetting your wife keeps you sharp as well. You still are going to need the 'fix', but strive to get them from either drugs, or different behaviors.

The solution for me was to strategically fill all of my 'free-time'. It sounds like you have a wife and kids, so this should be easy. Lean into being a good husband and father. Block out dedicated family time where you are focusing on them and not stray thoughts about work. It is the 'limbo' state where you are present at home but thinking about something else that is the killer.

Make sure that this time is centered around an activity - not TV/Computer. Cooking. Washing dishes. Doing Laundry. Playing with the kids (for real). Painting the guest room.

This does 2 things: it keeps your family happy, and leaves you just enough time to cram in work when it is time to work. Too much time on any one task will put you in 'limbo'. I'm sure that your problem isn't just at work, I'm willing to bet that you are not making a habit of being present in the moment. Off hours practice being present at home will only help things.

Also, it sounds like you know that boring problems make you procrastinate. It may be worth looking into ways to make boring problems interesting...

3. Administrative Pre-Planning - I know that trying to work around anything that could derail my attention is not going to work. The solution is really as simple as removing the possibility for those distractions to occur.

Seriously - Restrict your internet access with site-blocking , headphones to keep co-workers away (even without music - I can't listen to music / TV when I am trying to work). Whatever your triggers for 'limbo' are, acknowledge them and make sure that you have no chance of being exposed. Not ever.

4. Unwavering Planned Routine - This doesn't work without #2 and #3. I could never stick to routines because I needed the rush that I got from a chaotic lifestyle. When you turn it around, you can get almost the same rush by being optimally effective at any one time. You can race the clock for your fix. If you have to decide at any given time what to be optimally effective at, you will deliberate and go into 'limbo'. Pre-planned routine is a good way of overcoming the impulsivity and reduced long-term executive-cognition that is characteristic of the condition.

Now this is what it is supposed to look like... But I think that it is down to technique rather than the cameras.

This guy lays out most of the obstacles with the process in a very short comment: 1. Maintain consistent depth of field between two cameras by using separate Neutral Density filters for each camera 2. Spend time tweaking your luma keys for each video stream.

People that work on lighting crews should be getting nervous right about now.