ibrow

I live in Berlin and have just walked to work - I love it (even on a rainy day like today) - time to think.

Whilst Berlin is spread out I have found that you normally stick to your own "kiez" (neighbourhood). If you are lucky you'll be able to live and work in roughly the same area, and therefore walking (or cycling) is a great option.

As a previous commenter said, there are a number of shared car options available. I don't use these as I have no need, but they seem very good.

Also, the public transport within the city is very good.

There is, however, one danger of walking. It is very easy to find yourself stopping for a coffee or a beer on a sunny day!

Think you're over egging the pudding there. Was simply responding to the question "Ireland won anything lately?"

The Rugby on Sunday. They were looking very good actually, might be a dark horse for the Six Nations.

Slightly off topic, but has anyone read "Grace Hopper and the Invention of the Information Age"[1]? It's been on my wishlist for ages, but I've not got round to buying/reading it yet.

[1] http://www.amazon.co.uk/Invention-Information-Lemelson-Studi...

Thanks for the info. We haven't hit near that number yet, we mainly use it for the autoresponder stuff and some simple mailings to a few hundered addresses.

I use Sendy[0] for this very reason. It uses Amazon's SES and whilst it isn't as feature full as Mailchimp it does the job, costs about $60.

Note, I'm not affiliated in any way I just started to use it as I needed auto-responders and Mailchimp was too expensive for my use-case.

[0] http://sendy.co/

Masters of Doom is a fantastic book, really enjoyed reading that.

From that I then also read the Making of the Prince of Persia[1]. This is Jordan Mechner's journal from his time during the making of this game. Not just about the game but about some of his life in general too. Not as riveting as the Masters of Doom, but still a very interesting little read.

[1] http://www.amazon.com/The-Making-Prince-Persia-Journals/dp/1...

Edit. Oh yes, just remembered. For a real trip down memory lane you might want to check out Speccy Nation[2] too. It took me about an hour to flick through but it was so much fun, afterwards I had to call up my best friend from the time (another ZX Spectrum addict) and tell him to buy a copy!

[2] http://www.amazon.co.uk/Speccy-Nation-ebook/dp/B0096BFBSA

Yes, it is a bit strange. I'm a native speaker and I would have said "in a single PHP file" too.

Are the three videos running at the same speed? Or are they constantly adjusted so they keep up with each other so we can see more clearly any changes in landscape?

I can actually believe that the journey time hasn't increased since the 1950s. However, possibly the clock at the end of the film is there to indicate the differing journey times?

Anyway, interesting video. thanks for posting.

Many thanks for the link.

Well, if it works for nuclear?!

Bonkers.

But then you look at Egypt. It once seemed so hopeful and now it appears to descending ever more into violence and civil war. What's to say that even if they do have fair elections unrest will continue.

Yesterday my wife and I were discussing the UK vote on intervening in Syria. It is such a horrible plight for people trapped in the middle of this, that both options of going in or not going in are equally awful.

The conclusion was that we don't know what the right answer is, but there must be some better way. We've got to stop thinking that military action is the only alternative.

We need to seriously do some bigger, different thinking. Possibly the UK granting opening it's doors to anyone who wants to flee this hell? I don't know.

Initiatives like Hire Programmers from Syria are a great start to thinking differently. I have no idea if it will be successful at achieving its goals or not, but I still applaud the effort.

Well done, and good luck.

This sounds spot on for what I'm after. Looking forward to seeing how this progresses.

Thanks for the link to the other vids, will check them out.

Regarding target audience, I think if the screencasts were "emacs for beginners and elisp for beginners" it would be too much and there would be no real audience: people who are starting out in emacs don't need to bother about elisp yet, people who are starting out in elisp probably know at least the basics, if not more, of emacs.

So either do emacs for beginners (of which there are already quite a few screencasts) or do elisp for intermediate emacs users but those new to elisp

Disclaimer: I am being amazingly selfish here as I've been using emacs for quite a while, but only now getting into elisp (and lisp in general)

I've just watched all 3 screencasts and found them really very useful. Not just the elisp stuff, which is great, but also the modes that help you use elisp (smartparens etc).

I would happily pay/gittip for a series that aimed at programmers who already use emacs (or can figure out the editing/movement functions) that takes you from no elisp to being able to write your own (useful) packages. Tips for getting the most out of emacs for the development of lisp would be a huge plus (for example, an episode on setting up/using smartparens, eldocs or whatever).

I read quite a good interview with Chicken Scheme's author a few months ago. Here's the link which might be of interest:

http://spin.atomicobject.com/2013/05/02/chicken-scheme-part-...

Here is the book[1] that goes with that documentary. It is a really good read and not too technical at all.

[1] http://www.amazon.co.uk/Fermats-Last-Theorem-confounded-grea...

Edit: Just seen nicholassmith posted exactly the same link. Apologies for duplication

But talking to customers is exactly what these guys did:

> So we talked to a few artists who said they thought it was a cool idea. BOOM! Our idea had been validated!

The idea had not been validated at all, just been told it was "cool". What they should have done next (or possibly at the same time) is spend a couple of hundred dollars on adwords to see if a cool idea converted into something people would actually want to buy.

What they should not have done is

> stopped talking to artists for a year and built (and rebuilt) the software until we thought it was acceptable

My point is that I would far rather spend $200-$500 on adwords and not on 1 year development of a product that is thought to be cool, but no one has actually had the opportunity to come to it fresh and click on an "order now" button.

I am probably not making myself clear

> Is it because i drew the wrong crowd? Is it because they don't know me? is it because adwords conversions are usually very low so do i need to pay for more traffic?

You don't just put up one ad using some keywords and be done with it. You constantly tweak, seeing what keywords people are using to find your ads, which keywords have the highest click through rate.

When I did this for a little idea I was thinking of doing, this was incredibly helpfu

The product I was think about doing was related to niche websites. I thought most people would use the word "niche" to describe them, it quickly became apparent that the real word people used was "affiliate" I saw "affiliate" appear a lot with related keywords and in the stats on the site, so I added an adword targeting that and related keywords, CTR doubled.

Using adwords helps you define and recognise the crowd you draw so you can best cater to them.

> If it actually is because my product sucks, then cool.. But what do i change?

Again, don't keep it static. In my experiment above, the first 100 clicks saw no interest. I changed some wording, a tiny improvement (less bounces etc). I changed the price, less bounces. I added FAQs, less bounces, I tweaked the available functions - possibly people would want feature X. Bang! people clicking on the "order now" button. Feature X is what people want

> There is no way to know this; which is why i believe the buy button is not the way to go.... at the beginning.

Seems like you haven't tried it, ;)

You can learn a lot from this.

Firstly you can learn how other people describe the type of product you are offering - not necessarily how you describe it. With Adwords you'll see the types of keywords that people are typing to have your adverts displayed, some of these keyword phrases may include words you haven't considered. You then add these new words to your list and see the results. Rinse and repeat.

Now people are coming to your site you can track what they do. What price point has the most clicks, what wording bounces the least, etc.

I have done exactly what erikpukinskis described and it serves to not only validate (or not) your idea, but the great thing about this is I learned far more what real people are actually wanting, not what I thought they wanted.

A couple of weeks investing in a quick wordpress site and some adwords to validate and modify an idea before building is so much better then building it then seeing if they will come.

My mother always used to tell me "only boring people get bored".

Now with a small child and business to run, some days I would love to be bored and have nothing to do!

Not to take this thread off topic but I've also been getting into the fascinating history of computers. I've almost finished the book Code by Charles Petzold and it was like a lightbulb going off in my head. So interesting and so exciting.

I'm now itching to dive into assembler so based on georgemcbay's comment I'll give 6502 a go.

On a side note, @geeksonhugs, do you know of any other good books or documentaries exploring the history further?

Thanks in advance

Actually, we are possibly expecting another (it's a bit too early to officially announce) and my wife has suggested Haskell if it was a boy! (as guard-of-terra says below, it is the name of a boy).

It is rather worryingly beginning to grow on me.

I guess I can always say he was named after the England Rugby player[1] to hide my true geek creds, and portray a more rugged image of myself.

[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/James_Haskell

It's not really an issue, but I have had a number of people know me, know I'm a bit of a dweeb and clock it, normally with an eye-roll. (I personally actually like her being called Lua, I think it is really individual. She is about 20 months now and the name is really suiting her)

I agree that Ruby is a lovely name, but the only reason it wasn't included in the list is that my parents have a dog with the same name, so imagine the hilarity at Christmas and other family gatherings!

Congratulations on your son. I would have appreciated it far more if my parents named me after someone who really had a big influence on their life, not just, as in my case, my dad! I'm still convinced it was for sneaky tax purposes or something ;)

We added the middle name to be safe really. We had heard some horror stores about parents being denied kinder-geld due to an "incorrect" name.

We're both English, so middle names are common there (not sure about the US) and the middle name we chose rally suits the whole name, sort of finishes it of nicely.

I guess the point of the anecdote is really that in Germany, this sort of thing must be considered, but more of a light hearted Friday story!

While it can be seen like this, it does stop the unnecessary act of going through childhood being called things like Moon Unit[1] or Prince Michael II. But then again, I suppose there is an argument that if you can make it through childhood with a name like this, your going to end up a pretty tough adult.

[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moon_Zappa

When my wife was heavily pregnant we were stuck thinking up girls names. (No idea at this point if a boy or a girl). She suggested Ruby and I said we couldn't as this is a name for a programming language and everyone would think we named her after that (me being a programmer). So I jokingly started to list as many programming languages as I could: Perl, Haskell, Fortran, Lua, Brain Fuck, etc. She stopped me at that point because "that's a beautiful name" (no, not that one). But, because we live in Germany we must conform to naming your child a proper name, so we gave her a "normal" middle name.

We were confident the baby would be a boy, but were wrong, and in the summer of 2011 our baby daughter was born.

Most people are happy with the explanation that it's Portuguese for Moon. But I have had a couple of knowing looks from colleagues. Luckily, the German authorities were fine with her double-barrelled "normal" name.

Ditto for me. It is the unlimited free private repos that initially drew me to Bitbucket, however, I am now happily paying the $10 per month for multiple members of the team (7 of them) for the company account.

Using Github the way we would like (multiple repos) would put us in the $50 per month bracket, which seems excessive.

Bitbucket, for our use case, has the perfect price point.

Pirate Party UK Donation page: http://www.pirateparty.org.uk/Help

I completely disagree with you calling it an "embarrassing system". I've had my Pi for a couple of weeks now and been happily tinkering with it. For the price I am utterly amazed with it (in fairness, I'm a bit of an old git and amazed that you can buy a 2TB HD for less than £100 so I may not be the best judge here).

Whilst it may not be the quickest thing out there, it is a start, and I think this is the most important thing about the Pi - it is a statr. It is so cheap it will get people interested in and tinkering with this kind of technology. As a result more people will move into this space, surely the Cubieboard is testament to that. (As well as the Parallella[1] which sadly I don't think will make it's Kickstarter goal)

[1] http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/adapteva/parallella-a-su...