kgroll

One thing I really appreciate about good authors is their ability to clearly articulate ideas or impressions that I share, but am unable to express on my own. Or in other words, I love seeing these semi-conscious ideas floating through my mind assembled eloquently in language. I think this takes an enormous amount of skill.

I agree with French author Marcel Proust, who claimed "there is no better way of coming to be aware of what one sees oneself than by trying to recreate in oneself what a master has felt." We can learn what we feel by reading material written by others. We can develop our thoughts through the thoughts of others.

Of course, one shortcoming with this idea, and in my opinion, of literature in general, is that ultimately the author is not ourselves. Despite an authors ability to help us understand our feelings and enhance our sense of perception, there inevitably is a divergence in the particulars of our personal situations and those found in writing. Trying to mold our experiences into those of a book, in hopes of finding answers or guidance, is misguided.

Proust explains better than I can myself:

'It is one of the great and wonderful characteristics of good books (which allows us to see the role, at once essential yet limited, that reading may play in our spiritual lives) that for the author they may be called 'Conclusions' but for the reader 'Incitements'. We feel very strongly that our wisdom begins where that of the author leaves off, and we would like him to provide us with answers when all he is able to provide us with is desires... That is the value of reading, and also its inadequacy. To make into a discipline is to give too large a role to what is only an incitement. Reading is on the threshold of the spiritual life; it can introduce us to it: it does not constitute it.'

And, as patio11 suggests, in deploying code.

From his Mixergy interview (4/30/10) [1]:

``I have a physical checklist for when I’m doing a deployment. It’s, off the top of my head maybe six commands long; one, two, three, four, five, six. I check them off; dink, dink, dink, dink, dink. And then after I do that, I have the other checklist to verify that it actually took, you know the things that I did that had the expected effect. I missed doing that once because I was exhausted at the day job and, sure enough, that was my biggest down time in four years. So I’m trying to be better at it in the future.''

[1] http://mixergy.com/patrick-mckenzie-interview/

Here's a commented version of my .vimrc, which is modeled after Steve's, albeit nowhere near as comprehensive. (Looks like I lost it's fixed width in the paste? Sorry!)

http://pastebin.com/jJQFxQpR

For me it's a lot quicker to reference comments than the :help entry for each option. Thought it might help others who are creating/modifying their .vimrc.

And of course, thanks Steve for continuing to share your stuff. I'm in love with Vim, and a lot of that's thanks to you.

Alternatively, I'd encourage you do to "stupid shit." Lots of it. Isn't that what learning is all about?

http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2266193

Offer details: http://www.amazon.com/gp/feature.html/ref=amb_link_355524002...

> but isn't there a flaw in the explanation that running usually happened on dirt, grass, and not on the paved streets of New York?

This seems intuitive when considering the difference in impulse between a sidewalk and a grassy lawn, but I'm not sure it actually makes any difference if you have good form - the idea there being that your calves take all the impact (remember impulse, again), versus your knees. Muscles can develop - whereas joints and bones can deteriorate. There's a good illustration of this in the following link from Harvard, which elaborates on the mechanics of foot strike with pretty charts showing the force generated in different scenarios: http://www.barefootrunning.fas.harvard.edu/4BiomechanicsofFo...

I started running in VFFs in September, 2009, but didn't seriously commit to running in them until January of this year. I've since logged 1,200 miles in them and haven't looked back. I've done numerous 20+ mile runs in my Vibrams, including a marathon within the past month. There were 2,700 entrants at that race, but only two runners (including myself) wore VFFs. I haven't had any stress fractures or other injuries since I've started wearing them, even when logging around 60 miles per week. (This is not to say that I disagree with the other comments in this thread.)

I'm pretty passionate about barefoot running. I love to see others joining the movement, so I try to encourage best practices to those making the transition. If any of you have questions about how to take the plunge, feel free to follow up here or contact me via email.

Rather than get into the ethics of it, I was simply hoping that people would pause, even if just for a second, to make sure they were comfortable being involved. I'm not trying to sway people either way.

I agree with you - you can't put Pandora back in the box. I don't, however, think that changes the classification of the leaked documents. When judging an individual's fitness for a security clearance, I imagine that they're looking more at character traits than specific instances of undesirable behavior. Sharing these documents that are already "public knowledge" is only noteworthy because it may indicate that you're not uncomfortable with the idea of releasing classified documents if it's for a cause you believe in. (Just speculating here)

>>Also if State et al. don't hire anyone interested by the cables I think we might be slightly screwed later

I disagree with this. I can think of a handful of reasons somebody lacking interest in these cables would still want to work for the government. Example: To do engineering work for a defense contractor, you'll undoubtedly need a secret+ clearance. You might seek such positions for the job security they provide. Or maybe you're interested in working with cutting edge technology that isn't necessarily available at more budget constrained (IE commercial) companies. Many of the engineers working at a high technical level are drawn to the technology, not the politics.

To reveal any bias, I should note that I do contract work for the US government.

Regardless of your favored method of distribution, make sure you consider the consequences of sharing classified documents.

Those consequences are probably negligible for the overwhelming majority here, but for anybody anticipating getting a US security clearance within the next seven years, you're likely shooting yourself in the foot. You'll either have to reveal the fact that you've disclosed classified material, or else lie under oath. Neither of those being ideal if you're trying to get that job.

It also conflicts with your clearance if you're already holding one.

I'm not saying you should or shouldn't support Wikileaks. Just make sure you give it adequate thought before jumping on a torrent.

I was really hoping for a widget to be included with this.

Are there any third party readers that include that functionality?

Edit: Just noticed that the Wolfram links break because of their syntax. HN then worsens the problem, by shortening the displayed links with '...', meaning copy/paste breaks! So I'm just removing the http prefix and you'll have to copy/paste to view any of the graphs.

---

This seems to disagree with the gist of the comic, but I think the answer to the final part (largest dating pool) is 23 years old.

I arrived at that by doing the following, please correct me if you spot an error along the way!

The dating range for any age, t, would be defined as:

  lower limit = .5t + 7
  upper limit = 2t - 14

Despite the range growing with age, we know that the proportion of singles is decreasing with age. Sigh. That's where the other model comes in. The author of this problem gives:

  S(t) = e^(-0.05*t)

I believe the largest dating pool would correspond with the greatest area yielded by taking the definite integral of this function from .5t+7 (the lower age limit) to 2t+14 (the upper age limit). To see this in pretty print, you can visit this link: www.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=integrate+(E^(-.05x))+dx+from+(.5x%2B7)+to+(2*x-14)

Evaluating that for any age would give the area under the curve corresponding to that age.

The next step, then, would be to find the maximum area for any age. To do this, we should be able to take the derivative of that previous equation, and set it equal to 0 in order to maximize it. Again, correct me if I'm wrong, but for the result of that, I get:

  -2000(e^(-0.1t+0.7) - e^(-0.025t+0.35)) = 0

This graph illustrates the size of the dating pool corresponding to age along the x axis: www.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=Plot[-2000(e^(-0.1x%2B0.7)-e^(-0.025x%2B0.35)),+{x,+0,+100}]

Comments? Did I approach this totally wrong? Did I miss something along the way? Does that seem reasonable?

I really like Steve Yegge's take on this topic: http://sites.google.com/site/steveyegge2/you-should-write-bl...

"So your fear is justified: practically nobody will read your blog. Unless it's good. Even then, it'll be a very long time before lots of people have read it. Don't worry, though. If you put in the effort, and you write honestly, people will eventually find their way there.

...

I never advertised my blog, and to this day I have no idea how so many people found out about it, let alone why they read it. I certainly haven't made any effort to try to please people. My blog isn't "about" anything, and although there are various running themes, I haven't tried to stick to any particular subject. And I'm horribly inconsistent in my tone, posting regularity, writing quality, and so on. But I'm really just writing for fun, and even if everyone stops reading my blog, I'll still be happy with what I'm writing."

Worked fine for me in Chrome on Ubuntu 10.10.

It took two tries, however. The first time, it imported 0 contacts. I tried it again less than five minutes later, using the same account, process, and browser. Worked fine.

I don't think I'm entitled to share the company, but based on a certain comment in this thread, it looks like he's landed in real estate.

The positions currently listed on the Jobs page for that company are:

* RoR developers

* Customer Acquisition / Marketing

* Loan processing

I imagine that he'll be trained for the first category.

Hope this isn't too intrusive - kind of reminds me of that analysis of patio11 from a month or two ago. Willing to remove this post if requested.

Or for Firefox - vimperator. http://vimperator.org/vimperator

I can't. Is it in the 'about' field? 'email' is private.

As ridiculous as this sounds - this is the only reason that I keep an XP installation on one of my machines at home. I've tried Banshee, Rhythmbox, and AmaroK, but they all just felt clunky coming from F2K.

Based on other comments here, it sounds like I need to give Audacious a shot.

I'm definitely not suggesting that Facetime is, or will be, a failure.

Thinking about it, however, reminded me of a passage from Infinite Jest about the failure of video chat.

(1) It turned out there there was something terribly stressful about visual telephone interfaces that hadn’t been stressful at all about voice-only interfaces. Videophone consumers seemed suddenly to realize that they’d been subject to an insidious but wholly marvelous delusion about conventional voice-only telephony.

...

EDIT: Instead of that wall of text, here's a link to the rest of that passage. Sorry about that. http://stevereads.com/weblog/2010/06/07/iphone-4-facetimeinf...

Thanks a lot Steve, this will definitely come in handy.

Quick question - It looks like this requires python support for vim. What would happen if I didn't have python compiled in, and then tried to use this plugin?

(You can check for yourself with :version)

The tree is built in. There's a really good explanation (with "pictures") of the tree behavior detailed here: http://vimdoc.sourceforge.net/htmldoc/usr_32.html

I found that article. It was less informative than I thought. I've uploaded a scan of the relevant section here: http://imgur.com/ac2VS.png

The text, in case that link dies:

"No one wants to be a slouch, but it turns out that might just be what's best for your back if you're bound to a desk all day. That's right: Although you've been admonished all your life to "sit up straight," the healthiest posture seems to be considerably more laid-back - 135 degrees back, in fact. When researchers in Scotland and Canada scanned the backs of 22 healthy men and women as they assumed three sitting postures - sitting straight at a 90-degree angle, hunching forward, and leaning back 135 degrees - they were surprised to find that the spine was actually least stressed in the laid-back position. The worst? Sitting ramrod-straight created the most disc movement and strain on the spine.

"Sitting unsupported puts more pressure and stress on your lumbar spine than standing," says Scott L Blumenthal, M.D., a spine surgeon at the Texas Back Institute. Relieve the pressure by sitting in a chair with good lumbar support, so it's easy to maintain the natural curvature in your lower back."

Source: March 2009 issue of Bicycle Magazine. I think this is covered by fair-use.

I read an article supporting this as well. The basic idea was that sitting in a slouched position was closer to standing up.

The article was called "Get Off Your Ass" and ran in Bicycle magazine probably about two years ago. I'll see if I can find it when I get home this evening so you can decide how credible you think it is.

Then he would be 71 clicks away from his original location (this page).

This is actually a really good guide. I use vim daily at work, and my .vimrc shares most of these settings.

One big productivity boost for me was remapping the Escape key to something a little more convenient. I just remapped the ESC key altogether, but this can throw you off if you find yourself working at lots of different computers. If you prefer something less permanent, you can map a key sequence to ESC. I like this one, which maps 'sdf' to ESC if you're in insert mode:

  imap sdf <ESC>

Honest question: Are you basing that off personal experience, or is there evidence that this happens on a large scale?

To provide another data point, my Dell Latitude D520 still has all keys intact, and I've been using it roughly (in every sense of the word) every day since 2005. On the other hand, my HP notebook from work has already lost it's Shift key after just one year. (Maybe that's an indicator that I'm YELLING too much at the office...)

That's just an anecdote however. There's no way I would try to make claims about either keyboards based on that small sample size.

Some people, such as the author, choose to write every day. Others, like PG for example, post much less frequently (thus keeping the SNR much higher). For most people, I think the sweet spot lies somewhere in between.

Whenever I strive to do something every day, it ends up feeling forced or contrived, and inevitably the quality drops. (I might be atypical in that regard?)

Furthermore, I think there is such a thing as wearing down your audience. It’s like you’re lowering your own value. Sure, you might still produce really good piece on a weekly basis, but they live in the same house as all your other, potentially mediocre posts.

That said, I strongly agree that we should all try to write every day. I started blogging earlier this year, and only at that point did I realize how difficult it is. So, taking my first point into account – my suggestion is that you do write every day, but not necessarily share everything you write. A journal is good for this, or even write it on your computer without publishing it. Whatever works. By doing so, I think you still develop your voice and style, without obligating yourself to add to your blog every day. This approach has helped me avoid burnout. Plus, there's something I really enjoy about writing things just for myself.

I'm surprised nobody has provided this link yet.

Perl is Dead. Long Live Perl. http://www.oreillynet.com/onlamp/blog/2007/08/perl_is_dead_l...

It's an essay from 2007, but I think it's still relevant today.

I'd be really interested in seeing the numbers from Buffet's assertion. Could you provide a link please? (Thanks!)

Persistent undo is my favorite new feature. The ability to close vim, reopen a file later, and then have all of the undo history still available is awesome. (Alternatively, I used to suspend vim instead of actually quit.)

To turn on persistent undo, I created a new directory called ~/.undo to store all of the undo history so that my working directories wouldn't get cluttered. Then in .vimrc, I add:

   set undofile
   set undodir=~/.undo

Agreed. I'd be more interested in seeing average salary by region contrasted with the average cost of living for those same regions, which would identify the most economical places to live in the US.