misham

Do you meet with all mentors/advisers at the same time/place?

I need to apologize for this post. It's uncalled for and inappropriate.

I wish I could take it down as it sets the wrong tone for this conversation. It was not written from the right place and calls people out in an improper and angry way.

To everyone who might read this, I would like to extend my apology.

Colin,

I just did a search for the Professors name, Albert Bartlett, and found the following thread:

http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1382456

No, I did not check if this was posted before. However, these videos do such a fantastic job of explaining exponential growth and how such growth applies to our every-day lives I felt that I had to share them, even if they have been posted before.

I wish I saw this lecture while I was in school, the connection to real-life would have made the theory so much easier to grasp. Heck, I wish all of my teachers were like Dr. Bartlett, but that's not possible.

I'm really glad to have found this lecture and I wanted to share it with others who may not have been aware of it.

I submitted my blog post here as I'm curious what people on HN think about the effect of Backbone.js, et al. on how the traditional way of building web applications using MVC is changing.

I'm putting together a pull request with some cleanup for Automake files. I'll take a look at porting the Automake configs to Scons next.

Have you considered using Scons as your build system, instead of Automake?

I'm curious what the community thinks about this especially as entrepreneurs and developers/designers.

I spend a huge portion of my time learning new languages, tools and technologies that fitting in fiction/non-fiction books that do not directly relate to building a business or learning a new technology is extremely difficult. (e.g. I've been reading a US history book for a couple of months now)

I'm sure people on HN have interests in a large variety of topics, what do you do to cover all of those topics? Or __do__ you cover all of those interests at all?

Do you just pick a couple of interests and stick to them or do you dabble in many different ones and only dive in deeper if you get "bitten"?

Sure and Cloud9 is working on getting PHP/Ruby/etc. integrated into their environment, but when you're working on the project you're using more than just PHP or Ruby or JS, it's a combination of several technologies - your application stack - that you run your code on. It seems that's what's missing.

What are you using?

Can you provide a tutorial on how a dev would use your framework?

Thanks

I've been using Rapportive, but it's more like Gist with better Gmail integration than a CRM

I'm giving BatchBook a try right now, see how that works out.

Gist is ok, but their dashboard is useless to me. I already can see my calendar and twitter feed through my regular work-flow. I need to be able to see contact information, whom I contacted recently and whom I need to contact. Gist is ok for social aggregator of my network, that's about it.

I worked for a startup where it felt like I was being crushed. Most of my co-workers and people running the company were average to poor, we didn't have a choice in technology and I saw a person who downloaded porn all day, was barely at the office and was caught with child porn on his computer promoted to senior management.

That's not a good enough reason. I worked for a large company and know others who work for large companies and find the work very rewarding.

The choice of what experiences will best suit you on your way to starting your own company is more personal than black and white comparisons. Not all big companies are evil empires designed to crush you (e.g. Google) and not all startups are rosy playgrounds for engineers.

In the end, as expressed by several people here, it's a personal choice that has to fit your own values and which experiences you want.

While not exactly what you asked, here's a Kauffman study (http://www.kauffman.org/research-and-policy/the-coming-entre...) about average age of an entrepreneur. I don't have a source, but I read another study which showed majority of companies were started by 30+; this would merit the assumption that most companies are started by people who worked at other companies, including large corporations.

This rings true since working for other companies allows you to build a network and find out where the pain points are in different industries.

I use Janus (https://github.com/carlhuda/janus) for my vim setup and then customize it via .vimrc.local (https://github.com/misham/.dotfiles/blob/master/vim/vimrc.lo...)

Is anyone looking for an Embedded Linux developer to do some contract work? I have a full-time job but I'm looking to supplement my income.

I have experience with x86, ARM, MIPS and PowerPC development on different kinds of systems from user-space apps to kernel drivers (wireless and character devices).

My contact info is my profile

For an Incubator, there's Founder Institute (http://www.founderinstitute.com) chapter, UCSD business school has a program, Qualcomm has some kind of program, there is a TechCoast Angels chapter, BootStrapper's Breakfast chapter and a whole host of other programs that I've forgotten or don't know about.

For hacker meetups there are San Diego Super Happy Dev House (http://groups.google.com/group/sd-shdh) and San Diego HN chapter (http://groups.google.com/group/sd-hackernews). There are also all kinds of groups for various topics such as Ruby, Python and LUG that you can find on Google Groups and MeetUp. Quite a few of them meet at UCSD by the way.

You can also take a look at Brant Cooper's site for more info: http://market-by-numbers.com. He also puts out a weekly news letter through Startup Digest: http://startupdigest.com/ and has a meeting every Wednesday in the morning at Del Mar location of Pannikin (http://pannikincoffeeandtea.com/).

This is just stuff I'm aware of but should give you some place to start looking, I hope.

Have you seen http://www.builditwith.me/ ?

I'm working on software/tools for embedded field as well as trying to develop a wireless driver for 802.11p (automotive "WiFi").

It's actually not that expensive to get a prototype done with many of the hardware resource available for either free (as samples) or dirt cheap in small quantities.

Say you want to build a new Gaming Router, you can buy the underlying hardware to do development on for under $200 in quantities of < 10 and that will give you all the needed parts (board, radio, antennas, cables, enclosure, etc.) with the right specs to do just about anything you want. You'd then run Linux on it (OpenWRT is easy, comparatively) and wright the necessary software on top of that.

As the Ideas point #27, linked to by ig1, shows, most of the problem solving is in software.

Give you an example, I worked for a startup, 3 software guys (myself included) built a router that had all the capabilities of a Cisco small business-class router in 6 months from getting the hardware to being feature complete. No hardware people were involved. We used a crappy, 3 year-old platform that would over-heat (the SoC would start to literally smoke) if we ran more than 2 IPSec connections, but we were able to tune the kernel and our software to make it a viable product for a lot of businesses.

If you know your way around Linux, building embedded products is unbelievably simple.

If you or anyone else is interested in talking more about this field, shoot me an email (it's in my profile).

You know about Brant Cooper's meetup this Thursday? Might reduce the number of people that can attend

Update: link - http://www.meetup.com/SanDiego-Tech-Founders/calendar/153343...

I just have a US passport. Haven't considered New Zealand, but will look at it. Found Wikipedia article with lots of info on working visa:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Working_holiday_visa

I've seen that program, it looks like a great opportunity and I'm working on an application right now :)

I haven't visit Vancouver, but I've been to Quebec City and Montreal. I imagine Vancouver to be very different from Quebec, just like LA is different from Boston or New York (some would argue including the language), however, in US we're Americans and thus certain cultural aspects hold true. Living in Canada would be different from living in US, maybe not from the language perspective, but definitely from a cultural perspective.

I am basing this on my own assumptions, which could be quite wrong, please correct me if I'm making the wrong assumptions.

That sounds like a great time. I wouldn't mind living in the country side for some time, I'm sure there pluses and minuses to living in a city like Kyoto or living in the country side.

I've considered studying abroad, though I'm not sure how competitive the universities are. Good point though, I'll investigate this further. Do you know if after graduating you get a temporary work visa like in US?

Great point! I am not looking to avoid fellow countrymen, rather to immerse myself in a completely different environment. I can see how having expats to talk to would be of a great benefit.

Thank you for the help offer. I am considering China is one of the destinations, though I was concerned about where to live and work. I'll take a look at Kunming.

Thanks! Contacting the embassies is a great point. Once I decided on my first destination, I'll start figuring out how to get a work visa there.

Were you already in the country when you applied for the work visa?

I'm in the US and abroad means anything outside USA, including Canada and Mexico.