HN user
I write a weekly newsletter: https: mentalpivot.substack.com
Previously co-founded Multiverse, Arrive, and Fanpop.
This is solid advice. I wish I had done better at #1, #2, and #5 when my father got sick and died from cancer, but I didn’t understand how fleeting life is and how brutal cancer is.
Having witnessed and supported other loved ones who subsequently succumbed to cancer, I’ve learned to appreciate all of the recommendations laid out above and not underestimate time or cancer.
Also per the Chronicle article linked above: "The Plan Bay Area Blueprint for 2050 was shaped by online public feedback this year during the coronavirus pandemic. The plan is expected to be adopted by next summer, but any legal mandates on remote work would require future legislation."
Yeah this is just poor reporting by the NYPost. It looks like this mandate is part of a 30-year long range planning proposal. It doesn't appear there's any regional or municipal legislation or business impacts tied to this in the short-run.
No doubt we have our share of idiotic proposals in the Bay Area, but this is definitely a misleading headline.
Here's an article that offers more context and concerns from SF politicians on the plan: https://www.sfchronicle.com/business/article/Bay-Area-planni...
1. I post my book notes and other things I’m learning about. I started it a year ago and I’m still trying to figure out what it’s about.
2. I post twice a week. I like the consistency and habit that regular posting imposes (I was posting 3x/week but found that was a bit too much).
3. I use Digital Ocean to host. The blog uses Ghost CMS. I’ve used WP in the past, but I like the blogging focus and relative simplicity of Ghost. On the hosting side, I like Digital Ocean’s pricing model, documentation and community. I’m starting a newsletter for the blog using substack mostly because it’s dead simple to setup a newsletter with them. And rather than fiddle with various solutions, I wanted something turnkey that I could just get started with immediately.
I've had a great experience making use of the Unity 3D free premium learning courses (free until June during the pandemic) with my youngest child.
Like your child, mine didn't care for Scratch. He's loving Unity though. Actually, who am I kidding, I'm enjoying immensely too. We've laughed our heads off together tweaking and adding small features to the rudimentary games that their basic course guides you through.
This is the basic course if you're interested: https://learn.unity.com/course/create-with-code-live
The Usborne books you linked to sound interesting too. I'll be sure to check those out.
It's a repository for my book notes (business, self-improvement, economics and other topics). I also post short pieces about things I'm learning. Fridays I post a weekly roundup of interesting articles and podcasts I listened to.
Most popular post are my notes on BJ Fogg's Tiny Habits: https://mentalpivot.com/book-notes-tiny-habits-by-bj-fogg/
Started the blog last year in an effort to develop the habit more than anything. Trying to get better every week just out of sheer repetition and practice.
This brings back some memories. I used the Corona SDK to build my first iOS app and Corona and Lua were a joy to use. The app is still around but I've since moved to a different framework. But I'll always appreciate Corona for helping me get started with that particular project.
I maintained a page called learningcorona.com for several years that collected the limited number of tutorials and articles on Corona. Carlos, the co-founder, was very kind and emailed me several times to include the site in the official newsletter and to ensure that I didn't run afoul of any trademark problems (in a gentle way). I appreciated how well he interacted with and supported the small Corona community.
So true. I love Aloha shirts (I grew up on Oahu). The best thing about them is that they are multi-purpose. Need to wear something to a wedding in Hawaii? Aloha shirt with slacks. Funeral? Aloha shirt, totally acceptable. Fancy restaurant? Again, Aloha shirt. Business attire? Totally acceptable (it's really the norm for business people if you're 'dressing up').
Where else can you get away with wearing such a comfortable, fun shirt in so many different contexts.
The number for SF is definitely not right if you're looking at SF city proper.
According to Wikipedia, based on the 2014 estimate of ~850k people, the per square kilometer density figure for SF proper is 7,000.
Is there room for growth in SF? Definitely. You'll get no argument from me on that. And I agree with you that Parisian style density is a fantastic thing. It also goes to show you that skyscrapers aren't essential for high density urban living.
By the same token, I do think people tend to underestimate the density of 3-story tracts in SF. The zip code I'm living in in SF, for instance which is dotted with 2-4 story buildings for the most part boasts a respectable 31,000 people per sq mile (and this is on the west side of the city). Many observers, without actually looking at the actual population statistics, would probably say this is a low density neighborhood when the reality is that it is anything but.
If we can achieve those densities with a mere 3 stories, imagine how many more people we could house if we upzoned to 6.
Btw, you can find neighborhood density figures for the 2010 US census by zip code here: http://projects.nytimes.com/census/2010/map (look under the "more maps" drop down)
EDIT: Looks like you corrected the SF numbers.
Hey Andrew, same offer I gave rthomas6 stands for you. If you want some one-on-one guidance, let me know. papandrew (at yahoo.com). This is a topic near and dear to my heart.
This stuff is pretty near and dear to my heart since I'm a clean freak/organizing nut. My wife thinks I have OCD.
This might be basic, but I'll give you my answers:
1) This may not be a satisfying answer, but the key for me is that my home is neat and tidy to begin with. When some activity takes place, I might deploy stuff to that area but as soon as the activity is done, I clean things up and put them away. If I'm cooking, I might bring things out and continuously clean up the kitchen as I go. The main point is that keeping an area organized and clean throughout the process is part of the key.
2) So for this problem, my solution is two-fold: (1) Find a place for everything in your home and organize stuff thematically so it's easy to find. Think of your home like a library with a Dewey Decimal system for all your household stuff. Hall closet? Maybe that's a good spot for cleaning supplies, sponges, brooms and the like. I have 3 kids, so one of my closets is all school supplies, art supplies, pens, crayons, binders, etc etc. The key thing here is to group like stuff together. This will make it easier for you to FIND stuff in the future. Also, in order for this to work, you must constantly put things away after you are finished using it. If you don't do this, you'll fail with your organizing (b/c you can't find stuff easily). (2) Attack the supply side of the problem and eliminate unnecessary stuff. This is a big task and a tough one for a lot of folks. I could go into more detail on this one, but unless you are willing to purge some crap, effectively organizing stuff will be challenging.
3) Are your plates and containers a hodge-podge of individual pieces not from a common set? If so, this is your problem. If you purchase plates and containers from a single set/design, you should be able to effectively stack your bowls and plates. Ditto on the containers. If you buy from the same product line, they often come in sets of nestable pieces or stackable pieces. Get rid of the one-off odd bowls and get a uniform set (e.g. 6 bowls of the same make).
4) Physical documents: file cabinet with hanging folders and/or manila folders. Each folder is a different topic/category: Automotive, Home Electronics, Bank Info, Home/Property documents, Travel documents/passport. I probably have 2-3 dozen folder "topics". I get a document that needs to be saved, I immediately file it in the cabinet. Taxes are always a breeze. As soon as I finish my taxes for the prior tax year in April, I create a new tax folder for the current year. Any docs with tax implications (letters from charities for donations, receipts) goes straight into my tax folder. I do the same for digital documents. Just carve out a little spot on your hard drive. Create work and personal life folders. Route the files that you need to save accordingly. Do this diligently and you won't be confronted with the insurmountable deluge of documents. You can also solve the supply side of the equation by periodically reviewing both your physical and digital documents and purging stuff you no longer need. As with my response to #2, if you file things properly, FINDING STUFF when you need it in the future is always a breeze.
5) Depends on your personality and how much mess you can tolerate, but I typically spend 15-30 minutes in the morning organizing my household before I go to work and maybe the same at night. Mind you, I have 3 kids and a wife with a busy schedule, so in order to manage the chaos, I need to organize things twice a day. This may be overkill for a single guy (assuming that's your status). The key thing is that by investing a small amount of time here and there you can keep your organizational system humming. As long as things are put away, things are easy to find. Once you let things slip, it gets tough. As a side note, this is usually when I listen to podcasts (so the time isn't completely wasted on humdrum cleanup).
6) Again this is personal preference and dependent on how much of a mess you make. Beauty of this is that you can outsource these tasks! After my 1st kid was born, that's just what I did. Now I have a house cleaning crew that visits my home every other week and cleans the bathrooms, kitchen, vacuums and mops the floors. You might be able to get by with once a month. 2x a month is better. Personally I'd like once a week but I don't want to pay more than I already pay at 2x/month.
I don't know if these responses are helpful. Happy to chat more about it if you want more pointers. I've been contemplating an Ebook on this topic, so would be interested in hearing more about your problems in this vein. If you want to continue the conversation, let me know: papandrew (at yahoo.com)
So true, small children do seem to squat very naturally and with great form and posture. It's a shame that this gets lost around school age (at least from what I've observed in my kids).
Now as a 40-something adult who performs squats for exercise (both weighted and non) and has to fight with mobility/flexibility issues when performing this exercise, I do envy (and am somewhat awed by) the "tiny humans" in this regard.
Yes, Prop C is a ridiculous attempt to subvert the planning process. For the record, 8 Washington was approved by the Port Commission, Planning Commission and Board of Supervisors. And yet, here we are with this measure.
Another one to watch out for is the Mexican Museum Tower (706 Mission). There have been rumblings that a few of the owners in the Four Seasons Tower don't care for the tall building obstructing their views: http://www.socketsite.com/archives/2013/07/an_unfriendly_ult...
Depending on the results of the November ballot, we may be seeing more of these.
This site provides some good neighborhood-specific price/square foot info.
http://pricesquares.com/#/county/1/san-francisco/
You can see that the north and northeast portions of the city carry the highest rates (close to $1k/sq foot in Pac Heights and the Marina).
Zoom in to drill down to smaller neighborhoods/sub-districts.
For comps between SF and Palo Alto, I'd recommend Redfin. Last I checked, the Palo Alto prices were above SF prices (on a square foot basis).
Edit: I'll just add some more detail!
Here's the Redfin report for Palo Alto ($1,168/sq ft): http://www.redfin.com/city/14325/CA/Palo-Alto
Here's the Redfin report for SF ($660/sq ft) http://www.redfin.com/city/17151/CA/San-Francisco
You might be confusing Michelin with Zagat.
Zagat has always used a crowd-sourced model, collecting customer reviews and publishing them in book form. They haven't really adapted this as well online (I'm sure this is where Google will give them a huge boost), but their approach was always UGC before people talked about UGC.
Frontline had an interesting documentary on this industry a year or so back called "College Inc". If I remember rightly, they even discussed one of the schools named in the suit, Argosy University (along with a lot of hard-sell tactics and high student loan default rates that accompany the for-profit industry).
It was an eye-opening program. Here's the link if interested: http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/collegeinc/view/
I think Netflix also has the episode available for online streaming.
And if you want more in the style of Terkel, "Gig: Americans Talk About Their Jobs" (Edited by John Bowe, Marisa Bowe and Sabin Streeter, 2001) is also a good read.
There's an astounding range of jobs profiled from Crime Scene Cleaner to Porn Star Actor to Tofu Maker.
Vox was Six Apart's social web 2.0 blogging entrant a few years back. I don't know the details, but I'm guessing the following were factors:
* Six Apart already owns/maintains Typepad and Movable Type. So there may have been some product overlap/redundancy (I believe Vox accounts can be migrated to free Typepad accounts)
* Six Apart has already sold off another of their properties, LiveJournal. So Vox may be another attempt to shed and streamline their overall business. In this case they are closing down the service unlike LJ (maybe they couldn't find a buyer?)
* Tumblr and Posterous as well as Twitter have largely "won" the social blogging war (microblogging in the case of Twitter). I don't think Vox ever had the traction of either of those products and in the economic downturn it may be time to cut their losses.
Just my $.02
Have you made use of any of the virtual desktop solutions out there? I've found Spaces on Mac to be useful when I'm on a single 15" screen.
"Given that the first inflection point is unpredictable, it makes sense to consider all traction "verticals" in the pursuit of product/market fit."
Good post. I often encounter entrepreneurs who ask what single thing they can do to promote their web service. This list is a good reminder that sometimes there's no easily identifiable silver bullet. Some companies might latch onto one tactic that works (after a great deal of experimentation with other approaches) and others might find that only the aggregate results from a mixture of these approaches yields any meaningful results. The only way to know is to cast a wide net.
Re: language choice, pick the one you're most comfortable working with (if you don't know, just start playing around with each). Cake, Rails and Django are all web frameworks for PHP, Ruby and Python respectively and may be appropriate for what you need.
As for the project, you've already done some of the right first steps with the feature list and paper mockups. Building it comes next.
Pick a couple of features to build out and maybe select a single university/town to focus on initially and build out functionality and content for that first.
I like this approach (the mental RPG game).
I'd also add that you can start with small steps. For instance, with a coworker, see if they want to grab lunch one day or get some coffee during a break. Making friends sometimes takes time. You need to see if you're compatible with the person enough to be able to do stuff with them.
If you're a hacker or entrepreneur (which I'm assuming b/c you're on this site), there are plenty of meetup groups from startups. This is always a great way to find like-minded people.
If college was a great way for the OP to meet friends, consider a local extension school or community college. Consider a class in some hobby you always wanted to learn more about (photography? ceramics?).
Good luck!
Well the problem may vary from provider to provider (and country to country), but after observing my wife's situation as a physician in the U.S., I can tell you that many doctors aren't late volitionally.
First, the problem isn't easily fixed. Here's the deal: At her HMO each doctor has a panel of several thousand patients. Each patient visit during a normal clinical day gets a 15 minute allocation with the MD. It used to be 20 minutes at her HMO but was recently reduced in order to increase the patient volume. Typically my wife's schedule is stacked appointment to appointment from 8-Noon and then again from 1-5pm. A couple of time slots are left unscheduled for high priority, emergent visits (if you've got a routine visit, forget it, you'll get something a month or two out into the future).
No as you can imagine, 15 minutes per patient isn't much time. Some patients require more time. With each successive visit, the wait will get longer and longer. This isn't because the doctor (at least some of them) is being a jerk or dismissive, it's because they're trying to do a thorough job with the time allocated. If they can't finish what they need to in 15 minutes, well, she goes over that time. It isn't too hard to realize how screwed up the schedule can get after a couple of tough back-to-back cases.
My wife then tries to catch up during lunch hour because she doesn't take lunch. After working through lunch, she kicks into the afternoon half of clinic hopefully caught up, but sometimes not. And the cycle repeats itself.
The receptionists can't "easily structure" the appointments more appropriately -- at least at the large providers -- b/c they're not the ones running the game.
I'm not going to defend the overall system. That's a much bigger problem and mess that a lot of smart people have looked at and have yet to solve. But I do think it's worth realizing that, yes, many doctors do think your time is valuable and don't purposefully try to waste your time. Many doctors are overworked and are doing the best they can within the parameters of what they've been given to practice medicine and that at some point you might be that person that has an appointment that goes over the time allocated (and when you do, hopefully you'll be happy the doctor ended up being attentive to those needs).
Just hoping to lend some extra perspective (especially as someone who used to feel the same way you do).
Thanks for the info. Just goes to show the value of a good lawyer!
When Google was considering the timing of its IPO back in 2003/2004, I remember reading about an SEC regulation that requires private companies to make regular public disclosures (10K filings) if they hit certain shareholder and asset thresholds. There was some speculation that this regulation may have played some part in forcing Google to go public sooner rather than later.
I don't know where/how it figures into Facebook's thinking, but it may be that the same issue may arise in which a private Facebook might face some of the public scrutiny a public corporation might and decide that if they must disclose, they may as well reap some of the benefits of going public.
For what it's worth, here's the specific reporting obligation I'm referring to as noted in a Wikipedia article (since I can't find it on the SEC website):
"Companies with more than $10 million in assets whose securities are held by more than 500 owners must file annual and other periodic reports, regardless of whether the securities are publicly or privately traded."
Seriously, and on top of that, even if one objects to organ meats and connective tissue I would imagine very few people would object to taking that carcass and putting it into a big pot of water and simmering with with some vegetables to make a nice chicken broth (omg, connective tissue was used to make my delicious broth? no!!!!!!!!)
I think many omnivores forget exactly where their food comes from which is what's really unnatural about all of this.
Greek Yogurt is awesome (Fage and Chobani are the two brands I've most frequently come across).
I enjoy mixing any of the following: granola, strawberries, walnuts, almonds, honey, raisins.
And if you want to mix things up wrt to your yogurt viscosity, try the soupier "Australian-style" yogurt from Wallaby. It's a nice contrast to the thick Greek-style yogurt.
Here's a TC article from this Spring that discusses some of Xmarks monetization efforts: http://techcrunch.com/2010/04/07/xmarks-begins-monetizing-bo...
Equally striking is the position of Huffingtonpost on that chart.
For a sobering look at the impact of dietary sugar in the American diet (particularly fructose), check out this informative lecture by UCSF Professor Dr. Robert H. Lustig: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dBnniua6-oM
(argues that current U.S. obesity epidemic is largely the result of low-fat, high sugar diet)