petermarks

Where is the explanation, let alone the data, to support the claim that happiness has not increased? There’s a compelling data driven chapter in Steven Pinker’s Enlightenment Now that makes the opposite argument. It also makes a compelling argument that people aren’t bothered by inequality in itself. It’s an amazing book that everyone should read and has genuinely changed my world view for the better.

Manipulating Ableton Live directly using python is tricky as you need to impersonate a proprietary device. However, there's a fairly there's a fairly straightforward Open Sound Control API here: http://livecontrol.q3f.org/ableton-liveapi/liveosc/

I few years back, I wrote Ruby and C wrappers to communicate with Live via OSC: https://github.com/tassock/ruby_4_live, https://github.com/tassock/ofxAbleton

Regarding learning Ruby in Portland, make it out to a PDX Ruby Brigade meeting if you haven't already. They have meetings focused on learning Ruby: http://calagator.org/events/1250461371

Should work now. Thanks.

I just hacked together a large standing desk this weekend using cabinets from Ikea:

http://petermarks.info/2011/04/11/the-spaceship-2-0/

The criteria for this project was 1) Cheap 2) high enough to rest my elbows on, 3) large enough for all my gear, 4) Good looking enough to not embarrass my girlfriend.

@adamc - I understand you want to do everything you can do encourage your daughters education and I'm sure that will serve her well. I'm my experience, however, I had more to do with my own motivation in school than my parents. I tried harder when scores mattered. Throughout elementary school, I spent most of my school time day-dreaming and most of my time outside of class blowing off homework. I could deal with being scolded by parents and teachers. My parents cared how I did in school, but I didn't.

When grades started to matter in middle and high school, my competitive side came out. I decided I was going to get better grades than most because that would lead to a future with more options. I also cared more because my peers cared more and I was socially self-conscious. When I started trying harder, I started learning more and became genuinely interested in subject matter. My grades lead to me getting into a good college where students were far more motivated on average than my high school. That ended up being where I met my best friends and eventual startup co-founder.

Did my best learning experiences come from studying for tests? No, they came less structured classes and from my own programming projects during and after college. However, I do feel that grades and standardized tests lit a fire under my booty to try harder and eventually led to me meeting more motivated people.

I agree standardized tests focused on memorization aren't educational, but surely tests that require problem solving ability (math) are worthwhile. Without standardized tests, how else are we supposed to quantify how well students and by extension their teachers are performing? The author doesn't suggest an alternative here.

My startup -- http://feastery.com -- was founded to address these problems for great restaurants. In general the issues around retention and customer quality have been around since the beginning but have been largely ignored by most writers. We match high-quality customers with great restaurants, and economically sensible offers. We help restaurants deliver a unique experience (not merely a discount) and we track retention so we can definitively prove ROI. It's a better model for our members and our restaurant partners. If you love food, request a membership here: http://feastery.com/request_membership </shameless startup plug>

This has worked well for us at http://feastery.com. No issues with the quality of the invitees.

Surprising to see this on HN. Regardless, here's my favs:

2009-03-10 Jamie Jones, 2007-02-18 Danny Howells, 2006-10-14 Trentemoller, 2003-08-24 Sasha live at Creamfields

Fritos and YouTube, no. Chicken McNuggets and Call of Duty, yes:

http://www.theglobeandmail.com/life/family-and-relationships...

I've been using jashkenas' ruby processing for a simple gui: http://wiki.github.com/jashkenas/ruby-processing . Processing is a pleasure to use once it's liberated from java syntax.

Redmine (redmine.org) is a free, open source alternative to basecamp/trac written in rails. It's great for tracking issues for your own projects, but especially useful to small teams. There are numerous plugins available to meet individual needs (scheduling, time tracking, etc).

I used prepaid sims from MTN and SafariCom when I visited Kenya and east Africa this summer. 50 cent activation fee and $5.00 for all the minutes I needed (including to the US) for 3 weeks on a network that seemed as reliable as my at&t service. Humiliates American carriers in terms of value.

People from literally all walks of life use cell phones like this. From the Masai herdsmen in Tanzania to the dirt dwelling inhabitants of the Kibera slum in Nairobi. Here's a mobile shop in the heart of that slum: http://www.flickr.com/photos/petermarks/4017875315/in/set-72...

Agreed. I thought the most spine tingling part of the trilogy was at the end of the second movie when Neo uses his powers in the real world. This is reminiscent of my own hacking experience, albiet far less dramatic, where successfully gaming the rules of one system gave me a whole new perspective and level of confidence to manipulate another system. It helps to broaden your horizons, so long as you eventually hone in on one thing and give it all you got.

Agreed. This account of his 4am workouts and non-stop icing routine on gameday is truly inspiring:

http://sports.espn.go.com/espnmag/story?id=4068270

I like Kobe more than Lebron more for this very reason. He compensates for his relatively inferior size with superior work ethic.

I grew up here and moved back after college in CA, so I'm a little biased. It's a great place to live. The tech scene is really inviting and impressively sophisticated as others have mentioned. The Ruby group where that calagator app was developed is superb, as is DorkbotPDX. I find it substantially cheaper and easier to get around here than LA/SF since it's not that big of a city (strict urban growth boundaries), it's reasonably dense and it's public transportation is well above average.

While it's easy to find people who are passionate about technology and building things, I don't feel it has the culture of ambition that's so prevalent in CA. Maybe it's because people are happy to be doing things that don't cost anything, like enjoying the outdoors or local music scene, and are less self conscious about what they drive.

Awesome. I'm interested to see what you come up with. Shoot me an email at the address in my profile.

Wow, awesome to hear there are other people into lighting on here. I'm spending my weekend working on a Max/MSP patch that spits out patterns onto an LED grid controlled by a 4/4 time signature. I plan to tie these patterns to music clips within Ableton once Max for Live comes out later this year. The idea is to have layered patterns corresponding to my layered music clips (minimal techno) during my dj performances.

Facebook already possesses and uses this sort of personal information for ads and they still don't have a great monetization rate per user. Twitter certainly has less overhead per user though.

My biggest criticism of 37 Signals is how easy they make selling simple products out to be. It's hard to imagine their success without the onslaught of positive attention rails has given them.

That said, this protectionist deliberate misinformation theory is pretty absurd.