vga15

"the human desire to clean things up."

I'm not sure I like where popular game-design seems to be headed. Core game mechanics driven by completing tasks, leveling up, reducing entropy, and competing with friends certainly have their place, and you probably couldn't dissect 'mafia wars' any other way. But it irks me that this is a trend, and that they're trying to hack through the average gamer's mental framework.

I've played at least 20 games that've mesmerized me and gotten me addicted purely through their graphics, characters, soundtrack, ambience and game world. My experience with the Final Fantasy series early on, was memorable despite the core gameplay mechanics. I was mostly drawn in by the vivid, dreamy environments and the interesting/quirky characters.

Great job on shipping. How long have you been working on this?

The app looks neat. I'm guessing you've used bits of (twitter) bootstrap. I get what the app does almost instantly. The logo/imagery stands out quite well. I can envision this going viral, after a few tweaks and a little more activity.

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I'll be a critic for a moment:

- Homepage feels a little sparse.

- Wish you'd asked for the twitter login early on, and not while I'm trying to take an action.

- Wish there was a more complete example of a story I could collaborate on.

- It'd help your cause to emulate a little activity early on.

- Could you perhaps consider gamifying it a bit. Leaderboards perhaps.

I'd like to see where this goes.

Great you're getting back at it. Tiny workouts during the week work wonders for the brain.

Much of the info below wouldn't be new territory for you, but I hope it helps. The points I wanted to emphasize: measure, prevent plateaus, and that less is more.

Losing weight and putting on muscle should come easy initially, since you've had a break for a while.

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Most importantly, 'measure':

- Keep note of your 8-rep max. Make sure you're not pushing yourself too far. Most folks feel embarrassed to add on the tiny 1.5-2 pound weights to what they're currently lifting. But thats thats the sort of increment you should be looking at -- 1.5-2 pounds every other week. This can't go on infinitely.

- Vitals: blood pressure, creatinine levels, pulse rate, pulse deceleration time. If you're doing it right, you should see improvements on some of these. Most folks choose to ignore deceleration time.

- Muscle repair time. How long they stay sore. Things that've reduced repair-time for me: glutamine, multi-vitamins, fish-oil, upping the protein intake (fish etc.).

- Optimize the diet --> repair time --> strength-gains relationship. There certainly is a level of protein intake (differs per person) that'll result in maximized gains & lesser repair time.

- Quality of sleep. Note down how rested you felt when you woke up. Tune your diet/vitamin intake for better sleep & more vivid dreams even.

- Food intake. The exact items you've consumed, vitamins involved, calories (tagged by fat, carb, protein).

- Productivity, through measurable values: pomodoro's, lines of code, emails replied to, calls made, blog posts written etc.

- Energy levels during the day. Times you felt sleepy, irritated, low-on-resolve etc.

- Body function: pains felt, skin irritations, bowel-movements, urination-frequency.

- And obviously, you'd be tracking body weight constantly (preferably on a daily basis). Personally, I wasn't too bothered about tracking inches on my biceps and such.

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While it might seem mundane to track all of that stuff, you'll have a ton of fun coming up with interesting conclusions from the data. If you stick with it for at least 8 weeks -- measuring, analyzing, implementing, improving -- you'd have turned yourself 80% better.

Also,

- For a diet, I'd suggest Tim Ferris's 'slow carb' variant of the low-carb diets that are all over the place. It works quite well. Cheat-days are mandatory.

- My workout consists mostly of compound lifts (squats, bench etc.). I'd set aside a couple of days each week for cardio -- lasting about 25-30mins. Resistance training about 3-4 times a week, and keep switching workouts (you'll find a plethora of interesting ones at the bodybuilding forums) every month or so, to prevent plateauing.

Initial impression suggests this is similar to tungle.me

Could you describe exactly what it'd do for me & my blog, besides allowing folks to see through my calendar of open/booked slots & schedule?

zero chance the next one will be called iPhone 5

Zero? There a reason for the certainty? I'm genuinely curious.

They're talking about the device that'll end up being called the 'iPhone 5'. Apple has a history of planning years in advance.

As others have stated, most devs have gotten a large chunk of their knowledge from the web. Google is their school.

However, I believe you were asking about those that want a more 'structured' university-like approach. Although these exist, I'd certainly say there's room for the 'google of education', or the 'wikipedia of programming' etc.

The most VITAL factor for structured learning is the result at the end. How will the world know that I'm any better than when I'd started? Any organization that can serve as a single authoritative credential node, to be referenced in my bio, would certainly be sought after. Much like the MCP, Cisco certifications etc.

I'd imagine an initiative quite like stanford giving out certificates for its AI (&other) online classes, would be interesting. Or perhaps similar to paul wilmott's CQF certification for quants.

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To sum it up, there's tons of free content that can be used. What's important is structure, and being an authoritative, well-respected provider of credentials. Also, the organization should have strong credentials themselves, and build awareness constantly. Tests would certainly feature heavily in the process. They could leverage startups and other universities to get there quicker~

The first time I'd been to a gym was about 8 years back, and I'd been led to believe that progress (weight loss & a certain muscular definition, from my pov) couldn't be had without working one's butt off, for about 2 hours a day.

Through a bunch of experiments over the past couple of years (after a 3-year-long hiatus), I believe I've nailed down the 20% that'd result in 80% of the effects most sought-after. I've cut down my workout duration from 1.5 hours to about 20-25 minutes, and have been doing better -- on strength, gains and energy -- than my self-selected control group of sorts. Most of them workout closer to 2 hours, 6 times a week.

It isn't always easy figuring out the exact elements that'd make the perfect 20%. Experience certainly helps narrow things down. I believe the amount of experience & time required, could be hacked massively by studying the mistakes others have made (mentors, books, interviews), and the stuff the've learned the hard way.

only one reason why people start businesses - circumstance

Not necessarily true. Better proactive than reactive.

I've a feeling that those who take deliberate measures to ensure opportunities bloom, would be a few steps ahead. Maybe you're looking to leave a dent in the universe. Maybe you want a few more dollars for that shiny new ferrari. Maybe you want to expand your interests.

Congrats on the move to freelancing. Can be quite lucrative. How are you planning on obliterating the competition? I'd assume its fierce over there.

Been a long day. Sorry for the late reply again. BTW, haven't had a stimulating conversation like this in a while.

I'm glad you've looked through the situation from different angles. Sounds like you've learnt lots.

Wow. You've made some drastic changes to your life. Freaky indeed. On the upside, you've beaten this huge monster of a disease.

It's great that you've got a list already. Also great that you've been featured in a health book. Perfect bunch of reasons for why it'd be great if you'd consider raising some funding over at kickStarter. Take things to a whole other level. It'll help you collect your thoughts about how you'd build an ideal community for CF-conquerers. Where members could share what worked for them, have very customized 'plans of action' even. (hope you've explored http://crohnology.com) You'll need some funding for the game, as well as the ad campaigns, etc. Also, with this one move, you'd have built up a list of 1000's. I'd be glad to help out a little, if required.

What is your web comic about? Have you got a marketing/distribution plan handy? Webcomics certainly are interesting, but I'd say the existing publisher/writer distribution model sucks to say the least. I recently convinced a friend of mine, who'd been turning his freshly baked novel into a web comic, to turn it into a Facebook game instead. Drove the idea's monetization potential up a hundred fold possibly.

"power dressing for women". Love the idea. Feel you certainly should pursue it in some form or the other. How about starting with a dribbble/pinterest-like community for fashion designers. Get them to submit ideas etc. I'd be more psyched about curation/community, utilizing network-effects and so on. Than a pure clothing line. But either way, you'll get a lot of great feedback from HN about the most vital parts -- e-commerce, marketing, seo etc. An internet-first clothing line around this concept seems doable, and the community aspect 'empowering women' etc. would drive it ahead. Every successful business needs to start with inspirational stories. And you've got plenty of 'em.

Interesting that you'd say people weren't as forgiving 'cause you got better. This seems quite plausible. Empathy is indeed a depletable resource. Reading through, can't help but feel inspired by your attitude towards all of this. Massively inspired.

You haven't elaborated on the mechanics of the game yet. But I love the idea of the shift in mental models -- leveling up on the characters health through subtle changes that can be visualized. What might the game look like? 2D side-scroller? top-down/isometric? (farmville/diablo) 3d environments? text-based? (like mafia wars) What sort of environmental / personal changes would the character make? I've gotten myself all worked-up about the game concept. Would love to send over a single page write-up of what I imagine this should look/play like, if you don't mind ie.

I'm really curious about the 'complex set of choices' you make throughout the day. Have you considered parallels that could be applied to curing other diseases. More often than not, there tends to be subtle links between certain diseases.

Whoa. Wasn't expecting that. Firstly, do not let go of your intense need/desire to fix this. There's someone out there who could really use your insights.

Reading through, couldn't help flash back to circumstances I've been through personally. The flawed medical system isn't new to me. Been called a hypochondriac. Prescribed tons of antibiotics. 'Irritable bowel' 'stress' 'migranes' 'whitecoat blah'; how quickly they'd come up their diagnosis. And, I'd gotten out (almost there) of my messed up state through a similar path as yours. Via massive dietary and lifestyle changes. Though, certainly nothing compared to what you've been through, and I've been trying to raise hell against the med community for quite a while. My folks are doctors; so I've had an insider preview of how bad things really are.

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Back to the CF community, Would it be possible to get them on board, if you started over from a different perspective?

You've probably seen http://crohnology.com/. Certainly could derive a lot of inspiration from there. (including the HN post)

Existing communities might be harder to penetrate. Especially ones that're heavily moderated. BUT, I'd bet there's a ton of folks who share your opinions about the med community, and the ways they diagnose & treat symptoms.

What might the other reasons for why you've received those strong negative reactions be?

I'm all for the simulation/game idea. I'd even recommend starting a movement over on Kickstarter, if you don't mind the publicity. Although, it might be better if you'd build a new community from scratch first. Share your story, tell them what the goals are, speak of your vision. Trust me, it'll resonate with a whole bunch of folks. Much like 'crohnology' did.

AND, like you'd mentioned, the folks most active on these communities might have been there for quite some time, and to suggest something disruptive would do nothing but ignite a wildfire. Could possibly start with those who've been diagnosed recently. The clueless ones. Perhaps the ones who haven't yet reached out for support. At a point where they're confused, looking for options, and they're just hoping some (usually clueless) doc has all the right answers. Of course, you'll still have to answer the question about how you'll actually get to them. Google adwords & seo, if not anything else.

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Lastly, I'm not sure you should pursue this with monetary goals in mind. Although, it'd be ridiculous to ignore the possibilities. Imagine all the positive press/attention/network/connections you'd attain, by starting a 'movement'. In a day and age where every other person seems to be trying their hand at the popular little social gizmo idea of the moment, making a real impact ensures you'll stand out like boeing 747 on a highschool playground. You've got a great story here. Leverage it. Save some lives.

Would you be willing to discuss your thoughts on how the simulation/game would work? What would the flow be like? How might it convince them about the changes they'd need to make?

Apologies for the late reply. Lot of interesting stuff packed into your comment. Thanks for taking the time. Also, great to know you're healthier now.

I'm intrigued about your 'openly hostile' target market. Firstly, it sounds like you've thought about your target audience quite a bit. Great sign. Why would they be hostile about you solving their pains? Is it the price point? Privacy concerns? General mistrust?

Or is it likely you're packaging an anti-depressant as a pain-killer. (http://pablobrenner.wordpress.com/2011/09/18/neither-painkil...)

You say 'the audience isn't ready for that'. That seems perfectly fine. You can probably think ahead a lot more than they can. But it'd be great to have some validation, even if that means dealing with their hostility, to get through.

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I'll echo the advice about starting with a design doc. Once you know what the game should be like, you can start implementing tiny features and learn along the way. When I'd starting building games (new to programming as well), I had weekly goals that were like "fighter jet moves right/left using arrow keys, over a static background". Next week would have 'implement top-down scrolling background' etc. When you're starting out, its important to take care of your mental state. Things that seem trivial might take much longer. You've gotta keep reminding yourself that its a learning experience too. That with every seemingly trivial item that you conquer, your value in the market increases.

With games, it often is easy to get overwhelmed. You'll need to split yourself into 'designer/manager' and 'developer'. The developer works on the tiniest, most detailed instructions. The designer/manager is allowed only a single day a week perhaps, to write (in detail) about the next tiny feature to implement & to dream of new features. In my case, I'd get my 'big plan' down on paper(about 2 pages worth about what the entire game was like), from memory, every single week. Just so I'd know subconsciously, where the project as a whole was headed.

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Here's hoping you'll be inspiring others with your story soon.

Inspirational anecdote ya got there. Thanks for sharing.

If you don't mind me asking. How long did it take to get to 5mm in revenues? Also, do you / did you ever have partners on this biz?

When I'd started my first job (after an ad-driven web app that went nowhere), I quickly found I wouldn't have much time for side projects. So I'd outsourced my little project to a talented dude from the east. This first project was to be measured with a financial goal -- 30,000$ a month. (was pretty naive)

Hours per week: about 10. (learned a lot about documenting processes, instructions & ui flow's for an other dev.)

Skills/Profile: worked on a ton of platforms. wrote emulators in high school. game engine developer. designed graphics hardware devices. published research papers. failed web startups.

Success measurement: 30,000$ per month. (hit about 2,000$. liquidated. back to basics)

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These days, my day job involves lots of consulting. Side project profile:

Hours per week: 40~ (I'm the core developer)

Success measured: 100-1000~ active users.

Financial goal: acquisition(s) in the 50-100,000$ range. (not tied to revenue / year)

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Haven't hit any of my (almost) modest end-goals/exits yet. I've met a few of my 'on the road' milestones. They didn't make me feel any different. I love the process, and that keeps me going.

If you're serious about forcing yourself into making an impact, find a bunch of target customers with a pain to be solved, talk to them, and promise them something with a deadline attached. I've found a lot of folks need the brute-force kickstart approach early on.

Interesting subject. Time allows us to measure results. Not the other way around.

Our consciousness cannot experience time going backwards. Time travel to the experiencer, would happen in +ve time for him/her.

Also, even if those neutrino speed measurements stand true, travelling back in time should still be an impossibility.

What is it about the experiment, that bothers you?

Agree that it wasn't the product. The product had a very vocal, loyal following.

But it wasn't just 'marketing'. They'd touched a massive audience. Many just didn't 'get it'. The show wasn't meant to have universal appeal. Certainly not the generic sitcom audience. Especially not on a large network.

This brings up a vital question lots of companies often have to face. What happens when growth declines, but you still have a powerful following?

Stir up a little controversy. (2.5 men) Re-brand for expansion. (syfy, cougar town), Give up on the current business model, perhaps try a new one & cut down costs. (dvd sales, movie -- arrested dev. as an example) etc.

Thank you for describing it so well here. [http://blog.memrise.com/2011/05/how-is-memory-stored-in-brai...] The actor/play analogy worked memorably well.

Haven't heard of memrise before. Yet, having read your posts, I can't wait to try it out.

I'd like to imagine the brain is a lot like the 'world wide web' as a data structure, than a pure graph.

That it isn't just a question of pure storage and retrieval. There's quite a bit of varied experience on the same root(& their storage) happening multiple times and layers within.

Content that gets shared/liked more, gets replicated, re-iterated on, transformed, re-tagged. As time progresses, you'll find more content similar to the parent, being generated -- re-experienced via dreams and the subconscious.

Eventually, when its necessary to dig out the piece of content using tags or searches, it'll end up finding the most 'linked-to' piece. Possibly one that was associated with a explosion of favorable chemicals.

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There's some evidence to suggest that the same experience, isn't stored as a single piece of memory. During the process of consolidation [when a long term memory gets etched], the 'experience' being transcribed goes through iterations. With variations being stored as well, some of them decaying almost instantly.

It's possible the brain applies 'instagram' like filters while etching these memories. (a process that happens over weeks)

It'll be interesting if in the future, we could modify/augment these 'filter' processes. Both at the storage and retrieval stages.

[http://pubs.acs.org/cen/coverstory/85/8536cover.html] [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Engram_(neuropsychology)]

Interesting. Well, you've built up a lot of authority over the years. That they trust you more, has been well earned.

I'm baffled by the 'pre-interview' concept.

Would love to see a candid 'behind-the-scenes' (video) peek at your process, without giving too much away. Maybe tiny interviews with your team even. Passion multiplied!

Keep up the good work Andrew. Premium subscriber here. Totally worth it.

Video, certainly is the future of content. And you're leading the way, for us hackers.

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I've gotta say this. Your interviews have evolved since when you'd started -- true signs of progress.

Also, I've noticed a consistent enthusiasm and energy in your newer interviews. Passion is contagious.

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One more thing... I'd love it if you'd do a little 'here's something thing I'd love to see built' segment. (like Fred Wilson often does)

Where you could elaborate on ideas you'd love to see improved/built. And the hacker community would respond, with swift ferocity.

Almost wierd that I feel sick to my stomach.

RIP Steve. We'll certainly miss the most important innovator of our times.

That's great. You're much more of an entrepreneur than I'd assumed.

Check out chapter 6 from 'Getting Real', by the folks at 37signals. [http://gettingreal.37signals.com/toc.php]

The problem I had starting out, was following an exact process for going from an idea to a Minimum Viable Product. Most importantly, I had trouble getting past my designs (PSD) being messy.

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Since you have an idea already:

- figure out what features your minimum viable product should contain

- throw out a whole bunch of those features, till there's just a few main ones, and you feel a little uneasy

- turn those features into screens (paper mockups). as few as possible.

- go from paper mockups to PSD's (photoshop). use dribble, themeforest, forrst, etc. for inspiration. especially the 'minimalist' designs

- or you could just use one of the 'admin themes' from themeforest. or 'bootstrap' by twitter.

- chop the PSD to css/html. This is where it becomes (sorta) 'REAL'.

- since you know basic java, I'd recommend you use php (almost similar syntax, and tons of help online) to hack together your first app

//---EDIT---

I see you're interested in Rails. Personally, with history in c, c++, dotnet & java, rails just seemed a little 'off'. Since you're familiar with java, I'd highly recommend GRAILS: http://grails.org/ as a viable/quicker alternative to rails.

//---END EDIT---

- don't stress about languages and platforms just yet. I'd spent weeks trying to figure out which framework would make me sound more technically proficient to a third party(investor perhaps?). The right answer always is, whatever gets the job done ASAP.

- consider using facebook/twitter for user account management. makes a lot of stuff easier

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One thing I'd fix going back, would be rewiring my process to having the PSD chopped first(and played with), before writing any server-side code.

I've been at this exact same place. The best way you can prep for a 'web startup' is to leverage the skills you've got (javascript, java, html), and take action RIGHT NOW. [I've a feeling you know enough to get hacking on an idea, and learn along the way.]

We've no clue what the world would look like 2 years down the line. One thing we'd be certain of -- insane amounts of competition. The most important thing you'll learn right now is 'STARTING' with limited information. If you can couple that with an insane drive to 'COMPLETE', you'd be prepped & ready.

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Since you mentioned 'web apps',

Get into action, the 'lean startup' way: [http://www.amazon.com/Lean-Startup-Entrepreneurs-Continuous-...]

- list a few target markets/niches you'd like to work with

- research them online/offline (forums, meetup groups etc.) & dig out their pain points

- build landing pages (unbounce.com) around your MAGIC SOLUTION to their problem

- get enough folks to sign up for your landing page (might cost you about 100$ worth of adspend)

- the inspiration you get from having actual folks that need your Magic Pain Solver would drive you to complete your product

- you'll relieve them of their pains by forcing yourself to build this ASAP, or you'd hire someone

- you'll have learned a ton about the essence of entrepreneurship through this experience

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Basically, you're connecting a pain-point for an small-enough group of people, that communicates amongst themselves regularly (the market), to a transaction (business model).

And please, start Right Away.

Absolutely. "Creativity as a service". I envision a lot of startups in the near future revolving around this model. Maybe we'll plug into a facebook-like universal AI-api (by apple?), and build 'creativity generator' apps that use chunks of hyper-personal data.

PG recently spoke about how, in the future, creativity would have to be 'generated'.(http://www.darrenherman.com/2011/09/14/ycombinator-ad-innova...)

Once early adopters tout about the variety that machines can generate, the rest will have to follow along.

I wouldn't be so sure about state-of-the-art natural lang processing & speech recognition systems being good enough, for Apple (given their track record) to pitch a complete virtual assistant as a software service (VAAS?).

The ideal AI assistant would be entangled with copious amounts of machine learning algorithms. And it'd have to be plugged into my email, sms's, phone convos, facebook, twitter etc. The AI would have to evolve not just from my experiences, but the collective experiences of the ecosystem (privacy alert!).

There's way too many dangling variables here -- privacy implications, govt. regulation, software error (30%+ for state of the art natural language processing) etc.

Yet, I've gotta say I'm stupidly giddy about today's keynote.