The Nerd Handbook

Re:The Nerd Handbook by gabebw on Wednesday April 13, 2011 @08:58PM (#2444948)

This idealizes some not-very-nerdy habits. Yes, sometimes nerds are messy - my desk is just messy. The package of gum on my desk doesn't mean I have an efficient system, it means I made room for my laptop.

And who watches 3 TV shows at one time? Serious question - if a lot of HN does stuff like this, that's a fairly fascinating discovery for me.

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Re:The Nerd Handbook by Zev on Thursday April 14, 2011 @12:42AM (#2445655)

And who watches 3 TV shows at one time?

I do. I'll start one, and than pause it to go do something else (write code, grab a snack, etc) and come back and start watching a different show. Eventually, I'll get distracted and pause the show I'm watching and talk on IRC or read Twitter for a bit, at which point I'll read about another show that I've been meaning to watch. So, I'll start watching it. Only to remember the first show that I started two hours ago and never finished. Its worse when I catch a reference to another show that I'm watching but can't quite remember what its referencing or its baseball season and I have a Mets game to watch..

This works really well with Quicktime, where it opens a new window for every video file I tell it to play. Not so much with VLC or Movist (mplayer UI) on OS X, that use a single window for all videos.

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Re:The Nerd Handbook by gabebw on Thursday April 14, 2011 @02:12AM (#2445833)

Oh, absolutely. I do the whole "pause and do something else" thing too, which the OP calls Nerd ADD [1]. Netflix + tabbed browsing is especially conducive to it. My point is that flipping through channels every 5 seconds makes us sound like nerd robots from the future, which I at least am not.

On re-reading, this article comes off as more measured and less apologist, but the "nerd robot from the future" aspect still comes through.

[1] http://www.randsinrepose.com/archives/2003/07/10/nadd.html

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