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styrmis

Google login has been added, screenshots coming soon—thank you for the feedback.
My partner built Velocity Tracker [1], not a clone but it aims to implement the core philosophy of Pivotal. Any and all feedback would be most welcome.

[1] https://app.velocitytracker.co/

Re:Book Review: Unlearn Your Pain (2016) on Sunday August 21, 2022 @02:46PM (#32543193)
And one more on this theme, When the Body Says No, by Gabor Maté.

https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/450534.When_the_Body_Say...

The author suggests (amongst other things) that anger suppression can lead to cancer cells not being dealt with by the body as they would normally otherwise be. The evidence is anecdotal, but then it perhaps quite unlikely that we will see clinical studies along these lines any time soon unfortunately.

Re:Ask HN: What's the best book you read in 2021? on Sunday December 26, 2021 @09:30AM (#29692621)
Ah, I can completely see why you would find it frustrating—I enjoyed the anecdotes and it made for very light holiday reading, but then it was indeed light on detail.

If you go to the end of the book, just before the Notes section there is a short chapter which lays out the basics of most of the breathing techniques. I've found that to be enough to experiment a little and while brief it's enough as a starting point.

Sadly I don't have any recommendations for breathing techniques outside of those espoused by Wim Hof, which are based in part on Tummo.

Given that this book (Breath) has been published and the recent increase in popularity the topic is seeing I am hopeful that we will see some follow-on works (if they don't exist already) that will break these techniques down in more detail. As it stands it feels necessary to piece together elements from different books to get a more complete picture regarding how these techniques work and what is possible. I would certainly be interested to see a collation of results seen in athletes.

Re:Ask HN: What's the best book you read in 2021? on Friday December 24, 2021 @07:12AM (#29672958)
I'm just finishing Breath: The New Science of a Lost Art by James Nestor and I have enjoyed it immensely.

https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/48890486-breath

I have previously taken courses in the Wim Hof Method and marvelled at the dramatic increase in energy that it gave me, not to mention an increased ability to be warm when I want to be and to tolerate the cold, something which being a relatively stationary software developer has negatively affected over the years.

This book touches on Wim Hof but covers the approaches and results of many other practitioners as well as traditional methods, blending together science writing and reporting of results with engaging storytelling, making it a fun, light and quick read.

As someone who likes to experiment with this kind of thing I went ahead and tried things like lightly taping my mouth shut while sleeping and was amazed to feel the difference when I didn't do it. Meanwhile I've experimented with only breathing through my nose when exercising (including exhaling) and have observed that my heart rate has stayed lower and my thinking clearer when under pressure in a jiu-jitsu class.

In the same week that I started reading the book I had a grading, and the instructors repeated again and again the reminder to breathe in through the nose, advice echoed in the book. To them it is common sense that if you start panting (breathing hard in and out using your mouth) that you won't be able to perform well in that kind of high-pressure scenario.

If you are looking for a light read over the holidays and are interested in health/wellness then I can thoroughly recommend this book.

Re:Language learning with Netflix on Tuesday June 08, 2021 @05:59AM (#27432435)
The Varnish error is almost identical to that of the Guardian (newspaper) website in the UK—wondering if they're both using CloudFlare and that it's CloudFlare that is having the issue?

Edit: Perhaps related to this ongoing Fastly outage (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27432408), https://fastly.com returns the same kind of Varnish error and Github currently has no assets being served in their web UI.

Re:My product is my garden on Thursday February 04, 2021 @06:04AM (#26024393)
DHH certainly doesn't putter (by the common definition), but as someone who has followed his output here and there over the course of ~15 years I disagree that he is burnt out or that he is out to impress.

Over the years his approach has in my opinion been an example of how to be practical, think for yourself, be productive and not burn out. His form of puttering looks to be blocking out time to program in Ruby and extracting patterns from Basecamp (and now Hey) to release as open source. This looks like a form of cultivation/gardening to me.

I think most people, myself included, would burn out if they attempted to emulate him—he has clearly found a way to remain balanced, in his own way.

For the rest of us I think Bear Blog is a good example to follow if you can make a living doing so. If you want to see the parallels between this and Basecamp then you would need to wind the clock way back to the early days of that product/company. That said, winding the clock forward on Bear Blog will likely not get you something that looks like Basecamp today.

There can be wisdom in old wive’s tales or otherwise home remedies. As someone who knows very little about such things in relation to helping with breathing I would also be interested to hear what worked anecdotally for you.

Glad to hear that your Mother-in-law managed to get off the ventilator despite the odds.

Re:How to Find Consulting Clients on Thursday April 12, 2018 @01:23PM (#16823031)
Coincidentally as I was reading this comment thread you came to mind—your approach is clearly working!
Re:Ask HN: Who is hiring? (February 2018) on Thursday February 01, 2018 @02:26PM (#16284967)
Mystery Applicant | Ruby Developer | ONSITE | Bath, England

We are looking for a Ruby developer to join us here in our office in Bath. We're open to talking to local developers of all levels—our main requirement is a willingness/drive to learn rather than particular technical skills. To that end, if you are an experienced developer interested in picking up Ruby then that is also a possibility.

The system is a Rails 5 app which large companies use to gather anonymous feedback regarding their hiring process. We are still a very small team so there is plenty of opportunity to have an outsized impact on the value delivered by the system.

For more details or to arrange to drop by our Bath office for a coffee, please contact me (Stefan) at [email protected]

Re:Ask HN: Who is hiring? (December 2017) on Friday December 01, 2017 @12:36PM (#15825536)
Mystery Applicant | Bath, England | Full-time | ONSITE

We are a small and friendly team of Ruby developers working primarily on a Rails app and also on Ruby-based ETL using Kiba. We are looking for a developer to join our team full time, on-site in our Bath office.

For more details please see:

https://mysteryapplicant.workable.com/jobs/489994

Re:Ask HN: Who is hiring? (September 2017) on Friday September 01, 2017 @01:50PM (#15150775)
Mystery Applicant | Full Stack Ruby / Rails Developer | ONSITE | Bath or Bristol, England

We are looking for talented and friendly Ruby devs to join us in building a surveying and business intelligence tool onsite (part-remote OK) in Bath, England.

Note that if you're not a Ruby developer but you're interested in picking it up then we would also like to speak to you.

For more details please see:

https://mysteryapplicant.workable.com/jobs/489994

Re:Ask HN: Who is hiring? (June 2017) on Thursday June 01, 2017 @12:21PM (#14461639)
Mystery Applicant | Full Stack Ruby/Rails Developer (£45-60k p.a.) | Bath, England | ONSITE, REMOTE

Mystery Applicant is looking for a Full Stack Ruby/Rails Developer (onsite or remote within the UK) to join our technical team. We might be small but we are agile and leaders in candidate experience measurement. We provide analytics to some of the world’s largest and most well known employers. We are growing and have some exciting product enhancements to bring to market. That’s where you come in.

This is a great opportunity to join our team and make your mark. If you’re interested then get in touch using the application form, ideally with links to some of your code (including test code), and we’ll set up a time to chat.

https://mysteryapplicant.workable.com/jobs/489994

* No agencies please

Re:Ask HN: Freelancer? Seeking freelancer? (March 2017) on Sunday March 05, 2017 @03:25AM (#13795097)
To follow up, I have received a significant number of emails about this—while it's great to make your acquaintance if you're reading this now unfortunately the position has been filled.
Re:Ask HN: Freelancer? Seeking freelancer? (March 2017) on Wednesday March 01, 2017 @11:47AM (#13765364)
SEEKING FREELANCER - Remote, Bath, England

I have a legacy Django app that is slowly being modernised and made more reliable but I could do with ongoing help with the process.

A key part of the work is to add minor features and refactor under the cover of tests--a key requirement for anyone getting in touch would therefore be a willingness to write Django/Python tests, and to be happy to take extra time on the work to gradually raise the quality of the codebase.

As the main developer for the project I'll do whatever I can to make it easier for you to do your work, for example you will only deal with me and Github Issues rather than clients further upstream.

If you could help me to increase test coverage and quality of this codebase please contact me at [email protected]. No agencies please!

Re:Ask HN: Who is hiring? (February 2016) on Monday February 01, 2016 @11:05AM (#11012530)
Mystery Applicant Ltd / REMOTE (UK)

We are looking for a senior Ruby/Rails developer to join our team. The work is primarily on a Rails app but there is also a significant ETL and ops component to the work.

We are based in Bath, UK, but would be happy to work with people remotely as long as they are GMT±1 and can come to Bath relatively regularly to interact with the team.

More details here: https://careers.stackoverflow.com/jobs/106972/senior-rails-d...

Re:Netherlands bans illegal downloading on Thursday April 10, 2014 @09:20AM (#7565781)
I think what he meant was that you can't be punished for being an "illegal alien" in the Netherlands.

"Illegal residence is only punishable if the party involved has been declared 'undesirable'" (http://en.justitiaetpax.nl/project/aliens-detention-in-the-n...)

Sounds great, I would certainly like to hear more about it. Could you drop me a line via the email in my profile please?
Re:Spaced repetition for study and learning on Sunday September 29, 2013 @01:26AM (#6464222)
SRS software (I mostly used Anki) was invaluable to me when I was learning Japanese, both for vocabulary and the kanji.

I always wanted to make my own SRS, one that had ease of use , stability and data integrity at its core rather than cutting edge features. This year I finally set aside time to make it: feel free to try it out and let me know what you think. It is very simple (there is only one deck), but multiple decks will be the next feature to be added.

http://benkyo.co

On top of that platform is an implementation of a rather interesting way to learn Japanese reading which it would also be great to have feedback on:

http://benkyo.co/iikanji/

Having a different URL for each update would allow them to track readers' entry points into the article at a finer-grained level than if there was just one URL.

Not sure about plugins for Wordpress but I wouldn't be surprised if someone's already started working on one.

Regarding the multiple URLs I wonder if it is more just so that they can be posting what look like new stories that ultimately just lead back to these long form story series.

This is really great! There are quite possibly many better ways to spend 180 days if you wanted to make money (#1 would probably be completing every Rails tutorial available) but I don't think that is important here. Rather, I find her approach inspiring and it's something that can be applied to any endeavour.

One nice thing that she will have, even if she doesn't make it through the full 180 is a record of her earliest creations through to her latest. Like when keeping a journal she'll be able to refer to it when she's feeling low and see the progress she's made, and she'll have a record of what she's done that transcends her memory.

At my first job I was lucky enough to report directly to the Technical Director of the company who took the time to mentor me on what it means to be a good software engineer. The first thing he had me do is to keep an engineer's journal. The benefits of this would only become clear a few weeks down the line but clear it was: I would encounter a problem I knew I had solved before but couldn't quite recall the solution to; I would flip back to find my notes and there it would be. Fast forward a few months, then a year and the value received from this simple act of keeping an organised journal far exceeded my expectations.

I have since kept the habit going but I feel that more can be done here. On one level you can keep notes for yourself and improve your own productivity. A level up would be to write those notes up on an internal wiki. One level up further and you've polished them into material you can publish to a wider community. One level up again you can inspire others to do the same through your efforts. One such effort that I have seen (outside of Jennifer's) that I think is completely worth anyone's time to explore is Journey of an Absolute Rookie: Paintings and Sketches (http://www.conceptart.org/forums/showthread.php?t=870), 10 full years of recorded progress of a beginning artist that blew my mind. Warning: you may lose a lot of time to that forum thread!

There is something beautiful and powerful in things that have been worked on and tended to for years, things that cannot be rushed no matter what: the only way to have 10 years of recorded progress today is to have started 10 years ago and to have kept it up for the duration. What a present to give to yourself!

Re:As Competition Wanes, Amazon Cuts Back Discounts on Friday July 05, 2013 @08:39AM (#5994593)
It seems strange that there is no mention of inflation in the article given that they are comparing prices from up to four years ago to today's prices.

> When Mr. Striphas’s book, “The Late Age of Print: Everyday Book Culture from Consumerism to Control,” first appeared in paperback in 2011, Amazon sold it for $17.50, the author said. Now it is $19.

Well, given that the 2011 $17.50 price would be ~$18.12 today (due strictly to inflation) then it is not as big an increase as suggested.

> When the University of Nebraska Press brought out a bibliography of the novelist Jim Harrison four years ago, Amazon charged $43.87. The price this week: $59.87.

2009: $43.87 Today: $59.87 Correcting only for inflation the price would be: $47.63

Inflation doesn't even account for the majority of the price increase in this case but still this article appears to draw rather strong conclusions from rather flimsy analysis.

Re:Facebook buys Parse on Friday April 26, 2013 @04:13AM (#5611943)
Normal people eh? ;)

Speaking of late to the party Facebook is just in the process of taking off here in Japan, it's already very popular and appears to be taking over from social networks like Mixi which have previously dominated here.

I don't have any numbers to back this up though, I'm just basing it on the change in usage I've seen here in the last two years. Certainly Facebook is alive and well here, even _useful_ if you can imagine it!

Re:Ask HN: Who is hiring? (April 2013) on Monday April 01, 2013 @11:40AM (#5473712)
Yokohama, Japan, full-time, assistance with visa.

This position is for a software developer (primarily Perl) in a growing team, working on a large-scale data processing system for a major telecommunications company in Japan. The project is still relatively young so there is the potential for influencing design decisions made as we scale, including opportunities to work with cutting edge hardware. You'll be joining a vibrant and growing team in Yokohama Japan—successful applicants will be provided with the necessary working visa for Japan, accommodation, national health insurance and a very competitive salary.

Email me for more details: [email protected]

Re:Offer HN: I will work for free in San Francisco this week on Thursday February 28, 2013 @02:45AM (#5297609)
Yes many thanks for that, it's made the trip to SF all the more worthwhile; looking forward to dropping by again.
Re:Offer HN: I will work for free in SF this coming week on Monday February 25, 2013 @01:29PM (#5280643)
Thanks for the feedback, it's a shame there isn't a good alternative—there are meetups but they're really a different beast and may not be running when people visit.

On karma, I feel guilty enough just enjoying reading HN but I realise I am missing out by not interacting at least a little.

Re:Offer HN: I will work for free in San Francisco this week on Monday February 25, 2013 @01:19PM (#5280539)
Fair enough—I realise it isn't necessary (there are seemingly many generous and open people here) but I'd like to offer something in return if I can. Feedback duly noted! I'm happy to just chat and I've had a good experience with that so far.

Out of interest have you done something similar before, and did you approach it in a different way?

Offer HN: I will work for free in San Francisco this week

I'm staying in San Francisco and will be here until the 6th of March; I came here to expose myself to a different culture and perspective (I'm from the UK) and I would love to visit your startup, I would even be happy to do some work for you for free!To give you an idea of what I might be able to do for you, my background is I: - have a PhD in Machine Learning (graduated in 2010) - am a...

( Read More... | 4 comments | 7 points | on HN )

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