I was also a big fan of remapping capslock to control. Fortunately, in OSX 10.5+, it became a configurable option in the keyboard prefpane. Thanks for posting your list! I'm looking forward to giving Lyx a try.
the landing page design really grabbed me, but I'm also really impressed with how simple and functional the actual dashboard is when you login. I had signed up with another beta autoscaling service, but I never heard back from them again. Best of luck with the service! I'll be rooting for ya.
offtopic, but guitaryst looks pretty sweet. You guys should compile a list of other cool apps built on top of last.fm
great job on the UX for tastebuds. It's not only pretty, but the barrier to entry was low and really draws you in to try it. The artist autocomplete was a perfect example of this.
Related to Sinatra, the Padrino docs and guides are really good. On top of reference style documentation, guides and tutorials like the ones at http://guides.rubyonrails.org/ that are topic based are really helpful
I have the same problem when it comes to buying electronics. I've missed out on having a smart phone because I'm always waiting for the next iteration, or for my current contract to run out. It's an endless cycle of not buying.
What helps me break this cycle is to have specific monthly amount budgeted towards something I would otherwise have a hard time buying. If I put $100/mo towards my "dream X fund", then I won't feel this internal guilt when I finally buy X.
When they were explaining how to form letters, the movement reminded me of dialing numbers on a rotary phone, except that the possible combinations were expanded because counterclockwise "dialing" is also allowed.
Not sure exactly what you guys are building, but I hope it makes a fat dent in how credit bureaus work. I went through my first credit report from the 3 credit bureaus. Not only was the process archaic, but along the way I was bombarded by all kinds of predatory offers to sign up for paid credit monitoring services. After I retrieved my reports, I find inaccurate information, along with an account that I've never seen before labeled as an "adverse account". On top of that, I see misreported addresses and dates as well. From there, I had to do 3 separate dispute claims (all of them slightly different in process, but equally filled with spam). While on the phone with an Indian call center with Equifax, I was cut short every time I asked a question or tried to clarify, and at the end of the call I get yet another pitch to sign up for their paid credit monitoring service.
Please tear down and rebuild these sloppy and fat credit bureaus. At the very least, I hope you guys provide some solid competition for them to shape themselves up.
Even the basic reporting is pretty terrible. For example, I have a pretty low credit limit given my income (mostly because I stupidly canceled cards I wasn't using). For months I tried to get it raised without any success. Finally, I paid for one of those credit reports that has suggestions and found out my problems are because I've been "carrying" too much debt... except I don't carry any debt. It's just that my limit is so low when the month rolls around I often am using close to the limit (which I then promptly pay off). Basically, your credit utilization can be extremely high even if you pay in full every month.
Solution: pay in full right before the month rolls over. I've already had two credit limit raises after doing this... but why should I have to? Why should I have to arbitrarily change habits that have nothing to do with good finance just to appease credit bureaus that aren't doing a good job to begin with?
What about just going cash and debit for everything?
Are you afraid of not getting a good rate when it's time to get a mortgage? I've often heard the anecdotes about without debt but no credit card history getting turned down for loans, but I've also wondered if it's actually true.
Actually, my card gives decent cash back and it's definitely worth it if you try to put as much as possible on the card. I haven't heard of a debit cash back card.
US Bank used to offer cash back on debit cards; don't know if they still do. ING Direct occasionally has cash-back promotions on the debit card for their Electric Orange checking account, but only for new accounts.
You're right in that credit cards are still useful if you use them right, though. There are certain protections (chargebacks) plus the benefits you note. Credit card companies are like casinos--they give you tons of benefits if you use them hoping you'll go on tilt and waste tons of money. If you're smart, sometimes you can beat them at their game.
Forget the analogy, this ain't Vegas. All you gotta do is remember to pay one bill on time every month and you're a (small-time) winner.
Oh, and you should make sure you never spend more on your credit card than you have in cash to pay it off; but you should have at least several months' expenses sitting around in cash anyway, so this shouldn't be an issue as long as you have good financial habits.
For an average-income person with good financial habits a 1% cashback credit card is a net win of maybe two hundred dollars a year. Not a huge deal, but the best financial habit you can have is not saying no to small savings.
But this is what the Vegas analogy means: if you follow the optimal strategy while gambling and stop when you've gambled enough to be comped a room, you'll be +EV compared to the normal cost of the room. It's just as easy as paying off your credit card bill every month, assuming similar levels of financial discipline.
Hmm, I didn't know that the comps worked out that way; I always assumed that the value of the comp wound up less than your expected losses even with optimal strategy. Nice to know.
Still, it's a lot easier to remember to pay a bill on time every month than it is to play optimal-strategy blackjack for hours with no mistakes.
The analogy holds, but it's not all that good an analogy since there's a severe difference in the difficulty and the risk/reward ratio. Some things are better explained in their own terms than via an analogy.
The kind of person who vacations in Vegas isn't likely to be someone who makes rational economic decisions about +EV comps, so Vegas isn't worried about offering +EV comps. If you're a rational +EV economic decision-maker, you either don't go to Vegas, or you live in Vegas and make your living beating tourists at poker. Either way, you're not the one being comped a room--more often, it'll be someone who goes on tilt.
My girlfriend is a chemical engineer. We both try to talk to one another about what excites us about our work. When she starts talking about nanotech materials, she can't help throwing in a lot of technical jargon that fly over my head. She's always good about thinking of an analogy that I can understand. On the flip side, she rarely has trouble understanding what I do as a web programmer. I think the fact that her work involves all this sci-fi future black magics makes it a little harder to explain.
I love having that we have such 2 distinct passions in life. Sure, there's some overlap in engineering, but the subject matters are totally different. As a result of what she does, I get to travel to where her research takes her and meet people with backgrounds completely different from myself. It's freaking awesome.
The 2 of us are moving down to Pasadena next month because she's starting at Caltech. It's a bummer to leave the Bay Area, but I'm excited about our new adventures.
I like the idea of this because there are benefits for both the employer and the freelancer. For employers, it's a labor model that's pay-as-you-go like cloud servers. For freelancers, you're motivated to complete tasks and not watching the clock for 8 hours waiting to run away. This doesn't fix the problem of stability for hired work or benefits like retirement or med insurance. Cool post!
