3 ms·

What skills have you acquired over the years that you deem most useful? The ability to learn new skills quickly

by byoung2 14y ago

wallflower 14y ago
First, the ability to make people feel comfortable around you (which usually means actually being comfortable around them) I second "the ability to learn" -- but be more confident and bold (this is an extreme): “After Andy dropped out of Emerson College in his sophomore year, the [siblings] reunited in Chicago, where they started a construction business, learning most of the skills on the job. They once built an elevator shaft without any plans or previous experience, having projected unquestionable confidence to the people who’d hired them—not an unuseful talent in the film business.” You can see the enormity of the undertaking, and the brass buttons it takes to say that, yes, of course you can do something that you have no idea how to do. Sometimes filmmaking requires that kind of absurd confidence (but don’t do anything that might make people fall down several stories or anything)." http://www.filmschoolrejects.com/features/6-filmmaking-tips-from-the-wachowskis.php http://www.filmschoolrejects.com/features/6-filmmaking-tips-... http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2012/09/10/120910fa_fact_hemon http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2012/09/10/120910fa_fact_...
- pavel_lishin 14y ago
  > They once built an elevator shaft without any plans or previous experience, having projected unquestionable confidence to the people who’d hired them Wait, was this for a film set, or was this an actual elevator shaft that people will be using to zip up and down a building? Because if it's the latter, I'm terrified.
  - SparrowOS 14y ago
    I did Ticketmaster's file compression in 1992. http://www.wired.com/magazine/2010/11/mf_ticketmaster/all/1 http://www.wired.com/magazine/2010/11/mf_ticketmaster/all/1 Denny gave me an LZW algorithm from a magazine. It's the same code I used at Ticketmaster -- to compress or uncompress a buffer, basically out of the magazine. At Ticketmaster, I did full multiple file archiving with bloom filters and encryption. In SparrowOS, it's individual files. My LZW applied to 16 color bitmaps is superior in every way to JPG. I get my own graphics compression out of a general purpose lossless algorithm built-in and applied automatically on files ending in ".Z" I generate my web site myself. I use uncompressed BMP files -- big. I added RLE BMP compression, just for my website. I don't need BMP file formats -- I have my own graphics format. I use BMP because it interoperates with Windows and the Web. I'm not interested in multimedia -- more like old school C64 games. With 16 colors, the standard formats are worthless. You might as well use loss-less. I could write a phenominally compressed loss-less screen-cast format.
  - wallflower 14y ago
    The latter, yes. All major construction like elevator shafts is always inspected [1]. Since they are working on-site, the quality, speed, and scope of their (subcontractor) work is apparent and visible on a real-time basis. You have to know what you're doing - if you do not - worst case, you get someone injured/killed, best case, they fire you. Like the cliche goes - a contractor with shiny new tools isn't a contractor you hire. As for licensing, there are ways around licensing & bonding... The point is they weren't just bluffing - they had supreme confidence they could do it. And did it. As someone who is scared to install a new faucet, who does that? [1] They did the shaft in Chicago: http://www.sfm.illinois.gov/commercial/elevators/faq.aspx http://www.sfm.illinois.gov/commercial/elevators/faq.aspx
lotharbot 14y ago
Related: the ability to do research. In my previous life doing IT, I was the "go-to guy" almost entirely because I knew how to efficiently and effectively read man pages and use Google. Nowadays that may take the form of reading API specs or language docs. The way to acquire that skill is simply to do it over and over again.
- sigkill 14y ago
  >The way to acquire that skill is simply to do it over and over again I would totally agree with you on this one because of my personal experience. I'm no CS guy, and nuking a VPS repeatedly (screwing up because typing a / instead of a ./ kind of errors) and installing a LAMP stack and CMS software has made me proficient even in the finer points of LAMP (like memory utilization of mysqld, or number of processes in PHP). Because of this, I am way more comfortable with linux as well. You wouldn't believe, I've destroyed installations like no tomorrow. And even on the personal front, more often than not, I tend to screw up my hardware and then with a great incentive to try and make it work again I read man pages, google every possible stuff to get it fixed. This automatically results in me knowing EXACTLY what to do when someone's screwed their hardware and are terrified. So, actually I think I should say, "Not afraid of breaking things, AND (most importantly) have determination to fix them up again."

What skills have you acquired over the years that you deem most useful? The ability to learn new skills quickly

by byoung2 14y ago

What skills have you acquired over the years that you deem most useful? The ability to learn new skills quickly

First, the ability to make people feel comfortable around you (which usually means actually being comfortable around them) I second "the ability to learn" -- but be more confident and bold (this is an extreme): “After Andy dropped out of Emerson College in his sophomore year, the [siblings] reunited in Chicago, where they started a construction business, learning most of the skills on the job. They once built an elevator shaft without any plans or previous experience, having projected unquestionable confidence to the people who’d hired them—not an unuseful talent in the film business.” You can see the enormity of the undertaking, and the brass buttons it takes to say that, yes, of course you can do something that you have no idea how to do. Sometimes filmmaking requires that kind of absurd confidence (but don’t do anything that might make people fall down several stories or anything)." http://www.filmschoolrejects.com/features/6-filmmaking-tips-from-the-wachowskis.php http://www.filmschoolrejects.com/features/6-filmmaking-tips-... http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2012/09/10/120910fa_fact_hemon http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2012/09/10/120910fa_fact_...

pavel_lishin 14y ago
> They once built an elevator shaft without any plans or previous experience, having projected unquestionable confidence to the people who’d hired them Wait, was this for a film set, or was this an actual elevator shaft that people will be using to zip up and down a building? Because if it's the latter, I'm terrified.
- SparrowOS 14y ago
  I did Ticketmaster's file compression in 1992. http://www.wired.com/magazine/2010/11/mf_ticketmaster/all/1 http://www.wired.com/magazine/2010/11/mf_ticketmaster/all/1 Denny gave me an LZW algorithm from a magazine. It's the same code I used at Ticketmaster -- to compress or uncompress a buffer, basically out of the magazine. At Ticketmaster, I did full multiple file archiving with bloom filters and encryption. In SparrowOS, it's individual files. My LZW applied to 16 color bitmaps is superior in every way to JPG. I get my own graphics compression out of a general purpose lossless algorithm built-in and applied automatically on files ending in ".Z" I generate my web site myself. I use uncompressed BMP files -- big. I added RLE BMP compression, just for my website. I don't need BMP file formats -- I have my own graphics format. I use BMP because it interoperates with Windows and the Web. I'm not interested in multimedia -- more like old school C64 games. With 16 colors, the standard formats are worthless. You might as well use loss-less. I could write a phenominally compressed loss-less screen-cast format.
- wallflower 14y ago
  The latter, yes. All major construction like elevator shafts is always inspected [1]. Since they are working on-site, the quality, speed, and scope of their (subcontractor) work is apparent and visible on a real-time basis. You have to know what you're doing - if you do not - worst case, you get someone injured/killed, best case, they fire you. Like the cliche goes - a contractor with shiny new tools isn't a contractor you hire. As for licensing, there are ways around licensing & bonding... The point is they weren't just bluffing - they had supreme confidence they could do it. And did it. As someone who is scared to install a new faucet, who does that? [1] They did the shaft in Chicago: http://www.sfm.illinois.gov/commercial/elevators/faq.aspx http://www.sfm.illinois.gov/commercial/elevators/faq.aspx

lotharbot 14y ago

Related: the ability to do research. In my previous life doing IT, I was the "go-to guy" almost entirely because I knew how to efficiently and effectively read man pages and use Google. Nowadays that may take the form of reading API specs or language docs. The way to acquire that skill is simply to do it over and over again.

sigkill 14y ago
>The way to acquire that skill is simply to do it over and over again I would totally agree with you on this one because of my personal experience. I'm no CS guy, and nuking a VPS repeatedly (screwing up because typing a / instead of a ./ kind of errors) and installing a LAMP stack and CMS software has made me proficient even in the finer points of LAMP (like memory utilization of mysqld, or number of processes in PHP). Because of this, I am way more comfortable with linux as well. You wouldn't believe, I've destroyed installations like no tomorrow. And even on the personal front, more often than not, I tend to screw up my hardware and then with a great incentive to try and make it work again I read man pages, google every possible stuff to get it fixed. This automatically results in me knowing EXACTLY what to do when someone's screwed their hardware and are terrified. So, actually I think I should say, "Not afraid of breaking things, AND (most importantly) have determination to fix them up again."