aarondf

28 ms·

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Show HN: I turned a prefab shed into an office(twitter.com)
8 points by aarondf 5y ago|4 comments
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by aarondf 5y ago
No way, you got one of our letters? That's crazy! I'd be curious which version you got. We sent a few different iterations. I'll have to look you up tomorrow when I'm back at the computer. Re: the system. I can't
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by aarondf 5y ago
I've gotta admit I didn't read the whole comment about Moloch. I told my wife that HN was going crazy over the robots and tried to describe the range of comments and her response was "what's HN?"
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by aarondf 5y ago
That only thing left is a pretty big one! We could print it and then apply the pressure with a pen, but at that point I think writing would suffice
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by aarondf 5y ago
Yes, in the sense that we don't get paid unless we win. No, in the sense that we don't advertise on TV and we don't call ourselves The Texas Hammer [1] 1: https://twitter.com/JIMADLERLAWFIRM
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by aarondf 5y ago
That's where I draw the line. Call your grandma! Call your mom too, while you're at it. That's really wonderful that you still send your grandma cards. I guarantee you she saves every one.
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by aarondf 5y ago
Moloch! Glad you enjoyed it. I feel like the jigs were one of my best inventions. Especially the pen alignment jig that gave me a reference point for dead reckoning. When I figured that out I was pretty tickled. Good luck, reach out if you
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by aarondf 5y ago
Nice, it would make a great side hustle if you have a flexible enough job to attend the hearings! Or if your angle was strictly preparing packets for homeowners to attend their own hearings. I say go for it
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by aarondf 5y ago
Careful posting that here, you might get called Moloch (whatever that is) or an amoral douchebag! Seriously though, Axidraws rule. Glad it's working for y'all.
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by aarondf 5y ago
It's hard to introduce random into actual fonts. I don't even know how I'd do that. What I could've done is just generate the SVG and then print it, that would've been a lot easier but way less fun. The reason you g
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by aarondf 5y ago
Yeah you can definitely do it yourself! Usually they give homeowners "courtesy cuts" for showing up. Or sometimes they do stonewall them. Either way, many of our clients prefer to have us do it since we do that all day, every day,
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by aarondf 5y ago
Ha, thanks! That's a nice thing to say. I think a lot of times, persistence can be confused for genius.
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by aarondf 5y ago
Deal! DM me your address
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by aarondf 5y ago
Yeah that sounds super cool. Alas, I am but one man, and one mildly skilled web developer with zero experience in hardware before this. I did watch a bunch of vacuum robot videos on YouTube tho, that was fun.
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by aarondf 5y ago
Ha! Weird seeing an ACCT 229 student here. You're welcome. Congrats on getting the A!
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by aarondf 5y ago
Yeah, that's the baseline drift I mentioned. The whole line kinda flows on a wavy baseline, like a human does. It doesn't look like it on the video because we're talking a few millimeters or less. But when you stand back from
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by aarondf 5y ago
Ah well, dust off that pitchfork. These letters are sent to homeowners, who then hire us, and we go in person to the appraisal district to represent the homeowner.
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by aarondf 5y ago
> the marketing machine and not more worthwhile endeavours. Ah yes, but how do we tell the world about our worthwhile endeavours? Marketing! > Nothing really against the OP No worries at all. You should read some of the other comments
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by aarondf 5y ago
Ah yeah I guess I shouldn't have said it that way. I'll rephrase: "It's hard for me, as the individual developer at a company, to spend enough time to devise a system to adequately A/B test the production and distri
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by aarondf 5y ago
> In other words, a bit of a race to the bottom. Copied from another comment, but this is what I got from ~10 seconds googling. • https://www.handwrytten.com/ • https://www.scribeless.co/ • https:/
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by aarondf 5y ago
> everyone from political campaigns to the local deli, will start doing the same It is definitely a matter of time until this stops working. From a quick google of "handwritten letters" here's what I got: • https:/&#
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by aarondf 5y ago
> I'm curious of OP had any moral qualms about deceiving people, and I ask this with complete sincerity and with no desire to downplay the (technical) impressiveness of the project. Hey! OP here. Great question. So I think one piece
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by aarondf 5y ago
Hey! Glad you liked that one. So it does introduce random variation. I had the employee write each letter ~15 times, and then they are plucked at random and then more "wobble" is applied randomly. So each character is slightly alt
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by aarondf 5y ago
> Are people more likely to read your mail if it has a handwritten envelope? That is the theory! > My question would: Isn't it faster to just have some people write the addresses per hand? Undoubtedly, yes! Our plan was to try to
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by aarondf 5y ago
It is, I agree. We used them to write the addresses on the envelopes.
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by aarondf 5y ago
The off-the-shelf plotter is called Axidraw, by Evil Mad Scientist: https://shop.evilmadscientist.com/890
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by aarondf 5y ago
Thanks! It has ~2.5 degrees of freedom. The pen servo only controls the up part of the vertical axis, gravity controls the down. What I mean to say is that the pen carriage just slides down, it is not pulled down. To solve for that we use
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by aarondf 5y ago
Holding it at 45 works well for e.g. a sharpie, but it didn't work quite as well for a ball point pen, which we ended up using. We tried a bunch of different pens and eventually ended up on G2 for reliability and "rollability,&quo
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by aarondf 5y ago
In Texas, the county puts a value on your house that then determines how much you pay in taxes. Usually they just kinda eyeball it. The homeowner is allowed to protest and say "hey that's super wrong, I protest!" It's a
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by aarondf 5y ago
Haha exactly right! I came across this WBW article when I was building these guys and thought wait... Am I building Turry?

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