jsomers

16 ms·

121.
by jsomers 16y ago
I do have a local instance of etherpad but the friction to get it running seems to be just enough to prevent me from firing it up. So mostly I use either textmate or something called writeroom. I like using textmate with markdown because yo
122.
by jsomers 16y ago
Good catch. What mostly happened was that an old prof of mine, upon reading a draft, pointed me to a much better source than the ones I was using. So I ditched that material (and those citations) and just used the Rainey article, the one fo
123.
by jsomers 16y ago
That's a hell of an idea. One thing it took me a long time to learn was that being good at math is mostly about working really hard. It's hard to know that, because until you're a graduate student the only messy incomplete work you ever see
124.
The Simple Software That Could--But Probably Won't--Change the Face of Writing(theatlantic.com)
226 points by jsomers 16y ago|69 comments
125.
by jsomers 16y ago
I'm curious: how do you know how long it takes writers of successful blog posts on HN to write those posts? Your number feels right—I've written a number of "successful" HN posts myself, and they've all taken about 6-10 hours to write—but
126.
by jsomers 16y ago
Exactly. I like what the mathematician Paul Halmos had to say on the same subject: Archimedes taught us that a small quantity added to itself often enough becomes a large quantity (or, in proverbial terms, every little bit helps). When it
127.
The Hofstadterian mood, or, how creativity works(jsomers.net)
3 points by jsomers 16y ago|0 comments
128.
Social Annealing(jsomers.net)
3 points by jsomers 16y ago|0 comments
129.
Generating Thoughts, or, the Feynman Family Phrase(jsomers.net)
32 points by jsomers 16y ago|7 comments
130.
by jsomers 16y ago
I'm skeptical that one can tell which novels were plotted out beforehand just by sensing how neatly they're integrated. Isn't it possible (indeed likely) that someone who wrote in a piecemeal jumpy fashion also pays careful attention to con
131.
by jsomers 16y ago
Nicely put. I often consider this problem when I think counterfactually: "What would have happened if I missed the train? Where would I be right now if I hadn't lost my pencil two days ago?" I have an instinct to just dismiss this kind of m
132.
by jsomers 16y ago
That's not an accurate summary, or at least it's not complete. I took the author's main points to be that (a) 37Signals's offerings are viewed by customers as investment opportunities instead of as consumable goods, and that (b) people are
133.
Exploring the complexity of driving directions using the Google Maps API(jsomers.net)
1 points by jsomers 16y ago|0 comments
134.
Beware short forms: the dangers of a low word count(jsomers.net)
1 points by jsomers 16y ago|0 comments
135.
The trouble with "The Big Bang Theory"(jsomers.net)
2 points by jsomers 16y ago|0 comments
136.
The "1,000 Most Important Words" (or more modestly, just a very good word list)(jsomers.net)
6 points by jsomers 16y ago|1 comments
137.
Boston-area hackers looking for work?
5 points by jsomers 16y ago|1 comments
138.
by jsomers 16y ago
Hofstadter wrote about this in a column for Scientific American. The article appears in his collection, "Metamagical Themas," and Google Books has most of it here: http://books.google.com/books?id=o8jzWF7rD6oC&dq=metamag... .
139.
by jsomers 16y ago
See also http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/children/ and a wonderful book by Gareth Matthews, "Dialogues with Children."
140.
Bibliography from Godel, Escher, Bach, annotated by Douglas Hofstadter(jsomers.net)
5 points by jsomers 17y ago|3 comments
141.
by jsomers 17y ago
I don't know why, but I always seem to count backward from 2000, so that I end up thinking of 1996 as being roughly four years ago. Gets me every time.
142.
by jsomers 17y ago
Why not the front log? Site looks great, by the way. One thing I'll say is that I ran into the same reel after just two clicks -- this should be pretty easy to avoid, either by shuffling an array of reels (rather than pulling one out at ra
143.
A Stochastic Model for Picking Winners in the NCAA Tournament(rwwb.wordpress.com)
16 points by jsomers 17y ago|8 comments
144.
by jsomers 17y ago
I wonder how much the ability to persevere in the face of difficulty is affected by a person's genes? Exactly. The authors of that famous paper, "The Role of Deliberate Practice in the Acquisition of Expert Performance," said something al
145.
“It turns out”(jsomers.net)
257 points by jsomers 17y ago|63 comments
146.
by jsomers 17y ago
I built this game using the data made freely available by j-archive.com (a wonderful site). It's "multiplayer"---so you'll get the most fun out of it if you've got some chums around. But there is also a single-player "study mode" at /blast.
147.
Ask HN: Try my Jeopardy game(jimbojeopardy.com)
3 points by jsomers 17y ago|1 comments
148.
by jsomers 17y ago
Odds are good that the paper that actually proves P != P (a) will be written in TeX, (b) will not include references to introductory algorithms textbooks, Wikipedia pages, and lecture slides, (c) will not conclude by saying "There is no r
149.
by jsomers 17y ago
I liked this, from the video: > "Think about the time that you're living in, right, like Don Knuth, who's considered the father of computer science, is still alive and he's in this department . It's sort of like you're geometers and
150.
by jsomers 17y ago
Looks like this thing is having trouble handling the load. It's running off a 256MB slice at slicehost, and odds are good that I configured it poorly (though I just followed the steps in their articles). Thoughts?

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