kalid

51 ms·

1. 601.▲
   by kalid 19y ago

   Glad you like the site :)
2. 602.▲
   by kalid 19y ago

   If you want to minify your javascript, use Rhino to pack your files. But GZIP compression will give you most of the speedup. Shameless plug, but people have found these articles useful: Speed up your javascript: http://betterexplained.com/
3. 603.▲
   by kalid 19y ago

   Bury it in a hole in the ground... heck, you could even dump it back in the same water source it came from and filter it again :)
4. 604.▲
   by kalid 19y ago

   I couldn't agree more. People forget that the calculus of Newton and Leibniz was based on infinitesimals, not the "rigorous" epsilon-delta proofs and the concept of a limit. Calculus was found by intuition and experimentation (Archimedes' m
5. 605.▲
   by kalid 19y ago

   I highly recommend Zinsser's "On Writing Well" ( http://www.amazon.com/Writing-Well-25th-Anniversary-Nonficti... ). It has excellent advice & real examples of rough drafts.
6. 606.▲
   by kalid 19y ago

   Shameless plug, but if you consider log(x) as "time needed to grow by x" it's very clear why log(a) + log(b) = log(ab) http://betterexplained.com/articles/demystifying-the-natural...
7. 607.▲
   by kalid 19y ago

   Thanks, glad you like the site. I completely agree -- many ideas can be boiled down to a few key concepts, yet most of the time we're taught to plug and chug (and inevitably forget). It surprsies me how often "cram and forget" is the operat
8. 608.▲
   by kalid 19y ago

   Yeah, there's lots of different interpretations for the average. The predictive one works well (expected value), another one is where the "balancing point" would be if you had physical weights at those coordinates. If you had 1kg weights a
9. 609.▲
   by kalid 19y ago

   Cool, glad you liked the article. Yeah, I'm still working on the zen of making catchy "click me now!" titles :).
10. 610.▲
    by kalid 19y ago

    Love Zeno's paradoxes. And apparently they aren't fully resolved today -- is the universe quantized? Is spacetime really continuous, or is that an unrealistic mathematical abstraction?
11. 611.▲
    by kalid 19y ago

    Yes, very much agree. I used to work at MS and one problem is that many employees (even devs) have no experience with the other people's dogfood, ie. Linux/UNIX. Because of this, you'd have situations where people would want to write C to m
12. 612.▲
    by kalid 19y ago

    Great article! I've always thought that having math education focusing on formulas is having poetry and literature focus on grammar and spelling -- the painting and music analogies are dead-on. But that's exactly what happens: Formulas and
13. 613.▲
    by kalid 19y ago

    Self-hosted: Wordpress on a Rimuhosting VPS that runs betterexplained.com (blog) and instacalc.com (fun little app). If you're new it may take longer to figure out, but it's a learning experience: basic sysadmin skills are very useful, and
14. 614.▲
    by kalid 19y ago

    Shameless plug, but I enjoy writing natural, intuitive explanations of math & programming topics. Try this intuitive guide to e if the true meaning of that constant has eluded you: http://betterexplained.com/articles/an-intuitive-guide
15. 615.▲
    by kalid 19y ago

    Yeah, I threw that note in just because that type of comment is fairly popular. But the time depends on whether he's sitting, standing, how far away the bill is, impact of context switch, etc. And yep, it's not like he can't pick up money a
16. 616.▲
    by kalid 19y ago

    Two main points, mostly to look at this old theorem in new ways. 1) The sides of a triangle (3-4-5) can represent portions of any shape. For example, circle area (radius 3) + circle area (radius 4) = circle area (radius 5). Instead of rad
17. 617.▲
    by kalid 19y ago

    Hi, you don't have to split a triangle into integers. For example, you could have 50^2 = 25^2 + 43.3^2 Strictly speaking, if you have a circle of radius 50, you can take the sine and cosine of any angle and get a possible way to split the l
18. 618.▲
    by kalid 19y ago

    Yeah, I'm not a big fan of the 1 minute * 300 million argument because we fritter enough time away already (TV, internet, waiting in line, chewing too slowly, hitting snooze, etc.). A minute here or there will invariably be sucked up somewh
19. 619.▲
    by kalid 19y ago

    Yes, Digg uses MySQL and other optimizations. http://www.computerworld.com/action/article.do?command=viewA...
20. 620.▲
    by kalid 19y ago

    Thanks for the feedback, I'll consider adding them in. Ideally I'd like to make a plugin system where people can enter and share their crazy formulae & constants.
21. 621.▲
    by kalid 19y ago

    Awesome, thanks for the feedback :)
22. 622.▲
    by kalid 19y ago

    Yeah, I decided to make it case insensitive to avoid confusion. It seems most non-techies aren't aware of the GB vs gb distinction (and not to mention the uber-geeks who insist on gibi and kibi and all that :) ) If you want gigabits, you ca
23. 623.▲
    by kalid 19y ago

    Ah, c'mon, it provides some value right? What did you do when you saw this? http://milliondollarhomepage.com/ =)
24. 624.▲
    by kalid 19y ago

    http://instacalc.com/?d=&c=MSBwaW50IGluIGN1YmljIGNtfDEgc... 1 pint in cubic cm, sure. Cubic meters, no problem. Cubic knots, even cubic rods, anything you want. But cubic acres? Now that's just getting crazy. Acres measure area, so no
25. 625.▲
    by kalid 19y ago

    Thanks for the feedback. Yeah, right now I'm not tracking the type of each result, just the final result. This is a planned feature.
26. 626.▲
    by kalid 19y ago

    Wow, I hope it will be useful for you! Let me know (kalid@instacalc.com) if there's any features you need.
27. 627.▲
    by kalid 19y ago

    Um, it's a "feature" :) I purposefully disabled charts on the embedded versions to save bandwidth (about 100kb of javascript), but I plan to add it in.
28. 628.▲
    by kalid 19y ago

    Thanks for the info. Yeah, I was surprised how quickly the spammers found my little old site. Nofollow is a great suggestion. I may need to add captchas as well.
29. 629.▲
    by kalid 19y ago

    Thanks -- you can actually do the calculation above like this: http://instacalc.com/?d=&c=KDFUQi8xTUIpIHNlY29uZHMgaW4gZ... I'm not tracking the implicit unit conversion (1TB/ 100 Mbps)... yet :)
30. 630.▲
    by kalid 19y ago

    Hey guys, this is Kalid from instacalc. Thanks for the link -- please send any feedback/bug reports to kalid@instacalc.com and have fun playing around with it. I'm actually in YC this summer on another project with some friends, we'll let y