Great idea! Thank you for putting this together. I’ll have to dig deeper but the first two randomly selected companies had an announcement of their investment and not a formal investment memo that would be submitted to their IC. However it’s very interesting to understand the investors perspective at the time of their participation.
Thanks for sharing your insights! I’m curious to learn more about how you ranked the options (Dexadrine ~ Adderall) and how the later options does more harm to your body. Is there any links you can share on its details?
I've been using one for almost a year now. I was going to splurge on a fancy steelcase one but opted for a GeekDesk (~$1000). My setup includes 2x 27" monitors with an ErgoTron arm, two macbooks and a desktop stashed on the side.
I do a lot of Dev work as well as design. When I'm coding, standing isnt too much of an issue. Having the option of moving around helps me when I'm stuck debugging issues. When designing though, especially with a wacom tablet, I notice that I tend to slouch or lean too much on the desk, so I sit.
Having a motor makes it very convenient for lazy people like me, especially if it has presets. Setting up the height to make it ergonomically correct is key.
I have a friend that has a DIY setup who uses monitors which adds to the weight and makes adjusting the height on demand very inconvenient–leading to the fact that he doesnt use it to stand anymore. If you go the DIY route, make sure its setup correctly. I've seen some creative setups before including putting a height adjustable chair on their desk. I was too short for that to work for me.
In regards to long-term work, that all depends on you. Like most people on HN, my days run 8~12 hours too. When I first got my desk, I split my day up until I got used to it. One of the things that helped was the use of a GelPro mat (check the clearance section) which cushions your feet.
There are days I've stood all day and felt fine. When I'm sitting I tend to get myself into "Stuck to the chair" mode and even if all it takes is to stand up to walk around to get your blood flowing, I dont or I dont even realize I've been glued to the chair for hours on end.
I have a hard time getting my butt to bed and when I do, my brain is still running a hundred miles a minute. I've been experimenting and here's what works for me.
1. Turn off the TV.
2. Turn on some white noise, there are apps, mp3s, etc. Nature sounds work too.
3. Stretch. This doesnt have to be any hardcore yoga regimen. My back tends to be tense by the time I'm done working so its a good time to listen to your body and work on areas so your body is relaxed. Do this until you do feel relaxed. Sometimes its 10 minutes, other times its 30 minutes. Whichever way, it beats tossing and turning in bed for hours on end.
4. Follow up with a meditation session. Again, no need to follow any regimen here. Just sit, in the dark, collect your thoughts and at a certain point, your mind will be cleared. Its amazing what sitting in a dark, quiet environment for 5~10 minutes will do.
There are a ton of resources about relaxation techniques, find one that works for you. And if you dont want to worry about meditation styles, just sit in the dark and relax your mind or just let it wander. You'll want to learn about meditation as you get comfortable with it.
I know this may sound like some "hippie crap" to some but you'll see how important meditation is. Especially if you've been following HN for a while.
Whichever way, cut the caffeine intake, stop the late night tv sessions (I'm always guilty of this one), and relax.
Keep in mind that peter's article was from 2006. Drupal has continued to grow and it provides a lot of out of the box functionality. I think there are a lot of alternatives as Vuong has mentioned, including doing it yourself. But why not use out of the box functionality and install modules that the community has already contributed? There are ways to extend existing functionality as well.
It really depends on what you're trying to accomplish too. I've helped customize Drupal for a lot of applications, such as using it as a data aggregation server thats paired with a mobile app, video broadcast platform and yes even a groupon-esque site as well.
If you dont mind sharing what you're trying to build, I think there are a lot of people here who can chime in on your architecture/approach.
Theres a ton of random things to do out here. It depends on what you like but heres a few ideas:
If you're a foodie, check out off the grid SF (http://offthegridsf.com/calendar). Its a gathering of food trucks which is pretty fun to do. They'll be around fort mason that Friday.
I think the Union Street Fair is that weekend too.
Other Touristy Things:
- Go to the Golden Gate park, you can check out The Academy of Science and/or The Exploratorium
- Rent a bike and cross the golden gate bridge or take the Ferry over to Alcatraz (from pier 41).
- Go shopping at Downtown, Haight, Metreon(?) etc
- Theres always some good music stuff going on too. Just pick up a free copy of the Guardian or any of the other weeklies.
I just recently shopped for a good chair as well. I've used Aeron chairs before and they're great but I really didn't like the mesh feeling.
After digging around, I have decided to go with the Steelcase Leap.
http://www.steelcase.com/en/products/category/seating/task/l...
I liked this because it is just as configurable as the Aeron (I'm short so these things matter a lot). I liked the fact that i can choose the fabric so it matches my home office. They have a ton of color swatches and fabric types. They have a 10 yr warranty and has good customer service so far. Its all personal preference, but make sure it fits your body. For example, can you clear at least 3 fingers between the edge of the seat and behind your knees. When I sat down on this chair, i just knew this one would be good for me.
It all depends on what you're building but Drupal is an awesome CMS framework that you can extend and mold it into whatever you need. We run a small consulting shop and we leverage Drupal for a lot of our projects. From internationalized corp sites, ecommerce sites (we have a groupon-esqu clone), web apps, and even just as a back-end data store that our mobile apps interface to.
Unless you're trying to really do something super high performance, or have a real good reason why it absolutely needs to be in rails, as we always hear with startup advice, JFDI!
FYI, I know Drupal 7 was just released and its real pretty and shiny but make sure you look into all the compatible contributed modules. Many of them havent been ported over or fully tested for D7.
I'll have to try harder on meeting the early birds. The last few events where I arrived early, most people were hiding their faces behind their laptops, ipad, smartphone, etc.
I've been a smoker for 10+ years and quit cold turkey.
I actually tried chantix first and took it for a week and started getting depressed which lead to suicidal thoughts. I should have looked up the side effects first (duh! i know). Anyway after that crazy little mind f*, i just told myself that im going to quit cold turkey. Quitting cold turkey is rough, it sucks, its not easy but you gotta go through it. There are no shortcuts, no easy way out and no excuses. Just realize that once you truly commit, it gets easier as time passes. Its hard to believe that it gets easier when you're going through it but its true. For me (as well as other HNers), being stubborn I think was a key factor in getting over it.
Things that helped me cope:
- Drink juice, real 100% not from concentrate pineapple juice helped me "cleanse my palette".
- Stop over eating / eating greasy foods. It was a HUGE trigger for my smoking craving. Find your triggers and try to avoid them. One thing that really sucked was I had to stop attending my daily starbux sessions. Change is sometimes good. =)
- Be in the right mind set. It helps if there is someone to support you. There are support groups and sites out there. Let your pride/ego go and ask for help. At least you can be somewhat anonymous online.
- I hear running/ working out helps but I'm not much of a workout guy. Yoga and breathing exercises do help. Look up "breathing Yoga" to learn some techniques.
Again, there are a lot of resources out there to help. I hope that you got some good insight in this thread. Good luck!
I use dojo toolkit for our web app development. In the past, we've evaluated YUI and ext.js too. All are great frameworks but it all depends what you are doing and how comfortable you are working with js. If its simple widgety stuff, maybe even jquery would be sufficient?
Also take a look at cappuccino.org. They have an interesting approach in web app development.
Hi! I've been trying to get a forrst invite for a while. Please check us out jay at bitsprout dot net. www.bitsprout.net (new site design coming too) Thanks!
With Firefox you can undo closed tabs.
If you use xmarks, it saves your open tabs and will let you reopen these tabs on a different machine or browser that has xmarks installed.