One of my websites was featured in brutalistwebsites.com Quite a big surprise since I'm a self taught designer. What I've learnt is to avoid the hype and trust your gut. Don't go with the flow, the 99%, you'll get nowhere. The content of that website is something very meta and I'm writing it since 2006. I thought only robots will read it. This makes me think secondary values are more important than the day job you do…
Ask HN: What was your greatest accomplishment in 2016?
271–280 of 317 posts
Re: Ask HN: What was your greatest accomplishment in 2016?
#272I wrote this answer to a similar question a few months ago: "I'm not dead" probably ranks highly. I am sometimes cast into a tournament against a patient, relentless salesman for death. The problem is, he knows everything about me. Everything. Every thought, every recollection, every secret shame, every regret. Everyone I've ever hurt, how I hurt them, how I let them down, how I failed them. And he can, in a moment o…
Re: Ask HN: What was your greatest accomplishment in 2016?
#273Created a beer bread recipe blog in the hopes that I get big enough that breweries will send me beer. Last month, a brewery decided to send me beers to "play around with". Mission accomplished.
That is what I call motivation!
Re: Ask HN: What was your greatest accomplishment in 2016?
#274I bit the bullet and released Gorgonia ( https://github.com/chewxy/gorgonia ) to the wild. I braced for harsh critiques but it turns out releasing open source software is like running a startup: 90% of the time, nobody cares. Nobody uses it.
Sounds so sad! Dont worry it takes time. You hit a break and you will have more users than you will be able to manage.
Re: Ask HN: What was your greatest accomplishment in 2016?
#275I bit the bullet and released Gorgonia ( https://github.com/chewxy/gorgonia ) to the wild. I braced for harsh critiques but it turns out releasing open source software is like running a startup: 90% of the time, nobody cares. Nobody uses it.
Sounds so sad! Dont worry it takes time. You hit a break and you will have more users than you will be able to manage.
Re: Ask HN: What was your greatest accomplishment in 2016?
#276I licenced software I made to my current employer and turned that into a mini-SaaS business.
I negotiated my own job role in a specialised area but turned it down in favour of moving countries with my girlfriend.
I gave a TEDx talk on legal technology.
2016 has been a rough year globally but a pretty good one personally. Whilst it has had its challenges, overall I've learned to take more risks and to say no to more people.
Next year, I want to create more SaaS businesses - though right now I've got a bit of creative block around it.
Re: Ask HN: What was your greatest accomplishment in 2016?
#277I started selling online, total sales so far over $300k. Multiple sources, some retail, some wholesale. What I've learned: 1. Not all rules matter. A large part of my business is stretching certain rules, either from the marketplace, or from the source (e.g. a store that doesn't allow resale). That said, you can't get away with breaking rules unless you have a very good understanding of why the rule exists, who's mot…
Can you disclose profit?
Re: Ask HN: What was your greatest accomplishment in 2016?
#278Re: Ask HN: What was your greatest accomplishment in 2016?
#279I always loved learning and teaching, and a side effect of this is that now I've regained the curiosity I always had about the fundamentals of our industry (I've a CS PhD). So now I'm back reading about the fundamentals of electricity and building 8-bit digital adders with basic AND/OR/XOR logic gates [0].
There's still lots of fundamental things that I want to re-learn, and for 2017 I'm thinking on writing a book about learning programming from exercises (with just enough theoretical concepts) starting from flow-charts and pseudocode, up-to some basic algorithms / abstract data structures/types (probably using Python). My idea is that there are lots of students out there that could benefit of learning how to program by solving focused exercises and learn enough about algorithms and structures to feel capable of doing more complex things (i.e, not feel the "impostor" syndrome).
[0] - https://www.amazon.com/Code-Language-Computer-Hardware-Softw...
Re: Ask HN: What was your greatest accomplishment in 2016?
#280Earlier quoted context omitted.
Can you disclose profit?
I don't track it directly, but margins are on average 20% or so. I have items anywhere from 5% to 50% margin.