Designing a Business Card in LaTeX

Part II

My software now is 100,000 lines of typing with about 25,000 programming language statements and the rest voluminous comments. About 80,000 of the 100,000 are for on-line, and the rest are for off-line, occasional batch runs for some of the data manipulations. There is some light usage of SQL Server.

I am basing on Windows and the .NET Framework. For the Web site, that is Microsoft's IIS (Internet Information Server -- handles the TCP/IP Web site communications and much more leaving a nice environment for my code for the actual Web pages) and ASP.NET for the Web page controls (single line text boxes, links, check boxes, radio buttons, etc.).

My Web pages and my code for the pages is just dirt simple -- Microsoft writes a little JavaScript for me, and I have yet to write a single line of it. There's no use of Ajax, no pull downs, pop ups, roll overs, overlays, icons, etc. The Web site is also dirt simple, a seven year old who knows no English and has only a cheap smart phone dirt simple.

I wrote a little C code; am using some open source C code, and otherwise wrote all the code in Visual Basic .NET -- seems fine to me. The important stuff is the math I derived; given the math, the code is routine, and Visual Basic .NET is well up to the work. Since I don't like C syntax, I don't like the syntax of C#. Maybe someday I will convert to C#, but in an important sense Visual Basic .NET to C# is just converting to a different flavor of syntactic sugar -- indeed, IIRC there is a translator.

So, I'm an entrepreneur working to sell the results of some math I derived.

So, to do such a thing, think of a problem and a solution, write the code, sell the results. Of course, problem selection is a biggie. And want a problem that can solve and with own applied math with a better solution than available otherwise; want the software not too much to write; want the computing resources within what is reasonable now or soon (possibly considering the cloud); want the results to be a must have instead of just a nice to have for enough users/customers times money per each to make some big bucks.

If you are a solo founder, then you get to avoid a common cause of failure -- founder disputes. As a founder, you SHOULD understand all the work, so if you are a solo founder you will!

Don't expect any equity funders to write you a check until you have revenue significant and growing rapidly. Thus, as a solo founder with revenue significant and growing rapidly you won't accept their check. No one in equity funding has yet seen even 10 cents from applied math research; you won't get back even laughs. Ph.D. academics is really good at work that is "new, correct, and significant". Business just HATES anything really new or significant and has no idea how to check "correct". E.g., the information technology VCs keep looking for simplistic, empirical patterns and have no idea how to evaluate anything new. Really, their looking for such patterns is likely also just a publicity scam; instead, they want to invest money in a business where accountants working for their limited partners, who, if that is possible, know even less about math, can say that they made a good investment. In an analogy, they want to buy a ticket on a plane that has already reached nice altitude and is climbing quickly. Maybe the startup will take their money if there are five founders, all exhausted, all with all credit cards maxed out, and each with a pregnant wife.

For a good applied mathematician -- with some original, powerful, valuable work, good at software, with a business with significant revenue growing rapidly -- to report to a BoD of business people, essentially anyone else in business, is a bummer. E.g., at an early BoD meeting you will outline an applied math project for some nice progress in the business, and about the time you get to sufficient statistics, an ergodic assumption, completeness of Hilbert space, the polar decomposition, something in NP-complete, or a martingale, the board members will soil their clothes, leave a smelly trail to the rest room, and then run screaming from the building. They will meet off-site, fire you, put the business up for sale for the cash in the bank, and be glad you are gone. Bummer.

So, go into business for yourself. Or, don't expect anyone in business, who no doubt knows next to nothing about math, doesn't even remember sin' = cos, to create a job suitable for your talents, training, and business value in applied math.

Heck, at one time in business, I saved a major company just by formulating and solving

y'(t) = k y(t) (b - y(t))

The BoD was thrilled, but I scared the socks off the C-suite.

That was the third time. The first time I wrote some software that pleased the BoD and saved the company. The second time I beat everyone in the C-suite at Nim -- I'd read the algorithm in Courant and Robbins.

Scared the socks off the C-suite.

Applied math in business is a wide open field -- nearly no one there now. So, you will be alone. You can trust the solid math you know, the solid, new proofs you write, and a lot in software, but no one will do anything but laugh until you have the big bucks in the bank; then, since you did something valuable they don't understand and know they could not have done, they will fear you and hate you; they will all agree and may gang up on you; they may attack you. The laughing is not nearly new: Just read the Mother Goose "The Little Red Hen"; that's still the case.

There's a lot of good, foundational applied math code out there for optimization, statistics, etc. you might be able to exploit. In computing, operating systems, .NET etc., SQL etc. are astounding and from free to usually quite cheap.

Nearly no one in business can identify, formulate, and solve even a problem that is basically just linear programming -- the competence in applied math in US business is, well, they forgot plane geometry. To expect them to derive some simple Lagrangian relaxation is asking for hen's teeth.

As an applied mathematician in business, you will be essentially alone out there, in the nearly empty intersection of math and business. If you are successful, then you will necessarily also be exceptional, and necessarily nearly everyone who is exceptional is alone.

My first server is an AMD FX-8350, 64 bit addressing, 8 cores, 4.0 GHz processor clock, 32 GB ECC main memory, etc. That's a lot of computing power for the money. Fill that up doing something valuable, buy 20 more, fill those up, and sell out for $1 billion or so. It's a heck of an opportunity.

I typeset my resume in LaTeX, but I ended up formatting it so it looked almost exactly like it did in Word. I should probably update that at some point.

But I did throw a \LaTeX macro in the skills section, so anyone familiar LaTeX should notice.

I ditched GA after I tried Authy. Built-in QR scanner, plus syncing with non-mobile devices.

I suspect his problem is more with Windows and its brain-dead font rendering. Vertical strokes are the ideal case for subpixel anti-aliasing on a typical LCD: you get 3x the horizontal resolution. On a typical 100dpi screen this gives you 300dpi horizontal resolution, which is around the low-end for print quality. On modern 200dpi "retina" displays, you get 600dpi horizontal resolution which is more than enough to make Computer Modern look good. But ClearType has a strong preference for aligning positions and sizes to whole pixels, giving you horrendous kerning and sudden large jumps in font size and apparent weight as you increase the requested font size.

I'm using a Retina MacBook. The readability problem with Computer Modern is intrinsic to its design, and even a 200 dpi screen just isn't enough to make it look good (IMHO). But it's definitely much worse still on Windows.

My question is: why use this particular 1980s font developed to showcase a dead-end stroke rendering technology, when there are much better alternatives around?