jacobroufa

Joined 18 years ago

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Member since

Jun 20

JavaScript junkie. Always seeking new experiences on the web.

[ my public key: https://keybase.io/jroufa; my proof: https://keybase.io/jroufa/sigs/3oEp9BADzF1N3AHZzRC5rNbYzawknpg5Q1x3dB2T1qA ]

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Recent submissions

Comment · 11 years ago

tig

Comment · 11 years ago

I'd have to recommend the Manifold trilogy by Stephen Baxter. I know it's not a book, but as a whole entity, it deserves to be looked at.

Comment · 11 years ago

I just finished the Manifold series by Stephen Baxter. The series is a look at the (solution to, reason for, questions surrounding the) Fermi Paradox through three potential lenses. Best and most raw sci-fi I've ever read. The books left me hopeful, suspended, disgusted and in awe of the depth of this man's observation of humanity.

If you're looking for something lighter, perhaps check out Time Ships by the same author. This was the only authorized sequel to the legendary classic The Time Machine by H.G. Wells.

Comment · 11 years ago

This.

Comment · 11 years ago

I'm currently working my way through Stephen Baxter's Manifold trilogy. His writing is incredibly insightful and psychedelic. I'd also suggest the Time Ships (only authorized Time Machine sequel) and anything from the Xeelee universe. Maybe start with Vacuum Diagrams?

David Brin's Uplift series is brilliantly written, and personifies non-human characters wonderfully.

Heinlein has been a favorite of mine since I was a kid, and his writing always makes me giddy.

Comment · 12 years ago

The Time Ships, by Stephen Baxter

The depth of his exploration of the human condition through the continuation of H.G. Wells' classic just floored me. My jaw was dropped practically from page one.

Comment · 12 years ago

Have you tried Droid Sans Mono Slashed? I find that the slashed 0 helps readability quite a bit.

Comment · 12 years ago

If you know any journalists, I'm sure they'll have ideas -- They are (in my limited experience) intelligent and incredibly busy people, leaving them with little time to really dive in to every topic they see that interests them. Also, news organizations have been slow to catch up to the internet age. At least in the US, there are only a handful of papers REALLY diving into the app side of things. Thankfully that number is growing.

I'd love to see what you and your friends are doing with open data. I'm finding it difficult to stay motivated in my own area, with few developers and little free time.

Glad to see that people world over are investing time in open data. :)

Comment · 12 years ago

Is there an equivalent program in Denmark or elsewhere in Europe?

Comment · 12 years ago

Look for information you would want to see in your available media -- find a dataset and build it into a useful app to be filtered and queried in different ways. Map data points to physical locations. Correlate those things. At some point it all starts to look like a population density heat map, but sometimes you find good stuff in there. And people want to see it. They need more tangible access to all the real world data we have been collecting. Otherwise, what's the point?

I worked for a year at a newspaper and built apps and stuff like that -- it was the most fulfilling work I've ever done and I wish the situation had been able to work out. If I ever get a chance to do real news apps again, I would jump on it. Enjoy your opportunity, Anders, and be prepared to show your work.

Sometimes, the phrase "if you build it, they will come" is applicable. If you build something that shows you CAN build something, show it to the right people and you will attract attention.

Some inspiration: http://blog.apps.chicagotribune.com/ http://blog.apps.npr.org/ https://source.opennews.org/en-US/ http://flowingdata.com/

Comment · 13 years ago

If the technology were there to have a workable version of Glass as a contact lens, I'd wear it all day every day. Augmentation of the senses is the next logical step, right?

Comment · 14 years ago

I've been finding that just simply mocking up the sites/apps I'm building or even just pieces of their functionality has helped me refine what I feel is implementation of good user experience. The marker comes down to "Would I use that?", and more often than not, as fast as I can get a page up it's no match for a mockup that comes to fruition even quicker. Check out Balsamiq (http://www.balsamiq.com/) for the app that I choose to use. I also lurk ux.stackexchange.com, as mtrn suggested it's a great resource.

Comment · 14 years ago

I'm very excited to try Angular. Your tutorial, however, is not compatible with the suggested server experience where Apache is not installed, as Node has updated to v0.8 and not only deprecated but removed the "sys" module in favor of the "util" module. Update your repos please? https://github.com/angular/angular-phonecat/pull/18 https://github.com/angular/angular-seed/pull/22

Not digging against you, but this might (though, imho it shouldn't) be a barrier to entry to newcomers. I've simply resigned myself to editing the one line it takes to complete the tutorial every step of the way... Though in retrospect I think I probably could have just forked it and updated that line myself for a permanent fix... :)

Comment · 14 years ago

I and a friend of mine launched http://www.brandonacademy.com

We'll be releasing frequent UX and content updates over the course of the next couple months as we develop new features and add more tutorials. Please feel free to make suggestions; all are welcome! :)