Disqus - Latest Comments for jbminn

Re: Convert Nordictrack revolutions to miles

jbminn — Tue, 08 Sep 2009 19:49:57 -0000

Hey Amber,

You're right - friction would play a role in a real bicycle situation (I think I mentioned this as slippage or friction originally), but I think since we're talking about theoretical travel of the wheel, we can ignore friction.

This isn't a perfect measurement, and you can see from all the comments that even the vendors disagree on how to measure their own machines.

Thanks!

Re: Face To Face Board Meetings

jbminn — Thu, 06 Aug 2009 09:29:24 -0000

Exactly.

Re: Face To Face Board Meetings

jbminn — Wed, 05 Aug 2009 09:51:35 -0000

I can't speak for anyone but myself, but if you look at the comments thread here, you'll see responses from guys at Foundry Group (Brad Feld) and Spark Capital (Bijan Sabet).

Brad is constantly traveling visiting portfolio companies; watching Bijan's tweet stream just briefly shows he does the same thing. Between these three VC firms (including Fred's Union Square), you have Boston, NYC and Boulder / Denver covered WRT local stuff. But these guys have investments in - and travel to - Seattle, LA, and points in between frequently.

There's no need to buy into the myth that one must relocate to San Francisco or the valley to attract VC. Make quality connections & your location - wherever it happens to be - will be significantly less important.

Re: Face To Face Board Meetings

jbminn — Wed, 05 Aug 2009 09:21:52 -0000

Totally agree, but with a twist.

In my experience, there's *no substitute* for the face-to-face time spent developing trust with the team. In my case, I'm referring to my customers.

Sometimes that takes as little as a couple weeks, other times four or six... but once it is there, so much more work can be done without hopping on a plane. The relationships that are established on the ground can then be used to leverage the efficiencies of the network (the actual computing network), allowing me to do what I do (enterprise build systems & source control stuff).

I get to participate with & influence these great companies - firms that wouldn't otherwise trust their source code & internal systems to some guy sitting at a desk in Denver.

Re: AJAX Logfile Tailer & Viewer

jbminn — Wed, 29 Jul 2009 11:40:19 -0000

Hey all -

To everyone who has visited this page, checked the example and found that it didn't refresh as advertised, please accept my apologies.

I had made some server-side configuration changes to Apache that resulted in far-too-aggressive caching of page content. This had the affect of not refreshing the logtail <div> in the example.

There is (and was) nothing wrong with the script itself, so if you had downloaded it & attempted to use it on your own server, it would have worked for you.

Again, apologies to anyone that was blocked by this server-side configuration error on my part. I've restored the original config & the example now functions as it should.

Re: Comments - A Follow Up

jbminn — Tue, 28 Jul 2009 09:54:44 -0000

Hey Fred - do you have a pointer to where the new/upcoming Disqus moderation feature is described?

Re: Don’t install TortoiseSVN v 1.6.2?

jbminn — Sun, 12 Jul 2009 17:57:41 -0000

From a friend:

"As a follow-up, about a week ago, I upgraded to tortoise-svn 1.6.3, and all is well.
I don't know whether the problem was with 1.6.2, my download, or my installation. But in any case, 1.6.3 works well and looks stable."

Good to know.

Re: The Fine Line Between Informing and Spamming Your Followers

jbminn — Sat, 11 Jul 2009 10:57:06 -0000

There's value in that as a feature, I think.

For any third-party app that wishes to tweet my action (in their app) to my followers, the notification drops into a 'funnel'. At the top of the funnel is a simple 'This is what we're doing. Are you sure?' dialog, with the standard 'click OK' to continue. The next step actually generates the reply, setting it up for you to click 'Send' or 'Publish'.

I've seen some third-party apps that already use this approach - the funnel is entered in their app & when I choose to 'Tweet this to my friends', it simply opens a new window with the message formatted & ready to go - but I have to click 'Submit' before it leaves the funnel & enters my followers' streams.

Why not normalize this out to a consumable API call? That could conceivably allow me to tune the 'volume' of the notification (100% of followers, only followers I've ever DMed, etc.). That would respond to some of your concerns about how to broadcast / share these messages without being spammy.

Re: AJAX Logfile Tailer & Viewer

jbminn — Thu, 12 Mar 2009 10:10:42 -0000

Even though only a few have commented or asked questions here, it is obvious from the server logs that many, many people find this script every day. So, perhaps it is all over the Net already...

Re: AJAX Logfile Tailer & Viewer

jbminn — Thu, 12 Mar 2009 09:41:36 -0000

Excellent.

Re: AJAX Logfile Tailer & Viewer

jbminn — Thu, 12 Mar 2009 09:20:18 -0000

I can only offer educated guesses, then.

If the contents of the php script are displayed (anywhere) rather than executed, it would seem that your web server isn't properly recognizing the PHP as an executable script.

Can you hit htttp:/your.internal.server/ajax-logtail.php & get it to execute? If it only displays the contents, then you know your server doesn't have PHP capabilities. Solve that first & then the script should work in the context of the ajax logfile viewer.

Re: AJAX Logfile Tailer & Viewer

jbminn — Wed, 11 Mar 2009 11:31:42 -0000

If you have a link, I'll take a brief look.

Re: Tech Tip: Publishing iCal Calendar in Multiple Places

jbminn — Wed, 18 Feb 2009 13:30:57 -0000

When I solve a particularly difficult (or just interesting) problem, I like to post my approach.

Glad to hear this may help you, Guy.

Re: Convert Nordictrack revolutions to miles

jbminn — Thu, 12 Feb 2009 14:11:17 -0000

Thanks for the recent comments everyone.

It would be great if manufacturers took this as cue to improve the information that they make available on their websites - clearly many people have this question. Even those folks that are generous enough to comment here don't completely agree on exactly how or what to measure to derive this piece of data.

Hey NordicTrack - are you listening? We'd love to hear directly from you.

Re: AJAX Logfile Tailer & Viewer

jbminn — Thu, 29 Jan 2009 15:41:17 -0000

Got it. Thanks for the update.

Re: AJAX Logfile Tailer & Viewer

jbminn — Thu, 29 Jan 2009 12:13:34 -0000

Thanks!

Re: Convert Nordictrack revolutions to miles

jbminn — Mon, 05 Jan 2009 14:49:52 -0000

"...make it whatever you want as long as it motivates you right?

Absolutely.

Re: Rethinking authentication (Scripting News)

jbminn — Mon, 05 Jan 2009 13:04:53 -0000

Sys admins, me included, have been using this exact technique to black-list port-scanners for years.

Re: Convert Nordictrack revolutions to miles

jbminn — Mon, 05 Jan 2009 10:36:06 -0000

I'm amused that this post has generated so much interest over the past year...

You've certainly put a lot of thought into this, and I am intrigued by the notion of elliptical circumference. This doesn't change (for me) the fact that the only "thing" rotating is the rear wheel to which the pedal mechanism is attached. As stated above, that's one of my basic assumptions.

It would very interesting to study a video of someone using an elliptical trainer, and markup the frames of video to prove/disprove that the ellipse maintains the same size throughout a workout, without regard to adjusting the pedal mechanism.

Re: Convert Nordictrack revolutions to miles

jbminn — Sat, 03 Jan 2009 12:30:27 -0000

This is a confusing topic because each machine is different and I've made the assumption here that "revolution" refers to the rotation of the wheel, while the manufacturers seem interested in measuring the stride of the pedals.

Don't forget that the lateral stride increases or decreases when you adjust the pitch of your sliding pedals (which aren't really pedals at all) if yours are adjustable; mine are. So any calculations involving stride become immediately suspect. That's another reason why I choose to use the wheel as the authoritative element of measurement.

Since the wheel is round (a perfect circle) & the pedals are delivering work in the form of rotation of that wheel (a traversal of the circumference of the circle), it makes sense to me to use the calculation I describe in the post.

In my mind, since the miles travelled by the trainer are theoretical only, it is perfectly reasonable to use the measurement that makes the most sense to you & best meets your exercise goals.

Re: Thinking about comments

jbminn — Thu, 01 Jan 2009 16:40:27 -0000

Funny thing about 'narrow' topics: my most commented post ever was about how to calculate mileage on an elliptical trainer. I wrote it almost a year ago, and still get comments on it.

Re: Thinking about comments

jbminn — Thu, 01 Jan 2009 16:36:07 -0000

I know that - I met Daniel Ha over dinner w/ Howard Lindzon in San Francisco. I tried Intense Debate at Brad's suggestion, but found that it just wasn't right for me.

Re: Thinking about comments

jbminn — Thu, 01 Jan 2009 16:31:07 -0000

Comments are thematic this morning, Bijan.

I've just updated & reactivated Disqus over at commavee.com again. (nice updates to the service, btw). I wanna do a better job of managing & growing comments this year, as I expect to post more frequently.

Re: Twitter’s impact on my 2008

jbminn — Thu, 01 Jan 2009 14:41:59 -0000

Count on it... can't wait.

Re: Convert Nordictrack revolutions to miles

jbminn — Tue, 30 Dec 2008 16:53:04 -0000

This topic is getting a lot of mileage... now see, that's funny.

I advocate using whatever technique or values work for you. My technique & equation are based upon the wholly circular wheel that rotates when you pedal. In classic mileage calculations on a free-wheeling bicycle, that's what is measured.

So - pedal on!