A rice cooker

Matt,

Thanks for sharing. I did the same for several months, I would call each session a mini iteration. And I kept a kanban board on my moleskine...which is imperative. I had times where other things would take precedence and I would stay away from my project for several days but due to my physical kanban I could easily pick up where i left off.

What I did different is this: at each iteration i would set a goal that I new I could accomplish within the mini-iteration (1-2 hours, sometimes a little more). Then at the end I would check off my accomplishments and would quickly "trim my backlog" and create a list of "NEXT:" for the next time. Then the next time I sat down I would review this list and adjust it as necessary and begin.

I found that have a physical notebook was beneficial because at the first sign of discouragement I could easily look back and see where I was just a few weeks ago or a few months ago. And nothing feels better than marking something complete. My lists are segmented by each iteration by day and have three categories: DONE, TODO, NEXT. it worked great for me.

Though I never delivered my product it was a great talking tool at an interview that led me to a job with a 30% pay increase. And I'm ok with this.

Good article Kar, I agree that the talent pool is drying up and I'm not sure what reasons are behind it. I wish more company's would adopt a work from home mentality as it also creates a competitive advantage to attract some of the brightest.

agreed. but you also need to be the change you want to see in the world. in a hiring role? ensure you allow remote/home-based team members. evaluating working for someone else? filter for that and demand it, else seek elsewhere. it's what I do (well, trying to do. mostly succesful so far.)

I've seen this happen time and time again. And working with their security department is difficult. They need a strong competitor.

the mysql is crashing under the strain placed on the site. Time to take it a few notches up in technology used, no? (nosql, etc.)

Interesting site btw, good work.

I have to say that this post hits the mark. My older mac that received the lion upgrade is now a piece of crap...i get the beach ball effect every few minutes.

Thanks for the Vista Moment Apple.

Yes the extra whitespace in gmail is good. Just read TuFte's book on ink-to-information ratio. Good stuff

This is a nice tutorial, thanks @arturadib. btw, backbone.js has an unofficial google group at: http://groups.google.com/group/backbonejs

I'm not sure how it is for other engineering professions, but for software engineers we have a similar competition but instead of people willing to work for free it's people willing to work for peanuts out of India.

But what is peanuts to you is not peanuts to them. A different thing altogether from the point of this thread.

A better comparison for software engineers would be with interns working for free just to gain experience, freeware or FOSS.

I'm shocked that this hasn't happened yet. Good job, looks great.

I commented above, but the concept definitely has been attempted before, it just hasn't become mainstream.

The real question is why, how could this site execute differently?