I'm in a similar position, but I find that the major factor that affects my procrastination is my emotional investment in the product I'm making. At work, I don't really care about the application I'm building - largely because the quality of the existing codebase makes me depressed. However, when I get home and work on my own side projects, I code like there's no tomorrow, and have no problem with focus. I haven't had the opportunity to test my theory yet, but I think one way of tackling procrastination is to make sure you're in a job that you really care about.
Also, and perhaps more importantly, make sure you have the opportunity to grow as a developer at whatever job you're in. If a job doesn't provide learning opportunities pretty regularly, I feel as if I'm wasting my time and don't care about the product, and as a result spend a lot more time on HN while I'm at work. I'm at work right now :P
Leaseweb isn't closed. They just had to store some servers. They could just turn them off, put them in storage, then sue law enforcement or the DOJ equivalent for the opportunity cost and storage costs. That's not an accurate analogy at all.
Yes, Henry Ford did it in the 1950's to recoup the losses after the Allies bombed his tank making factories in Nazi Germany and Axis controlled territory.
There are certain laws in place to keep people from willy-nilly suing the government, but there are situations where it is possible to sue them and sometimes even win. (not sure about this case in particular, anyone want to weigh in?)
Do you have any source for this trial? I can't seem to find any trace of it when googling. Also Henry Ford died in 1947 and had cerebral issues before that, so if the trial did happen in the 50s it was either brought by his successors or Ford Motor Company.
YES! This guy is an inspiration. As a musician I'm so happy that this is becoming a valid model of art distribution - rather than having to sign with a label and end up taking about 2% (ok, maybe it's not quite that bad) of sales.
Also, point 3. It's like WHAAAaAAAaAT?!
Moreover, the videos are extraordinary. Robots? Light shows? YESSSS! :D
Sorry, false alarm. It seems to have been caused by a possibly corrupt Baskerville font on my computer, which caused certain character combinations like "er", "te", and "is" to have ridiculously wide spaces in between. Still, I have no idea why only Firefox was affected and not Chrome and IE.
Suggestion: Use web fonts. "Baskerville, Times New Roman, Times, serif" ain't a web-safe combination.
I think he means there are different aspects to web design. You mention in your post that when you tried to design a site well you "ended up with a totally hideous website, using jarring colors, and too many fonts, with really thick borders and dense type." That's not all there is to design.
For example I find I'm not very good at designing something that looks nice but I can design a site/app to work well for the user. The UX is good. Steve Jobs famously said "Design is not just what it looks like and feels like. Design is how it works." You and I may not be good at the aesthetic part of software design but that doesn't mean we should dismiss it all together. Software developers can still be good at 'how it works' and it's possible they might be better positioned than a UI designer to do this.
