Isn't that how del.icio.us started all this bookmarking in the first place?

I started the year happy in my opinion that "it's ok to be crap at your hobby if you find the process enjoyable". I made some really rubbish things and enjoyed the process.

Then I learned that I feel fine with being rubbish at metalwork, but that I actually want to get better at woodwork. Now I am enjoying the process of failing, learning and improving.

Many people have been running headless Chrome in AWS Lambda functions for a while now. Use cases include testing, screen scraping, screen capture.

I was employed once at an insurance brokerage that had to automate insurance quotes from carriers that did not provide any sort of API. So we used a type of page automation with a headless browser, and manually wrote the code to automate entering data into each textbox and clicking each button in sequence, adding wait times as needed for the next page to load.

Would recommend avoiding this at all costs.

The Spectrum (and ZX81) had a big effect on a whole generation of Brits. I know my folks could not have afforded a C64 or BBC Micro but they did manage fifty quid in Currys to start my lifetime of coding.

Likewise. At the time my folks could just about stretch to a ZX81 plus 16k RAM Pack[0], but not a wobble stopper[1] - so we fashioned one out of corrugated cardboard and gaffer tape. A few years later I scored an upgrade to the ZX Spectrum+ which was an absolute revelation - what with stuff like colour and sound.

I learnt BASIC through typing out listings from ZX Computing Monthly, Sinclair User, Your Sinclair, and others, borrowed from the local library. I forget the name of the magazines which had multi-platform listings, for the Electron and Vic-20 and MSX and others.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/RAM_pack [1] https://web.archive.org/web/20110614170203/http://www.sincus...

Since it was my first computer, and the reason I started programming, I dug out one of the old badges I earned by submitting POKEs to the magazine:

https://i.imgur.com/FT97X2H.jpg

Computer & Video Games (C&VG) and Your Computer used to have multi-platform listings, even including machines such as the Sharp MZ-80 series.

ZX Spectrum is my first machine. Always wondered how much it could do with such a small footprint.

It gave me so much appreciation for native CPU instructions and efficient use of hardware.

Including Portuguese and Spanish as well, it was the most relevant 8 bit computer in the Iberian Peninsula.

i was fortunate enough to have access to a bbc-micro (acorn) machine while growing up. and spent many a pleasant evenings programming 2d function plots, with zoom and scale, taylor series expansion of trigonometric functions, learning about matrix multiplication, solving small simultaneous equations using gauss-jordan...at some point in time i just stopped studying any ‘fundamental’ subject f.e physics/maths/chemistry much to the annoyance of my parents so much so that i was banned from using the machine. but guess what, i continued writing programs on notebooks by hand, and would run sims to trace their execution...to say that i was obsessed would be such an understatement. i think i was intoxicated on the whole thing... :)

ZX81 was my first machine. Got me hooked on coding at 11, and I'm still coding full time for a living 36 years later.

I learnt the most important aspects of programming on the ZX81 with nothing more than 1k RAM, a small B&W CRT TV and a tape recorder.

Just write. Stop procrastinating on HN, and type this:

    mkdir doc && $EDITOR doc/index.md

This doesn't seem to answer all the questions.

I like theoldreader.com. It's very similar to Google Reader and worth every cent of its annual fee for premium access ($25 IIRC).

Ah, the memories. Here are my first few:

Sinclair ZX81 with 16k RAM add-on

Rubber-key Sinclair ZX-Spectrum

ZX-Spectrum +3 with 3" (not 3.5) disk

Commodore Amiga (I can't remember the model) with an 85MB hard-disk

I feel your pain as I pay about the same for 1.1mbps down. I can't get any faster speeds (I checked when I worked for Internode) and speed drops whenever it rains.

I once tried to follow the Udacity course on Tensorflow, but could not download a 10GB that was needed for one of the exercises. Download kept failing and restarting and eventually I killed it after 8 days. Utterly shameful.

I generally wake up when 5 kilos of fur jumps on my bladder and shouts "MEOW!"

However, in my life before cats I really struggled to wake up for a 9-to-5 until I got an alarm with a lamp that lights up very gradually, simulating sunrise. I was surprised at how well it worked and definitely recommend them.

I had a Bio-Brite model, which I don't think are made nowadays but google for "alarm clock lamp sunrise" and there are lots of alternatives.

Does anybody have experience with Red Hat's OpenShift PaaS? [0]

Reading through the sales copy, it seems to be a reasonable competitor to Heroku. They offer 3 small gears free and have a startup assistance program for those that qualify.

[0] https://www.openshift.com/pricing/index.html