Jack Kinsella's Blog, page 14

On Passive Income

On 23 April, 2014 I gave this speech to the Berlin chapter of the 4 Hour Work Week Entrepreneurs and Lifestyle Designers Group. The focus is on passive income, and it applies chiefly to people starting out, but is also of interest to established business owners wishing to remove their labour with minimum sacrifice in quality.

Intro

For the last four years Iâve been blessed with a passive income source where the entire sales process is automatic and, if I so desire, I can forget about the inco...

Automating Popularity

Two years ago I wrote a program that logged into my Facebook account and pretended to be me. I wanted to test the hypothesis that automatic tools could make someone more popular.

If I could build a script that caused more friends to get in touch with me, then my hypothesis would be proven true. If, instead, the script had no effect on my popularity or was detected as a fraud by the people in my network, then my hypothesis would be proven false.

Before I carried out the experiment I studied so...

Janki Method

EDIT: Update To JANKI Method
For nearly four years after I wrote this post I have continued to use flashcards to learn and have made a number of refinements to my recommendations. I summarised these points in 1: Janki Method Refined and a separate article, 2: Guide to Autodidactism/Note-taking/SRS. Open both pieces in new tabs for later reading to get a complete and nuanced picture.

This is a guide to becoming a productive programmer quickly. In his book Outliers, Malcolm Gladwell told the w...

Why Bother With Cucumber Testing?

I recently heard an account of a web development project from both the point of view of the consultancy doing the work and the client. A member of the consultancy told me how they educated a technologically backward client about agile processes. Although this might be tedious for the client initially, with time the client would appreciate their wisdom. Glowing business referrals would follow forever more.

A few days later I bumped into the client:

“[X] were a nightmare to deal with. They wou...

Textmate to VIM

When I switched from Textmate to VIM I felt like a tourist lost on a Japanese subway without a guide, translator or hope. I was unable to find in VIM the features I’d come to love and rely on in Textmate. I yearned for T to summon my models, a project drawer to manage my files, and snippets to save my fingers.

Instead of accommodating my needs, VIM sat firm and unresponsive, save for a judgemental beep. Even though I was supposed to go cold turkey on Textmate, I met her by night for a guilty...