<i>"Sometimes I wonder how many things could have gone differently."</i><p>I'm a firm believer that awesome always finds a way, but I love these stories of seemingly small decisions (<i>"I could’ve spent the $500 on something other than a Rift. I could’ve stayed in bed"</i>) being major turning points in someone's life.<p>For me, a pivotal moment was Stanley Kubrick's removal of <i>A Clockwork Orange</i> from circulation in the 1970s, and its subsequent posthumous re-release in 2000. My university cinema had a showing one night; this gave me time to kill on campus after the library closed; during which time I saw a job-board ad for work in a real estate firm.<p>The job led to a management position post-graduation, which turned into State Operations Manager for a large franchise group, which turned into the business coaching career I've had for almost a decade.<p>If Kubrick hadn't pulled the film? If he had died a year earlier? Maybe I would have leveraged my journalism degree into that profession instead? From little things, big things grow...
One gem that stood out to me from the article was the author's take on hackathons: "The prizes were nice, but the knowledge, soft skills, and connections were prizes in themselves" - which seems like the right way of approaching a hackathon.
I'm overly impressed with those being able to build a project by the end of a hackathon. In my life I haven't had many chances to participate to one, but I'm also the more methodical type (you can call that <i>over engineering</i> and I wouldn't argue on it).<p>Any advice on how I could switch to this mode from time to time?
It's quiet common, that blog posts from HN leave me behind with a different perspective of things. In this post, this is what made me so:<p>"Sometimes I wonder how many things could have gone differently. I could’ve spent the $500 on something other than a Rift. I could’ve stayed in bed instead of going to a hackathon. I could’ve worked on another joke app. I could’ve saved some money and not flown out to Mountain View for a hackathon. But if my parents taught me anything it’s that you have to take advantage of every opportunity you get. So I did."
Very happy for Angel and wish him the best for the future.. Keep on hacking!<p>tl;dr I am a harsh judge at Hackathons, and I think that's what we need.<p>But on the topic of Hackathons and YC Hacks in particular... I expected YC Hacks to be more focused on realistic, actual businesses. I was there and the finalists were mostly disappointing. Vrniture, a cool demo app, is a total non-starter as a business (and I don't think it was ever intended to be one.) The number of people who would have 3d maps of their living space is ~0. The chances of having accurate and well-textured 3d models of sufficient furniture pieces is ~0%. Apparently just getting on "YCs radar" was the intent, and that just doesn't sit well with me unless you're at <a href="http://www.stupidhackathon.com/" rel="nofollow">http://www.stupidhackathon.com/</a>
> I could’ve spent the $500 on something other than a Rift.<p>Like? :)
It is often the case when someone is really awesome, most of their choices are really good.