[blhack]

This is exactly the problem, and this is exactly why a lot of nerds don't stand up and talk about what they're doing. They're under the impression that if they're not working at on of MIT's labs, then what they're doing is worthless.

This is absolutely not the case. Some of the things that I've most enjoyed doing recently were a the "automated reddit observation system" (http://thingist.com/t/item/2945/) and my "Jarvis" alarm clock (http://thingist.com/t/item/4329/).

These projects were both probably done "wrong". The way I'm parsing RSS on Jarvis is probably "wrong" and I was nervous about publishing the code because I thought people would call me out on it.

But who cares. These things are hella fun. As one person said "Build shit. Do shit. Write Shit. Fuck the Haters. Let them know by the trail of Original Content you leave behind."