A long time ago I worked as the infrastructure & systems manager of an biostatistical institution at a medical university. The institution had a large staff of highly qualified professors and researchers and others, doing cutting edge work on huge datasets, even by today's standards. It was a really well funded research operation.
One day the phone starting ringing off the hook, the mail blew up and I had a large group of people outside my office (no open work space there!) being very upset all of the sudden. It seemed that almost all of them were relying on this quirky internal service for some input of sorts to what they were coding on/with, and all the computations and calculations and modelling broke without it. And apparently, it had broken. So ofc I start looking into it.
All I got was an IP address, and my system lists and IP registers showed nothing. I went on to look in an old patch panel registry, and found a reference that might be something to look into regarding where it physically might be located. But ofc the patch panel wasn't in use anymore, but I knew they sort of moved it 1:1 to a new panel in the far corner of a basement. Got a new lead on where the patch terminated, and went there only to find an empty room. A lone network cable ran from the connection on the wall, through a hole in the back wall to the next room. The other room had no marking, and my key pass didn't work. I called the maintenance guy who came running, and his keys didn't work either. So we took the decision to simply remove the lock by force.
Once inside, I come upon a very strange sight. Again an empty room, with only a very, VERY dusty desk and chair, with an ancient Unix machine and monitor. No one had touched that thing in many, MANY moons. It was disgusting. Someone had set it up to do its work, and then left the building, without notice or documentation, and it had been forgotten. It was a very Tron: Legacy kind of moment. I had a look at it and it said that the raid was downgraded, but still working but somehow halted the machine. I took a chance and rebooted it and after a while it came back online. All the researchers were happy again! I eventually took the liberty to move all the source code off the machine and got help from a co-worker to set it up in a new Linux environment. It worked almost out of the box, my co-worker made some minor fixes to make it compile. For all that I know, it's still running.
This is a old war story that I never will forget, very fun to talk about :)
My father (67, retired) has a couple of friends his age with long time, small businesses in the IT industry. One has been making some sort of map software for a very small niche in the marine industry, another has been making software for bee keepers or something similar. A third in image scanning software. They have been doing well since the late 80s, and still could be. They chose to go out of business and enjoy retired life instead.
I suspect that, although there is a market for the products, noone is interested in taking on the software they worked on.
I am using both a dedicated 35mm film scanner (not flatbed) and a DSLR with macro for repro, the latter for medium format film.
The outcome quality of both processes is identical and great quality, but the DSLR repro way is a little bit more cumbersome. It takes me longer to get a really good result with a lightbox than with the dedicated film scanner. Not by long, but it adds up if I have a couple of 120 film to repro.
I shoot repro with a Nikon D700 in RAW using a 105mm macro lens on a regular stand, with a bubble calibrator. The lightbox is a small cardboard box spray painted in black, with flippable/removable cutouts to fit 6x4,5 up to 6x7. I use an old discarded iPad mini, setup with a white image on max brightness as backlight.
Using Capture One (my preference of editing suite), I connect my camera with a USB cable and import directly into the editing suite. No need for importing of a CF/SD card. Smooth process.
> The harder part is now getting a computer that will take the firewire (you may have an old laptop -- macs had them until like 08 -- or get a firewire-to-usb2.0 cable or thunderbolt to firewire adapter on amazon)
Modern computers with thunderbolt will take a converted fw stream without any problem. I am using several old fw400 sound interfaces with a string of adapters without any problems, on both mac and pc. The mac laptop has tb built in, for my workstation pc (Windows 10) I bought a PCI Express io adapter for 30 euro. Works perfectly.
Of course it is. It's part of the signaling equation. The same way that someone might put on a nice suit for an interview or a date when they're usually not wearing suits at all. "I have this suit now because I need the confidence it gives me (in addition to showing that I can dress appropriately)". One just have to be aware of it.
People outside of HN and similar circles usually get impressed with shiny things. "Regular people", most often in business situations, or with business minded people. I run my own businesses and deal with a lot of this sort of situations, but also with some family and acquaintances, normal folks.
Like it or not, I've most likely been referred and/or gotten deals through due to my Omega Speedmaster, my Burberry winter coat, hade made expensive leather shoes, etc. That sort of clothes and accessories. Because it makes me look successful in the eyes of Others, and people wants to be friends and partners with other successful people.
Shiny things/expensive clothings/etc = Seen as I must be competent to earn that sort of cash.
My friends couldn't care less about what I wear, but they understand why I do it.
This is my experience too, and also in other areas. I have to include "stack overflow" or "forum" keywords to actually find something useful on the first or second page. Example: drone racing discussions.
I use a combination of Meetup and LinkedIn, sometimes Telegram, Facebook or Twitter, and usually scout a couple of weeks to a month or so in advance. At these events I've met with people and connected after, got invited to some private event, meet more people etc.
Right now in mid July there is not many events, just a few, but check out Stockholm Startup Founder, Let's do business STHLM, STHLM Tech Meetup and SUP46 on Meetup to get started for after summer. Add own flavours to fit your interests and focus. I also use LinkedIn quite a bit to find events for specific areas I am interested in. Many times a post with just "Any tech aw going on today/this week/soon?" have been an easy way to get to know what's going on. It's usually at least a few companies hosting something to attend.
I would be so happy if there were some sort of color coding to just be rid of the hassle of switching twice ("I'm sure it's this one, nopes, it's the other one").
I've been working 100% remote as a contractor/gigger the last four years, with the exception of half a day/whole day stints at the clients office from time to time. It has been working great for me, I have been super productive and have come up with some really creative ideas that have turned into several side businesses.
I also sometimes miss the social part of working in an office. When I get lonely I just rent a flexible desk by the hour at a co-working space where some friends or industry acquaintances work and work there for a week to get my social fix. There is also almost daily breakfast/lunch/dinner tech meetups/network events in my city so it's easy to hang out with other cool and smart people.
FWIW, one of the biggest fast food franchise chains in my country uses a custom Excel sheet as their main backoffice app across the organization. From what I can tell, it's far from a single user app with a small dataset.