Cory Doctorow has posted some great notes from Danny O'Brien's Life Hacks: Tech Secrets of Overprolific Alpha Geek. These were taken from Mr. O'Brien's presentation at NotCom '04.

I emailed and contacted 70 technologists, asked 100 questions and got 14 replies back

I got a bunch of screenshots, habits, code, anaecdotes

* JWZ -- Netscape hacker, sells beer, hangs out with goth chicks
* Gnat Torkington -- Perl hacker
* Brad Templeton -- Chairman of EFF
* Guido van Rossom -- Invented Python
* ESR -- Gun toting nice man, author of Cathedral and Bazaar
* Ann Mitchell -- Antispam lawyer
* Morbus Iff -- Amphetadesk, prefers dialup to broadband
* Paul Ford -- ftrain.com
* Dan Egnor -- Sweetcode.org
* Edd Dumbill -- XML.com
* Cory Doctorow -- Writer
* Simon Cozens -- Perl Hacker
* Tim Bray -- W3C
* Piers Beckley -- LA Scriptwriter (meant to get a perl scriptwriter,
got an LA scriptwriter -- we'll call him "the control") Source