Before I started soldering

The back of the finished board

The finished board

Below is my own quick attempt. I tried to be as granular as possible without spending all day on it. My purpose behind doing this is to point out just how much is going on in that page without even leaving the page or refreshing. This is an excellent example of how interactive a true modern web application can be.

Note that I subscribe to the Wikipedia definition of AJAX.

Feel free to add anything I missed in the comments.


Friends Requests menu
- User profile image
- Name
- Count of mutual friends
- Confirm/Deny buttons
Messages Menu
- User profile image
- User name
- Message snippet
- Message time
Notifications Menu
- User profile image
- User name
- Notification type icon
- Notification time
- Notification icon shows updated notification count
Search
Options Menu
- Count of new notifications for Pages
Live Feed/Contact Bar on the right
- Feed updates realtime
- User image, name, update snippet
- Mouseover a live update provides a popup
- User image
- Name
- Full update content
- Like button
- Make comment
- Timestamp
- Security
- Popup has an options menu
- Comments from friends with timestamp, like link, like count
- Contacts update realtime
- Profile image, name, and online status
- Search
- Options menu items
- Live chat with other user
- Video chat with other user
- Chat menu
- Typing status
- Video and Close buttons have popup with explanation
Left Nav
- Section Headers are links that update page content without refresh
- Edit menu for each navigation item
- Notification count for certain nav items
- Create Group button pops up dialog
- Members list auto-completes as you type
Right Nav
- Current birthdays
- Todays Birthday, popup, that allows you to comment and multiple walls at once without leaving the Feed page
- People You May Know
- Profile image
- Name
- Count of mutual friends
- Menu of mutual friends
- Friend list assignment menu
- Add friend
- Remove friend suggestion, new friend suggestion replaces it
- Sponsored Story
- Like button
- Remove story
- Sponsored Ad
- Some ads can popup in page like video and picture and everything that goes along with that
- Remove ad menu, new ad replaces it
News Feed
- Update status on page
- Who are you with feature
- Location feature
- Security menu
- Add Photo/Video on page
- Ask Question
- Poll options
- Security
- Sort menu
- Sort menu options
- New Stories
- Count of new unseen stories
- Load new unseen stories
- Friend updates
- Update options menu
- User image
- Name
- update content
- like button
- comment inline
- share feature
- timestamp
- location
- security, also has popup explanation
- list of friends who liked
- count of comments, names of friends who commented
- count of shares
- Comments
- commenter image
- commenter name
- commenter comment
- commenter timestamp
- commenter like button
- post a comment inline
- Scrolling to page bottom loads more updates


When a citizen commits a crime, they do so in trade for some of their rights. In other words, were I to kill someone, I would give up my rights to liberty and the pursuit of happiness and depending on the scenario, I could lose my right to life.

This is natural cause and effect. Every action has a consequence. Certain consequences are desirable, others are not. We learn what to do and what not to do based on receiving these consequences. This is a law of the universe. It cannot be changed.


When we do try to change this law of the universe and take away consequences, we damage not only the person to whom those consequences rightly belong, but we also damage our society.

The damage to the person is that they do not learn what they were supposed to.

The damage to society is that the individual will continue to commit crimes because there is no fear of adequate negative consequence. This leads others to see a lack of negative consequence who then are more likely to commit crime as well.

What exactly the adequate consequences are for any particular crime is a topic for another discussion.

The fact that there is are not adequate negative consequences in place for many crimes is obvious by the number of citizens inhabiting prison cells. What we need is to stop thinking that citizens who commit crimes still have all their rights. They commit crime? They lose most of their rights. They commit crime, they owe a great debt to society. A criminal needs reform and they need to be able to make restitution. They need to repay their debt to society.

In other words, we need to bring back work programs to prisons. We need to rip out all the cable and satellite TV from the prisons. We need to make the food less enjoyable and more utilitarian. Nourishment is all the food should provide. College education? Why should a criminal get a college education for free when honest citizens have a hard enough time getting grants and scholarships? The education a criminal should get is through service to the community. Service and hard work is what builds character and is what is missing from society. If they do not learn it in their families or communities, prison must be the next best option for these wayward citizens.

To that end, a friend of mine had an idea. We should put prisoners to work producing electricity. Put a dynamo in every stationary bike and then hook those bikes up to the grid. Every time a prisoner pedals the bike, they produce power. Put them to work pedaling every day. Energy crisis averted!

How about roads? Prisoners used to make roads. Put them back to work making roads!

Jobs that citizens do not want to do? Let the prisoners do them.

Let us put our prisoners to work. Let them repay their debts. Let us not rob them of the valuable negative consequences for their negative actions. Put our prisoners to work! But not for money. Heavens no! Make them work for Restitution.

If negative consequences are adequate, our prisons will stop filling up. Prison used to be a punishment. These days prisons seem to be 5 Star hotels. A prisoner is released and they do whatever they need in order to get back in? Why?! Because prison is not a deterrent! It is a haven!

Please share your comments with me on this topic.

My typical git workflow

- git init (or clone)
- work on files on main branch
- git branch [newbranchname] (create a new branch for a new feature)
- git checkout branch (switch to that new branch)
- git merge [newbranchname] (merge new feature into main branch)
- git add . (or git add path/to/file(s))
- git commit (leave good notes)
- git pull [remote] [branch] (to sync with other devs)
- git push [remote] [branch] (send my local commits to other devs or repo server)

Some descriptions of other git commands

git init (initializes a directory as a new Git repository)
git clone [url] (copies an existing Git repository)
git status
git remote (list local "remote" aliases)
git remote add/rm [url] (creates a new alias)
git add (add changes; those could be in files or directory structure)
git add -u (adds unstaged changes including deletes not done with git rm)
git add -p (add changes per chunk in a file!)
gif diff (--cached for staged changes)
git commit (records a snapshot of the staging area)
git commit -m (specify a commit message on the command line)
git commit -a (skip the add step and do it automatically -a will not add new files)
git rm (delete a file, can be used to actually delete the file or after the fact to inform git of the action)
git rm --cached (aka un-add/un-track)
git reset (unstage changes that you have staged, opposite of git add)
git checkout -- ..." to discard changes in working directory (???)
git update-index --assume-unchanged (ignore uncommitted changes in a file that is already tracked)
git pull/push (eg git push memoryties master)


My main source of information so far has been Git Reference.

Other resources
- http://nvie.com/posts/a-successful-git-branching-model/
- http://progit.org/book/
- git reset: http://progit.org/2011/07/11/reset.html

My Vim Cheatsheet

Since I finished it I have found some other tidbits and had some other ideas for enhancing the sheet further. If I ever get around to it, I will update the link with the newer version.

Enjoy! I hope it is as useful for you as it is for me.

Long live Vim!

0. Before diving in, be sure to read through the “Free” FAQs: http://aws.amazon.com/free/faqs/

1. When you are ready to get going, visit http://aws.amazon.com/free/ and sign up for a free account. You will need to give them a credit card number in order to create an account. The credit card is for when the free period is over, or in case you go over the limits of the “Free” offering, or if you choose to use some of the non-free services.

2. Once your account is create you will now be able to access the AWS Console and sign in.

3. If not already on the EC2 tab, click it. The default seems to be S3

4. In the Navigation, choose a region. I think the default is “US East”. Keep that in mind because each region is different. If you install instances in one region they will not show up in other regions. That can be confusing if you log in and it defaults to a different region. You may think all your instances are gone and start to panic. (Remember, I learned this from experience.)

5. You can now “Launch an Instance”. There should be a button that says as much made plainly visible. If not, you can click on the “Instances” section on the left.

6. Choose an AMI:

You can choose one of the “Basic Amazon Linux” AMI’s if you would like. They fit the criteria of “Micro”. However, I clicked on the “Community AMIs” tab and typed “ami-ad7e2ee8″. This is an Ubuntu AMI that was designed specifically to be a Micro Instance. I found it from an Ubuntu Cloud blog post.

No matter which AMI you choose, make sure the AMI is 10GB or less and not SUSE or RedHat (there are some licensing issues there that cost money). Safe distributions are: Amazon, Ubuntu, CentOS (as long as they meet the size criteria I mentioned).

Make sure you choose an instance with an EBS root store, if you choose “instance” then you will never be able to reboot the server without losing everything.

7. Instance Details:
There are three screens under the Instance Details step. I only made two changes to the default. First, make sure the instance you choose is “t1.micro”. The is the only instance type that meets Free Tier requirements. Second, is optional, but on the “Key Value” screen, you get to give your instance a “Name”. Call it whatever you want, or skip this part. I would give it a name because if you ever have more than once instance, the information screens can inundate you with information that is not human friendly.

8. Create Key Pair:
If this is a new AWS account and you do not have a Key Pair already, or even if you do and want to create a new one, you can do that here. You will need this in order to SSH into your server. Be very careful not to lose it. If you do, there is no way to recover it, in which case, you will have to create a new key, assign the new key to your instance and restart the instance. It is very easy. Just give it a name and download it.

What you download will be a .pem file. This contains an encryption key, which I will not delve into in this post other than helping you use it to connect to the server.

9. Configure Firewall:
On this step I went with default. You can create your own security group settings here if you want, but you can also do it very easily later. I wanted to get to the end so I just chose the default and moved on. If you do the same, the next screen is review and on that screen you can finally “Launch” your new instance. Click that Launch button and think happy thoughts, but don’t throw a party just yet.

While we are still on this bullet point and while your instance is launching, let us delve further into the firewall. Click on the “Security Groups” navigation link on the left. Then click on the “default group”. Below will be the details. You may need to drag the edge of the details window up so you can see it better.

Now, among other things that you may want to add to these firewall rules, the first thing that we want to add is the ability for you to SSH into your server. Feel free to give everyone access to your server. However, I gave myself access from the two IP’s that I usually access from.

Here is a screen shot showing what it may look like for you:

Take note that the “/32″ at the end of the IP address means “this and only this IP address”. (You can read more about CIDR Notation if you feel so inclined.)

Once you save your new entry(s) you are now ready to connect.

10. Connecting to your instance.

If you cannot connect, it is very likely you have something wrong in your Security Group or you are not using your key correctly.

First, you need to find the address of your new server. Click on the Instances section again and then click on your new instance that is in the list now. Below you will see details. What you are looking for is “Public DNS:”. Later, if you want a public static IP address you can get one easily (but not for free) by going to the “Elastic IPs” section. Copy that “Public DNS:” address and you are ready to do some server shelling.

Here is what the command could look like for you:
ssh ubuntu@ec2-1-1-1-1.us-west-1.compute.amazonaws.com -i /path/to/aws_key.pem

Let us now analyze this command:

- “ssh” is, well, if you do not know what that is then may need a different tutorial. If you truly do not know what that is, let me know and I can provide some further direction.

- “ubuntu” is the default user that comes with the instance. Some instances will use “root” as the default user. Each type of instance will be a bit different. For the AMI that I used, the user is “ubuntu”.

- “ec2-123-123-123-123.us-west-1.compute.amazonaws.com” is the Public DNS address that you copied from the instance details.

- “-i” is the ssh switch that tells ssh to use a different file for connection keys

- “/path/to/.ssh/aws_key.pem” is the actual path and key file that you downloaded in step 8 when you created a key pair.

If you did everything correctly, once you issue that command you will now be connected to your new server that is living and running in the AWS cloud as a Micro Instance on the Free Tier. Congratulations!

Now, how you setup your server and what you do with it is completely up to you. There are a plentiful number of tutorials out there that explain those options.

Now that your AWS Free Tier Micro Instance is setup, you will want to monitor your account usage and billing to make sure you are staying within the “Free” realm. To do this from in the console, click on the “Account” link that should be at the top, then you can look at the “Account Activity” and “Usage Reports”.

That is is! Have fun! Let me know how it goes for you.

If you have questions, feel free to ask them below.

When I read this I was excited that I may be able to get rid of the plug-in I had been using for this same purpose. While the plugin worked, most of the time, there were times when it did not. I also personally prefer to use built-in features whenever possible.

I checked out the new Rich Text Signature setting. Quickly I found that it allowed you to add images and links, yet still lacked the ability to do HTML editing. Not yet ready to give up I Googled to see if anyone else had found a way to do HTML in the new Rich Text Signature setting. Finding none I set to figuring out my own solution.

As I thought I remembered that this same feature could be found in Google Sites (and perhaps elsewhere). So I logged into one of my Google Sites and sure enough, the editor was almost identical, except that in the Google Sites editor there is an “HTML” button, which is lacking on the Gmail editor.

I had the idea that perhaps I could use the Google Sites editor to get an HTML signature into Gmail. It worked. Here is how I did it.

I created a new page on my Google Site. I clicked on the “HTML” button to “Edit HTML Source”. I pasted in the HTML I had been using with the plugin. I clicked “Update”. Now my signature showed up in the new Google Site page as rich text. I then highlighted the rich text version, copied it, went to my Gmail settings and pasted it into the Rich Text Signature editor. I saved and the click on Compose. Lo, and behold, there it was. Like magic.

I hope this helps you out until Gmail adds that HTML button to the Gmail editor.