Hacker Survival Guide

Have your own server/domain ready

This is one of the biggest mistakes I see at every event. This is especially true for students at Hack University events. You cannot count on that free college account for homework assignments to work during a hack event. Often times they will limit what code can be used, they include firewalls, and there’s no permanence to your hack.

This also solves one of my biggest peeves of students applying for their first job in the tech world. This is the internet, you need to control your online presence. We (resume reviewers) want to know what you’ve been exploring. Go to Dreamhost or other similar company (not GoDaddy or Network Solutions) and purchase your domain name. Sign up for an account that gives you control of the server and allows you to install multiple domains/platforms. I have been happy with Dreamhost, where I run many domains on a single hosting plan.

Your personal site should include a link to your GitHub, Flickr, LinkedIn, resume, and a list of hacks you’ve created. Make it easy for people to find more than Facebook photos of you getting smashed at a party. Having a personal server also makes it much easier for you to throw together that prototype over the weekend for the next big thing. It is the best investment you can make as a student.

Bring a designer friend

Hack events are great for non-engineers. Take some time to leave the engineering building and visit other sections on campus. Meet artists, designers, literature majors, biologists, etc. Invite them to the next hack event. Many of the best hacks I’ve seen have included a non-engineer on the team. This is especially true for graphic designers that can help your team understand the user experience.

Bring what you need

The most important element is the power cord for you laptop. You should also consider bringing: an extra mouse, keyboard, monitor (I’ve seen several teams with monitors), headphones, iPod, a full day’s worth of medicine, programming reference books, USB flash drive, digital camera, phone, and sketchbook/pen.

You should also keep in mind that you will be staying overnight in a room with dozens of geeks. Bring toothbrush, pillow, sleeping bag, or anything else that might make that 2 hour nap more comfortable. You should also plan on dressing for comfort instead of style.

Bring ideas

Hack events thrive on new ideas. Be prepared to explore new languages, problems, and technologies. You should also come to the hack event with some concepts to share with other hackers. The first part of a hack event involves sharing these ideas with other hackers to decide what to work on. You can also visit Random Hacks of Kindness for problems that need solutions.

Be Prepared

Most hack events allow you to do some work in advance. You should have your own account set up with GitHub, Yahoo/YQL, Twitter, Facebook, and any other service that you will be working with. Pre-install Node.js, Java, Zend, or any other server environment you’ll need for your hack. Plan in advance for any hashtag, phone number, or URL that will be needed for your hack.

I’ve seen many, many teams waste critical time trying to set up a server at 3 a.m. on a sandboxed university server and it sucks the energy right out of the team. Have this done in advance so you can concentrate on the good stuff.

Hack events are a great opportunity to learn a new coding language. It’s not a bad idea to read the documentation before heading to the event. This is especially true when using a library such as YUI or jQuery.

Ask for help and meet the mentors

Most hack events will have representatives from Yahoo or similar companies, as well as subject matter experts. Take this opportunity to meet the mentors and get help. I’ve given many one-on-one tutorials on building mashups. I also try to sit down with every team to discuss their ideas and projects at least once during every event. If I don’t know the answer to your problem I will reach out to people on my contact list for assistance. Rasmus Lerdorf, has graciously provided several teams advice about PHP over Yahoo messenger during hack events. I’ve also been able to reach out to the engineers that develop YUI libraries and APIs. Don’t be shy at a hack event. This is the time to learn and meet new people.

Related articles

• Hack the Change, Change the Hack (developer.yahoo.com)
• Hackers Come Through at Fifth hackNY Hackathon (technoverseblog.com)
• Eventr Captures Twilio Prize at Angel Hack SF (twilio.com)
• How To GitHub: A Complete Guide to Forking, Branching, Squashing and Pulls (gun.io)

Follow my posts about Accessibility

• Yahoo! Accessibility Lab posts by Ted Drake
• Accessible Programming Posts by Ted Drake

I’ve been looking for new headlights. There seems to be three options.

OEM Replacements

You can purchase OEM replacements from Hella and Magneti Marelli from Amazon. These come in regular or xenon flavor and are not cheap. They’ll cost $300 to 1,000 a piece.

Restore the headlight

There are polishing compounds designed to remove the cloudiness from headlights. I’ve had this done by a detail shop once and the result was nice for about 6 months, but it’s coming back. One person on the Audi TT forum suggests wet sanding the headlights with a fine grade sandpaper to restore the surface and then buffing.

After restoring the headlights, you may consider adding a protective film to the surface.

LED Headlights

There seems to be only one aftermarket headlight for the Audi TT. Spyder creates a projection headlight with LED lights that mimic the strip in the Audi R8. These headlights will cost around $400 for the pair.

You can also purchase matching tail lights.

I’ve looked for used headlights on various web sites, but the savings are not significant and new headlights from the dealer are pretty pricey. To summarize, restoring your headlights are the cheapest route, but may not last forever. As my mom liked to say “You can only polish a turd so many times.” The LED projection headlights are a reasonable alternative. I’ve seen the tail lights and they are not the same quality as the original versions. I expect the headlights to be of the same quality. Finally, you could order OEM headlights from outside the dealer and get the great quality while still saving some money.

Now that I’ve figured out my headlight options I need to start evaluating a new bumper cover. I’m considering the kits that upgrade the TT to the larger grill design of the post-2006 models.

Update

I just got the car out of the shop. I went with the updated headlights, which cost about $425. I picked up a used 2001 bumper for $200, a new bumper is around $750. I also bought a new honeycomb grill to replace the stock bars. I haven’t driven it at night with the lights on yet, but so far I’m pretty happy with the result.

Today I sent a message to find out how I should fix my sites and got this great response within 15 minutes. This is the hands on support that I appreciate from Dreamhost.

> Hi

Hi There,

> I know you’ve been hit by a bunch of problems. However, I’ve been patiently
> waiting for my sites to come back and I keep getting database connection
> errors. This is occurring on many different domains.

First off, I’d like to thank you on your patience with these matters,
we’re attempting to get everything sorted as quickly as possible.

> Do I need to do anything to get them back online? Or will this happen when
> you get the servers fixed?

I’ve gone ahead and checked each of your sites, the issue here was caused
by a problem with the database permissions on the MySQL server. I’ve gone
ahead and corrected these permissions for you and everything is now
running as is expected with your sites and their content being properly
delivered. If you happen to need anything more please let us me know.

Thanks!
JJ G

Thanks JJ and Dreamhost for making the personal commitments to getting sites back online.

I’ve had the brakes on the car for a month and I have to say they have been better than I expected. I was worried about the break-in period. I wondered if they would seize or squeal. However, they felt perfect right off the bat. The brake pedal feels solid with no pulsations.

The brakes have a very slight squeal after 2,000 miles. It’s not bad and it only occurs once in a while.

I would highly recommend this brake upgrade. The final price for the parts from Amazon is about the same as getting replacement parts at the local Firestone or other repair shop.

Upgrade your Audi TT to high performance brakes

It’s time to replace the brakes on my 2001 TT Roadster. I’ve been thinking of upgrading from stock to some high-performance ceramic pads with slotted rotors. After doing a bunch of research I’ve decided to go for the EBC Red Stuff. They’ve got good reviews and should provide a big improvement in braking without excess dust and noise.

I’ve also been comparing prices and Amazon has a really good price. I’ll have Fred’s Garage in Redwood City install the big boys.

EBC Brakes DP3680C Redstuff Fast Street Disc Pad

EBC makes several sets of ceramic brake pads. The green set would be ok, but the red set is stronger and is recommended for the Quattro. It’s also going to require an adjustment period.

Redstuff has always been known for its low dust ability but the latest blend has greatly reduced the phenomenon of pad “Pick up” or disc scoring and reduced dust even further.Tested at the UK Motor Industries Research Association (MIRA) in witnessed tests early Redstuff reduced car stopping distance in tests by almost 50 feet from 100 MPH offering a staggering 30% brake improvement.

Redstuff however as a harder compound does take longer to fully bed in to achieve its highest levels of performance (can be up to 1500 miles/2500 Kms urban use) during which time the odd “Chirp” of brake noise may be heard when starting from cold in damp and cold conditions at walking pace speed.
EBC Brakes

Front Pads

Rear Pads

EBC Brakes USR931 Rear Sport Rotor Kit

Slotted rotors can significantly improve brake performance and longevity when used with a matching high friction pad set . Having sold hundreds of thousands of brake kits EBC Brakes feel confident their approach is as perfect as it gets.

We are of the opinion that slotted rotors have been “Over sold” by certain marketplace participants and our findings are that a slotted rotor will only give benefits if used with a pad that compensates for its reduced surface area. The benefits of degassing and promoting flat and smooth pad wear are a clear plus in favour of sport rotors but the trick is to opt for a matched set of brakes and not to just expect a slotted rotor to improve braking on its own.
EBC Brakes

Rear Rotors

The Quattro requires the 10.1 inch rotors, which are a bit harder to find.

Front Rotors

Related articles

• Noise from ceramic brake pads no cause for alarm (sfgate.com)
• How do you bleed brakes on 1993 gmc vandurea (wiki.answers.com)
• Paris 2010: Audi Quattro Concept (topgear.com)
• “Autonomous Audi TTS scales Pikes Peak in 27-minute climb” and related posts (windows7forums.com)
• Learn How to Replace Rear Disc Brake Pads (brighthub.com)
• Audi’s RS 3 Sportback Is Yet Another Lustworthy Wagon (ridelust.com)
• Learn How to Replace Rear Disc Brake Pads (brighthub.com)
• Audi’s RS 3 Sportback Is Yet Another Lustworthy Wagon (ridelust.com)

On Monday, November 8, 2010, the Federal Communications Commission will sponsor an Open Developer Day event at FCC Headquarters in Washington, DC, to promote collaboration between Web developers in the public and private sectors, in furtherance of FCC goals to further innovation in accessible technologies and foster citizen participation in open government.

This will be a public, single-day event that prioritizes accessibility goals, though other Web solutions are also of interest. The event will feature guest engineers from the Yahoo! Developer Network and Yahoo!’s Accessibility team, and will have a component addressing the requirements and opportunities in the new Twenty-First Century Communications and Video Accessibility Act.

FCC Hosts Open Developer Day: Accessibility Innovation – Yahoo! Accessibility Lab

I’ve been playing with government data to make it ready for quick mashups. I threw a challenge to some other developers for creating a quick map mashup with a series of map points generated by a spreadsheet on Data.Gov. This is what Anthony Ettinger put together with Yahoo! Pipes:

It’s great to see how you can grab a spreadsheet from the government’s repository, convert it to CSV format, upload it to your server, and quickly parse that data for mashups. It would be easier if data.gov had the file in csv format instead of xls or zip. I could have saved the first few steps.

Related articles

• FCC Hosts Open Developer Day: Accessibility Innovation (developer.yahoo.com)
• Baker Awarded FCC National Broadband Map Data Assessment Contract (eon.businesswire.com)
• FCC Fines Verizon a Record-Breaking $25 Million for Screwing Customers [Fcc] (gizmodo.com)
• The man behind the National Broadband Plan (Q&A) (news.cnet.com)
• Calling all developers! FCC releases APIs for key databases (arstechnica.com)

Calling themselves the “Niqabitches,” the veiled ladies can be seen strutting past prime ministerial offices and various government ministries with a black veil leaving only their eyes visible, but with their long legs naked bar black high heels.
French women cause a stir in niqab and hot pants in anti-burka ban protest – Telegraph

The music is also intended to be inflammatory. My friend Daniel explains it well

…it’s very funny, all in French slang, in the style of the early fifties, all about ways she likes to play with herself at night, it ends by her saying now you may ask me what I do during the day? ….. well I just get fucked it’s that simple..
D. Travert

Related articles

• Two French students protest Burka Ban in face veils & hot pants. (copyranter.blogspot.com)
• Two French students protest Burka Ban in face veils & hot pants (adsoftheworld.com)
• Dutch Close to Burka Ban in Party Deal (newser.com)
• Niqabitch shakes Paris (osocio.org)
• France’s highest legal authority removes last obstacle to ban on burka (independent.co.uk)
• Niqabitch French Veil Ban Protest Video: Niqab Plus Hot Pants (nowpublic.com)
• France’s constitutional watchdog endorses burka ban (cbc.ca)
• Italy move to ban the burka (telegraph.co.uk)
• Burka and Niqab Banned in France (friendlyatheist.com)

Carl also discussed his work with releasing legal documents to the public domain to allow all citizens access to law resources. Open Government data has been an ongoing talk at this conference. I’m looking forward to seeing more mashups and effects of this transparency.

Here’s a sample video that is relevant for the recent incidents. It’s a mine safety video.

Related articles by Zemanta

• International Amateur Scanning League will rescue our video treasures! (boingboing.net)
• Volunteers Duplicate Federal Videos for an Online Archive (nytimes.com)
• NYT on Carl Malamud’s International Amateur Scanning League (boingboing.net)
• Works Progress for Scanning (personanondata.blogspot.com)
• Meet the Scanners! (radar.oreilly.com)

Now the guys that opened Pandora’s box have a new creature to celebrate: the Axolatl. My sister had one of these crazy critters and they are almost as cute as a pug.

Related articles by Zemanta

• Got Kit? ” Yahoo Login is more popular than Facebook. Are you covered? [del.icio.us] (js-kit.com)
• Yahoo pulls Facebook into Yahoo Mail (macworld.com)
• Yahoo Launches New Privacy Tool (techdailydose.nationaljournal.com)
• Mainstream Commenters Choose Yahoo Logins (gigaom.com)