Make it Easy to Unsubscribe from your Email List

I subscribe to many different blogs, podcasts, websites and services and because of this I receive a lot of email. On an average day I receive between 200-300 emails from these services and without proper filtering it would become unmanageable extremely quick.

Every few months I have to go through and cull these lists, unsubscribing from sites I no longer want to receive mail from. This brings me to an important tip for web developers out there: Make your email lists easy to unsubscribe from.
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How to Fix Firefox Backspace in Ubuntu

As a computer nerd, I’ve used a number of operating systems for a number of reasons. One of my favourite Linux operating systems is Ubuntu. I like it for its ease of use, its great UI and a number of smaller reasons that are too numerous to list.

One of the things I hate about most Linux OS’s is the fact that the backspace button is used to go up in any documents. Now, I know I’m just used to the Windows way of things but I find it one of the biggest nuisances when moving to a new operating system.

Below are a few steps on how to fix Firefox in Ubuntu (and probably other operating systems) to get the backspace button to go back in history instead of going up the page.

  1. Type about:config into your browser
  2. Find browser.backspace_action
  3. Change the value from 2 (or any other number) to 0

Once you’ve done the steps above, your browser will now function like it would in Windows with the backspace button going back in history instead of up the page.

If you have any other tips or tricks for us, please feel free to post them in the comment section.

Procrastination Tip: Taking a Break

Like the name of this blog, developers often procrastinate when it comes to different aspects of their profession. I know a lot of developers (myself included) that’ll start side-projects and then abandon them a week or two after they have started. They aren’t bad developers, or even lazy ones, they are just developers that procrastinate to the point of project stagnation.

When you find procrastination starting to hit you and your projects there’s a number of things you can do. One of them is to find someone who will hold you accountable for your projects. Another is to simply take a break. Continue reading Procrastination Tip: Taking a Break

Write Code as if People Will Read It

“Oh I’ll just write this little script to do. Nobody will ever see it”. I have heard many programmers say that exact sentence. And inevitably someone at some point will see the hacked together script that you never meant for public consumption.

I want to propose a challenge to everyone. Write code as if everyone in the world will see it. Here are a few things you can do to complete this challenge. Continue reading Write Code as if People Will Read It

Ready Set Sprint – DjangoCon 2011 Sprints

As the conference wraps up the sprints get started. For those that don’t know what a software sprint is:

A sprint is a get-together of people involved in a project to give a focused development on the project. Sprints are typically two to seven days long. Sprints have become popular events among some Open Source projects. [wikipedia]

DjangoCon 2011 Sprints are being held at Urban Airship in Downtown Portland. So far I’m really impressed with their space. It’s an open style concept with a warehouse feel. The people here have been really nice to host over 100 developers, and the sponsors have even catered it.

This year a number of teams have gotten together and are sprinting on different Django related projects. While all of them sounded great I decided to dive into Django’s open tickets to see how I can help.

While I’ve only been here a couple of hours I’ve closed one ticket as invalid and added a patch (and documents) to another.

It definitely doesn’t take a lot of work to look into Trac. Finding something you can work on is a little more difficult but even adding extra documentation or reviewing tickets can help out the core developers and make Django a better place.

DjangoCon 2011 – Making interactive maps for the web

For the last regular talk of DjangoCon US 2011 we’ll be hearing from Zain Memon on “Making interactive maps for the web”.

When tasked with displaying geo-data, most developers decide to put some big red markers on an embeddable Google Map and call it a day. If you’re interested in creating maps that are more beautiful, more interactive, and more usable, this talk is for you.

Updates Below:
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