Bulk add:

svn st | grep ^? | sed 's/? //' | xargs svn add

Bulk remove:

svn st | grep ^! | sed 's/! //' | xargs svn rm

Strip all .svn directories from project:

find . -name .svn -exec rm -rf {} \;

This is why I like to use the Phase Now and Phase Later approach.  Why not have that big picture discussion and compile a list of concise, clear deliverables and then sort it in order of priority. Once you have done this, put as many priority items as you can in comfortably manage with a short deadline (couple weeks) in a separate list and call this Phase Now; everything else is Phase Later. Get the most important stuff done first and then keep moving down the list from there. Of course this does not work for every project and in every instance, but I have found that things tend to get done quicker and lots of time is saved by not having to implement unimportant details upfront.

Do you know what this means? It means that we are one step closer to nirvana and passed a test that could have easily been very detrimental to Base-10. This does not mean that we can all go on sabbatical, but it does mean that what we have created is stronger then ever and will continue to grow. It is not about the individual, it is about the team. I spend more of my waking hours with Ramin, Thorsten, Negar, Fredrick, (anyone else I work with) etc, then I do with my family and I do not regret it, for they are also my family. In my mind Base-10 exists to enrich the lives of the people around us because this is what they have done for me. Who would have thought losing my wisdom teeth would give me such wise insight?

In preparation for my black belt testing I wrote an essay describing the importance of being a black belt and  the responsibilities that come with a black belt. You may be wondering how this relates to business or web development and all I can say is read it and then ask that question. There are so many parallels between working towards your black belt and building a company. I can honestly say that base-10 would not be where it is today if martial arts had not played such a large roll in all of our lives.

I will follow-up with another post on the actual black belt testing and will include some nice videos and images. Please keep in mind that the following essay has not been edited or really even proofed. I hope you enjoy it.

——————-

In my opinion, there is a huge difference between being a black belt and having a black belt. A black belt is after all a black piece of cloth that is tied around ones waist. On the other hand, being a black belt it something profound that represents who you are to the core. With enough effort almost anyone off the street can work out enough to accomplish the physical feats associated with having a black belt, but it takes someone truly special to embody what being a black belt represents. A black belt represents the never ending quest to perfect your mind, body and soul; to treat others and the world with respect and to hold yourself to the highest standards possible.

I have been training at Champions since I was 7 and even though I took a number of years off to ground myself, that means I have been working towards this for 16 years. I still remember the day clearly when I figured out what I now know to be the essence of a black belt. It was actually when Champions first black belt ever (Joel) was testing for his black belt and I was testing for my orange belt. It was the first time students had to know the creed to get their belt and at the time, the 7 words. My mom spent hours helping me memorize these things and when Joel went up, he couldn’t remember them and none of us had to say them. I remembered them and still do remember them and it is these 7 words that we don’t have to know any more, that represent in my mind what it means to be a black belt: sincerity, self control, confidence, character, effort, respect and discipline.

Like I mentioned above, martial arts are not solely about fighting and being physically strong, they are about honing every aspect of your life. Realizing this has lead me to not only get into the best shape of my life, but to eat better, sleep better, work better, love better, act better, see better, etc. The black belt spirit overflows into all facets of your life and this is the importance of being a black belt. No one is perfect and you are definitely not perfect when you get a black belt, but it shows that you are on the path to perfection. Even though this is an unattainable goal, it shows ones true character, to strive for something they know that they will never reach; constantly improving and moving forward.

When I pass my black belt test it is not as if a switch is flicked and I become something new, something different. It is only a formal recognition of what I have become during my journey to reaching my black belt. And also, it is not the end because the journey never stops and the lessons and values you learn throughout the journey will be with you forever because they have been ingrained into your entire being. On another note, it does not make me better then anyone, in fact it signifies that I have recognized I am not better then anyone else, that no one is better then any other one; that I am humble. The only one I can be better then is my current self and this is what I strive for.

I have to be honest, I am afraid of the test for my black belt and of having a black belt. This is the true test, not if I can do 100 jump spinning hook kicks or not. It is overcoming your fears, standing strong in the face of fear and overcoming your daemons. All you can ever do in life is be true and try your hardest and this is what I am doing and will do for the rest of my life. Do I deserve a black belt if I am afraid of having one, of course I do. Without fear there is no respect and without respect for something, there is room for abuse.

There is such a misconception of what a black belt represents and what it means to wear one. TV, Movies, UFC, etc, they all distort the true meaning. There seems to be this social pressure that if you have a black belt you must be a hardcore who can kick anyone’s ass. Some people see it as a threat and it can lead to conflict. I guess this is part of the responsibilities of having a black belt, having to properly deal with this.

Another major responsibility inside and outside of the dojo is leading by example. Having attained the level of black belt, you naturally have others that look to you for example and direction; especially children. You have to set a good example and carry on the tradition. My brother is 10 years younger then me and even though I see him as much older then his age, he is really only 13. As his bigger brother it is my job to set an example for him. The fact that a human being I love follows and learns by my actions is a big burden, but one that I gladly carry and cherish.

Having trained at Champions, I now represent Champions, especially after I get my black belt. If I abuse the knowledge and skill that has been passed down to me, I put a black mark on Champions Academy. Champions has put a level of trust in me and they will not regret it. As I have done before, students come and they will go. But what I have learned from my instructors and champions academy, I will never forget. Champions has benefited my entire life and has forged who I am. Every decision I make has been influenced by my study and training. I am forever grateful for this and will carry on the tradition.

The entire point of this essay was to show you the importance of being a black belt and to prove that I can handle the responsibility of what being a black belt means. I understand without a doubt the importance of a black belt and the responsibilities that come with being a black belt. I also understand that the essence of a black belt does not come off when I take the black belt off or even if I don’t get a black belt. It is deeper then that, embedded into the fibre of my entire life, forever. Osu.

–
Casimir Loeber

svn st | grep ^? | sed 's/?    //' | xargs svn add

svn st | grep ^! | sed 's/?    //' | xargs svn rm

svn st | grep ^! | sed 's/!    //' | xargs svn rm

They can even handle files with spaces.

Generators

http://www.stripegenerator.com/
http://www.roundedcornr.com/
http://www.ajaxload.info/
http://www.favicon.cc/
http://www.tabsgenerator.com/
http://bgpatterns.com/
http://kuler.adobe.com

Programming/Frameworks

http://www.catalystframework.org/
http://www.jquery.com/
http://search.cpan.org/dist/DBIx-Class/
http://wordpress.org/

Extensions

http://getfirebug.com/
http://www.colorzilla.com/firefox/
http://chrispederick.com/work/web-developer/

Applications/Utilities

http://www.activestate.com/komodo/
http://www.adobe.com/
http://filezilla-project.org/
http://www.mozilla.com/en-US/firefox/personal.html
http://www.virtualbox.org/
http://subversion.tigris.org/
http://tortoisesvn.tigris.org/

Business Services

http://basecamphq.com/
http://beanstalkapp.com/
http://www.freshbooks.com/
https://rightsignature.com/
http://aremysitesup.com/
http://www.networkredux.com

Operating Systems

http://www.ubuntu.com/
http://www.microsoft.com/windows/windows-7/

Here is a really cool CAPTCHA implementation from www.captcha.net and is based around the concept of tracing around a specific image from a set. It is called squigle-pix: http://server251.theory.cs.cmu.edu/cgi-bin/sq-pix . I would like to see a bot break that!! Only problem is, I can’t find an easy to implement version of this; it seems like it just exists as a proof of concept.

Just a quick tip because it is probably the main stumbling block when learning nginx configuration vs apache configuration; the root directive works differently in nginx. In nginx it will append the directory from the matching location block to the request. Taken from the docs: “so that a request for “/i/top.gif” will not look in “/spool/w3/top.gif” [but in /spool/w3/i/top.gif] like might happen in an Apache-like alias configuration where the location match itself is dropped. Use the alias directive to achieve the Apache-like functionality.” But I digress.

Most of the online documentation and tutorials explain how to get php running globally or how to get phpmyadmin to work from document root, but I had to dig deep to get it to work like www.domain.com/phpmyadmin/ . I didn’t want every .php script to be run as php and I did not want phpmyadmin installed at document root. Here is what I found:

location /phpmyadmin {
    root           /usr/local/nginx/html;
    index          index.php;
}

 location ~ ^/phpmyadmin.+.php$ {
    root          /usr/local/nginx/html;
    fastcgi_pass   127.0.0.1:9000;
    fastcgi_index  index.php;
    fastcgi_param  SCRIPT_FILENAME  $document_root$fastcgi_script_name;
    include        fastcgi_params;
}

This combined with spawn-fcgi got everything working exactly how I wanted it to. The first location block is so that static files are served from the correct directory on the server (note how nginx uses the root directive) and makes it so that if you only specify the path in the URL it will execute the correct index file. The second location block tells nginx to only pass files that are in /phpmyadmin and end with .php to the fastcgi process listening on port 9000.

Not the most advanced stuff in the world, but it took me several hours to figure out. I hope it saves you from the dreaded ‘No Input File Specified’ error message and trying to track down permission issues that don’t exist.

It all started back in 2003 almost 7 years ago… Ramin and I both trained in Kickboxing and attended Champions Martial Arts. Ramin was 19, I was 17 and we were not even good friends at the time, in fact I clearly remember Ramin picking on me. We had been training together for more then 5  years at the time and knew that we were both computer geeks. Ramin was into graphics and 3d rendering and I was into linux system administration; we were both into gaming. This is how we first connected, by fragging and ganking each other in Counter Strike and other such games. One day I was approached by Amin Sabounchi, another member of Champions, asking me if I knew how to make websites because he was interested in getting a new real estate site for his business. I told him what any 17 year old underachiever, wannabe computer hacker would say, “Of course I do!!”. To tell you the truth, I did not know how to make a website, especially a dynamic real estate website.. all I knew was some super basic HTML and the general concepts involved.. I had no programming experience and absolutely no design skills. Armed with nothing but an idea of where to start, I bought a book on Perl (Programming Perl!!) and called up Ramin with a proposition.

Version 1

Ramin agreed to work with me on the project and thus our partnership was born. We both learned how to make websites pretty much on the spot and we learned how to do it together. My mom used to drive me to his parents house after school and on weekends to work on www.sabounchi.ca (amin’s website). I would sit on the edge of his bed or on a wooden chair that permanently damaged my ass and can still feel to this day; we would work together on the design and web coding. Ramin would be the one actually using photoshop while I would do the backend programmer, but it formed a very important pattern in the way we work today, one based on collaboration and team work. When we finished the website, we did not know what to put at the bottom of it as our credit line, so we started thinking of names for our company. We were teenage computer geeks so we kept thinking of things like ‘Binary Design’ or ‘Binary Networks’ but everything like that was taken. We did a google search on the word binary and found references to it being a base 2 number system. We then looked up base 2 and randomly saw a reference to other number systems including one to base-10 which is the most widely used number system in the world, the decimal system. We actually didn’t know that at the time and picked base-10 because it sounded cool and only found out that it was the decimal system after people started asking us what is so significant about it and why we chose it. It sounds a lot better to say we chose it because it is the mosy widely used number system and how most all human minds think about numbers, instead of saying  it sounded cool.

Version 2

Armed with a name for our combined efforts and because we did not have a website of our own (we just made our first website ever!!) we created a hotmail address and put ‘Site by base10design@hotmail.com’ at the bottom of the website. We did not think much of it at the time and we were proud of our efforts but we were both busy with our normal lives at the time. I was busy hating high school and Ramin was busy working a day job and going to design school. What happened next was a surprise and an incredible stroke of luck; we started getting e-mails by the dozen, complimenting us on our work and asking if we would do their website. It seemed that we stumbled upon a niche that was not being filled in Vancouver; custom real estate sites with great designs. We knew we were onto something, but we also knew that we needed to be more legit, especially because we were so young. We figured no one, especially real estate agents, would take 2 teenagers seriously if we did not look and act the part. So we started our quest to officially create Base-10 as a company. We soon found out that I was to young to be part of a company so we created a sole proprietorship under Ramin’s name and decided to have the official company name be ‘Base-10 Design & Development’. The deal was that Ramin’s name was on the papers, but we would split everything 50/50. As soon as I turned 18 we reformed the company into a general partnership and opened a business account. We were now officially legit with our logo on our cheques, business cards in our pockets and a website of our own.

Version 3 Splash Page

Which brings me to our logo; you will notice that in our first website our logo was a bar  code.. we into the whole cyberpunk thing and bar codes were very cool at the time. Eventually we graduated from a bar code and came up with our current logo which represents a cell going through mytosis; once again we did not have this explanation until people started asking. We kept filling the real estate niche, which has been and still is our bread and butter, but branched out and did all sorts of different websites, from doctors offices to fashion design companies. The fact that we had a chance to work on projects in different sectors was very important to our growth and has buffered us from market ups and downs. It also prevented us from over specializing and allowed us to learn how to cope with any project that comes our way.

Version 3 - Flash

The last 2 years have been the craziest 2 years in our companies history. The 2 largest and most influential decisions we have ever made were to get an office and hire our first full time employee. Going from working in our parents basements to working in an office made us almost a million times more productive. It enforced semi-regular working hours, instant feedback from each other, collaboration and communication we never even imagined and the all important work/life separation. When we come to work, we work; when we go home, we live. It might not be the biggest and most glorious office in the world and is essentially a big room, a bathroom and a storeroom, but it is perfect for what we needed it for; gathering a core group of talented individuals and maximizing our creativity and productivity.

Version 3 - Lite

After we had a space to work in and starting working on the company, not just in the company, we made the biggest financial decision we have ever made.. we made the leap and hired our first full time employee: Thorsten Drobnik. I realized that my talents were being wasted on programming because of the fact that I didn’t want to be a programmer and would never aspire to be the best programmer. What I needed was time to work on what I enjoy and what I am actually good at, building the company and solving problems. Ramin and I still make all major decisions together and I could not do it without him, but he needed to be able to focus on the design work, so we figured that as our first employee, we needed a programmer. We put some ads out through various channels and got hundreds of responses (mainly from dubai)  but the one that stuck was from Thorsten. He and his wife had just moved here from Germany and coincidentally lived just around the corner from our office. Thorsten had years and years of computer science, lots of programming experience and most importantly, he was a perl guy. At the time we agreed to pay him twice as much as we were paying ourselves and he started working for us October 1st 2008. He instantly fit right into our culture of Martial Arts, stupid noises, beer o’clock fridays and general tom foolery. He is now truly part of the family and I can honestly say that he is an integral part of this company. As a side note, he and his wonderful wife have recently had a baby girl, her name is Ruby (not perl..) and she is also part of base-10.

Version 4

This pretty much brings us up to date and sums up our history. We are currently working on a bunch of cool projects and are continuing to focus on our core business. Every day is a learning experience and has the potential to change the fundamentals of how we do business. Today we are creating high impact custom websites, but who knows, maybe tomorrow we are running a ninja SaaS business.. or maybe we do both? It is a constant adventure and we never stop learning!

9 Station Pour Over Bar

I am very much a coffee fan and love discovering new methods and gadgets for brewing coffee, along with different roasts and grinds that can diversify my coffee experience. I started with the drip coffee my father used to make and then moved on to espresso, press pot, siphon, vac pot, percolator, clover and so on and so forth. Now I am told that I should not have ventured past my fathers method of drip coffee because apparently that is what makes the best cup of coffee; much to my fathers amusement. I see no difference between ‘pour over’ and ‘drip’ coffee. Purists claim that pour over is brewed on a cup by cup basis with more attention given to how and where you pour the water, hence pour over.

It's all in how you pour the water

Personally I use a press pot at home because it is easy to clean and quick to prepare. A trick I learned from the fine folks at Cafca is to scoop of the top layer of grinds before you plunge the coffee after your brew time of choice (4 minutes and 20 seconds is my prefered brew time). This results in a cleaner tasting cup that will stay clean even if you leave it in the pot for a period of time. Do you have any secret methods for brewing your coffee?