diff --git a/_posts/2013-04-02-blog-or-not-blog.md b/_posts/2013-04-02-blog-or-not-blog.md
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..8936a5c
--- /dev/null
+++ b/_posts/2013-04-02-blog-or-not-blog.md
@@ -0,0 +1,36 @@
+---
+title: To Blog or Not to Blog
+layout: post
+---
+
+
+The original intention of this blog was to serve as a place where I could
+showcase the programming work I have done and detail my process. However, as
+you can tell, there hasn't been any posts since my first ["Hello,
+World!"](/blog/hello-world/) post. Sure, I've been working on projects, but I
+just haven't gotten to the point in any of those projects where I felt like I
+could blog in detail about it.
+
+Then I watched this great talk that [Brian
+Jones](http://pyvideo.org/speaker/352/brian-k-jones) gave at
+[PyCon](http://pycon.org) that my friend, [Daniel Bond](http://dbond.cc/),
+pointed out to me:
+
+<div class="flex-video widescreen"><iframe width="640" height="360"
+src="http://www.youtube.com/embed/BBfW3m3TK0w?feature=player_embedded"
+frameborder="0" allowfullscreen></iframe></div>
+
+One point that he makes that really resonates with me is how I should write
+even if I feel like I don't know what I'm talking about. The reluctance to show
+my inexperience is essentially the reason this blog sat stale for so many
+months after its inception.
+
+I have decided I will take Brian's words to heart, and start blogging just for
+the sake of writing. Henceforth, I will no longer hesitate to chronicle my
+journey through programming, writing, and any other quest which may take a hold
+of me as I continue to improve and broaden my skills. I'll be wrong, I'll ask
+questions, and I may frankly look like a blundering idiot at times; but, I only
+ask that you just bear with me and understand that I'm new at all this still,
+and I appreciate any constructive criticism that anyone has for me.
+
+Let's see how far I can go.
diff --git a/_posts/2013-04-09-visualizing-laundry-usage.md b/_posts/2013-04-09-visualizing-laundry-usage.md
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..8e8c657
--- /dev/null
+++ b/_posts/2013-04-09-visualizing-laundry-usage.md
@@ -0,0 +1,87 @@
+---
+title: Visualizing Laundry Usage
+layout: post
+---
+
+George Mason University uses a system called
+[eSuds](http://www.usatech.com/esuds/) to control the laundry machine
+transactions in the dorms. What makes eSuds really cool though, is that it
+keeps track of the status of every machine and displays it on a
+[website](http://gmu.esuds.net/) so students can check how full the machines
+are before making the trek down to the laundry rooms. The system emails each
+student when their laundry is finished as well.
+
+The only problem is that their user interface is pretty atrocious. I wrote up a
+[usability analysis](https://gist.github.com/thallada/5351114) of the site for
+my *SWE 205: Software Usability Analysis and Design* class, but most people
+agree it's a pretty painful interface to use ([just see for
+yourself](http://gmu.esuds.net/)). The thing is, most of the information that's
+on the website could be reduced to a few charts. I'm a big fan of simplifying
+data, so I thought: why not?
+
+I decided to create the visualizations with [pygal](http://pygal.org/), because
+the charts it spits out are absolutely gorgeous and well... it's in python,
+which made it easy for me to dive right in. I'll probably try out
+[d3js](http://d3js.org/) for my next visualization project though, it looks a
+whole lot more advanced.
+
+###Current laundry usage charts###
+
+I created an [app](/laundry) in [Django](https://www.djangoproject.com/) to
+display current laundry machine usage charts for all of the laundry rooms on
+George Mason's campus. All of the data is scraped from the eSuds site using
+[Beautiful Soup](http://www.crummy.com/software/BeautifulSoup/) and updated
+every time you refresh the page.
+
+<div style="text-align: center"><a href="/laundry" alt="See it in action"><img
+src="/static/img/laundry_preview.png" /></a></div>
+
+The site will save which laundry room you select so when you come back you will
+immediately see the chart for your laundry room.
+
+You can see the code for this on my
+[GitHub](https://github.com/thallada/personalsite/) (look in the "laundry"
+folder).
+
+The point was to make this as dead simple and easy to use as possible. Do you
+think I succeeded?
+
+###Weekly laundry usage chart###
+
+Knowing the *current* laundry machine usage is nice for saving a wasted trip
+down to the laundry room, but what if you wanted to plan ahead and do your
+laundry when you know other people are less likely to do laundry? That's why I
+recorded the laundry usage with a [cronjob](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cron)
+every 15 minutes for an entire week: to get an idea of when there is a high
+probability of open machines.
+
+<embed type="image/svg+xml" src="/static/record.svg">
+
+This one is a little interactive.
+
+As you can see, the laundry usage jumps around all over the place very quickly.
+This definitely provides evidence to some previous frustrations I've had when I
+had checked eSuds, saw that most machines were open, and arrived in the laundry
+room to suddenly find that no machines were open.
+
+**So when is the best time to do laundry?**
+
+After analyzing the data for a bit, I noticed that there still seemed to be
+quite a bit of usage around midnight and 1 AM, which, I suppose, would be
+expected of college students. However, after about 2 AM the laundry usage
+consistently teeters off until about 10 AM. So I guess there's no way around
+it; if you want to have the laundry room to yourself, you'll have to be the
+early bird.
+
+Also, I should note that this was during the week of spring break. I'm
+currently working on recording data over a few normal weeks and then compiling
+it into one average week in order to see the patterns more clearly. I'll post
+again once I've done that.
+
+This was a lot of fun and I expect to make more data visualizations in the
+future.
+
+**Let me know what you think!**
+
+EDIT: Check out the [comments on
+Reddit](http://www.reddit.com/r/gmu/comments/1c1ehg/i_dont_like_esuds/).
diff --git a/_posts/2013-04-18-how-download-rtmp-video.md b/_posts/2013-04-18-how-download-rtmp-video.md
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..5394422
--- /dev/null
+++ b/_posts/2013-04-18-how-download-rtmp-video.md
@@ -0,0 +1,92 @@
+---
+title: How to Download a RTMP Video
+layout: post
+---
+
+[RTMP or Real Time Messaging
+Protocol](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Real_Time_Messaging_Protocol) is a
+protocol developed by Adobe to stream Flash videos. It's currently in use by
+sites like the New York Times, ABC, NBC, Hulu, and so on. Since the video is
+streamed to the user's Flash player (in their browser) bit-by-bit, the full
+video file is never given to the user for them to keep. This is desirable to a
+lot of media companies because then they can force you to watch through ads to
+see their content and can charge you to download the full video.
+
+However, [RTMPDump](http://rtmpdump.mplayerhq.hu/), an open-source tool
+designed to intercept RTMP streams, can download the full video. 
+
+Despite  numerous “How to use RTMPDump” tutorials and forum posts coming up
+with a brief Google search, I've found a large portion of them are either
+completely incorrect or are far too complicated since they are not using the
+full toolkit that RTMPDump provides. Since it took me so long to find a decent
+procedure for downloading a RTMP video, I thought it would be worth sharing
+here.
+
+Since this is questionably legal, make sure you understand any Terms of
+Services you accepted or laws in your locality regarding this before you follow
+the steps below ;).
+
+###Have Linux### Most of these instructions will assume you have Ubuntu, but
+most distributions will work.
+
+While RTMPDump works on a variety of operating systems, I've only researched
+how to do this on Linux. Feel free to comment if you know how to do this in
+Windows or OSX.
+
+###Install RTMPDump### This open source goodness can be found at
+[http://rtmpdump.mplayerhq.hu/](http://rtmpdump.mplayerhq.hu/) or you can just
+intall it using your Linux distro's package manager. For Ubuntu, that would be
+typing the following into your terminal:
+
+    sudo apt-get install rtmpdump
+
+###Redirect ALL the RTMP!### Now we need to configure your firewall to redirect
+all RTMP traffic to a local port on your computer (Note: this will screw up any
+RTMP streaming video you try to watch on your computer, so make sure you run
+the undo command in one of the later steps to return things to normal). Type
+the following into your terminal, there should be no output from the command:
+
+    sudo iptables -t nat -A OUTPUT -p tcp --dport 1935 -j REDIRECT
+
+###Run rtmpsrv### When you install `rtmpdump`, a program called `rtmpsrv`
+should have been bundled with it and installed as well. We will want to run
+this now by entering the following command in a terminal:
+
+    rtmpsrv
+
+This should output something that looks like this:
+
+    RTMP Server v2.4 (c) 2010 Andrej Stepanchuk, Howard Chu; license: GPL
+
+    Streaming on rtmp://0.0.0.0:1935
+
+###Feed rtmpsrv the Precious Video### Now go to your browser and open/refresh
+the page with the desired video. Try playing the video. If nothing happens and
+it just continues to give you a black screen, then you're on the right track:
+rtmpsrv has intercepted the video. 
+
+If you look back at the terminal that's running rtmpsrv you should see that
+some text was outputted. There is one line in this printout that we need; it
+should be a command that starts with `rtmpdump`. Copy that entire command, we
+will need it later. 
+
+You can CTRL+C out of rtmpsrv now that we have what we need.
+
+###Undo the Redirection### You must undo the iptables redirection command we
+performed earlier before you can do anything else, so run this in your
+terminal:
+
+    sudo iptables -t nat -D OUTPUT -p tcp --dport 1935 -j REDIRECT
+
+###Finally, Download the Precious Video### Now paste that command you copied
+from the rtmpsrv output in the step before last into your terminal prompt and
+hit enter. You should now see a torrent of `INFO` printout along with a
+percentage as the video is being downloaded.
+
+###Feast Eyes on Precious Video### Once downloaded, the video file, which has a
+`flv` extension and was named by the `-o` parameter in the command you copied
+and pasted, should be in your current directory (`ls | grep flv` can find it as
+well). Any video player should be able to play it, but vlc is a nice video
+player for Ubuntu.
+
+You're welcome.
diff --git a/_posts/2013-04-26-hackers.md b/_posts/2013-04-26-hackers.md
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..468c505
--- /dev/null
+++ b/_posts/2013-04-26-hackers.md
@@ -0,0 +1,122 @@
+---
+title: Hackers
+layout: post
+---
+
+*The following is a non-fiction essay I wrote for my* ENGH 396: Intro to
+Creative Writing *class. I decided to write about my experience with
+discovering and getting involved with the eccentric community of hackers that I
+met since the past two internships I've had at [Valti](https:/www.valti.com/)
+and [Humbug](https://humbughq.com/) in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Seeing as it
+encapsulated what I've learned culturally since then, I decided to post it here
+as well.*
+
+Hackers -- not your malicious meddling Hollywood-style speed-typists -- but the
+type who sees a toaster and turns it into a computer capable of etching emails
+into the crispy surface of toast. Those who would create a programming language
+consisting exclusively of expletives and then use it to filter out offensive
+words from websites just for the irony. They would never steal a password or
+cause any harm -- unless, perhaps, you gave them a powerful rocket and a bad
+idea. Their curiosity leaves them with a burning desire to break all
+assumptions and to answer "what if" questions as if they were a challenge to
+their very existence.
+
+My personal foray within the realm of hackers began with Boston. I had snagged
+an internship with a startup called Valti started by a couple of Harvard
+students who wanted to create an online platform that enabled college students
+to exchange dresses. Startup businesses are dime a dozen in the hacker culture.
+With so many wild ideas going around, every once in a while a profitable one
+comes by. Hackers despise cubicles and big corporations, so starting their own
+company on their own rules is the usual course of action.
+
+While Harvard's snobby atmosphere put me off, MIT seemed to call out to the
+hacker within me. Now, MIT is arguably the birthplace of the hacker, so when I
+say that I was thrown into the thick of the hacker culture all at once, it is
+no over-exaggeration. This is the place where people would regularly discuss
+mathematical and computer science theories over a casual lunch with each other.
+Computer Science is the de facto "undecided" major at MIT. You would be
+hard-pressed to find a student who didn’t know their way around a Linux
+terminal. Now imagine the computer club of such a university.
+
+The Student Information Processing Board, or SIPB for short, was at least one
+such computer club of MIT that I began to get involved with. This club, which
+was established in the 60s, packaged their own operating system and distributed
+computing environment called Project Athena that was good enough that the
+university installed it on all of their computers. The members were laughably
+out of my league in terms of computer science experience; I would find myself
+regularly searching Wikipedia for every other word they would mention while in
+a heated discussion concerning some technology. But, what surprised me the most
+was not the depth of their knowledge, but the breadth; each of them seemed to
+have an unlimited capacity for various trivial tidbits of knowledge from the
+etymology of words to the physics of the universe. Being around that kind of
+intelligence was fascinating, while at the same time frustrating, since it was
+often hard to follow.
+
+Whenever I wasn't building the website for Valti, I was out in the city going
+to various meetups to meet people and learn about new upcoming technologies.
+This was a totally new world for me. Hackers didn't exist in high school, they
+were just those weird nerds in the computer classes. And, even at George Mason,
+there still wasn't the same atmosphere of ingenuity as in Boston that gave me
+the motivation to want to change the world. I had the feeling most CS students
+at Mason were only there for the degree just so they could go work at some
+boring government contractor in DC when they graduated. After seeing the hacker
+culture in Boston, that type of job seemed like death to me.
+
+Hackers, a world-wide amorphous group of people who enjoy discussing (and
+arguing) various topics, naturally congregate among sites like Slashdot,
+Reddit, and Hacker News (often abbreviated to HN -- hackers, much like the
+military, are fond of their abbreviations) to get quick syndicated news and to
+have large in-depth discussions in the comments. Locally, there are groups that
+meet to discuss certain technologies or set up spaces where hackers can easily
+build prototypes (usually referred to as "hackerspaces"). Unsurprisingly, the
+hubs for these local communities are usually centered around cities that are
+hosts to major computer science universities: San Fransisco, Boston, New York,
+etc.
+
+Their awareness of the languages they use and their fondness of breaking beyond
+the norm lends hackers a great affinity to the game of word play, and thus they
+have created their own lexicon of slang that borrows much from the jargon of
+computer science. "Foobar," "grok," "cruft," "distro," "kluge," "phreaking,"
+the words that are common knowledge among those already within the society put
+a barrier in front of those like me looking to understand the culture.
+
+Many of the students I met at MIT use a chat protocol called Zephyr as cross
+between email and instant messaging to communicate with each other. Zephyr was
+created in the 80’s as one of the first instant-messaging systems (the other,
+more popular protocol being IRC), and, because of the culture surrounding the
+program, it is still widely used at the university. "Zephyrisms" have developed
+over the years to aid in simplifying communication. For example, "==" is used
+to indicate agreement and "++" is used by what would probably be the equivalent
+to a "Like" on Facebook. Both can find their parallels as symbols used in many
+programming languages, the former for equality and the later for incrementing
+an integer by one. Other more obscure zephyrisms include "starking," or
+reviving an old thread of conversation, "prnf" which stands for "Pseudo-Random
+Neuron Firings", and "i, i" which would mean "I have no point here, I just like
+saying" and would usually prefix some snarky comment in reply to an otherwise
+serious thread of conversation (some people would just omit the "i, i" and put
+quotes around said snarky comment instead). Even though these zephyrisms seemed
+completely arbitrary to me when I first encountered them, after a while of use
+they came to me naturally, and I would even accidentally use them outside
+Zephyr to the confusion of my friends. It was easy to see how such conventions
+of speech developed originally.
+
+The Free Software Foundation (FSF), which advocates for free, open-source,
+non-proprietary software (free as in "free speech," not "free beer"), is based
+in Boston and is one of the focal points of the hacker culture. The president,
+Richard Stallman (who is often referred to as RMS), a big, heavily bearded
+fellow, is particularly legendary in the community. Being nearly militant about
+the goals of FSF, he refuses to use software that contains any proprietary code
+at all: no cellphone, only uses a laptop developed completely open-source,
+doesn’t use a browser to view the internet, and even refuses to use a key card,
+which makes it difficult for him to get into his office at MIT. Though often
+painfully stubborn about his ideas, he is the ultimate activist for hackers:
+making sure the government and big corporations do not misuse people's
+information or kill off the hacker culture.
+
+While nowadays I like to call myself an aspiring hacker, I’m not so sure I
+could ever match the intelligence and indestructible curiosity of those that I
+met in Boston. Perhaps it is their unique culture of constantly questioning the
+norm and striving for knowledge of the world around them that allows them to
+transcend into true hackerdom. Either way, I now know never to tell a hacker
+that something is impossible, because they will surely find a way to prove me
+wrong.
diff --git a/_posts/2013-05-19-gmu-bookstore-homepage-concept.md b/_posts/2013-05-19-gmu-bookstore-homepage-concept.md
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..1630e91
--- /dev/null
+++ b/_posts/2013-05-19-gmu-bookstore-homepage-concept.md
@@ -0,0 +1,67 @@
+---
+title: GMU Bookstore Homepage Concept and Staw Dispensers
+layout: post
+---
+
+I have finally finished my second year of college. Now that finals are over, I
+can post about some of the things I have been working on. First, a front-end I
+made with a group in my [*SWE 205 : Software Usability Analysis and
+Design*](http://www.cs.gmu.edu/~offutt/classes/205/) class. The assignment was
+to create a homepage for the University's bookstore website, applying all of the
+usability principles we had learned over the semester. I ended up working on it
+when I wanted to procrastinate on assignments in my other classes, so I put
+quite a bit of effort into it.
+
+See it here: [swe205.hallada.net](http://swe205.hallada.net)
+<div style="text-align: center">
+    <a href="http://swe205.hallada.net" alt="See it in action">
+        <img src="/static/img/gmu_bookstore_preview.jpg">
+    </a>
+</div>
+<br>
+
+You can see all the code for it [up on my
+GitHub](https://github.com/thallada/gmu-bookstore-concept).
+
+Our group researched other university bookstore websites to get some ideas and
+we liked the layout of [Virginia Tech's](http://www.bookstore.vt.edu/) (but
+hated the colors). We liked how everything needed was presented immediately
+upfront in a Windows 8 metro-esque grid.
+
+Since the main feature of the site was a grid and I was already familiar with it
+I used [Twitter Bootstrap](http://twitter.github.io/bootstrap/) to help with the
+CSS. Bootstrap also helped make the design responsive and look nice on mobile
+phones (try resizing your window to see it in action). I also used the
+[Bootstrap modal](http://twitter.github.io/bootstrap/javascript.html#modals) for
+the "Contact Us" form which is activated by the link in the footer of the page.
+However, I had to modify it quite a bit to make sure it was fully usable and
+would prompt the user before they closed out of the modal with text entered.
+
+Overall, this was a fun project to end off a very fun and interesting course. I
+highly recommend any one at GMU to take this course with Prof. Offutt even if
+they don't plan on being web designers. I have come away from the class with not
+only the principles for making usable web interfaces but also a habit of
+analyzing nearly any interface in the real-world.
+
+For example, I noticed the other day while getting food in the [Johnson
+Center](http://jcweb.gmu.edu/) that they had installed a [new paper-less straw
+dispenser](http://i.imgur.com/s9olzcg.jpg). When I first encountered it, I
+didn't know how to operate it (and at the time there was no sign to tell me
+how). Since there seemed to be a chute at the bottom of the contraption, I
+figured there must be a way to get a straw to drop down into it, but the
+dispenser didn't give any hints to how to do that. The knobs on the side had
+looked purely decorative to me. Giving up, I opened the top of the dispenser and
+grabed a straw from the pile of them, cursing the whole thing for it's bad
+usability.
+
+The next day I came by for food again, and I noticed that it now had a sign
+instructing everyone to not do exactly what I had done the other day: "Do Not
+Open. Just turn knob". More people than just I must have been perplexed by this
+dispenser.  As Offutt had said countless times in class before: if a interface
+requires a manual then it has failed.
+
+It's the little things, like the straw dispensers that no one knows how to use,
+that you begin to notice after taking SWE 205. It's both a blessing and curse.
+Bad interfaces drive me insane, and to my frustration I notice them everywhere
+now. But, at least know the most basic things to avoid in the interfaces I
+design now.
diff --git a/_posts/2013-06-04-w3m-reddit.md b/_posts/2013-06-04-w3m-reddit.md
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..8b75705
--- /dev/null
+++ b/_posts/2013-06-04-w3m-reddit.md
@@ -0,0 +1,90 @@
+---
+title: w3m-reddit
+layout: post
+---
+
+I've been moving a lot of my daily tasks to the command-line lately, and that
+includes redditing. I probably spend far too much time on
+[reddit](http://reddit.com) as it is, but I really wanted to find an efficient
+way to view reddit through the command-line.  [w3m](http://w3m.sourceforge.net/)
+could render reddit okay, but I couldn't view my personal front-page because
+that required me to login to my profile.
+
+The solution was [cortex](http://cortex.glacicle.org/), a CLI app for viewing
+reddit.
+
+However, I kind of got tired of viewing reddit through w3m, the header alone is
+a few pages long to scroll through, and the CSS for the comments doesn't load so
+there isn't any sense of threading. But, then I discovered reddit's mobile
+website: [http://m.reddit.com](http://m.reddit.com), and it looks absolutely
+beautiful in w3m. In fact, I think I prefer it to the normal website in any
+modern browser; there are no distractions, just pure content.
+
+<a href="/static/img/w3m_mobile_reddit.png"><img src="/static/img/w3m_mobile_reddit.png" alt="m.reddit.com rendered in w3m"></a>
+
+In order to get cortex to open the mobile version of reddit, I made a bash
+script wrapper around w3m that takes urls and replaces `"http://reddit.com"` and
+`"http://www.reddit.com"` with `"http://m.reddit.com"` before passing them to
+w3m (as well as fixing a double forward slash error in the comment uri cortex
+outputs that desktop reddit accepts but mobile reddit 404s on). The script:
+
+    #!/bin/bash
+
+    args=()
+    until [ -z "$1" ]; do
+      case "$1" in
+        -t|--tmux) t=1; shift ;;
+        --) shift ; break ;;
+        -*) echo "invalid option $1" 1>&2 ; shift ;; # or, error and exit 1 just like getopt does
+        *) args+=("$1") ; shift ;;
+      esac
+    done
+
+    args+=("$@")
+    for arg in "${args[@]}" ; do
+        # Switch to mobile reddit
+        url=${arg/http:\/\/reddit.com/http:\/\/m.reddit.com}
+        url=${url/http:\/\/www.reddit.com/http:\/\/m.reddit.com}
+        # Fix double backslash error in comment uri for mobile reddit
+        url=${url/\/\/comments/\/comments}
+        if [[ $t == "1" ]]; then
+            tmux new-window 'w3m "'${url}'"'
+        else
+            w3m "${url}"
+        fi
+    done
+
+Since I regurally use [Tmux](http://tmux.sourceforge.net/) (with
+[Byobu](http://byobu.co/)), I also added an optional `-t`/`--tmux` switch that
+will open w3m in a temporary new tmux window that will close when w3m is closed.
+
+I saved the script as `w3m-reddit` and made it an executable command. In Ubuntu
+that's done with the following commands:
+
+    $ sudo mv w3m-reddit /usr/bin/
+    $ sudo chmod +x /usr/bin/w3m-reddit
+
+Now cortex needs to be configured to use `w3m-reddit`, and that's done by
+setting `browser-command` in the cortex config at `~/.cortex/config` to
+`w3m-reddit`:
+
+    ## Command to invoke the webbrowser
+    ## If left empty will try to autodetect the system default browser
+    ##browser-command=firefox '{0}'
+    browser-command=w3m-reddit '{0}'
+
+The result is a distraction-free reddit experience right in the command-line
+without having to edit cortex directly. I've found that I even prefer reddit
+this way. Without image thumbnails (I need to explicitly select the image links
+to view the image in w3m) I am more inclined to pay equal attention to every
+post, not just mindlessly scrolling through meme-fests. Thus I'm more focused
+and tend to not loose myself like I do in the infinite scrolling of [RES
+reddit](http://redditenhancementsuite.com/) in a GUI browser.
+
+There are still some improvements I could make to the w3m-reddit script. Namely,
+it should pass along any arguments to itself to w3m underneath. I'm still a
+newby at bash though, and I couldn't figure out an easy way to do that without
+scrapping the whole thing and starting over in Python instead.
+
+Stay tuned for more posts on how I view images and videos efficiently from the
+command-line.
diff --git a/_posts/2013-07-10-quick-command-line-search-search-pane.md b/_posts/2013-07-10-quick-command-line-search-search-pane.md
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..9b1e48d
--- /dev/null
+++ b/_posts/2013-07-10-quick-command-line-search-search-pane.md
@@ -0,0 +1,149 @@
+---
+title: "Quick Command-line Search: search-pane"
+layout: post
+---
+
+It's been a while since I last wrote, but I've still been busy. I began my
+research position at the [MIT Media Lab](http://media.mit.edu) working with
+[Fluid Interfaces](http://fluid.media.mit.edu). It feels like I'm designing the
+future; I really couldn't ask for a better job right now. But, more on that
+later.
+
+I've still been continuously refining my workspace, and how I use my laptop. As
+I mentioned in my [last blog post](/blog/w3m-reddit), I've been moving more and more towards the
+command-line for day-to-day operations because of it's unparalleled level of
+customizability and compatibility with other programs. There's nothing more
+powerful than being able to whip up a small python or bash script that interacts
+with a couple of other programs to achieve something instantly that optimizes my
+work flow.
+
+I use the [Awesome](http://awesome.naquadah.org/) window manager, which works
+great for tiling up terminal windows right up next to browser windows. However,
+I also use [Byobu](http://byobu.co/) (which uses
+[tmux](http://tmux.sourceforge.net) as a backend), practically a tiling window
+manager for terminals. While working with a whole bunch of terminals, I've found
+that I actually prefer using byobu panes over separate terminal windows under
+awesome.
+
+I'm pretty sure I clock in somewhere at three to five Google searches a minute
+when really focused on a programming task, especially when I'm working with
+something I'm unfamiliar with. Historically, I've done this by switching tags in
+awesome to my web browser and then searching in the Google Chrome omni-bar. It
+required me to leave the context of my code and then flip back and forth between
+code and browser if I needed to reference anything.
+
+My new-found love of w3m's compact nature led me to design the perfect search
+program for my setup. I dubbed it the generic name: search-pane, and it does the
+following:
+
+* Very light-weight interface for inputing a search query that is fed directly
+  to w3m in a Google search.
+* Byobu/Tmux key bindings to open a new window for search that closes on quit.
+* Byobu/Tmux bindings to open in a quick one-off vertical or horizontal pane.
+* Search history. Just like the bash shell, press up to cycle through past
+  searches.
+* Global history. When a search is performed on one computer using search-pane,
+  the search is added not only to that computer's history, but the history of
+  any computer listed in the other-hosts config file. I'm often sshed into many
+  different machines, so this feature was a big plus for me.
+* Vim keybindings to open up the search for even quicker access.
+
+This is how I got it setup (on any Ubuntu machine with sudo privileges):
+
+Save the following python file in `/usr/bin/` as `search-pane` (no extension):
+
+    #!/usr/bin/python
+    from subprocess import call, check_output
+    from threading import Thread
+    import os
+    import sys
+    import readline
+
+    home = os.path.expanduser("~")
+    histfile = os.path.join(home, ".search-pane/history")
+
+    # load history
+    readline.read_history_file(histfile)
+
+    os.system('cls' if os.name=='nt' else 'clear') # clear the terminal
+
+    url = ''
+    query = ''
+    if len(sys.argv) > 1:
+        url = "http://google.com/search?q=" + '+'.join(sys.argv[1:]) # google url
+        query = ' '.join(sys.argv[1:])
+        readline.add_history(query) # add query to history buffer
+    else:
+        try:
+            query = raw_input('Search: ') # get user's search
+            url = "http://google.com/search?q=" + '+'.join(query.split()) # google
+        except KeyboardInterrupt:
+            sys.exit(0)
+
+    readline.write_history_file(histfile) # write search to history file
+
+    def write_other_hosts():
+        # write to history files on other registered hosts
+        with open(os.devnull, 'w') as FNULL:
+            with open(os.path.join(home, ".search-pane/other-hosts"), "r") as f:
+                for line in f:
+                    line = line.strip().split()
+                    host = line[0]
+                    path = line[1]
+                    # make sure we don't write to local file again
+                    client_names = check_output(['hostname', '-A']).split()
+                    if (host.split('@')[-1] not in client_names):
+                        call(['ssh', host, 'echo', '"' + query + '"', '>>', path],
+                            stderr=FNULL)
+
+    # Spin off another thread for sshing so user doesn't have to wait for
+    # connection to complete before viewing w3m.
+    try:
+        Thread(target=write_other_hosts).start()
+    except Exception, errtxt:
+        print errtxt
+
+    call(['w3m', url]) # pass url off to w3m
+
+Make the directory and file for search history:
+
+    mkdir ~/.search-pane
+    touch ~/.search-pane/history
+
+Allow anyone to execute the python script (make it into a program):
+
+    chmod a+x /usr/bin/search-pane
+
+To get quick access to the program from the command-line edit `~/.bashrc` to
+add:
+
+    alias s='search-pane'
+
+To add byobu key bindings edit `~/.byobu/keybindings.tmux` (or `/usr/share/byobu/keybindings/f-keys.tmux`):
+
+    # thallada's keybindings:
+    bind-key Enter new-window -n "search" "search-pane"
+    bind-key - split-window -v -p 20 "search-pane"
+    bind-key = split-window -h -p 30 "search-pane"
+
+To add vim key bindings edit ~/.vimrc
+
+    "Open google search in a tmux split beneath vim
+    map <leader>g :silent !tmux split-window -v -p 20 "search-pane"<CR>
+
+If you wish to add the functionality to other machines then follow the steps
+above and, on every machine, add the other hosts and the paths to the
+search-pane history files on each to the other-hosts file:
+
+    vi ~/.search-pane/other-hosts
+
+The syntax is:
+
+    user@host /path/to/history
+
+Host separated by path by a space.
+
+So far it's been really useful, and since it doesn't screw up my focus as much
+I'm searching more.
+
+Also, wow python is a lot easier than bash for these sorts of things...
diff --git a/_posts/2013-08-24-on-chromebooks.md b/_posts/2013-08-24-on-chromebooks.md
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..9ebe087
--- /dev/null
+++ b/_posts/2013-08-24-on-chromebooks.md
@@ -0,0 +1,47 @@
+---
+title: On Chromebooks
+layout: post
+---
+
+I like to think that if only I find The Perfect Text Editor I will somehow
+write better and more often. Obviously this is only a tactic I use to delay
+actually writing anything, but I did come across something that might actually
+help. [Draft](https://draftin.com) is a writing app being developed by one guy,
+[Nate Kontny](https://twitter.com/natekontny), that has a ton of nifty
+features, one of its best being a version control system that allows you to
+send a draft to other people and accept or reject any changes they suggest. It
+also has a minamilistic iA Writer type interface, which focuses on the actual
+writing and nothing more.
+
+One of my most favorite features that I have just discovered, though, is that
+it allows publishing any Draft document to any arbitrary
+[WebHook](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Webhook). Which basically means I can
+click a button in the interface and that will send a POST request to a URL I
+specify with all of the data for my Draft document in JSON format. I can just
+write a bit of code to parse that data and then I instantly have a better
+editor for my blog.
+
+It was really easy to do too. For this Django website, all it took [was adding
+a view that parsed a JSON object and made a blog entry out of
+it](https://github.com/thallada/personalsite/commit/c4694a6669dbc7b79a5bff3fb818a682ecacffbb).
+You can read the
+[documentation](https://draftin.com/documents/69898?token=5fjKKlZ0-AeBzqj_RAftAGdzRzl9VBfBHj5wpSWm_gU)
+for more info on how to make a WebHook for Draft.
+
+Nate has also made a lot of other neat features, like a [Chrome extension that
+turns any textarea on the web into a Draft
+document](https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/draft/amlbbbgcijmiooecobhkjblcdkjldmdk).
+Read about some of the other features in the [Lifehacker
+article](http://lifehacker.com/5993339/draft-is-a-writing-app-with-serious-version-and-draft-control).
+The app is still in development and new features are being added constantly.
+
+I think the take-away here is that the Big Guys, with apps like Google Drive or
+Evernote, don't always have the best solutions. I tried hacking Google Drive
+into a more immersive writing experience with templates and so on, but nothing
+came close to the experience of Draft, which was exactly what I wanted to begin
+with. It's a wonder that more people don't know about Draft, but I guess that's
+part of the magic. There's a real person, an innovative and driven hacker,
+behind the product who might actually listen to what I have to say.
+
+Now excuse me while I go waste more time scouring the web for more obscure but
+brilliant apps.
diff --git a/_posts/2013-10-03-publishing-draft-docs-to-my-blog.md b/_posts/2013-10-03-publishing-draft-docs-to-my-blog.md
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..164a108
--- /dev/null
+++ b/_posts/2013-10-03-publishing-draft-docs-to-my-blog.md
@@ -0,0 +1,47 @@
+---
+title: Publishing Draft Docs to my Blog
+layout: post
+---
+
+I like to think that if only I find The Perfect Text Editor I will somehow
+write better and more often. Obviously this is only a tactic I use to delay
+actually writing anything, but I did come across something that might actually
+help. [Draft](https://draftin.com) is a writing app being developed by one guy,
+[Nate Kontny](https://twitter.com/natekontny), that has a ton of nifty
+features, one of its best being a version control system that allows you to
+send a draft to other people and accept or reject any changes they suggest. It
+also has a minamilistic iA Writer type interface, which focuses on the actual
+writing and nothing more.
+
+One of my most favorite features that I have just discovered, though, is that
+it allows publishing any Draft document to any arbitrary
+[WebHook](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Webhook). Which basically means I can
+click a button in the interface and that will send a POST request to a URL I
+specify with all of the data for my Draft document in JSON format. I can just
+write a bit of code to parse that data and then I instantly have a better
+editor for my blog.
+
+It was really easy to do too. For this Django website, all it took [was adding
+a view that parsed a JSON object and made a blog entry out of
+it](https://github.com/thallada/personalsite/commit/c4694a6669dbc7b79a5bff3fb818a682ecacffbb).
+You can read the
+[documentation](https://draftin.com/documents/69898?token=5fjKKlZ0-AeBzqj_RAftAGdzRzl9VBfBHj5wpSWm_gU)
+for more info on how to make a WebHook for Draft.
+
+Nate has also made a lot of other neat features, like a [Chrome extension that
+turns any textarea on the web into a Draft
+document](https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/draft/amlbbbgcijmiooecobhkjblcdkjldmdk).
+Read about some of the other features in the [Lifehacker
+article](http://lifehacker.com/5993339/draft-is-a-writing-app-with-serious-version-and-draft-control).
+The app is still in development and new features are being added constantly.
+
+I think the take-away here is that the Big Guys, with apps like Google Drive or
+Evernote, don't always have the best solutions. I tried hacking Google Drive
+into a more immersive writing experience with templates and so on, but nothing
+came close to the experience of Draft, which was exactly what I wanted to begin
+with. It's a wonder that more people don't know about Draft, but I guess that's
+part of the magic. There's a real person, an innovative and driven hacker,
+behind the product who might actually listen to what I have to say.
+
+Now excuse me while I go waste more time scouring the web for more obscure but
+brilliant apps.
diff --git a/_posts/2014-04-24-welcome-to-jekyll.markdown b/_posts/2014-04-24-welcome-to-jekyll.markdown
deleted file mode 100644
index cd5ec64..0000000
--- a/_posts/2014-04-24-welcome-to-jekyll.markdown
+++ /dev/null
@@ -1,24 +0,0 @@
----
-layout: post
-title:  "Welcome to Jekyll!"
-date:   2014-04-24 18:53:43
-categories: jekyll update
----
-
-You'll find this post in your `_posts` directory - edit this post and re-build (or run with the `-w` switch) to see your changes!
-To add new posts, simply add a file in the `_posts` directory that follows the convention: YYYY-MM-DD-name-of-post.ext.
-
-Jekyll also offers powerful support for code snippets:
-
-{% highlight ruby %}
-def print_hi(name)
-  puts "Hi, #{name}"
-end
-print_hi('Tom')
-#=> prints 'Hi, Tom' to STDOUT.
-{% endhighlight %}
-
-Check out the [Jekyll docs][jekyll] for more info on how to get the most out of Jekyll. File all bugs/feature requests at [Jekyll's GitHub repo][jekyll-gh].
-
-[jekyll-gh]: https://github.com/mojombo/jekyll
-[jekyll]:    http://jekyllrb.com