The quotes I noted from the book The Rosie Project by Graeme Simsion. This book was actually recommended  by Bill Gates, and here’s what he said about it:

This is one of the most profound novels I’ve read in a long time.

I also liked this book very much and marked it as a favorite on my Shelfari account and have commented it as

Try to imagine Sheldon Cooper (TBBT OFC) on a mission to find a wife. Well, you don’t have to – you can simply read this book :).Though am not a fan of romances, this one is excellent.

Anyways, the quotes:

We will risk our life to save a person from drowning, yet not make a donation to save dozens of children from starvation.

I am able to hug Rosie. This was the issue that caused me the most fear after she agreed to live with me. I generally find body contact unpleasant, but sex is an obvious exception. Sex solved the body contact problem. We’re now also able to hug without having sex, which is also convenient at times.

I’m a big fan of Stack Overflow and I tend to contribute regularly (am currently in the top 0.X%). In this category (stackoverflow) of posts I will will be posting my top rated questions and answers. This, btw, is allowed as explained in the meta thread here.

My question was:

I see few rows like this in my table:

     id  | val
 --------+------------
    1    | {}
    2    | {}

Of course not all are equal to {}, and I would like to query them out and then update them to {0}. However, trying the following fails:

UPDATE table SET val={0} WHERE val={};

I must be missing something obvious, please point out what.

The answer, by user sandipon, was:

UPDATE table SET val='{0}' WHERE val='{}';

My notes from the book Progwriter [programmer + writter] by Azat Mardan:

It’s better to have fewer features with no bugs than lots of features with bugs.

Marketing is easy when you think about the value that you bring to other people. Think about how much frustration, and how many sleepless hours, other developers can avoid by reading your books! If your product is good, this is exactly what will happen.

Leanpub, Gumroad worth checking out. Simple webhosting via Github pages, and a lot more awesome content…

I actually liked this book very much, so that I wrote the short review (5/5) on Amazon:

Honestly, so much acquired knowledge presented in a straight forward way, one would have to spend years in trying it out himself. Great eye opener for all those who aspire to become a programming writer = progwriter.

My notes from the book The Lean Startup by Eric Ries:

Split testing often uncovers surprising things. Many features that make the product better in the eyes of engineers and designers have no impact on customer behavior.

Are we making sufficient progress to believe that our original specific strategic hypothesis is correct or do we need to make a mayor change. That change is called a PIVOT – a structured course correction designed to test a new fundamental hypothesis about the product, strategy and the engine of growth.

Single piece flow – one envelope at a time. It works because of a surprising power of small batches.

It matters how fast you can get through the entire loop of build measure learn.

I’m a big fan of Stack Overflow and I tend to contribute regularly (am currently in the top 0.X%). In this category (stackoverflow) of posts I will will be posting my top rated questions and answers. This, btw, is allowed as explained in the meta thread here.

My question was:

Well, the question is in the title. I searched SO (obviously) but nothing similar came up. Additional reading material (if you happen to know one) will be helpful to solve this mystery for me.

The answer, by user Eike Pierstorff, was:

No, not by default at least.

It is technically possible to contrive a serverside solution that measures referenced assets. But usually (i.e. when you use the javascript tracking code) Google Analytics will only measure documents that have the tracking code embedded. Since you cannot embed javascript code in image files they will not be tracked.

If you want to see which images have been called from other domains you can instead have a look in your webservers access logs which keeps track of all requests to your server and usually includes the address of the referring site.

ng-wat is the most awesome video I’ve seen presented at any official conference. It was presented by the ever so slightly awesome developer Shai Reznik.

Anyways, take a look and see for yourself, and if promise you, you’ll laugh like hell.

The line I like the most is:

Every time you want to complain, make a pull request instead.

My notes from the book Creativity for sale: How I Made $1,000,000 Wearing T-Shirts and How You Can Turn Your Passion Into Profit, Too by Jason Surfrapp:

Do work that matters to you, and don’t be afraid to do things wildly differently from other people.

There was one question I always asked myself when it came to dealing with a customer service issue of any kind:’How would i want to be treated in this situation?’

Under promise and over deliver.

I’m happy to work until I’m 100 years old if I truly enjoy what I’m doing.

The freedom to understand that I don’t need things, I just want them, and that these feelings will often pass (normally when I stop watching TV).

This got me pretty alarmed:

I immediately checked the devices from which it was accessed but couldn’t see any different from what I use usually. Nevertheless, even though I use two-factor authentication, I changed my password immediately.

Now, has any one of you had a similar experience? I thought the “problem” could be related with Google ignoring the dot (.) in the email thus for example [email protected] and [email protected] would come to the same email address. But, someone used the added numbers 33, so this hardly would pass as the same use case.

Anyways, still kind of baffled about it, so would appreciate some insight from more knowledgeable users.

edit: I asked this question on another StackExchange site (StackOverflow is a part of StackExchange btw) called Web Applications and will see if I get some explanation  there.

edit2: The answer, as that usually is the case with StackExchange sites, came pretty swiftly. User Al E. responded:

It’s hard to tell exactly what you’ve got here. (I don’t speak or read the language. (Slovenian? Croatian?)) I suspect one of two possibilities:

1. Someone logged in (or tried to log in) from an area where you usually aren’t. (I might get a message if someone tried to log in from China, when I’m on the East Coast of the U.S.)
2. More likely, I think, is someone has set your email address to be their recovery email or alternate email, and probably by mistake

I think you’ve done the responsible thing. You’re already using two-step authentication and you’ve changed your password. This probably won’t ever come up again. I wouldn’t worry any more about it.

And my comment on it was:

Thanks for your answer. Sorry for not translating Croatian (very close guess btw!), but essentially what it says is that someone just signed in to my account [email protected], then some details and then the question with a link if I don’t recognize this activity. Since this email isn’t mine I’m inclined to thinking that the possibility 2 really is the case, be it intentional or unintentional. But yeah, I probably should have a peace of mind having changed the pass immediately and since I have a two-way auth enabled. Thanks for reassurance! –

I’m a big fan of Stack Overflow and I tend to contribute regularly (am currently in the top 0.X%). In this category (stackoverflow) of posts I will will be posting my top rated questions and answers. This, btw, is allowed as explained in the meta thread here.

My question was:

I am wondering how to rewrite this code to work with qq:

  $containerRight = <<<qq
    <div class="container_right">
        {echoLikeBox()}

        <div class="join_us"><a href="#"><img src="images/join_us.png" width="304" height="44" alt=""></a></div>

        <div class="box2"><a href="#"><img src="images/twitter_big.gif" width="304" height="292" alt=""></a></div>

        <div class="box3"><a href="#"><img src="images/facebook.jpg" width="304" height="257" alt=""></a></div>

        <div class="box4"><a href="#"><img src="images/google_ads.gif" width="304" height="164" alt=""></a></div>
    <!-- container_right end --></div>;
    qq;
    echo $containerRight;

The problem is that I don’t know how to echo function inside the <<<. The code for the echoLikBox() is this:

function echoLikeBox()
{
    $likeBox = <<<qq
    <div class="box1">
            <div class="box1_lft"><a href="#"><img src="images/tweet.jpg" width="108" height="20" alt=""></a></div>
            <div class="box1_rht"><a href="#"><img src="images/like.jpg" width="82" height="20" alt=""></a></div>
            <div class="clear"></div>
    </div><!-- box1 end -->
    qq;
    echo $likeBox;
}

edit: found the solution here: Calling PHP functions within HEREDOC strings

The answer, by user Gavin Anderegg, was:

You may want to change the “echoLikeBox()” function to, instead of echoing its contents, store them as a string. You can’t make a call to a function inside of heredoc strings, but you can output variables. So, for example, you could have:

function echoLikeBox()
{
    $likeBox = <<<qq
    <div class="box1">
            <div class="box1_lft"><a href="#"><img src="images/tweet.jpg" width="108" height="20" alt=""></a></div>
            <div class="box1_rht"><a href="#"><img src="images/like.jpg" width="82" height="20" alt=""></a></div>
            <div class="clear"></div>
    </div><!-- box1 end -->
qq;
    return $likeBox;
}

and then just

$likeBox = echoLikeBox();

$containerRight = <<<qq
    <div class="container_right">
        $likeBox

        ...

inside of the main body.

I was just accepted to the Webfestival 2015 competition, so fingers crossed!

C/P from the official site (since, well, this is for Croatian users – so, fellow citizens, do join in!):

Tema ovogodišnjeg Webfestivala su osobne web stranice koje se u kontekstu natjecanja promatraju kao zbirka digitalnih sadržaja koje prikazuju napredak, razvoj i postignuća nekog pojedinca.

Cilj natjecanje je ukazati na potencijal i važnost osobnih web stranica u vremenu cjeloživotnog učenja i kontinuiranog stručnog usavršavanja te potaknuti CARNetove korisnike, ali i sve ostale, na izradu osobnih web stranica. Također, tijekom trajanja natjecanja ćemo kroz radionice i webinare upoznati korisnike s pojedinim alatima i mogućnostima za izradu osobnih web stranica te ćemo naposljetku autore najboljih osobnih web stranica i nagraditi vrijednim nagradama.

Svi zainteresirani autori mogu se prijaviti u dvije kategorije – Osobne stranice u obrazovanju ili Profesionalne osobne web stranice putem prijavnice dostupne nahttp://webfestival.carnet.hr/2015_prijava . Prijava na natjecanje će biti moguća do 30. rujna 2015. kada će Ocjenjivački sud započeti s ocjenjivanjem pristiglih prijava.

Autorima osobnih web stranica koje stručni Ocjenjivački sud ocijeni najboljima u svakoj kategoriji bit će dodijeljena nagrada u okviru CARNetove korisničke konferencije CUC 2015 koja se ove godine održava u Dubrovniku od 18. –  20. 11. 2015.

Pozivamo sve zainteresirane da se s detaljima natjecanja, pravilima sudjelovanja te kriterijima ocjenjivanja upoznaju na webu natjecanja  te da se prijave na natjecanje.