In the realm of public spaces, the concept of a 'commons' bears versatile significance. Essentially, a commons is an open, publicly available space, inviting everyone without any discrimination. This age-old idea of a common ground, a place for civic discourse, collaboration and co-creation, remains as relevant today as it ever was. But what happens when private entities step into this traditionally public domain? Can a private entity create a true 'commons'? If so, what does it look like, and is it really a commons?


Before we engage with these questions, let's look at a few instances where private entities have created a space marketed as 'commons.' A case in point is the Apple App Store, an ostensibly open space marketed as being available to any developer, despite being restrictive and curated. Google Play Store provides similar services, with slightly fewer restrictions, but toeing the same line with respect to government restrictions. Twitter, now rebranded as X, has strived to be the “town square” of the internet, upholding the ethos of a commons where anyone can engage in global discussion and voice their opinions. Yet, even they have drawn flak for censoring tweets and users, under the guise of protecting narratives or advancing ideologies.


So, given these instances, can a private company genuinely create a commons? Can a space crafted by a private entity, intended for public consumption, still bear the same level of unrestricted access and equitable engagement that defines a true commons? The answer is somewhat layered. Yes, private entities can form what can be called 'commons,' provided they manage to nurture an atmosphere of inclusivity and public ownership while maintaining a transparent and restricted influence.


Historically, examples from Ford Motors to Penguin Random House seek to suggest that the definition of commons can be as fluid as the entity creating it. Henry Ford’s Model T car democratised access to a public commons of roadways, while private publishers have created a knowledge commons accessible to the masses. In the advent of open-source software, companies like Red Hat have given the world a model of collaborative creation and shared ownership.

Modern sharing economy models, as seen in Uber, Lyft, and Airbnb, serve as an illustration of a 'sharing commons.’ Herein, resources like vehicles and homes, instead of being individually owned, become part of a shared ecosystem, marking a transformative step towards communal consumption.


However, these examples also drive home a crucial point. The true spirit of a commons—untrammelled access, absolute freedom for public discourse and collaboration—should not be sidelined. This balance between upholding the ethos of a commons while acknowledging the limited role of a private entity is the key to achieving a truly open commons.

As we advance further into this interconnected age, the conversation around private entities and the formation of a commons will only escalate. As such, striking a delicate balance between preserving the integrity of a commons and acknowledging the evolving role of private entities in contributing to it remains crucial. A commons, whether physical or digital, whether initiated by a public or private entity, should fundamentally serve as a foundation where humanity can thrive.

While it is indeed possible for private entities to birth a 'commons', ensuring the universality, inclusivity and equity of such spaces poses an ongoing challenge. But, if addressed correctly, these can serve as spaces that truly epitomise a 'commons' where ideas are freely exchanged, and community creation is prioritised. This lies at the heart of what a ‘commons’ originally strives to be, regardless of its origin or who sparked its creation.

Private Entities and the Creation of Commons

In the rapidly evolving realm of software architecture, it is all too easy to become overwhelmed by the complexities and intricacies of numerous features, tools, and frameworks. As a developer, prioritising software minimalism – the practice of implementing only what is necessary while maintaining simplicity and efficiency in your code – can significantly bolster your productivity and ensure long-term scalability & maintainability. In this article, we delve into the essential aspects of software minimalism.


At the core of software minimalism lies the guiding principle: "

implement only what you're going to need.

" By adhering to this fundamental tenet, you can ensure that your code remains pristine, manageable, and efficient, even as your project expands in complexity.


Essential Components of Minimalism in Software Development:

Consolidate and Streamline your Infrastructure

When working with various services and internet accounts, strive for simplicity by consolidating and streamlining your digital interactions. By opting for a focused ecosystem, you can ultimately save time, resources, and administrative effort, even if it entails a minor premium.

Emphasise Simplicity: Avoid over-complicating implementations

Concentrate on addressing the most pressing and immediate requirements, rather than attempting to predict every possible scenario. Trying to accommodate numerous use cases simultaneously can lead to intricate, difficult-to-maintain code and potentially trap you in seemingly insurmountable software challenges.

Complex implementations can wreak havoc down the line, resulting in protracted feature development times, more arduous bug resolutions, and escalating iteration costs.


Practical Strategies for Embracing Software Minimalism:

Prioritise the essentials: Focus on the features critical at the present moment while thoughtfully designing an architecture that accommodates future developments or modifications.

Remove redundancies: Swiftly eliminate components that do not serve an immediate purpose, preventing unnecessary clutter and confusion.

Engage in regular refactoring: Consistently refine your code to ensure it remains clean, efficient, and well-organised, even as new features are introduced or requirements evolve.

The Potential of Minimalist Software Development

Software minimalism is a sound approach to software development that emphasises simplicity, productivity, and enduring maintainability. By concentrating on the essentials, eliminating excess, and diligently refining your code, you can master the art of minimalist programming, crafting efficient and adaptable software capable of being maintained long into the future.

Software Architectural Minimalism: Simplicity and Efficiency in Development

When it comes to writing a feature, and when it comes to getting that feature out the door, and usually when that feature should have been out the door yesterday, managers very often tend to "solve the problem" by 

"More" or "more senior" is not a guarantee for anything

Features are not "problems" that get solved by simply throwing "more resources" at them

Features are not "things" that get resolved in a randomly allocated set of time which was determined by someone who has never touched the code (cough cough, e.g. managers or even worse finance departments)

Features are intricate and complicated - you could even argue they are an art form, and this needs to be understood!

These so-called "resources" that mangers work with are actually human (who would've thought?) They can hear, they can see, they can touch, they can smell, they can taste - and, they can even "break", "malfunction" or "simply not work". If a manager assumes: "I have one developer here, and I can add another one here and then perhaps a third, then I will have exactly 300% output - or perhaps even 350% depending on the so-called seniority. Brilliant!" Then that assumption is wholly flawed!

"Resources", aka developers, aka humans, have very different approaches to solving problems, writing features and creating art. Some might love building nice-looking features, some might prefer practicality over aesthetic, some might prefer speed over function, some might even not care about the feature, some might want to paint the inside of the box even though no one will ever see the inside of the box, etc. etc. You get the point.

Knowing the people that you have working on writing features will help you understand how to resolve problems without necessarily throwing more people at the problem - as your general approach!

And usually, the more people that are involved in writing a feature the more difficult it will be for them to complete it.

Would you rather have 10 people write an essay, or three, or rather one?

If you have one person writing an essay (regardless of the length or complexity of it) you'll most likely end up with an essay that has great coherency. If you have three, you might still have the same coherency but the writing styles might differ or it might seem like different people wrote the essay. If you have 10 people writing the essay, heck, you might end up with a poorly executed ChatGPT essay which you've explicitly told to be unreadable and un-understandable.

The point is, maybe you have a person that's really good at writing the entire essay. And maybe that person is also really fast and can always tackle an essay on their own. But maybe you have an essay that needs to be a 1,000,000 words long and it needs to be done yesterday. In such a case, 

People have different strengths and quirks - and things take time. There is no magic "reduce the amount of time it takes to complete" button - we would have all pressed it long ago!

One person might be really good at writing introductions (starting the feature), another might be really good at writing the body, yet another might be really good at fleshing out sentences and filling them with emotions and capturing a reader's attention, yet another might be a better grammar police than any online grammar tool.

If one person is slow, another might be quicker, but therefore sloppier. One person might not be able to express sentiment in coherent sentences, let alone write a word, and is being asked to write a really short and simple introduction. All of these things matter! The people might not even like working with each other. Some might not have the right tools, some might need "bringing up to speed" (lol - should've been done yesterday), some might need to jump off other things they're in the middle of. It's really a bit of a jungle and simply "adding 10 more people in the last minute" will 

It takes great skill to find and encourage people to work together on something as seemingly simple as a feature.

Given that each person has their own strengths and that each person approaches problems differently one has to make room for interactions that take place outside of the "writing the feature" part - and those take time and need that time. No amount of "it needed to be done yesterday" can speed this process up.

 purposefully allow for extra time to overcome the initial complexity which you are disruptively adding into the mix before expecting even a single line of hoped-for "quicker code" to be implemented.

There is always a trade-off where adding more people will simply result in a communication and complexity overload which, sure, by your calculations would just be a matter of "add more", but in the end will result in something more along the lines of "should've added better".

What managers need to know about writing features

Rust is not trivial and neither is testing your code. How you approach your testing can depend on your perspective.

If you're coming from the OOP mindset, you probably want to mock all objects and almost see that as a given. Some people with a functional programming background are already going wtf, this is a code smell. However, in both cases, at some point you'll find yourself trying to test code that interacts with another system.

If you need to define functions in rust that need to return different values (maybe something akin to a mock?) when writing tests, the 

 annotations can be really useful. Let's use an integration test as an example.

 package as an example for this. It has an interesting feature that allows you to open up a database in memory. This is different to other setups where you would usually provide a database connection string as an environment variable or a config. This also allows us to create and destroy the database purely for testing purposes.


Let's say you're trying to code that does a database read/write. During automated testing you want to create the database in memory, but in production, it would need to open a connection to the production database.


Rust allows us to annotate functions, imports, structs etc with 

. Depending on the context of the compile and runtime of the application, rust will decide which one of these annotations is currently contextual and will execute the code beneath.

Here we define two connection methods. One for the tests and one for, well, not test.

cargo build #( with or without --release )

Splitting by context like this can be used in other areas of your code as well. Maybe there are specific things that should only be executed in test scenarios.


Rust Testing Context

Make it your passion to hunt down your goal like you would a wild beast.

Wake up with a sense of going out to hunt and come back home to sleep saying, "It was a good day hunting!"

Never focus on what you or others can't do. Focus on what you can do. And don't quit!


Are you hunting?

Here are some bits and pieces pulled out of an excellent article posted on hackernoon.com

"These are the true origins of Bitcoin and everyone knows it. Bitcoin is a solution to the problem of the State having absolute control over the form and supply of money and the regulation of banks. That is why it is so powerful; it solves two difficult problems at once, and offers an unimaginable number of secondary uses that are tangential to the money use of Bitcoin."

"There is no place in the Bitcoin world for the Federal Reserve; Bitcoin was designed to destroy it. This is the real reason these institutions are testing new networks." (aka Ripple)

"there is no Blockchain without Bitcoin:"

"you will never again see people complaining that a bank where they had an account has shut off their access to their own money. All the artificial rules and restrictions of the central bank licenced banking system evaporate in Bitcoin."

"Bitcoin is not a simple transition to a new medium. It is a paradigm shift. Every assumption about what money is, how it is stored, who should control its production, how it is transmitted and managed is turned on its head in Bitcoin. This is not a simple matter of moving from Oracle to MySQL; this is the equivalent of computing without computers. Its something that is very hard to accept for people inured to the idea that the State should be the sole provider of money; "

"the idea that anyone should rely on a State issuer of an alt-coin for money is absurd."

"You do not need to “put an asset on the network”. All you need Bitcoin for is a means of accounting for something. Once again, this idea of “putting assets on the network” is an example of computer illiterates trying to find a use case for something designed to do a job that they do not believe needs to be done. None of these people believed that there was a need for Bitcoin before Bitcoin existed; they were all happy with the Federal Reserve and its fiat currency, inflating money supply and all the ills that were borne of it. They had no interest in cryptography, privacy and especially financial privacy, which they believed was inherently criminal and they still do."

"This is the explicit purpose of Bitcoin; to eradicate the central banks and put the money function out of reach of regulators permanently. People are asking the wrong questions about Bitcoin. One of these wrong questions is “What role should we (the state) play in the emerging digital asset economy?” The answer is you have no role to play. You are now nothing more than peers on the network at best. You will only be tolerated if you provide a useful service."

A tl;dr of "Why Central Banks Will Fail at Digital Currency"

Proof of concept for website tracking/analytics using only CSS and without JavaScript.

Webpage tracking only using CSS (and no JS)

"The only way that is known to me currently is, to disable CSS for a webpage completely (you can do this with a plugin like uMatrix). The problem that almost every modern webpage looks very ugly without CSS and is sometimes even unusable completely. So, disable CSS is not a real option, except when you are very worried about your privacy (for example, when you are using Tor browser, you should maybe disable CSS).

A better solution would be, that browsers does not load the external content (referenced in CSS), when it is needed, but when the site is loaded. Then it would be impossible to detect single actions. This modification to content loading could be implemented by the browsers itself, or maybe by a plugin (similar to NoScript or uMatrix)

The problem is that this solution maybe has a performance impact, because the browser has to load a lot of content on initial site loading (and maybe the browser will not use the content at all)."

Tracking via CSS

The SEC released a statement yesterday, concluding that DAO (Distributed Autonomous Organisations) tokens would be seen and dealt with as securities and as such, would be subject to federal securities laws. Regardless of whether these tokens were purchased using the US Dollar or 

While the report claims that the SEC will not bring up any charges against companies at this time, it does highlight the fact, that this is to be seen as a strong warning to the market, that they are definitely aware of what is going on and is busy studying the effects of distributed ledgers.

The SEC is concerned that investors and market participants are protected under federal law with regards to ICOs (Initial Coin Offerings) used to fund new ventures.

SEC rule ICOs as securities

A service which queries the API's of various Bitcoin exchanges around the world.

Busy working on a Bitcoin Price ticker which runs as a service and grabs the current exchange rates from various exchanges.

. I'm open to / looking for contributors who are interested in reviewing the code, adding support for exchanges etc etc.

I'll be adding exchanges as time goes on myself and improving the code. The idea is mainly to provide an option to self-host (or something like that) your own exchange rate data.

I have this running on my netbook as a background service in Linux. Which means that while I'm working, it keeps a SQLite database up to date with exchange rates etc, which can then be queries locally.

Bitcoin currency ticker project

Over the last 2 to 3 years Bitcoin has been facing the same question that any other network faces at some point, "How do we scale this?"

Bitcoin is a peer to peer payments network, comparable only to cash or gold. While it differs in many ways from cash or gold, they remain the closest comparison. The heart of the network is made up of the Blockchain. An immutable, transparent, distributed and open to innovation ledger, that keeps a record of all transactions, that have occurred on the network. This ledger is kept up to date using a consensus mechanism called proof of work; which validates all new transactions made on the network, as well as inadvertently confirming every existing transaction over and over again.

The people who partake in this consensus mechanism are called miners. Miners dedicate hardware which they have purchased, as well as electricity, to validate transactions made on the Bitcoin network. They group transactions into chunks (from the mempool, where new transactions are submitted to) and validate whether or not they are legitimate transactions. This is done based on an algorithm agreed upon by the entire world. Once they have validated the transactions, they solve a puzzle to prove that they did the work (proof of work) and submit these chunks to the Blockchain.

These chunks are called blocks. Each block, is currently 1MiB in size. The average transaction can range between 226 bytes and 1kb in size. Which usually translates to around 1500 -> 2500 transactions being mined in each block. Each block takes about 10 minutes to "find" (to validate transactions and to solve the puzzle). This is what is called Bitcoin's heartbeat. It beats every 10 minutes at a rate of 7 transactions per second (compared to VISA which handles on average around 2,000 transactions per second).

The 1MiB limit was imposed by Bitcoin's creator Satoshi Nakamoto, about 1.5 years after it's launch, from 32MiB to 1MiB. Based on interpretations of his comments relating to it, this change in code was to keep bandwidth and network requirements low enough, to be practical for anyone to keep a copy of the Blockchain on their computer. The idea was to increase the block size at a later stage. However, he never commented on when or how this size increase would roll out. The idea was that by the time this question needed to be answered, we would've advanced far enough, in accordance with Moore's law, that a block size increase would essentially keep the cost of running a node to about the same as it was back then.

We've come to this point. Blocks are constantly reaching their 1MiB limit and have been for more than a year, we have a serious back log of transactions in the mempool every couple of days (think on average 60k transactions waiting to get confirmed) and have split the community into two camps. Each with their own idea on how to scale the Bitcoin network.

On the one hand we have a Bitcoin improvement protocol called Segregated Witness or SegWit (segwit). Segwit's purpose isn't directly related to a block size increase but its improvements allow for a theoretical 0.7MiB increase in block size. To understand how this works, we need to look at how Bitcoin transactions work.

On a very simplistic basis, a Bitcoin transaction consists of inputs and outputs. Inputs contain transactions that you reference to prove how you got the Bitcoins that you are about to spend and outputs contain the destinations and amounts, where you would like to send these Bitcoin. The inputs are then signed by your private key which proves ownership of those Bitcoin and the the entire transaction (signed input and outputs combined) is submitted to the Blockchain. Each transaction in a block contains its own set of signatures and this contributes to the size of a transaction.

Segwit allows a miner to take the transaction signatures and split them from the transactions portion of the block. One of the problems that segwit is trying to fix is a more complex one called transaction malleability. Essentially, in some edge cases, transaction ID's can be changed during the mining process. Which means if you were monitoring a specific transaction ID to see if it has been confirmed or not, you'd never know. Once it is mined, the ID is "accidentally" changed. Causing a lot of confusion. Segwit solves this problem by splitting signatures from the transactions which prevents this change in ID from being possible. Which also provides the 0.7MiB block size increase.

Fixing transaction malleability (which enable things like the lightening network)

Increases the block size from 1MiB to ~1.7MiB

Provides security gains for hardware wallets

Linear scaling of sighash operations (prevents maliciously designed transactions from clogging up the network)

Efficiency gains when not verifying signatures

For a more in-depth look at each of these points above, visit 

On the other side of the coin, we have the so called "Big Blockers". Who firmly believe that in order to scale Bitcoin as a network, we must increase the block size. This would mean that more transactions can be mined at once. For instance, if the current "heartbeat" of Bitcoin produces 7 transactions per second with a 1MiB block size, increasing the block size to 2MiB would directly increase the transactions per second processed to 14. The debate between the "Big Blockers" is still open as to how big this increase should be, some want 2MiB, others 8MiB. Out of this dilemma, Bitcoin Unlimited was born. Bitcoin Unlimited tries to solve the block size issue by allowing users to define their own consensus on what block sizes to accept.

Problems with this solution include the increased cost of keeping a Bitcoin Node running. Meaning the number of Nodes would drop and the risk of centralisation increases. Other problems, related more specifically to Bitcoin Unlimited, stem from the ability for users to dictate their own accepted block sizes. Causing the network to be in constant flux over what is the true Blockchain and what is discarded as a side-chain. This can cause confusion as transactions which may have been mined on a side chain, will all of a sudden lose confirmations and end up in the mempool again (ending up in the mempool is the best case scenario, worst case, the transaction just disappears and the sender has their money back); due to the side chain being discarded.

Bitcoin works on a consensus protocol. Every decision made in Bitcoin needs the buy in from the entire network. If a new feature is to be implemented, which changed the way Bitcoin functions, a voting mechanism is kicked into play. Anybody accepting this new feature, and would like to include it into their implementation of Bitcoin, casts their vote by "signaling" their support for this feature.

This is done by installing and running the version of Bitcoin which implements it. If more than 75% of the network is in agreement and votes toward a new feature, it becomes part of the Bitcoin consensus and the network moves in that direction as a whole. The other 25% have the choice to either take it or leave it. In a situation where the change is a so called "Soft Fork", the 25% will not be excluded from the network but will not reap the benefits of the new feature. If the implementation is rolled out as a "Hard Fork", the 25% are "forced" to switch otherwise they will end up on a side-chain. A version of Bitcoin which is not accepted by the new direction of the Blockchain and therefore has no buying power.

Everyone on the new main Blockchain will not see any transactions on the side-chain and vice-versa. They cut themselves off.

If we take a look at the current state of the Bitcoin Mining network, we see the following stats (these are sourced from 

SegWit: 25.7% have signaled their support

Bitcoin Unlimited: 19.9% have signaled their support

8MiB Block Size Increase: 6.2% have signaled their support

It seems that after 2, going on to 3, years of this debate, we have not found a scaling solution that is accepted by everyone. Unfortunately, politics has had an influence in the decision making of many and each side has valid points. Regardless in which camp you sit, a scaling solution needs to be implemented. Sooner rather than later. We may only have a year or so left before the first contentious hard forks become a reality.

How do we scale Bitcoin

Changing the default vim theme is quite simple yet so many don't bother to spend two minutes to improve their quality of life dramatically.

 or any other scheme you like. Make sure that the 

 file ends up in the following directory (you'll need to be root):

Then add the colour scheme as default for all users:

Add the following to the very bottom of the file:

Save and exit. Next time you open any file with vim the colour scheme should be applied.

Giving vim a colour scheme

What is it that you want to achieve? What drives you? Where are you heading?

Recently I was asked what my 2 and 5 year goals are professionally and personally. I was stumped! I had no idea. Why do I even need to answer such questions? I'm content, I'm happy. I have nothing to complain about. At this stage in my life everything is pretty peachy.

I'm employed, I love what I do and the people closest to me are awesome. I couldn't think of anything that I desperately want to achieve. I have no plans. I have no great, life-changing ambitions.

Ok, well if I have to answer then I will need some time to think about it. So I thought about it... for weeks. And what I came up with is, well... it's not much.

Professionally, I want to encourage other people to reach their full potential. I want to help them unlock their talents. I want them to achieve the things that they set out as their goals. I want to help them fight their uphill struggles in life. I want to provide the tools or financial support they need. I want to be the person they can come to when they have no-one to talk to. I want to be there. I simply want to be there next to them. I want to say the right word at the right time. I want to make them believe in themselves when all odds are against them. I want to make them power through the wall they have their back up against.

Personally, I want to be a good friend, brother, son and someday a loving husband. I'm emotionally cold. I don't like that about myself. And to convey my feelings is a real struggle. You know, like a cold bucket of ice? That's me. You have an awesome idea? I'll most probably think it's a crappy idea (pour that bucket of ice all over you...). Not because I don't think it's an awesome idea, because I'm ice cold. But that can change. And it has to change, that's my ambition, that's my drive. "Eliminate the negatives and strengthen the positives."

These aren't even 2 or 5 year plans and goals. These are things I yearn for. These are things that will define me. These are the things that will define others that interact with me. These are things that are more important than "earning a higher salary" or being a "successful individual". What even is that? Who came up with that? Why do we measure ourselves by the material gains we make? That is pathetic! Why do we even measure each other by what school or college we went to? Are we for real?!

I want to live in a world where goals and ambitions are to help others first and then focus on ourselves. I strive to create such a future. Imagine a world where you try to help someone and that person asks you "Hey, how can I help you?". Wouldn't that be awesome? A world where we help each other, a world where we strive to bring each other forward.

So what is it you want to achieve? What drives you? Where are you heading?

Finding purpose

grep is a wonderful tool that I think those new to Linux should really come to grips with.

Essentially, it allows you to search for strings. Simple as that. However, I recently discovered that grep can also be used to search for strings in files in folders, i.e. if you've got a folder full of text files and you're looking for one containing a specific string use grep! syntax:

Here's an example of me trying to find files still containing the string "dev.journeyatrest.com" that I use in my development environment:

Or you can omit the directory and it will search in the currently active directory. 

 just means recursive; so it will search through sub-directories as well. You can limit your results to display only file names using 

You can take this further and pipe the result to 

 can then use the results from a "grep -rl" to replace the string you're searching for with another string, e.g.:

's/dev.journeyatrest.com/my.journeyatrest.com/g'

grep the world

Is your coding on the next level? What is the next level? I didn't know there are levels, are there levels? Is this a game? How do I get to the next level?

Now, there are a few things I need to clear up. Coding is awesome. Also, coding is fun. And coding is awesome - not sure I mentioned that. By the way, fun fact, coding can also be painstakingly unfun. And that's when you notice you are stuck on a certain "level".

That feeling you get after looking at your code for hours and hours and not realising that you are looking at the wrong file. That feeling you get when you are trying to solve a problem for hours on end and then you read the docs and the answer is right there. That feeling you get when you pull some code and realise the only thing you understand are the block comments.

This happens (or at least it happens to me). It's a sign that you have reached the end of the level. And you're not going anywhere soon, because what you are doing is not taking you to the next level. The next level doesn't simply unlock when you reach the end of the current level. You see, in programming things work differently. It's not a computer game. It's actually real life. And in life, you don't get to the next level by simply skipping everything and running to the end of the current level. In life, you get to the next level by putting in some extra effort.

To get to the next level you have to realise that there will 

 be a next level. Should I say more? Do I need to say more? There is no end game or ultimate boss fight. There is no black screen with credentials to congratulate you. There is simply a blank screen staring back at you, asking "Do you even code bro?"

And that's when it hits you. The next level, the next level... the next level, it is right there. It is right there in front of you. And the funny thing is, you thought there was a next level.

Taking it to the next level

JavaScript code can very quickly become unmaintainable... Few developers will say of themselves that they have produced unmaintainable code. As developers we tend to get very attached to our code.

We pride ourselves on producing high quality and maintainable code. And there is absolutely nothing wrong with that! I would like to challenge developers though to let go of their egos and create "ego-less" coding environments.

Linters are tools which can help achieve such environments. Ego-less coding environments thrive on making better coders out of everyone on the team and will encourage team members to focus on learning and implementing best practices and standards whenever and wherever possible.

 and fallen in love with it. I use Atom (previously used Sublime) and the 

 is amazing. At first, dealing with errors and warnings was a pain. Now it is becoming a pleasure to work with.

Very quickly I became obsessed with strict standards and best practices. I searched online... unsuccessful. It was hard to find an eslintrc file which adhered to fairly strict standards and best practices while not covering the screen in a bloodbath of linting errors. (Yes, I know I said ego-less earlier, but red is just a painful colour to look at all day :D - rather make it orange :P)

Anyways, I said to myself, "Go through all the rules and make your own .eslintrc file." Brilliant idea! Basically took me 8 hours to go through all the rules and I didn't even read all of them properly! I have great respect for 

Meanwhile, back at the ranch, after a hard day's work and some more days testing on code I had lying around the rc file is ready for distribution. Goldilocks would be satisfied!

 (An annotated version of the .eslintrc file)

Take it or leave it. Also, thanks to fellow coders it is now dubbed the "C-Dawg linter", because code ain't been linted until it has been c-dawg linted!

ESLint best practice .eslintrc file

Amongst the flood of reviews and opinions about the latest Windows Phone 10 release, I believe 2 smaller, yet very important, updates have been missed. I’d like to share those 2 with you because it’s something which other platforms have not yet been able to get right.

I'll start with the first one which caught my eye.

Apple and Google have had a bit of a hard time over the last couple of years with this one. The problem is simple. An app is free to download and use. Fine. However, once the user has the app installed, he finds certain aspects have been locked until they purchase the full version. This can often be seen in games. Players will be asked to buy the full version to unlock more levels, as an example.

The problem here is, or was, deception. Users were not notified of this and felt betrayed. Google and Apple responded in the end by informing users on the app download page, that there would be in app purchases. Fine.

Microsoft just took it a step further. In it's latest beta release, not only do they show you that there are in app purchases, but they also show you exactly what they'll be!

Here's something new. Windows Phone 10 will pop up your next reminder as it shuts down. Not only is this very, very useful, it's also more user oriented than Apple's "Always On" policy.

Windows Phone 10 Build 10166

An auto-save script with PHP and JavaScript.

The purpose of these two scripts, are to act as an auto-save function for blog posts. It can of course the re-purposed for anything else but this is what it was originally intended for.

This function works in 2 parts. There is a JavaScript and a PHP script component. The JavaScript calls itself every 5 seconds, gets the values of the predefined fields and posts them (via POST) to the PHP script. The PHP script then checks to see if the values posted by the JavaScript function already exist in the database or not.

If they do exist, the PHP script will run an update, if they do not exist, PHP will insert those values into the database.

Place the JavaScript into your page. Into either the or the tags. It's really up to you.

Ensure that 'var url' is = to the name of your php script which captures the input. In this case, it's simply 'autosave.php'.

Save the PHP script 'autosave.php' either to the same directory as the JavaScript script or, if it has been saved elsewhere, update the java script module to point to the correct folder.

PHP & JavaScript auto-save

It's big, it's bold, it's reckless – and possibly the coolest thing since self-driving cars and drones. The 

 is slowly but surely climbing into reality and consuming anything and everything it can get its hands onto.

Consider this. You are a human. You are the "thing" which is in control of this other "thing" which we call "the internet". The internet is this magical place. It contains "things" such as the youtubes, the soundclouds, the wikipedias, the social networks, the newses, the appses, and so on... That alone is already quite astounding and breathtaking – even more so when we know not everybody has access to the internet.

To put it short. The internet is quite impressive.

But hang on though... what about having even more "things"? Not more things as in more websites, more cool things to do, more entertainment. More actual things – 

The IoT is the internet on steroids. They might as well have called it IoS (Internet on Steroids). Unfortunately that acronym was already taken. And because we all know what people mean when they say "thing" and "things", it seems very applicable to call it the Internet of Things. Cough... Nobody actually knows what it is. All we know is: "Things!"

Up until this point, interaction with the internet has been pretty straight forward. You need a device with a screen. You need some electricity, some WiFi or other means of connecting, and bang! Internet.

So where exactly in this picture does your fridge feature? Your car? Your front-door lights? Your TV? Your lawn mower? Your sprinkler? Your dog? Your plants?

Does your plant really need an internet connection? Seriously?

Probably not, although it could be interesting for the plant to tell you it needs more sunlight and that you gave it too much water yesterday. Consider something closer to reality:

You're driving your car. You have a serious accident with another car. You, as well as the other person, are incapable of moving and cannot reach your mobile phone. Assume you and the other person need medical attention as soon as possible. Wouldn't it be practical at this point for both of your cars to notify the nearest hospital that there has been a serious accident? The cars could send their precise location, the best route to get to the accident and even medical details on the passengers involved in the accident.

The IoT plans to bring together all types of 

, especially networks which will be able to save lives and educate people. The plan is to establish 

 which will be spoken across these networks so that ultimately all kinds of "things" (yes, "things") can 

Well, if you haven't yet noticed, these "things" won't need us to control them anymore. Remember how at the beginning I said we control the "thing"? Well, now we have more "things" and they don't need us to control them. They will be perfectly capable of "controlling" themselves. They will more than likely improve our lives and how we interact with the world around us, but it's sure exciting to see the internet doing some steroids.

The IoT revisited

Facebook, Twitter, Google+, Instagram, Snapchat, MySpace (still), LinkedIn, Email, Pinterest, Flickr, 500px, Soundcloud, etc., etc...

There are too many, we don't need another one. We need fewer social media networks with more targeted usages and broader reaches. For instance. We could take the entire list above and condense it into 3 different categories.

Every app these days wants it's own ecosystem rather than developing methods of growing existing social media networks and expanding on sub-ecosystems. I'm talking about a concept similar to the Google+ circles, but in the background, on a developer and not user level.

Complex Social Networks (e.g. Facebook, Google+, LinkedIn)

Simple Social Networks (e.g. Twitter, Email)

Media (Picture, Video, Audio based) Social Networks (e.g. Instagram, Flickr, 500px, Soundcloud)

For instance, I make use of Soundhound. It wants me to log in and use it's own history, location, search and friends system. I can of course log in using a Facebook account and "connect" with my friends, but the data still resides with Soundhound, not Facebook.

Now privacy issues aside for a moment. I am looking for cohesion. Logging in with a Facebook account into Soundhound should automatically pull through my music interests, my friends, my search history etc and allow me to sync back any new songs or artists I find to a list on Facebook, or even Google+. It doesn't really matter which one of the "Complex Social Media" networks are used.

You should have one set of data which grows and gets curated as you grow it.

Well, to begin with we need a core. A base to start off with. Something that could tie our friends, interests, geo-based interests, etc under one umbrella. Like a data-house which contains all the data relating to "you". This would be one of the "Complex Social Networks". This would be our own personal "Command Centre" for our data. In here we would find things like: From there on up, we start adding layers to the equation. This is where the customisability aspect comes into play. Our "Simple Social Networks" or "Media Social Networks". Would you like to be able to share status updates, photos you've taken or music you've produced with friends. Then geo-tag your posts, group and search for specific topics and so on and so forth? Well, then link Twitter, Soundcloud and Flickr/Instagram to your core. The Twitter/Soundcloud/Flickr/Instagram application would remain identical to the one you're used to and would operate in the same way, however, your tweets are stored in the core "Complex Social Network".

All of our connected Layers (Accounts, additional applications linked to the core)