I'm going to assume that since you're reading this, you're a technophile and you're already in the Google+ beta. I'm not going to talk about why Google+ is good, or how google finally "got social right", or why I love it more than life itself or any such nonsense. I'm going to talk about facebook.

Please don't misunderstand the title, I think you should try google+ out. If you like it (I do) then great! keep using it to your hearts content.

It's still about search

I'm pretty sure the primary reason for google+ is the +1 button. All this +1 action is going to give Google's search team a HUGE dataset to mine; no more scraping twitter for "social data". Facebook talked about doing this years ago.

It's good to understand Google's motivation before we pass judgement. 

Now about switching: don't.

Google is a very powerful company and they've (finally) created a good social network with some profound insights. One that I personally enjoy using more than facebook and twitter. Facebook is also a powerful company, let's not kid ourselves but they are *much* smaller than google.

Competition works

If everyone switches away from facebook and uses google+ instead, what we will have is facebook again, except owned by google (remember myspace). That isn't great.

Remember when Firefox started getting traction and over time started getting slow and bloated? And then Google released their own web browser, and all of a sudden Firefox was getting HUGE speed improvements? Right now we have 4 browsers with significant marketshare (sorry opera) all competing to be fast. That was great.

Well right now facebook has lost focus. They're the biggest by a lot and, frankly, they've got a bad case of slow-and-bloated syndrome (and a case of doing evil as well, but the degree to which they are doing it on purpose has been debated).

I'd like to see facebook have a change of heart on their crazy policies, and I hope Google+ is the catalyst. But it'd be a day when google controls our search, email, phones, photos, AND social graph.

Let's keep the Social Web competitive: let's force them not to be evil (and I don't just mean Google).

In python:

import base64

def signed_request_to_json(s):
    sig, encoded_json = s.split(".",2)
    encoded_json += (len(encoded_json) % 4) * "="
    return {
        'sig': sig,
        'json': base64.b64decode(encoded_json)
    }

So... I was tasked with setting up https for a website recently. I was setting up Nginx with an ssl certificate from thawte.

Pretty normal. Pretty standard. Pretty aweful.

Here's to helping the next guy get through the process quicker than I did.

Testing

Before you start. Don't use a browser or openssl to test your config. It will waste your time and make you unhappy.

Use this tool to test your ssl config:

• http://www.digicert.com/help/

Certificate Signing Requests (*.csr), PEM Files, Intermediary Certificates, root CACertificate, Secondary Certificate BS, and more

You should know Apache and several other web servers expect your ssl certificate to be in a separate file from the intermediary certificates Like this example http.conf

# your key file (often called www.example.com.key or privatekey.pem)
SSLCertificateKeyFile /www/certs/ssl.fictional.co.key

# your ssl certificate (often called www.example.com.crt or certificate.pem)
SSLCertificateFile /www/certs/ssl.fictional.co.cert

#intermediary certificates (often a *.crt or *.pem file)
SSLCACertificateFile /www/certs/CA.cert

ok great... but some other web servers expect your intermediary certificates to be concatenated with your ssl certificate (i.e. the one you paid for). So open up notepad and copy/paste that CA.cert into the end of your ssl.fictional.co.cert and hit save.

What about Nginx?

now your nginx config for ssl (documentation here) will look like this:

http {
  server {
    listen 443;
    ssl on;

    # this file contains the ssl.fictional.co.cert AND CA.cert from
    # the apache example
    ssl_certificate /usr/local/nginx/conf/cert.pem;

    # this file corresponds to the ssl.fictional.co.key from the apache example
    ssl_certificate_key /usr/local/nginx/conf/cert.key;

  }
}

Conclusion. SSL…
is a pain in the ass.

Been writing a lot of javascript and I thought this was neat:

class JsObject(dict):
    def __init__(self, *args, **kwargs):
        super(JsObject, self).__init__(*args, **kwargs)
        self.__dict__ = self 

This is going to be short; I just want to point out how bad a user
experience this is on OSX.

On windows (and linux) there is ONE default hotkey for cycling through tabs in any UI: Ctrl + Tab

So why does OSX have so many? Here are just a few:

Adium:
Cmd + left/right arrows

Firefox, Chrome:
Cmd + Option + left/right arrows

Safari, Skype, Terminal:
Cmd + Shift + left/right arrows

The worst part about this is that it confuses the text editing options...

If I want Cmd + arrow to go to the beginning or end of the current
line of text and be able to hold shift to select then the Apple
endorsed default (via safari and terminal - e.g. Cmd + Shift + arrows) is already accounted for.

The Current state of things is not good :(

Edit: Things that should be reserved for consistant text editing:

Cmd + Arrow: (go to beginning/end of the current line)

Cmd + Shift + Arrow: (go to beginning/end of current line while selecting)

Opt + Arrow: move one word to the left or right

Opt + Shift + Arrow: move one word to the left or right while selecting

Shift + Arrow: move cursor one char while selecting

As far as I can tell, you can't edit the Safari or terminal hot keys either :(