Programmingravenclaw - Code On

6 Things I Learned From Studying For Exams in College

If you skip a topic or don’t study it thoroughly enough because you think it won’t be on the exam, it will be. Study that in particular so you won’t be surprised when it shows up as the first question. Unless your professor explicitly states that it won’t be on the exam, don’t skip any topics.

Put aside the content you’re comfortable and familiar with and start studying the things you don’t know. It’s hard and time consuming but that’s where the actual learning happens.

Start studying at least 4 days in advance. I always regret not starting earlier when I’m at the library 24 hours before the exam and not even close to being done. When I’m having trouble focusing, I’ll sit there and imagine myself an hour before the exam scrambling to finish up a topic, wishing that I had these extra few minutes, hours, or days that I have now. Take advantage of the time you have right now.

Changing up my location helps a lot when I’m studying. If I study in the same corner at the library, eventually my brain will start associating that spot with everything I do in that chair, including wasting time. For me, new location + new material = focus. A few location ideas: a quiet corner in the library, a noisy floor in the library, at your desk at home, a room with a view of the outdoors from high up, a bench/table outside, a cafe or brunch place.

Stay on top of studying and homework from day 1, not after syllabus week and not a month into the semester. When you submit a homework assignment, make it a point to 100% understand everything you just handed in. Homework is assigned for a reason; they’re meant as practice exercises for the material you learned and exams often mimic them. Once you hand in homework, you should know and understand the material. This saves you time when it’s finals week and you have old and new material to study.

Well before the exam, make a list of topics you don’t understand and get your questions answered. There have been so many times where I didn’t fully understand something and thought, “It’s okay, they’re probably not going to ask that,” and it shows up on the exam. When you get your question answered, branch out and ask things like, “What if it weren’t this particular situation/these particular numbers but a different one instead. How would you work through it this time?” (physics/math) or “What caused that/what came after that as a result?” (history). Try to understand all possible scenarios if you can.

My life :(

Coding Masterpost

Hey buddies guess what??

I’ve brought you some awesome links that I have for learning how to code, computer science posts, and also various things about hacking. :p

CODING / COMPUTER SCIENCE

www.udemy.com

The best free and paid classes on the web. This is my go to site for learning something new.

app.pluralsight.com

$40 a month but the courses are top tier. You might find a free trial from microsoft dev essentials…

http://ocw.mit.edu/index.htm

Free MIT courses with video lectures, notes, and resources!!!

https://www.codecademy.com/learn

Perhaps the most famous site for learning how to code, this is must have for any aspiring computer scientist, web dev, or programmer. A smooth UI, dozens of courses, APIs, and fun quizzes if you decide to cough up a bit of money. $19 is crazy dirt cheap compared to some $200 courses out there on the web.

https://thenewboston.com/

Dubbed by its creator as the social network for programmers, TNB is a hotbed of hundreds of video tutorials for programming and computer science, as well as other disciplines like cooking.

http://www.tutorialspoint.com/codingground.htm

Another crazy important site for anyone serious about programming. You can find online terminals, IDEs, and tutorials for almost every popular language out there, from oCaml to lisp

http://codecombat.com/

Geared towards children, this is a good introudction to programming thinking and helps a younger audience get into the problem solving mindset.

http://www.codewars.com/dashboard

For users with some coding experience, codewars offers hundreds of challenges in various languages and help them build up their skills. Perfect for intermediate to master programmers.

https://www.codingame.com/start

This site is a bit geared towards new coders, it’s still fun and helps a ton in developing confidence.

http://jonisalonen.com/

Random blog that discusses some concepts regarding computer science. Worth a read if you’re ever lost and wanna just reflect on something.

http://howtonetwork.net/

https://www.howtonetwork.com/

Both the old and new sites are still up and provide their services for learning IT skills.

http://www.freeprogrammingresources.com/

RESOURCES FOR COMPILERS, DATABASES, FORUMS, and SO MUCH MORE TAKE A LOOK.

http://www.hloom.com/modern-resume-templates/

What good is a programmer if they can’t make a good resume to show off their skills? With these helpful templates you can impress your potential employer.

http://freecomputerbooks.com/

I haven’t used this so be cautious. Has a lot of ebooks.

http://i.imgur.com/i3jtrA0.jpg

Web development cheat sheet.

http://hackforums.net/showthread.php?tid=626170

Awesome intro to programming with links to projects.

http://www.elithecomputerguy.com/

Eli has a blog and also videos for various things.

http://www.net130.com/ccie/tech/Sybex%20-%20Cisco%20CCIE%20Book.pdf

CCIE book. Not sure if it’s open source. I’ll remove this link if requested.

https://www.codeschool.com/

pay money, learn to code. seems legit.

http://www.python-forum.org/

A forum for Python usrers! There are only a few sections but there are enough posts on here so if you haev a question, it might have already been asked.

http://www.dreamincode.net/

Another sweet forum that covers multiple topics.

http://forums.devshed.com/

A really popular forum! Lots of languages and users, dozens of topics.

http://www.codingforums.com/

Another large forum, perfect for any use.

http://www.programmingforums.org/

A freaking large factory of forums you will never find the same post twice.

http://www.gamedev.net/page/index.html

Lots of forums, jobs, and helpful resources all geared towards game development.

http://stackoverflow.com/

The most famous one imo. Be wary friend, don’t let your CS teacher find this in your browser history.

http://forum.codecall.net/

Resources, forums, tutorials, blow yourself out here.

https://openhatch.org/

Has some training missions and other stuff. Helps you find projects to work on.

https://codefights.com/

Put your skills to the test against AI or humans.

www.datacamp.com

Like big data? Well this site teaches you Python, the numpy library, and R.

https://www.edx.org/

Full of courses for anything.

http://www.exactas.org/modules/UpDownload/store_folder/1_-_COMPUTACION/Jonathan%20Bartlett%20-%20Programming%20From%20The%20Ground%20Up.pdf

handy book on progrmaming.

HACKING

http://null-byte.wonderhowto.com/

This is one of the BEST websites to learn about security and you can follow tutorials by real hackers and members of the IT field. With a strong community full of experienced authors, you will either flourish by using proper grammar or be mocked for asking “how do i hack gmail??”

www.hackerhighschool.org/home.html

PERFECT FOR HIGH SCHOOL STUDENTS INTERESTED IN CYBERSECURITY BUT HAVE NO IDEA WHERE TO START. I CANNOT STRESS HOW AWESOME THIS SITE IS.

allison.com

ANOTHER PERFECT SITE FOR LEARNING ANYTHING

http://null-byte.wonderhowto.com/how-to/links-help-you-hacking-0162359/

Small collection of resources for educating yourself on internet security.

http://directory.umm.ac.id/Networking%20Manual/Networking%20For%20Dummies%207%20Ed%202004.pdf

A must read for anyone with a desire to get into IT

http://cli.learncodethehardway.org/book/

Crash course on Command line.

https://www.cybrary.it/

Great if you cannot afford pricy online classes. Instructors know what they are talking about and despite a few poor quality videos, you will be supplied with helpful resources and forums.

https://evilzone.org/

One of the better forums out there for learning. Delve into it at your own risk.

https://v3rmillion.net/

ROBLOX hacking, general exploits, or just normal discussions. Roblox helped put me on my path to coding and I love how every day, millions of kids are being taught the ability of coding thanks to its studio.

https://www.hackthissite.org/pages/index/index.php

Lessons, challenges, forums, and resources all bundled in a site to hone your pentest skills.

http://www.enigmagroup.org/

Like hackthissite, but with a different UI

https://www.hellboundhackers.org/

Read the above

https://pentest-tools.com/home

Free pentest tools. Don’t use it for anything wrong.

https://www.defcon.org/

Hehe..we are in defcon 4..

https://picoctf.com/learn

Capture the Flag learning site. Amazing imo.

http://overthewire.org/wargames/

Another war games site. You get various challenges that are fun to solve ^.^

http://hakipedia.com/index.php/Hakipedia

Wikipedia but for security.

http://smashthestack.org/

Wargames.

http://www.wablab.com/

Compete against IT pros. Git rekt code-bug

http://academy.ehacking.net/courses/computer-hacking-forensics-investigation/

Explore this site a bit.

https://www.ethicalhacker.net/features/book-reviews/the-basics-of-rootkits-leave-no-trace

The link kinda gives it away.

https://github.com/mrrrgn/simple-rootkit/blob/master/README.md

Fun little project.

http://www.fuzzysecurity.com/tutorials.html

Professional blog that has tutorials and highly detailed information.

https://www.corelan.be/index.php/2009/07/19/exploit-writing-tutorial-part-1-stack-based-overflows/

Ahh read the above please!

https://trailofbits.github.io/ctf/index.html

A CTF guide. Pretty well written and has slides. Awesome resources. What else can I say?

http://www.securitysift.com/windows-exploit-development-part-1-basics/

Another swell blog.

http://www.thegreycorner.com/2010/01/beginning-stack-based-buffer-overflow.html

Woa..another..awesome blog..there are too many to count!

http://www.flexhex.com/docs/howtos/hex-editing.phtml

Hey kid? Wanna learn how to hex edit like a b0ss?

https://www.blackhat.com/presentations/bh-usa-03/bh-us-03-willis-c/bh-us-03-willis.pdf

Nice little pdf for forensics.

www.greyhathacker.net

A blog that’s a bit dated but has useful information.

xeuhack.com

Dated but useful blog.

www.cybersecuritycourse.co

haven’t tried this yet but it has great reviews.

www.censys.io

Search engine for data scientists.

http://www.techexams.net/forums/off-topic/51719-best-security-websites.html

Best sites to learn from.

http://resources.infosecinstitute.com/ebooks/

Awww yiss ebooks

http://bookboon.com/en/it-programming-ebooks

Might run into errors downloading books.

http://ebook-dl.com/

Full books that are virus free.

That’s all for now! Special thanks to everyone who suggested I make this!

Keeping The Same Tabs Open For 9 Days Straight Because They Contain Information Relevant To Tasks You’re Too Lazy To Complete - A novel by me

Must see

Programmers for you ;)

Ah, old good switch-a-roo ;)

Credit: Eric Burk

How To Make Tumblr Themes: Part I

Introduction

What we will cover in this tutorial:

HTML review (bare minimum you need to make a basic theme)

CSS review (bare minimum you need to make a basic theme)

Meta Tags

Other <Head> codes 

Documents and websites we will consult regularly in this tutorial (keep these open in a tab):

W3Schools HTML

W3Schools CSS

Tumblr Theme document

HTML Review

Before making a theme, you should know that HTML consists of tags (keywords surrounded by angular brackets like <html>) and that they come in pairs (opening and closing like <html> and </html>).

You should also already know basic HTML elements such as links, headings, paragraphs, lists, formatting and images. If not, please learn it at the website I provided. 

The most common way to group and position things in a website layout is to use div layers or tables. In this basic theme tutorial, I will cover div layers first since it is easiest to understand. 

Here is a coding for text that is NOT inside a div layer:

[click for larger view]

Here is a coding for text that is inside a div layer:

[click for larger view]

Also notice that I used CSS to dictate the width and background of the div layer. That is how CSS and HTMl is connected; you can use CSS to demand HTML elements to look and be positioned a certain way. So in order to make columns in tumblr themes, you use CSS to position and “decorate” the div layer which will wrap your columns (ie: posts, sidebar etc).

CSS Review

In relation to what we’ve discussed above, CSS commands HTML elements. So you need to be very familiar with CSS. CSS is the codes between the <style type=“text/css”> and </style> tags (as can be seen in the previous image). In this tutorial, I will use the following terminology:

Now, div layers can either be id-ed or class-ed. The id selector is generally used for a single unique element while the class selector is used for a group of elements.   While there is that difference, I discovered it doesn’t matter. You can use id selectors for multiple/repeated layers. 

[click for larger view]

In the above, the selector for id is preceded by a “#” (outlined in pink) and the selector for the class is preceded by a “.” (outline in blue). Now, you can use basic CSS properties to specify the position, dimension and style of the layer. 

You will need to know 90% of the properties described on this site; particularly background, color, fonts, links, text, margin, padding, z-index, position, display, dimensions and borders. Since it is too much for me to cover them all, please review/learn them before proceeding. 

Getting started

Now we’ve gone over the idea of how HTML and CSS will be needed, we can apply it to tumblr themes. So, we start with our basic HTML tags for any basic webpage:

<title></title> is where you specify the title of the blog which will show up on the browser tabs. Looking at the basic variables section of the custom tumblr theme document, you can see {Title} and {block:PostTitle}{PostTitle}{/block:PostTitle}.

{Title} is a “variable” which corresponds to the blog title (which you customize in the customization page). For example, my theme blog title is “ettudis”…

{block:PostTitle}{PostTitle}{/block:PostTitle} corresponds to the title of the post (of the individual posts). The “blocks”, {block:PostTitle} and {/block:PostTitle}, renders so that the post title shows up only when there is a post title (in other words, when you go to the individual post page. For example, the title of my “terms of use” post…

Generally, it is set up so the it’s the {title} followed by a dash, then {block:PostTitle}{PostTitle}{/block:PostTitle}. So, it will look something like this:

<title>{Title} - {block:PostTitle}{PostTitle}{/block:PostTitle}</title>

We also can add in favicons. To make the favicon the same as the blogger’s userpic/profile icon, we can just link to {Favicon}, like so:

<link rel="shortcut icon" href="{Favicon}" /> 

Meta Tags

The meta tags in tumblr themes are what allows the bloggers to customize the themes colours, upload images, select options, add links etc, as described in the appearance options. Then, you can line up the meta tags to the HTML or CSS.

For colours, it will look something like this:

[click for larger view]

As you can see, the colours in the meta tags can correspond to the HTML or CSS. So the default colours (indicated in the meta tags, ie: #FFFFFF, #000000 etc) are what the colours are if the blogger reset to defaults. If the blogger decides to customize to his/her own colours, the colour he/she chooses will correspond and fill into the HTML or CSS in the live preview. 

For custom fonts, it will look similar to:

[click for larger view]

Similar to colours, the meta tags correspond to CSS (or HTML). However, tumblr only provides a few custom fonts (ex: arial, georgia, impact, courier new, helvetica, tahoma, trebuchet ms, times new roman etc) that are selected via a drop-down menu on the customization page.

Now booleans are rather important in tumblr themes. These meta tags allow the bloggers to select an option.

[click for larger view]

In this, the option is whether or not “if infinite scrolling” should be on the blog. The meta content is “1” if there is infinite scrolling as default. If infinite scrolling is not default, it meta content should be “0”.

Outlined in orange, {block:ifinfinitescrolling} and {/block:ifinfinitescrolling} wraps around the HTML (or CSS) that will be activated if the blogger decides to select the infinite scrolling option. If not, then the HTML (or CSS) in {block:ifnotinfinitescrolling} and {/block:ifnotinfinitescrolling} will be activated. 

Booleans can apply to anything, such as whether or not to show tags on index page, size of post, number of columns, show side image ~ whatever your imagination allows you!

On this note, this sort-of gives you the idea of how tumblr codes work. The “blocks” act as activators for a certain code that it contains. Remember they always come in pairs as well, an open and closed one.

In the above example, you can see that there are the blocks, {block:Pagination} and {/block:Pagination}. This means that the codes inside these blocks will only show if there are actual pages; so in an individual post page, the pages will not show up.

Another meta tags are text. You can allow bloggers to enter their custom text into a theme. You can do a lot with text, you can also use it as an input for CSS hex numbers, dimensions (they would enter pixels), labels etc etc. 

In this particular example, I’ve used custom text as a way for bloggers to enter links. The blocks (in pink), as I’ve explained previously, act as activators for when the bloggers do enter a URL in the “link 1” meta tag (outlined in blue). 

Tumblr also allows bloggers to upload images. So bloggers can upload their own background or other images they want (that you specify) into their theme. 

[click for larger view]

Shown here, you can see that the meta tag for the background image dictates the CSS body selector (outlined in orange).  In the content, you can insert an image (“http://static.tumblr.com/…”) as a default image. 

As for the sidebar image meta tag, it uploads the image into the HTML. Blocks (shown in pink) can also be used in case the blogger does not want to upload an image (or if an image is not uploaded, an alternate coding can be shown). 

Other <head> codes

You can also insert a {CustomCSS} block at the bottom of the theme’s CSS style block (before </style>) so that bloggers can insert their own CSS if they want to. 

There is also a meta tag that is involved in search engines. 

{block:Description}<meta name="description" content="{MetaDescription}" />{/block:Description}

This allows the description of the blog to show up if the blog is searched on the a search engine (such as google). 

And that’s all I have to say about meta tags which is crucial if you plan to make themes for the public use. 

Key Points

To clarify and emphasize, the terms, “variable” and “blocks” are what makes up the tumblr theme. Variables are used to insert dynamic data. As we’ve seen in previous example, {Title} is a variable and so are {Image:Sidebar}, {Color:Background}, {Text:Link 1} and so forth. They come in singles, meaning, you do not need to close them. 

Blocks are used to render (activate) a block of HTML, CSS, or a set of data. As we’ve seen in previous examples, {block:Title} and {/block:Title} are blocks, and so are {block:ifinfinitescrolling} and {/block:ifinfinitescrolling}, {block:iflink1} and {/block:iflink1}, and {block:ifnotsidebarimage} and {/block:ifnotsidebarimage}. These come in pairs, meaning, you do need to close them similar as to you would close a HTML tag.

The meta tags allow users to customize the theme without editing the HTML/CSS themselves. They only have to customize via the Appearance section on the customization page. We’ve covered all the meta tags that tumblr has: colours, fonts, booleans, text and images. Every meta tag can correspond to a HTML/CSS component. So using HTML and CSS, you can specify the look of a certain variable and meta tags can give customization options for the HTML and CSS.

The End

I think I’ve covered all the basic ideas of what tumblr themes need in order to work. Though this tutorial was more of introduction on just the fundamental foundations of what we’re going to build, next tutorial will get into constructing the tumblr theme using variables, blocks, CSS and HTML.

I hope I was clear, concise and thorough in my explanations. If I missed anything or if something wasn’t clear, please let me know as all of this sort-of comes to me naturally now so I wouldn’t know if I was being abstruse or convoluted. 

The thing about computer programming is that it’s a complete pain in the ass when you’re trying to figure out the problem, yet when you finally solve it, when you finally have that aha moment, the feeling of accomplishment is unlike anything you’ve felt when you’ve accomplished something. You think holy shit, I can make technology work, and that feeling is totally worth the long stretch of hours or even days when computer programming feels like a pain in the ass.

hey reblog this if you think girls can study and excel in computer science

“Only open your mouth if what you are about to say is more beautiful than silence.”

Arabic Proverb (via distractful)