For a single vim session (safe version)

:inoremap jj <Esc>

For every vim session (still safe)

Save this to your .vimrc file in your home directory.

" this is a comment so you remember this later
" insert mode; no recursive; map; <from>; <to>
inoremap jj <Esc> 

What is happening?

i means we are creating a mapping for the insert mode

nore means we designate “no recursive” mode (see below for more)

map means we are mapping 🗺

jj is the commands we are mapping from

<Esc> is the command we are mapping to

No change needed: Ctrl + [

If you already have Caps Lock mapped to Ctrl, then a solid alternative is: Ctrl + [.

Why use the safe version?

When you create mappings in vim, there is a recursive lookup to all other mappings.

We use inoremap instead of imap above because the nore (not recursive) portion, will avoid recursive mapping. An example of recursive mapping is this :nmap dd jddk where the dd in the right hand definition will actually map to the left hand into an infinite loop. Read more here.

Sources:

1. Stack Overflow
2. Learn Vim The Hard Way
3. vim.fandom
4. In vim > :help inoremap

Your command line welcomes you with a prompt.

Default OSX terminal may look like this.

PS1 is the variable used by your shell to determine your command line prompt

RPS1 determines your right hand prompt.

Note, you can always `echo` this variable to see what these are currently set to.

By default, mine is set to %n@%m %1~ %#

These % (percent) symbol combinations are prompt expansions (docs)

• %n– is the special variable $USERNAME (echo this to check)
• @ – literally the “@“ sign,
• %m – hostname up to the first “.”
• %1~ – current working directory for “1” ancestor
• Additionally you may like..
• %~ – current working directory with home aliased to “~”
• %D – date in yy-mm-dd (International) format
• %W – date in mm-dd-yy (US) format
• %t – time in am/pm format
• %* – time in 24 hour format

Note, your prompt can even accept emoji’s 🚀

How to apply this to every new terminal window

If you are using bash, add your PS1=... command to your ~/.bash_profile file.

If you are using zsh, add your PS1=... command to your ~/.zshrc file

* emoji’s are not available on all machines, but great on those are.

TLDR: Convert your problem file with Sublime Text by opening the file and using “Save with encoding” as utf-8. Alternatively, use iconv -t UTF-8//TRANSLIT -c Zip_Zhvi_SingleFamilyResidence.csv > new_file.csv

When does this error happen?

I wanted to parse the housing data from Zillow at their research page. Zip code is a great measure of single family home real estate values.

However, when I download this data set as “Zip_Zhvi_SingleFamilyResidence.csv”, I could not simply load this data into pandas.

This last line seemed like the clue:

UnicodeDecodeError: 'utf-8' codec can't decode byte 0xf1 in position 4: invalid continuation byte

Well, what format is that file?

Using a Mac, we can use file -I <file_name>

Oh, great! its “us-ascii”, we just pass that encoding into pandas right?

Oh maybe, I need to specify the encoding I want. WHY PANDAS, WHY!?

Why does this error happen?

Some encoding error has occurred, maybe because you accidentally opened Excel before opening ipython or Zillow saves in a crazy format.

Awesome, lets just convert it

Let’s use the *nix program iconv to convert the file. According to the man page (man iconv), “The iconv program converts text form one encoding to another encoding. Great!

Let’s use this.

iconv -f us-ascii -t utf-8 < Zip_Zhvi_SingleFamilyResidence.csv > new_zip_code_file.csv

“cannot convert”

But iconv, that’s your only job… you know, unix philosophy, one program, one job done well etc etc.

Turns out if you use “//TRANSLIT” appended to the encoding, characters are transliterated when needed and
possible (man page)

Solution 1 – iconv with //TRANSLIT

> iconv -t UTF-8//TRANSLIT -c Zip_Zhvi_SingleFamilyResidence.csv > new_file.csv

> mv new_file.csv Zip_Zhvi_SingleFamilyResidence.csv

Solution 2 (easier to remember) – Sublime Text

Is there a better free editor than Sublime? Be a good citizen and buy your license.

Step 1: Open your file in Sublime Text

Step 2: Save with Encoding > UTF-8

DONE!

read_csv to your hearts desire 🙂

ipython> data = pd.read_csv("new_file.csv")

Nodemon will allow you to start your node.js project without manually shutting down and restarting your server.

Many people are scared of installing nodemon GLOBALLY, so here’s a guide to install nodemon locally in your node.js project.

You took two paths to get here: 1. You used the express generator, 2. You started your own express server

Path 1: You used the express generator

Step 1: Install nodemon

npm install nodemon --save

Step 2: Change your “start” npm command to use nodemon inside the “scripts” object

"start": "nodemon ./bin/www

note: you might have to create this command

Step 3: Run your new dev script

> npm start

Path 2: You started your own express server

Step 1: Install nodemon

npm install nodemon --save

Step 2: Create a “start” npm command to use nodemon pointing to your express file (inside the “scripts” object)

"start": "nodemon index.js

note: you will have to create this command

Step 3: Run your new dev script

> npm start

 

Your javascript changes will automatically restart your server.

 

*You’re welcome Ken.

Hi all!

Todidlist.com started as a vim shortcut that I wrote about way back last year here.

I wanted to have the most accessible “did list” and vim served me so so well. 

However, once I got a new computer, I realized that my did list was missing a key feature: ubiquity. 

There was one simple trait that was missing from my $ did command and that was the ability to see my “Dids” on every computer and my mobile devices.

So, www.todidlist.com was born! Check it out and let me know how it treats you.

Thanks for all the support!

By default, your express application will store session data in memory. That means if your server restarts all users will need to log back in. Additionally, this does not scale to more than one instance, leaks memory and does other mean things. While this works while developing your local computer (notice how you always need to log in after making a code change), you will want something better for production.

Heroku even warns you if you do this. Try running $ heroku logs --tail to see this.

Welcome Redis

Redis is an open source (BSD licensed), in-memory data structure store, used as a database, cache and message broker.

Step 1: Create the heroku add on

$ heroku addons:create heroku-redis:hobby-dev

This will create a REDIS_URL in the heroku config that you will use to connect. Use $ heroku config:get REDIS_URL to see this value.

Step 2: Download the connect-redis package for your project

$ npm install -s connect-redis

Step 3: Pass in express-session into connect-redis

Step 4: Create an instance of RedisStore as the store property of your session configuration

Note: your local computer probably does not have REDIS_URL set.

Step 5: Push to heroku and try your new session store

$ git push heroku master

How do you run your project locally now?

Option 1: default to memory session store locally

Check your NODE_ENV setting and if its not production we will default the store property to null.

Option 2: default to using a redis instance locally

Run these commands and connect to your instance directly.

Gotcha Error: req.flash() requires sessions

If you try running your project locally, you will notice that your session store fails to initialize and things break – this happens since you likely do not have the REDIS_URL set.

Production ready: 

Note that redis on hobby dev will not allow SSL and to secure a production redis, you will need to pay for a production plan and add “stunnel” to your buildpack. (link)

The Sublime Text documentation “OS X Command Line” references the command line tool, subl to work with files on the command line.

This allows you to open the entire current directory in sublime like this:

$ subl .

This allows you to open a specific file like this:

$ subl <file_name>

Note: The $ sign means this is run in your command line application.

subl is not available by default

Simply running $ subl is not immediately accessible when you download Sublime. Without symlink-ing the command, you will have to type the full path ​to the original subl

This is how you would use the full path to open a file.

$ /Applications/Sublime\ Text.app/Contents/SharedSupport/bin/subl <file_name>

So lets create a symlink

The official docs ask you to target your symlink to ~bin/subl but it may be nicer to keep symlinks contained to existing “load paths” like usr/local/bin

What are your “load paths”? Find your current load paths by running this command:

$ echo $PATH

You will see all load paths including these default OS X paths:

/usr/local/bin:/usr/bin:/bin:/usr/sbin:/sbin

How to create subl shortcut for Sublime Text

Run this command in your terminal:

ln -s /Applications/Sublime\ Text.app/Contents/SharedSupport/bin/subl /usr/local/bin/subl

What happened?

ln means link, -s means we want a symbolic link

We will create a symlink at usr/local/bin/subl that will point to the original Sublime command. Deleting this link will have no effect on the original file.

Step 0: You need some code to share.

Create a new Github repo or choose one you currently want to publish

Here is the command line argument to create a repo called “adder”

$ curl -u <your_username> https://api.github.com/user/repos -d "{\"name\": \"adder\"}"

Once you have chosen a Github repo clone it

Step 1: Create a proper package.json

The best way to do this is to run the npm init command

$ npm init

This will insure you have the required package.json file with name and version set.

Step 2: Publish

$ npm publish

If you are not logged in, you will need to run npm login

Thats it!

Step 3: Test your npm package

Double check your package information with $ npm info <package_name>

Alternatively, go to another repo and run $ npm install <package_name>

Congrats! Your code is out in the wild on the npm registry 🙂

Troubleshooting: Package name already exists

You might run into the issue where someone else has taken the name of your npm package. Note that you can set a different name on npm than your github repo. One option is get super creative with your npm package name and change the “name” key in package.json. Another option is to namespace your package to your username like this:

"name": @theptrk/express 

and then publishing this with the public flag

$ npm publish --access=public

What if I want to publish a new version?

npm will reject your package if you do not bump the version number. Use npm version and choose either major, minor, or patch. This is the example for patch

$ npm version {major, minor, patch}

$ npm publish

“Invalid salt revision”

bcrypt-nodejs is no longer maintained and you might run into this

Use bcryptjs for a more secure actively maintained experience.

Also, check out Django, its great, but if you do, consider adding bcrypt