Up all night: the LinkedIn Intern Hackday, Day 1

Update: the official photos, videos, and submitted projects are now available on the Intern Hackday site.



Friday, July 29, we kicked off the LinkedIn Intern Hackday. It was the first ever public hackday we've had at LinkedIn: interns from all over Silicon Valley were invited to come down to LinkedIn headquarters, form teams, hack for 24 hours, and build something awesome. Roughly 165 interns came and just about all of them stayed up all night. To keep them going, we had a ton of food delivered - sandwiches at 7, pizza at 9, Chinese food at 2am, breakfast burritos at 7am, more pizza at noon, hot truck at 4 - and vast quantities of caffeine at all hours.

This is a quick blog post with some of the sights and sounds from day 1. These are mostly from my iPhone (apparently, the only camera I have on me during most LinkedIn events), the LinkedIn University Facebook Page and one of our volunteers, Hemendra. Keep your eye on the Intern Hackday site for the full official set of photos, videos and, most importantly, the submitted hacks from the event.

The interns check-in at 6pm on Friday

One intern came prepared, ready with his own case of energy drinks

But don't worry, we were well stocked with food and drinks of our own

And, of course, plenty of caffeine

Getting settled in

Cal Poly represent

165+ laptops, phones, monitors, and keyboard meant a lot of wires

Every type of laptop, netbook, headphone, phone, tablet and gizmo could be found

Adam Nash kicks off the hacking at 7pm

The planning begins

Secret tactics

A few interns figured out the winning strategy early on

The hacking begins.

And finally, a video of 165 hackers hard at work.

Check out pictures and videos from day 2 here!

Worth watching: pale blue dot

When I started the 30 day blog fitness challenge, I promised I would cheat. Today, I deliver on that promise. This post is less of a blog entry and more of a tumblr-style micro-blog.

Below is a video you should watch. It's the kind of video that would make the world a better place, if only enough people saw it. Turn it on, sit back and enjoy the deeply moving prose of the one and only, Carl Sagan.

Up in the mountains

Yesterday, I talked about being down in the salt mines. Today, I'll go in the opposite direction, and give a brief tour of a different part of my Budapest and Krakow adventure: my trip up in the mountains in Zakopane. It's a relatively obscure town in Southern Poland and we only knew to visit it because we caught some glimpses of its beauty in the movie General Nil. It was well worth the quick (and cheap!) bus ride from Krakow.

Our tour started by taking an enclosed gondola up a mountain. From up top, we got a gorgeous view of the rolling green hills all around. 

We wandered around the mountain a bit and found a small path that cut through the forest. 

We passed through some fields of purple flowers.

And came upon a field that overlooked a gorgeous farm on the side of a mountain. It looked peaceful and serene. We simply sat in the tall grass and relaxed.

After our the brief respite, we caught an open air gondola back down the mountain.

The view on the way down was stunning.

When we got back down, we got the chance to appreciate the Zakopane architecture style. Wooden cabins with large, very angled roofs.

These people were very serious about their roofs.

Some of the houses seemed to consist entirely or roof.

Gaudi style roofs.

Terraces with roofs.

Benches with roofs.

Fences with roofs.

Bus stops that were 90% roof.

And even a cemetery where each gravestone had a roof.

Each one was unique and intricate.

Including the gravestone of Stanislaw Witkiewicz, who is credited with creating the Zakopane style of architure.

Down in the Salt Mines

Last summer, Molly and I took a trip to Budapest and Krakow. The trip was nothing if not varied, including stunning basilicas, gondola rides down a mountain, a visit to a Auschwitz, archery, a museum of terror, and thermal spas. One of the more unique stops was at the Wieliczka Salt Mine. We didn't know much about it other than the fact that Rick Steves recommended it. As is so often the case, his recommendation was spot on. In this post, I'll go through a quick picture tour of our visit.

The stairway down to the mine

The tour of the mine starts with a descent down 135m (442 feet) of stairs. We're talking more than a football field straight down. Looking between the railings, you literally could not see the bottom.

Nor could you see the top when you were halfway down the stairs. And you thought being forced to sit in a cubicle 8 hours a day was rough.

After a dizzying few minutes of descending the stairs, you eventually reach the hallways of the mine. See the white stuff all around? It's salt. You can lick your finger, swipe down a wall, lick again, and taste it.

And these statues? Also carved out of salt. The miners would be down here for long stretches and often passed the time by carving scenes from Polish folklore.

More salt, this time the pattern left behind by horizontal drilling. Pretty sure I saw these in Aliens.

As we continued the tour, we descended further into the mine down wooden ramps.

We eventually reached this running stream of water. Apparently, it contains the maximum concentration of salt possible (~32%). We tasted it. It was, uh, salty.

Even deeper within the wine, we came across the chapel. The miners wanted to have a place to pray, so they painstakingly carved the whole thing over a number of years, mostly out of salt.

The altar was made of salt.

A chandelier made out of 99% salt.

A copy of The Last Supper carved out of salt. Molly approves.

Even the floor was made out of salt. This one in particular consisted of tiles that were actually salt licks.

As we headed towards the exit, we came across this underground stream. They used to permit boat rides on it, but no longer do after a boat capsized and trapped all aboard beneath it. It turns out that you are too buoyant to dive in such salty water and that without something to stand on, a boat is too heavy to lift. Scary.

Waiting for the elevator back to the surface. Don't worry, those signs are conveniently translated into english. It reads: "ATTENTION THE SHAFT".

Proposal: extend Markdown syntax to support form elements

Markdown is a lightweight markup language that can be converted into HTML. The main inspiration behind its syntax is to copy what most people have used for years to decorate plain text emails. For example, if you emphasize a word by surrounding it with *asterisks*, you get <em>asterisks</em>. If you try to put in a page divider with a bunch of dashes ---------------, you get <hr/>. The syntax visually represents the type of HTML output you desire; in a way, Markdown is the onomatopoeia of markup languages.

Markdown was created by John Gruber and Aaron Swartz

Markdown is VERY easy to read and write, so it's a great choice for CMS, wiki and WYSIWYG use cases. GitHub and StackOverflow both make heavy use of Markdown and have created their own Markdown extensions and implementations: GitHub flavored Markdown and MarkdownSharp. I too am a fan of Markdown: I think it's perfect for formatting answers on StackOverflow, it's a slick way to support rich text formatting in Resume Builder, and in my open source projects, it's an elegant solution for readme files that are perfectly readable with or without a Markdown interpreter.

Proposal

In this blog post, I'm going to propose a small extension to the Markdown syntax: support for forms. There are a number of CMS and wiki use cases where I've wanted to allow users to create a custom form (e.g. a simple poll or event RSVP) without having to write out the full HTML for it. I even created a github project (forked from wmd) to try to implement this extension, though I've been too damn busy to get to it. Perhaps someone will be inspired by this post and help me get this thing rolling :)

Syntax

Text fields




Radio buttons




Check boxes




Drop down




Required fields




Feedback

Hopefully, merely looking at the examples above makes my proposal clear. If not, I've clearly failed, as Markdown's central goal is readability. Either way, let me know what you think in the comments. Also, feel free to fork my github project for this proposal and start hacking away!

Update: Geoff saw this post, forked my project, and implemented the proposal! Awesome work Geoff!

Apartment hunting tips and tricks

My girlfriend and I have been looking for a new apartment for next year, which is never an easy process. We don't do this often, so we're learning as we go. However, to help other apartment hunters in the future, I thought I'd put together a quick blog post that summarizes some of the tools and techniques we've been using to make our lives a little easier. If you've got suggestions/tips of your own to add, post them in the comments!

Craigslist

http://www.craigslist.org

This one should not be a secret to anyone. If you're looking for an apartment, house, sublet, condo, roomates, or furniture, craigslist should be your first step. Nothing else quite compares in terms of traffic.

Padmapper

http://www.padmapper.com/

Craigslist UI not quite doing it for you? Me neither. Padmapper overlays craiglist listings - as well as a few other apartment sites - on top of a Google Map, so you have a nice, visual interface to help you find your next home. There are also some nice filters (price, # bedrooms, photos, etc), visual indications of which posts you've already clicked on, and even support for email alerts that match your selected view & filters. This has been my go-to site for apartment hunting.

Hotpads

http://hotpads.com/

Very similar to padmapper, although the listings seem to come from other sites. Key differentiator is the ability to overlay more than just apartments on the map, including "heatmaps" for population density and rent ratio as well as the locations of schools and public transportation. In my limited experience with hotpads, it seems to be used by rental agencies far more than private landlords.

MyApartmentMap

http://www.myapartmentmap.com/

Very similar to the above two sites, although the map view seems crappier ("you have too many properties in view, please zoom in") and occasionally flat out broken.

University postings

http://supost.com/

If you are near a college campus, check with the local housing office to see if there is a bulletin board for the university. Stanford, for example, has SUPost which includes a housing section.

Email template

If you use the sites listed above, you'll likely end up sending a lot of emails. Here are a few simple pieces of advice to keep things organized:

1. Put the posting title into the subject. For example, if you find an apartment on craigslist that has the title "2br/1ba in downtown Palo Alto", make that the subject of the email. When a new posting comes up in the future, you can just scan the subject lines of your sent mail folder to see if you've contacted this place before.
2. Include a link to the original posting in the email body. For example, write "I saw your post on craigslist (http://sfbay.craiglist.org/foo/bar/12345) and was interested". This way, when the owner replies - possibly days later - you'll be able to reference the original post to help you remember what apartment you're discussing.
3. Keep it short and sweet. This applies to pretty much all emails.

Checklist

I'm a bit obsessed with lists, but this one really matters: bring with you a checklist of all the features/information you want the apartment to have. If you're seeing multiple apartments, or simply forgetful like I am, you are likely to miss some crucial piece of data. What's the security deposit? Is there parking? Where do I do laundry? Bring a checklist with you and don't leave the place until you have everything filled out. There are many sample lists online, so do a google search and pick the one that best suits your needs.

Bring your camera

 
I'm also a bit obsessed with taking lots of pictures, but bringing your camera when seeing apartments is truly worthwhile. After you see 3 or 4 apartments in a few days, they'll all start to blend together. Having some photographic or even video evidence is your best bet for knowing what's what a few days later.

Credit report, application at the ready

If you're in a competitive market, every second counts. Many applications require you to include a credit report, so having yours printed & ready can save you some time. You can get your credit report for free, once per year, from https://www.annualcreditreport.com. If you really want to move things quickly, you can even fill out a "standard" application beforehand and hand it to the owner as soon as you find a place you like. The "standard" differs per state, so you'll have to do some research. In California, for example, many places use the California Apartment Association Application to Rent. Remember, one application per tenant.