With thick smoke billowing into the air a block away, I stepped back into the safety of the train station. As a young white male out on the streets, on Chicago’s West Side, you can feel you’re an outsider. People look at you differently, they talk to you differently, and wearing more business-like clothes often results in being the target of panhandling. The entire atmosphere can be unsettling to someone who’s never set foot a mile from their quiet, peaceful home.

Later that day, I waited as cars rode by with music blasting, a group of young men hung out on the corner next to the auto repair shop and liquor store. Police drove through the intersection with an air of caution and suspicion, seeing the men gathering.

Standing at California Avenue and Harrison Street waiting for the bus to arrive, I quickly remembered I wasn’t in the Chicago shown in old postcards or glamorized in movies....

“Simulcast currently unavailable. Units in 7…” The air is hot and sticky on a July summer night, and the radio crackles to life once again. A person has just been shot. I type furiously trying to keep up with the tempo of the dispatcher as she reads out the ticket. A few more keystrokes and I tweet one more time.

These sounds are an all-too-common occurrence on some nights. We hear tallies like “3 killed, 20 wounded”, “1 killed, 5 wounded”, “2 stabbed”,
and more. For those in communities far from the usual centers of violence, it can be easy to simply ignore it with a “not in my backyard” attitude. It’s become something we know to skip through when reading the morning news report.

I used to ignore the crime and violence going on in Chicago. Why read about something that just involves death and pain? That’s not any encouragement I need to get through the day. Thus it got pushed back...

“One day you could be president,” the parent tells their child; an overused cliche, with the statement going more untrue as the years go by. Another cliche is for parents to tell their children to be doctors or lawyers, timeless professions which often garner lots of wealth. I have been fortunate enough to have my path in life be left open-ended, no stereotypes or career cliches imposed on myself.

However, with that open-endedness comes great uncertainty and ambition. Over the last 18 years of my life, I have had many aspirations. Some of them far-fetched, some of them within reach, and some achieved by luck and determination. Thus, I am very thankful for those who gave me a chance to go far beyond the limits of my imagination. Alas, when one appears to do well at a motley of roles and tasks, it is difficult for oneself to find the true magnetic North and go in that direction.

For me...

Exactly one week ago, the hit mobile game Flappy Bird was removed from the App Store. It had become a viral hit, gaining millions of downloads and hundreds of thousands of reviews. So what is Flappy Bird exactly? It is a remake of the very old helicopter game where you tap to keep the bird afloat, and have to get it through a series of narrow openings in pipes.

Since it was taken down, I have seen numerous clones of the game pop up on GitHub and other sites. The question I have is: WHY? If the game has caused so much aggravation and hate for players, then why are we still trying to keep the meme alive?

There are so many social problems that need solving. Real, hard problems that do not have simple solutions (e.g. homelessness, gang violence, education, poverty). There are also many talented developers, entrepreneurs, and others in the industry - many more than there were ten years ago...

Going to one of top high schools and colleges in Illinois in terms of technology curriculum, I’ve been very lucky to have so many classmates who are not only interested in the same areas I’m interested in, but also are very talented at it. However, for all the great talent that’s out there, I am not seeing all of it.

One issue I see is that those who may be really talented choose to keep their ideas/code/product secret instead of publish it to the world. With tools like Github available, one of the best actions a young developer can take is to publish all their code on the web. It is a very empowering feeling when you can work on something that you show to the world (and being proud of what you’ve accomplished is a nice bonus). Companies are even starting to replace resumes with Github profiles.

The other pressing issue is that those who want to get better aren’t putting enough effort...

It seems like every day there is a new change in the front-end web development workflow. Just yesterday, I heard that “that Grunt and RequireJS are out, it’s all about Gulp and Browserify now”. For those not working in the frontend world, Grunt and RequireJS are tools to help automate the development process (building and modularizing code, for example). Gulp and Browserify are similar tools, but have been said to work better by some industry experts.

Every day developers are coming up with a new something.js or a browser drops/adds support for a certain CSS spec. There are constant changes to the workflow, with everyone having an opinion on what’s “best” or what the “proper” way to build a web app is.

Frankly, I’m a bit apprehensive about going into web development with all this constant change going on. How will I ever learn all of this? By the time I’ve learned the basics of one...

Too often I see new startups launching their products with a real-world component in a city that is not my own. That city? San Francisco, California.

Don’t get me wrong - I have nothing against the city and think it’s a great place to start a business. However, despite the abundant tech talent and investors in the area, it’s not always the right place to set up shop.

Location is critical to any business, despite becoming less critical as we’ve become an increasingly globalized world. When deciding to launch a product, especially one that people interact with physically, the founder must consider which place has the greatest need for that product. Otherwise, there’s an increased risk of failure because you may not have the biggest market to begin with.

For example, Chicago’s weather is all four seasons, and can get a large amount of snow in the winter. By contrast, San Francisco’s...

Looking to capitalize on loving Bitcoins searching for a wallet, a new online startup called DogesForBitcoins lobbied Congress to let doges order pizza and pay with Bitcoins, by allowing long lost Bitcoins to come together in a single wallet. So here’s a bunch of Bitcoins celebrating a major civil rights milestone and their freedom to be awesome. It makes me tear up a little. I think it will make you tear up too.

Sorry, but this isn’t the story you think it is. BuzzFeed, Upworthy, Business Insider, Gizmodo, etc. - these are all viral content mills bragging about how they are able to pander so successfully. One of the ways they accomplish this is with sensational titles filled with hyperbole and anecdotes.

These are headlines designed to fuel page-view journalism, something we call clickbait. They want you to click on the link so they can waste more of your time and thus get money...

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It has been over a year since my course registration application, informally known as NCP Registration, was launched to the students of Northside College Prep. Development started in early July 2012, and continued though the launch in September 2012, feature additions ceasing sometime in Spring 2013. Upon graduation in June 2013, I was no longer responsible for the application.

Features

The application performed the following:

• Course lists of colloquiums and X/Y blocks
• Course registration for colloquiums and X/Y blocks
  • Custom permissions for specific courses
  • Timed opening/closing of registration
• Attendance-taking via alphabetized roster and student ID
• Master list exports (course rosters, attendance)

It should have also performed automatic course assignment for those who did not sign up for a course, but that feature did not...

Beep. Ping. Clang. Those are the sounds of communication in my life. I have typed thousands of lines into an instant messaging (IM) client, without a single sound exiting my mouth. Unlike the teenagers who decades ago heard the sound of a nearby postman, our current world is full of these percussion sounds, signifying we have just received another message or other notification.

Just like those in long-distance relationships fifty years ago checked their mailboxes eagerly for letters from their lover, we check our Facebook notifications and inboxes with a similar eagerness. Moving my mouse to the right edge of the screen, a “buddy list” appears. Shown are a list of “friends” currently online, automatically sorted by the number of previous interactions. I have checked this list a hundred times each day, some times on accident, but many on purpose. Whoops, I just did it again while writing...