1. Register your domain name. I used Hostable to do that.
2. Create an Amazon EC2 instance.
3. Create an Elastic IP and associate it with the EC2 instance you created.
4. Create a hosted zone in Route 53.
5. Select your hosted zone and click on Go to Record Sets. Two record sets will already have been created, with types NS and SOA. Create a new one of type A – IPv4 address. In the Value field, enter the IP address of your Elastic IP and save it.
   
   
6. Inform the registrar with whom you registered your domain name to update the name servers for your domain to the ones associated with your hosted zone. You can find these name servers (of which there are four) in the Value field of the NS record set. With Hostable, you can edit these yourself, however you need to first deselect Registrar Lock before being allowed to do so.
   
   
   

I just got a keyboard that is meant for Windows (the Logitech Wireless Desktop MK320 Keyboard) but I read a review on Amazon that said it worked for someone’s Macbook, so I decided to give it a try. All the keys seemed to be the same except for Ctrl, Option, and Command.

To remap the keys, I installed an app called Double Command:

Then to figure out what the current key mappings were, I opened up the Keyboard & Character Viewer:

 That’s pretty much it. I know it’s simple but I hope this helped someone figure things out quicker than I did.

When I’m doing UI or graphic design (the latter of which is always a struggle), I often get stuck designing things over and over again in the same way simply from lack of creativity, or I find it impossible to get things to look “right” and I can’t figure out why. When this happens, I like to check out other people’s work to get ideas and inspiration. Here is a list I’ve compiled of websites that I bookmark and come back to in these situations.

1. Icon Deposit

This site is relatively new, so there isn’t a ton of content yet but it looks like it has amazing potential.

Here at the Icon Deposit, we give you the opportunity to post your icons, designs, codes, and screenshots to promote your work and gain new clients. We feature hundreds of free icons, icon sets, UI/UX design, illustrator graphics, vector art, code tutorials for CSS, CSS3, JQuery, photoshop tutorials and tons more.

2. Forrst

Similar to Icon Deposit, this is a sort of mash of ux.stackexchange.com with screenshots and image galleries but without free graphics. The community of users is exclusive in that you need to be invited to be a member, or have a GitHub account. In this way, they are able to control the content quality a little bit more.

3. Pattern Tap

Pattern Tap has organized sets of screenshots in user-defined categories, which is really useful when you want to search by a specific UI element (eg. navigation, 404 pages with white guys throwing gang signs, etc.)

4. CSS Remix

CSS Remix kind of Pattern Tap but with full-page screenshots, and none of the content is organized, sorted or searchable in any way.

5. Dribbble

Dribbble is show and tell for designers. Players share shots—small screenshots of the designs and applications they are working on… Some have called Dribbble “Twitter for designers.” Shots are to Dribbble as tweets are to Twitter.

Enjoy! And if you know of any more similar sites, I’d love to know.

Cool shirt from the event

This past weekend I attended an event called Women 2.0 Startup Weekend. The basic idea is that you build a startup in 3 days with other attendees. On Sunday night, every team pitches their idea for 5 minutes and 3 winners are selected. Although my team didn’t win, it was a great learning experience and there were a lot of really awesome pitches. The event overall was very well-organized.

However, I’m going to be a jerk now and say what I was thinking the whole weekend: With 65% female attendees and a male MC, how exactly is this Women 2.0? Also, if I remember correctly, 2 out of 4 of the judges were male. At the very least, they could have enforced a rule that all teams should have female leads.

Feel free to rebut.

I moved to San Francisco a few months ago for work. Every time I call my mom she insists that I “speak” to my cat.

The rents are crazy (as are many of the people) but it’s a great city, especially for vegetarians!