Show HN: My new homepage

by awaxman11 • 13 years ago

103 80 13 years ago

This is a pretty fun little site. I have a few unsolicited suggestions, of course. ;)

* My first thought was "work history? OK, where's your resume?" On second viewing it may be one of those mystery-meat icons, but I don't know what several of them mean, and their hover states don't help. I may not be part of your target audience, but I do hire people, so perhaps I am after all; perhaps small captions below the icons would be a good idea.

* This begs for Easter eggs! I'm not seeing any in the source.

* Tab completion!

Mostly-inane commentary aside, I like it. Well done!

awaxman1116• 13 years ago

Thanks for the comment! Really like all the suggestions. Resume and easter eggs are on the way. Same with tab completion if I can figure that out :)

bentruyman• 13 years ago

I did something similar on my site: http://bentruyman.com/ (clicking the little gear or pressing ` on your keyboard).

You can read the source for it here (sorry it's in CoffeeScript): https://github.com/bentruyman/bentruyman.com/blob/master/sou...

laander• 13 years ago

Oh yes, PLEASE add tab completion, would please my inner shell-mage.

Tried 'sudo apt-get install bash-completion', didn't work :(

zachrose• 13 years ago

Please just proxy a remote ssh session on a locked down terminal to my web browser!

jivid• 13 years ago

This looks pretty sweet! I'd add tooltips or captions for the icons at the bottom of the page. Some of them are instantly recognizable (github, instagram, twitter etc.) but it's not really clear what the rest of them are.

awaxman1116• 13 years ago

Thanks! Tooltips on the way!

Inversechi• 13 years ago

+1 on this - I had to look at the status bar to see where these URLs would take me for some of them...

awaxman1116• 13 years ago

Tooltips are up and running! Thanks for the suggestion!

TheHippo• 13 years ago

Not so much impressed. There was a WordPress Theme that could do that a fews years ago.

evo_9• 13 years ago

It's not Wordpress.

It's actually quite clever, creative and cool.

wyck2• 13 years ago

I believe he is referring to the little know and 6 year old Ajax WP command line theme found here : https://code.google.com/p/wordpress-cli/

Splendor• 13 years ago

Very cool. Nice job!

malcolmmcc• 13 years ago

Typed "fav". Hit Tab. Did not complete. Wat.

kaeawc• 13 years ago

Ditto on this haha.

Intermernet• 13 years ago

I like it, but before reading the MOTD I'd already typed 'man'. Any chance you could alias 'man' to 'help'? It'd make it more UNIXy... if that's a word.

awaxman1116• 13 years ago

Definitely, thanks for the suggestion!

ultimatedelman2• 13 years ago

Emory represent! :)

awaxman1116• 13 years ago

Why is this comment so low?? We obviously need to introduce HN to more eagles :)

ultimatedelman2• 13 years ago

they wouldn't understand how our mascot is an eagle, but is actually an immortal skeleton. i mean, i don't even understand it.

whyrusleeping• 13 years ago

A friend of mine did something very similar for his homepage: http://jimmyl.ee/

deadfall• 13 years ago

"exit command not found" disappoints me.

cdr• 13 years ago

I browse in a 1050x1680 side monitor, and you seem to be assuming minimum 1280w - about 20% of the page is scrolled off the side. I can't remember the last time I saw a horizontal scroll bar on a page. You ought to think about whether you can make the page design more responsive, or at least consider whether 1280 is appropriate for whatever your target audience is.

awaxman1116• 13 years ago

Appreciate the feedback! Making it responsive is definitely something I want to add

nsxwolf2• 13 years ago

The world isn't built for left-handed people or sideways monitor people :)

krapp• 13 years ago

This is the second one of these i've seen and neither of them does anything interesting with 'sudo'... :|

xauronx• 13 years ago

What's going on in the console there?

Otherwise, very cool! Assuming you're going to put a little bit more into there. Maybe a command to send you an email or something would be neat (and fun to abuse).

pavel_lishin• 13 years ago

Yeah, his debug information makes it annoying to search for easter eggs :)

gatesphere• 13 years ago

I know typography is a very touchy issue, but I'd suggest a different font for the terminal... the 1 (one) and l (ell) are almost identical. Looks like typing 'he1p'.

I'd suggest DejaVu Sans Mono - the only monospaced font I've ever seen that has such visible distinctions between 1li, 00o, [{(, )}], and %#.

awaxman1116• 13 years ago

Thanks for the feedback and suggestion! Will definitely check that font out

ErikAugust• 13 years ago

I tried to run vim. Easter egg?

nsxwolf2• 13 years ago

'zork' would be a nice addition.

intellegacy• 13 years ago

what language / framework did you use to make this? nice job btw!

awaxman1116• 13 years ago

Thanks! It's a rails app (although nothing really dynamic on the ruby side) using HTML / SASS / JQuery and an awesome JS terminal plugin (http://terminal.jcubic.pl/) from jcubic (http://jcubic.pl/)

mowfask• 13 years ago

In case anyone else wonders why the day-fraction seems to increment once per second: 1/24/60/60 = .00001157

EDIT: Watch it closely and you'll see the bug.

EDIT2: Okay, not really the bug, but @op: how about changing setInterval to 864ms? It really looks nicer ;)

nvr219• 13 years ago

Got really mad about lack of tab completion

blowski2• 13 years ago

If you're using this page to get hired, be warned that while this will impress future colleagues, actual hiring managers may get confused, or just not bother.

So make it much more obvious where to download your CV.

Of course, if you just want the karma points, then it's all good.

bad_user2• 13 years ago

I find advices such as these to be harmful.

The secret of getting hired by good companies is to get noticed. You get noticed by standing out. Otherwise you're competing against hundreds or even thousands of other people with conventional resumes, that have more experience or went to better universities than you did or are just cheaper.

blowski2• 13 years ago

Totally agree with you. But you want to follow up "Look what I can do..." with "...and here's how to hire me".

k3n2• 13 years ago

You have to stand out, yes, but you also must present a clear message (which would include a clear call-to-action).

If the non-techie who's sifting through resumes can't deduce in a few seconds whether or not you're even qualified and applicable for the job at hand, the resume is going to get trashed, regardless of whichever gimmicks you pull.

Guillaumeish• 13 years ago

Good job, I like it! But please, responsiveness.

orangethirty• 13 years ago

Great job. I would include more commands. Like to change the page background color, the font, etc. You know, show off.

awaxman1116• 13 years ago

just added the ability to change the background color: 'background_color red' to change the body color, 'terminal_color red' to change the terminal color. Thanks for the suggestion!

Bill_Dimm2• 13 years ago

Neat, but I was immediately disappointed when I typed "ls" and "df" and got "unknown command" for both. If it's going to look like a *nix shell, it ought to recognize the most common commands and give some interesting/clever output. There's a huge opportunity for creativity being missed.

tripzilch• 13 years ago

Funny, for a "most common command", I had to `man df` even though I've used Linux for ages :) Turns out I only checked my diskspace in the GUI File Explorer, never in the terminal. And at uni, the command was `quota` (but that might be a diy script they used there, as `man` doesn't recognize the command).

Bill_Dimm2• 13 years ago

If you Google "common linux commands" and check the top few lists you'll find that "df" is on all of them, so it really is considered common by people other than me. In the age of the GUI, though, I can see how people might never need to learn it.

dubcanada• 13 years ago

That "1" or "l" or "L" for some reason drives me absolutely nuts. It looks so close to (one).

Anyways besides that it is awesome.

tjbiddle2• 13 years ago

Very cool! I have something similar (http://TJBiddle.info) but your page has much more friendly feel to it - My design skills aren't very good :-) - And my JS is/was pretty horrendous, definitely need to re-write when I get some time.

Definitely throw in some more details about your work history and what not - Add more commands! Just having a LinkedIn button on the bottom isn't quite enough in my opinion.

Great job!

speg• 13 years ago

Your site isn't working in Firefox:

  Error: useless setTimeout call (missing quotes around
  argument?) @ http://tjbiddle.info/static/js/resume-
  main.js:76

tjbiddle2• 13 years ago

Heh, need to work on my QA. Thanks :-) I'll be sure to check various browsers when I rewrite it.

prezjordan• 13 years ago

I was pretty close to making my personal website a terminal, but instead opted for something much simpler: http://jordanscales.com

I tear it down and rewrite it about twice a year. Each iteration has been simpler and simpler. In time, it should just say my name in 60pt Helvetica.

Also, let us know how Flatiron School goes! Seems like a great opportunity.

krmmalik2• 13 years ago

I really like your site. Very clean, neat and precise. Did you code it completely yourself? Polite suggestion: suggestion regards the font. It's ever so slightly difficult to read due to the contrast between the font and background.

I'm not an out and out coder so i bought a template and then modified it: http://krmmalik.com/me

awaxman1116• 13 years ago

Thanks! Coded it myself with some tips from friends & family coders, and with the help of the awesome terminal plugin

zrail• 13 years ago

That's basically what my personal website ended up being (my name in a 60pt font): http://www.petekeen.com

krmmalik2• 13 years ago

I love stuff like this. If i was hiring some talent, something like this would really get my attention. Kudos to the person that put it together, but at the same time, I do worry for said person; we live in a society where recruitment is clearly broken, and there's a chance something like this would work against him.

That's not deter him in anyway though. I just hope he does well out of it.

Wishing you all the best.

leeny• 13 years ago

Great job!

My site has been a terminal for a while. I keep meaning to add new commands, but for now I'm just collecting stats on what people type :)

http://www.alinelerner.com

awaxman1116• 13 years ago

Love your site!

nottombrown• 13 years ago

Wow, this is really well executed. Sweet concept and design, Adam!

alan_cx• 13 years ago

I want more.

Dunno why, but typing commands to get info, or even pages, was very entertaining. Im sure there are a million reasons not to interface a web site like this, but I find myself wanting sites like HN to have a command line interface.

Simple idea, but great fun.

Just, please more. In fact, can some one do some sort of add on to do this with other sites?

And thank you. That is the first time I've felt some excitement using a web site.

AndreasFrom• 13 years ago

The flockwithme and rulethejungle icons don't appear as links on my tablet which confused me a bit. The rest do.

awaxman1116• 13 years ago

Thanks for letting me know! Probably something to do with the fact that I'm using background images for those two and image_tags for the rest. Looking into it now!

harryherbert• 13 years ago

It looks like an 80-column terminal. Why does an 80-column terminal not fit in a reasonable-sized window? I suppose this is a sub-problem of everyone's weird need to change the basic font size (to larger or smaller) instead of picking a decent medium.

Oh speaking of zoom, ctrl-minus doesn't work for me. If it's possible to fix that, you might want to. For now I feel glad I already added a zoom slider to my browser's toolbar.

chacham15• 13 years ago

You should add a "whoami" command because thats the basic unix command to determine who the user is. Then you can put some information about yourself there. Also, instead of having to type "help" to get the available commands you should print those out whenever you encounter an unknown command (since there are so few commands anyways). Good job though, it looks good!

awaxman1116• 13 years ago

tab completion and some new commands coming shortly! thanks everyone for all the awesome suggestions!

D9u• 13 years ago

The non-responsive design doesn't fit on my netbook's small screen. Likewise for my phone. It also doesn't work on my netbook running FreeBSD & Xombrero browser. It just loads a duplicate of the next open tab when I type "help" at the prompt. No on screen feedback of text entered.

It does work on my Android phone.

Other than that, I like it. I've always wanted to do something similar.

Nice work!

marcamillion• 13 years ago

This is awesome.

You probably know a very good friend of mine....he is originally from Jamaica and played Soccer for Emory too. Not too sure if I want to call out his name on this public forum.

Either way...this site looks nice. Very clever REPL - especially for someone that just started coding. You are off to a good start!

dochtman• 13 years ago

Please don't break CTRL + W.

6cxs2hd6• 13 years ago

Nice!

Tiny suggestion: would prefer a fixed terminal font (courier, consolas, whatever) rather than a Times Roman-ish serif font. Think it would look better and more authentic.

cuppy• 13 years ago

I'm actually curious to hear how you built this! :) As someone learning to code, myself.

awaxman1116• 13 years ago

Lots of googling. You can see my favorite coding resources by typing learn_to_code in the terminal. Mostly just HTML/CSS with a nice js plugin plus the js time code. Feel free to ping me with other questions

gdonelli• 13 years ago

Nice! it definitely got me typing! Good luck

enduser• 13 years ago

Nothing happens when I type "xyzzy"

awaxman1116• 13 years ago

Updated with tab completion and some new commands

Show HN: My new homepage

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