kl116004

What can be done at the state level around campaign finance reform that shouldn't contradict Citizens United? I'm not interested in symbolic legislation that is sure to be struck down as unconstitutional. That seems like a waste of resources to me.

Campaign finance reform is my pet issue and you have me considering volunteering (in general). I can write a letter to the editor but you don't want me writing code for you (yet, anyway). Need someone to record a guitar solo for any reason?

What's your favorite tool no one has heard of right now?

Yep, that would be the thing.

A good infographic on how some typical publicly funded campaign systems work would be helpful right about now. I struck out while quickly googling for it.

Have you interacted with Dr. Armando Fox and Dr. David Patterson from UC Berkeley? They taught an edx.org course (the free, yet full featured university courses) on Software as a Service application development, and it personally changed the course of my life/career. They have an excellent perspective on design as a whole, and how software fits into the picture.

They teach it in Ruby-on-Rails and emphasize beautiful code and agile development techniques. If you have some moderate experience in programming you can jump right in (like a full college course, or some amount of time spent learning a single language).

The thing I love about programming is all of the stuff you want to know is out there and so much of it is free. If you want to self-educate, all you need is the motivation. That course jump-started my desire to learn programming again and understand at an academic level. I truly appreciate initiatives like these.

As a prominent place to learn some webdev skills, how do you regard w3schools.com? I "think" I learned some solid information on html, css and javascript, although I don't know what to think of the fact that they seem to imply they are affiliated with the World-wide Web Consortium even though they aren't. Should we trust w3schools?