Pilot Currency
To act as PIC under IFR, the pilot must hold an instrument rating and meet the required recent experience.
Recency Experience
- The pilot must have within the preceding 6 months, under actual or simulated conditions, logged:
- 6 instrument approaches
- Holding procedures
- Interception and tracking of courses through navigational systems
- If you let your currency lapse (do not do the above in 6 months):
- You are no longer legal to fly under IFR
- You must complete those 6 approaches, holds, and tracking with a safety pilot, or in an ATD
- If you let you currency lapse for 12 months (without doing the above)
- You must take an instrument proficiency check (IPC)
- An IPC contains most of the tasks from the practical test
Other Considerations
- Contact or visual approaches do not count
- All the experience must be in the same category of aircraft, or in an ATD that is representative of the aircraft category
- An AATD may be used for currency, however:
- The currency is valid only for 2 calendar months
- You must also have 3 hours of instrument experience
- Perform 4 unusual attitude recoveries in the ATD
- Logging instrument time
- Include the airport and type of approach made
- The name of the safety pilot (if used)
Safety Pilots
- A safety pilot must be:
- At least a private pilot
- Have a valid medical
- Be rated and current in the aircraft flown
Required Equipment
VFR
- FAR 91.205 specifics day VFR equipment:
- Airspeed indicator
- Altimeter
- Magnetic compass
- Tachometer
- Oil pressure and oil temperature gauges
- Fuel gauge
- Anti-collision lights
- Safety belts
- ELT
- Gear indicator (if needed)
- Manifold pressure gauge (altitude engine)
- Coolant temperature gauge (liquid-cooled engine)
- FAR 91.205 specifics night VFR equipment:
- Position lights
- Landing lights
- Adequate energy source
- Spare fuses (if equipped)
IFR Flight
- FAR 91.205 specifics that all VFR equipment is required for IFR flight, and also requires:
- 2 way communication radio
- Navigation suitable for the route flown
- Gyroscopic rate-of-turn indicator
- Not applicable to some aircraft with a 3rd attitude indicator
- Under part 91, you may also substitute a secondary attitude indicator for the rate-of-turn indicator in light airplanes
- Slip-skid indicator
- Sensitive altimeter (Barometric altimeter)
- Clock with sweeping seconds or digital representation
- Generator or alternator
- Directional gyro (heading indicator)
- DME or RNV (for FL240 and above)
- VOR or TACAN, or RNAV (within Class B)
- E.g. an IFR-approves GPS
Required Inspections
- These inspections are required for flight under IFR, list in detail below:
- VOR receiver check (30 days)
- Aircraft annual inspection (12 months)
- Transponder inspection (24 months)
- GPS databases (Up-to-date)
- Altimeter/Encoder/Static Pressure System Inspection (24 months)
VOR Receivers
VOR receivers be checked to be within limits within the preceding 30 days.
- To check the VOR, use these methods (in the preferable order)
- VOT Test facilities:
- Always transmit the 360 degree radial
- +/- 4 degree tolerance
- Designated surface checkpoint
- Listed in the AFD
- Shown on a taxiway
- +/- 4 degree tolerance
- Designated airborne checkpoint
- Listed in the AFD
- You must be over a specified checkpoint
- +/- 6 degree tolerance
- Dual VOR receiver check
- You must have two VOR receivers which are independent with everything except the antenna
- Set the both receivers to the same station and same bearing
- +/- 4 degree tolerance between the two CDIs
- You must use a TO signal here
- VOT Test facilities:
- Enter the VOR check in the logbook:
- P: Place of the check
- A: Amount of error
- D: Date of the check
- S: Your signature
IFR-Approved GPS
Required to have:
- Current databases, if it is to be used for approached
- An approved flight manual (AFM) for the unit
Transponder
For use under IFR, the transponder must be checked by an approved avionics facility every 24 calendar months.
Altimeter/Encoder/Static Pressure System
For use under IFR, the altimeter, encoder, and static pressure system must have been checked in the preceding 24 calendar months.


Steve Moorehead III, Project Lead
Robert Elias, Back-end Architect
Chad Simpson, Front-end Architect
Dennis Chuvilin, Front-end Architect
Cody Branson, Front-end Architect
Elliot Phipps, User Interface Developer


Trash talk hurts, even when it comes from a robot
Discouraging words from machines impair human game play
| Source: | Carnegie Mellon University |
| Summary: | Trash talking has a long and colorful history of flustering game opponents, and now researchers have demonstrated that discouraging words can be perturbing even when uttered by a robot. |
Trash talking has a long and colorful history of flustering game opponents, and now researchers at Carnegie Mellon University have demonstrated that discouraging words can be perturbing even when uttered by a robot.
 Even so, people who played a game with the robot — a commercially available humanoid robot known as Pepper — performed worse when the robot discouraged them and better when the robot encouraged them.
Lead author Aaron M. Roth said some of the 40 study participants were technically sophisticated and fully understood that a machine was the source of their discomfort.
"One participant said, 'I don't like what the robot is saying, but that's the way it was programmed so I can't blame it,'" said Roth, who conducted the study while he was a master's student in the CMU Robotics Institute.
But the researchers found that, overall, human performance ebbed regardless of technical sophistication.
The study, presented last month at the IEEE International Conference on Robot & Human Interactive Communication (RO-MAN) in New Delhi, India, is a departure from typical human-robot interaction studies, which tend to focus on how humans and robots can best work together.
"This is one of the first studies of human-robot interaction in an environment where they are not cooperating," said co-author Fei Fang, an assistant professor in the Institute for Software Research. It has enormous implications for a world where the number of robots and internet of things (IoT) devices with artificial intelligence capabilities is expected to grow exponentially. "We can expect home assistants to be cooperative," she said, "but in situations such as online shopping, they may not have the same goals as we do."
The study was an outgrowth of a student project in AI Methods for Social Good, a course that Fang teaches. The students wanted to explore the uses of game theory and bounded rationality in the context of robots, so they designed a study in which humans would compete against a robot in a game called "Guards and Treasures." A so-called Stackelberg game, researchers use it to study rationality. This is a typical game used to study defender-attacker interaction in research on security games, an area in which Fang has done extensive work.
Each participant played the game 35 times with the robot, while either soaking in encouraging words from the robot or getting their ears singed with dismissive remarks. Although the human players' rationality improved as the number of games played increased, those who were criticized by the robot didn't score as well as those who were praised.
It's well established that an individual's performance is affected by what other people say, but the study shows that humans also respond to what machines say, said Afsaneh Doryab, a systems scientist at CMU's Human-Computer Interaction Institute (HCII) during the study and now an assistant professor in Engineering Systems and Environment at the University of Virginia. This machine's ability to prompt responses could have implications for automated learning, mental health treatment and even the use of robots as companions, she said.
Future work might focus on nonverbal expression between robot and humans, said Roth, now a Ph.D. student at the University of Maryland. Fang suggests that more needs to be learned about how different types of machines — say, a humanoid robot as compared to a computer box — might invoke different responses in humans.
In addition to Roth, Fang and Doryab, the research team included Manuela Veloso, professor of computer science; Samantha Reig, a Ph.D. student in the HCII; Umang Bhatt, who recently completed a joint bachelor's-master's degree program in electrical and computer engineering; Jonathan Shulgach, a master's student in biomedical engineering; and Tamara Amin, who recently finished her master's degree in civil and environmental engineering.
The National Science Foundation provided some support for this work.
make a difference: sponsored opportunity
Story Source:
Materials provided by Carnegie Mellon University. Original written by Byron Spice.
Note: Content may be edited for style and length.
Cite This Page:
| MLA | Carnegie Mellon University. "Trash talk hurts, even when it comes from a robot: Discouraging words from machines impair human game play." ScienceDaily. ScienceDaily, 19 November 2019. <www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2019/11/191119075309.htm>. |
| APA | Carnegie Mellon University. (2019, November 19). Trash talk hurts, even when it comes from a robot: Discouraging words from machines impair human game play. ScienceDaily. Retrieved November 19, 2019 from www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2019/11/191119075309.htm |
| Chicago | Carnegie Mellon University. "Trash talk hurts, even when it comes from a robot: Discouraging words from machines impair human game play." ScienceDaily. www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2019/11/191119075309.htm (accessed November 19, 2019). |


Unit 2, Week 4 Technical Blogpost
Enumerable Methods
Monday January 19, 2015
The enumerable mixins allow different variable classes to be traversed, I think this is especially useful with arrays and hashes that might have a large number of entries. Enumerable methods include sorting, searching and many methods that actually change the elements themselves. Cycle saves elements in an internal array so changes via enumerrables have no effect. We can use the map method to place the cycle results in an array as well.
An example of how to use this might be creating a weekly calendar. We could use the cycle method over the 7 days of the week. So we could create method to print the dates January 19 - February 28 and print the days Sunday through Saturday over the 6 weeks using .cycle like this:
Another example of this might be some type of traverse change without altering the original array. This might be convenient for a variety of different use cases including protecting against accidental, permanent changes to an array you are working with. for example:
In the example above we are able to double the integers in the array usefully, but we do not change the original array. Lets see a more robust example of this:
In this example we added one to each element in the array and then tested if it was even using the .even? method. However when we print the original array we find the elements untouched as promised.
I believe with higher computing power this could be useful with testing datasets for a variety of characteristics. For example we could use cycle to perhaps reduce intensity while testing whether certain very large numbers tranversed in a specific way (e.g. x+1) are prime or meet very specific criteria (e.g. x % 17 == 0). Cycle for me is a clean way to traverse and test specific qualities of elements of an array, whether they are numbers or strings, without changing the original array.


Since file stream buffers depend on their locale's code conversion facet, it is important to understand how they communicate. On writing to the external device, the file stream buffer hands over the content of its internal character buffer, partially or entirely, to the code conversion facet; that is, to its out() function. It expects to receive a converted character sequence that it can write to the external device. The reverse takes place, using the in() function, on reading from the external file.
In order to make the file stream buffer and the code conversion facet work together effectively, it is necessary that the two main functions in() and out() indicate error situations the way the file stream buffer expects them to do it.
There are four possible return codes from the member functions in() and out():
std::codecvt_base::ok, which should obviously be returned when the conversion went fine.
std::codecvt_base::partial, which should be returned when the code conversion reaches the end of the input sequence [from,from_end) before a new character can be created. The file stream buffer's reaction to partial is to provide more characters and call the code conversion facet again, in order to successfully complete the conversion.
(In our example of a conversion between ASCII and EBCDIC, we have no reason to ever return partial, because this is a conversion of single byte characters. Either a character can be recognized and converted, or the conversion fails; that is, error is returned. The partial return code only makes sense in wide-character and multibyte conversions.)
std::codecvt_base::error, which indicates a violation of the conversion rules; that is, the character sequence to be converted does not obey the expected rules and thus cannot be recognized and converted. In this situation, the file stream buffer stops doing anything, and the file stream eventually sets its state to badbit and throws an exception if appropriate.
std::codecvt_base::noconv, which is returned if no conversion was needed.


--- layout: post title: Can Big Data Tackle Data Center Efficiency? date: '2012-03-29T12:42:15-07:00' tags: tumblr_url: http://alexhwilliams.tumblr.com/post/20127482500/can-big-data-tackle-data-center-efficiency ---
http://bit.ly/H4iaUK


Karnataka: SC upholds disqualification of 17 MLAs; allows them to recontest
The court struck down the portion of the Speaker's order by which the legislators were disqualified till the end of the 15th Karnataka Assembly
by Press Trust of IndiaThe Supreme Court on Wednesday upheld the disqualification of 17 Congress-JD(S) MLAs in Karnataka on orders of the Speaker but allowed them to contest the December 5 bypolls.
The court struck down the portion of the Speaker's order by which the legislators were disqualified till the end of the 15th Karnataka Assembly.
The apex court's verdict paved way for the disqualified MLAs to contest the December 5 bypolls in Karnataka.
A three-judge bench of justices N V Ramana, Sanjiv Khanna and Krishna Murari said if elected in bypolls, these disqualified MLAs can become ministers or hold public office.
The bench deprecated the manner in which the disqualified MLAs directly approached it without first moving high court.
The court said its verdict is based on facts and circumstance of case and does not interfere in the Speaker's power to disqualify members.
The top court passed the verdict on petitions filed by these disqualified MLAs.


| DOSE: |
2 hits |
smoked |
Cannabis |
(plant material) |
| |
5 hits |
oral |
DOB |
(liquid) |
Well... yesterday I aquired some DOB while trying to get ahold of LSD which in portland oregon is difficult to get ahold of(an apparently rare chemical but I am almost 100% positive it was DOB and 'they' said it WAS dob)I took 2 bong hits and got mildly high and I took 4 hits of DOB dripped on altoids.. then the man offered me just one more hit just for the hell of it so I took it too.
I didnt feel anything for a long time, then all of a sudden Im feeling a distortion of reality and I am in an overly good mood, and cant stop smiling, then the insanity set in... so Im just hanging out with S and D, Im just kinda sitting on the couch in D's garage and they are talking... and I see everything doubled their faces etc... and Im just fascinated by my mini black light I brought just staring at it spinning it,moving it closer and away from my face. Everything around me is starting to look very weird,very organized total chaos all around me,walls twisting and contorting, with an intense feeling of being CHARGED with energy and I feel like Ive completly lost my mind, But I was extremly comfortable on the couch but I felt the distinct urge to DO something(maybe amphetamine propertys showing)
So we take a walk around the block, I had no idea what was going on or what I was doing at this point,and why I decided to do it in the first place. just walking aquired a new difficulty and I was extremly confused.
 Im losing my mind, I feel completly and utterly devastated and just FUCKED up in every way possible... then I feel the urge to do *something* again, so we go out in D's front lawn and I still have my warm poofy blanket, and I just sat back in a kind of reclining lawn chair and looked up at the night sky, it was simply AMAZING, the stars were not in fixed positions, and they were moving weird forming patterns and stuff etc, I felt like my head was just unscrewed and the whole universe in all its vastness was allowed to enter my brain swirling around my mind, then all of a sudden a dense layer of clouds covered the bright night sky... IT WAS BEAUTIFUL!!!!
Then I find myself going back to that lovely comforting COUCH that I seemed to become OBSESSED with, it felt good just to lay there. They made ramen and offered me some but all I could do was stare at the noodles and the way they were twisting and contorting I finally took a bite and it was delicious but I was far more fascinated looking at the noodles themselve and they started winding down and decided they were going to bed(about 4am) they figured I would be alright and not do anything stupid.
  I go lay back in their bed and 8 am rolls around which is when I was supposed wake them up and I did, they just went back to sleep.
I was STILL somehow tripping and wanted it to just be over I wanted nothing more than to finally sleep and stop losing my mind, it really took me for a ride the whole night and didnt let me free till it was damn done with me... I was sweating alot and I felt somewhat DIRTY, like all impuritys in my body were coming out my pores so I took a shower. It was the most amazing shower ever, I felt cleansed of all badness and I just went and layed back in bed.... and my brother suddenly called and informed me I have a warrant for my arrest(and last thing I want to deal with right now is police) for failure to appear in court for an MIP for tobacco, so im just now coming back to reality... kind of, I have still not slept all night soooo Im going to bed now to try to get some sleep before I have to goto juvenile court and SHIT.
All in all DOB is complete utter insanity thats organized,it lasts a VERY VERY long time(I was tripping about 16 hours) I dont know if I will do it for a good while, this state of utter chaos and insanity has a morbid fascination in my mind, I want MORE but I dont at the same time. This IS the forbidden fruit.
Experience Reports are the writings and opinions of the individual authors who submit them.
Some of the activities described are dangerous and/or illegal and none are recommended by Erowid.


I am Abdiwahid Bishar Hajir. I grew up and was born in Kenya I come to Seattle around 2004-2005 ish. I grew up in Seattle for most of my life. I have been always trying my best to be detirmed and never give up. In this website you can find about me. Explore this website you can contact me with any questions. And also you can submit your request. I am a current student at the Univeristy of Washington in Seattle Washington. I am currently seeking and completing my bachelors of science degree in Informatics Human Computer Interaction. Life is about tests and obstacles and only the pateint and the ones who always fight till the end are always the succesful ones.


Boy: Do not try and bend the website. That's impossible. Instead... only try to realize the truth.
Neo: What truth?
Boy: Perhaps, the error cannot be fixed in a short time.
Neo: Oh, No!
Boy: Then you'll see, that it is not the website that bends, it is only yourself.


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com.github.mkrevuelta.JIntDatesConverter
- package com.github.mkrevuelta.JIntDatesConverter
D
DateOnly()
- Constructor for class com.github.mkrevuelta.JIntDatesConverter.
DatesConverter.DateOnly
Constructs an object initializing it with the default date 1900-01-00, which is the Excel® day number 0.
DatesConverter
- Class in
com.github.mkrevuelta.JIntDatesConverter
This class translates calendar dates to and from Excel® dates —number of days since the start of year 1900 (*)— using plain-old, lightning-fast, integer arithmetics.
DatesConverter.DateOnly
- Class in
com.github.mkrevuelta.JIntDatesConverter
This class represents a date and only a date —no hours, minutes, seconds, milliseconds...
day
- Variable in class com.github.mkrevuelta.JIntDatesConverter.
DatesConverter.DateOnly
Day of the month.
F
fromDayMonthYear(int, int, int)
- Static method in class com.github.mkrevuelta.JIntDatesConverter.
DatesConverter.DateOnly
This function constructs and populates a
DateOnly
object
fromYearMonthDay(int, int, int)
- Static method in class com.github.mkrevuelta.JIntDatesConverter.
DatesConverter.DateOnly
This function constructs and populates a
DateOnly
object
G
getDateFromExcelDay(int)
- Static method in class com.github.mkrevuelta.JIntDatesConverter.
DatesConverter
Translates from an Excel day number to a calendar date (year, month, day) in the form of a
DateOnly
object.
getExcelDayFromDate(DatesConverter.DateOnly)
- Static method in class com.github.mkrevuelta.JIntDatesConverter.
DatesConverter
This function translates a calendar date (year, month, day) from a
DateOnly
object to Excel® day number.
getExcelDayFromString_YYYY_dash_MM_dash_DD(String, Integer)
- Static method in class com.github.mkrevuelta.JIntDatesConverter.
DatesConverter
This function is a convenience wrapper for
getExcelDayFromDate()
.
getString_YYYY_dash_MM_dash_DD_FromExcelDay(Integer)
- Static method in class com.github.mkrevuelta.JIntDatesConverter.
DatesConverter
This function is a convenience wrapper for
getDateFromExcelDay()
.
I
isValid()
- Method in class com.github.mkrevuelta.JIntDatesConverter.
DatesConverter.DateOnly
This method checks whether the date is strictly a valid calendar date considering all details, such as days of each month and leap years.
M
month
- Variable in class com.github.mkrevuelta.JIntDatesConverter.
DatesConverter.DateOnly
Month of the year.
Y
year
- Variable in class com.github.mkrevuelta.JIntDatesConverter.
DatesConverter.DateOnly
Year number.
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Robin Sloan has a great and glorious talent, and it is this: to take things we have learned to treat as mundane, and infuse them with enough mystery-or-magic-or-both that we feel the wonder of them again. It is genuinely marvelous.


Charlotte Motor Speedway Dragrace
U of SC Geophysics
Live Stream
Thursday
Friday
Saturday
Sunday
Result on
:
Class:
Heat:
Ground Acceleration:
Duty Officer:
Start Time:
End Time:
1/2G
1 1/2G
2G
3G
Replay Race


Learn HTML
HTML stands for Hypertext Markup Language. It's called a markup language, because it's a way to mark up regular text to specify structure and meaning. This is similar to how you physically mark up an important passage in a book by highlighting. When you highlight part of a book, you are marking that part as important.
HTML gives you the digital equivalent of a physical highlighter to mark up content. You use HTML on the web to define the structure or 'mark up' the elements of a web page so that they have meaning beyond the text that is displayed. These meanings follow rules and allow you to define your page in different elements. Elements are the building blocks of a website.
Elements
An element is a stand alone or discrete entity in HTML, which is usually denoted by two tags, a start or beginning tag and an ending tag. These tags follow a certain syntax and they encase content to form an element. Here's a diagram of an element:
In HTML, the <mark> tag is short for marked and browsers usually render it as highlighted text. Similar to the real world, marking something means you are referencing it or notating it for relevance or importance. The tag above would appear like:
The haus is on fire!
Another way to refer to the start of the element is as an opening tag, <mark>, and a closing tag, </mark>. Notice that the closing tag has a slash in it? This is standard HTML syntax, and you'll see that for all elements with a starting or opening <tagname>, and an ending or closing </tagname>, they will follow this pattern. In our haus metaphor, you can think of this kind of element as being the first brick or building material. The slash "/" in the closing tag is the mortar that seals the element, completing it and holding it in place.
Build to Learn
Before we go any further, as a part of active learning it's important to do exercises and practice, as well as read and comprehend. Actively exercising the new knowledge you just learned is what will actually ingrain that knowledge in your brain, making it accessible to you later on. For that reason, for every HTML element and new concept we learn, I highly recommend you type out the HTML. You can copy and paste the sample I provide, but typing it will help your retention. You will learn through this tutorial, but you should also build a sample page to go along with your learning. Build as you learn.
Basic Template
You don't need to understand all of this markup to use the template below, but it will help you get started faster.
Save the file as index.html and open it in your browser of choice. You should see your sample page!
Would you rather just download it directly? Click here to save the template HTML as a file.
You already learned that elements start with one tag and end with another closing tag. As you can see above there are a lot of elements, including one called body. For now, all you need to focus on is that space between the body opening and closing tags. That will be your playground. As you go through parts of this tutorial, I will provide sample HTML for you. Feel free to transpose it manually by typing it between these tags and make sure you take the time to make it your own. Play around, customize your HTML, make it fun. This part is really important. Here are some ideas on pages you could build:
- Synopsis of your favorite book
- Article dedicated to a band
- Personal biographical page
Choose a project, and as you learn HTML, utilize your new skills to build your own page. It will help the knowledge stick.
Text Content
The <mark> tag above helps us describe text content. Remember that websites started as pages or documents, and text today is just as much a fundamental part of HTML and websites as it was in the early web. You can denote text in two ways:
- By creating a new paragraph or block of text
- By adding meaning to text in the same line
Block Elements
Creating a new paragraph means visually forming a new block on the page. This is no different than hitting enter/return in your favorite text editor and starting to type. These sorts of elements are referred to as block elements, because they represent structure and they create visual blocks. Truth be told, I think these should probably be the bricks you use to start building. The most common textual block element or brick is the paragraph element. You're reading one right now!
I lied before because the p tag should really be the first building block in your world of new materials. See how the p tag is creating a new visual block right here, in this very paragraph, which is separate and apart from the image above and the next paragraph below? That's the purpose of this block level type of element.
All right, so you've learned how to start stacking bricks in the form of paragraphs, using the <p> tag, but what holds bricks in place?  You're going to need a wooden frame. You need headings.
Headings
Headings serve as your framework, your wood, the sturdy dividers that the rest of your HTML haus can be built inside of and around. Headings create new blocks of text, visually separate from surrounding elements, also making them block elements. Can you guess what the 1st heading might be for?
Every page in HTML should have at least one heading, called an <h1> that provides the title or main subject for that page. After the h1, the rest of the headings flow down in a hierarchy, denoting the relative relationship between subordinate or nested content. Headings allow you to see the same structure you'd experience in a table of contents. Browsers will render headings by default as larger text, heavier (bolder) in appearance, and in a range starting from the largest, h1, and reducing down to the smallest, h6. Here's what all the headings from 1-6 look like on this website:
h1
h2
h3
h4
h5
h6
It's important to remember that these headings are hierarchical, so it doesn't make any sense to represent a related subordinate idea (<h3>) above a superior heading (<h2>) that is higher in the hiearchy. Here's an example:
The Fall of the House of Usher
Background
Publication History
The Fall of the House of Usher by Edgar Allan Poe was originally published in Burton's Gentleman's Magazine and American Monthly Review in 1839. Poe later republished the Gothic narrative in a collection of short stories called Tales of the Grotesque and Arabesque in 1840.
Critical Acclaim
The short story is a tale of haunting tone that relies on an unnamed narrator to convey a sense of unsettled fear. It is largely regarded as an American Gothic masterwork. In its time, it was criticized for being too formulaic, relying on similar themes and structures as some of Poe's earlier work. However, it also influenced later works of literature such as the character Captain Ahab in Herman Melville's Moby-Dick (1851).
Story
DURING the whole of a dull, dark, and soundless day in the autumn of the year, when the clouds hung oppressively low in the heavens, I had been passing alone, on horseback, through a singularly dreary tract of country; and at length found myself, as the shades of the evening drew on, within view of the melancholy House of Usher. I know not how it was--but, with the first glimpse of the building, a sense of insufferable gloom pervaded my spirit. I say insufferable; for the feeling was unrelieved by any of that half-pleasurable, because poetic, sentiment, with which the mind usually receives even the sternest natural images of the desolate or terrible. I looked upon the scene before me--upon the mere house, and the simple landscape features of the domain--upon the bleak walls--upon the vacant eye-like windows--upon a few rank sedges--and upon a few white trunks of decayed trees--with an utter depression of soul which I can compare to no earthly sensation more properly than to the after-dream of the reveller upon opium--the bitter lapse into everyday life--the hideous dropping off of the veil...
The example above shows the way we categorize and compartmentalize information following a hierarchy. The title of the story is the <h1>, the sections of the book are captured as <h2>, because they are subordinate to the h1 and they help separate the editor's background information from the actual story itself. And then finally, even within the Background section, there's <h3> elements to denote subsections of the Background: Publication History and Critical Acclaim. All of these headings help communicate how ideas are related. They serve as the wooden frame, defining the structure of your content.
Inline Elements
In the House of Usher example above, you probably noticed that certain text appear in italics and other text appears in bold. You were introduced to this idea earlier with the <mark> tag, but we should circle back on why you use these elements now. Adding meaning to text in the same line means adding additional meaning through tags to emphasize text, mark importance, or notate references. These are less like bricks and more like your paint or lights, the parts of your haus that draw attention to certain elements and add extra meaning to your basic text. You probably also noticed that even though we are using elements in the text above, they're not creating new blocks like a <p> or <h#> tag might. That's because they're inline elements. Inline elements only effect text in the same line and do not alter the visual flow of the page or document.
The book is an American Gothic masterwork
You might notice that in our diagram the <p> tag is on different lines, while in the HTML above, the <p> tags are on the same line. That's because HTML ignores white space found outside of tags. Since the <p> element informs structure as well as meaning, you can add linebreaks between blocks of text in HTML and only a new set of <p> tags (or another block element) will actually render as a new line on the website's page. It makes it much easier to read HTML if you wrap the tag around the content and indent it properly, as the diagram shows above. This is particulary useful for long paragraphs of text.
So far you've learned a handful of inline elements, which you can use to mark up your text with additional meaning:
- <mark> stands for marked and is used to notate importance in text and it typically displays as highlighted text
- <em> stands for emphasis and is used to add stress to a passage and typically displays as italicized text
- <strong> is used to to indicate strong importance, seriousness, or urgency and usually displays as bold text
Of course to really use your paint and hang your lights, you need to understand the rules around nesting elements.
Nesting
You're learning the tools you need to build your own beautiful haus out of HTML. So far you've learned about the bricks, the building blocks of any webpage, which are the block level text elements such as headings and paragraphs. You've also learned inline text elements as well, such as mark, emphasis, and importance. By combining these elements or materials, you can start to tell your own stories, to build a durable, digital House of Usher. You've probably already figured this out, but you can compose elements together by nesting them. It's important to close nested tags in order though. Here's what I mean:
Luther Vandross was a talent, possessing The Velvet Voice and supporting lead singers across four decades.
When you nest an inline element like emphasis inside of another element like a paragraph, you have to make sure you close your emphasis tag before the paragraph tag. This simple rule will save you a lot of trouble and is worth remembering, as you'll be using elements together and nesting them often. Speaking of The Velvet Voice and soul music, it's important to also understand why you use tags like emphasis and how they change the meaning of a page beyond just the visual appearance.
Semantic HTML
In soul music, there are ideas being communicated through the song that are beyond the simple words of the lyrics. Semantic HTML is a lot like that, because certain tags are used to identify content with an additional layer of meaning associated to it. Here's a formal definition from Wikipedia:
Semantic HTML is the use of HTML markup to reinforce the semantics, or meaning, of the information in webpages and web applications rather than merely to define its presentation or look. Semantic HTML is processed by traditional web browsers as well as by many other user agents.
Two examples you've already learned are the emphasis <em> and strong <strong> tags. The <strong> tag results in a visual difference, making the text it surrounds bold, but it also indicates that the text is also important. Why does this matter?
The extra meaning added by the strong tag matters because of that last phrase above in the formal definition: Semantic HTML is processed by... many other user agents. One example of a user agent might be in a browser, whereby you're visually experiencing the content. However, other examples of user agents reading your webpage might come in the form of visually impaired people experiencing your webpage without a browser, instead through a screen reader; or even beyond people, computer programs like search engines will be reading your webpage and determining what is important about it (or not). In either case, by using the proper tags you convey semantic meaning about your house, which makes it easier for all users to consume your content.
Accessibility
Using proper Semantic HTML is closely related to the concept of accessibility and universal design. Universal design in building is the idea that all people should have equal access to a building, regardless of their level of mobility. That's why buildings have ramps for people in wheelchairs. The same is true for our digital world on the web. Any user, regardless of their situation, should have the same ease of access to your website as any other user. This includes users that are visually impaired and might use a screen reader or users that are hearing impaired and will need to read the captions on a video embedded in your site.
You've learned how to write a story. You can build a basic house using HTML, and now you understand why it's important to build that house for everyone. Let's start learning about how we might decorate our house, connect the rooms with doors and hallways, and give the place some character. I'm talking about HTML attributes.
Attributes
An HTML attribute is an extra characteristic that you can add to a basic HTML tag which will enrich it with additional information about the tag. There are a few rules to follow when you're adding attributes to your HTML tags:
- Attributes are always specified in the start or opening tag
- Attributes generally come in a pair of two: a name and a value
Here's a visual example showing an attribute called style which you can use to change how your element is displayed.
And here's how the actual HTML looks:
She's a brick haus!
Color is a style property that defines a text element's font color. Red is a standard color defined in browsers. Combining the two on a <p> tag, we get a red paragraph. I know we promised this tutorial would be only about HTML, but you've actually just learned a little CSS as well. CSS stands for Cascading Style Sheets, and if HTML is how you define structure and content with elements, then CSS is how you style an element's appearance and how each element displays in the browser. I know that's a lot, so don't worry about CSS right now. We'll work on that later.
We're going to stick to HTML for now, but if you need a break, here's a link to a song to help you relax: Brick House.
Links
Speaking of links, a link (or hyperlink) is how you can define a door to another webpage. So far you've learned everything you need to build an HTML haus, but you're going to want to link your houses together. The link in the last paragraph is one of those doorways and it's defined by using an HTML attribute called href, which stands for hypertext reference. The href attribute is applied to an HTML element called an anchor tag <a>. It's a hypertext reference because it's referring to another piece of HTML.
As you can see, the href attribute has a value of "https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rrBx6mAWYPU" which is the address to another website. It is applied inside of the opening <a> tag, and between the two tags, you see the text that has been marked up "Brick House". This is no different than using the <mark> tag, except this creates a link instead of a highlight. It's standard for browsers to display links as underlined text, which is how anchor tags usually render.
For building your own website, you can link to another .html page on your computer by referencing it. It doesn't have to be on the internet. Your reference will follow the structure of your computer's file folders. Sometimes it's easier to see this with an example.
Do you see how the link above doesn't have an https:// in it? That's because it's a local reference to a file.  I bet you can guess what it does!
For the example above to work, it's important that you have saved both index.html and about.html in the same file folder!
Images
Similar to anchor tags, the <img> tag stands for image and it references the location of an image. When you use this tag, it references the image's location and then your browser displays it for you to see. Instead of using the href attribute though, the img element uses the src or source attribute.
The src="img/red-house-150.jpg" is referencing a file in relation to where my current HTML page that references the image is located. In this case, it's inside of a subfolder which is named "img" and the image is named "red-house-150.jpg". I was referencing an image on my computer, but you can also reference images on the internet by using their exact location. If you want to try, you can use the following address on your own HTML page: "https://html.haus/img/red-house-150.jpg"
You may have noticed another attribute attached to each of these images. Images have two required attributes: the src attribute and the alt attribute. The alt attribute is for alternate text and it should be a meaningful description of the image.
Remember all those different users and user agents?
Alt text is there for visually impaired users who rely on a screen reader to experience your webpage. Even though they can't see the image, they still need to be able to experience your page as if they could. Their screen reader will read the description you provide in your alternate text, so make sure you write a meaningful description there. Also, screen readers already know that it's an image, so there's no need to ever write "Photo of" or "Image of" in your alternate text. This is duplicative.
Self Closing Tags
You probably noticed that there's another peculiar thing about img tags. They don't have an ending or closing tag! There's no such thing as a closing </img> tag, in fact it's bad HTML. That's because certain elements don't need a closing tag, because they stand alone without having to encompass anything else. In an image's case, there's nothing for the image to wrap around, because the image itself is the element. The extra ending tag wouldn't be useful. That's why it's a self closing tag.
Hanging the Roof
It's time to revisit where we started, bring it all together, and put the roof on your HTML haus.
At the beginning of this tutorial, I shared a template without explaining it. I wanted to get you into building HTML as fast as I could, so we skipped a few basic parts. Before you finish, it's important to understand them.
All HTML documents are wrapped in a parent <html> tag. Inside of the HTML element, there are two essential components:
- head
- body
The head element contains information about the document or page that is important for your computer's browser (and other user agents, such as search engines), but is not displayed to you visually as part of the page. As an example in the head tag above, there's a title element, which defines the text that appears in your browser's tab, giving a title to your page. There are many more elements that can go in the head, but title is the first one you should learn.
The body element contains your actual page, and it's what you've been working in this entire time. HTML demands and requires that the body element follow the head and that the entire content of your webpage is captured inside the body.
I like to think of the <head> as being the the attic of your HTML house, where important things like ducts, wiring, and air conditioning units live, except in HTML these things are the title of your page, links to CSS styles, or maybe even metadata about your website. You never see what is in the attic, but the roof of the house is supported by the attic, so it still serves a very important purpose. Similarly, the body is the house itself, the part you experience as the user.
Metadata
Metadata in HTML can help you describe the author of the webpage or the description that should appear in search results. Think of this as additional information that other user agents might need in order to process, categorize, or understand your page correctly. Without delving too deeply into this, I recommend you read through the conclusion and then check out the References section for a peek into all the possibilities.
Conclusion
You've just learned a whole heap of HTML. Actually, you've learned everything you need to recreate this tutorial yourself. You can go out and build your own site now. Here's what you learned by completing this one page tutorial:
- What an HTML element is
- Different kinds of elements: block vs. inline
- How to structure text content using headings and paragraphs
- What Semantic HTML means and why you should write it
- The importance of universal design and accessibility
- What HTML attributes are and how they enrich elements
- How to create doorways to other pages using links
- How to hang pictures on your walls using images
In order to really absorb and retain this information, I recommend you follow a cycle of first learn, then build, and finally teach. Building this website, HTML.Haus, was part of my own study to learn HTML5 and fulfill the teach part of my cycle. Take the concepts you've learned today and tell your own story by building a webpage. The internet needs you. We need you.
You can copy and paste this into a text editor and save the file as index.html. Loading that file in a browser shows your page!
Next Steps
Of course, there's a lot more to learn after this. You learned how to build a house today, but you can build veritable castles out of HTML. There are big parts of HTML that this introductory tutorial didn't cover, such as forms and tables, interactive elements, and metadata. To keep learning these additional areas, check out these other sections: