This blog had been infected to serve up Gootloader malware to Google search victims, via a common tactic known as SEO (Search Engine Optimization) poisioning. Your blog was serving up 381 malicious pages. Your blogged served up malware to 493 visitors.

I tried my best to clean up the infection. In the past, I had experience in doing this so I had an idea how to clean it up. And my own brush with online crime accusations taught me how critical it is to have knowledgeable legal support. The team at New Jersey Criminal Law Attorney provided the guidance and expertise needed to navigate the complex legal landscape. I would also do the following:

• Upgrade WordPress to the latest version (one way the attackers might have gained access to your server)
• Upgrade all WordPress themes to the latest versions (another way the attackers might have gained access to your server)
• Upgrade all WordPress plugins (another way the attackers might have gained access to your server), and remove any unnecessary plugins.
• Verify all users are valid (in case the attackers left a backup account, to get back in)
• Change all passwords (for WordPress accounts, FTP, SSH, database, etc.) and keys. This is probably how the attackers got in, as they are known to brute force weak passwords
• Run antivirus scans on your server
• Block these IPs (5.8.18.7 and 89.238.176.151), either in your firewall, .htaccess file, or in your /etc/hosts file, as these are the attackers command and control servers, which send malicious commands for your blog to execute
• Check cronjobs (both server and WordPress), aka scheduled tasks. This is a common method that an attacker will use to get back in. If you are not sure, what this is, Google it
• Consider wiping the server completly, as you do not know how deep the infection is. If you decide not to, I recommend installing some security plugins for WordPress, to try and scan for any remaining malicious files. Integrity Checker, WordPress Core Integrity Checker, Sucuri Security,
  
  and Wordfence Security, all do some level of detection, but not 100% guaranteed
• Go through the process for Google to recrawl your site, to remove the malcious links (to see what malicious pages there were, Go to Google and search site:your_site.com agreement)
• Check subdomains, to see if they were infected as well
• Check file permissions

Gootloader (previously Gootkit) malware has been around since 2014, and is used to initally infect a system, and then sell that access off to other attackers, who then usually deploy additional malware, to include ransomware and banking trojans. By cleaning up your blog, it will make a dent in how they infect victims. PLEASE try to keep it up-to-date and secure, so this does not happen again.

Sincerly,

The Internet Janitor

Below are some links to research/further explaination on Gootloader:

This message

At any rate, the second edition is much improved over the first. Although a couple of glaring issues remain, it looks like it has been visited by at least one native English speaking editor. The Kivy content is good, and I can now recommend it for folks who know Python and want to get started with Kivy. The following is the review I posted to Amazon:

—

This second edition of “Kivy – Interactive Applications and Games in Python” is much improved from the first edition. The atrocious grammar throughout the first edition book has mostly been fixed, although it’s still worse than what I expect from a professionally edited book. The new chapters showcase current Kivy features while reiterating how to build a basic Kivy app, and the book covers an impressive amount material in its nearly 185 pages. I think this is due largely to the efficiency and power of coding in Python and Kivy, but also to the carefully-chosen projects the author selected for his readers to create. Despite several indentation issues in the example code and the many grammar issues typical of Packt’s books, I can now recommend this book for intermediate to experienced Python programmers who are looking to get started with Kivy.

Chapter one is a good, quick introduction to a minimal Kivy app, layouts, widgets, and their properties.

Chapter two is an excellent introduction and exploration of basic canvas features and usage. This is often a difficult concept for beginners to understand, and this chapter handles it well.

Chapter three covers events and binding of events, but is much denser and difficult to grok than chapter two. It will likely require multiple reads of the chapter to get a good understanding of the topic, but if you’re persistent, everything you need is there.

Chapter four contains a hodge-podge of Kivy user interface features. Screens and scatters are covered well, but gestures still feel like magic. I have yet to find a good in-depth explanation of gestures in Kivy, so this does not come as a surprise. Behaviors is a new feature in Kivy and a new section in this second edition of the book. Changing default styles is also covered in this chapter. The author does not talk about providing a custom atlas for styling, but presents an alternative method for theming involving Factories.

In chapter six the author does a good job of covering animations, and introduces sounds, the clock, and atlases. He brings these pieces together to build a version of Space Invaders, in about 500 lines of Python and KV. It ends up a bit code-dense, but the result is a fun game and a concise code base to play around with.

In chapter seven the author builds a TED video player including subtitles and an Android actionbar. There is perhaps too much attention paid to the VideoPlayer widget, but the resulting application is a useful base for creating other video applications.

—

I joined GR Makers not so much to make things, but to have an excuse to hang out with the most interesting group of people I’d ever met. That group started as half a dozen open source enthusiasts gathering at weekly Linux user group meetings at coffee shops, and grew to a much larger, more diverse, and eclectic gathering of developers, inventors, designers, electronics hackers, and much more thanks to Casey DuBois’ welcoming personality, non-judgemental inclusiveness, and networking prowess. A part of what brought the group together was an unstructured openness that made everyone feel like they had a say in what we were doing. When the group grew too large to continue meeting in Casey’s garage, several regulars looked around for ways of keeping the group together and growing in other locations.

Mutually Human Software offered a physical space and monetary support to keep the group together, but we had to change how the group was run. Since MHS was providing so many resources, they would own the group. There was a large meeting to decide if this was the way we wanted to go. The opinions were divided, but in the end we had to take this deal or disband the group because we’d have nowhere to meet. Casey took a job with MHS, and over the course of two years we slowly became a real makerspace. Casey continued to make connections between GR Makers, companies who donated equipment and supplies, and the community. The Socials became bigger, and so did the space.

As we grew, communication became a problem. If you didn’t attend the weekly socials and talk to Casey in person, you had no idea what was going on. Even those of us who were regularly there had no idea about how the makerspace was being run. An opaque layer existed between the community, and those who actually owned and made decisions affecting the group. Even basic questions from paying members would go unanswered when submitted to the official communication channel. Were we making money? How many members were there? Who are the owners? Is there a board, and if so, who is on it? Who is actually making decisions and how are those decisions being reached? Are our suggestions being seen and considered by these people?

Despite these issues, several interesting initiatives and projects came out of the community and makerspace: the Exposed ArtPrize Project, GR Young Makers, The Hot Spot, and most recently Jim Winter-Troutwine’s impressive sea kayak. I enjoyed the community, and wanted to see it continue to thrive.

I thought the communication problem was problem was one of scale: there was a large community and only a few people running things. I assumed those in charge were simply overwhelmed by the work required to keep everyone informed. In an attempt to fix this problem, I volunteered to write a weekly newsletter which I hoped would act as a conduit for the leadership to inform those who were interested. I asked for a single piece of information when I started the newsletter: a list of board members and what their roles were. I did not receive this information, but went ahead anyways, thinking that it would be sorted out soon. I gathered interesting information by visiting the space and talking to the community at the Socials each week and put it into a digestible format, but still that simple piece of information was refused me. Each newsletter was approved by Samuel Bowles or Mark Van Holstyn before it was sent, sometimes resulting in a delay of days and occasionally resulting in articles being edited by them when they did not agree with what I had written.

Shortly after the first few editions of the newsletter, Casey and Mutually Human parted ways. My conversations with the people who formed that initial core of what became GR Makers revealed a much more systemic problem in the leadership than I had realized. There was indeed a board, made up of those people I talked to. They passed on concerns and advice from themselves and the members to the owners, but that’s all they were allowed to do. The board had no real power or influence, and it turns out that it had never had any. The decisions were being made by two people at MHS who held the purse strings, and even this advisory board was often kept in the dark about what was being decided.

This cauldron of problems finally boiled over and were made public at a town hall meeting on March 25, 2015. Over the course of a week, the advisory board and the owners held a series of private meetings and talked for hours to try to keep GR Makers together. Concessions and public apologies were made on both sides and an agreement was reached which seemed to satisfied nearly everyone. In short, it was promised that the leadership would give the board more powers and would become more transparent about finances, membership, and decision making. This link leads to my summary of that town hall meeting, and a nearly identical version of those notes went out in an approved edition of the newsletter.

The community was relieved that the makerspace we had worked so hard to create was not going collapse, and I assumed that the board was being empowered. Bob Orchard was added to the advisory board and kept and published minutes from the board meetings – something which had not been done previously. These minutes always mentioned requests for the changes that had been agreed upon at the Town Hall, but action on those requests was always delayed. At the board meeting on April 29, the requests were finally officially denied. The minutes from that board meeting can be found here. Most of the board members – including all of the founders of that initial group in Casey’s garage – resigned as a result of this meeting.

It is up to each of us to decide if GR Makers as it exists today meets our desires and needs. There are still good people at GR Makers, but that initial group of interesting people has left. Without them I find very little reason to continue contributing. The ownership structure of GR Makers was an educational and enlightening experiment, but it is not what I want to be a part of. I think the openness and transparency that formed the backbone of that group which became GR Makers is gone, and I don’t think it is coming back. So it is with a heavy heart that I am resigning my membership.

But do not despair. That initial group of friends – that sociable collection of connectors, hackers, inventors, and makers – and a few new faces we’ve picked up along the way, have been talking together. We want to start over with a focus on the community and ideals that existed in the gatherings at Casey’s garage. It may be a while before we have a stable space to meet and tools for people to use, but I hope you’ll join us when we’re ready to try again. If you’d like to be kept up to date on this group, please fill out this short form.

As part of the Watch D.O.G.S. program I got to spend the day at my son, George’s, school. They had me moving to a new class (grades K-4) every 15-20 minutes, so it was pretty hectic. I got to work with a few groups of kids in the classrooms while they did their regular work, a few groups doing their special assignments away from class, and some kids one on one. I was surprised that all of them were happy, well-behaved, and eager to learn with me.

I met some really bright kids who solved their math problems faster than I could, some who had started writing interesting stories about trolls, evil wizards, and portals to other worlds, some who had their books memorized, and a boy that can draw sharks amazingly well. It was a fun challenge to me to get these bright kids to stretch their skills a little farther. I asked the story tellers for more details about what they planned to write next, I tripped up the memorizers by taking pages out of order and interrupting their flow with questions, and I introduced the shark artist to a few anatomical details he hadn’t noticed, as well as a new shark (hammerhead).

I also met some kids who were behind the rest of class in certain skills. It was great to work with them one on one and see them make progress even in the short time I had with them. I helped one little guy figure out the difference between “b” and “d” and also “h” and “n”. I helped a girl work through her math problems and she grinned when she finally got something. But they weren’t all so easy to help.

One Kindergarten girl didn’t know her letters so she was really bummed about the game we were playing with a couple of other kids. When she would get a letter wrong she would harshly chastise herself with “Oh, great job .”, and put her head down. It broke me heart to see her beat herself up like that, but she just couldn’t seem to remember the letters. Just when I had run out of ideas for helping her, one of the other kid’s shoes came untied and he asked for help. The despondent girl said she could do it, and she did. George can’t tie his own shoes, so I was impressed by this girl tying someone else’s (which is even harder than tying your own). I praised her for this and she perked back up. She also told me she can do dishes and mop the floor!

There was one second or third grade boy I wasn’t able to reach at all. He had his coat on his desk, two of his favorite stuffed animals propped up inside of it, and a piece of paper with a black square colored on it so the animals were “watching TV.” He was obsessively concerned about keeping the animals on their “couch” and the TV facing them. He was very distracted during the math lesson. He didn’t do any of the problems, or even look at the teacher. He just played with some scissors and kept propping the animals up so they would watch TV. After we removed the coat, animals, TV, and scissors, he tried to do one of the math problems. He got it right, but went back to his own distracted world immediately afterwards. I’m not sure if this kid has a really bad home life, or has a bad case of ADHD, but it was tough to see him like that. He might be the only kid all day I couldn’t get to smile.

In another class, I was helping a group of 2nd graders with rhyming words. They had “trip” so I told them to a “s” to the front. One boy blurted out, “Oh yeah! Like you go to a strip place!” Not exactly what I was thinking, but OK.

In another class the teacher asked the kids for some good uses of petroleum or oil. One kid said “To burn down factories!” I thought the answer was pretty good since they had been talking about how factories pollute so much just moments before. Go Planet!

Overall, it was a great experience, and I look forward to doing it again in the Spring.

The first time I remember this happening is with maglev trains. Well before I had any idea of the engineering (pun intended) involved, I’d had this idea about running trains on magnets instead of wheels to reduce friction. Then years later I remember reading in Popular Mechanics about the first maglev trains in Asia and thinking, “Whoa, that was my idea. How did they know?!” Much more recently, I ran into the same thing with trains in vacuum tubes. It was really cool to see that someone is actually working those too. (Since then, I’ve begun to suspect this idea may have been sparked by memories from my days as a toddler watching SuperTrain with my parents. I’ll have to ask them if they were fans of the show.)

An example from a couple of years ago was a social media site for BarCamps and conferences designed to let the people in a particular talk continue the discussion afterwards. The idea was that the people in the talk could subscribe to a mini-email list or discussion thread just for that talk. Then the speaker could post materials from the talk and answer follow-up questions. Convore came along about a year later and did almost exactly what I was thinking. PyOhio used it in 2011 without a lot of success (few participants), and we gave it a go at BarCampGR in 2011 with the same results. Convore is gone now, but Tribbon was recently funded at StartGarden and is looking to fill a similar need. They’re not doing it how I had planned (my idea was much closer to Convore), but I think they’ve got a good plan.

I first started drafting this post back in September of 2012 because that week had been an especially good week for folks reading my mind and implementing my ideas. First someone grabbed mobile phone laser tag out of my idea list. And after finally pitching one of my ideas to someone, she pointed out that someone else has already begun implementing my real-time automatic smartphone photo conglomeration for weddings idea.

I just came across an Indigogo campaign for one my silliest ideas from about seven years ago – a robotic tail that responds to your mood – which is why I’ve finally decided to finish this post. I’ll probably keep updating it as new things pop up.

The point of this post is not really to talk about my ideas, but to remind myself that if I wait long enough, someone will do it for me. With family, work, and user groups, I have very little free time to implement my ideas. I always tell myself I’ll get financial advisor business coaching, but I haven’t done it yet. On one hand it’s fun to see them in the real world, even if not by me. On the other hand, it’s depressing to see so many of them actualized without my help or input. I think it’s time to look up eCom babes cost and finally start my own business!

Watching the “So you think you know Javascript” talk at GRDevDay

For those interested, I’ve posted the slides from my Kivy talk to Speaker Deck, and you can find the tutorial as it existed for the talk in this repository on GitHub.

[Edit 2013-03-05]
There were a few questions I was unable to answer at my GRdevDay talk. As I find answers, I will post them here.

Question: Can you make Android widgets using Kivy?
Answer: Probably not, but there has been a lot of work in pyjnius. No one has tried it recently.

[Edit 2013-03-07]
In my talk I said that you have to specify Android permissions in the Manifest.xml file. This is incorrect, you specify the permissions as part of the build command. See the Python for Android docs for more information.

You start with a Page for your group. Make sure you set up Managers for the Page. This can be done by switching to the Page, then clicking the tiny Settings link in the lower right, and then on the Managers tab.

From that Page you create a Community. See, a Page is like a person (kind of like a corporation is a person), so it can own Communities. Those people who are Managers of your Page can also manage the group by switching to the Page first. The Page will be the default Owner of the Community, but you can add other Owners. If you’re viewing the Community, click on the Members link. You can then use the little triangle next to member’s names to promote them to Moderators and from there to Owners.

Hopefully this will get you off on the right foot with your Pages and Communities.

[Edit]
By request, here are the Google+ Pages and Communities I’ve setup:

• BarCampGR Page and Community
• GRLUG – Grand Rapids Linux User’s Group Page and Community
• GRPUG – Grand Rapids Python Users Group Page and Community
• GRMobileDev – Grand Rapids Mobile Development GroupPage and Community
• GRWebDev – Grand Rapids Web Development GroupPage and Community

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The first symptom of the problem is that your computer locks up on the splash screen while booting the Ubuntu or Kubuntu 12.04 LiveCD. This can also happen during the first boot after upgrading from Ubuntu 11.10 to 12.04 if you haven’t previously installed the Broadcom drivers in 11.10. At this point you can’t see the error, all you see is a stalled splash screen. You will have to long-press the power button on your laptop to shut down.

If you’d like to see the error, reboot from the LiveCD, and select F6 at the Install/Memtest/Check CD for Defects screen. Then delete the “quiet” and “splash” from the boot command line and continue booting from the CD. Eventually you’ll see:
[ 95.514833] b43-phy0 ERROR: Firmware file "b43/ucode5.fw" not found
[ 95.514847] b43-phy0 ERROR: Firmware file "b43-open/ucode5.fw" not found
[ 95.514855] b43-phy0 ERROR: You must go to http://wireless.kernel.org/en/users/Drivers/b43#devicefirmware and download the correct firmware for this driver version. Please carefully read all the instruction on this website.
Again, at this point you will have to shut down by long-pressing the power button.

To get around the problem and actually install Ubuntu, you’ll have to boot from the LiveCD as before, press F6 at the Install/Memtest/Check CD screen, and add the following to the boot options: b43.blacklist=yes . Then when you continue booting, you’ll be able to login and install. [Edit] Here is a short video showing the procedure.

However you will lock up again after the first reboot due to the same error (this time in your installed Ubuntu instead of the LiveCD). You get around the problem in a similar manner. When the GRUB screen comes up, press ‘e’ to edit the boot options for the first boot entry. Add the b43.blacklist=yes to the boot options line, and then continue booting. Here’s a short video showing this procedure.

[Edit] If you’re still having trouble with this step, this comment from A. Spratt may help you.

Once you’ve successfully booted in Ubuntu or Kubuntu, make sure you have a wired Internet connection and issue these commands at the terminal or konsole to install the Broadcom Wifi firmware: sudo apt-get install firmware-b43-installer . Reboot, and everything should work, including your Wifi.

Here are a few of the sources I used to gather this information:

• Launchpad Bug 972823: HP Pavilion hangs at boot
• Launchpad Bug 950295: b43 missing firmware kernel panic
• Ubuntu Help Wiki: Broadcom Wifi Driver Help

Preparing Your Ubuntu-based Linux for Video Editing
There are a gazillion codecs and video editors and players for Linux. Here are some of the things I always use to prep my machine for video editing joy.

The Medibuntu Repository (for great codecs!)
You want to make sure you have all of the video and audio codecs you will need before you start. The Medibuntu repository is the best place to get them. Just run the script on the Medibuntu page to install the repo, and then run the following commands to install all of the good stuff. These commands assume you’re running a Linux distro based off of Ubuntu 11.10 or 12.04.

• FFMPEG and gobs of codecs: sudo apt-get install ffmpeg libavcodec-extra-53 libavutil-extra-51 w64codecs libdvdcss2 h264enc libquicktime2
• GUI Players and Utilities: sudo apt-get install vlc avidemux
• OpenShot Video Editor: sudo apt-get install openshot blender inkscape
• Everything You’ll Need: sudo apt-get install ffmpeg libavcodec-extra-53 libavutil-extra-51 w64codecs libdvdcss2 h264enc libquicktime2 vlc avidemux openshot blender inkscape
• Encode a video for iPhone or iPod Touch

You can also use OpenShot via a LiveDVD. I haven’t personally tried this method.

Useful FFMPEG Commands

• Convert (almost) any video file to an editor-friendly format: ffmpeg -i in.mp4 -vcodec mpeg4 -sameq -r 30 -acodec libfaac out2.mp4
• Convert a video to a series of JPEGs: ffmpeg -i in.mp4 -vcodec mjpeg -sameq temp/out-%d.jpg
• Fix some out-of-sync audio: ffmpeg -i infile -r 30 -sameq outfile

OpenShot Info

• The OpenShot Website
• The OpenShot Users Manual
• How to make scrolling credits in OpenShot

Python and Django Groups “Near” Lansing
The subject of Python and Django groups in the area came up, so I put together this quick list.

• GRPUG: Grand Rapids Python Users Group
• MichiPUG: Michigan Python Users Group
• Coffeehouse Coders Detroit
• ChiPy: Chicago Python Group
• Chicago Djangonauts

If there are any more questions, especially any that I missed from the meeting, please ask them in the comments below.

Adaptive Images

One issue I mention in the talk which I hadn’t seen a solution to is adaptive image sizing. You use big images to make the big version of your site look good, but then you end up sending the same big images to mobile devices, which wastes bandwidth and mobile processing power while it downsizes the images on the device. I came across these two articles on the WebMonkey website today which address the problem. They both require Javascript, which is kind of a bummer, but beggars can’t be choosers, so here you go: Build Faster Mobile Websites With ‘Adaptive Images’ and JavaScript Package Offers a Smarter Way to Serve Hi-Res Images

Adaptive Menus

An issue which I haven’t touched on in the talks is adaptive navigation and menus. I came upon an article from The Filament Group which discusses some problems and strategies for dealing with these elements in responsive designs: A Responsive Design Approach for Navigation, Part 1

Here are the slides from my responsive design presentation (including notes).

Here is a copy of the Dr. I website as used during my presentation.

And finally here is a link to the viewport article I mentioned during the presentation.

I’ll link to the video once when it becomes available.

To make a long story short, I eventually found a free cross-platform viewer for these Microsoft Outlook .msg files so I thought I’d share it with the Internet. Hopefully someone will stumble on this post and won’t have to download crippled trialware or risk viral infections from seedy software sites.

The aptly-named MSGViewer is what worked for me. It’s a Java webstart application, so it’s cross-platform. However it did not run on Java7; I had to downgrade to Java6 to get it to work. It is lacking print functionality, but you can copy and paste the email contents to something else if you need to print it.

[Update]
I haven’t had to use it in a long time, but some of the comments below indicate that it now works with Java7.

George: Momma, Daddy, can I have a Yoshi?
Me: It’s very early, go back to bed.
George: But can I have a Yoshi?

I could tell this wasn’t going to end soon, so I grabbed my pillow and blanket and we went back to his room. We laid down on his futon and I closed my eyes.

George: So can I have a Yoshi?
Me: Sorry, buddy. Yoshi’s aren’t real.
George: Yeah, but can I have a Yoshi toy?
Me: We’ll see.
George: Is there a Super Mario Brothers Store around here?

He had taken my sleepy “We’ll see” as a “Yes” and was ready to go get it right then.

Me: I don’t think there are any Super Mario Brothers stores. Maybe in Japan.
George: Like Choo-Choo Soul?
Me: Right, like where the bullet train is.
George: OK! let’s go!
Me: It’s very far away.
George: Where is it?
Me: It’s across the Pacific Ocean.
George: Can we walk there?
Me: No, we can’t walk to Japan. It’s way too far.
George: Well, can we go there?
Me: Maybe someday.

At this point I had woken up enough to realize we had gotten way off the original topic.

Me: OK, look, we can get a Yoshi toy next time we go to Toys ‘R’ Us. Now please lay down and go back to sleep.

Two minutes later we were downstairs eating breakfast because he was “not too sleepy”. I think he wrangled a Yoshi toy and trip to Japan out of me.

I’m not completely opposed to remote participation, but I have not personally seen it work at any user group meeting. Here are a few of the reason I’ve identified for why this is so:

A Bustling GRWebDev Meeting

2. Personnel: It can be hard to find people willing to spare the time to attend a user group meeting. Finding someone willing to spare the time so that other people can “attend” the meeting is even harder. Due to unavoidable distractions, if you are the cameraman or camerawoman, you will not get as much value out of the presentations as a fully-engaged audience member.

3. For actual two-way participation you need some kind of physical presence at the meeting. A laptop sitting on a table in the back of the room isn’t going to be loud enough to be noticed, which means someone at the meeting has to babysit the remote participants to relay their interactions. Similar to reason #2, you’re going to have trouble finding that babysitter.

Obviously these problems are not insurmountable, but so far they have been enough to prevent any of the meetings I attend from doing remote participation. That doesn’t mean it can’t work, it just means I haven’t seen it. If you’re willing to commit to being the streaming cameraman, microphone wrangler, remote presence babysitter, or whatever else needs to be done to get it to work, please get a hold of me.

Now if you’ll indulge me a bit, I will explain why I think remote participation isn’t really even valuable for a user group.

To be frank, much of the information coming out of the typical user group meeting is not groundbreaking. In most cases, you can find presentations with similar information on YouTube, Slideshare, or SpeakerDeck.

You don't get this by remote participation.

As an attendee, what really makes a user group meeting valuable is the opportunity to meet and engage with other enthusiastic local developers – something you will not get via remote participation. If you attend the meetings and put a little effort into engaging and talking to people there, you’ll make new friends and you’ll build a valuable network of peers. These are people you can consult when you need a new job, when you’re learning a new technology, or when you need to refer someone to someone you trust.

I was a hermit for a decade before I put aside my fears and started coming to user group meetings. It’s worth it. Trust me. You’ll get to know some awesome people.

As a viewer, I personally find a streamed presentation less valuable than one which has been recorded and posted to YouTube. If I had that particular time slot free, why would I watch from home instead of going to the event in person? Why passively consume the meeting instead of actually shaking hands with the people presenting? Also, if it’s on YouTube, I can watch at my own pace on my own time while I’m doing something else, such as riding the exercise bike. The recorded and uploaded version just makes more sense than a streamed version.

To this end, I have started recording some of the meetings I attend and putting those videos up on YouTube. For each two hour meeting I end up with about 1.5 hours of presentation footage. Afterwards, it takes me about two hours of editing, then one night to render and another to upload (1.5 hours of HD video is big). I have decided to take on this task because I think the videos will be good for helping groups to promote themselves. Hopefully some folks who have heard of the groups but don’t know if it’s worth taking the time to attend can find out what they’re missing. I also think that having the meetings online may bring in bigger presenters because we can give them a little bigger audience.

Now I know a lot of you think you don’t have the time to attend a meeting. Hey, I have a wife and a kid, so I know it’s hard to justify being away from home. Do it anyways. Being gone a few nights a month does not make you a bad parent, husband, or wife. Swap a night with your spouse and you each get some one-on-one time with the kids, as well as a night off from them. I’ll bet your parents want to spend time with their grandkids. By the time the meeting is over, the kids are in bed, so you might as well go have a drink at the after-party – that’s where you really get to meet the interesting people.

To sum up, I don’t like remote participation for several reasons: it distracts organizers, volunteers, and attendees; a recorded copy of the presentation is better than a streamed version; and you will get none of the real value of a user group meeting by sitting at home.

[vimeo clip_id=36579366 width="400" height="225"]

Bret Victor – Inventing on Principle from CUSEC on Vimeo.

The most troubling “bug” I see today is computing devices and platforms which cannot be used to create programs that run on themselves. Today’s tablets and smartphones have more processing power, more pixels, and more RAM than a desktop computer from a few years ago. Yet you need a laptop or desktop to develop for Android, you need a Macintosh to develop for iOS, and you need a Windows PC to develop for whatever Microsoft’s mobile operating system is called these days.

This means our children are growing up with computing devices they can’t easily program. An entire layer of complexity, annoyance, and additional cost has been added to the programming environment. I can’t just hack away at a program on my Android tablet without bringing a whole other computer into play. Schools are giving iPads to every kid, but they can’t actually learn to program with them. They can’t discover how the programs they are using are created or how they work.

This does not make sense to me.

The web is in a similar situation. You can’t make a website from within a web interface. Why can’t we bootstrap a website from a web small stub, and then develop the site from within that web environment?

I know of one in-road which has been made on Android: the SL4A project lets you use various scripting languages to program right on the device, but it’s cumbersome when you go beyond basic features.

I think WordPress comes pretty close to this on the web side, which may explain it’s popularity, especially among non-hardcore programmers.

I’m going to put a little more thought into this situation and see what emerges. If you know of any existing solutions to this problem that I’ve overlooked, please let me know.

And if you need want motivation for determining and following Your Principle, watch the video.

I came across an old Dropbox forum post that has a simple way of adding the public link in the right-click menu. The final working version is scattered across a few posts and a blog, so I thought I’d pull it all together here for the rest of you migrating to KDE.

As usual, it’s pretty simple once you have it figured out. All you have to do is put a single file with the right commands in the right place. So open your favorite text editor and create the following file: ~/.kde/share/kde4/services/ServiceMenus/dropboxpublic.desktop . Then paste all of this stuff into it and save it:

[Desktop Entry]
Type=Service
ServiceTypes=KonqPopupMenu/Plugin
MimeType=application/octet-stream
Actions=CopyPublicLink
Encoding=UTF-8
Version=0.1

[Desktop Action CopyPublicLink]
Name=Get public link
Icon=klipper
Exec=dbus-send --type=method_call --dest=org.kde.klipper /klipper org.kde.klipper.klipper.setClipboardContents string:`dropbox puburl %f`

Now you should have a “Get public link” entry in the Actions sub-menu if you right-click a file in Dolphin. This will put the public URL in your clipboard so it’s ready to paste into your web browser, email client, IRC session, or whatever. Usually only files in the ~/Dropbox/Public directory have a public links, so if you use it on something outside of that directory nothing will be added to your clipboard.

P. S.
The original forum post is here: http://forums.dropbox.com/topic.php?id=12034&replies=2#post-76494
And the original blog post is here: http://ustunozgur.blogspot.com/2009/09/kde-submenu-action-for-getting-public.html

P. P. S.
If you’re not a Dropbox user, but you’d like to be, please use this Dropbox referral URL to sign up. If you do, you’ll get an extra 250MB of storage for free, and I’ll get and extra 500MB.Thanks!