saadware

Tour de France 2014 Tech

2014-07-08T00:00:00+00:00

How the Tour de France stays online over three weeks, 21 stages, and 3,664 km

Every morning, 25 engineers start building a communications headquarters from scratch, based in four trucks that travel from town to town (the other 25 travel on to the next stage of the race.) One truck is for the press, the second for photographers, and the third for broadcasters. Each is essentially an office on wheels, albeit with broadband connections. The fourth truck is the most important. It is the heart of the communications infrastructure for the world’s media.

Impressive.

Unlocking Encrypted Time Machine on Command Line

2013-12-20T00:00:00+00:00

The auto generated password I chose for locking my encrypted time machine was not being accepted by the graphical interface when I needed to unlock it. Knowing that I was typing it in correctly, I decided it was some special character that the GUI was freaking on. Therefore I looked for ways to do it on the command line in hopes of this providing some resolution. It did.

In order to do this I first had to find the volume’s UUID.

diskutil cs list

From the output, the UUID is the massive key on a line that looks like:

Logical Volume XXXXXXXX-XXXX-XXXX-XXXX-XXXXXXXXXXXX

Note that it’s not the Logical Volume Group or the Physical Volume or the Logical Volume Family. It’s simply the Logical Volume.

From here you can copy the UUID and run the following command:

diskutil cs unlockVolume XXXXXXXX-XXXX-XXXX-XXXX-XXXXXXXXXXXX -passphrase myS00P3RHAXT0RPr0ofp@55Word

This should unlock the volume and Time Machine should start running and backing up again. Notice that if you have some special characters in your password that you’ll need to surround the password with quotes.

The Flood

2013-09-21T00:00:00+00:00

It’s been over a week since the biblical storms hit Colorado and caused widespread flooding. Boulder saw its share of the action as well, large in part because the city butts up to mountainous areas where reservoirs, streams, creeks, etc. originate. People were affected in different ways depending upon where they lived. For my family and I, it’s almost as if nothing happened. A grateful and all at once unsettling feeling when within tens of feet from our house, massive destruction occurred.

The Monday and Tuesday before the floods took place I worked from home as I recovered from a head cold. On Wednesday I returned to the downtown office but not before meeting a good friend for coffee. The morning was ominous as I was dressed in full rain gear while I biked to the coffee shop. With less than a mile to ride I was completely soaked. It was more than just a drizzle, it was like the air was completely saturated with moisture. It rains hard in Boulder once in a while and this wasn’t necessarily a downpour that I was used to. The density was like nothing I’ve experienced before. It was more like the raindrops were falling closer together than they normally do. This is how I pictured it at least.

At lunch I remember walking on Pearl Street for a brief moment as I grabbed something to eat. I took note that there was water running down the walking mall. If I focused on a few stones on the ground, it was as if somebody had left a garden hose on and the water seemed to pass the point of forming puddles.

The day ended with all of us saying goodbye fully expecting to see each other the next day. The rain was wearing on us. Being from Colorado, we’re not really used to a day or two in a row where the sun is hidden. I think we were all optimistic that this would all clear up the next day.

For the next two days things got kind of crazy. The flood horns continued to sound throughout the nights (it’s always at night when things get creepy). These were usually an indication the local creeks were rising fast and to climb to safety if you were in the vicinity.

Our home was a few hundred feet in elevation to the main pathways of these creeks, a fact I continually reminded my wife of. In her head she feared that when these creeks flooded, all of Boulder was going under water (an exaggeration of course). I remember awaking multiple times during the night to peek outside and see what levels of water (if any) were building up around the house. Not being able to see much I looked for street lights that illuminate the gutters around the neighborhood and used them to judge the levels.

The rest is history really. News articles, tweets, pictures can better explain the details of what happened. This was my own personal recollection that I wanted to remember as the whole experience was a once in a lifetime one. At least I’m hoping so.

My Ongoing Memorable Notes:

Some photos/videos I took while exploring.
Twitter was an amazing resource to keep in tune with what was going on.
I remember thinking, this is a natural disaster and usually people get glued to their television sets while watching the news. I now pictured everyone glued to Twitter on their phones. I know I was.
The Thursday morning after the first flood night I took a ride downtown to see what I could see. It was still raining and most of downtown seemed to be business as usual.
Lots of land had been displaced.
Manhole covers dislodged in our neighborhood with explosive streams of water gushing from them.
A good portion of North Boulder Park was under water. (1/2 block from our house).
Many kids played in the flood waters of North Boulder Park, not realizing at first (or ever) that raw sewage most certainly existed.
It became clear that water flows wherever land lets it. However land can violently move out of the way when the will of water is strong.

wget Equivalent for Windows PowerShell

2013-08-12T00:00:00+00:00

Today I needed to install Python’s setup tools in a Windows environment which comes with the recommendation to just download the script directly and run python against it. This works fine of course but if you’re coming from a Linux environment you’re probably looking for an equivalent of wget. With wget the setup becomes slick like by running the following:

wget https://bitbucket.org/pypa/setuptools/raw/bootstrap/ez_setup.py -O - | python

This can now be replicated in PowerShell V3 with the Invoke-WebReqest cmdlet.

(Invoke-WebRequest https://bitbucket.org/pypa/setuptools/raw/bootstrap/ez_setup.py).Content | python

Just another way to keep yourself in the shell more often than not. You know, if you’re into that sort of thing.

Showing Differences in HG Between Releases

2013-08-05T00:00:00+00:00

Keeping track of changesets in Mercurial is often done by the use of tags. For example, tagging a release with a pattern like, r_4.20 helps us know that a particular changeset was considered the 4.20 release.

To build further on this, it’s nice to see what has changed between two different releases. Say perhaps there was a bug introduced between the 4.18 and 4.20 release and we want to quickly look at all differences between these two versions. We could run the following:

hg diff -r r_4.18:r_4.20

This also works if you have a your favorite graphical diff tool setup.

There seems to be an entire language around specifying revision sets in Mercurial and is worth further exploring when wanting to do more sophisticated queries. This one serves it up just right when wanting to see what changed between two different releases.

Linking the vimrc file in Windows

2013-05-01T00:00:00+00:00

Using Vim on multiple machines and platforms is necessary when you have a geek crush on your editor like I do. Being able to have your settings and plugins follow you around on these various machines is invaluable.

For me, I keep all my vimfiles stored in a GitHub repo. That in combination with using pathogen as my plugin manager enables a ubiquitous experience regardless of the machine and platform I’m on.

For Windows the _vimrc file is stored in the user’s home directory. (i.e. c:\users\scott\_vimrc). Naturally, I want to use my vimrc file that is stored in my vimfiles repo (i.e. c:\users\scott\vimfiles\vimrc). For modern Windows installations, creating a symbolic or hard link is trivial using the mklink command. Yet, it’s something I always have to lookup in terms of syntax.

So for reference sakes, here we go:

To create a symbolic/hard link so that my _vimrc file points to the vimfiles/vimrc file I do the following:

cd c:\users\scott
mklink /h _vimrc c:\users\scott\vimfiles\vimrc

And there we have it. A joyous harmony where my vimrc file always points to the trusthworthy one I store in git.

Tootles.

Auto Line Breaking in Vim

2013-04-30T00:00:00+00:00

Almost a year ago I switched my blog engine over to Jekyll. Since then, all of my posts have been written in my favorite editor, Vim. One of the handy settings that I’ve ended up using quite a bit of while using the editor to write paragraphs instead of code is textwidth.

Description:

‘textwidth’ ‘tw’ number (default 0)
Maximum width of text that is being inserted. A longer line will be broken after white space to get this width. A zero value disables this. ‘textwidth’ is set to 0 when the ‘paste’ option is set. When ‘textwidth’ is zero, ‘wrapmargin’ may be used. See also ‘formatoptions’ and |ins-textwidth|. When ‘formatexpr’ is set it will be used to break the line. NOTE: This option is set to 0 when ‘compatible’ is set.

This is super handy when you want your line to automatically wrap to the next after a certain number of characters are written. In my case, I like setting it to 72, which wraps to the next line once I go over 72 characters.

:set tw=72

This operates on the current buffer and all new typing wraps at 72 characters.

But what about modifying existing content? Say for instance I need to edit a paragraph that is already written? The textwidth setting does not always work here and a format - gq command must be executed.

When wanting to perform this on the existing paragraph I normally just go into visual mode and select the paragraph and issue the format.

So to select the current paragraph and reformat: vap followed by gq

While a great editor, Vim needs a bit of tweaking to work in word processor mode. These settings and commands help it feel a bit more natural to write more like humans would.

Araxis Merge HG Settings

2013-04-29T00:00:00+00:00

As with any technology tool switch, there is a period of time where I slowly transition my other tools/processes to work with the newcomer. Since switching over to mercurial (hg), I needed to find a way to infuse my existing graphical diff tool, Araxis Merge into the mix.

Ultimately, here is the pertinent information I have in my mercural.ini (or .hgrc on Mac) file:

[extensions]
hgext.extdiff=

[ui]  
merge = araxis  

[extdiff]  
cmd.arxdiff=C:\Program Files\Araxis\Araxis Merge\ConsoleCompare.exe  
opts.arxdiff=/2 /wait

This allows me use the Araxis Merge tool from both Tortoise Workbench and from the command line.

To diff files in my working directory, I can now run:

hg arxdiff

To invoke the three-way merge to be invoked, I simply run the standard:

hg merge

I have different settings for Araxis when I use git, but that’s another post. :)

Having a good diff/merge tool is well worth the investment as it saves time and headaches. Araxis has been my choice for over a decade now and it continues to prove itself as irreplaceable.

Imitation

2013-04-24T00:00:00+00:00

As adults, we sometimes find ourselves in situations that are new to us. As children, everything is new but learn to navigate the new world by imitating those around us. The better the role model, the better chance we have. As adults, we can sometimes forget this simple tool.

There are many instances in life where it would be helpful to know what to do in certain situations. Maybe we have to stand up for something we believe in our profession but have never been a stand up type of personality. It feels awkward to do it because we’ve never really done it before. But of course, like many things in life, we want to overcome and grow. Can we pretend we’re a children again and imitate our way through this growing experience?

It may be as simple is finding somebody that has already done what we’re looking to embark upon and ask ourselves, “How would this person handle the situation?” It becomes a simple tool to help us learn how to navigate areas of unfamiliarity.

We all know those people that seem to have all the answers. They seem to have all the insight into how to deal with certain situations. They always know what to do. But they didn’t always. At some point in their live, they were as clueless as the next.

Nobody is born with this knowledge, it’s learned. Our experiences shape us and we naturally look upon others when we don’t know how to do something. As adults we should not forget this simple tool. If we have not consciously used our imitation skills in a while then we need not worry. The ability to imitate is within and momentarily dormant.

Wasteful Worry

2013-04-23T00:00:00+00:00

Compared to last year’s Winter/Spring, which was super dry, Boulder, Colorado is seeing its fair share of precipitation. Each of the last three weeks started off with a massive piling of snow on the Monday/Tuesday, followed by a warming trend all the way up until the weekend where temperates were in the 60’s! Then, the cycle starts over again with snow. Very twisty indeed and I think it’s causing everyone around here to go a bit Spring Crazy.

With the snow starting early yesterday morning it took the entire city by surprise when the flakes didn’t stop flying until mid afternoon today! Even the city’s road cleaning crew seemed to be extremely behind this morning as the slush was piling high and cars were more of a mess than I’ve seen them in quite some time.

Yeah… I’m talking about weather here. There is a point… I swear. Bear with me…

While my wife and I were racing to drive our kids to school, a little Subaru (Boulder’s signature car), pulled out in front of me. Now I’m not one to get the rage or anything but it did strike me as odd. While I was Northbound, this person cut across two lanes of traffic to make a left turn in front of me, coming extremely close to making the Southbound traffic slide into them (you know… ‘cause it was wicked snowy out and all).

Here’s the thing. If the person would have waited just an extra five seconds, they would have realized that both Southbound and Northbound traffic was clear, giving them the worry free right-of-way.

The event sparked a thought in my head. This person could not see there was an opening in traffic. Under the duress and worry of a stressful snowy commute an interesting decision was made to risk basic safety. Of course in hindsight, there wasn’t anything to rush about and the safety shouldn’t have been compromised because traffic cleared within seconds.

As humans it’s natural for us to see the events in real time, not fulling understanding them and therefore getting anxious about possible outcomes.

We worry. We worry like no other. We worry about what’s going to happen and for what? What can our worry possibly gain us? It’s not like by worrying we can have a better control over a situation.

How many times have been anxious about something happening but the thing did not even end up happening? I think it’s safe to say that this happens and controls most of us.

If we stop and think about this for a bit, we might realize that an exorbitant amount of energy is put into this worry crap, which ends up having zero payoff. When there is no payoff, one could argue that the energy went to waste.

I hate waste.

I hate wasting my time. I hate putting in effort where I know there is going to be no foreseeable benefit. Frankly, it pisses me off.

What better things could we being doing with our minds if they weren’t consumed by endless worry? Only one could imagine and I would have to think we could put it to better use.

The whole experience reminds me of a story I once heard.

While a wise man was on his deathbed he confessed to his Father, “Father.”, he said. “I’ve lived a very hard life.” He continued, “Most of which has not even happened.”

So how much of our life is spent in this worry? How much of our lives are we wasting on thoughts that won’t even happen? Maybe if we try and put our attention on other things, our worries might start to melt away. Perhaps.

Like the anxiety of the snowy driver that almost caused an unnecessary accident because they didn’t see that everything was okay, we don’t see what’s going to happen next in our lives. By thinking with an optimistic point of view we might find that more times than not, it’s all going to be okay if we just wait the extra time and see.

Put your energy were it counts. We only have so much to give.

Just Write Something

2013-04-22T00:00:00+00:00

Whether it’s a condensed form of expression on my thoughts or something a bit longer, I enjoy writing. There is something about the process that brings me satisfaction. Unfortunately, I don’t carve out enough time to do it.

It’s like anything else in life, if you really want to make something happen, then adjust your priorities to set yourself up for success. At this point I’m not sure exactly what I want to happen other than to just write more.

So I will write… more than I have in the past. Starting today.

One day at a time. Baby steps.

Where it goes from there I can’t really say I care at this point.

Just write something.

Unpack HG bundle with PowerShell

2013-02-24T00:00:00+00:00

Recently I needed to strip three HG changesets, that had not yet left my local repo, but wanted to extract some of the code within those changesets for something I needed. As I’m sure I would find myself needing this again, I figured I would archive it here for myself.

The Mercurial Wiki discusses how to manually unpack a changeset bundle created by hg strip. It even gives a simple code example on how to unpack the bundle using python. The hg strip command produces bundles that are compressed with BZip2. The PowerShell version of this is quite simple, however there is no native BZip2 support in PowerShell so I left that portion to the all trusty 7-Zip.

# Read the compressessed bundle in, reading all at once
# versus line-by-line (i.e. ReadCount set to 0)
$bundle = ".\.hg\strip-backup\551b9da1b6ed-backup.hg"
$hgBzip = Get-Content -ReadCount 0 -Encoding Byte -Path $bundle

# Strip the 6 byte header off the front, put back the 2 byte 'BZ' and save to temp file.
$bzOutFile = Join-Path ([System.IO.Path]::GetTempPath()) "$((get-item $bundle).BaseName).bz2"
$bzHeader = [System.Text.Encoding]::ASCII.GetBytes("BZ")
$bzHeader + ($hgBzip | select -Last ($hgBzip.Length - 6)) | Set-Content -Encoding Byte $bzOutFile

# Uncompress using 7Z to current directory (change output dir with -o switch)
7z.exe x $bzOutFile
rm $bzOutFile

Doomsday Funny Business

2012-12-18T00:00:00+00:00

While reading this article about the absurdity of 2012 doomsday apocalypse, there were a few pieces that caused me to chuckle and therefore felt I should capture.

It was written by fellow Boulderite, Phil Plait, also knows as @BadAstronomer.

Some words on Planet X:

Back in 2003, there was a big doomsday rumor flying around the web about a giant planet named Nibiru (or, more ominously, Planet X) that orbits the Sun every 3600 years. On May 15 of that year, so it was said, the planet would sweep past the Earth and cause all sorts of disasters. A lot of people really believed it, too.

He then goes on to say:

You may remember that date as being one when the Earth wasn’t destroyed.

Yes… I totally LOL’d on that one.

The humor continues:

I suspect they wouldn’t have known about Nibiru even if it did exist. And of course, they never mentioned it. Because it didn’t. Exist, I mean.

The article continues and is a good read. Consider me a fan.

Don’t get me wrong. I think it’s natural human instinct to have glimpses of, “Oh wait. Crap! What if there is some truth to this doomsday business?” It’s in our nature to worry about things outside of our control, no matter how logical we may be. I admit that I have too.

Outside of the fear being spread, December 21, 2012 is gearing up to be a regular day here on earth. If anything, I hope the big surprise is that it ends up snowing. Like a mother load snow is dropped from the heavens.

Bring on the snowpocalypse.

Instagram

2012-12-17T00:00:00+00:00

About a month ago I decided to open up an Instagram account. It seemed like another interesting outlet for social interaction. I mainly was looking for a way to put my fairly new iPhone 5 to use as a camera.

When Instagram stopped showing up in Twitter feeds, the value immediately diminished and have since not used it. The final straw was drawn with recent terms of service announcements,

Needless to say, I’m not sad about moving away. It’s definitely interesting though. I pulled the plug on a similar service about four years ago for like reasons.

This is just it… there exists a fine line in ad supported services. If a company is not careful there ways can start to seem dirty and wrong. It’s possible that my feelings are in the minority but I feel that if a service is good enough, users find a way to pay it.

I love me some filters and I’m happy Twitter is now natively providing features like what Instagram brought. And I suppose I could always rekindle the love for my Flickr account that I’ve happily been paying for since 2008.

Merlin Mann Phone Rant

2012-09-18T00:00:00+00:00

For my own humor I had to capture the latest rant by Merlin Mann regarding a mobile phone. The series of tweets were a bundle of laughs for me.

Maybe a healthy step would be to establish—just for yourself—how many people need to publicly agree you’ve ordered the nicest mobile phone.
— Merlin Mann (@hotdogsladies) September 19, 2012

I bet a lot of people won’t admit they already KNOW you ordered the nicest mobile phone.They should admit your mobile phone is the nicest.
— Merlin Mann (@hotdogsladies) September 19, 2012

Because, seriously—friend to friend?You’ve ordered a really, really, REALLY nice mobile phone.Eventually, everyone will publicly agree.
— Merlin Mann (@hotdogsladies) September 19, 2012

No. Seriously. I’m not even kidding here.You’ve ordered a really REALLY nice mobile phone.Now, try to get some sleep. You’ve earned it.
— Merlin Mann (@hotdogsladies) September 19, 2012

Sh-sh-shhhh!I know—just close your eyes, lay very still, and try not to think about your mobile phone.You can win again in the morning.
— Merlin Mann (@hotdogsladies) September 19, 2012

Theeeeeere we go.Good night.
— Merlin Mann (@hotdogsladies) September 19, 2012

Ssssssshhhhhh…mlkshk.com/r/JHL2.png
— Merlin Mann (@hotdogsladies) September 19, 2012

And that is all. At least for now.

Grove IRC Shutting Down

2012-09-16T00:00:00+00:00

Last night prior to turning in, I noticed the following tweet come through:

We are sad to announce that Grove will be shutting down October 13th. grove.io/blog/grove-shu…
— Grove (@groveio) September 16, 2012

Grove is a hosted service that aims at helping teams communicate more effectively with their IRC based product, which includes a fancy web client. They did so by attempting to take the somewhat over complications that can come with traditional IRC networks.

I signed our team up when Grove first went to beta and shortly thereafter converted to paying customer. Prior to this we were using an internal IRC server where a VPN connection was required to connect to it. We needed our chats private and closed off to the rest of the public so a traditional IRC network like freenode was not an option. Plus, as our team became spread across the country, connecting to a VPN seemed kind of overkill.

As I started seeking out other options I heard about this up and coming service called Grove. I believe it crossed my eyes one day on twitter, though I cannot fully recall. It seemed like a perfect solution as it not only provided a simple web client to connect with, it also supported traditional IRC clients, a huge geek selling point. Another cool feature was a searchable log of all chat history. It seemed to be a match made in heaven.

At some point though the honeymoon phase started to fade out. As our team grew to embrace the service the stability of it started to dwindle. The system started to have all sorts of connectivity issues where minutes, sometimes hours, would go by where we could not use it.

Doing a little research on the company I knew it was a small team and it seemed, like many startups, that engineer(s) were the first line of support. Their response time was pretty good given the circumstances but as the stability continued to fade, so did my patience.

Eventually I started to look elsewhere and within a week made a choice to abandon Grove in favor of HipChat. For the most part it had the same selling features (minus the support for traditional IRC clients). We’ve yet to have any troubles with the service. It’s been solid.

Ultimately only the company knows why Grove is shutting down.

We love IRC for companies and had a great time working on Grove. However, our team has moved on to other projects and we’ve made the very difficult decision to shut down the Grove website and IRC service.

Shutting down a company with paying customers sucks. I have my hunches what lead to this but they are purely speculative. Regardless, it was a fun ride while it lasted and I wish the Grove team all the best on their future endeavors.

DNA Storage - 700 terabytes of data into a single gram

2012-08-17T00:00:00+00:00

DNA Storage - 700 terabytes of data into a single gram

It goes on to say…

It’s also worth noting that it’s possible to store data in the DNA of living cells — though only for a short time. Storing data in your skin would be a fantastic way of transferring data securely…

But what does it all mean Basil?!?

Create Something

2012-06-29T00:00:00+00:00

Create something.

Create love.

Create art.

Create warmth.

Create music.

Create peace.

Create happiness.

Create laughter.

Create as fast as you can.

Create now.

It is in you.

For consumption comes when you die.

Moody Blues - Never Comes the Day

2012-03-19T00:00:00+00:00

Give just a little bit more

Take a little bit less

From each other tonight

Admit what you’re feeling

And see what’s in front of you,

It’s never out of your sight. You know it’s true,

We all know that it’s true.

–The Moody Blues - Never Comes The Day

vim - copying between registers

2012-03-15T00:00:00+00:00

Many times while in Vim, I like to test out regular expressions that I may use somewhere else (outside editor, command line, etc). Once I get the expression working I’ve sometimes found myself having to retype it into wherever it is I actually plan to use it.

A waste of my mother scratchin’ time!

Vim makes heavy use of registers. I recently learned that there is even a register for the last search preformed (i.e. ‘/’). Could it be there is also a register for the clipboard?

The * register is the clipboard. Now how do I go about copying between these two registers?

For reference, I found a handy Q/A on Stack Overflow about this very thing. To copy the last search expression into the clipboard register one would:

:let @*=@/

Yes. That simple.

Oh Internet, I love thee.

Letdowns and Lessons

2012-03-13T00:00:00+00:00

Today was an interesting day as it was the culmination of efforts to see my favorite band, Radiohead, play live near Denver, Colorado.

Here was the build up for today:

ask friend to go with me before tickets went on sale months ago (he ended up not being able to go) - done
purchase tickets online when they went on sale months ago - fail
purchase tickets online from resellers at over double the face value price - fail
ask friend to drive 250 miles the same day of the concert, at the slim chance we could score onsite tickets - done (he ended up not being able to come, thank goodness)
ask another friend to drive 10 miles the day of the concert, at the slim chance to score onsite scalper tickets - done (however, he could not go either)
muster up enough will power to drive, the family minivan (with empty car child car seats and all) 30 minutes to try and score tickets from a scalper… solo style. - done
arrive 60 minutes prior to showtime in order to roam around looking for a spare ticket - done
pay $10 for parking, not knowing whether I would even get a ticket - done
walk/stand around with numerous other desperate fans, hoping somebody might have an extra to sell - done
stay 45 minutes past the start of the show, hoping something might turn up - done

There were various points in the day where I almost decided to stop trying. But I didn’t for some reason. In the end, did it get me anywhere? No. Not exactly.

While I did not get to see Radiohead (the original goal), a reoccurring life lesson was brilliantly played out for me today. We never know the outcome of the efforts we put forth to achieve something. Try. Try. Try. Try. All of this effort may still not produce any visible achievements (like in my case today). For me, knowing that I tried is always better than not knowing what might have been. Even if it was failure.

Walt Whitman. Leaves of Grass

2012-03-09T00:00:00+00:00

Come, said my soul,

Such verses for my Body let us write, (for we are one,)

That should I after return, Or, long, long hence, in other spheres,

There to some group of mates the chants resuming,

(Tallying Earth’s soil, trees, winds, tumultuous waves,)

Ever with pleas’d smile I may keep on,

Ever and ever yet the verses owning—as, first, I here and now

Signing for Soul and Body, set to them my name,

Walt Whitman

– Walt Whitman. Leaves of Grass

Quants Book Quote

2012-02-27T00:00:00+00:00

… as he barked out wisdom about the markets in his Boston brogue as if agitated by the powerful thoughts percolating in his basketball-sized cranium.

– I’m reading The Quants by Scott Patterson

Desktop App Reversal

2012-01-31T00:00:00+00:00

Even though web applications are taking over the world, I’m still a fan of the native desktop application. They provide an authentic look/feel to the operating system that makes me feel special. While most of the native apps I use are developer tools, I also regularly use the following on both Windows 7 and Mac OS X:

Evernote
Rdio
Skype

It’s been my opinion that the PC version has always had a better experience when it came to native apps. However, I cannot say that for Evernote and Rdio. These applications are much better from a usability standpoint on the Mac. Skype is still an absolute disgrace on the Mac (comparatively to the PC version).

So why is it that 66% (yes I know… I have mass amounts of data for my study) of the applications I use have better Mac versions? As a programmer ten years ago, you built applications for the platform you most commonly used. Has anything changed? Probably… depending on how you look at it.

I would bet that programmers are still developing for and on the platform they most commonly use day-to-day. They are developing on the system that makes them feel special. However, I also guess many that were developing for the PC ten years ago may also be developing for multiple platforms now, like the Mac. Are they using a Mac at home too? Have they made a switch? Does your dog really know what your name is?

Are you paying attention? No? Well let me bring it back full circle.

All of this doesn’t much matter as in a few years we’ll all be developing off of machines that run in clouds that serve up rainbow lollypop browser versions of an IDE so we can program in a 6th order language.

For craps sake man. Wake up.

Reading Other People's Code

2012-01-31T00:00:00+00:00

“I hate reading other people’s code.”

Found this amusing and somewhat true. For me, I enjoy reading other people’s code because I tend to learn what’s good and what’s bad. Helps me steer my own future development.

p4 grove

2012-01-10T00:00:00+00:00

If you are using the hot new grove.io irc service for your development team chatter and also use Perforce, then tune in. Using the grove.io API, I’ve written a script to publish change commit notifications to an irc channel, kicked off by a Perforce Trigger.

The script is written in Python (one of my first adventures in the language so be gentle) and requires the P4Python hooks to be present.

README and Fork It

Lunch Ride with the Dude

2011-11-08T00:00:00+00:00

Lunch Ride with THE Dude on Flickr.

It was a brisk Fall ride, but we hung in there. He had his pretzels, I had my water. He had his blanket, I had an extra 50 pounds to tote. It was excellent.

We started out heading up the canyon but only got a few miles in when we were stopped by icy conditions. I therefore turned the ship around and headed North where I could still hit a few good climbs.

He seemed to enjoy the time. I know I did.

Kernel Panic

2011-10-18T00:00:00+00:00

Kernel Panic!

I have no idea what caused such a fuss on the mac tonight. It was very irksome as it felt like somebody was slowing pulling a digital blind down over the screen, followed by this lovely dialog.

Dennis Ritchie (dmr) has passed

2011-10-12T00:00:00+00:00

Dennis Ritchie (dmr) has passed

Two things I grew up learning/using:

UNIX
C

Thank you for your contributions. They have formed a rock solid foundation for my technical skills.

Boards of Canada on Rdio

2011-07-08T00:00:00+00:00

Boards of Canada

One of my all time fav’s. Also very happy these guys recently shows up on rdio.com as I’ve been waiting since the early beta for that to happen.

Joyous times.

The Drama

2011-06-03T00:00:00+00:00

Dreaming.

This means something.

I’m part of an audience, watching horror unfold.

The crowd claps at acts I find repulsive.

What is happening?

What just happened?

More cheers, more unthinkable acts.

I don’t know if this is OK.

Is this OK?

Why do I feel so uneasy?

This is life.

Somebody stop this guy!

Why is everyone else calm?

I need to realize.

Wakeup.

This is just a dream.

Is this life?

Relax, it will all be over in time.

Breath.

Code Commenting

2011-04-21T00:00:00+00:00

Coder 1: Hey there! Noticed you commented out some code with your recent checkin.

Coder 2: Yes, the code was ancient and not even being used anymore. I whacked it! (karate chop motion)

Coder 1: Well, you commented it out and then added your own comment about why you commented it out.

Coder 2: Yes…?

Coder 1: …

Coder 2: What?

Coder 1: Why didn’t you just delete the old code and be done?

Coder 2: Then the future maintainers of it wouldn’t realize what I had done.

Coder 1: But we’re using source control management… history is preserved for you!

Coder 2: I know, but how would they really know? You know?

Coder 1: … (karate chop motion)

My Early Computing

2011-04-10T00:00:00+00:00

Recently I was reminded about some of my early computing adventures. While my earliest memories were that of playing games on an my neighbor’s Apple IIe, most of my early adolescence was spent in front of an unknown AT&T PC running DOS. No, I don’t remember specifics on hardware or OS version.

Countless hours wer spent just messing with the thing, from both the hardware and software side. I would break it to the point where it no longer would boot, attempt to fix, fail at that, call technical support to get it fixed. It’s easy to say that I had no idea what I was doing, but enjoyed it. Pure exploration… one of the few things in my early life that I did explore outside of sports.

Athletics dominated the majority of my extra curricular activities growing up and it wasn’t until 10th grade when I embarked upon my first programming class. Sports and general studies came easy to me. Programming, I had to work at. I had to bend my mind in ways to make the computer do things I wasn’t sure how it might go about doing. I literally would spend hours trying to wrap my head around loops so that I could alternate the red and white stripes of the American flag as I flailed to draw it to the screen.

Programming was fun but wasn’t something I dedicated too much time to outside of class. However, it perked enough interest for me to apply to the Computer Science Department at the University of Colorado. I remember looking down a list of possible areas of study when applying and seeing the words “computer” and “science” and then thinking to myself, “Hey, I like computers… and science is pretty cool!”

I honestly had no clue what I was getting myself into at the time. The thought of using programming to solve scientific problems didn’t even cross my mind. Yes, naive is an understatement. All I knew is that I wanted to do something with computers. That was it. The rest I would figure out when I got there.

Spread

2011-03-31T00:00:00+00:00

Things come up.

Everyday, they come up.

It never stops.

How many should I direct my attention toward?

Which ones to ignore?

Which ones are worth my time?

If I try and take them all on I hurt.

I feel spread.

When spread, I cannot focus.

When I cannot focus I feel less content.

I feel like there has to be something else.

Something else to put my attention on.

Will it bring me happiness?

I don’t know.

Spreading is not working.

Naturally, I feel down.

Time to reinvent.

Moleskine - Hacker Tool?

2011-02-24T00:00:00+00:00

I used to be a huge fan of my Moleskine. I still am, but I guess I used to be a huger fan?

Apparently some like minded geeks feel it’s an important tool. My main complaint is that I cannot read my chicken scratch handwriting and have therefore opted to use the Evernote service (paid subscriber) for a lot of my day-to-day thought captures.

However, I do still use my notebook in low-tech scenarios when a lot of my creative thinking seems to be done… away from computers/devices.

Remote PowerShell

2011-02-07T00:00:00+00:00

Let me start off by saying I’m just a another software developer that likes to get the most out of his tools/platform. Therefore, when I’m developing on a Windows platform I never leave home without PowerShell. It’s so ridiculously delicious sometimes I slap myself in disbelief. With PowerShell v2 there were many improvements to an already excellent v1. One of which was Remote Commands using Sessions.

With this post, I’m definitely not going to go into details about Sessions as I really don’t get down that way. I’m also not here to convince anyone to use PowerShell, even if it’s the best shell I’ve come across on any platform. This post is simply being done to call attention to the PowerShell community leaders. You have an ace in your hand here and I’m not sure why people like me don’t know about it.

I use PowerShell for many development related task, many of which reside on remote machines. Since, for the most part Windows lacks a native remote shell environment (telnet, ssh, etc), I usually would terminal into the machine I needed to perform some tasks on, open up PowerShell and be one my way. This worked fine for the most part, but a developer can wish for more. What I really wanted was to be able to open up a telnet like session and run my commands.

I recently found that there is something similar. While it’s not a full on command terminal session (telnet) it is pretty darn useful and will help with a majority of the tasks I perform on remote machines.

Enter-PSSession - Starts an interactive session with a remote computer.

This translates to giving you an interactive prompt on the remote machine. Priceless!

I recognize that as a developer I might be a minority of the PowerShell user base and would imagine the IT crowd is the majority. This could also be a case where I just missed the boat and the vast majority of the community already knows (AND uses) these Remote Sessions. I’m OK with that and thankful that I finally stumbled upon them as they will prove to save me many hours of work.

However, if this is the case where there might be more people like me out there that are oblivious to Remote Commands, I think the evangelists have an opportunity to fill that potential void, resulting in a happier, more productive kid with a toy.

Wish -> I cannot seem to run an editor like vim in the session to edit files on the remote machine). This would be double awesome if made possible.

Back From Inner Space

2011-02-03T00:00:00+00:00

I’ve taken a good break from many online interactions (blogging, twitter, etc). It’s been a nice interruption indeed as I found it has truly helped me refocus.

This wasn’t the first time I’ve done this and it probably won’t be the last. Each time I do it, something new is learned about where distractions live for me; the net gains of participating in these games; how my priorities need to shift to meet my objectives.

When taking such extended breaks from my twitter stream, I’ve been asked if it’s because I don’t like it. I do like it. I find it very entertaining! However, up to this point that’s all I’ve realized. It’s another form of entertainment. That in itself has value but has to be equally weighed against the more pressing things in my life, whatever those might be at a given time.

As we know, our time is finite and for me twitter has a cost. For example, I tend to obsess about how I write something: delivery, humor, seriousness, thoughtfulness, geek value, etc. This obsession takes time, but I do enjoy doing it. It’s just that my priorities need to be better kept in check as I don’t gain anything from it, regardless of how I try to spin it to myself.

So… until next time I introvert… I’m back!

Archiving to Disc

2010-09-27T00:00:00+00:00

Many industries still trying to transfer the “archives” to disc… this is just another one of those instances.

Issues

2010-08-24T00:00:00+00:00

Me:

Does this orange shirt match?

Daughter:

It's a yellow shirt.

Me:

What?!? You crazy!

Daughter:

Seriously. It's yellow.

Me:

Oh. Ok. I guess it doesn't match the brown shorts then?

Daughter:

Green shorts.

Me:

Right.

Panic Lie

2010-08-10T00:00:00+00:00

A few days ago I had something amusing happen to me on my bike commute into work. Every now and then when stopped at traffic lights I’ll have the pleasure of talking to people that go out of their way to roll down a window to chit- chat. The conversation usually goes something something like:

Car: Hey, nice bike!

Me: Thanks!

Car: So you like to ride bikes huh?

Me: Yes, it’s pretty enjoyable.

Car: Sweet!

Me: Yes.

As you can see, there is not a lot of thought here. My brain pretty much turns into mush as I mindlessly answer some questions within a ten second engagement of dialog. On this particular day there was something about the situation that took me off guard. I’m still trying to figure out why it went down the way it did. The result was that I proceeded to make an uncontrollable lie which I will never be able to take back.

The first thing that was noticeably different about this experience was that I was not stopped at a traffic light but rather was in motion, on a one way street. The driver, who was in a convertible of some sort, slowed down a bit to get my attention. It went a little something like this:

Car: Hey, nice bike!

Me: Thanks!

Car: You like to ride!?!

Me: Yes!

Car: You riding in the Ride the Rockies?

Me: Yes!

Car (passing me, waving happily): Awesome! See you there!

I have no idea why I said yes to that question. I’m not riding in this organized event. At some point in my life I may consider it but not anytime soon.

Did I know the person? No.

Did I want to impress the person? I don’t know why if I did.

Why did I lie? The only logical reason I can think of is that I panicked because the question took me completely off guard and therefore I said the first thing that was in my line of next answers to come, “Yes!”

I don’t consider myself a pathological lier or even a casual one at that. However, catch me off guard while peddling a two wheeler and who knows what can happen. It’s just another friendly reminder that I’m not in control.

Learning New Languages

2010-08-08T00:00:00+00:00

I always enjoy picking up a new programming language. There’s something about it that seems to turn on a different part of the brain that was lying dormant before. It seems to be another outlet for the exploration of creative problem solving. The problems remain the same, yet the approach changes a little bit.

With every new language it takes a while for the brain to adjust to the syntax. Once it does, then things become a bit more natural. As I start to figure out the basics of how certain structures and semantics are represented in the language, I’m able to apply similar techniques to the problem at hand. However, finding a good way to explore this has not always been a pleasant experience.

An effective way of learning a new language is something I’ve struggled with. I’ve always flailed here and there trying to create test projects to learn with. Most of the time I get so caught up in the details of what the project should be that the primary objective of learning the language takes a back seat. This has been very frustrating and counterproductive.

A year ago or so, I stumbled upon Project Euler, a site that has a series of challenging programming problems, many of which are mathematical in nature. This site is an amazing way to try out a new language because it forces one to explore the basic elements of the language, with a focused problem instead of a dreaded test project.

As a side, I’ve found that solving the problems in more than one language really helps bring to surface the differences between the languages. For instance, solving a long hand division problem will usually result in needing to store string representations along the way. If one were to try and use normal floating point operations on a problem like this, it would cause some type of overflow. Doing this in c/c++ can be somewhat a pain, but in python is trivial.

This has been my experience in picking up a new language and I would recommend the method to others if asked.

regular expression for primes

2010-07-05T00:00:00+00:00

regular expression for primes

A regular expression for testing primes? Does this really work? At first look, it’s super ugly but then the beauty of it starts to seep out once one realizes that it really works!

And the magic formula is…

/^1?$|^(11+?)\1+$/

slowing down single speed style

2010-07-03T00:00:00+00:00

I’ve been riding the converted single speed mountain bike for the past week. It’s been nice switch from the more sleek road bike. When on the road bike I am determined to get to my destination (work/home) in the fastest manner. I crank, pretty hard. However, one can only go so fast when on a single speed and therefore, this forced me to slow down.

It forced me to look more horizontally, much like a real commute should be where one enjoys not only the ride, but the surroundings as well. I tend to mess around more as well, hopping on/off curbs, riding wheelies, etc. I feel more like a kid, careless and enjoying the moment.

I know I’ll switch back over to the speedster at some point, but I’ve enjoyed the change.

moved

2010-06-27T00:00:00+00:00

I have moved my blog to a new home (tumblr) and am hoping my rss feed just works so that my one subscriber (hi mom!) has no problems. Tumblr just seemed simpler and I didn’t need all the tricked out options that wordpress gave me. Too many distractions. Hopefully this change will help motivate more writing.

blog.saadware.com will stay around for archival purposes.