Automate updating custom Homebrew formulae with GitHub Actions
I have a few projects I use custom Homebrew taps with. I never remember to update the formulae versions when I update the projects. So, I finally decided to automate the process with GitHub Actions.
Reorganizing my ~/Sites directory
I keep all my websites’ source code under ~/Sites. I’ve always just named
them like ~/Sites/josh.fail. A while ago, while looking at how launchd
names its plist files, like com.apple.iTunes, I realized that would be a
great way to organize my ~/Sites directory so that sites under the same
domain show up next to each other with ls or in Finder.
My home network
I thought I’d document my home network, or at least the more interesting parts.
The Bluffer’s Guide to The Mythical Man-Month
Someone posted a bluffer’s guide to The Mythical Man-Month.
Somehow, I Manage: Setting Expectations When Asking For Something
Today on Hacker News, I saw this article explaining how a manager should ask their direct reports to complete a task. In short, you need to be mindful of what kind of effort you expect them to put into the task, be explicit about how it should be prioritized against other work, and how you plan to use whatever they are doing for you.
Tracking sqlite3 changes in git
I saw a really neat way to track sqlite DB changes in a git repository.
Custom iOS Wallet passes
I found this article outlining how someone made a custom Wallet pass for their library card.
A deep dive on credit card debt collection
A fascinating deep dive on credit card debt collection.
milliondollarhomepage.com
Someone wrote about the Million Dollar Homepage and how it’s still online. I remember when it came out and he’d gotten a few bites—and how stupid I felt when it actually worked out for him. Man, I’m old.
oo - open recent Obsidian files with FZF
If you’re a fzf and Obsidian.md user, you might like oo to open recent
Obsidian files using fzf.
RIP Bram Moolenaar
I just read that Bram Moolenaar, the creator and BDFL of Vim, passed away on Thursday 😢.
Thoughts on Laravel from a Rails veteran
Random thoughts on my first production project with Laravel…
Sharing git repos between two system users
I needed a way for two developers to access a git repository on a Linux machine. Each developer has their own dedicated system user and logins require 2FA. Here’s how I got this going.
Hello from my Q2 Pro
Saying hi from my new Keychrone Q2 Pro, the proper ANSI one this time.
Easy SVG sparklines
I saw this post on creating easy SVG sparklines. I have a project in mind for this at work, so bookmarking for later…
Nginx proxy for Slack Webhooks
I have a quick and dirty slack-notify script that I’ve been using for a
while. I threw it on GitHub today, and got the idea of proxying a slack.
subdomain on my internal network to Slack so I could avoid pasting the webhook
everywhere I wanted to use it.
Launched - A launchd plist generator
I needed to put together a launchd plist today and decided to see if there are generators. I found Launched which did exactly what I needed.
CIDR subnet mask chart
I really suck understanding CIDR notation, so I snagged this table to
reference when my networking coworkers talk about /13s.
2FA hellscape
2FA is a necessary evil, but man does it annoy me at least weekly…
SvgPathEditor
Someone posted SvgPathEditor on Hacker News today. I suck with graphics design, but this might be a neat tool to use someday 🤔
My favorite shell aliases
I tend to use full scripts more than shell aliases, but I do have a few that I
use all the time. I try to keep them all Bash/ZSH compatible so I can just
source one file for either shell—so I avoid things like ZSH’s -g. Anyway,
here they are…
macOS defaults list
I came across macOS defaults list, a comprehensive list of different
settings you can change with the defaults command.
macOS CLI Commands
I saw this list of macOS CLI Commands. I knew about most of these, and
use many like pbcopy and pbpaste often.
New keycaps
I picked up some new keycaps from Drop. I’m writing this post to test them a little… but I think I may be in love.
Style your RSS feed
I saw this post about styling your RSS feed.
Using Direnv to set PHP versions
Detect in-progress git cherry-pick, merge, rebase, or revert
I came across this post on how to detect in-progress git cherry-pick, merge, rebase, or revert.
The Legend Of Zelda: Tears Of The Kingdom Haul
Today is Zelda day! Super excited I managed to snag the custom pro controller, and amiibo. And bonus, Majora’s Mask and Wind Waker amiibos 😍. Can’t wait to play the game later — I should have taken the day off!
Creating a wedding photo gallery
We got pictures back from our photographer a while ago—so naturally I had to create a photo gallery website. This stuff is still way too hard…
Somehow, I Manage: 1-on-1s
I saw this thread on Hacker News today where a user asks, “what do you talk about in 1-on-1s with your managers?”
My bin: license
I grabbed this simple license script from @defunkt back in July 2010 which
prints a copy of the MIT license with my name/email as the copyright.
The songs that got me into heavy metal
About 27 or 28 years ago, I found myself in my mom’s white 1990 Honda Prelude SI while my she was perusing a garage sale. I was bored quickly and started rummaging through the glove box. I found a tape labeled “Ozzy Live & Loud” and decided to pop it in. Little did I know that I was about to be absolutely mind blown by Mr. Zakk Wylde on guitar.
AWK technical notes
I came across some AWK technical notes today on Hacker News. I have a thing for awk, so bookmarking it here to torture myself with later.
Somehow, I Manage: Why We Pair Program
On my dev team, we pair program for just about everything we do. In fact, this was the first team I worked with that pair programmed at all. It continues to work well for us, but there are pros and cons, and what works for one team may not work for another.
gh-prq - open GitHub Pull Requests with your $EDITOR
I threw together gh-prq, a GitHub CLI extension to create Pull
Requests in your $EDITOR.
My bin: headers
One of my most used scripts, I snagged of GitHub way back in 2010: headers.
New computer
I went 🐷 mode for my latest computer, an M2 Pro Mac mini.
Universal Control on macOS
Universal Control on macOS is awesome!
I Will Fucking Dropkick You If You Use That Spreadsheet
A coworker sent this to me today so I could send it back when she sent me a spreadsheet. Blogging so I remember it later on.
Apple Studio Display First Impressions
I’ve had my eye on the Apple Studio Display for a while now. I finally picked one up today. First impressions…
How I do my first commit for a new project
Git isn’t super friendly when you are creating a new project, especially on a team. A simple way to work around this is using an empty commit.
Star Wars in telnet or bash
An oldie but a goodie I had to look up today—the entirety of Star Wars Episode IV is available via telnet.
Git commands you do not need
I saw this post of Git commands you do not need on Hacker News today (comments). Lots of juicy stuff in there to read about later.
Get a random devops_borat or sadserver tweet in Obsidian
I threw together a quick templater script to print random quotes in my Obsidian daily notes.
Get Calendar.app week number via CLI
If you need to get a Calendar.app week number via CLI, here’s a script that does just that.
My horrible Pixelmator creations
Starting a home for my horrible Pixelmator creations…
Speed up ZSH compinit on slower systems
I came across this tip on speeding up ZSH compinit on slower systems. I haven’t actually done it yet. Just doing some housekeeping and blogging it so I can look it up later 😀
Hacker News Parody Thread
This Hacker News Parody Thread is hilarious and spot on.
Josh Lasso
Halloween time!
Selenized theme
GitHub profile tricks
I saw this post on some GitHub profile tricks. I really need to give mine some love…
Using Vim to convert MySQL output to CSV
Pretty regularly I am working with MySQL queries and need to present them to non-technical people in a Google Sheet. Here’s my caveman-Vim approach to doing it.
Facebook Engineers Don’t Know Where They Keep Your Data
An unsurpising look at the engineering culture of Facebook. Color me shocked!
AppleScript
Some useful tidbits on AppleScript programming popped up on Hacker News today (comments).
Work From Home Things: The Lunch Minute
One of those random Work From Home Things my fiancée and I both have: marking
yourself away for lunch must be done on a timestamp ending in :00, :15,
:30, or :45. If not, you have to wait for the next one to come around.
HTML capture attribute
I learned about the capture attribute for file inputs today, which
allows you to prompt a user to take a picture and passes it to the file input
for processing. It is only supported by mobile browsers, and I can’t think of
how I would use it. Still, seems like a neat concept.
Setting up my PiBox
I picked up a PiBox and wanted to run it without KubeSail/k3s. The devs at KubeSail have open sourced all of their provisioning scripts and I was able to get things working in a night.
My Git+Synology setup
I upgraded my NAS and setup git on it again. I went a little custom this time around, so I’m documenting it here if I ever need to do it again.
How to setup a git server
Here’s how I setup a git server with Gitweb on a Raspberry Pi.
The Oregon Trail’s Origins
Very interesting documentary on The Oregon Trail’s Origins.
Slack’s scrollbar
I was searching for CSS scrollbar rules for Safari and came across this completely unrelated article about how Slack customizes their scrollbar by hiding it and showing their own. Clever!
Don’t think to write, write to think
This is one of the lessons that every writer comes to appreciate: writing is thinking. Writing is not the artifact of thinking, it’s the actual thinking process.
The Rails Attributes API
Test Double wrote about the Rails Attributes API. Great article—just don’t be tempted to use it on a serialized column like jsonb… you’ll hate yourself eventually like I always do.
90s cursor effects
I saw this list of 90s cursor effects posted on Hacker News today.
The seventy thousand
The Biden administration announced their student debt relief program this week. Of course there are a lot of opinions on this, ranging from literal tears of relief to outright rage over liberals getting another handout. I’m one of those people who penny pinched for years to pay my loans off and I think this is a great idea. Strap in for a story.
rsync compression is slow afterall
I tested compression in rsync on a big file and, no surprise, it’s pretty slow (about 9x slower).
Linux Sticky Bandits (the sticky bit and friends)
I always have to look up how to apply sticky bit/suid/sgid, so I am bookmarking it here for future reference.
Heroku killing free accounts
Heroku today, “we will be phasing out our free plan for Heroku Dynos, free plan for Heroku Postgres, and free plan for Heroku Data for Redis®, as well as deleting inactive accounts.”
Accounting for Developers
I saw Accounting for Developers today (and part 2, along with the HN comments). Saving it here so maybe I’ll read it later and understand some of the jargon our Controller throws out in meetings 🤣
Signing git commits with SSH keys
GitHub announced today that they have added support for signing commits and tags with SSH keys. Here’s how I set it up on my Mac.
airport cli
Shelby shared airport cli, a CLI for AirPort express wireless on macOS. Blogging it so I remember to check it out sometime 😀
LackRack
The LackRack was mentioned on Hacker News today. tl;dr: a cheap Ikea table might make a decent little 19” network rack.
whytheluckystiff.net
Someone compiled a _why museum. One of my biggest Ruby “regrets” was that I got into it just as _why was on his way out. I hope he’s still teaching people in the shadows.
Silencing “last login” message on macOS terminals
I got annoyed by the “Last login: Fri Aug 19: 11:23:33” messages I saw in Terminal.app when opening new tabs (in spite of seeing them daily for years). Here’s how I solved it.
`~/.ssh/config` includes
Last night I discovered the Include directive in ~/.ssh/config that I have
wanted all my life.
Efficient Pagination Using Deferred Joins
TIL that pagination via LIMIT and OFFSET (i.e. how most of us are doing
it) is not very performant for large datasets. Instead, you can use a
“deferred join” to fetch just the ID from the table and then an outer query
has fewer IDs to work with.
Trying to fix my Audioengine A2+ woes
I upgraded my desktop speakers to Audioengine A2+ a while ago. They are awesome, except for one random bug: they sometimes stop working and require me to unplug their power.
2Advanced Studios gallery
I was feeling nostalgic in web design today and found this gallery of old 2Advanced Studios designs. V3 Expansions is still the best website of all time.
Pi-hole/DNS configuration gotcha
I’ve been running Pi-hole off and on for a few years. It mostly works great, but it would randomly stop working and I’d see ads again. I could never track down what was happening — until recently.
Let’s Encrypt for Pi-hole
Here’s how I used acme.sh to setup Let’s Encrypt for my Pi-holes.
PHP’s null coalescing operator vs elvis operator
I saw this comparison of PHP’s null coalescing operator (??) vs its
elvis operator (?:).
EU to require sideloading on iOS
Looks like the EU is going to force Apple to allow side-loading and alternate app stores on iOS. Mixed opinions, as I’d expect. Myself, I hate the idea and hope Apple tells them to fuck off.
Red Dead Redemption 2
Keep calm and use the runbook
Runbooks are important because they make knowledge easily actionable for someone without domain expertise. This ensures, for example, that the engineer who created the service doesn’t need to be the first line of defense in the event of an outage. Instead, if they create a runbook, anyone else can pick it up and take the right steps to fix the problem.
What’s the deal with all those weird wrong-number texts?
A deep dive into scam texts. Fascinating stuff.
Spectrum, this is why we all hate you
It’s fashionable to complain about the cable company oligopolies. So let me add to the pile.
OSI Layer Mnemonic
One of my coworkers loves to say “Layer 2”, “Layer 3”, etc. I learned this in school to pass a test and promptly forgot. There’s always a mnemonic, I know I memorized it once for that test. So I looked it up again so I can maybe stop feeling dumb on those calls:
My favorite Bash resources
Bash is everywhere and I write a stupid amount of it for that very reason. It’s pretty hard to write good Bash. Here are some resources I’ve used to try and level up my code.
Getting stuck
A pretty good list of some of the ways devs get stuck on their work.
How to review code links
Someone posted some code review guides on Hacker News. I need to give them a read and update this post on whether or not they are actually any good.
The book that taught me MySQL
It took me a few years to truly grasp MySQL and the concept of relational databases. The MySQL Pocket Reference is the book that helped it all click for me.
Jekyll image galleries in 2022
It’s been a while since I’ve attempted to make an image gallery with Jekyll.
Back in the Octopress days, you had to use a separate Jekyll plugin, or
Rakefile to generate it for you. These days, first class support for
static files (site.static_files) makes it a breeze.
Jekyll cheatsheet
This Jekyll cheatsheet looks pretty nice 👌
Hardening macOS
I found nice little security-focused guide on hardening macOS.
Running queries against CSV with sqlite3
Someone posted a little overview of working with CSV files via sqlite.
Amdahl’s Law
In a random thread on Hacker News talking about air purifiers, someone mentioned Amdahl’s Law:
Getting a new game sucks today
Getting a new game sucks today. Back in my day, we had booklets to read by street light on the drive home from Toys ‘R Us. You popped the game in, and if your room was clean, you were ready to rock. No console updates. No installing files to disk. No downloading game updates. Just you, your shiny new game, and a soda.
macOS Screenshot Tricks
Someone posted some macOS screenshot tricks on Hacker News today. I knew about these, but the comments had a few extras I always forget (like holding option when clicking a window to ignore the window shadow).
Pull Requests start conversations
I worked at Envato for about two years and one of the biggest things that sticks with me is a tiny little blurb that was in all of our Pull Request templates: Remember, a Pull Request is the start of a conversation, not the end of one.
Somehow, I Manage: Everyone Wants to Sell You Something
When I was given a company credit card, I didn’t know that vendors would magically get a hold of my email address to try selling me something.
Did you know: wildcard SSL certificates and subdomains
Did you know wildcard SSL certificates only support one level of subdomain?
That XOR trick
Super comprehensive deep dive into the XOR (^) operator.
Five steps to take after making a mistake
Solid advice, pretty much in any profession.
dns.toys
Just discovered dns.toys, a little DNS hack that lets you do stuff like
dig newyork.weather @dns.toys to get back different types of data. It would
be fun to do stuff like this as an employer searching for network engineers 😀
If OpenSSL were a GUI
Yuuup, lol.
I’m a fucking webmaster
Back in 1993, you weren’t a designer, developer, copywriter or in devops. You were a fucking webmaster, and your name was at the bottom of every page.
Zsh Plugin Standard
This Zsh Plugin Standard looks pretty neat. I have a pretty manual Zsh setup, but there are some neat tidbits about Zsh’s inner workings.
Geekboards 8-key macropad
Drop really wants my money… this Geekboards 8-key macropad looks pretty sweet. The only thing stopping me from buying it right now is not having enough USB ports.
Raspberry Pi Zero W Webcam Server
I have an old Raspberry Pi Zero W with their camera that hasn’t been used. I used this guide to get it setup. The performance is hot garbage on the Zero, but a fun mini project.
Litestream - Streaming replication for SQLite
I like to use the same DB in dev/test/production, so I rarely use SQLite — but Litestream looks pretty damn cool.
SiriMote
I have been using an old headless Mac mini to play music and was wondering if I could use a spare AppleTV remote to control the volume. I found SiriMote which does exactly that.
Q2 “mods”
I replaced the stock switches and plate in my Keychron Q2.
ffmpeg buddy
I saw ffmpeg buddy on Hacker News today. Maybe I’ll remember it next time I need to use ffmpeg?
Hello from my Keychron Q4!
Just grabbed a Keychron Q4 and giving it the ol’ blog-post-typing-test.
Making macOS behave itself
Came across this collection of macOS hints — definitely need to check these out in detail later!
Cursor Dance Party!
Check out Cursor Dance Party. I love fun projects like this 😀
Preventing burnout
I came across this guide on preventing burnout on Hacker News.
alerter: CLI notifications on Mac OS X
A coworker mentioned alerts on macOS today, and I came across alerter.
Somehow, I Manage: 11 Promises of a Manager
A coworker shared this post from LinkedIn, 11 Promises of a Manager. I try to follow all of these, mainly because I’ve been lucky enough that most of my managers followed them too.
-h, –help, help, -?, –?
I came across this post on Hacker News that talks about a topic dear to my heart: help flags in command line programs.
macOS App icons
A coworker shared a list of macOS App icons.
Those HTML Attributes You Never Use
I stumbled on a list of rarely used HTML attributes today. Two stuck out:
gh-render-markdown extension
I threw together a gh extension, gh-render-markdown, to quickly render Markdown using the GitHub API.
5 things you don’t need Javascript for
Some interesting things CSS can do without Javascript — I saw the dark mode trick when I was revamping this site’s theme a month or so ago.
Stats – macOS system monitor in your menu bar
Stats, an open Open source version of iStat Menus.
Somehow, I Manage: Work/Life Balance
I’ve been officially a manager for just over two years now, and I think I am ready to start rambling about some of the things I’ve learned along the way. First up, setting a good work/life balance with your team.
Some web color tools
I saw hue.tools today on Hacker News, a cool tool for playing with colors.
Does my GitHub Pages site need a Caching Plugin?
No.
Hilarious South Park metal reference
I had South Park on in the background and heard some tasty riffs, looked up and saw Stan, Butters, Jimmy, and Kenny in a death metal band, Crimson Dawn. More of this! 👊
Micropub Test
Testing Micropub from iA Writer 😀
Random old designs
I found a few random old site designs on my NAS.
Two Weeks With Leopard
An old half-finished post I found from around probably mid 2008 about my first couple weeks with OS X Leopard. Still one of my favorite Mac OS’s.
2022 Universal Orlando Trip
Just got back from an awesome mini-vacation at Universal Orlando with my fiancée and 4 of our friends.
My recipe site
In October 2020 I set about getting my assortment of recipes online in Markdown format. tl;dr checkout recipes.priddle.xyz, this sauce, and that sauce.
Vim Tips: Writing ASCII lines quickly
I sometimes need to write an ASCII line (hr) quickly, like ----------, here
are two ways I do it in Vim.
Shell Tricks: Better Bash debug
Toss the following snippet at the top of any Bash script and run with
DEBUG=1 to automatically activate set -x and print its output via $PS4.
Micropub
I saw Micropub in iA Writer’s publish settings today and had never heard of it. tl;dr I think I can use it and a small Heroku app to publish to this site from iA Writer on my phone 🤔
Updated permalinks
Updated my permalinks. No one cares, but I wanted to mention it so I remember when I did it 😀
Obsidian Nirvana
I really need to do a proper project/post on my Obsidian setup, but I think I’ve finally reached planning nirvana.
Simple PHP/SMTP mail script
I needed a quick ‘n dirty script to test outgoing SMTP email via PHP and found php-smtp.
Pure bash markdown table generator
I wanted a portable markdown table generator a few months back and threw
together markdown-table.
Merging git repos with git-filter-repo
I needed to merge multiple git repos into a single one using subdirectories,
while preserving the history. I have used git filter-branch in the past
to do the inverse. Searching around, I found git-filter-repo which made
it a snap.
Dump Calendar.app events to JSON
I wanted a way to dump Calendar.app events to JSON. I came across icalBuddy, which can dump your events to text. I threw together the following bash/jq script to convert icalBuddy output to JSON.
Shell Tricks: Pretty Printing the name of your program
You might need to print or use the name of your program itself — what you
would see if you ran basename my-script.sh. tl;dr: use ${0##*/}.
Shell Tricks: Detecting if your script is being piped
If you need to check if a shell script is being piped to another program (i.e.
bash yourscript.sh | less) you can use test -t 1 and friends.
A solution for git repos and iCloud?
If you’re tried keeping a git repo in an iCloud (or Dropbox) folder before,
you know it works fine — until it doesn’t. Something inevitably happens
one day while one of your devices is syncing, and your repo is corrupted, such
that a bunch of your files look like they’ve been changed. A workaround I’ve
been playing with is custom $GIT_DIR set via direnv. Here’s how I set
it up.
You can’t parse HTML with regex
This now infamous post on Stack Overflow — You can’t parse HTML with regex — is one of my favorites. I think every dev has tried it at least three times: first time you do something simple and it Just Works™; second time you try something advanced and manage to figure out most of the edge cases so it Mostly Works™; final time is such a nightmare you wish you’d chosen to build Things Out of Wood™ instead of code.
Fun with jq and Tautulli
Responsive CSS Gallery
Searching for image gallery templates, I came across this one that looks light-weight and decent enough.
Dev Shower Thought: Webmaster
Dev Shower Thought: Webmaster on a resume in the 90s looked pretty sweet; in 2022 it’s a red flag saying “I don’t really know what I’m talking about.”
37
I am 37 today. I’ve spent the last week or so hacking on this blog and reviewing old content since I turned 21. I thought I’d wrap up my nostalgia trip with a check in on what life is like in 2022.
The Web Is Fucked
A few weeks ago I came across The Web Is Fucked and it’s really stuck with me. I miss Web 1.0.
lsusb on macOS
An old WordPress hack I found
I was poking through old WordPress backups I have and noticed a strange
wp-content/85060.php file. Turns out one of my sites was hacked back in 2006
or 2007 and I had never noticed.
How to Mount a USB Drive on Linux
Need to mount a USB drive on Linux?
How to generate a simple calendar
Need to generate a simple calendar for a specific month or year? The cal
command does just that.
Viewing and killing MySQL queries
MySQL running slow and want to see which queries are running? If you can get a
mysql> prompt, try SHOW PROCESSLIST or SHOW FULL PROCESSLIST.
Reverting a Git Pull
If you ran a git pull and need to revert, you can use git reflog to find
the last revision you were on before you pulled:
1Password Classic Extensions
1Password makes it hard to find their “classic” browser extensions (i.e. the ones that work without a subscription), so, here they are: https://support.1password.com/cs/1password-classic-extension/
Somehow, I Manage: Disagreement is a Healthy Part of Collaboration
A strong collaborative culture is one of my favorite parts of coming to work every day. One thing that isn’t touched on often is that disagreement can actually be an indicator of a healthy team.
What does it take to be a good programmer?
I stumbled across this quote on Hacker News that talks about what it feels like to be a good programmer:
Using direnv to set a custom git email for work projects
I like to specify a different git author email for personal projects and work
projects. This can be done per-repo with git config user.name and git
config user.email, but it can be easy to forget as you clone repos. Here is
how I used direnv to accomplish this automatically.
The Ten Slack Commandments
As a fully distributed team, Slack is our main tool for real-time communication with each other. Keeping up with dozens of messages a day can be daunting, and distractions abound. Here are just a few ways I’ve seen remote teams of all sizes use Slack effectively to cut through the noise and keep the communication flowing.
Warn when macOS adds path_helper to zprofile and profile on OS updates
If you like to manually set your $PATH on macOS, you may have updated
/etc/zprofile (for ZSH) or /etc/profile (for Bash) to eliminate calls to
path_helper. Unfortunately, macOS will update these files when you install
OS updates. I’ve been bitten by this changing my $PATH, so I came up with
the following snippet to warn when it happens.
Ruby 2.3.2 on macOS 10.15
I needed to install Ruby 2.3.2 on macOS 10.15 and hit some snags with OpenSSL.
Vim cheatsheets
A big list of Vim cheatsheets from reddit.com/r/vim:
Useful git configs and aliases
Here are some of my favorite git configs and aliases.
Using Let’s Encrypt for local servers
I run a few web services on my local network. I trust my network, but I’ve often wanted to use SSL with these services. Using DigitalOcean as a DNS provider and Let’s Encrypt, I finally have this in place. Here’s how I set things up.
Deluge and OpenVPN on a Raspberry Pi 4
I recently got a new Raspberry Pi 4. Since it has gigabit ethernet and USB 3, I thought it would make a perfect Deluge seedbox (you know, for Ubuntu and Rasbian ISOs and the like). Here’s how I setup Deluge and OpenVPN.
I’m Comic Sans, Asshole
Listen up. I know the shit you've been saying behind my back. You think I'm stupid. You think I'm immature. You think I'm a malformed, pathetic excuse for a font. Well think again, nerdhole, because I'm Comic Sans, and I'm the best thing to happen to typography since Johannes fucking Gutenberg.
Signed commits with GitX
How to print help text in shell scripts
Good shell scripts should come with documentation that is easy to access.
Usually some-script -h, some-script --help will print such help — if the
developer was nice enough to include docs anyway. I think it’s a really
important thing to include in any script you’re going to share with the
public. I’ve seen and tried a few different methods over the years. Here
are a few, how they work, and what I’m using today.
Hello, macOS!
I threw together this post on macOS basics for my dad a few years back when he got his first MacBook. Copying it here in case it helps anyone else, or if I ever need to share again.
vnStat on RasPlex
tl;dr: Want vnStat on RasPlex? Check out rasplex-vnstat!
Vim Registers
I found this great writeup on Vim registers today.
Generate Password LaunchBar Action
I often need to generate random passwords when testing development work. To help with that, I’ve created a LaunchBar 6 Action, Generate Password.lbaction.
The One Where I Got A New iMac
I bought a new iMac to replace my aging MacBook Pro. Here’s a post where I gush about it.
Stupid things I had to Google
“Never memorize something that you can look up.” — Albert Einstein. Some stupid things I never memorized and had to look up.
My Vim Setup
This is my Vim config. There are many like it, but this one is mine.
Procrastination
A “poem” I wrote in late 2002 for creative writing — clearly 10 minutes before it was due — about being lazy.
Using Nginx as an SSL proxy to GitHub Pages
Running PHP’s CLI Server with launchd on OS X
Here’s how I configured launchd to run WordPress via PHP’s Built-in web server on OS X.
Better local GitHub Pages with Pow
A couple years ago I covered how I setup a local GitHub Pages build environment using Pow with Rack. Things broke on me recently, and while trying to fix them, I found an even easier way.
The time I ran `rm -rf /`
A lot of sysadmins have had that holy shit moment where they ran rm -rf /.
Here’s mine.
Shell Tricks: Colorized output
This is part 3 of my series on tricks I’ve used in shell scripts. In this post, I’ll share a few ways I’ve colorized text in shell scripts.
Shell Tricks: Custom ruby shebangs for speed
This is part 2 of my series on tricks I’ve used in shell scripts. In this post, I’ll share a few ways a custom shebang can be used in ruby scripts.
Shell Tricks: Showing help in a script
This is part 1 of a series of quick and dirty tricks I’ve used in various scripts over the years. In this post, I’ll show how I like to provide help text for shell scripts.
Disabling bottles in Homebrew with custom formulae
Homebrew recently added bottles for Vim/MacVim — but they depend on
Homebrew-installed Ruby, Python, and Perl. I prefer to build these from source
so they will use whatever versions of these dependencies currently installed
on my system. Instead of constantly remembering brew install -s vim to
install from source, I created a couple small formulae that disable bottles.
Introducing `wp-cli-tgmpa-plugin`
I recently dove back into the world of PHP and created
wp-cli-tgmpa-plugin, a WP-CLI package for working with plugins registered
with the TGM Plugin Activation. Check it out if you need to install TGMPA
plugins via wp cli.
A Simpler Homebrew Formula for WP-CLI
I mentioned in my last post that WP-CLI’s Homebrew Formula includes a
dependency on Composer I don’t need. I spent a few minutes and came up with a
simpler Formula with no dependencies. To install, just
run brew install [--HEAD] itspriddle/brews/wp-cli. The Formula just
downloads pre-compiled phar files directly from GitHub, this works great for
my needs.
Running WordPress on OS X
I’ve been working with WordPress a lot more lately, and I wanted a way to run it on OS X with as few dependencies as possible. Thanks to WP-CLI and PHP’s built in web server this is now easier than ever before.
wp-cli on a shared host
Here’s how I installed wp-cli on a shared host (HostRocket).
Convert GitHub repo links to GFM in Vim
GitHub allows a shorthand syntax for linking to commits, pull requests and issues: user/project@SHA for a commit and user/project#Num for an issue or pull request. I frequently paste links into Vim when writing git commit or pull request messages, and wanted a way to automatically convert these to the shorthand syntax on save.
Viscosity CLI
I created a small CLI for controlling VPN connections with Viscosity.app.
Linux Signals
I found a great list of signals in Linux.
Copy screenshots to Dropbox Public folder on OS X
In 2013 Dropbox added the ability to save your screenshots in Dropbox This is an awesome feature that I’ve used almost daily since it was announced. It’s always annoyed me you can’t configure this to use your Dropbox Public Folder. I finally came up with a way to do this using launchd. Head on over to the README for more info on how to set it up on your own system.
Running vim plugin commands from the command line
Vim allows you to run commands from the command line using the + or -c
flags, vim +PlugUpdate or vim -c ":PlugUpdate". Many plugin commands aren’t
available until you have opened a buffer (eg. rails.vim or git.vim). This has
bugged me for a while and I finally figured out how to make it work.
Bootstrapping your development setup with Homebrew
I maintain a small Homebrew tap for projects I work on at Site5, homebrew-site5. I came across a “meta” brew in Josh Peek’s homebrew-github Homebrew tap that allows you to install multiple dependencies with a single command. I adapted it for my own needs at Site5 and it has worked great.
git pr: push current branch and open pull request
I use the awesome hub utility to open pull requests on GitHub from the command line. I love being able to do this from the terminal. Since I almost always need to push a branch and copy the pull request URL to my clipboard, I wrote a wrapper to handle these steps in one command.
Customizing the Rails Console
Rails comes with the ability to customize the IRB console when you run rails
console. This can be useful to preconfigure behavior for your console when
any developer runs it from any environment.
Launching IRB from your RubyGem
When developing a RubyGem, it is often helpful to launch an IRB console preloaded with your library. There are a few ways you can do this.
Another New Layout!
I finally got around to revamping this blog’s layout. Jekyll now includes a nice starting theme that I tweaked a bit. Now to remember to post more.
Building GitHub Pages Locally
GitHub recently released a pages-gem making it easy to duplicate the environment they use to build GitHub Pages. Add a little Rack, and Pow, and you can be running GitHub Pages locally in no time.
Documenting with TomDoc and GitHub Pages
I wrote a blog post over at Eng5 outlining how we use TomDoc and GitHub pages for documentation at Site5. Check it out!
Tomy Racing Turbo
I stumbled across this video for the Tomy Racing Turbo. I totally remember using this when I was 4 or 5 years old.
Why Blacksmiths are Better at Startups than You
I read an interesting article today about the show Mastercrafts. Mastering a craft like blacksmithing or stone masonry seems a lot like mastering computer programming, but much less forgiving. Definitely worth a read.
Designed by Apple in California
The new Designed by Apple commercial is absolutely brilliant.
A look inside Gears, the Final Fantasy VII game engine
I came across this document a few months ago. It is an inside look at Gears, the game engine used to develop Final Fantasy VII.
RSpec and vim-dispatch
A couple months ago I wrote about how to Run RSpec in Vim. Shortly afterward, tpope released vim-dispatch which does a better job of solving that problem.
How We Hack At Site5
Hacking for Site5 Engineering is an awesome gig. I work with an amazing team of highly opinionated developers from a wide background. In early 2012, we adopted a semi-formal process for working on software. We’ve been very happy with how this has worked out, so I thought it was time to share.
SSH Escape Sequences
Today, I learned about a bunch of escape sequences that SSH supports.
A Year Without Smoking
Just over a year ago, I left for Railsconf and made one of the best decisions of my life: I was going to use the week in Austin to force myself to quit smoking.
Bash Arguments with $* and $@
Today, I wondered what the difference between $* and $@ in Bash were. This
is a tough one to Google for, so I’m copying the answer I found on Bash
Hackers:
Xcode 4.6 and ruby-build
I’ve been having trouble compiling Ruby 1.9.3 since updating to Xcode 4.6. After a little Googling, it turns out that the error is with some invalid CFLAGS set in Ruby’s compile scripts.
The One Where I Got A New MacBook Pro
Today, I finally got a new MacBook Pro with Retina Display to replace my aging early-2009 model.
Running RSpec in Vim
Today, I finally got :make working for RSpec files in Vim.
Running Vim commands from stdin
Vim has a handy feature that allows you to run commands from a file when you open a new session.
Fun With Jekyll Posts and Vim Macros
Yesterday, I decided I wanted to edit a bunch of Jekyll posts. Specifically,
I wanted to move the title field in each post’s YAML front matter to the
bottom. Instead of having to manually edit a few hundred files, I finally
remembered to use Vim macros.
All programming languages need a REPL
My girlfriend has recently begun learning Java for college. The shittyness of Java aside, I’ve realized that its lack of a REPL makes it much harder to play around with its features.
NiGHTS into dreams on PSN
Today, Sega re-released one of my favorite childhood games from Sega Saturn: NiGHTS into DREAMS….
Validating Serialized Attributes in Rails
ActiveRecord provides a serialize method, which can be used to transparently
store a Hash, etc in a single database column.
Restoring files from OS X Time Machine with Terminal.app
I use Time Machine on OS X to keep backups of my hard drive. Overall it is a great program. However, restoring files can be a slow and cumbersome process.
Credit Card Number Generator
I was sent this Credit Card Number Generator the other day. It has fake numbers to test a variety of cards with, and explains how the numbers are validated.
Upgrading to OS X Mountain Lion
I installed OS X Mountain Lion today and have had a pretty good experience.
Font Bomb
Font bomb is too much fun.
Three Avatars Coming?
It looks like James Cameron is going to be recording three new Avatar films. I can’t wait to see the next installments!
Design Principles
This is a good read on design principles in software applications.
Animate.css
I stumbled on Animate.css today. It contains a bunch of pure CSS animations for use in your own projects.
iOS Text Editors Compared
I found this very comprehensive comparison of iOS text editors today. I’m still not happy editing without a filesystem, but perhaps one of these apps handles it in a non-shitty-cloud-syncing way.
Railsconf Links
Railsconf was a blast. Here are just a few links I gathered during the various talks: https://gist.github.com/2495211
Railsconf, ho!
Beyond excited to be attending Railsconf in Austin, TX this year! Can’t wait to finally meet the rest of Site5 Engineering team in person. If you’re at any of the bars afterward, make sure to flag down Site5 for a drink!
Prince of Persia Open Sourced!
This was a pretty cool story about how the developer of the original Prince of Persia game was able to recover it’s source code after 20 years. It almost makes me wish I had kept my pile of floppy disks!
All the reasons PHP sucks
This is a pretty comprehensive article that discusses the overall shittiness of PHP. Many of the points listed here are reasons I love Ruby over PHP.
TIL gifs can have more than 256 colors
Today I learned that gifs can have more than 256 colors. Using more seems unpractical, but it’s still a cool trick.
Fun with vector icons
This was an interesting article about resizing vector icons — in short, the details count, and SVG is no replacement for a designer’s keen eye.
A Test, from Heroku!
This is just a test post from Heroku :)
Splitting git repos with git filter-branch
While working on a project managed with Git, I needed to split some files into
a new repository. In order to maintain the git history on these files, I used
git filter-branch. Here are two methods I used.
This is how design works
Take note of the Apple products. I had no idea they were so, inspired, by Braun.
ZSH Tab Completion for Bundler Binstubs
Bundler has a feature called binstubs, which places stubs for gem bin
scripts in ./bin. Unfortunately, ZSH doesn’t seem to complete these files
out of the box.
Graphical Vim Cheat Sheets
I found these excellent cheat sheets for Vim — nice and simple keyboard overlays.
Splinter, the Capybara Ninja
Emoji cheat sheet
Wow, I had no idea there were so many emoji icons! Use this cheat sheet to make your Github issues and pull requests diamonds.
Basecamp Next is crazy fast
A post from 37Signals about how they made the new Basecamp fly.
So You Want To Be A Developer
A pretty accurate description of what it’s like to be a developer.
Patched ruby 1.9.3-p0 is sexytime
I’ve been using this patch for a few weeks, and the speed increases on a Rails 3.2 app are definitely noticeable. It installed for me without any problems.
Removing Finder from the OS X Application Switcher
@erichatesyou sent me this tip today. It removes Finder from the OS X app switcher.
Vim 7.3 on a shared host
A few years ago I blogged about how I setup Vim on a shared web host. I needed to do this again today; but with a bit more control as to the features that were compiled:
The Twiddle Wakka
An article describing the usage of that weird ~> operator found in
gemspecs and Gemfiles. I read this a while back but keep forgetting where it
is when I want a technical explanation.
Teach Yourself Programming in Ten Years
Researchers have shown it takes about ten years to develop expertise in any of a wide variety of areas.
Being 5 Years Ahead
Another reason I like iOS better than Android.
Allow binding ctrl-s and ctrl-q in Terminal.app
I ran into an annoying issue trying to configure ctrl-q as a Vim mapping in
Terminal.app for OS X. It turns out that flow
control was blocking it. I had
mistakenly thought that the flow control keys only applied to things like
less or more.
Vim anti-patterns
This post covers some vim anti-patterns and includes a few tricks I had not
known about (such as :set tildeop).
marked.vim
I threw together vim-marked, that provides some mappings for opening and closing Marked.app. Check it out if you’re using Vim and Marked!
Marked
I just discovered Marked today. It adds one of the few things I still miss from TextMate to vim, a live preview window for markdown.
Why Jekyll pwns WordPress
It was just about two years ago that I converted my WordPress blog into a Jekyll blog. Overall, I am very happy with the decision, here’s why.
CSS Font Stack
Eric sent me this a while back - a very useful site for choosing fonts for multiple operating systems.
More CSS3 generators
This is a great page that handles generating CSS for a wide range of techniques.
CSS Gradient Generator
I found this excellent CSS gradient generator a while back. Very useful for playing around with CSS3 background.
Rainman is a very good driver
@jmazzi and I released Rainman, a Ruby implementation of the abstract factory pattern. Check it out!
Jekyll and Vim
I’ve been using Vim full time for a while now and wanted a decent way to manage blog posts in my Github Pages powered blog.
2011 Retrospective
The year is coming to a close, so I thought it would be a good time to reflect at some of the projects I’ve worked on in 2011.
Six Months at Site5
I can’t believe it’s already been six months since I joined the engineering crew at Site5. I’ve been having a blast!
On Perfection
This quote from Bleach sums up my thoughts on perfection pretty well:
Modern Ruby Development
I was having trouble getting Pow working with rbenv, and I found this detailed article that goes through the process, and a lot more. Check it out if you want to take another look at your OS X ruby development setup.
Pow and Apache, kissing in a tree
Need to use Apache alongside Pow? I found this guide that explains how to setup Apache to use IPv6.
The Million Dollar Question
A friend of mine sent me this article today, a very interesting read about taking chances in business.
vim stripper
I wrote my first vim plugin, vim-stripper, a simple command to strip trailing whitespace from buffers. Check it out if you think whitespace is the devil too.
Snuggie: a ruby gem for the Softaculous API
Yesterday, I pushed Snuggie, a gem that wraps the Softaculous API in a warm, loving ruby embrace. Check it out if you use Softaculous!
FannyPack: Ruby bindings for the Fantastico API
Check out FannyPack if you use the Fantastico API with Ruby.
iDium mod for Adium
Theming Liberty Sports Group with WordPress
I was contracted recently by Allusis Productions to create a backend for the soon-to-be-released Liberty Sports Group site. After going over the client’s requirements, I decided WordPress would be the best fit for the site. Here is an overview of my experience setting up and theming WordPress 3.1.
MiniDB, a cute little wrapper for PHP’s PDO
I threw together a tiny little wrapper for PHP’s PDO library. It probably sucks, but it may be useful to someone stuck with PHP :)
Jekyll TextMate Bundle
I forked a Jekyll TextMate bundle and added a new post template and a tmLanguage file. Check it out if you blog with Jekyll and TextMate.
Two Weeks With Leopard
I originally started this post on Mar 5, 2008, two weeks after I purchased a Mac mini. It’s been almost three years - and now I’m a diehard Mac fan.
Fireworks Icons using alpha transparency
Cool video on making vector icons in Fireworks using alpha transparency.
A good read about NDAs
I found this article the other day about why one developer says “no” when it comes to NDAs. It was a very interesting read, and I think I may follow suit when consulting in the future.
WHMCS API Bindings
I recently extracted some of my DotBlock work to create WHMCS API Bindings in PHP and Ruby.
Wage intergalactic war on your Titanium Mobile apps with TiFighter
Over the last 10 months, I’ve had the opportunity to work with Titanium
Mobile for a few different projects. I was immediately drawn to Titanium
because projects are written in JavaScript (which I know) as opposed to
Objective C or Java (which I don’t know). JavaScript is all well and good,
but I still found myself missing things from jQuery, like $.each, $.map
and friends.
Setting up a Ruby production environment on a DotBlock VPS
My projects’ production environments consist of Git, Ruby, Apache, and usually a hand full of RubyGems. These are the steps I took to set these up using Ubuntu 10.04 on my new DotBlock VPS. These steps were performed immediately after the VPS was setup, so there weren’t any additional packages/dependencies yet installed.
Hosting Private Gems
I’ve written a few gems for work that I can’t host on RubyGems. It turned out to be easier to host these than I thought.
Rake tasks to build Titanium Mobile Apps
I’ve been working with Titanium Mobile to build an iPhone app. Using Titanium Developer to launch the app in the iPhone simulator is a pain in the ass. It would be great if I could build via the command line.
Capistrano: Send Jabber alerts on deploy
I use this Capistrano recipe at work to send a broadcast to the office when I deploy an update. We use Jabber, and have a broadcast user that forwards messages to every user.
A few Rails Plugins
I extracted a few pieces of code into Rails Plugins.
API authentication in Sinatra with Clearance or Authlogic
Writing an API with Clearance
Recently, I needed to write an API to work with an iPhone application. I used Clearance for authentication. Unfortunately, it doesn’t support HTTP Basic Authentication out of the box, which made it difficult to use in an API.
Jekyll Pagination Gotcha
If you’re using Jekyll and pagination (see Template data),
make sure you’re using index.html and NOT index.markdown or index.md.
`git browse` alias
I recently wrote a git alias to open a repo in your web browser.
Managing TextMate bundles with git submodules
I’ve been using TextMate nearly every day for 2
years. Over that time I’ve customized it exactly to my liking with a bunch of
extra bundles, plugins, and theme tweaks. I’ve tried a few different things
to try to manage my ~/Library/Application Support/TextMate directory.
Deploy with git
I found this git hook that lets you deploy a project with a git push rather than having to use a full deployment library such as Capistrano. I use this on a bunch of PHP projects that don’t need all the features Capistrano provides.
ActiveRecord Migrations - integer limit gotcha
I work on a few apps that deal with phone numbers. I usually store these
as bigint(11) in MySQL. My migrations always seemed to ignore this.
CodeIgniter Database Library Extraction
I’ve used CodeIgniter in several PHP projects, and I love it (if I have to write PHP). I’m a big fan of the included Database Library.
Formatting MySQL Queries For Asterisk
If you’ve ever used the MySQL module with Asterisk, you’ve probably had loads of fun formatting queries.
gem install without sudo
It took me a while to find a clearly documented way to manage
gems without having to use sudo. Just drop these lines into your
~/.zshrc or ~/.bashrc file.
Fetching Emails with Redmine
Redmine has an awesome feature built in that lets you check an email account to import new tickets into your project.
Forcing SSL with Apache
For my own reference really, here are the steps I took to setup an Apache vhost to redirect all non-SSL requests to https:
jQuery Autocomplete for Jekyll
After migrating my blog from Wordpress to Jekyll, one thing I was missing was a functional search box. I threw one together last night.
Oh Hai, Jekyll
After putting it off for too long, I’ve redesigned my blog using Jekyll and GitHub Pages. It ended up being a lot easier than I thought, and Jekyll can do some pretty sweet stuff.
PHP Script To Delete All WordPress Tables
I’ve had to do this a few times when I wasn’t able to just drop the entire database, so I threw together a small PHP script that will do it for you.
Asterisk Manager Commands
I’ve been playing around with the Asterisk Manager lately (which is pretty damn cool, if you ask me). There doesn’t seem to be a list of all the commands available on voip-info right now, so I’m posting these here for my own reference.
I (still) hate IE.
It’s funny how you forget how much Internet Explorer sucks until you have to write CSS for it again.
OS X: Fixing the Terminal
This might not be a problem for everyone, but I got used to using home, end, page up, and page down to navigate through the command line and documents through the console. I was quite surprised to see that these seemingly basic features were missing from OS X’s Terminal.app.
OS X - A Month Later
It took me a while to get used to the quirks, but I have not only gotten used to OS X, but it is now my favorite operating system.
OS X First Impressions
The font rendering is ruining my life.
Hurray Mac mini
I finally bit the bullet and bought one, and it’s delicious.
jQuery, nothin’ but love for ya
For the longest time, I was anti-javascript in just about every sense. Once I figured out how to do rollovers with CSS instead of JS, I pretty much abandoned all JS on my work. This was before Ajax was known for more than its grease fighting abilities on pans and other dirty dishes. Needless to say, it was only a matter of time before I had to use Javascript - and it was an absolute disaster. Of course, now I know it was simply my inexperience with Javascript (and more importantly, cross-browser Javascript) that made it such a disaster. Now I know there are great tools already made to do most of this stuff for you.
FTBS… I’m getting a Mac
I’ve decided that I am going to purchase a Mac Mini with my tax refund. I am sick of Windows on my old laptop, and Fireworks in Wine is slow as death. The Mac will give me the tastiness of Fireworks with the stability of Unix. I can’t wait.
Movierack (again)
It seems I have a habit of revisiting old projects every time I learn a new way of doing things. Naturally, this means I’m remaking movierack.net again using CodeIgniter.
Asterisk on Ubuntu Server
I know I’ve blogged this before, but these are the steps I took most recently to get Asterisk running on a fresh Ubuntu Server (Dapper) installation. The instructions will also work on Feisty or Gutsy server.
Random Date Helpers
I wrote these as helpers for a project I’m making with CodeIgniter, but you can use them in any application.
Stuff I need to do
- Create something for any (preferably all) of the following sites I pay for: nevercraft.net, voipninja.net, movierack.net, mp3dojo.net, tehsource.net
- Use Ruby On Rails for one of the aforementioned projects.
- Learn OpenSER and setup a server for no reason other than to say I could.
- Find a car.
- Re-assess priorities, and find a car first.
- Purchase a new computer
- Complete my tax return.
- Go to sleep earlier.
Kate Project Manager Plugin on Kubuntu
It was a pain, but this ought to work:
Oh, how I love you Kate…
The KDE text editor Kate is my latest weapon. Its great if you’re on a slower connection (or you’re torrenting and killing a faster one) as it downloads the file to your hard drive before you edit it. I love me some vim - but it is no fun on a slow connection, waiting 30 seconds to move between lines.
Oh yeah…
Did I mention I am officially a web designer according to ITT?
New Development(s)
Well, I’ve just finished building my first site with CodeIgniter, and I have to say it was an absolute blast. The framework is wonderfull. Using it, I was able to completely redesign Inglenook Realty in about 3 weeks with leaner, more sensible code than I had implemented previously. Granted, there is about twice as much code now as there was previously, but everything works perfectly now - and I won’t need to scrap the whole thing again if the owners want more revisions down the road. Thank you CI!
Merry Christmas!
Christmas was an absolute blast, as it is every year.
Das Keyboard
You’re my best friend…
Recently.
It’s been a long time since I have had the motivation to post here. It’s funny how things like jobs can ruin the otherwise productive streak of a blog started two years ago during unemployment, but such is life.
AIM Web Presence API
So I’ve been dabbling with AIM’s Web Presence API — which basically allows developers to get info on a particular AIM user.
voipninja.net
Is coming soon, for realsies this time…
Ogle that <BODY>…
Saw this in Tony’s AIM profile tonight, and it was so genius I had to save it here.
Code Folding in Vim
So I learned yet another awesome feature in vim today - code folding.
Calling Dell Support
Earlier today, I noticed the A/C adapter for my laptop seemed to be broken. It took a few minutes to realize that there was a kink in the wiring under the shielding. If I moved that around just a bit, it would work properly. “That sucks,” I thought. “At least I have the warranty and it should be a quick phone call to get a new one out.” Wrong.
tar over ssh
I figured out this easy way to make a backup over ssh.
Rock the Bells 2007 at Randall’s Island
Or, more specifically, Rage Against the Machine at Rock the Bells was the best concert I have had the privilege of attending — period.
Vim 7 on a Shared Host
I did this about 8 months ago and never wrote down my steps. I just had to figure it out again for another server, and thought I’d write it down here to save myself (and possibly someone else) time.
I love/hate KDE
I haven’t been much of a KDE fan. 2 years ago when I was first exposed to Linux in my Operating Systems class at ITT, I liked the layout a bit better that Gnome, but really knew nothing about it.
Linux finally sounds good
Wow, I finally got surround working on Linux — and it’s great.
Good times with rar
So I decided today I was going to make a DVD backup of my music collection. I also decided I was going to use rar to do this.
ITT Really Sucks
I really need to learn to do my homework in a more timely fashion. I need to learn to go to class and pay attention.
Pidgin/Gaim Contacts
Pidgin (formally Gaim) is an amazing IM client. There was one small thing that used to bug the shit out of me though.
New Motherboard
So I broke down about 2 weeks ago and picked up a new motherboard for my PC. It’s an ECS — which I’ve never heard of either - but I have to say I’ve definitely been pleasantly surprised by the performance.
Linux - unzip
I just had a hell of a time trying to unzip a bunch of zip’s on Linux.
Fireworks CS3
First, I can’t say how happy I am that Adobe has decided to continue developing Fireworks after the Macromedia merger. That was my biggest concern a year ago when I first heard the news.
Mozilla Thunderbird 2 on Ubuntu
Installing Thunderbird 2 on Ubuntu was cake.
Password Protect Directory (Manually)
Password protection with Apache is really a piece of cake.
Twilight Princess (Part 4)
Believe it or not, I actually had to put this game on hold for some work at ITT.
Twilight Princess (Part 3)
And 13.5 hours later…
Twilight Princess (Part 2)
For the first 10 hours, I was really having fun. It got [what I thought was] difficult in spots - but now I am at the Goron Mines, and it’s really pissing me off…
The Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess
This game fucking pwns. If you haven’t played it yet, go buy it now.
Compiz on Ubuntu Edgy
It took forever, but I eventually found this guide for getting compiz up and running.
Trixbox
I will get Trixbox working with ViaTalk, if it is the last thing I do.
Happy New Year!
Happy new year everyone! I’m too sore to write anything more than that.
Christmas
Christmas was pretty cool this year.
Asterisk on Ubuntu 6.06 TLS
It took forever, but this ended up working to get Asterisk to compile:
A New Home
I’m just moving into my new home on one of HR’s semi-dedicated servers. PHP5 ahoy!
IT216 - The final word
I got a perfect grade on IT216. Also I got a 98% for the course overall.
Hacking Wordpress
It’s been a great time stripping WordPress for use as a CMS. The software itself is awesome, it’s really been just commenting things out here and there that might be confusing for people. I am looking for a plugin that makes better use of WP pages and RSS feeds.
Updates
If you remember a few weeks back, I had blogged about a program I am writing called Movierack. Well — it’s more or less complete now (although you can’t have the link unless you work with me, tough luck kids). I hate the layout, and there are still bugs, but all in all, it’s way better than an Apache directory listing.
Asterisk Goodness
So with the help of a friend at work, I successfully made my first incoming and outgoing calls with Asterisk this weekend. I haven’t gotten all of the kinks worked out yet, but it’s definitely been a good time.
New Apartment
Eric and I finished moving (mostly) everything into our new apartment yesterday.
IPTV Project
The project I mentioned a few weeks back with IMDB lookups, will be my official ITT Tech Fest project.
Moving on Friday
Yes — Eric and I move into our apartment on Friday. Unfortunately, the carpenters aren’t coming until Saturday, so we’re camping out in the living room until then. We are, however, having our cable installed tomorrow, so I’ll have the void of the ‘net to keep me company the entire time.
Resident Evil 4 (part 5)
I beat this game the other day — and I have to say, overall it was excellent.
Resident Evil 4 (part 4)
Have I mentioned this game is like crack? It is…
Resident Evil 4 (part 3)
If I get my head cut off one more fucking time I’ll scream!!!
Resident Evil 4 (part 2)
AHHHH!!!!!
IMDB Lookup
I’m driving myself crazy trying to get IMDB IDs for a list of movies using
imdb.class.php.
Don’t wanna go to school/work…
I truly hate VT from midnight to 8am. If I’m lucky I won’t come in to 10 people on hold with hour+ wait times. If I’m lucky, they won’t call at all and I’ll be able to get some tickets done.
Resident Evil 4
This game kicks ass.
The night shift…
At ViaTalk really sucks. Working alone really sucks. Being awake until 9 or 10 AM really sucks.
Linux Experiences
If you’ve been reading this over the last 8 months or so, you know that I’ve gone through somewhat of a love/hate relationship with Linux. I installed Fedora Core 4 at first and liked it for about a day. As soon as I went to play an MP3 and realized I couldn’t, I was quickly back to Windows.
It’s been a long time
I know I never update this much. I can’t seem to find the time to sit down and spend 5-10 minutes on this blog — although, I do often waste time writing in the company blog. Who knows if anyone even reads this?
The company party…
Was freaking awesome. Old people with flashlights and barking dogs. Hilarious!
Projects
Voipcowboy is coming. And so is another little sasser for VT I’m helping with that’s XXX Classified.
Bored
VA is so freaking boring. I’d rather be at work.
Fuck the beach
Sand and heat suck.
Vacation
Not working, not at school. What could be better?
Finally, vacation
I’m finally going on vacation!
Upcoming projects
Me and a friend of mine from work are working on a new project. Nothing much yet, but basically it’s going to be our little corner of the web for VoIP (voice over IP).
Downtime
I had two glorious days off in a row from VT. I freaking love the place — but damn, is it good to get 2 days off.
Damn Honda
Well after 4 hours, 100 bucks and a useless alternator, the Honda should be back… tomorrow morning that is.
New keyboard
I bought a sexual new keyboard today for the lapper at work. I really have no reason to update this other than the fact I’m just trying to see how comfortable is it when I’m typing.
Grrr ITT
So much work left to do. I have to work out the topology of a 90 host network and then do a shit load of math. Oh, I should learn to subnet too.
MxO One More Time
So me and Mr. Iversen recently started playing the Matrix Online again. There have been a couple new combat revisions that have made the game much more enjoyable than it was in the past.
Ninety-nine is always fine
There really was some kick ass music at the end of the 90s. Snot of course, but currently I’m re-addicted to Staind’s first CD Dysfunction. Mike Mushok kicks major ass. And the singer doesn’t suck too much on this CD… it’s a great time.
My poor neglected
I really wish I had more time to devote to this site, but school and work just use too much of my time.
Work school work work work school work school work
Haven’t had much time lately to do anything with this or any of my other sites. Although, I can’t lie, when I had the time I never did anything with it. I’m just lazy when it comes to my own work I guess.
So tired…
I need to sleep for like 9 days. This full time work/school is gonna suck.
I win the spirit award!
Haha, I answered 2 out of 24 questions correctly on Mr Iversen’s Academy Awards test. That shit was like homework, let’s do a music test next time huh?
Bored
Just sitting here at ViaTalk bored off of my ass.
Finally made the switch…
I finally took Windows XP off of my desktop and installed Fedora Core 4.
So much work…
So little time… of course.
Year 1: ITT
Wow, I just realized that I’ve finished my first year at ITT tonight. It certainly flew by…
Lack of updates
I never have time to update this anymore. I hope you weren’t too excited for anything…
ViaTalk: Week 1
My first week at ViaTalk was awesome.
Server migration successfull
I’ve successfully moved everything from my old server to my new bad ass Host Rocket server.
Server Migration
I’m currently moving all of my files from PHPWebhosting.com over to my new home at HostRocket.com. You probably won’t even see this for a while, until my DNS resolves. Updates soon maybe?
It’s been a while…
It’s been a while since I’ve had the time to update this.
Live Calls: Day 1
LMFAO, I couldn’t have planned it better than this:
21
Indeed, I am 21 today. Wasn’t very fun, and I don’t drink. Hoorah!!
RA: Week 1
First, I should mention I’m not actually working for Ticketmaster, although I am working in the same call center (and will eventually be working for TM). I’m selling camping reservations at a low low price instead.
Worky work twerk
Firstly, I’d like to say that 7:45a is way too early to be alive. Life really shouldn’t begin before noon.
Well I survived Day 1
I am alive after the first day.
A (not) very exciting new jobber
Ahh yes, I get to start training at Ticketmaster on Monday. I’m glad to have a job, but it sounds like the dumbest shit on earth. I know that I’m going to be bored of it within a month and want to quit.
Episode 3
Revenge of the Sith was fucking amazing. Anakin Skywalker decimates all.
Badass mofo
This Optimus Keyboard is quite possibly the coolest thing I’ve ever seen.
Bored
I don’t know why I write this… All I ever write is “I’m bored.”
The Forty Grand
It’s always great to be so bored at ITT that I have to leave early. Every time I’m there I’m just a bit further in debt, and every time I feel as though it’s all been a complete waste of money.
echo Linux > /home/jpriddle/file1
Linux is fuckin great.
ITT Tomorrow
Ughhh, gotta go back to ITT tomorrow. Hopefully it isn’t snowing or icy because I’ll never make it.
Happy fuckin New Year!
Happy New Year everyone! Nothing really much to say.
Tales of Symphonia
It’s rare that a game with seemingly bad graphics has a storyline so compelling that you barely notice. Not since Final Fantasy VII back in 1998 has a game even come close.
Honey I Shrunk The Kids
I don’t care who you are, “Honey I Shrunk the Kids” is one of the best movies of the 80s.
Back to school
That week was excellent…so now it’s back to ITT. Actually, I started back yesterday.