Most posts will probably end up in this category one way or another, because I tend to write a lot about technology and tech-related topics. I work online and really enjoy gadgets and gizmos, so a lot of what I get involved in revolves around those subjects. Anything from regular expressions to iPods to The Magic Bullet is fair game.
I’ve finally gotten around to moving this site (along with all my other random sites) onto a single server. It’s all now hosted at Media Temple, on a 512MB (dv). We’ll see how that goes. I’ve got a bunch of things to write up once the move is complete, but if you’re seeing this then it looks like we’re most of the way there.
There’s definitely some more tuning and tweaking to happen, but at least I have my memory usage below 100% 🙂
If you’re working with Facebook’s API and trying to record some stats around the values being sent via their fb_source parameter, you might be forgiven for thinking that you could get a definitive list of valid values from their official documentation. Hah! Think again.
Developers seem to love to hear about how other developers work, so I thought I’d try to capture my entire environment, from end to end, in a single post. This will change (has changed) over time and depending on the project/company/whatever, but this is how things are for me right now. A couple of points up front:
OK, here goes.
Note: This turned into a little bit of a summary of how we work internally at Automattic as well. Oh well, maybe it’ll provide some inspiration, I think we do some pretty cool things.
It is now 12:04am, and I just got back from a walk.
There are a few things about this walk to make it notable:
So; fun stuff all around. Here’s the data, from RunKeeper:
and for the same time period from Fitbit:
What’s interesting here?
Maybe I should run instead of walking, since high/homeless/whatever people are even less likely to give chase?
If you’re having trouble closing a window using JavaScript, this might help. I’ve had this problem sometimes in Chrome in particular when I open a window, then follow through a bunch of redirects or something. It seems to lose track of the fact that I “control” this window object, so it doesn’t allow me to close it. This fixes that:
window.open('', '_self', '');
window.close();
Basically it reopens the window on itself, then immediately closes itself. Neat. Haven’t had any problems with it not working in other browsers, but I also haven’t super-widely tested it.
Quite a while ago (like, in at least 2009), I started thinking about regaining control of all the content I was producing online. I was posting photos to Flickr, saving bookmarks to Delicious. I started Tweeting. I was checking in. All fun and games, and all of those services offer great tools for interacting with them (let’s face it, tools that are much better than WordPress’, because they are focussed on one thing). So I figured, why not write importers for these services and pull my content back over to my WordPress. And keep doing it periodically, so that I could keep using those tools. I want WordPress to be my “home on the web”, my digital hub, but I want to use these neat tools with their fancy apps and what-have-you.
Very quickly, I realized that if I was going to do anything useful on most web services, I’d need to be able to authenticate with them. No biggie, right? I know my username and password… Oh. Right. OAuth. Turns out that most web services use OAuth (or something similar) to authenticate, and it turns out that that’s actually a bit of a bear to implement, when all you want to do is write a simple little Twitter importer. And then again for a Foursquare importer. And a Flickr importer.
What I needed was a shared, generic authentication framework that would do all the heavy lifting for me. I would tell it I wanted a connection to specific service, and if it didn’t have one, it’d walk the user through the process of getting one. It’d give me a standardized format of authentication credentials and abstract out all the complexity of making authenticated requests against those services. Then it would make me a coffee*. What I needed, was Keyring.
(more…)
I use CloudApp a lot, and recently saw mention of Dropmark. That got me to thinking of a relatively simple, WordPress-powered application for small-group-collaboration which I thought I’d throw out here in case anyone wanted to build it.
In essence this is just a streamlined, simplified, beautiful WordPress client. There is nothing stopping someone from creating this today. There you go internet, 1 more free idea.
In October 2010, as part of my NERT training, I attended a “HAM Cram” class here in SF and gained my FCC HAM license. I picked up a Yaesu VX-7R radio and then tinkered around a bit, but never really got into HAM too much more than it just being a fun idea. Since then I’ve listened on and off to the weekly Siren Net that happens in SF, but I’ve never actually called in and reported what I was hearing.
Today I had my first check-in (from home), and it was fun. It also felt good to know that I was helping the city keep track an emergency system that might save lives at some point. I checked in via the repeater at 443.100+ tone 114.8 and had a bit of interference, but it was clear enough for the net control to hear/understand me after a clarification. “KJ6LFV, back to net control” 🙂
Most of my work for Automattic is done on a remote sandbox machine, somewhere in Texas. I’ll often jump in and make smaller edits over SSH via vi, but when I’m doing something bigger I much prefer to work locally, using TextMate (I’m on a Mac, obviously). To do that, I need to be able to access files as if they were local, which means either duplicating them to my machine (lame, annoying) or mounting them directly.
I’ve been doing that via one of the following options, and I’m wondering if anyone out there has a better solution.
I’ve tried both for a while now. They both work. Except for when they don’t. Here’s what I’d found:
So, have you used one of the following methods? Is there a configuration option I’m missing? How do you go about solving this problem?
UPDATE: I should have mentioned that I need to be able to do this over the open internet (securely), where I’m not connected directly to the same network as the server.
If there’s one thing that travel has done for me lately, it’s made me recognize and accept how addicted and reliant I am upon my smart phone (in my case, an iPhone).
When you travel (internationally), you have to make a hard choice — do I shell out big $$$ to AT&T to get an international data plan, do I shell out even bigger $$$ to use roaming data, or do I sever the umbilical and disable roaming data. Roll the dice on being able to get wifi. Or worse yet — don’t use the internet at all. Gasp.
Traveling with others, I get this feeling that some people who don’t get an international plan are hopping from connectivity bubble to connectivity bubble, holding their breath in between and hoping they make it to the next one alive. There’s a sense of relief when they can get back online. Check Twitter. Check email. Check in. Check a map. OK, now hold your breath and hope we can find somewhere else with wifi before it’s too late!
I’ve found myself more and more often opting to not get any data access at all, and to actually relish the experience of not having connectivity for the most part. When I was in Chile, it was rough at first, not having access to maps, Google, etc. But I got used to it. It was like taking a step back in time. I talked to people. I used a paper map. It wasn’t so bad. It turns out that not having connectivity to the world wide web forces you to live in… the world right in front of you.
That’s not a bad thing. Try it.