programming

Why I probably won't get a Kindle

Sat, 30 Jan 2010 21:20:20 -0800

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Why I should probably get a Kindle.

Sat, 30 Jan 2010 21:15:00 -0800

Sent from my Mini iPad.

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iWant

Thu, 28 Jan 2010 01:16:08 -0800

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Meetings are Obsolete 2

Wed, 06 Jan 2010 16:14:00 -0800

(Follow up to my original non-sequitur.)

Jason Fried's talk at Big Omaha 2009: interruptions are bad, don't talk to each other.

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Lambdas via Python

Wed, 06 Jan 2010 14:03:00 -0800

def adder(x):    return lambda y: x + y add5 = adder(5)add5(1)6

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Web Server Redux

Mon, 04 Jan 2010 21:08:00 -0800

I got FIOS installed at home a couple of months ago (awesome, by the way), and with it, I got a new router. I happened to see the admin screen for the router and it looked like it was much better than the one from my previous Westell.

So, I decided to try setting up the web server again this past Sunday. It was a great way to procrastinate from doing actual work. After re-familiarizing myself with my setup (which I hadn’t touched in a while) and doing a quick review of the original nettuts article, I got Apache going, and I got ssh going from inside my home network. Next was the part where I crashed and burned last time: opening it up to the outside world and accessing it from there.

First, the router. My current router has a much more user-friendly interface, and I’m happy to say that this made things a lot easier. I didn’t dive into it too deeply last time (being too busy with the gelato project), but I had heard that my old router wasn’t too easy to configure. This time, it was a piece of cake to funnel a port request from outside into my server. I opened up port 80 for HTTP and port 22 for ssh, then tested it with my iPhone with wifi disabled and everything worked fine.

After that, the firewall was a little bit more trouble. I still couldn’t get Shorewall to do what I wanted it to do. Somehow, turning it on prevented all access from the outside. I tried a couple of alternatives that the Shorewall documentation suggested for simpler setups, but couldn’t get those to work either. Finally, i just studied up a bit on iptables (a great tutorial on Just Linux) to see if I could configure it manually. That did the trick. I set up two simple rules: the first rule to accept ssh from port 22, and another rule to deny everything but HTTP from port 80.

Anyway, now I’ve got a web server that serves up my initials if you access it. I can also log in to my computer at home while I’m away. Yippee. Not really sure what I’m going to do with it now, haha.

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Milestone 1

Tue, 12 May 2009 18:10:08 -0700

Well, I missed the first milestone I set for myself by about a week. Those darn robots at work have had me running around at work making sure the system stays up and orders get shipped. Anyway, it looks like thing have finally slowed down to a manageable pace, so I'll have more time to get some icecream work done. The more I think about this, the more it seems like I've got a good thing going. I can't wait to get a decent version up and running so I can get additional feedback from more people. Things I've picked up since the last post:

notes on Facebook Connect integration
recursive relations in my model setups

...and that's pretty much been it. My next task is to get process flows described for the major use-cases so that I can list out the different forms and views I need to create. Then I need to start cranking them out.

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Shooting for Alpha

Wed, 29 Apr 2009 00:33:54 -0700

Project icecream is coming along pretty well. I did my first proof-of-concept demo to someone and she thought I had something good. My next target date is Memorial Day weekend when I plan on demo-ing icecream to another, bigger, group of friends. After that, I'm shooting for Fourth-of-July closed beta test with a target demographic. I'm pretty stoked. As for Ruby and Rails, I'm just going to skip it for now. I'm finding everything I need so far with Django. The biggest potential issue I had was with user authentication and registration, but I've found some good resources for setting it up so that I don't need to re-invent everything. (James Bennett's b-list blog is particularly helpful. I will likely use his Django registration package, kept in bitbucket.) And all practical considerations aside, the recent Ruby-Porngate drama just makes me glad I went the Python route. Speaking of community resources, it's obvious that I am racking up quite a debt to the open source community in general and to the Django community in particular. I plan on contributing back to these as soon as I have my product up and running.

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Django vs. Rails

Sun, 19 Apr 2009 18:24:13 -0700

I found this great article on Rails vs. Django the other day (via HN, I think). I wish I had found it a month ago. Oh well, I guess I'll take a look at Ruby in more depth now.

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Ruby or Python?

Thu, 02 Apr 2009 05:19:43 -0700

In trying to decide which language to use for my new project (it's still secret, so I'll just call it Project Ice Cream for now), I tried googling the question. Of course, everything I found just left me more unsure. This probably means that choosing between the two won't make much of a difference, but I decided to go in-house and ask my brother-in-law for advice. Granted, he's not prejudiced at all working for Google, but I decided to go with Python. So...no Rails and I guess I'm going with the Django framework (his recommendation too).

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Web Server Installed

Sun, 29 Mar 2009 11:04:26 -0700

Okay, after I figured out that I needed to do a full update on Ubuntu in order to get SSH Server up and running, I continued with the instructions from the NetTuts Plus Web Server setup article:

sudo aptitude install apache2 php5-mysql libapache2-mod-php5 mysql-server

...was the command for installing the LAMP stack. After I got Apache going, I then installed the Shorewall firewall. That's when I ran into my next issue. After turning on the firewall, I couldn't access the internet from my browser anymore. I figured that this was because the instructions had me lock down all ports other than the ones for SSH and HTTP. So for the time being, I just turned off the firewall.

(EDIT: It looks like I'm going to have to learn how to use the Shorewall firewall in more detail if I am going to continue with this web server project.)

Next thing I did was figure out how to log in via SSH from my laptop. That was easy enough (I just did "ssh username@servername", now I just have to figure out how to SSH in from outside my apartment's LAN so I can sign on when I am out of town for work during the week.

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SSH Server Installed

Sun, 29 Mar 2009 03:22:09 -0700

I haven't tried logging in yet, or even know if it's turned on, but I finally figured out how to get SSH Server running on my box. Basically, the apt-get command wasn't working on ssh because I didn't first do an apt-get update immediately after I first installed the OS. So, that's running now. In the meantime, I spent last Sunday (before my trip to Indy) trying to manually install the SSH Server source code. I'm glad I decided to restart from scratch today. I think having no network connection up and running at initial boot is what caused my system to not update the software automatically upon install.

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Ubuntu Server

Sat, 21 Mar 2009 13:53:32 -0700

I installed Ubuntu server on my old desktop today. I just wiped the whole XP install off the hard drive, hopefully I saved off everything I might need onto the detachable hard drive. Anyway, too late now. The plan is to set it up as a web server, but first thing I need to do is get the wireless adapter working. I think I need to figure out how to wrap the Windows driver it came with inside the Linux ndiswrapper. Project for next weekend maybe. [update] Okay, I did a different google search, this time on "ubuntu wifi" and found better instructions on getting my adapter working. Looks like I'm good to go! Next project is going to be installing an SSH server I guess.

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Deciding on a Project

Mon, 16 Mar 2009 15:35:31 -0700

I've decided that I'm not enrolling on that follow up linguistics course next quarter. This is to free up some additional time for me to get some programming projects done. What this means though is that I really need to decide on a project to finish up. My latest idea ties in a pair of recent fields of study together: iPhone development and the hermosahappenings blog. I think I can come up with some interactive, multi-user application that readers of the blog could use. A Facebook tie-in would also be in the works. I still need to flesh out the details, but I could set it up as a "quarter long" assignment. If I start it in April, then I should have it up and running by the end of June.

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The Compiler Project

Wed, 25 Feb 2009 18:04:00 -0800

I brought the dragon book with me to the gym this evening and got through chapter one. What a cool book. I think I'm going to at least lay out what I know about this subject (from that project class fifteen years ago), this way it will give me some sort of starting point. I'm not sure where I'll go from there...I may work through the exercises and samples in the book.

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Wordpress Scripting

Sun, 22 Feb 2009 05:12:00 -0800

Okay, it's not actually programming, but it's in the same realm. I was messing around with the Threat to Creativity theme that I installed for my personal home page and ended up having to dig around the php files to modify it to how I wanted it to appear. The general look and feel of the theme is awesome, but I wanted to limit it to the front page. I wanted the blog listings to look different, so I had to make some changes.

Anyway, it was pretty fun mucking around in there. So much different from the languages and scripting tools I use at work.

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Meetings are Obsolete

Thu, 19 Feb 2009 03:43:00 -0800

This topic is not really appropriate for this particular blog, but at the moment I don't have anywhere better to put this thought. There are just so many tools and techniques out there that people can use for spreading information and receiving feedback that gathering people around so that one person can make pronouncements is just outdated, other than for the social aspect.

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My Subdomain

Wed, 04 Feb 2009 08:17:00 -0800

...and given that I may actually have something to blog about on here (at least for the immediate future), I'm going to transfer this blog on to my hosted space so I can manage it for myself. Still not sure if I should include this on my personal domain or my corporation domain though. Probably the personal. I'll try to keep the corporation limited to my professional IT work stuff. I will still most likely cross-link between the two.

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Common Lisp

Wed, 04 Feb 2009 08:10:00 -0800

My question on how to get back into "real" programming on StackOverflow elicited some responses. One of them, was a description of his participation in Project Euler where he implemented the problem solutions using a homemade compiler (of Scheme). His answer, plus Paul Graham's essays got me interested in Lisp.

I remember it from college, mostly just the car and cdr stuff. I thought at the time that it was mostly an experimental or niche type of language that wasn't usable for more generic programming tasks. I didn't really dwell on it too much. Maybe I'm smarter now than I used to be, but now I see the possibilities. One that struck me especially was Graham's explanation of how Lisp could use itself to write itself. Pretty cool stuff.

Anyway, these two things got me going on doing some kind of project involving building a compiler. I'm still not sure exactly what the project is going to be, but I broke out the (red) dragon book and bought a copy of Graham's Common Lisp book.

I'm pretty eager to get deep into this stuff, I think moreso because work, Hermosa Happenings and my linguistics class are all conspiring to keep me away from it.

At the very least, I'll blog about what I learn from these two books on here for future reference.

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Programming on Hiatus

Tue, 27 Jan 2009 11:07:00 -0800

Too busy working on the Hermosa blog to get any traction programming. Also, just started my first class on linguistics, so programming might have to take a back seat for a while. Possibly once the Hermosa blog is established, I can set aside some time to lay down some code.

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