April 2012
4 posts
6 tags
My Search for the Perfect Desktop Environment Part...
I’m unsure of how many parts this series will consist of, but this is the first.
Prior to Ubuntu’s Unity, I was a long time user of Gnome 2 with the occasional deviation to KDE (typically days at a time, just was never my thing). Prior to the release of Unity, I had moved to having an OSX-style dock in preparation for Unity (abandoning the bottom gnome-panel). Fun fact is that I used...
6 tags
Clock? We don't need no stinkin' clock!
So I’ve been using Xmonad for a little while now (one of these days I’ll blog about my recent OS / Window Manager trials) and the one thing that has left me a bit meh is the way the toolbars work.
First off, there’s a myriad of options. Some work better than others and some not at all, but no shortage. I started with and settled back to Xmobar, but I still wasn’t generally...
4 tags
Why developers (maybe everyone) suck at estimates
I’ll be the first to admit that I feel like my estimating abilities are horrible, but today I did an estimate, felt confident that I did enough due diligence and amazingly enough, even with a bit of justified padding was viewed as a reasonable estimate.
So why after all these years of being a shitty estimator did it work out? Pretty simple, the time estimate was done at a start up not in...
3 tags
Because if you're not kicking your own ass,...
So I’ve been busy and have neglected reading for a few weeks now and decided to pick up Cold Hard Truth: On Business, Money & Life as I’ve recently become obsessed with Kevin O’Leary’s Twitter feed and figured it would be a semi-decent read as I wait for my Kevin O’Leary meme to catch on.
Well turns out the aforementioned book wasn’t available for the...
March 2012
1 post
10 tags
Spell & Speak
One thing that I really enjoy about OSX (possibly the only thing) is the text to speech capabilities. The command line application `say` sounds good and doesn’t seem nearly as buggy as some of the open source counterparts. Now what I’ve been doing recently to help get my daughter acclimated to using a computer (and not just touch interfaces) is allowing her to type on the computer and...
February 2012
3 posts
5 tags
PCI Compliance and the importance of a 404 page
As you may remember from a previous post, I typically rewrite my error traffic back to / instead of having a fancy 404 page. The logic behind this is that I’d rather get my users to a page that’s functional instead of presenting them with an error page, also I’ve yet to come up with anything cute / funny / witty enough to do with a 404 page to justify using one. Generally...
3 tags
Recursive PHP Lint-inator
Just cleaning up a repository at work and came across a script I haven’t used in forever, a script to lint all PHP files in a directory, recursively.
Expect something more stimulating soon as I found out the hard way that tumblr. doesn’t seem to auto-save your posts once you’ve saved them once as a draft. Or I’m an idiot, either way, enjoy the script.
And yes, the title...
8 tags
SceneKids.com - 8 months later
This post was supposed to happen 3 months after launch, pushed back to 6 months after launch, wait maybe at 10,000 users, better still at 15,000 users but well, shit happens. Here we are just over 8 months since the initial go live and now at over 17,000 users. A lot of things have happened in that time and hopefully I am able to remember all the pivots along the way.
To give you some back story,...
January 2012
1 post
4 tags
Fuck this, I'm going to tumblr.
After many years of maintaining my personal blog as a way to help aid in my own learning and to feel like a bad ass because of that proud feeling of building something with your hands (well fingers) I have migrated to tumblr. for the indefinite future.
You may remember last year when I migrated to WordPress and shortly thereafter migrated back, not the case this time. Initially I didn’t...
May 2011
6 posts
3 tags
Viral landing pages rarely go viral because no one...
Yep, it’s a sad truth, unless you’re a Kevin Rose or a Reid Hoffman (or insert some other person’s name that you think is really important and could successfully leverage a landing page) there’s a good chance you’re going to thow up an alleged “viral landing page” and will be disappointed. It’s not because you have a bad idea (actually, it might be)...
2 tags
Doing Less, Better
I planned to write this post 7 hours from now, but as I sit up at 3:49am on the verge of my first vacation in 2 years and on the heels of a beta launch of the new scenekids.com, I figure there’s no better time to type. This particular blog post is one of those introspective type scenarios, where I talk about what I’m doing and slip in some domain names to help boost the click thru...
9 tags
Version Control: It doesn't matter what system you...
CVS vs SVN, SVN vs Git, Git vs Mercurial… who fucking cares. I’ve been through my share of version control systems (CVS, Visual Source Safe, SVN, Serena PVCS and Dimensions and as of late, git) and the one thing that stands out to me is that it doesn’t matter which one you use.
Wait, what?! FLAME ON! My choice is better than yours!
Shocker here, this isn’t flame bait....
3 tags
Restoring a Linode Backup
Still kicking myself over this one, last night I accidentally dropped a database instead of just the table I wanted to get rid of. Now at one point, I had nightly database backups on my server, but when I added the Linode backup plan for $4.95 a month, I stopped that. In hindsight, I wish I hadn’t, but such is life. At this point, I really needed to get my database back (subscriber database...
5 tags
Tux 'n Droid: How I spent not even 2 months as a...
It’s [was] like The Odd Couple, but not as funny. Incidentally, starting a webcomic seemed like a great idea at the time. I knew it was going to be hard to keep the content coming, so I cut some corners with the art (a la Dinosaur Comics) by having some pre-done graphics and sticking to 3 panels.
Major downfall was trying to do 3 comics a week. Week 1 started on a Wednesday so it was only 2...
3 tags
Switching to Linux, you're doing it wrong (redux)
So after the public outcry that I’m a total asshole that just immediately starts yelling “RTFM you fucking n00b” based on my previous post, I decided to revisit each of my points and try to provide some helpful insight.
Before revisiting the points I’d like to state that the only way that questions can be answered is by actually asking them. Often times I find, folks will...
April 2011
6 posts
4 tags
WorkFlowy: Adventures in Text Parsing
First off, if you’re not familiar with WorkFlowy you may want to watch this video. WorkFlowy is quite simply a list maker and based on my own usage of planning out a program / script I decided to create a script to take an exported list and convert it into a the workings of the program itself.
The script that I wrote is in PHP and only generates PHP files. I lost interest in the project, at...
3 tags
Why you don't make $80k+ and how you can get there
First off, you’re going to be offended by this, partially because it’s true and partially because I’m right. The reason you don’t make $80-100k (or whatever the magic number of deservingness [my word, you can’t have it] is as per Hacker News) is because you don’t deserve it, for one or all of the following reasons, or because of some other reason that has...
7 tags
TeuxDeux: Adventures in Screen Scraping
Been a busy week, still dedicated to blogging regularly though. Decided the best way to balance out my busy weeks is to post code that I had on github but decided to pull down as I wasn’t maintaining it, and no one else was following or forking it.
If you know me, you know one of my favorite thing in the universe is screen scraping and data mining. Below is an example of a very rudimentary...
2 tags
Quality over cost or how PennySMS sucks and I...
For nearly the last two years I’ve run a simple SMS reminder service known as ReminderWire. The site was initially built around the idea of using the built in carrier email addresses for cell phones to send the SMS messages. The major drawback to this was that I had to prompt the users for their carriers and had no way to handle the user changing carriers. After some brain storming about how...
2 tags
Switching to Linux, you're doing it wrong
As a long time Linux user, I’m constantly trying to get people to experience all the awesome. For the most part, people are reluctant, but I’m finding that I run into one or more of the following
It seems pretty clunky
So you’ve finally installed Linux, most likely Ubuntu as I praise it for it’s simplicity and you start bitching about how the UI seems slow. Turns out you...
2 tags
The Zen of the Server Crash
I was talking to someone last week about how I attempt to keep cool when things fall apart. I call it “the Zen of the Server Crash” and as luck would have it, everything started to fall apart that afternoon.
First to go was our Internet connection at CrowdSavings.com HQ. It was a rainy day and Bright House was not handling the wetness very well. This was manageable at least, well...
December 2010
2 posts
6 tags
Why you shouldn't redirect HTTP errors back to /...
I have this nasty habit of being completely dismissive of HTTP error handling by not handling 404 errors and setting the ErrorDocument in my .htaccess file to point to / (e.g. ErrorDocument 404 /). For the most part, this has never been an issue shy of needing to explain why that missing page happened to show the main page. That is, until some recent issues with updatemuch.com.
The site was...
4 tags
Ditched WordPress
To at least one person’s dismay, I have abandoned WordPress for not only my blog, but for any future endeavours. WordPress seems great if you can’t build a blog on your own and would rather interact with a series of plug-ins than get your hands dirty with some code. I’m not that guy, so I’m out.
For those wondering what actually caused this change of heart after 2 months...
October 2010
3 posts
2 tags
My Thoughts on Rails Rumble
Anyone that knows me knows that I’m not a big fan of Rails, largely due to the fact that I dislike the community. So this year, I decided to follow the Rails Rumble on Twitter just because I found it all fairly intriguing and wanted to see the different stages of development. Keep in mind, I was following mostly Tampa teams as that’s where I’m from and wanted to support the...
5 tags
Setting up a secure MySQL server on Rackspace...
Recently I’ve been building out dedicated MySQL servers to combat some of the shortcomings we have encountered with hosting MySQL on Rackspace Cloud Sites (commentary on this will be saved for another post). During my research on what I could do to set up the server as securely as possible and after a few brain picking sessions with some of the fanatical Rackers, I was able to put together a...
2 tags
Why I recently switched to WordPress
Anyone that knows me knows that I’m not a huge fan of using canned web applications. I find them to be insecure (talking to you OSCommerce) often times a pain to upgrade and more often than that a nightmare to customize. Keep in mind that I do feel WordPress is fairly insecure (especially if you don’t keep it updated) but I do find the feature set to be very robust and the ability to...
September 2010
4 posts
4 tags
Gravity Boulevard Redesign
Been a few years since the original design was put in place, and I was starting to think the site was a bit too sterile / business-y (especially since I have retired from doing freelance [again]). New site attempts to be hip and modern by using a high res photograph for the background, and all those wonderful jQuery effects, big fonts, rounded corners and non-standard web fonts the world has come...
3 tags
Moustache.ME
Sucks when you put a chunk of hours into something just to realize that someone else has already done it. Case in point, I finished up Moustache.ME after realizing that someone already runs Mustache.me on a similar concept. Well I’m sticking to my guns on “moustache” being the proper spelling, and without ado, yet another site of mine for people to not use. Moustache.ME is a...
5 tags
Script to Install Adobe Air on Ubuntu 64-bit
So after giving Gwibber an honest try for a few months, I’ve decided it’s time to move back to DestroyTwitter for my tweeting needs. Unfortunately, earlier in the year when I completely denounced Adobe products (specifically Flash) I went ahead and completely removed Air from my system. But alas, I forgot how the hell I got it installed on a 64-bit Ubuntu system the last time. Luckily,...
3 tags
ID Much? - An Alternative to “See ID”
Wow, quite the productive Saturday, even made time for two blog posts. So a while back I swapped out “See ID” on the back of my credit card for “ID Much?”. I’ve been so amazed at the response that I decided to put up a site about it, you can check it out at IDMuch.com
August 2010
1 post
6 tags
What could you do in 10k?
I’m typically not the type to engage in any sort of popularity contest, especially those of which include either musical or technical ability, as it’s all so opinionated. That being said, I decided to enter something in the 10k An Event Apart as it was suggested to me by Justin Davis of Madera Labs as something he felt was right up my ally. Well, he was right, as my head is often times...
July 2010
1 post
2 tags
Stubby Bottom Icons v1
Been toying around with designing icons, specifically icons for social media websites. Got tired of trying to find a matching set of icons that included all the icons that I needed (paid or free). After redesigning the icons over at CrowdSavings.com, I went ahead and created the Stubby Bottom icons to eventually replace the icons already in use on this site. If you like the icons and are looking...
May 2010
3 posts
2 tags
Project Update
Thought I’d post to let everyone know what new projects I’ve launched in the last few months.
Update Much?!
A simple Twitter add-on site that I built for @thatgirljen to help her manage the Twitter accounts she maintains. The concept is simple, you log in via Twitter and the site will show you the folks you follow on Twitter that haven’t been updating. You can select the...
3 tags
Using GRUB to boot a Linux ISO
Since my latest Ubuntu upgrade totally hosed my machine, I decided to do a clean install instead of resolving the issues. Since my CD/DVD drive still absolutely hates me and my latest choice of CD media, I’ve had to search for options to be able to boot a Linux Live CD. Some of those options included installing from a USB thumb drive and via the network. Seems I don’t own a single...
2 tags
“Oh, how awkward.”
So I recently met an individual who took over a project of mine at my last job. Now let me preface this all by saying that this project that he took over was not my magnum opus or anything, just a fairly simple process for loading a gigantic spreadsheet into a DB2 table. Well the whole interaction was completely awkward, and from what I can tell the dude wasn’t impressed with the code of...
April 2010
2 posts
3 tags
Are Flash developers the new COBOL developers?
The game’s changing with HTML5 and I’m starting to hear the same type of comments from the mouthes of Flash developers that I’ve been hearing from COBOL developers for years. The gist of the comments is that what they use is never going away (which in the case of COBOL developers and probably with Flash, it’s a true statement). What throws me off though, is that there is a...
2 tags
First Impressions of the iPad from an Android...
If you don’t already know me, let me just preface this by telling you an a staunch Linux user as well as advocate, I prefer my Android phone to my wife’s iPhone and after recently giving OSX a full-time shot for a week, I’m no closer to switching.
Now that I got that out of the way, here’s the deal, like everyone else that has bought one, I absolutely love my iPad. ...
March 2010
1 post
3 tags
So I Pre-ordered an iPad
And God damn did this come as a surprise to most of my peers as I’m pretty adamant about my disgust for most Apple products. One thing that I found interesting was the negative feedback I’ve gotten from folks concerning the iPad. Specifically, folks are very quick to point out that it’s “just a glorified iPhone”. First and foremost, it’s really easy to...
January 2010
1 post
4 tags
New year, new problems
Well my car didn’t start this morning. I think it’s because of the cold (I thought 30 degree weather in Florida was illegal) but we’ll see tomorrow. Now this all happened after I had a tech support issue from my wife, her laptop would boot up past the white Ubuntu logo and then remain on a black screen. Luckily she still gave me a ride into the office even after I was short...
December 2009
1 post
3 tags
No Resolutions, Just Retrospect
The end of the year is here, and there’s been quite a few things that I’ve wanted to blog about but haven’t had the motivation.
First and foremost, I’m pretty sure this has been one of the best years of my life. At least twice three four ahem five+ times this year I’ve taken out the trash on some relationships that weren’t ideal and told people exactly how I...
August 2009
2 posts
2 tags
Server Migration
After nearly a decade of hosting on a dedicated server, I’ve finally made the jump to a virtual private host. Partially to save money, partially for some personal reasons, but mostly because I wanted more ease in scalability. The host I ultimately settled with was Linode, mainly because of their operating system selection, specifically, I wanted to run Ubuntu and MediaTemple lost out...
1 tag
Redesign to the Max
If you haven’t noticed already, this site got a drastic face lift recently. For the first time in a while, I made sure to mock up the entire site before starting to mess with the mark up. Weapon of choice was the GIMP (as per usual) and the process was fairly painless. Just to restate this for all the hates, you can actually make graphics in the GIMP. Just because you don’t know...
July 2009
4 posts
2 tags
So I'm addicted to checking my email
It’s true, and not only do I check it, but I like to address the messages as soon as they come in. Great customer service ends up meaning huge time sink and often times a loss of momentum for me. Interestingly enough, I spoke to my boss on the matter earlier in the year concerning only checking my email a few times a day (first thing, before/after lunch and late afternoon before calling it...
2 tags
Websites are more than just buying a domain
Most people I come in contact with (still) don’t have a grasp of how much goes into having a website. This isn’t their fault, and I definitely don’t blame them for it. Hell there’s a lot of details about things that I don’t know nor do I plan to find out.
To give you a back story, I had been planning on writing up “the n00b’s guide to a website”...
1 tag
Going full circle on Allman Style Indenting
I’ve been programming for quite a while now, and I’m very much the type of person that will change coding styles if another style or technique will benefit me more than my current way of doing things. That being said, I’ve web full circle on using Allman style indenting.
The obvious question would be “why?” or potentially “ewww, why? that’s so...
8 tags
RMS makes me want to be a better person
So I’ve been following the saga of Tomboy Notes (and subsequently Mono) being added to the Debian install. On the surface, it seems fairly harmless, and part of that is because I not only use Tomboy, but I enjoy it. As part of the ongoing saga, Richard M. Stallman (RMS) has spoken out against the inclusion because .NET is not free software.
Regardless of where this all falls, I have to...
June 2009
5 posts
3 tags
Oops I tried KDE again... and back to GNOME
It had been a good 6+ months or so since my last attempt at using KDE and I had that bug up my ass yet again. I had originally installed KDE on my wife’s laptop on whim and was very impressed at first. So much so that I decided to install 4.2 on my desktop computer. I was starry eyed for a day or so but then kept coming back to the fundamental issue I always have, KDE just isn’t...
6 tags
/home is where the heart is... on the NAS
In an attempt to unify my desktop data on my newly acquired laptop I decided to try out sharing my /home directory from my desktop as a NFS and then mounting it as /home on my laptop. Originally this idea was flawed because the laptop was not connecting to the wireless router on boot (remedied by my previous post). Now that this wasn’t an issue, the idea didn’t seem half, sans the fact...
4 tags
Wireless Connection at Boot (pre-GUI)
A while back I got my wife a new laptop from Dell, got it set up with Ubuntu 8.10 and then proceeded to fight with YoVille! for a week or so prior. Since then, I still had a few action items on my list, specifically getting wireless working on boot / the network manager not prompting for a password on boot. See, my wife’s laptop is set up to auto login (yeah I know, gaping security hole)....
2 tags
New Project: Function of the Day
So I’ve bought yet another domain, but actually got a site up in a timely fashion this time. The site is called Function of the Day and it’s just that, a site that presents a single programming function every day. Right now it only supports PHP, but the plan is to add more languages as time progresses. Assuming the site gains a bit of interest from the community, the sooner new...