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Virtually handy

Oct 162012

Maybe it’s just that I’m slow on the uptake, but I didn’t get the whole hype over using virtual machines for development up until I actually started doing it. After all, why use virtual machines when you have a perfectly good physical box sitting right there and ready to go? I get that it saves money and power and is easier to administer, but that’s an administrative reason to use virtual machines, not a reason for me to put my server set up on a VM rather than the computer sitting right here next to me. Continue reading »

Why can’t all this stuff just get along?

General Commentary, Work 7 Responses »

Oct 042012

We all have our own personal Kryptonite, that little something you encounter as part of your job that just never seems to go right no matter what you do. For me, that Krytonite is server configuration. It doesn’t matter how clear you make the how-to directions, I will find a way to fail at it no matter how hard I try to get it right on the very first time. It’s like magic, or karma, or some other-worldly force that’s determined I fail when trying to set up any new environment. Continue reading »

Phone season 2012

Shenanigans Comments Off

Sep 212012

So all of the new phone line announcements are in and the comparisons, snarking, and general smuggery are underway in earnest. Apple and Android fans are still Montagueing and and Capuleting each other, and Microsoft fans totally understand how Rodney Dangerfield felt. Since Apple and Nokia (aka Microsoft’s phone division) recently had major press events (I think Motorola, aka Google’s phone division, made an announcement right around the same time, but apparently that didn’t seem to be a big deal). Continue reading »

What’s in your box?

General Commentary, Work Comments Off

Sep 112012

For the first time in my professional career, I’ve found myself working without any type of laptop. I can still work from home on my own machine, but given how easy it is to telecommute as a software developer, it struck me as odd that my work machine would be just a desktop. It led me to think about just what the reasons could be that I have a desktop for working, and why everywhere else I worked chose to make sure that I had a laptop capable of doing development work, or at the least could remote desktop into my development machine. Continue reading »

When it’s time to put old features out to pasture

Programming 2 Responses »

Aug 232012

When a friend of mine made a Google+ post a while back asking StackExchange what happened to the links to post your question on Facebook, Twitter, Google+, etc., he learned that the links were removed because they were hardly being used. This led to a brief back-and-forth thread between him and me on the post about the propriety of removing old features that just aren’t as cool as they used to be. Long story short, I’m in favor of cutting the links (and removing unused features in applications), he was opposed. Continue reading »

When I Get Filthy Rich: Open Source Software Foundation

Education 6 Responses »

Aug 132012

Like everyone else who’s ever wanted money at any point in their lives (i.e. like everyone else on the planet), I’ve put a little thought into just what I’d do if I ever go so obscenely rich I could stop worrying about money. Now, since definitions are important, I’ll define obscenely rich as making so much money a year, your immediate reaction is to utter an obscenity.

One of the things on that list is starting an open source foundation at my old college. This would be a setup designed to have students create or maintain open source projects that are released to the real world. The idea here is to give students an easily-accessible option that gives them all kinds of crazy useful real world experience other than “get a real-world full-time programming job.” Part of this was inspired by ~~Steven Hicks~~ Steven Hicks’ [ed. Fixed my grammar] post on Computer Science classes he’d like to take.

Random mongo tips learned the hard way

Education, Programming Comments Off

Jul 262012

I did a little bit of work using mongo recently, and I stumbled across some of those “lessons learned the hard way” things that I thought I’d share. If you haven’t used mongo or aren’t familiar with it, I recommend their official site and Wikipedia for a quick introduction on what mongo is and how it works.

A few quick notes on load testing web services

Programming, Python 1 Response »

Jul 082012

After having written the afore-discussed Flask web service, I needed a framework to load test the whole thing. I wound up using multi-mechanize. Overall, it’s a pretty decent framework. It’s pretty easily configurable, the documentation is thorough enough for most needs, and presents the test data in a variety of formats. Projects are quick and easy to set up, leaving you to focus on your test scripts. Continue reading »

Bottling up web services with Flask

Programming, Python 1 Response »

Jun 302012

If you’ve Googled around for a quick and simple framework for putting together web services in Python, odds are you’ve stumbled on the Flask framework. In fact, quick and simple is pretty much Flask’s claim to fame.
Continue reading »

It’s not just about learning to program

Education 1 Response »

Jun 162012

Around the end of 2011 and 2012, CodeAcademy.com starting promoting and subsequently launched Code Year, offering up a programming lesson every Monday for people to learn to code. In the interest of full disclosure, I’m doing the Code Year lessons myself, since I haven’t had a lot of web development experience in the past, and for the kicks.

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