Edit Locally, Run Remotely Via MacFUSE

July 17, 2009 - 4 mins read

One of the most ample things I’ve had this summer has been time: time to read, time to code, and time to tinker (or waste) on improving how I code. While I am occasionally guilt of being too ‘meta,’ spending too much much time worrying about how I do work rather than doing work, I feel that having the idea to improve in your head is far better than stagnating. Some improvements are easy to invest in and quick to see returns of saved time, others are not.

Barcamp Rochester 4

April 17, 2009 - 2 mins read

Over the weekend, Barcamp Rochester 4 took place here on campus at RIT. I have been helping to plan this event over the last few months and was pleased that it went off with any major problems! Around 60-80 people showed up of the course of an entire Saturday and there was a lock picking village that was open most of the day. I arranged most of the food and it seemed like my estimates were in order, I don’t think anyone left hungry!

Munin For Server Stats

April 8, 2009 - 3 mins read

I switched servers recently, moving from a SliceHost VPS back to a spare machine to try and save some money monthly. One of the final pieces of rebuilding the server was to add a server status page. I tried at first with some php exec calls and command one-liners, but that was pretty limited functionally and required me to handle all the formatting. Then I found Munin, a script-based monitoring tool that uses RRDTool to create static graphs that you can view through your web server.

Shmoocon Wrapup

February 18, 2009 - 4 mins read

Before I left this languish any more, here are my thoughts on Shmoocon 2009: it was a great time! The First Day I was last in DC about 6 years ago for my 8th grade graduation, so it was fun to view the city again from a different perspective. Some friends from RIT drove down Thursday night and we crashed at another friend's house around 2AM. We were up and moving by 10 the next morning, taking the Metro in to the city center.

Shmoocon This Weekend

February 5, 2009 - 1 min read

Still trying to get my trip in China written up, but a busy school schedule and great snowboarding this winter has taken precedence over the writting! To top that off, I’m 5 minutes from leaving for Shmoocon, a hacking and security conference in Washington, DC! If anyone who reads this is going, send me and email! I plan on taking pictures and providing a summary of the event when I get back, so have fun this weekend!

OSX Terminal And Finder Integration

January 31, 2009 - 4 mins read

I love the Terminal that comes standard with OSX and now thanks to 10.5, the Finder has improved a bunch as well. Between the two of them, I can get to the right directory and get what I want done pretty quick. Here are a bunch of tips to help integrate and work better with them. Finder For just navigating around, I use List mode (Apple + 2) exclusively. My hands sit on the Apple key and the cursor keys.

More iTunes Stats

January 17, 2009 - 1 min read

My friend Drew updated his Perl iTunes library module in this post, adding an example script for providing a bunch of stats. I used his module previously, practicing my Perl skills and getting some basic stats for my facebook profile, but his example sets a good baseline for comparison. Here are my iTunes stats, check out his post to grab yours! Number of tracks: 14811 Total size: 130492.45 MB Average size: 8.

Dual Monitors Done Right

October 3, 2008 - 3 mins read

After getting back to school and settling in, I put some serious thought into my current desk setup. Considering I’m planning on sitting at this desk for the next ~14 months (which is actually quite a long time for me stay in one place), I wanted to ensure that it was ergonomically sound. My main guide was a pair of Coding Horror articles, a programmer blog from Jeff Atwood. They had been on my mind for awhile, but I didn’t have the time or money until now to do something about them until now!

iTunes, Perl, and You

September 28, 2008 - 3 mins read

I was updating my Facebook profile tonight and wanted to fill in the “Favorite Music” section with some real data from iTunes, considering I listen to 99% of my music through iTunes, my iPod, or iPhone, which means all of my stats get tracked through iTunes. Creating a Smart Playlist in iTunes of my most played music would be adequate, but I don’t know of a way to that data out of iTunes without copying and pasting, a boring and time waste experience, so I turned to Perl.

Wordcamp Wrapup

August 17, 2008 - 4 mins read

It was a great day Saturday at Wordcamp, meeting so many interesting people, fostering some new ideas, and learn quite a lot. I’ve used wordpress now as my default blogging software for a few years, but I’ve never had the opportunity to get in touch with the community first hand, to see whose really behind the software. As my first Wordcamp, I had high expectations, and I wasn’t let down!