Archive for Work

Seiki SE39UY04 LCD on my Late 2011 Macbook Pro at 3840×2160 15Hz

It’s slow (at 15Hz refresh rate currently) but I’m enjoying near Ultra High-def resolution on a secondary monitor paired with my Late 2011 Model 17″ Macbook Pro.

Screen Shot 2014-10-09 at 9.10.07 PM

Thanks to my friend Chris’ suggestion I bought a Seiki SE39UY04 on Amazon for a steal.

WP_20140919_003.jpg

With the help of SwitchResX I’m able to make use of the full 3840×2160 resolution it offers.  Screen Shot 2014-10-09 at 9.10.33 PM

When using the monitor at the super high resolution the mouse cursor is really quite slow but for web development and general system administration it’s extremely useful to have an extra monitor attached to my macbook running 3840 x 2160 resolution.  I’m quite happy however this definitely makes me want a newer Mac that can handle UHD. ^_^

#internetSlowDown

Help cover the web with loading icons and raise awareness about net neutrality with battleforthenet.com.   Also, join the fight and sign the letter against cable companies trying to slow your internet.

Read more, get the #internetSlowdown modal at:

https://www.battleforthenet.com/sept10th/

NON-Technical Hiring Questions I’ve been asked.

In a few recent interviews as a PHP developer applying for LAMP stack contributing developer positions I’ve been asked the following NON-TECHNICAL questions:

If you were given a box of pencils, list 3 things you could do with them that are not their traditional use.

My answer: I’d juggle them, practice my trigger pull (pencil in barrel marking a wall) & play Pick-Up-Stix.

Why do you want this position?

If you could be any street sign, what would you be?

My answer: .. was all over the place. lol. An interstate sign for a left exit! Then I had a lap of judgement and said “A useful one” to which the interviewer responded, “That would be all of them”.  Fine, Not a speed limit sign though.!.

Explain a day in the life of a developer.

Explain your approach to coding.

How do you choose user stories and estimate time.

I’ve really enjoyed some of the interviews I’ve participated in. I’ve also totally bombed at least one of the three I’ve had. lol.  If there is one thing I would stress over everything ( understanding we’re applying for jobs we have the skill set to back up ) is to be positive, inquisitive and engage the hiring staff interviewing you.  As a developer, we’re supposed to be magical sources of logic based creativity. So keep the logic mind on and be magical. ^_^

Props to Comcast who even managed to slide in “Miracles (Daily!)” on their Job Opportunity doc under a “Typical Activities” section. lol.

A quick guide to enjoying a day in Colorado on the cheap.

Step 1: Visit the local ARC thrift store and purchase some outdoor sports equipment.

For this example I bought some roller blades for $12.99.
WP_20140605_002.jpg

Z and I also acquired an awesome set of diving boots and fins for a future adventure for the same price.

Step 2: Find a park.

In this example I went a couple blocks down from the Arc to Clement Park at Johnson Reservoir to skate the features.
WP_20140605_004.jpg

 

Step 3: Enjoy lazy or intense fun

Despite trying to break myself, I broke the blades.
And they broke.

Step 4: Grab a bit to eat somewhere near by.

I grabbed food w/Z at Sweet Tomato which was across the street from the park.  Great stuff.

Step 5: Go Home when it hails

This was fun

WP_20140605_011.jpg

And this is how the government or whoever wants – beats your key pairs

UPDATE:  The Heartbleed vulnerability is of course multitudes simpler and thus a significantly easier means to the same end.  ^_^


The following is a screenshot from a computer that’s been quite obviously hosed. I won’t even ask why….  Walking past the rabbit hole & moving along.

random.wtf.seed   No, no background will be provided on this post beyond the simple facts.

  1. I didn’t do it.
  2. I’m the only one with access to this computer
  3. I wasn’t present during the timestamp. (pre-time reverse fail huh?  yeah)

Dear Google: Please fix the content age vs context value issue.

 

I’m not sure if Google is just trying to keep us on our toes but it makes absolutely no sense that the 5th and 6th result links when I searched for PHP Database Design were published in 2006. Content age doesn’t always equate to a good thing. In this context it’s just silly yet there will be people learning from this, very likely lots of people.

when(old != good){SUPER old content}

MySQL Workbench. Confused & Broken?

 

What the heck?  MySQL Workbench has crashed a couple times on me today and now I get this:MySQL Workbench

 

I may just be confused because I’m annoyed at the  moment but is this not a setup to lose data? lol.  I have an option to continue and open an auto-saved version thus losing the recovery or let it try and recover data saved at the exact same time?

I’ll take the hint and stop poking at MySQL Workbench in between tasks for today at least.  I’m confused and workbench is broken. lol.

 

KidsQuest.mdb KidsQuest_DBModel.pdf

All your Base MEMory r Belong to Chrome…

I find it entertaining that Google Chrome happily consumes virtually all the resources our computers can put out in many cases while at the exact same time I (or the collective we as web developers I suppose) are configuring virtual machine dev environments that Vagrant Up as identical clones of our systems live production environment (read: operating system) totally happy n’ snappy being allotted a single Gigabyte of memory.  If that…  lol.  Then there’s Chrome which was just a moment ago consuming over 5 Gigs of memory. I may have closed a few tabs before the screen shot but you get the idea. ^_^

Chrome the Memory Melter

Next time you find yourself trying not to buy something from the apple store, just remember that in order to logically weigh in that memory upgrade – go ahead and write off half your system memory to Chrome’s lay-on-the-couch-in-a-crowded-house comfort zone.  Then feel free to consider other things like Virtualbox or Fusion. ^_^

 

I’m switching to Opera for no less than the next 47 minutes.

Apps that make OSx useful

It’s been a long time since I’ve wiped out my workstation and started with a fresh Operating System.  I’m starting to get a real solid grasp of OSx so a clean slate to work with sounds fantastic. Having a much better knowledge then I did a year ago about the apps I like, which apps to I definitely don’t like and in what combination I find them most useful.   So here’s a quick breakdown of the OSx Apps I use while things backup backup before I race down green-glass lane, nuke this MacBook & arrive at destination defaults.

Web Browsers

Code Editors IDE’s & Support

  • Netbeans – PHP/Java IDE
  • TextMate $$
    • Simple GUI text editor
    • I rarely use it now however given that it’s paid for…  It’s still noteworthy to mention that I use VIM much more often.
  • Github + Command Line Tools
  • Arduino

DB Tools

Video/Graphics

  • GIMP - All my graphics editing needs under one easy to use roof.
  • VLC - Have Video File… Will Play.
  • Quicktime – pre-Bundled w/OSx
  • Camtasia $$ – Everybody loves screencasts and video demo’s

Organization, Notes & non-code Text

  • Evernote $$ – THE only notes app worth using on all platforms & architectures when logging all things noteworthy in any media type (txt,image,audio,etc)
  • OmniGraffle $$
    • Flow charts, Wire Frames, Brain Storming, Network Maps, Visual website site maps…  and whatever else you can think of once you get good at using it, it’s hard not to.
  • OfficeLibre – Offline office suite
  • FreeMind – Offline Mind Mapping otherwise I use Mindmeister $$ w/an entry level paid subscription.

Communication

Misc

  • Jing & Snagit – Screenshot + annotation & sharing tool.
  • SEO Power Suite $$
  • MarketSamuri – DEPRECIATED – Keyword research tool
    • This shouldn’t be listed here.  I can’t recall the last time I used this.
  • VirtualBox – Virtual Machines for all!
  • uTorrent – Leech

System Resources

  • FUSE for OS X
    • MacFUSE
    • NTFS-3G
  • TrueCrypt –  It’s all encrypted.  Everything.  Thumbdrives, backups, shared containers.  Everything.
  • Little Snitch $$ – Amazingly simple firewall
  • QuickSilver – Cutting shortcuts and mashing mashups for super quick access to everything.
  • GPGTools – This stuff should be understood now.
  • Homebrew – An OSx Packaging system that’s as useful as it is easy.
  • oh-my-zsh – Useful & Pretty.
  • Java – Necessary

Workaround for truncated dump file – NTOP Suspicious Packets File

I was encountering an error when trying to run tcpdump using the suspicious packets or other packets PCAP files generated by ntop as input. Tcpdump would display an error message stating the provided file was a “Truncated dump file” and die. the end. No beans.

The Workaround: Don’t run NTOP in daemon mode.
Don’t use the -d or –daemon command line argument. This also means that any common means of starting ntop as service such as with `/etc/init.d/ntop start` or `service ntop start` also results in failure.

The real answer: Stay current: As of this writing ntop has been replaced by it’s successor ntopng which is freely available and available freely: ntopng v.1.0 [stable] is available for download as pre-compiled packages or build-your-own from source of course. ^_^

Other then that I hadn’t resolved a real answer – however the NTOP Man Page warns about daemon mode under the –output-packet-path command line option. *shrug*

My Enviornment:

  • NTOP v.4.1.0 (32 bit)
  • Ubuntu [precise] 12.04.3 LTS
    • Linux hq 3.2.0-53-generic-pae #81-Ubuntu SMP
    • Thu Aug 22 21:23:47 UTC 2013
    • i686 i686 i386 GNU/Linux
  • tcpdump version 4.2.1
  • libpcap version 1.1.1