Once more into the fray.....

Not to pull a quote from the movie "The Grey", but it seems appropriate considering my situation.  Back in October, the company I work for decided that my group (and a couple of other groups) needed to be relocated to one of their offices in another state.  To say that we were blindsided by this decision was an understatement.  I mean there were rumors abound for years about its possibility, but nothing ever came of it..... till now.

Seeing as how all 7 members of the team I am on are choosing to take severance (including me), they are losing many years of experience supporting their client facing product.  Four of us have already received our 90 notice of termination, and of everyone in the group, I think that I am the one most actively looking for work at the moment.  Sure, it would be nice to bank the severance, but I have to admit that staying employed and keeping a roof over my families heads is a bit more important in my opinion.

So, I have been actively doing things like learning Python and MongoDB and rebuilding my skills in Perl (which I have only used periodically over the last 3 years, but am getting right back onto that bicycle).  I am hopeful that one of the interviews that I have had (and am going to be going on) pans out as I really want to keep working.

So, at this point I have 75 days left to find myself a job.  Fingers crossed!

A Moment Of Regret

Quite a vague title for a blog post, I know.  Some of you are probably thinking, "What happened?  What did you do?".  I was thinking the same thing recently and am still kicking myself a bit.

I have a VPS(Virtual Private Server) that I have rented online for the last couple of years.  Its mostly a playground where I can do development for projects.  I have had a yearning to get a website up on it and maybe advertise my coding services, but with everything that's going on (especially as of late), I just haven't had the time to do that.

Anyway, I digress from my point.  I run Ubuntu Linux on the VPS and about 3 1/2 weeks ago I logged on to do some stuff and tried to install something through the apt package manager and was presented with some really funky errors.  Thankfully I had seen the errors but once before and they were those tell tale errors that say, "your distribution is flipping old and you need to UPGRADE!!!".  

So, I backed up my coding and my home directory and even my web directory where I kept things like my wiki, which had a TON of nice docs that I constantly referenced.  I then proceeded to attempt to upgrade my version from the command line, but was met with some other errors which puzzled me.  A bit of research on Google still had me puzzled.  Since I had to get some coding done, I decided to do a full re-install from the VPS control panel.  After it completed, I logged back in, uploaded my web directory, re-setup things like Apache, MySQL, PHP, Python, etc., configuring as I went.

I got my web server working and attempted to go to my wiki as I needed to reference something and that was the moment that stopped me.  I realized that in my rush to back everything up and get things re-installed, I had backed up my wiki software yes, but COMPLETELY forgot about....... the database.   Yes, everything in my wiki was toast.....gone..... kaput!

So here is a lesson for you everyone, back EVERYTHING up and make sure to not forget your databases.  I am still getting things configured and added, but my wiki needs the most work of all.  C'est la vie!

Bye, Bye Grazely!

Back in a July 2011 post, here in my blog, I made mention of a new bookmarking service that had arrived on the seen called Grazely.   At the time I was excited and happy at the prospect of a new bookmarking site, considering the unstable nature of delicious.com at the time.

Well, its been almost a year and a half now, and at this point Grazely is D.E.A.D.!  Apparently they announced it on their site back in September 2012, telling users to download their bookmarks, but considering I hadn't actually visited the site, I was simply bookmarking from my browser, I completely missed this.

So, imagine my surprise when I went to bookmark something a couple of weeks ago and got a failure.  I attempted to visit the sites URL, but was met with an error saying that the site didn't exist.  I turned to my email, found the address for one of the admins I had chatted with early on and inquired about the status of the site.  It took him a few days to get back to me, but he did, informing me of the site's demise.  He claimed too much competition to keep going.

Most of the sites out there were social networking bookmark sites now, like delicious.  I wasn't in whole-hearted agreeance with this move by most sites as I just simply wanted a place for my bookmarks.   It took a bit of searching before I found Grazely, but was intrigued when I did.

After getting a response from the admin, I then inquired as to whether or not my nearly 6000 bookmarks could be retrieved or not and he came back with a, "Sorry, everything has been deleted."  How depressing and unfortunately.  Thankfully I am not that trusting.  :-)  I kept a duplicate bookmark on delicious for just this occasion.  I did have a backup copy of the grazely bookmarks from a few months ago, but having everything on delicious really helped.

So, if you turned to Grazely, I am very sorry.  How is one to know if a site will simply bomb this hard or not.  Please don't hold it against me.   If I do find another site and it seems credible and (hopefully) stable, I will be sure and post again.

The Peril's of Upgrading

As a lot of people have done, I recently upgraded my Mac to Mountain Lion (OSx 10.8 (subsequently installing the 10.8.1 upgrade that was released not long after my upgraded)).

As with any operating system. there are some things that just don't work after the upgrade.  Sadly, I expected this, as I have yet to find an OS that doesn't break something upon upgrading.  When I upgraded one of my Ubuntu boxes after 11.10 came out, I was blown away by the number of things it screwed me on.  Some of the critical things I used every day were completely gone, such as:

- Apache
- Python
- MySQL

Just to name a very small subset.  All of the command line installation utilities that are necessary for building software by hand were also gone.  It took me a couple hours but thanks to my backups prior, I was able to get everything back in working order relatively quickly.

But, I digress a bit, sorry.  After upgrading to Mountain Lion, I didn't immediately notice anything awry.  The post installation notice did notify me that some apps were not compatible.  For instance, Parallels stopped working, so you will have to download a new version or re-install if you have the version compatible with the new OSx version.

One thing I noticed though, was that installing things with easy_install or pip (python package installer) had gone away or stopped working.  The same was true for setuptools, which is used when installing with things like like pip or easy_install.

To correct some of the things that will drive you crazy, you will want to go to this site.   If you haven't done it after upgrading, you will need to probably re-install Xcode and then, per that link, install the commandline tools that it references.  I know it says some had issues, I didn't experience any thankfully.

As I mentioned a couple of paragraphs above, my setuptools had completely disappeared from the installation after the upgrade.  So, to re-install them, you will need to download them from the PyPi page here.  Download the most current .egg and then issue the following command:

sudo sh setuptools-0.6c11-py2.7.egg

I used the most current .egg version as of this posting for the command above.  After working through the issues that I had experienced post upgrade, my system is again back to where I want/need it for my daily work.  Hopefully this will help you as well.  Remember also that there are a plethora of other post Mountain Lion upgrade guides on Google, just search for them.  What I have here is obviously not the be all, end all.

The Question of Questions

After the digression of my last post, which really was not technically based, I was going to get back to the really juicy stuff.  Instead, I will only partially back to the good stuff.

I was reading a CNN article on Marissa Mayer, the Google-ite Engineer turned Yahoo CEO.  In the article, which outlines 11 facts about her, #6 in the list caught my eye.  It says that in her original job interview, which was conducted at one point by Sergey Brin and Larry Page, Google's co-founders, they asked her the following question:

"How would you write a spell-check program when you have a vocabulary so big it won't fit in a computer?"

I have to say that that is one heck of an interview question.  One that you cannot really prepare for.  They were more than likely simply seeking her quick insight of the issue to see how she would approach it, but none the less its an amazingly specific question that would knock a lot of people on their butts, I am sure.

I have seen questions from people on some of these coding forums, asking for lists of interview questions that they can study for their upcoming interview.  Every time that I see one of those questions I want to tell them to pick up the book nearest to them that covers the language in question and to study that in its entirety.

The possibility of questions in an interview is astounding and one could not even hope to study the exact questions that would be asked in a given interview.  My point is that all you can do is study and code and do your best when you get to the interview.  Its all you'll really be able to do to prepare.

I, unfortunately, don't interview very well as I tend to freeze up mentally.  Sure, I know how to code, but I am usually so insanely nervous in an interview that to ask me to code or think about technical problems more than likely comes across disappointing.

Ok, enough embarrassing myself and boring you with useless details.  

Losing an Art Form

Hello everyone!  What a year it has been so far, and I am sure that you have a similar feeling about it as well.  I feel that each year gets crazier and crazier, but then that could be that our kids are getting older and older, but their energy levels are still rising.

I was reading a friends blog recently and came across this amazing post about something so amazingly simple.  Mark Keating, the owner of the blog, was talking about how crowded our lives are with tech that we are losing touch with something as simple as the pen and paper.  There are dozens of note taking applications on our phones, tablets, pc's and laptops, that all we need do these days is fire one of them up, write down what is on our mind and save it, no actual writing involved.

Its sad really because the way things are going, how long will it be before people are no longer writing, their typing up their notes.  If that were to happen, a very beautiful art would be lost on technology and go the way of things like the dodo, and won't ever be seen again. 

In Mark's blog post, he gives what is essentially a features list of the pen and paper.  Its an amazing addition to post which really opens ones eyes to the perfection that the pen and paper really have and continue to have.  Here is the list from his post:

• No specialist input devices
• Compatible with all hands and eyes
• Never crashes
• Rarely corrupts data
• Splash recovery
• Language agnostic
• Fits in a convenient pocket[5]
• Fast data input
• No Startup times
• No application charges or updates
• Full ASCII/ANSi support[6]
• No ‘generation’ of devices
• Reality display (TM)
• Version safe
• Future safe
• Full version compatibility between devices, languages, users and systems
• Available in a seemingly infinite variety of styles and colours
• No vendor lock in and many high-street stockists
• Can be used during take off and landing on a plane

As you can see, Mark went to town on the list, but its wonderfully accurate.  I hope you enjoy this enough that you want to maybe put down the keyboard and just go write.  Heck, go buy a journal and write an entry every day.  Sure, I sound like a 9th grade English teacher, but they did have a point with their making you keep a journal.

I know this post is a bit non-tech, but I hope you enjoyed it.  If you would like to read Mark's post, you can find it here.  Enjoy and happy writing!

Sweet Hiatus, I return from thee

As you can tell, this blog has been a bit dormant since September of last year.  Allow me to apologize for that.  My day job switched my shifts and it has taken a bit of getting used to.  Now that I have a few months under my belt working my new shift, I believe I should be in a better position to continue with blogging activities.  

I would like to take a moment to thank my friend Richard McCutchen for his flatteringly awesome #FollowFriday post on his blog.  I am the first mention and am quite grateful to him for that.  Thanks a million Richard!

Seeing as its currently just after 11pm, it is still friday, so here goes:

• Richard McCutchen (@psychocoder): If you have a project that requires the services of a .Net coder, then Richard is certainly your man.  His work speaks for itself, as does his kindness. 
• Benjamin Howarth (@benjaminhowarth):  Ben is another .Net coder who deserves a good mention.  He is a good friend and colleague who has an amazingly big heart.  If your in the UK and looking to hire someone for your coding project, please be sure and contact him.

I know, its a short list, but at the moment its all I can muster.   I would like to thank al of our readers for their patience and say that more intriguing articles are on their way.

Twitter, the Missing RSS and the Graffiti

I was recently setting it up so that the tweets from my ParsedContent Solutions twitter feed would be propagated to my Facebook page of the same name.  At first I was trying to figure out the best way to do this.  Sure, I could have activated the Facebook integration inside the Twitter account, but it was stating that it would post that to MY Facebook wall, which is not what I wanted, I wanted it to go to my businesses wall.

Well, after some digging and reading, I activated a Facebook application called RSS Graffiti.    Its an interesting app because it manages the posting of your feed to your different pages and it handles multiple so its really cool.  The settings in the app allow you to tell it where to post what feed and how often to poll for new content.

In setting it up, you have to first give the application permission to post to your page's wall.  This isn't a problem since that is what I am wanting.  After that though you are asked for your feed url.  Now, on Twitter you used to find the atypical orange RSS feed button near the bottom right side of your page.  You would have just had to click on it to see the feed url and copy it.  Well, I didn't see it and started a bit of a search to try and find it or something else that I could use.  I finally found an intriguing article that enlightened me to the fact that Twitter had officially removed the RSS button and feed, but that was only in lieu of their API, which they prefer everyone use.

Yes, this is a break from what standards would dictate, but its their service and you unfortunately have to conform to their way of operating.  The article did enlighten everyone to the url that you would need to use for your feed which is as follows:


     https://api.twitter.com/1/statuses/user_timeline.rss?screen_name=username


In the above you would simply replace 'username' with your twitter id.  You can test this url by copying and pasting it into your browser's url bar as it will work fine.  Once you have it you simply plug it into RSS Graffiti and voila, a feed to pull from.

Keep in mind when that even after putting in the feed URL into RSS Graffiti, I recommend you go through the settings for the app and ensure its posting the way you want it to.  There are 3 options for posting:

1. Standard:  This posts the tweet to your wall and states its from the Twitter feed.  Recommended for most feeds.
2. Compact: For publishing shorts from things like Twitter without changing your Facebook status.
3. Status Updates:  This posts the tweets to your wall as if it were a Facebook Status update.  You can't even tell that this came from the Twitter feed.

Whatever you choose, test it to make sure its what you want.

OSx and the bashrc

A couple of months ago I purchased my first Mac, a 13" Macbook Pro.  I have to say that I am absolutely loving so far.  The interface is pretty sweet, but for me the best part is that its got a *nix back end.  Learning a new environment like OSx after coming from the Linux world is not a difficult transition, but it certainly has its little speed bumps.

This evening was one such speed bump when I decided to add some things and customize my .bashrc.  The first thing I noticed….. there wasn't a .bashrc in existence yet on the system.  This simply told me that it was pulling its initial settings from /etc/profile (which in turn sources /etc/bashrc on OSx Lion).

So, I went and created my own .bashrc in my home directory, added my settings that I liked to have and copied some of the stuff from the default /etc/bashrc file.  I then saved the file and sourced it with ". ./.bashrc" to test the settings and ensure I didn't break anything.  Cool, all looked to be fine.  I closed the window, opened another one and that is when I noticed that the changes I made were non-existent.

So, I did a little bit of Google digging and quickly learned that by default, OSx looks for the .bash_profile, not the .bashrc file.  That is a bit of a change from Linux as it does look for the .bashrc.  To not look for it is a bit ludicrous in my opinion (as rc files are the most common settings files in the *nix world), but this is not a standard *nix platform.  So, I did what any geek would do and created a soft link for .bash_profile that pointed to my .bashrc that I had just created.  Yes, I just created it and was going to be damned if Apple was going to tell me I couldn't use it.  Call me stubborn, but its my environment, not theirs.

So, after that little speed bump, I need only edit my .bashrc and resource to have my changes take effect.  Now, on to see what other funky differences I can discover.

Online Cloud Storage Review

With the advent of things like Netbooks (laptops that either have no hard drive to speak of, instead using a solid state device, or have a small hard drive), cloud storage has become a necessity in this day and age.  Cloud storage is nothing more than storage for your files and media, provided by companies that are either able to or specialize in that service.

The storage itself ranges from a couple of gigabytes up to the Terabytes, providing more than enough storage for your average user and their files.  The nice thing about a lot of the cloud storage options is that you can typically access your files from anywhere and any computer or device with web access (or an installed app, such as a mobile smart phone).

I personally tend to use the storage for things like my music (in mp3 format) and also for documents that I want to have access to wherever I am.  I have had a number of friends ask me about the different options that I knew of for online storage so that got me thinking, "Hello, blog post.".

I went out and did a search for online storage and quickly realized that not only was I getting hits for what I was looking for, which is storage that one could access but others could not see, but also the more 'social' storage options like media fire, where you upload files up to your storage limit and others can see the files that you have uploaded.  This did not work for me as I am a bit security conscious and there are plenty of things that I really don't want to share with others.  Granted, I don't put the really sensitive stuff online. Things such as credit card numbers, password and other such goodies should never be put into the open like that, unless you are asking for trouble.

So, after weeding through a plethora of hits from my Google search, I made myself a list of the services that I wanted to review.  I limited them to having at least 2 gigabytes of storage at a minimum.  The features provided by each of these companies varies from site to site, so if you are trying to decide on some storage, please remember to take the time and review all of the features offered.  You may find that paying that little bit per month (in some cases) is well worth it for your needs.

A number of these are relatively inexpensive for the amount of space provided.  Of course, there are also those that are a bit pricey for those of us looking for the cheapest, yet reliable way to store our data.  All in all, do your homework and find something that fits your needs and your budget as best as you can.  Worst case you could always invest $129 in a 3 terabyte external drive and store your files locally, yourself.  That way you pay one time for the storage and are solely responsible to yourself for keeping your data safe and backed up.  For those that want their data online, here is what I found out about the services that I reviewed.

Dropbox:   First up is one of the more popular services and one of the primary that I use.  A DropBox free account nets you 2 gigabytes (gb) of space when you sign up.  The nice thing about Dropbox that most other services don't provide is that you can send out invitations to your friends and family to join as well and any of them that use your invitation to sign up, they get 250mb extra and so do you.  The more people that accept the offer the more space that you can accumulate for yourself and best of all, your limit is raised forever, not just for a limited time.  The only catch is that the free accounts are capped at 8 gb of storage.  So, once you get enough people to join to give you that much space, you are capped and only they get the extra bit.  Once you sign up though, you have some signup tasks to complete that will also net you some initial extra space.  One thing I really like about dropbox is the application that you download and install onto your system that does all the synching.  Upon installation you setup your Dropbox folder.  This is the folder where you "drop" anything that you want storred online.  Once you drop a file in the folder it is automatically uploaded to the server and available.  If you have the application also installed on any other machines, the file(s) you uploaded are automatically synched with them, downloading to their dropbox folder since you would be signed in with the same account. If you want more space, you can upgrade to a paid plan and pay about $10 per month for 50 gb or 100gb for $19.99 per month.  The desktop application for Dropbox is available for Windows, Linux and Mac OSx.

Spideroak:   The free account on Spideroak is limited to 2 gb and unlike Dropbox I didn't see any offers to increase this for free.  They have an upgrade to 100 gb for $10 per month, which is 1/2 the cost of what Dropbox wants for 100 gb.  When you sign up, you enter your name, email and user name and upon clicking "Create Account" the application you need is auto downloaded to your machine (or prompted to download if you have your settings as such).  After the app is downloaded go ahead and install it.  When you run it for the first time you will need to first specify a password for your account, after which you go right into the application.  In the app you will have to specify the folders that you want to backup.  If you want a different folder that isn't listed, just click "Advanced" in the upper right and select the folder you want to use.

Box.net:   Box.net only has online access for the free accounts.  To get a desktop app you need to have a paid account.  The free account allots you 5 gb of space, while the paid accounts are 25 gb for $10 per month.   Much less space for the money on the paid account than you get with Dropbox or Spideroak.

Syncplicity:   Free account limited to 2 gb of space.  Paid account has 50 gb for $15 per month.  Again, a touch more expensive for less space.  This has an app available for download, but is only for Windows and Mac users.  Linux is not supported.

ADrive:   The free account for ADrive is set to 50gb.  That is an impressive amount for a free account.  Unfortunately it was quickly discovered that the upload speed for this service is incredibly slow.  I was only getting about 2-3K per second when attempting to upload a small, 2 megabyte file.   Also, there are ads in the free account.  To get rid of the ads you would have to have one of their paid accounts.  There is no desktop app or synching available for the free account with this service.  It is completely web based for uploading and downloading.  The paid accounts have a desktop app but its only for uploading, downloading and scheduled runs.  No synching for that either.

Zumodrive:   I said in the beginning that I was limiting this list to services with a minimum of 2 gb of space for free.  Well, with Zumodrive you only get 1 gb initially, but upon completing their dojo (tutorial), you get an extra 1 gb added to your allotment.  There are paid plans that offer:  10 gb for $2.99/month, 25 gb for $6.99/month, 50 gb for $9.99/month, 100 gb for $19.99/month, 200 gb for $37.99/month and 500 gb for $79.99/month.  For their app they support Windows, Linux, Mac OSx, Android, iPhone and even Palm Pre.  One nicety about this service is that it claims to integrate smoothly with iTunes so that you can store your music in the cloud and simply download playlists for listening instead of taking up your diskspace with storing the mp3s.  If your a heavy iTunes user, that may be something to consider.

iDrive:   This service offers 5 gb of space for free.  It also offers paid accounts of 150 gb for $4.95/month and 500 gb for $14.95 per month.  Considerably cheaper than some of the others.  The list of features for this service is quite nice and should definitely be reviewed by those considering it.  This service is geared heavily towards being an online place to back up your data, not just store it.  They offer a desktop app with scheduling and folder watch/synching and even offer versioning for files (that way you can get an earlier version of a file if needed), but its limited to the last 30 versions of the file.

Mimedia:   This has one of the larger free space allotments, coming in at a whopping 7 gb.  You can upgrade to a paid account and get 250 gb for $9.99/month, 500 gb for $20/month or 1 Terabyte for $35/month.  For the price, this service ranks up there at one of the cheaper ones for "space for your buck".  They tout themselves as media storage (audio, video, photos), but also support regular files and backups as well.  There is no desktop app that I could find so you are limited to using the web interface with this service.

Skydrive:   This is a free service provided by Microsoft, for those users with a Hotmail/Live email account.  It provides you with 25 gb of free storage for your Microsoft Office or other files..  There is no desktop app so you must use the web interface.  While it doesn't have an app, 25 gb is still a sizable amount of space, and its free.

Amazon Cloud Drive:   If you have an amazon account, then you can get access to the Amazon Cloud Drive service.  They provide an initial 5 gb of space for free with the option of upgrading to a paid account with 20 gb for $20/year, 50 gb for $50/year, 100 gb for $100/year and so on, up to 1 Terabyte for $1000/year.  Initially it seems costly, but those are yearly costs.  Divide by 12 and it breaks down a bit more sensibly.  The 100 gb allotment is less than $10/month.  Like others, there is no desktop app and you are limited to their web interface for uploads and downloads.  One nice thing though is that songs purchased through amazon.com can be stored here and do not count toward your space used.  Plus, for a limited time (no idea when this promotion ends), they are offering the storage of unlimited music files for free on all paid accounts.  This means that it wouldn't effect your storage used.  And it doesn't say that the songs had to be purchased through them either, but I would read the fine print to be sure.  If they don't require that, then this is a pretty sweet deal for those with gigantic music collections.

Opendrive:   This is the final service reviewed.  The free account offers 5 gb of space.  You can upgrade to 100 gb for $5/month, 500 gb for $15/month or 1 Tb for $35/month.  These are some pretty decent rates for the storage amount.  The free account is limited to 200K max speed though, so be warned.  The paid accounts are not metered. Also, there is no auto synching for the free account.

Well, those are the services that I have reviewed.  I hope that this helps you a bit in your decision to choose an online cloud storage provider.  As always, check the features and always read the fine print.  Make sure of what you are signing up for before you click.