Tag: software

I do all my writing in Ulysses. I also like to keep all of my files in its library. Since I started using it, the idea of having individual files scattered about my computer is just plain barbaric. The cost of this trade off is that if Ulysses doesn’t support a feature, I have to add raw HTML into the files. Normally this isn’t much of a problem. A bit HTML set off with ~~ isn’t distracting.

Getting paid online is a delicate balance of convenience vs. cost. Some of the services are used simply because they’ve been around the longest. Like PayPal. But new ones seem to pop up every other day. For the most part, they’re worth signing up for to see how things work. The newest is Cash.me from Square. They have a nice link-shortening gimmick called “cashtags.” The idea is to create a username starting with a dollar sign ($) which then becomes your unique URL.

This project was a few weeks in the making. When I started there was a problem with some of the software not behaving. I leave the hardware driver voodoo to those that understand it. After an update this morning I was able to get all the parts working. So what exactly is a WiFi VPN access point? It’s the combination of several pieces of hardware and software that when running on my Pogo provides me with:

The security researchers also claimed they had created a modified version of Apple’s proprietary software development tool, Xcode, which could sneak surveillance backdoors into any apps or programs created using the tool. Xcode, which is distributed by Apple to hundreds of thousands of developers, is used to create apps that are sold through Apple’s App Store. § The article goes onto say, “It remains unclear how intelligence agencies would get developers to use the poisoned version of Xcode.

In my continuing adventures with the PogoPlug V4, I decided to get OpenVPN working. The install was easy enough, but getting the configuration correct turned into a literal project—it has it’s own GitHub repository. My VPN provider of choice is TunnelBear1. I started with them about a year ago because of their free service. The free accounts get 500 MB of data transfer per month. That’s not a lot, but it’s enough to get me out of a data emergency.

This morning I received an email from the Ulysses developers about the ePub bugs I reported. One thing that surpised me was a request to update my script that fixes the playOrder incrementing. One thing that came to my mind: since you already developed a small Ruby script, could you integrate the unzip and zip process within the script, so users wouldn't need this extra step anymore? — Götz So I did!

Managing receipts is a necessary evil for anyone that needs to track tax deductions. I wanted a way to keep my receipts in one place on my computer, and have an easy way to mark the ones that are deductible. Keeping track of emailed and downloaded receipts is usually much easier than having to file paper copies. Usually. The one advantage of paper is that it can be glanced at. A folder full of PDFs isn’t something that be looked through with a quick riffle of the thumb.

(This is a sample chapter I put together to see how I felt about writing a programming book.) The Simple Script Before starting to build a more complicated program, let’s start with something simple. We’re going to hack together a short script that works. It will upload a single cat picture to a S3 bucket. We’ll learn the basics of both a ruby script and how cloud storage works. Lesson setup In your working directory create a new branch for this chapter.

Lately, I’ve been dabbling in ruby programming. I’ve mentioned it a few times recently. I’ve also been thinking that what I’m doing would make for a decent beginners book. I’ve seen a few of the ones out there. The projects are much more involved and tend to focus on web applications. This would be more of a beginner-to-beginner style project. I’m thinking there might be a place for a smaller, focused book.

Last week I got sucked into a small coding project. I wanted a quick way to upload files to AWS S3. S3 acts like a FTP file server. But traditional upload methods like SFTP aren’t allowed. This makes the service tricky to use from the command line. I wanted a simple tool that I could use in three different ways: Directly from the command line. Inside of an Automator workflow “run shell scrip” action.