Wednesday, January 28, 2015
I got to get me one of these!
Geek: the impossible just takes a little longer...
Geek: the impossible just takes a little longer... The reason I started coding again is because I'm working on bringing up my new blog (SlightlyLoony). It will probably be a few months before I actually start posting there, as I have quite a bit of coding to do before it will work the way I want it to. Partly that's because I'm hosting it on Ghost, which is a brand-new and not fully baked yet blogging platform. Mostly, though, it's because I want some features that the Ghost platform doesn't support, and likely never will.
One of those features I wanted is the ability to upload some data to the blog periodically, and then have that data available to people reading the blog. For instance, I'd like to have the weather forecast for the next few days show up. I can “scrape” that sort of data from other web sites, then package it up for display on my blog – but to do that, I need to upload that data to the blog server somehow. Many blogging platforms provide an API for that sort of thing, but Ghost does not. I spent quite a bit of time on the Ghost forums, researching the issue and asking questions about it. The conclusion from expert Ghost developers: it can't be done.
This morning I came up with a way to do it, and I whipped up a prototype and tested it – it works! Best of all, it's easy as can be. Here's how it works:
One of those features I wanted is the ability to upload some data to the blog periodically, and then have that data available to people reading the blog. For instance, I'd like to have the weather forecast for the next few days show up. I can “scrape” that sort of data from other web sites, then package it up for display on my blog – but to do that, I need to upload that data to the blog server somehow. Many blogging platforms provide an API for that sort of thing, but Ghost does not. I spent quite a bit of time on the Ghost forums, researching the issue and asking questions about it. The conclusion from expert Ghost developers: it can't be done.
This morning I came up with a way to do it, and I whipped up a prototype and tested it – it works! Best of all, it's easy as can be. Here's how it works:
- I created a special “bucket” on Amazon's AWS S3 storage service. This bucket has the name “assets.www.slightlyloony.com”.
- I created a DNS record (a CNAME record) that aliases “assets.www.slightlyloony.com” to the S3 storage URL.
- I wrote a program that uploads the data of interest to a particular set of files within the S3 bucket.
- In my client side code (running in the blog reader's browser), whenever I want to access some of that data, I use the URL “http://assets.www.slightlyloony.com/[file name]” to get it. The browser thinks it's on the same host, because “assets.www.slightlyloony.com” is a subdomain of “www.slightlyloony.com”, where the browser loaded the page from. No cross-site scripting rules are violated by this.
Holy rocks?
Holy rocks? Well, holey, really. Scientists have discovered that the combination of hot rocks (like cooling lava) with microscopic pores in them promotes the development of nucleic acids that can replicate. In other words, that might be how life began on Earth...
The unending pain of ObamaCare...
The unending pain of ObamaCare... Reader and friend Larry E. emailed me on this while I was reading the article on Hot Air yesterday :) It seems that when you tote up all the costs, the federal government is spending about $50,000 for each person covered under the law. That's far more than it would have cost simply to purchase a pre-ObamaCare policy for each of them.
I like the way Hot Air closed their article:
I like the way Hot Air closed their article:
You were lied to. Again.Yes. Yes you were.
Apple makes some great products...
Apple makes some great products ... and they reap great rewards for doing so. I know that great design is hard. In a lifetime of engineering, I've only made a couple of designs that I thought were great, and I'm not sure how many people would agree with my assessment :) But the world abounds with examples of great design, though relatively few of them are in the tech world. With the example of Apple to validate the model, I'm surprised there aren't a host of Apple wannabes (that is, design-focused high tech manufacturers) visible to the consumer public. But there aren't...
On a trip I made recently, I had a three hour layover in Houston. I spent a good part of that time in a store that carried high-end laptops (Dell, HP, Asus, etc.). All of these laptops cost less (though sometimes not all that much less) than Apple's MacBook Pro, which I use. None of them, in my not-so-humble opinion, matched Apple's physical design, fit, or finish. They were very nice laptops, mind you – but they all had easily visible design flaws, or fit and finish issues. Then there's the fact that they all had Windows as their operating system (with one exception: a Dell that could be purchased with Ubuntu Linux). After 8 years of using OS X, there is no freaking way I'd go back to the nightmare named Windows. Not happening. And Linux's desktops, while much improved, aren't even close to being as usable as OS X yet.
So an Apple fanboi I shall remain, for now :)
On a trip I made recently, I had a three hour layover in Houston. I spent a good part of that time in a store that carried high-end laptops (Dell, HP, Asus, etc.). All of these laptops cost less (though sometimes not all that much less) than Apple's MacBook Pro, which I use. None of them, in my not-so-humble opinion, matched Apple's physical design, fit, or finish. They were very nice laptops, mind you – but they all had easily visible design flaws, or fit and finish issues. Then there's the fact that they all had Windows as their operating system (with one exception: a Dell that could be purchased with Ubuntu Linux). After 8 years of using OS X, there is no freaking way I'd go back to the nightmare named Windows. Not happening. And Linux's desktops, while much improved, aren't even close to being as usable as OS X yet.
So an Apple fanboi I shall remain, for now :)
A big step yesterday...
A big step yesterday... I've been a subscriber to The Wall Street Journal for over 30 years, since my first print subscription in 1981. In the '90s I switched to online-only, mainly because the print edition was always a day late where I lived. At first the online edition was a mere shadow of the print edition, but within just a few years it was the better choice anyway. I've been reading (well, at least skimming) that paper every day for all those years.
Starting next week, that's coming to an end – my subscription expires on February 4th, and I'm not renewing. It's not that I'm no longer interested in its content – I am. The main reason I'm stopping is that Dow Jones (the publisher) has finally managed to raise the subscription price to the point where I just can't justify it any more. It's now $300 a year, nearly a dollar a day, to read content that I can largely find elsewhere for free.
So sadly, and reluctantly, I'm saying goodbye...
Starting next week, that's coming to an end – my subscription expires on February 4th, and I'm not renewing. It's not that I'm no longer interested in its content – I am. The main reason I'm stopping is that Dow Jones (the publisher) has finally managed to raise the subscription price to the point where I just can't justify it any more. It's now $300 a year, nearly a dollar a day, to read content that I can largely find elsewhere for free.
So sadly, and reluctantly, I'm saying goodbye...