The Bachelorette season is upon us again. I must say I enjoy the show. It advertises itself as a path to finding lasting love but its success record is less than impressive. And thus it satisfies my formula for great television:

Expectation fails to meet reality == great television

Some of the antics on the show also make me wonder how much of the show is scripted and which of the cast are looking for media exposure versus true love. Lets look at some data.

I wrote a script to aggregate data from the contestants’ Instagram accounts. Five of the 30 contestants either deleted or never had an Instagram account leaving us with 25. Of these I looked at total followers and number of Likes gained on their most popular post (to indicate newly gained followers).

It looks like Grocery Joe and mule wielding Blake Horstmann are crowd favorites, each gaining 10,000 additional likes on their...

”One of the biggest differences between hobbyists and professional programmers is the difference that grows out of moving from superstition to understanding.”
-Stephen McConnell

In my early days of programming I often fell into the trap of refreshing a broken application multiple times to make sure it was “really broken”. In hindsight this seems silly. A computer does not behave randomly, however, deterministic behavior can lead to some interesting quirks.

function getGreeting() {
  const hour = new Date().getHours();
  const greetings = [
    [22, 'Working late?'],
    [18, 'Good evening'],
    [12, 'Good afternoon'],
    [6, 'Good morning'],
    [4, 'Whoa, early bird!']
  ];
  return greetings.find((greeting) => { hour >= greeting[0] })[1];
}

Do you see the problem? (Hint: This will work flawlessly during office hours but result in a late night support call) Along the same lines...

At some point in their career programmers stumble upon VIM and find the boost in productivity to be so great that they treat the find like an epiphany handed down from above. I personally love VIM and think everyone should have a go at learning to use it effectively. However, do not stop evaluating other editors that may be better suited for you specific language or project. If you’re getting paid to code, don’t be opposed to the idea of paying for a professional IDE.

Recently I’ve been frustrated by the following argument: “I only use VIM because it’s super fast and lightweight. It feels closest to the bare metal of the machine.” After this statement I watched the developer navigate to find the definition of a class used in another file as follows

1. gg - two keystrokes to navigate to top of file
2. look at import statements
3. :e . - four key strokes to open file navigator
4. /Libr - five...

My sister often emails video attachments of my niece and nephew. Gmail provides a really sleek mechanism for viewing the attached videos without leaving the browser by playing them in an embedded YouTube player. However, at some point the YouTube player started presenting me with the following message: “An error occurred. Please try again later.” Let’s dig in.

The cause

Disabling third-party cookies in my browsers was the cause of this issue. Some browsers like Firefox have this disabled by default. To see if you’re video playback is broken for the same reason visit this page. If you see “Third party cookies appear to be disabled”, then read on for the solution.

Background: third-party cookies

When you log in to a website like Gmail you provide your email/password and in the background Gmail’s servers send you back a cookie containing a session ID (for example...

Recently I’ve had some free time to take up another personal project. The idea is that your computer’s web cam watches your head position and alerts you if it gets too close to the screen. My mind has never been able to kick the habit that the closer I bring my face to the screen the better I will understand whatever is written on it. And so we come to my golden rule of side projects:

Build something that benefits your life. This will provide you intrinsic motivation (happiness) while you wait for the extrinsic motivators (money, fame) to kick in.

I’ve seen a lot of people violate this rule by brainstorming business ideas that can make a lot of money but don’t affect the creator personally. My view is these founders will run out of steam long before their project earns them a full time paycheck.

But I digress….

The design

I wanted to follow two design principles:

Limit wordy

Meadow at Aspiring Flats

Most people who spend time in Wanaka will drive down the west Matukituki valley and hike to Rob Roy glacier. The less popular East Matukituki valley offers a seldom travelled alternative. In fact, I found the valley devoid of human life the evening I hiked in. Plenty of cows, though. The most accessible destinations of interest are the Aspiring Flats and Rock of the Ages bivvy which are located on a tributary of the East Matuktuki.

Follow this road, second valley on left in the distance is your destination

The walk begins by crossing an impressive bridge across the West Matutuki. Follow the route markers along the true left bank until you come to private land. You’ll need to remove your shoes for three water crossing before heading north along a road for some time. You will go through a gate. Next follow a long, long fence. There is a worn road running...

I’ve had my Brother HL2170W laser printer since January 2010, before AirPrint printers were really a thing. It’s been a solid printer and still has 90% of its second cartridge left. I’ve had an iPhone since around 2010 as well and I was under the mistaken impression that the two devices could never talk to each other. True, the devices are not directly compatible, but it is possible to use a Raspberry Pi as a mediator to have the two work together. Here’s a quick run down of how works in under four minutes:

1. Download NodeJS zip (http://nodejs.org/dist/latest/), likely the *-win-x64.zip version and unzip inside ~/AppData/Local/Programs/node¹
2. Download git for windows (https://git-for-windows.github.io/)
3. Run installer
   1. Uncheck all components except Use TrueType font
   2. select Use Git from Git Bash only
   3. You can leave default line ending conversion
   4. Use Windows’ default console window
   5. Check file system caching and Credential Manager
4. Run git bash shell

5. vi .bash_profile or use notepad.exe to create it in your user directory

   PATH=$PATH:~/AppData/Local/Programs/node
   PATH=$PATH:/c/Windows/System32/
   

6. Restart git bash shell or run source .bash_profile

7. Clone your github repo over HTTPS (no SSH keys required). Credential manager can store your password.

8. Cd into project and npm install²

9. Go forth and profit

Bonus: Visual Studio Code

Visual Studio Code is my favorite editor and it’s free.

1. ...

How to watch HBOGO abroad on your Chromebook?

1. Turn on developer mode on your Chromebook
2. Press Ctrl+Alt+T to open a shell window and type shell at the prompt
3. Start a SOCKS proxy server on your laptop that forwards traffic through a server in the USA you can access via SSH
   ssh -D 20001 user@serverintheusa
4. Configure your Chromebook connection to use the local proxy.

4a. Click on your active Wifi connection to bring up the proxy configuration. Fill in the appropriate SOCKS host and port.

4b. You should now be able to access HBOGO

What is a proxy?

A proxy acts as a middle-man for your internet traffic. If you want to read cnn.com, instead of issuing a request for that page directly from your browser, you would first issue this request to a proxy server. The proxy would then request the contents of cnn.com and once it received the response, it would return the requested data back...

I recently noticed some tin-can rattling coming from the underside of my mom’s car. Google'ing pointed me towards the rear heat shield coming loose. I used some aluminum flashing and oversized washers to fasten it back in place.

Tools:

1. Scissors
2. 10mm socket wrench
3. WD-40
4. Framing nail + hammer

Parts:

1. 10-24 nylon lock nuts
2. 3/16" x 1 ¼" washers
3. aluminum flashing