I like to pair program with my fellow engineers from time to time when I’m stuck on a problem or want to ensure reviews for complex code changes don’t take a long time. Remote pair programming isn’t as high bandwidth as sitting next to each other, but the experience can be improved with the help of a telephony tool and a shared tmux session in a cloud VM.
How to Setup Ircd-hybrid With SSL on Ubuntu
Spotify uses IRC (internet relay chat) for instant messaging with an SSL layer for encryption.
Everytime I logon I get a (notice) *** You are connected using SSL cipher "RSA-AES-128-CBC-SHA1"
banner. Here’s how I setup an encrypted IRC service on my home Ubuntu server. Installing the
vanilla ircd-hybrid package is straight forward, but the package in the official repo isn’t
compiled with SSL support. I needed to build it myself with the SSL patch.
Temporary Email and Traffic Visualization
I recently finished 10minutemail.davidxia.com, a disposable email service (it even has forward and reply functionality, I’m so proud), and vis.davidxia.com, a visualization of my website’s traffic.
How to Tweet Automatically, Twitter Bot
A while ago, I wrote some amateurish scripts that tweeted automatically via Twitter’s API. First I used PHP then Ruby. I’ve settled on Python and gotten rid of database dependencies by serializing each bot’s user data. Simpler, flatter, better. Check out the code here.
Farts and Craps With David Xia – Waterboarding
Waterboarding has been a controversial topic ever since the fall of 2007, when it was widely reported that the CIA was using waterboarding on extrajudicial prisoners and that the Justice Department authorized the procedure as an “enhanced interrogation technique.” Many consider waterboarding torture and a violation of Common Article 3 of the Geneva Conventions.
I’m in no way trying to diminish the implications waterboarding with this personal experiment. I wanted to experience waterboarding first-hand in order to better understand the context surrounding the debate. I never truly feared for my life because my trusted friends administered the waterboarding and I held a wooden block which I would drop when I couldn’t take anymore. But I can say that when done right, I felt like I was drowning. I had no control over my spasms and gags.
Ice Climbing at Lake Placid
I went ice climbing with some friends last weekend at Lake Placid, NY. Although it was physically punishing, it was a lot of fun. We learned a lot of rope and climbing skills and will definitely be applying them to our future spelunking or climbing trips.
Farts and Craps With David Xia, Potato Cannon
I am a trained professional. Do not try this at home.
Setting Up My New Home Server
Hardware and OS
I was inspired by this Ars Technica article to own hardware after renting one in the cloud
for a while. So I ordered a Foxconn NTA350
Once my new toy arrived, I named him Jarvis and installed Ubuntu 12.04 server edition including the DNS, OpenSSH, SMTP, and LAMP packages.
Vim + Tmux + Cloud Virtual Machine = Increased Productivity
Recently I’ve been working with a kick-ass combination of Vim, tmux, and my cloud virtual machine that has increased my productivity.
Workflow
- Open terminal
- ssh into cloud VM
- Create a new tmux session (
tmux new -s [session name]) or attach to an existing one (tmux attach -t [session name]) - List tmux sessions with
tmux list-sessions - Use Vim, open like 50 tabs, don’t care about it
- Lose network connection, put computer to sleep, abruptly or accidentally close terminal
application because you’re like F**k this. I’m going home, or intentionally detach from tmux
session (
ctrl-b d) - Reattach to tmux session
- BAM, it’s like you never left!
C Stdlib IO Functions and System Call Equivalents
I’m reading The C Programming Language
| C stdlib | return value | header | system call | return value | header | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| files | file pointer FILE *fp | stdio.h | file descriptor int td | |||
| streams | stdin, stdout, stderr | stdio.h | 0, 1, 2 | |||
| open | FILE *fopen(char *name, char *mode) | file pointer on success, NULL on failure | stdio.h | int open(char *name, int flags, int perms) | file descriptor on success, -1 on error | fctnl.h |
| create | (fopen creates file if it doesn’t exist) | int creat(char *name, int perms) | fctnl.h | |||
| read | int getc(FILE *fp); getchar = getc(stdin) | next char, EOF on end of file or error | stdio.h | int read(int fd, char *buf, int n) | number bytes read, 0 on EOF, -1 on error | stdio.h |
| read | char *fgets(char *line, int maxline); gets = fgets(stdin) | *line on success, NULL on EOF or error | stdio.h | |||
| write | int putc(int c, FILE *fp) | char written on success, EOF on error | stdio.h | int write(int fd, char *buf, int n) | number bytes written, 0 on EOF, -1 on error | stdio.h |
| write | int fputs(char *line, FILE *fp); puts = fputs(stout) | non-negative int on success, EOF on error | stdio.h | |||
| close | int fclose(FILE *fp) | 0 on success | stdio.h | int close(int fd) | 0 on success | unistd.h |
| perms | r, w, a | |||||
| flags | O_RDONLY, O_WRONLY, O_RDWR | fctnl.h | ||||
| BUFSIZ | stdio.h |