Reddit:crypto makes my day

I finally discovered reddit:crypto (and also reddit:ruby) thanks to a guy I ran into at the RubyChicago event I blogged about a few days ago. Actually, he mentioned how much he liked reddit:python, and I went from there...

Anyway.

http://www.reddit.com/r/crypto/

http://www.reddit.com/r/ruby/

http://www.reddit.com/r/Python/

Extreme Programming Applied by Auer and Miller

I got this book in the mail today. I don't think that it's the one that TW will want me to buy and read, but this is a fucking excellent book and I'll read their favorite when they tell me what it is, because they haven't done that yet (it's not like it'll take me until January to read it, so that doesn't bother me.)

Extreme Programming Applied by Auer and Miller http://www.amazon.com/Extreme-Programming-Applied-Playing-Win/dp/0201616408

Frankly, I bought it because 1. Fowler linked to it and 2. It was $0.01 (+shipping) used.

It is- let me say this again- awesome. It has stories. Which is to say, short biographical case studies. I skimmed the table of contents and then started skipping around in the book. It is tasty. Writing style is important, dammit.

"Suppose the best programmer on your team gets run over by a truck." p.170

I mean, I totally always start with that assumption...

"If I could write code that you couldn't understand, then I was, by implication, smarter than you. You can imagine the stinky code that came out of this group!" p.213

Anyway, the book might not be as entertaining as I think it is right now, but meh. Will see.

Amp talk @ ThoughtWorks

These are straight notes taken during the presentation and posted during the clapping. They may be updated later to add explanation and details. Presentation: 6:30pm-7pm, + questions.

Talk is by Justin Love

AMP: Mercurial.

http://www.delicious.com/rauros/amp

His first version control was http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Microsoft_Visual_SourceSafe ...soon learned better. had to let Windows ppl in, so used Hg (git was no-windows in 2007)

Michael Edgar, Ari Brown. User seydar

Current version: Amp 0.5.3

Starting to implement git support. Which is hard. Started over and scrapped the old one. Learned a lot. This time: modular. Amp frontend. Git is written in C. Mercurial is written in Python. Monotone is in C==, SVN is in C?

There's not much from Ruby on here. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comparison_of_revision_control_software and part of the manifesto is to change that.

briefly mentioned

Ruby Sinatra http://www.sinatrarb.com/

Ruby merb http://merbivore.com/documentation.html

Amp will be somewhat like ActiveRecord? In that it translates...

Talking about the rebuilding of Rails 3 around modularization. Common api to things.

Showing off the ability to modify/rename commands. Also looking @ code.

This is using Trollop. What's Trollop? http://trollop.rubyforge.org/ "A commandline parser for Ruby that gets out of your way. "

Discuss billing command parsing... "estimate time spent" How many ppl here just understood those last few slides? (about implementing billing estimate using amp)?

in amp, a command will be defined as a class. Can use Ruby built-in modules to customize commands. (hwa?)

git output- not standardized. Many problems. Get around this by amp-grit instead of amp-git? http://grit.rubyforge.org/

I would like to see the version of the manifesto. Link?

There's a guy w a fancy camera taking pics. I want a camera like that. I wonder where the pics will be posted?

Questions:

Q svn will be supported?

yes. problem yet to be tackled. svn workflow is very different... haven't addressed problem yet.

Q what distinguishes amp? what makes you choose it over Hg? or a different system?

It's a general system. Well, it will be a general system. "Ignore the ppl who don't care right now."

"This is my RubyConf talk, I have to add 15min to it, so give me suggestions.

To present at one of these things, talk to chicagoruby.org via email.

Elephant and Castle now.

Google: security

http://googleonlinesecurity.blogspot.com/2010/11/rewarding-web-application-security.html

In other words, Google will pay you (and make you famous and possibly hire you) to find their security bugs for them.

Rocking.

Sadly I don't know where I would start on a project like that. Maybe some googling will give me some ideas. (ahaha irony)

EDIT: after reading parts of the Hall of Fame for people who've won the money, I'm less convinced that I can make an immediate contribution, but more convinced that I want to.

Rspec and pair programming

Friday I:

- pairprogrammed for real for the first time. Ping-pong method == fun

- forgot my root password, (which I've used several times daily for the last month)

- remembered my password

- installed Rspec

- used Rspec

- was amazed at how useful Rspec is

- got quizzed on my (very small) knowledge of SQL and databases

I need to do a lot more writing tests before I can do it quickly and easily but my long-ago JUnit experience actually helped me catch on reasonably quickly... although I may have seemed like a dumbass a few times when I was trying to figure out what should be tested next.

Saturday morning I was one of the judges for the IIT Ethics Bowl contest. It was entertaining and slightly informative. Met a few cool people. I might help edit cases next year. IIT-local competition is much less... controversial and regulated than national competition. Which is not unexpected.

Fireshepherd: a response to firesheep

So this guy wrote this thing that crashes Firesheep through a bug. -shrug- Which is cool. I'm going to test it out... maybe tomorrow. Today isn't a good time for it. (I found this because I set up a google alert that sends me blog posts that mention firesheep.)

http://notendur.hi.is/~gas15/FireShepherd/

FireShepherd, a small console program that floods the nearby wireless network with packets designed to turn off FireSheep, effectively shutting down nearby FireSheep programs every 0.5 sec or so, making you and the people around you secure from most people using FireSheep.
The program kills current version of FireSheep running nearby, but the user is still in danger of all other session hijacking mechanisms. Do not do anything over a untrusted network that you cannot share with everyone.

Optional command line switches:
-i *IP* Ip Destination for packets, local router is recommended. (A trivial facebook server is default)
The local router can be found with the tracert command. (For example the first hit from "tracert www.google.com")
-t *timeout* Timeout in ms for packet sending. About 200 is ok for a local router. (400 is default)
-h Shows this message

Note that a dot represents a packet being sent.

Download FireShepherd.exe (Win32)
Download Source code
Download Licence.txt

Note that by downloading/using you accept the terms found in licence.txt

Gunnar Atli Sigurdsson, University of Iceland, 2010
e: gas15 at_hi.is

Agile

I read http://martinfowler.com/articles/newMethodology.html and it was pretty excellent. I even took a few notes. It prompted me to do a few things, like add some dev books to my Amazon wishlist. And join this mailing list. http://tech.groups.yahoo.com/group/extremeprogramming/

I learned that XP stands for extreme programming, which is a flavor of agile dev. I met this XP website: http://www.extremeprogramming.org/ which has a list of "rules" i..e progceedures- very useful! I haven't read them yet. But they'll be useful. http://www.extremeprogramming.org/rules.html

To be honest, I feel like my brain is a little fried. It's kinda late in the day and it might be time to have a drink and not stare at a glowing screen. My laptop is running hot. I want hot cocoa.

Here's a site which is less simple and usable (to my eyes) than extremeprogramming.org but the article titles look like I want to read them. http://xprogramming.com/index.php (burn down vs. kanban board? locating bottlenecks. Scrum. http://xprogramming.com/articles/kate-oneal-burning-down/) Aha! pics on Google Images tell me that I have seen kanban boards before, at dfr's old workplace and at TW. (What was the name of dfr's old company? Dammit.)

Here is yet another shiny website. For some reason it has book reviews, but there are also Tests from a Hat! Mmmm. Shiny. http://www.xp123.com/g4p/hat/
Also, Scrum on a page! I think I've seen this before, though hell knows where. http://xp123.com/xplor/xp0507/Scrum-dev.pdf There's one for XP but it looks like an undergrad made it for a giveaway project. Oh gods, I probably just stuck my foot in it hardcore. But it does. Let's make new versions. ...Man, I constantly think of things that my professors could have done better. But if they had done all of those things, the students would have had a nervous breakdown. Or balked like overloaded goats.

Anyway. I just ordered this book (Fowler linked to it) because, honestly, it's one cent on amazon, plus shipping. And the description looks like it'd be useful. http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0201616408/
Alistair Cockburn (Scrum/agile guy) has a blog but none of the recent titles caught my attention. Should review it delta time. http://alistair.cockburn.us/Blog?view=dlist

http://pettichord.com/ This guy mentions Selenium, which I've at least looked at although not used, and Watir, which I've never heard of. Time to change that.

Ah, Mingle. I think there's a free dl; it'd be interesting to run it locally. Free for up to five users, or for one year? Someone is pretty sure that the product will hook the customer. http://www.thoughtworks-studios.com/mingle-agile-project-management

Tasty essay to read later "What is software design?" http://www.bleading-edge.com/Publications/C++Journal/Cpjour2.htm

Basically a white paper on why people are important when doing dev. Probably related to the concept that a teally topnotch guru can program 1000(more more)x faster than a basic. http://alistair.cockburn.us/Characterizing+people+as+non-linear%2c+first-order+components+in+software+development Too complicated for me right now. Maybe later.

Agile Alliance homepage! Very StarWars-sounding. http://www.agilealliance.org/

Golly, Fowler has written a lot. http://martinfowler.com/articles.html If I ever run out of books in an airport I know what I can do with my time.

I think that CS ppl believe that the future is inevitable and that trying to slow it down is [negative word here: silly/stupid/futile/etc]

Omg the manifesto! Must read. Heh. http://www.agilemanifesto.org/ I think that this is the coolest link from that article.

Red/Green refactoring- makes sense. Also, code "smells" (I recently learned what these things are and therefore think that they're cool.) http://jamesshore.com/Blog/Red-Green-Refactor.html

Anyway, I've run out of tabs now.

Twitter API limits

I just found out that they existed... by hitting one. Limit of 150 api requests per hour? For me, that's about 10-20 min of heavy usage, and I did do a catchup binge this morning. Dammit. Interesting guidelines, though! Quoted in part below. Link: http://support.twitter.com/entries/15364-about-twitter-limits-update-api-dm-and-following

• Direct Messages: 250 per day.
• API Requests: 150 per hour.
• Updates: 1,000 per day. The daily update limit is further broken down into smaller limits for semi-hourly intervals. Retweets are counted as updates.
• Changes to Account Email: 4 per hour.
• Following (daily): Please note that this is a technical account limit only, and there are additional rules prohibiting aggressive following behavior. You can find detailed page describing following limits and prohibited behavior on the Follow Limits and Best Practices Page. The technical follow limit is 1,000 per day.
• Following (account-based): Once an account is following 2,000 other users, additional follow attempts are limited by account-specific ratios. The Follow Limits and Best Practices Page has more information.

Cool security blogs about Firesheep

http://erratasec.blogspot.com/2010/10/re-firesheep.html
http://blog.mozilla.com/security/2010/10/27/cooling-down-the-firesheep/

Database hilarity presentation

I need to find someone who likes and understands databases so I can share this hilarious hour-long podcast with them. Yes, I listened to the entire damn thing. Also sent it to a professor.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uFLRc6y_O3s

this is by this guy https://twitter.com/#!/fuzzychef

His blog about it: http://it.toolbox.com/blogs/database-soup/wrecking-your-database-33298