Posts

tl;dr In the conclusion of a two part series, we explore how to optimize the website we designed in the first article. We also show how to control the size of the AdSense ads placed in the page and we employ Hugo (a static site generator) and Gulp (a swiss-knife tool), to automate site generation. Introduction Previously, we designed a responsive website, using only HTML5 and CSS3. After “themeing” the site and creating proper content, I tested against Google’s PageSpeed.

tl;dr Designing mobile-friendly websites is a must these days. In addition to the increasing traffic coming from mobile devices, Google will make some changes to its algorithm to improve the discovery of mobile-friendly content. In this article, the first of a two part series, I’ll show you how to build a responsive blog website, using CSS3’s display: flex and media queries as the main construction blocks. Introduction Creating a responsive web design seems a daunting task at first, but with the right mindset, it can be done pretty quickly.

tl;dr Gitlab is a great git hosting service, almost as powerful as Github. But, is there something out there that’s comparable to Gitlab/Github, yet simpler to manage ? I think Gogs does the job. Introduction These days, Github has become the preferred platform to host code. With its many great features, ease of use and access, almost all software developers are happily using it. Also, since Google Code hosting project is closing down, you can expect more projects being driven to it.

tl;dr How easy is it to switch from zsh to fish ? Is it worth it ? Background In the beginning … there was bash and all was good. The built-in OSX terminal catered to my needs whenever I had to wander into shell land. The Road to Enlightenment But when I started hearing about iTerm2, themes (Solarized, Tomorrow, etc.) and dotfiles (Github dotfiles, Holman dotfiles, etc.), there was only one possible outcome: zsh.

tl;dr This article discusses an implementation of the actor paradigm in a go application. Background Currently, there are two well known languages that support actors: Erlang and Scala. The core concept is that modules (actors) in your application communicate exchanging messages, which makes concurrency very easy to handle for developers. This is in contrast to thread-based concurrency (like in C++), where the developer has much more work to do to get the system working correctly.

Background so, back in 2012 i posted about virtualizing my media storage and general backup infrastructure. today i will post about going back to bare metal … well, sort of :) just a couple of days ago, my setup was running and working mostly fine the biggest nuisance was that since i didn’t leave the unraid boxes running 24x7, each time i wanted to turn them on, i had to start the unraid vms, then turn the das boxes and finally start the array manually.

That’s right. This is Yet Another Running Vert.x on Heroku Article ! It does have some differences with regards to other articles though. Let’s see. You can check the live app right now ! Background Since I published the code for a proof of concept vert.x/angularjs/bootstrap app on Github, I considered how easy/difficult it would be to make it run on one of the popular Paas. I first considered OpenShift due to affinity (Vert.

Introduction vaultee is a proof of concept web app, designed to showcase mostly vert-x and angular.js capabilities. what it does, is keep track of different properties (assets) that you own, and automatically version each change performed (revisions), so you can go back in time to check. it is mostly suited to keep track of computer builds, but it can easily be extended to other kind of assets (thinking home theater setups and such).

so, it’s been quite a while now since my last update with regards to my hackintosh, old trusted blackbeard. i have to tell you … it’s killing me the fact that sleep isnt working … whenever i shutdown and come online again, i have to rearrange most of the windows in their corresponding workspace (i have 6 workspaces). but that’s literally NOTHING compared to the fact that the whole system freezes, due to some god forsaken nvidia drivers for my gtx 660ti … no incantation i tried made any difference … and there are plenty of reports about this even on the official apple support forums (with regards to macbook pros and such).

it all started when i started considering the deployment of the vert.x app i’m working on. i will deploy to OpenShift, but i will also open source the code through Github. so, when i was analyzing how to transfer the code over, i came across Github Pages. i already had two sites: apertoire.net (hosted on Rackspace) apertoire.tumblr.com (hosted on Tumblr) the rackspace site held a wordpress blog and some software products i’ve developed over the years.

well, i need to add a couple of comments after my last post i deliberately chose to create the zfs dataset with a passphrase encryption method. as per solaris docs, this means it can’t mount it at boot time. the best practice would be a boot time prompt (a la TrueCrypt in windows), but until that time comes, i will live with loading after booting, using the following: $ sudo zfs mount -a $ sudo zfs set share tank/backup here seems to be a better way by doing zfs set key -l, but docs are scarce

so the plan is as follows: build a zfs box, with a two drive mirror pool rsync data from blackeard (my hackintosh mac) to the zfs box snaphot the zfs filesystem (full and incrementals) crashplan the backup to the cloud this basically gives me a two factor backup scenario: time machine-like fast access (without all the storage wasting that time machine does, on the zfs box) and offsite more secure storage (crashplan pro on the cloud)

i’m currently running an unRaid server, which hosts my media collection (movies, tv series, music, pictures and data backups) but, i’m running out of space on the server (currently 31.69TB used out of 32.51TB available) so i started looking for options on how to expand my capacity and decided on adding a second unRaid server, virtualizing both unRaids in an ESXi 5 head server and putting the disks on two DAS boxes (discussions at two unraid servers, atlas: a virtualized unraid, building a jbod das

i think it’s relevant to post some of the media sentiment about the latest iteration of windows 8. Paul Thurrott (of winsupersite.com fame) Woody Leonhard (of askwoody.com fame)

A nice article about upcoming Windows 8 was posted by James Kendrick at ZDNet … What problem does Window 8 solve ? I find the new logo kind of hideous :)

i’m writing this from blackbeard, my hackintosh mac. i was able to build this machine and have it working flawlessy under OSX Lion, mainly due to tonymacx86’s excellent site. two articles showed me in detail how to build the machine Building a Sandy Bridge CustoMac: Buyer’s Guide UniBeast: Install Mac OS X Lion Using an All-In-One Bootable USB Drive i chose the following specs for my mac: case: Corsair Obsidian 650D mobo: Gigabyte GA-Z68XP-UD3 cpu: Intel Core i5-2500K ram: Corsair 1600MHZ DDR3 16GB gpu: AMD Radeon HD 6850 power supply: Corsair 650 watts ssd: OCZ Nocti Series 60GB hard disk: Western Digital 1TB EARS the keyboard, mouse and display come from my previous pc rig.

I’m moving to Mac OSX, after many years running different Microsoft operating systems. Stay tuned !

$ Stay Hungry. Stay Foolish Steve Jobs

Rationale MeediOS is an open source HTPC media center application. Although it’s currently still an alpha version, it has become very stable and has an active development team working on improving it and making it ready for a beta release. You can get gorgeous HTPC navigation, applying user interface themes (skins) such as Evolution. In order to make it work, you have to import your media files, namely your movies, tv shows episodes, pictures, etc.

Rationale At the beginning of the year, I opened an account with a different bank than the one I was using exclusively for the past few years. Although some external factors were involved, there was also some financial gains with this transaction. Anyhow, this new bank has a somewhat challenging understanding of ofx (Money) format, so the ofx files I downloaded weren’t readable by GnuCash. I initially thought about doing some manual manipulation, but quickly realized it wasn’t scalable.