Curiously Nerdy

NixOS + SteamVR + OpenXR + Godot

I'm in love with VR and with nix. I want to do my godot and other VR dev in Linux with the ability to easily share the output. SteamVR itself

The Atlantic-Sized Hole between docker and k8s

One place where I've been really unhappy with the UX of modern container-based SDLC pipelines is the creation of the images themselves. Docker was a disruptor, they were first to bring a (mostly) effective UX to the concept of "containers". But it hasn't kept

fly.io replaces Nomad with NIH

The newtech, selfhosted, cloud, IaaS provider fly.io released a blog post last month detailing the escapade. I came upon this post as I've been recently looking through the landscape of [I|P]aaS providers. I'm simple, when I see "replacing Nomad", I click;

Why Kubernetes is the Linux of the Future

I wrote a large diatribe attempting to extol the virtues of kubernetes in an internal document, trying to sell it off as the perfect abstraction layer. The Linux kernel itself

Addicted to Kubernetes

I've spent the last year working at my current gig with a talented team to make a huge move from onprem kvm virtual machines and puppet, to containers and kubernetes deployed to an onprem cloud. Before that I spent the better part of a

Software Development

Deconstructing a Static XModem Encrypted Bootloader

This was an on-paper design I used to verify the data access patterns of a hardware bootloader that could write updates to chip config and flash from an encrypted payload using a hardware-protected AES PSK, all clocked by xmodem frames. There are formal verification

Sysop

Piloting RabbitMQ with Kubernetes

I am a fan of straight-forward declarative infrastructure, and for smoothing the interface between "hardware" infra tools like Terraform and orchestrating workloads on top of that hardware, I

Software Development

Persist Values in React with Custom Hooks

I needed to persist simple settings into localStorage in some react code, but the value of these settings were driven by a reducer. Composing a reducer and an effect hook

Software Development

Simple Function Three Ways

I've been spending some free time refactoring an OSS project I took over when the original dev sold the Chrome store app to a malware company; users have been asking

Sysop

Install Customized VIM from Source on Debian/Ubuntu

I am frequently using vim features that are not built into the default distro builds, and so I find it easiest to just build and install it from scratch to

Sysop

Configuring gpg-agent for SSH Authentication on Ubuntu

Since gpg-agent isn't used for ssh authentication on Ubuntu, and there are indeed 2 different daemons vying for the job, it can get complicated to figure out how to untangle

Using ssh-copy-id with Username and Password

Adding your private key fingerprint to ~/.ssh/authorized_keys is usually one of the first things you do with new Linux boxen. ssh-copy-id is meant to make that task easy by internally using ssh to automatically add the fingerprint for your default or a

Finder, Open iTerm Here

I used to be a windows junky and one command that I often used was the "Open command window here". It's a quick and easy way to start

Software Development

Node.js Encrypted Lantronix XPort Comms

The Lantronix XPort is a popular embedded "device server" which is effectively an ethernet card for microcontrollers. It provides transparent ethernet connectivity to a serial device sonnected via

Caseless identifier case strategy

If you've ever written software or enjoy dabbling in the inspect right-click option, you have seen these. In most structured computer languages, whitespace is important. Not necessarily important as in

Responsive Breakpoints and You

.ac { text-align: center; } When I'm working with responsive layouts, it helps me to have a quick reference or two nearby to help jog my memory. This is a cheat that I have printed out and tape to my monitor for when I'm bootstrapping, to

Synology Password Today

Today's root password for Synology devices is This password is calculated on-the-fly, using a naive encoding based simply on the date. Here I've ported code from the Synology source repo

Technology

PuTTY, TMUX and NPM

I use PuTTY often when I'm on a Windows machine to connect to my Linux boxes to do work. I also use TMUX and NPM which both do line-drawings to display UI. NPM When listing a tree of installed modules, NPM uses lines to

Bleeding Edge

Disable GUI on the BeagleBone Black

I've been using the BeagleBone Black as a headless web application server. For this purpose I don't want X Windows or GDM slowing the boot process and taking up precious resources. I looked around for ways to disable these processes and the top results

Technology

Node.js Sprinkler Controller - Part 1

Why is it that every spring there is something broken on my sprinkler system? This year my, supposedly waterproof, commercial-grade sprinkler controller ended up being non-responsive; leaving my whole sprinkler system as a useless, mindless, zombie moaning for brains. What does a software/hardware

Technology

jQuery Form Serialization Plugin

For a number of projects I've needed to serialize all of the values in a form on the client to JSON in order to post the data back to the server via AJAX. Here's a little jQuery plugin I wrote to help with this

Technology

Bitbucket Support for git and Attractive Pricing

I've been using github for quite a while for working against open-source code bases, but continued to use my own git installation for private repositories; and I did this because of their pricing model. Their UI is very nice, and their features unbeatable, but

Technology

Why Use an Object Relational Mapper

I occasionally (still!) get in heated discussions with fellow developers on the finer points of writing -- or generating -- data access code versus using an O/RM. Usually this discussion is happening at a restaurant or some social gathering place (yes we socialize)

Technology

Hiding ReaderWriterLockSlim housekeeping in a using statement

Fredrik Mörk has an interesting post on using extension methods to hide housekeeping code related to protecting access to a share resource using a ReaderWriterLockSlim. I recommend reading the article, but the short of it is that the standard try, lock, operate, finally, unlock

Technology

Exiting a Windows Phone Application

<UPDATE> Turns out that the Application Certification Requirements 4.2.5 expressly disallows calling any methods in the Microsoft.Xna.Framework.Game and .Graphics assemblies when your application uses any methods from the System.Windows.Controls namespace. So using the method below

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