The biggest security concern that I have is wireless spooffing. My phone just connects to a wireless access point. This is good and bad. I am posting this over an untrusted wireless access point at Zen as I am waiting for my food. I am asking for it. More on my fears and some possible solutions later.
Also, this is my first post from my wordpress iPhone app.
In the recent application that I am building, I am trying to increasingly cache content, so that the site can support more users and have a faster response time. I am pretty impressed with how easy it is to cache using the built in ruby on rails helpers. Integrating ruby with memcache is a different story. I like it, but it the client does not seem to be as fail proof as I would hope. Anyways, there is an interesting problem that is created when caching content. The content that is cached cannot be personalized if you really want to see some performance benefit. In other words, why would you want to have a cached version for every user personalized for them?
I have had always thought that it was ok to wait until the end of a project to implement your cacheing, but I found that you need to keep in in the back of your mind the whole time. We are going to have to write some front end code to recreate the personalized aspects of the site. I wish that we would have just done that from the start.
Has anyone else have any cacheing design ideas or gotchas?
Is being creative the same as producing art? What is art? What is being creative? As a software developer I have always said that I do what I do because it is a good paying creative career. I think that like all disciplines, making good art is very, very difficult. Music, photography, painting, and performance are the typical art form. They have the ability to make you feel something that you would otherwise not feel. Looking at good art art moves you. It inspires you. Does my work as a software developer inspire others? I am not sure. Does it help others? yes. My conclusion is that my software can be art, but it typically is not.
My work does require creative abilities, however. For me this is most of the reward for working in software. Software makes me think. Solving hard problems and predicting a user’s expectations are problems that are very satisfying to solve. However, it is not everything. My expression is not noticed by any other is way that may make them feel something that they would otherwise not feel. (expect upset when it does not work the way they want it to)
I hope I can look back at this post in the coming years and be happy that I began to strive to inspire others through my work instead of just making a dime.
I am trying to get started with git because that is what all of the cool kids are using these days. Getting git on my laptop using darwin ports was kinda weird. I am running Mac OS X (10.5.3).
First, you need to know the name of the package, and second, if you want to use import some svn repositories, then you have to add in that capability. Here is the command that I ran to install git on my machine. (Of course, darwin ports is already installed)
sudo ports install git-core +svn
I was concerned that it was going to replace the system ssh daemon, but don’t fear. It will not replace the system sshd. It prints out a message to tell you how you can replace it if you want, but it will not replace it.
Find my projects on github.
On another note, I find that I have some issues with darwin ports sometime. If I am installing something that has a lot of dependencies, I find that the build just stops working. For example, as I am installing git-core +svn my build failed on (sqlite3)[http://www.sqlite.org/]. I found that if I clean the project that failed, and build it by itself, it will build successfully, and you can move on. Here are my commands to solve this problem:
sudo port clean sqlite3
sudo port install sqlite3
sudo port install git-core +svn
Briefly, I just wanted to jot down some notes that might help some else working with any of these rails tools:
In my attempts to use the three of these together, I found that the sortable_element format regex, which is used to extract the id from the id attribute of the li tag, was not acceptable for use with the GUID plugin. At first glance, it looks like it should have worked. Anyway, by trying to follow the documentation, I tried the following:
The document said the format was a regex, so I gave it a regex. This did not work! It creates invalid javascript.
<%= sortable_element('tasks', :url => {:action => 'update_positions'}, :ghosting => true, :format => /^task_(.*)$/, :only => 'task')%>
Ok so I regex does not work, I will try a string.
<%= sortable_element('tasks', :url => {:action => 'update_positions'}, :ghosting => true, :format => "^task_(.*)$", :only => 'task')%>
String does not work, so let’s try a javascript string.
<%= sortable_element('tasks', :url => {:action => 'update_positions'}, :ghosting => true, :format => "'^task_(.*)$'", :only => 'task')%>
As you can see my approach to problem solving is not methodical. It is more brute force.
The moral of the story is to use a javascript string for the format configuration for the sortable_element.
As an employee of Symantec, I hear many different opinions of our company. Last night, I was at the Austin On Rails party at SXSW, and I met a guy that was confused about the positioning of security companies on botnets, spyware, etc. After talking with him for a few minutes, I told him a little of what I know about what NIS does, especially the WholeSecurity contributions to NIS, and he was very impressed with what NIS can do. Everything happens without the users knowing, which is good and bad. (BTW, I could not straighten out his confusion on botnets and spyware. That is above my pay grade.)
Here at SXSW, I went to listen to Jason Fried of 37signals, and one opinion that he had was that TV chefs are the best business people at this time. His reasoning is that the chefs share what they know. They do not fear others stealing their recipes they share in books and on TV. I bring this up, because I hope that Symantec can share many of their recipes. They have lots of them, and they are the best in the world.
This week, I am at the SXSW Interactive conference that is here at the Austin Convention Center. After the first real day, I am still excited about all that I can learn from all of these really smart people. I am having a great time. A third party application provider, sched.org, seems to have created a really great tool for for planning your day. With this, you can view all of the sessions, and the details of the sessions. You don’t even need the $40 book to know what you want to do.
I kinda got put out by the fact that I had to sign up for an account in order to use their service. I am tired of signing up for accounts. I think there are a few reasons that I would rather not sign up for an account.
Now, I know that collecting email address and accounts is the best way to save user preferences, track growth, and market the new features of an application, but there has got to be a better way. Ideally, I would like to use a web application that does not require you to sign up. Application providers need to be more creative in the way that they are designing their applications in order to provide this. Second, the use of openid would cut down on the time to take to sign up for an account. This would also allow for saving user preferences.
More later…
I hope that you enjoy this piece. It came from deep within my soul.
Who is going to SXSWi? If you are not going, what are some free events that you are sure to be at. I would like to meetup with all of you. Are there any wiki’s or anything that tries to consolidate all of the events? I am mostly interested in the non-SXSWi functions. The SXSWi events are pretty documented.
