I’ve been working on a library for easily exporting Trello information to CSV, TSV, and XLSX. It’s currently working well for all three formats although the code itself is first or second draft quality. (Not that XLSX has some issues of its own when done from Ruby. I’d like to solve it eventually but it’s on the back seat since the files still open.) I took the time to import it into CodeClimate’s automated test system to see where potential issues are. It revealed that one particular set of methods was far too complex. These were the methods that generate the CSV or XLSX file. I sat down to refactor them while under the weather this weekend and here’s what I accomplished: -Extracted code out into methods (needs more of this as methods don’t have single responsibilities) -Abstracted the process into a single uber method that calls sub methods (could be private methods later in development) -In order to abstract the process to be identical for CSV and XLSX, I found one spot that needed an eval(content) statement. ( Perhaps in the future I can adapt a lambda to better suit this purpose?? ) Here are the different versions of it: Before-After-Diff-Looking at it again I want to extract the different classes into their own files for better compartmentalizing the code. Let me know in the comments what code smells are present or what refactorings are still advised.

I recently found myself working from a restaurant with open WIFI. After having someone on open WIFI snatch my Facebook credentials back in 2009, I’ve become understandably paranoid about security on unsafe connections. I spent a few minutes setting up a Squid Proxy on my VPS, when I came upon a better solution: set a SOCKS Proxy in OSX and create an SSH tunnel.

How it works

The SSH tunnel connects to the VPS using an encrypted channel. This is open for use on a localport such as 8080 (or a randomly assigned one w/ script). The SOCKS Proxy passes network requests to the localport instead of sending them to the web/email-server/etc.

How to do it

On OSX it consists of the two following steps: sudo networksetup -setsocksfirewallproxy Wi-Fi 127.0.0.1 $localport off ssh -f -p $remoteport -D $localport $remoteuser@$remoteproxy sleep 1d This is all well and good, but someone went to the trouble of wrapping this in a script: OSX-PROXY. I took a little bit of time this weekend and refactored the code to extract functions, utilize a case statement, and add extra commandline arguments.   My revised script also toggles the state of the proxy if no arguments are given.

Update

The aforementioned code works very well but I’m not sure if it re-routes all DNS requests which could divulge personal information. So I switched to this python library that re-routes all activity and is more established: SShuttle. Add an alias to the shell for quick starting with default settings: [code]alias sshuttle_start=’sshuttle --dns -vvr user@vps 0/0' [/code](Replace user and vps placeholders with the appropriate info). PS - Never ever trust public or semi-public Wifi.  Using a proxy like this is the minimum security that you should consider.

I’ve been listening to RubyRogues which introduced me to Avdi Grimm from the Ruby community. I’ve also been subscribed to his RubyTapas screencast series which is a 2x a week Ruby show.

He uses a neat tool called rcodetools to execute Ruby code from within an Emacs buffer. Unfortunately, it wasn’t working when I tried to use the VIM counterpart, with segfault codes showing up. Here’s the fix: ( I’m using RVM to manage my Ruby Versions ) *Install Tim Pope’s excellent rvm extension for VIM cd ~/.vim/bundle git clone git://github.com/tpope/vim-rvm.git

*Install rcodetools using RVM gem install rcodetools

*Remove keybindings in other programs (ie Dashboard & Expose) for F10, F11, F12 or rebind the keys per README.vim

Now enter a VIM file and type F12 on any lines that you want the output from followed by F11 to evaluate the whole file. If you want to only re-evaluate the current line use F10 instead of F11.

It’s a great tool for terminal screencasting! Thanks Avdi for letting me know that this tool is available.

After frequently finding myself not using the current version of Metes and Bounds, I wrote a Ruby script to automagically do that very thing.  It checks current version, downloads the current version, and installs it into /Applications (BEWARNED, it nukes your current version of Metes and Bounds.app, use at your own risk):Thanks to this random blog for the hint on mounting DMGs from commandline!

Migrating from a flaky VPS to a more reliable one has generally been a hassle. But one easy part was migrating NeoRouter Server to a new Xen VPS. tar -zcvpf OUTPUT\_FILENAME.tar.gz /usr/local/ZebraNetworks/NeoRouter Rsync or scp that file over to new VPS wget http://download.neorouter.com/Downloads/NRPro/Update\_1.6.3.3150/Linux/Ubuntu/nrclient-1.6.3.3150-pro-ubuntu-amd64.deb sudo dpkg -i nrclient-1.6.3.3150-pro-ubuntu-amd64.deb Decompress file into place in /usr/local… etc Log into NeoRouter dashboard and redirect domain to new IP address (as found by running ifconfig on NeoRouter Server VPS) Save dashboard settings, click ‘Domain Status’ tab, and gloat in your success!

I’ll keep it short and sweet but here’s the top list of tools that I’m using in various tech areas of my life.

FASD - Making me more of a speed daemon on cd’ing around terminal along with instant vimming from anywhere. PEW PEW!

Alfred - Speed daemon in graphical environment with starting new programs, running terminal commands, etc. Akin to Launchy, Gnome-Do, Quicksilver (which I wish worked better on my Mac). [This one is Mac specific but see other programs for different OSes]

iTerm2 - Customizable and nicely integrates with tmux. [Mac specific, but on Linux I’ve been super happy with Terminator]

tmux - Terminal multiplexer. Like screen, but much more easily customized. Feels like a VIM take on screen control once it’s tweaked.

VIM - My favorite editor. Mainly used in the terminal but occasionally I use MacVim for the glitz.

Vimium - Bring the powers of VIM into the Chrome Browser. Very very slick interface, especially for opening links, scrolling … just go install it.

VimRepress - Blog with Wordpress from the safety confines of VIM (as I am now)… in MARKDOWN!

GoogleCl - Commandline access to Google features such as Contacts and Calendars. Great for adding events from the commandline. Python tool IIRC.

QuickCursor - Lets me use VIM to edit just about anything. It opens a new VIM instance/buffer with the highlighted text, say from an email and pushes it back into that spot after editing w/ Vim.

BetterTouchTool - Nice easy way to assign keystrokes to open a program, move window to specific region of screen, etc. Also complemented by BetterSnapTool.

TaskWarrior - Task manager on the commandline. Like Todo.sh but with more commandline power and no Android/iOS app. Worthwhile trade at the moment after 3 weeks use. Does have a Sinatra app with TaskWarrior integration… and I’m tempted to scrape together a Ruby tool to have commandline Pomodoro tracker that integrates with Growl and TaskWarrior (as an annotate function)

And in no specific order:

-Dropbox, Evernote, DashExpander, Pomodairo, TweetDeck, Sparrow/Thunderbird (Sparrow for slick integration, Thunderbird for extensions and power), and last but certainly not least Z-Shell.

Let me know in the comments or on Twitter if I’m missing any good tools!

@_zph

I attended the CodeRetreat at @SteelCityRuby 2012 and this post is an abbreviated recap of my experience.

It was great! I had fun. There, I’ve thoroughly explained it. Go forth and try it out when CodeRetreat comes to a city near you.

Oh, you wanted more of an explanation? It was an event lasting from 8am to 5pm and it involved turning programming on its head. Corey Haines led the event with the space donated by 4Moms (thanks!!!).

We ran through a series of 45 min pair programming sessions interspersed with lecture sessions and short breaks. Each session was with a new random programming partner and had its own evil (but useful) coding constraints. Think of the constraints as a way to shake free many coding habits and relearn more maintainable patterns.

So what did I and others learn from this day of intense and fun coding? 1. Re-usable and easily modified code is worth its weight in rubies. 2. Think of the ways that constraints may change in the future, code to allow this (ie is true/false sufficient or should it be more than a binary choice?). 3. Tests are more than tests, they’re a roadmap for talking with fellow programmers on your team. 4. Communication is very important, sometimes more than programming skill when working as a pair. I found myself spending time and effort working on communicating well and understanding what my pair partner was envisioning. 5. Contemplate why you’re passing primitives as output from methods. Consider where passing an object could be better. 6. Short methods are maintainable methods, also helps with easier testing. 6b. The idea of a ‘screen-full of code’ being the max for a method came from our elder days when very few lines fit on a screen …. not from now with a 1080p screen with 9 pt font. 7. Possibly the most important learning of the day: Rubyists are very fun and supportive, even of newer programmers.

So think of a CodeRetreat as a sassy, challenging, sometimes infuriating exploration of ’the code less written’, with apologies to Robert Frost.

Give CodeRetreat a try when its in your area. I’ll be hitting up the next one that comes this way.

:setlocal ff=Unix :w

Converts and saves current buffer as Unix standard line endings. n FTW!

Update

brew install dos2unix Then use dos2unix to easily swap line endings into Unix format dos2unix \*.rb

My head has finally stopped spinning from the CodeRetreat at this year’s Steel City Ruby Conference (2012), the fires are extinguished at work, and I’m ready to document the experience. I arrived as the first participant, not because I’m overachieving but because the Pittsburg taxi system is very irregular. I allowed the same time as the day before for a cabbie to pick me up, which was 30 minutes. Instead I was swooped up in 10 minutes and arrived nearly an hour early for the CodeRetreat at 4Mom’s office. The CodeRetreat was lead by the charismatic Corey Haines, the same bloke who set a wonderful tone on day one of @SteelCityRuby by emphasizing personal networking. In fact, the tone set by his keynote speech kept the conference largely free from individuals using their laptops during speeches! Quite a difference from other conference scenes that I’ve experienced :). But back to the point, the CodeRetreat was held in the offices of 4Moms and the food was sponsored by those fine folks. We started the day by pair programming Conway’s Game of Life using Test Driven Development. The first round lasted 45 min and we were then told that the specs had changed and to fix our code in another 10 min. Thankfully our code was relatively modular and the changes needed were minimal. We reviewed the amount of code revision needed to implement small requirement shifts and discussed how to build in flexibility and simplicity into the code.

Notes: Revelations: spending time learning social intricacies of collaborating

Dear Mail.app, I don’t want to open Mail for configuration every time an iCal notification arrives. And no I don’t want to use Mail as my default. And no, I don’t want to setup even a dummy email account in Mail. sudo chmod 000 /Applications/Mail.app PS - You too iTunes sudo chmod 000 /Applications/iTunes.app #fixing_OSX kthxbye