I recently checked a site of mine (Andy Status Tool) that was being served under https using the Caddy web server. However, my browser was telling me that the site was “not secure” and making me click two times to get to the site, and still showing “Not Secure” in the URL window.
I asked ChatGPT what to do about this, and of course it gave me 7-8 things to check/try. I decided to do the third thing (manually trigger certificate renewal). I logged into my server, navigated to the directory that had my Caddyfile, and entered the command “sudo caddy reload –force” (there are two dashes in front of the word “force”). I waited about 10 seconds, then closed the browser tab to my site, opened a new tab, and went to the site again – it was secure again! Thanks ChatGPT!
I sing in a church choir, one which typically sings four-part harmony. For many hymns, we start in unison for verse 1, then add parts in later verses. Sometimes, my fellow tenor and I will try to sing our part, but decide to shift to unison. Sometimes, when I sing, I sing the wrong pitch, or the wrong words. However, the music goes on – in general, the choir continues singing. Even in cases where the director may make a change (going to another verse due to the entrance of the priest not being complete), the choir follows, using their musicality to keep the music going.
In all these instances, the printed music provides the framework for the musical performance. As a counter-point, source code for computer software is a fragile language – one semi-colon out of place and everything stops…
I recorded this on 11/23/2024, so I am using that in the title, even though I am posting it 2 days later. Coves the election, what to do next, and what technical projects I think I will work on next.
Datasette: Datasette is a tool for exploring and publishing data. It helps people take data of any shape, analyze and explore it, and publish it as an interactive website and accompanying API.
Dave Winer again calls for “a twitter-like system built with feeds, with all their limits”. In May 2023, I created My Status Tool (Github repo) using Node.js that provides the basic posting and reading functionality within Twitter, but using RSS and rssCloud as the enabling technologies. Colin Walker also created a PHP implementation (Github repo), and our two versions were able to interop. Dave also called for this back in December 2023 (my response), but from what I heard, Dave had some other ideas besides working with MyStatusTool. I don’t think that FeedLand is the system he was talking about, and I don’t think that Blogroll Social is the system either. Anyone interested in working on this?
I have been wanting to try out some PHP scripts for posting to a WordPress site from Ton Ziljstra (see this page for background, and Github for the scripts). I have a Windows laptop, and have used WAMPServer on previous laptops so I chose WAMPServer (download link). I noticed when I started the install that there were some Visual C redistributable files that also needed to be installed (see bottom of this page). I went to the release page and downloaded the latest version of the VisualCppRedist_AIO_x86_x64.exe file and used “Run as administrator”. This application installs multiple Visual C executables, and takes several minutes to run. You will see a number of windows open and close. When the installation is complete, there will be a splash screen indicating that all files have been installed. This might be behind other windows, so you may want to monitor the icons in the Windows app tray at the bottom of the screen to see if there is an icon you do not recognize.
After the installation, it is a good idea to run this checking app to confirm that all necessary Visual C files were installed correctly. I ran this and got the message that all installations were complete.
Finally, I started the WampServer installation by double-clicking on the EXE file I had downloaded to start. There are several checkboxes to accept the license, the location of the installation, and default web browser and text editor, but other than that, the installation took care of itself. To start WAMPServer, I double-clicked on the icon on my desktop (titled “Wampserver”). A splash screen indicated after 10-15 seconds that all server apps were running. I started Microsoft Edge and typed “localhost” in the address text, and got a “main screen” with info on the server apps.
Finally, I wanted to create a test PHP file to make sure that the server was working. I used the following source code:
<!DOCTYPE html>
<html>
<body>
<?php
echo “My first PHP script!”;
?>
</body>
</html>
I saved this in a file called hello.php, and copied it to C:\wamp64\www. I then changed the URL in the browser to localhost/hello.php and saw the following:
Now I am ready to start doing some PHP testing!
While looking for some testing resources, I found a nice introduction to test-driven development by James Shore. His Github repo contains a test environment for Node.js and Javascript, but I think the key feature are the five videos linked from the repo. Also, they are part of a larger video site that used to be a subscription site, but is now free to all. Awesome!
Greg Wilson has been on a decades-long quest to transform how we teach and talk about software design. From getting rejections for using the term “beautiful code,” to empowering scientists through workshops on Python and Unix, Greg has pushed to bridge the gap between theory and practice.
Join us as Greg shares his failures and epiphanies along the way. You’ll hear how he revolutionized research computing by showing physicists the power of profilers. How he taught grad students the elegance of shell scripts. And how he’s crusaded to create a shared language to discuss software architecture with the nuance of true craftsmanship.
Greg’s captivating journey reveals that with perseverance and the right examples, we can elevate software design discussion to an art form. But that we’ve got a long way to go. You’ll come away enlightened and eager to level up your own understanding of software design.
Software Unscripted: Programming and Industrial Design with Greg Wilson – Richard talks with programming teacher Greg Wilson about different types of beginner programmers and how they learn most effectively, what counterintuitive aspects of programming languages they tend to find more or less difficult to learn, and about the surprising relationship between software architecture and industrial design.
