Koozie Notes

Faux Data Generator: Ruby Library to Generate Random Member Records

I needed a tool to generate some random member data, such as name, address, date of birth, and decided to write some ruby code.  See FauxData for details.

--Chris

 

BootStrap: Twitter's New Web Library

I keep forgetting the name of this library, so this post is for me.

http://twitter.github.com/bootstrap/

 

BootStrap: Web Library from Twitter

VIM: How to hard wrap long lines of text?

Today, I needed to clean up some documentation from an email and I wanted to hard wrap the paragraphs at line length of 50.  After searching a few posts, I found a succinct solution.

14.2. How do I format long lines in a file so that each 
      line contains less than 'n' characters?

You can set the 'textwidth' option to control the number of
characters that can be present in a line. For example, to 
set the maximum width of a line to 70 characters, you can 
use the following command:

    set textwidth=70

Now to break the long lines in a file to the length defined
by the 'textwidth' option, you can use

    :g/./normal gqq

 

Chris

How to Get SFTP Perl support on Windows XP

Today, I needed to update some old perl scripts from sending files via ftp to sftp.  I finally figured out how to make that happen on ActiveState's Perl 5.8.8 running on Windows XP. [Instructions for ActiveState PPMs for 5.8.8]

 

C:\>ppm install http://theoryx5.uwinnipeg.ca/ppms/Net-SSH2.ppd

--Chris

 

Git: Should I use 'git pull' or 'git fetch'?

While searching for documentation explaining the difference between "git pull" versus "git fetch", I found a nice blog posting covering this issue titled, git: fetch and merge, don’t pull.

The short answer is use 'git fetch origin' followed by a 'git merge origin/master'.  You can insert a 'git diff master origin/master' between the first and second command to see what will be brought in.

--Chris

 Online Git Book, "Pro Git"

 

BitCoin: A New Internet Currency?

I first heard about Bitcoin while listening Steve Gibson's Security Now podcast, episode # 287.  

 

Steve: Well, it's really, really clever. The reason that I sort of fell in love with this for the moment is, as I plowed in, I just got a big kick out of the way that the many problems associated with a sort of a floating currency, meaning a currency that isn't anchored by any central bank, there's no state sponsorship for it, I mean, and it's a real thing. Anyone who's interested, and I would encourage our listeners, if this podcast and what they hear about it makes them curious, go check it out. Just put "bitcoin" into Google, and you'll start seeing pages of stuff. And about two years ago the project was registered, a little over two years ago, by a Japanese cryptographer, Satoshi Nakamoto. And it's an open source project on SourceForge, so none of this is black art stuff. The goal is to really solve, I mean, to offer an honest-to-god, non-hobby-level, but industrial-strength, Internet-based, peer-to-peer currency where real value can be exchanged between two parties without any intermediary being involved. And that's one of the trickiest things because you've got all kinds of problems. First of all, where does the currency come from? What creates the currency? How much currency is flowing through the system? How do you monitor that and regulate it? How do you prevent it from being inflated? How do you keep people from fraudulently creating currency? How do you keep someone from, if they have some, from reusing the same currency? All of that has been solved with this system in some very clever and very new ways. Which is really what captivated my attention on this.

 

Next, I installed the Mac version of the Bitcoin client application, and headed over to get some free bitcoins from Gavin's Bitcoin faucet.

So far it is a definetly an interesting solution to a difficult problem: How to provide a true Internet Currency or E-Cash, which is not tied nor control by banks or soverign country.  BitCoin Market Watche provides data on how BitCoin is trading against the US Dollar.  Comments from PayPal on Bitcoin.

 

--Chris 

 

BitCoin Me!  [18cfvqNkQR6Q1bWpAarPiaTM51bRFb2W1z]

Bitcoin Block Explorer: Tool for Review Bitcoins Blocks.

Vim: How to insert and remove tabs while in Insert Mode

This tip was picked up from Daily Vim.

Here are some handy shortcuts that you can utilize while you're in insert mode.

<CTRL> + T: Adjusts current line one indent right
<CTRL> + D: Adjusts current line one indent left

 

Good Sci-Fi Recommendations from Steve Gibson: Episode 277: Security Now!

During episode 277 of Steve Gibson's Security Now! podcast [transcript], he lists several science fiction novels he enjoys reading.  Since I've find it difficult to pick the next book I'm going to read,I decided to list Steve's recommendations here as reference.

 

STEVE: ...  And I'm constantly getting feedback from listeners, saying, hey, Steve, what's happening in the world of sci-fi? So as it happens, still the very best things that I have found are what we've talked about before. If listeners are not familiar with Peter Hamilton, he's at the top of my list.

LEO: Me, too. And you introduced me to him, and I love him.

STEVE: Oh. "Fallen Dragon." You get an introduction. It's a standalone volume. He's very wordy. But so these books are long.

LEO: But they're all good words.

STEVE: Yes, they are. And he paints such a rich environment that, I mean, I still see all of these worlds that he has created for me. So "Fallen Dragon" is a perfect introduction. Then my second favorite series, it's just a two-volume series, is "Pandora's Star," followed by "Judas Unchained," which is the sequel to "Pandora's Star," which is just - I've read "Fallen Dragon" I think three times. I've read both "Pandora's Star" and "Judas Unchained" twice. Because these are things you can reread, or I can. They're just spectacular pieces of work.

I checked and Peter Hamilton's works listed above are available in Kindle edition.  Links are listed below.

1. Fallen Dragon by Peter Hamilton
2. Pandora's Star by Petter Hamilton, book 1 of 2 book series.
3. Judas Unchained by Peter Hamilton, book 2 of 2 book series.

 

[STEVE: ]Then my second favorite we've also spoken of before, and that's Michael McCollum's books. He has a website, Scifi-AZ.com, Michael McCollum. He also writes multi-volume series which I very much enjoy. Because, again, if I read one book, it's like, okay, well, that's gone. It's annoying if the series isn't finished, and then you're, like, stuck waiting, which happens to me from time to time. But his Antares Trilogy - "Antares Dawn," "Antares Passage," and "Antares Victory" - is just fantastic. I read them all twice. And I'm just sort of waiting now for it to be long enough for me to reread them.

And then the Gibraltar Trilogy I've mentioned: "Gibraltar Earth," "... Sun," and "... Stars" is fantastic. And in the case of "Stars," I read it before it was published because just to be his proofreader. So that came out. And I reread the prior two in order to get ready for the third one to be done. So that's great. And he also has many individual novels.

I started reading the Antares series in January, and I'm hooked.  I read the Gibraltar series last year and it was also a great read.  Links are below.

1. Antares Dawn by Michael McCollum, Book 1 of 3
2. Antares Passage by Michael McCollym, Book 2of 3
3. Antares Victory by Michael McCollum, Book 3 of 3
4. Gibraltar Earth by Michael McCollum, Book 1 of 3
5. Gibraltar Sun by Michael McCollum, Book 2 of 3
6. Gibraltar Stars by Michael McCollum, Book 3 of 3

 

STEVE: So I did all of those. Then I said, okay, what next? Then I ran across something called "Helfort's War."

LEO: You like these big long series, don't you. You don't want just one book. You don't want just two books.

STEVE: Well, and here was one where I ran out before the fourth book. This is a series of four. And it's sort of the classic newly minted graduate from Star Fleet, I mean, it's not set in the Star Trek environment, but we do have like the academy. He's graduated from the academy, and we follow his career through four books. And I ran out at the end of the book three, and book four just was published on the 23rd of November. So it's available for Kindle, which is where I'm reading this stuff. And I haven't yet started because I'm just finishing the fourth book in another series of six, which is Gregory Benford's Galactic Center Series.

I haven't read this four book series from Graham Sharp Paul, but the links are listed below.

1. Helfort's War Book 1: The Battle at the Moons of Hell
2. Helfort's War Book 2: The Battle of the Hammer Worlds
3. Helfort's War Book 3: The Battle of Devastation Reef
4. Helfort's War Book 4: The Battle for Commitment Planet

 

[STEVE:] And then Gregory Benford actually is a UCI physics professor.

LEO: I like that. I like hard science.

STEVE: This is. His is the so-called Galactic Center Series. I've just finished "Tides of Light," which is the fourth in the series of six. And here we sort of - we've got the humans versus the machines is like sort of the overall scenario there. And I loved, back in the day, Fred Saberhagen's Berserker series.

LEO: I haven't read those, either.

STEVE: Oh, those are really good, Leo. Berserkers being machines left over from some unknown alien race in the past that are out to kill off all biological life. And really interesting sci-fi that's old. It's been around forever. But now we've got the so-called "mechs," the mechs versus the humans. And this is a huge scope, like tens of thousands of years of history, but really interesting new ideas that I've never read before. And also substantial works. So I'm liking those, as well. So "The Lost Fleet," "Helfort's War," and Gregory Benford's Galactic Center series.

The links to Gregory Benford's Glactic Center series is listed below.

1. In the Oceans of Night  Book 1 of 6
2. Across the Sea of Suns  Book 2 of 6
3. Great Sky River Book 3 of 6
4. Tides of Light  Book 4 of 6
5. Furious Gulf  Book 5 of 6
6. Sailing Bright Eternity  Book 6 of 6

 

--Chris

 

Books Read in 2011

For 2011, I have finished reading reading the following books on my new Kindle 3 w/3G , which I purchased on 22 JAN 2011. [Kindle with Wifi Only]

1. Interview with the Vampire by Anne Rice (17 JAN 2011)
2. Antares Dawn by Michael McCollum (22 JAN 2011)
3. Antares Passage by Michael McCollum (28 JAN 2011)
4. Antares Victory by Michael McCollum (29 JAN 2011)
5. Dragons of Autumn Twlight by Tracy Hickman & Margaret Weis (8 FEB 2011)
6. Dragons of Winter Night by Tracy Hickman & Margaret Weis (19 FEB 2011)
7. Dragons of Spring Dawning by Tracy Hickman & Margaret Weis (27 FEB 2011)
8. The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo by Steig Larsson (15 MAR 2011)
9. Sheet Music by Dr. Kevin Leeman (22 MAR 2011)
10. The Girl Who Played with Fire by Steig Larsson (02 APR 2011)
11. The Girl Who Kicked a Hornet's Nest by Steig Larsson (09 APR 2011)
12. Dating My Vibrator by Suzanne Tyrpak (10 APR 2011)
13. A Minute in the Church by Gus Lloyd (11 APR 2011)
14. The  Personal MBA by Josh Kaufman (25 APR 2011)
15. Moonwalking with Einstein by Joshua Foer (05 MAY 2011)
16. Atlantis Found by Clive Cussler (24 MAY 2011)
17. In the Beginning was the Command Line by Neal Stephenson (28 MAY 2011)
18. At Fenway: Dispatches from Red Sox Nation by Dan Shaughnessy (11 JUN 2011)
19. Zodiac by Neal Stephenson (20 JUL 2011)
20. Ghost Story by Jim Butcher (12 AUG 2011)
21. Zero Day by Mark Russinovich (25 AUG 2011)
22. Ghost in the Wires by Kevin Mitnick (30 SEP 2011)
23. A Biblical Walk Through The Mass by Edward Sri (24 OCT 2011)
24. Sinner by Lino Rulli (5 NOV 2011)
25. The Litigators by John Grisham (18 NOV 2011)
26. The Forever War by Joe Haldeman (25 NOV 2011)
27. Heaven is for Real by Todd Burpo
28. Starship Troopers by Robert Heinlein (5 DEC 2011)

-Chris

Books 2010

Books 2009

Books 2008

 

VIM: How to Replace Text in Multiple Files

Today, I found a good article on using VIM to replace some text in multiple documents.   In my case, I needed to change the copyright year from 2010 to 2011 on about 15 html files.  Two (2) VIM commands made this a breeze.

:args *.html
:argdo %s/2010/2011/gec | update

Thanks,

 

Chris

 

Fictitious Web Sites from "The Confession"

While ready John Grisham's new legal novel, "The Confession," I noticed that the story keeps referring to two (2) opposing web sites: WeMissYouNikki.com and FreeDonteDrumm.com.   During lunch today, I checked to see if they were registered.  According to a whois lookup, they were by a Mr. Michael Pellman on October 26, 2010.

 

 

 

Chris

 

In the Kindle edition of "The Confession" jumped to location 1210 to see the reference to both web sites.

VIM: How to Sort and Remove Duplicate Lines

In VIM, you can quickly sort a list of lines and remove all the duplicates by running the following command:

:sort u

Other options for using the command.

Chris

 

 

Vim: How to print out form feeds

In VIM, you can tell it to observer form feeds with the following command:

:set popt=formfeed:y

Other options for using the command.

:set printoptions=paper:letter,duplex:off

Chris

 

VIM: How to Insert the Current Date

In VIM on Windows, one can insert the current date into the buffer by issue the following command.

!! date /t

or

:r! date/t

The first command replaces the current line with the output from "date /t."  The second command inserts a new line with the date.

--Chris

Thunderbird 3.0: How to Turn Off "Tab Windows"

Thunderbird 3.0 defaults to "Tab Windows" when viewing email messages.  I tried it, but I do not like it.

You can change this behavior under Tools --> Options.  Then select Advanced --> "Ready & Display"

 

--Chris

How to Reset the Master Password for Thunderbird 3.0

This morning I upgraded to Thunderbird 3.0 from 2.0 on Windows and realized I have no idea what my "Master Password" is set to in Thunderbird.  Luckily, I found this web page that explains how to reset the master passsord, which also dumps everything stored in it.

Tools --> Error Console

Type the following command in the window and press "Evaluate"

    openDialog('chrome://pippki/content/resetpassword.xul')

--Chris

VIM: How to convert CSV data to tab delimited data

Lets say you working on some data in a Vim buffer/window and you would like to convert this data from comma delimited to tab delimited so you can paste the tab delimited data directly into Excel.

Run the following ex command

:%s/,/\t/g

:   Ex mode command
%   Process command on the entire buffer
s   search and replace command
/,/\t/  search for any commas, and replace with a <tab> character.

g   process command globally

To paste the data from GVim to Excel, you would.

1. In normal mode, type:  ggVG          Like Ctrl-A on windows
2. You should now have the entire buffer selected
3. While still in normal mode, type: "+y       Like Ctrl-C on windows
4. You should now have the data on the windows clipboard
5. Switch to Excel, Ctrl-V to paste the data from the clipboard.

--Chris

VIM: How to center the screen on the current line.

If you would like to center your current VIM windows (screen) without having to reach for the mouse, then type the following VIM commands in normal mode.

zz    (Which should center current line in middle of screen)

zt    (top screen)

zb    (bottom screen)

--Chris

Vim Casts: Short Videos on using VIM

While attending the Lone Star Ruby Conference, someone mentioned a web site called Vim Casts, that shows off how to use Vim text editor.

--Chris

Lone Star Ruby Conference

I attended the annual Lone Star Ruby Conference (27-28 AUG 2010) in Austin, and needed a place to keep some of my notes.  To of my goals after attending the conference:

1. Give the VIM text editor another shot.  Currently use UltraEdit on windows and Textmate on Mac.
2. Learn Git, a popular DVCS

Videos were taken at the Lone Star Ruby Conference.

--Chris

Selling Old Electronic Gadgets

Today I was watching Clark Howard's CNN show, and he mentioned the web site, Gazelle [www.gazelle.com], that will purchase your used electronic gizmos, including providing a postage paid envelope for mailing items.

Other links mentioned:

• Find a fee-only financial planner: www.napfa.org

-- Chris