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Java coding education/tutorials
by Thomas Milne 22 Oct '14

22 Oct '14

My son is all motivated to learn Java so that he can hack around in Minecraft, so I'm looking for ways for him to get started. I have no coding background either, so I am equally lost. We are working with Alice right now, and I think it's giving him the basic idea, but I'm not sure how far Alice can take him. On the one hand I'm tempted to just start mangling some Minecraft code and learn that way, but I don't want to ruin the momentum here. Can anyone recommend something to get him to the next stage? I've been desperate to get him to start to learn coding so I don't want to waste this opportunity now that he's actually motivated! :-) -- Thomas Milne

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MythTV: Major Service Changes at Schedules Direct
by David Collier-Brown 22 Oct '14

22 Oct '14

The tv-listings supplier I use with MythTV is changing to delivering the data from their own servers, and in addition is prototyping a json version. At the moment, it's not obvious if I need to change anything: anyone following this and have experience to share? --dave -------- Original Message -------- Subject: Major Service Changes at Schedules Direct Date: Wed, 22 Oct 2014 01:01:42 -0700 From: Schedules Direct <noreply(a)schedulesdirect.org> To: David Collier-Brown <davecb(a)spamcop.net> Greetings David Collier-Brown! Schedules Direct has been operating since 2007 to provide a stable environment for non-commercial media applications to receive TV listings data, but that does not mean things never change! :) This may be our first email-blast since 2007! We have been informed that Gracenote (formerly Tribune Media Services) will be ending the guide data service currently used by most members of Schedules Direct. Their plan is to end support for this service on November 1, 2014. Schedules Direct was already hard at work implementing replacement services. Please check with your application's support page for your best solution. Some applications have chosen to use a new SD-JSON service that offers a richer data set, while others have chosen to use the SD-DD service, which is meant to be a drop-in replacement for Gracenote/Tribune's service. If your application is no longer supported, there's no reason to worry. Most apps can continue to function with a change to your system's hosts file. (details in the SD forum). Last week I asked Tribune to update their DNS to force half of the traffic to the SD-DD servers. The concept was for people with problems to fail half the time now, rather than 100% come Nov 1. If you're one of the folks having problems, check with your application team or us to help resolve it. For the most up-to-date news, look for links on the SD website http://schedulesdirect.org Robert Eden President, Schedules Direct

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TUURP - Toronto Utopic Unicorn Release Party, Thursday 23 October 7pm, Alio Lounge
by Bob Jonkman 22 Oct '14

22 Oct '14

-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- Hash: SHA1 Hi Everybodeee! Last week I happened to run into Mike Kaulbach while walking down the street in Toronto -- a 1 in 2.5 million chance! Shoulda bought a lottery ticket... Mike's hosting another Ubuntu Release Party with Free Cupcakes and Bottomless Cofffee: *What*: Ubuntu 14.10 Toronto Release Party *When*: Thursday, 23 October 2014, 7:00pm to 1:00am *Where*: Alio Restaurant http://aliotoronto.ca/ *Location*: 108 Dundas Street West, Toronto, Ontario, Canada *Map*: http://osm.org/go/ZX6BtMGY?m=&node=1113718580 *LoCo Event:* http://loco.ubuntu.com/events/ubuntu-ca/2920-ubuntu-1410/detail/ There are rumours of a Release Party in Kitchener-Waterloo as well, but I haven't run into anyone on the street yet... - --Bob. - -- Bob Jonkman <bjonkman(a)sobac.com> Phone: +1-519-669-0388 SOBAC Microcomputer Services http://sobac.com/sobac/ http://bob.jonkman.ca/blogs/ http://sn.jonkman.ca/bobjonkman/ Software --- Office & Business Automation --- Consulting GnuPG Fngrprnt:04F7 742B 8F54 C40A E115 26C2 B912 89B0 D2CC E5EA -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE----- Version: GnuPG v1.4.15 (GNU/Linux) Comment: Ensure confidentiality, authenticity, non-repudiability iEYEARECAAYFAlRHNmIACgkQuRKJsNLM5er+fgCgplqy/NtMNW67vo8e9HhBWNnO C6AAoNCnC2h6gClqrPt1dYxz72NxeJYI =Cs8z -----END PGP SIGNATURE-----

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SystemD vs Bind9 vs IPv6
by Christopher Browne 16 Oct '14

16 Oct '14

I think I got bit yesterday by the above... I was noticing terrible resolution speed, so checked messages (btw, "service bind9 status" provides brief, but decent-ish characterization of things), and noticed many messages indicating failing resolutions against IPv6 addresses. There is a common pair of bits of Bind configuration: a) One might set options to prefer not to use IPv6 addresses, so in /etc/bind/named.conf.options, change listen-on-v6 { all;}; to listen-on-v6 { none; }; b) This was where SystemD got into the mix... Pass the "-4" option when running named to use only IPv4. This seems to be the highly significant bit. On Debian-derived systems, the usual recipe is to add "-4" to /etc/defaults/bind --> OPTIONS="-4" However, the SystemD config for Bind9 lives in /lib/systemd/system/bind9.service, and apparently there is recent change there that that configuration no longer reads from /etc/defaults/bind, so that to have named get the "-4" option requires altering /lib/systemd/system/bind9.service. Seems like it needs to be altered directly. This isn't necessarily a "SystemD bug", rather a packaging bug in Debian. It still was fairly annoying. I have yet to report it properly, probably deserves a bit more research, in case my diagnosis is off a bit. -- When confronted by a difficult problem, solve it by reducing it to the question, "How would the Lone Ranger handle this?"

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open source routers
by Dave Cramer 16 Oct '14

16 Oct '14

My old linksys wrtg54 with dd-wrt locks up. I am looking for suggestions for a new router that will accept open source router firmware? Dave Cramer

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[Fwd: Fwd: remote hub info]
by Gordon Chillcott 15 Oct '14

15 Oct '14

Hi, all: This is about the remote hub to the ICANN meeting in Los Angeles tomorrow. I just got this from Glenn McKnight. The registration link on this document does work. Gordon Chillcott

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Raspberry Pi gadgets
by Alex Volkov 15 Oct '14

15 Oct '14

Hello everyone, As I mentioned there are several Raspberry Pi gadgets coming out on crowdfunding campaigns that I find interesting. PiTop -- A raspberry pi based laptop that greatly simplifies learning to work with hardware, robotics and sensors. Product page -- http://pi-top.com/ Indiegogo campaign -- https://www.indiegogo.com/projects/pi-top-a-raspberry-pi-laptop-you-build-y… SmartiPi -- a very versatile Raspberry Pi case that incorporates Lego blocks, VGA backplate mounting holes, stacking, GoPro mounts etc.. for about $21 - 25 USD. The project is funded at $11,614, needs $14K and has 4 days to go, so it could really use some help. kickstarted page -- https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/799765240/smartipi-raspberry-pi-b-and-… I found out about some of this stuff by listening to Raspberry Pi today podcast, which is a weekly, 30 minute long podcast, very British. http://www.raspi.today/ Alex.

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Resume Driven Development
by David Collier-Brown 13 Oct '14

13 Oct '14

This is an interesting side discussion to the problem of HR departments filtering out the good people and passing on people with the highest number of keyword matches to the hiring managers. [This one keeps coming up in both GTALUG and UU discussions: crossposted.] --dave -------- Original Message -------- Subject: Resume Driven Development Date: Sat, 11 Oct 2014 13:38:37 GMT From: <Mike Loukides> http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/oreilly/radar/atom/~3/vgBYi2NC_FY/resume-dri… Resume Driven Development Crossed_Wires_Howard_Lake_Flickr <https://www.flickr.com/photos/howardlake/4834299551> I had a conversation recently with Martin Thompson <http://mechanical-sympathy.blogspot.com/> (@mjpt777 <https://twitter.com/mjpt777>), a London-based developer who specializes in performance and low-latency systems. I learned about Martin through Kevlin Henney’s Tweets <https://twitter.com/KevlinHenney> about his recent talk at Goto Aarhus <http://gotocon.com/aarhus-2014/speaker/Martin+Thompson>. We talked about a disturbing trend in software development: Resume Driven Development, or RDD. Resume Driven Development happens when your group needs to hire a developer. It’s very hard to tell a non-technical HR person that you need someone who can make good decisions about software architecture, someone who knows the difference between clean code and messy code, and someone who’s able to look at a code base and see what’s unnecessary and what can be simplified. We frequently can’t do that ourselves. So management says, “oh, we just added Redis to the application, so we’ll need a Redis developer.” That’s great — it’s easy to throw out resumes that don’t say Redis; it’s easy to look for certifications; and sooner or later, you have a Redis developer at a desk. Maybe even a good one. And what does your Redis developer do? He does Redis, of course. So, you’re bound to have an application with a lot of Redis in it. Whenever he sees a problem that can be solved with Redis, that’s what he’ll do. It’s what you hired him for. You’re happy; he’s happy. Except your application is now being optimized to fit the resumes of the people you hired, not the requirements of your users. I have nothing against Redis. Substitute any other great tool (Node, Django, jQuery, AngularJS — the list is very long) in any tier of the application, and you’ll end up with the same story. If this scenario bears any resemblance to the truth (and it certainly does), you probably will rinse, substitute some other tool, and repeat. Now you have a developer whose job is to make sure there’s a lot of Angular in the system. Sooner or later, you have a nice “full stack” that’s using just about everything in the modern bestiary of programming languages and frameworks. This isn’t a good situation. The problem isn’t the tools, each of which serves a need and is good at doing what it does. The problem isn’t the developers; you hired good Redis, Angular, and Node guys, and they’re all doing what they were hired to do. The problem is that your team is optimized around the inability to communicate at a critical stage: the inability of a technical team to specify what they really want (a developer with good programming taste and instincts), and instead hiring someone who has a particular skill or credential. Martin and I suspect that Resume Driven Development is quite pervasive: an overly complex application stack that’s defined by the people you hired, and by the current toys that the “cool kids” on the programming block get to play with, not by the requirements of the application. If it all works, what’s the problem? Well, the problem is that it probably doesn’t work. Martin has gotten latencies from tens of seconds down to sub-second levels just by stripping layers out of the stack. The resulting code is simpler, easier to work with, and much more productive: customers buy stuff; customers actually explore the site and shop because they’re no longer frustrated while waiting around for their request to percolate through an overly complex site. This isn’t an easy problem to solve. The complete system (software, engineers, HR staff) tends to optimize around the wrong problem: simplifying the process of evaluating candidates by listing a set of skills. In the process, it pessimizes what should be most important: the ability to serve customers effectively. The result is a large, complex technology stack, a Yak with a lot of multi-colored hair to shave, that’s defined by the institutional setting, not the job’s real technical requirements. How do we fix this? It’s easy to say “hire good people”; but hiring good people is hard. When you’re looking for good programming instincts and a solid understanding of the fundamentals, certifications don’t help; degrees don’t help. But certainly understanding the problem, understanding why your “full stack” has grown so full, is a start. And before you ask HR to find a developer who is familiar with AcuteJS and Lymph, think about who you really want in that seat. /Cropped image on article and category pages by Howard Lake on Flickr <https://www.flickr.com/photos/howardlake/4834299551>, used under a Creative Commons license <https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/2.0/>./ <http://feeds.feedburner.com/%7Eff/oreilly/radar/atom?a=vgBYi2NC_FY:8OLvyuto…> <http://feeds.feedburner.com/%7Eff/oreilly/radar/atom?a=vgBYi2NC_FY:8OLvyuto…> <http://feeds.feedburner.com/%7Eff/oreilly/radar/atom?a=vgBYi2NC_FY:8OLvyuto…> <http://feeds.feedburner.com/%7Eff/oreilly/radar/atom?a=vgBYi2NC_FY:8OLvyuto…> <http://feeds.feedburner.com/%7Eff/oreilly/radar/atom?a=vgBYi2NC_FY:8OLvyuto…>

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Meeting tomorrow; announce list?
by D. Hugh Redelmeier 13 Oct '14

13 Oct '14

[I did not see this (or anything else) on the newish gtalug announce list. I've been subscribed for over a month. What's up?] Scraped from <http://gtalug.org/meeting/2014-10/>: AGM and ICANN 14 October, 2014 at 07:30 PM Annual General Meeting GTALUG Update -- 5 minutes Treasury Update -- 5 minutes ICANN & CAG -- 5 minutes Board Elections -- 20 minutes ICANN Update with Evan Leibovitch ICANN (or the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers) is a non-profit organization that is responsible for the coordination of maintenance and methodology of the Internet's DNS system. Evan Leibovitch (Vice-Chair of the At-Large Advisory Committee at ICANN) will be talking about the latest developments at ICANN. Location George Vari Engineering and Computing Centre at Ryerson University 245 Church Street, Room 211 (second floor).

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simple straightforward tool for mainaining small networked of imaged linux boxes
by Matt Price 11 Oct '14

11 Oct '14

Hi, Over at Free Geek Toronto <http://www.freegeektoronto.org/>, we have a small computer classroom of desktop boxes that run Linux Mint. Every couple of weeks we re-install clean images by hand. The process is pretty labourious and time-consuming, and we would much rather automate it somehow. However, none of us is a real sysadmin, and the tools I know a tiny bit about (landscape, puppet) are non-free and relatively complex. We have very limited financial resources and our volunteer capacity is also a bit strained right now. Does anyone have suggestions for a simple, easy way to automate the flashing of images in a small network? Thanks as always -- this is my first post on the new list! Matt

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