OpenRain.com uses Google Apps For Your Domain, and all email flows throw Google’s servers. Unfortunately, Rails 1.2.2 can’t send via smtp.google.com out of the box. As originally pointed out by Anatol Pomozov there is a solution. Here’s the simple version tested with Rails 1.2.2.
Updated 2008.01.04: The original link was b0rken, so I pastied the code instead.
We have a natural desire to fix things. As engineers we find satisfaction in resolving technical problems and, if you’re following test-driven practices, keeping them resolved. These thoughts flow through our minds as the primitive keyboard-wielding code monkeys we evolved from. What distinguishes us from our fecal-flinging counterparts, however, is our ability to question these instincts and wear business, user and developer hats simultaneously. Here are some additional questions we should consider before immediately reacting with technobabble.
Update 1: Check out “Making Friends With Some Guy Named Mike” on this band page of mine for an awesome example of this studio in action.
20 years ago digital home recording wasn’t plausible. 10 years ago we started to see its potential, but most hobbyists (read: very cash-limited people) were limited to using still-primitive versions of multi-trackers such as Cakewalk, Cool Edit Pro or Cubase with either COTS Sound Blaster PCI cards or ridiculously over-priced, high-noise, high-latency specialty cards with break-out boxes such as the Lexicon Core 2. Running on Windows 95 or 98, we regularly struggled with the stability of the platform and device drivers. Today, you can have your own personal studio capable of producing DVD-quality recordings by adding a thousand dollars of equipment to your existing computer and music rig. Here’s my living room/home theater/recording studio/Mac haven, all driven by a single Mac Mini..
Here’s are the core components..
If you’ve already got a Mac setup and some music equipment, grabbing Logic Express, PreSonus FirePod, decent vocal mic and a bunch of cables for $1K will turn your system into an audio powerhouse which your friends will envy.
The RAW format pictures produced by my Canon XTi are often in excess of 10MB. Couple this with “continuous shooting” and a fast CompactFlash card, and I can easily fill a 4GB’er in a couple days. I’ve used Apple’s Aperture for about a month now through the holidays and a friends wedding, and have been very pleased with the product.
Aperture is more like ACDSee or Picasa than Photoshop. It’s about fine-tuning, managing projects, browsing, searching, sorting, packaging and publishing, and does neither layering nor psychedelic effects typically associated with digital picture manipulation. It’s iPhoto on crack. Here are a few features which I like.
If you’re using OS X and are somewhat interested in photography, I’m sorry, but you’ll probably want to bite the $279 bullet
Here’s the lowdown on setting up your Motorola RAZR to connect to the internet wirelessly via your bluetooth enabled Mac after signing up for T-Mobile internet services. I live in Arizona and have had no issues following these steps on several Macs.
Go to System Preferences -> Bluetooth -> Devices and click “Set Up New Device…”
After selecting the more obvious options to set up your phone, enter the connection settings as in the following screenshot. (The password is “internet”.)
After completing the wizard, select “Connect” from the new icon visible on the menu bar at the top of the screen.
(Suggestion: manually “Disconnect” your phone when you’re done with the internet connection, as putting the computer to sleep while connected seems to cause issues when the system wakes up.)
As the Spring semester approaches, seniors start attending job fairs and submitting resumes to the Word-parsing, keyword-detecting machines of industry HR giants. In the seemingly few years since I completed my bachelors, I’ve been through the motions enough to have learned a great deal in the process. Here’s some advice for seniors trying to land sweet engineering or IT gigs.
The “it’s who you know, not what you know†principle is not bullshit. For better or worse, many things just work this way, and the tech industry is no exception. Almost every job I’ve had has been landed in part because of inside connections. Building these contacts is difficult for someone without industry experience, but can be overcome by involvement in student clubs, professional organizations, and other social activities. In my experience, involvement in mailing lists and local geek clubs has been the easiest and most beneficial means of networking. All the jobs fairs I’ve been to were a waste of time; most of the big companies just put your resume in a stack and direct you their HR website for further information.
One of the best things you can have when approaching a company is a pre-existing positive relationship with an inside contact. The better your relationship with your contact, the more they’ll sell you up before introductions are done or resumes passed. They will build good vibes for your interview, and generate internal momentum to push the process forward from the inside. A simple, “Hey, Jim, I just wanted to give you a heads-up that there’s a really bright guy named Bob that’ll be submitting a resume today†can build a valuable pre-conception with the evaluator that gives you an advantage over other applicants, if not land you the job before the interview even starts.
When submitting cover letters and conversing with potential employers, don’t send form letters. Show them you’re genuinely pumped about the job and company, and that you’re human by using real names instead of “To Whom It May Concernâ€. Know your audience and write to their tastes. If you know senior industry people, kindly ask them to review your writing before submission.
Do your research on a companies projects before talking to representatives, and be sure to come up with things you’ve done that could directly bring value to them. They don’t care that you have three dogs and that your cat’s name is Mittens, but they’ll find it intriguing that you’ve completed projects using Spring, Hibernate etc. If you’re talking to a non-tech person, just point out that you’re already familiar with what they’re doing and you’d love to talk to the project manager to see if you’d be a good fit. Also remember that what you what now and what you can know by your interview are two different sets of knowledge.
If you’re speaking to a technical interviewer, be honest about what you know. They’ll easily see through dodged answers and weak responses. With practice, however, you can easily turn many negatives into positives. For example, if asked “[a]re you familiar with Plajax: the AJAX for plague victimsâ€, don’t say “No.†Instead, say “I’m familiar with Blajax: the AJAX for blind people, and have lots of experience handling server-side requests.†Always emphasise the positive. Practice in your next team meeting by using the word “and†instead of “however†and “butâ€. Speaking this way is an extremely valuable general-purpose skill, especially when you’re in discussions with people you don’t agree with.
On numerous occasions I’ve seen Java code generated by other Java code as part of a standard build process. I’m not talking about “stub†or “boiler-plate†model code produced by tools such as rmic or hibernate, respectively, but logic code produced by a script. I’ve also seen this done in other languages, but it particularly bothers me when I see it done in an object-oriented language such as Java. Almost invariably it occurs for one of two reasons: an external dependency or structure prevents sane reuse practices, or a lack of modern object-oriented analysis and design skills. (The former case simply implies the latter on someone else’s part.)
Lame Dependencies
Some dependencies introduce more liabilities than benefits, yet are nevertheless necessary due to business or technological constraints. Libraries and frameworks that force you to extend specific classes (as opposed to interfaces) lessen your ability to create a flexible, adaptable application on top. When large amounts of boiler-plate code are necessary to satisfy a dependency, it might be reasonable to apply code generate techniques to avoid monotony; however, the generated code should at least adapt or delegate to a separate, reusable implementation.
Lame Developers (a.k.a. the people that write Lame Dependencies)
The pisser scenario that is often hard to differentiate from the former is a lack of OOA&D skills on behalf of the application designer. In particular, those accustomed to procedural thought may want to introduce “procedure generation” as a sort of clever closure mechanism which is more common in languages other than Java. This translates to large amounts of redundant, unnecessary code that could likely be avoided by applying modern design patterns and generics.
Conclusion
Classes are more than the place you put data and methods; together they implement a higher-level design which can be expressed in higher-level terms, isolated into components, and tested and maintained as such. If you have a system composed of a mesh of interwoven procedures with many statically bound components, mutual dependencies and generated logic, it may be more procedural than object-oriented.
As far as I’m concerned, no Mac is complete without these great freebies..
Cyberduck
Great SFTP/FTP rich-client.
Colloquy
An intuitive, native IRC client
VLC
Dirt simple media player capable of handling things that QuickTime can’t.
Handbrake
All-in-one DVD ripping and encoding utility. Provides plenty of features for most of us without be overly complicated.
Skype
Easy-to-use VOIP client. Works with MacBook (Pro)/PowerBook microphones out-of-the-box, and provide free calls to other Skype users.
CrossOver Mac Beta
Every OS X user I know must operate in a Windows environment on a regular basis. The recent release of Parallels for Intel-based macs (basically VMWare workstation-style guest-OS host virtualization) has made life one tick easier by allowing us to run Windows on our Core Duo systems, and the new CrossOver Beta for Intel Macs provides a great complementary technology. CrossOver Mac, by CodeWeavers of wine fame, allows you to run some Windows applications directly on your Intel Mac, without having to host a full-fledged copy of Windows by implementing the applications APIs dependencies on the Mac. The beta is free.
QuickSilver
Provides Spotlight-like capabilities, but faster and way, way better. The extremely brisk find-and-launch concept will be new for many users, but will be hard to live without once understood.
The presenters from the Jericho Forum at DEFCON 14 this year did an acceptable job of highlighting the principle that border firewalls are much less beneficial that they used to be for security purposes. WiFi, VPNs, MANETs etc. provide constantly changing IT environments which are not realistically plausible for IT to completely control. Our new challenge is to accept that hostile things may exist on the network, and we must solidify the security of individual services despite high-priced blue-colored networking hardware connecting it all. Their DEFCON session was unfortunately unclear on the specifics of how one accomplishes this, but I nevertheless agree with many of their core principles.
This Decades Security Challege (good .pdf slides)
De-perimeterization is the way to go for network security
De-perimeterization: Jericho Forum misses the mark
Each time I go to DEFCON, sniff a network or see an ad for an infosec product, I’m harshly reawakened to the general publics detachment for security concerns. When using a virus scanner, firewall and pop-up blocker, most users seem comforted enough to go about daily business with a satisfactory feeling of a “secure†experience.
A large gap with this frame of thought is of what we’re trying to secure. The most valuable thing on your computer—the stuff you want to secure if nothing else–is your personal data/information, NOT the machine itself. Most white-collar folk, in a worst-case scenario, could cough up the bones to cope with a stolen or broken machine, or re-install the OS after a bad virus attack. The data on that machine, however, may be priceless memories, confidential trade-secrets, or other information which you’d highly prefer to remain private and well backed up. As a resident of Arizona–the new U.S. capital for identity theft (per-capita)–we must recognize that the Bad Guys on the tubes do not have the primary intent to annoy us. They’re trying to make money. Compromising your system is merely a means for collecting sellable usage habits, relaying \/i@gr@ ads, stealing/selling your identity etc. We simply need to recognize that we protect system assets largely to protect our information.
In that vein, one of the largest commonplace no-nos is sending sensitive information over ordinary email. We’ve all done it, and most will continue. Emails can pass through systems that are maintained by people you don’t know and most certainly don’t trust, so don’t be a bonehead: encrypt your email, especially if it’s sensitive material. (If your email client is a horrible bitch-goddess that makes encryption a pain to deal with, please poke the vendor with a sharp stick until they make it trivial.) Mail.app and Keychain Access.app (OS X) make it ridiculously simply to manage and use X.509 public/private keys, which you can obtain for free from Thawte. If you use Mail.app, you’re out of excuses.
Should your machine be stolen, sold, repaired, or otherwise leave your possession, how do you know your not handing over the keys to the kingdom to a complete stranger? You can wipe the drive, but that isn’t convenient if the machine will be returned to you. A simply way is to use TrueCrypt for Windows, encrypted .dmg files for OS X, or encrypt your entire freaking home directory with FileVault. (OS X).
OS X users have no excuse but to encrypt everything. Linux and Windows users may have difficulties, but easy wins are still possible. Encrypt your email. Encrypt your backups. Encrypt your calendar. Encrypt your address book. Encrypt your financials. Encrypt your music. Encrypt your photos. Encrypt your life.
Encrypt everything.