dirt enthusiast
noise dept.
YOU ARE THE REASON
Andulka
⁂
PR's Tumblrdome
Lint Roller? I Barely Know Her
if i look back, i am lost
AnasAbdin
TVSTRANGERTHINGS
oozey mess
almost home
★
ellievsbear
Sweet Seals For You, Always
RMH
One Nice Bug Per Day
No title available
he wasn't even looking at me and he found me
Monterey Bay Aquarium
seen from United States
seen from United States
seen from United States
seen from United States
seen from United States
seen from United States
seen from United States
seen from Australia
seen from United States
seen from United States
seen from United States
seen from United States
seen from United States
seen from United States
seen from United States
seen from United States
seen from Singapore
seen from Canada
seen from United States
seen from Singapore
@skuda
We’re really excited to announce a new navigation in Beanstalk. It solves a few problems, provides a bunch of improvements and introduces several new features. We’ve been working on it for a while and think it creates a great foundation for our upcoming features.
Changes and Reorganizations
...
Just your typical Thursday.
One of my favorite collaborations to come out of the illustrious Oxidized Bismuth Blogger (OxBiz) ideation list is howdoi, a tool for instant coding answers via the command line.
The idea is simple – ask a question and get an answer.
$ howdoi format date bash > DATE=`date +%Y-%m-%d`
...
When I test an API call which needs authentication
UHURU + SKUDA Beta Access
*Update* (14/03/13): The Beta has been extended due to core changes in Cloud Foundry code. And a nice, new shiny API is on its way.
As the year draws to a close, so too does the previously mentioned beta developer access to Uhurucloud, which works off the CloudFoundry engine, but custom fitted with turbo, freeflows and an XBOX so you can drive while you drive (we herd, dawg).
Personally, I've still got a tough few days ahead, with some seriously wicked applications as a result... help is welcome. But that's just a side issue I slotted in here because this blog has been gravely neglected.
Developers:
This will be the last call to arms from my side, you miss it, you miss out. I'm trying some radical approaches and building/stabilizing templates in a few frameworks, but mainly PHP.
If you are reading this, and really want to know what I'm talking about please click this link. It's a direct link with a promo code appended to the url.
I'll give a quick breakdown of how far the Uhuru stack has come in the roughly six months I've been working with them, but a white-paper-level report is in draft.
When I was invited, it was a barren landscape. There was a Wordpress template, but
With each upgrade/revamp/bug-squash (and the Uhuru team is lightning fast at responding to support queries, friendly too), it's gotten remarkably better and easier to use.
Currently there are extremely stable Wordpress, Magento, Umbraco, Drupal, and several other Ready-to-Go (RTG) app stacks. This "pure" HTML instance has been up non-stop for months.
'But that's just a..' -- sorry, I'm going to cut your thoughts short there. If you doubt it, try it, abuse it then talk. And if you want to comment, there's a special place for it down there ↓
Git is coming, Python is coming. What makes Uhuru and SKUDA different to, say, Amazon, or Google?
You know us by name. And we aim to keep it like that for as long as humanly possible. For now, all you need to worry about is abusing the facility. How often are you invited to try and push the limits of an infrastructural framework to what they say it can't do. You know what I mean by "they". "Them".
SKUDA is about breaking barriers, not for the sake of it, but because they make sense. SKUDA is about deobfuscating the continuously piling on of services, frameworks, apps and not only software but hardware as well. Because we believe it needs deobfuscating.
We have been quiet, yes, but I assure you - far, far from stagnant.
Developers, this is not your run-of-the-mill yet another cloud factory operation. SKUDA do not link up with those.
And on that note, I will hopefully post by year end with a recap of 2012 (not a boring one, you're still reading, right? I'm not boring... r-right? O.o) but 2013 is THE year. It's time to bring back the ethos of the oldweb. Our web. It's time for the New Year's Revolution.
~ R Essop aka skopp
Bootswatch now offers an API, making it easier than ever to integrate with your platform!
Request
Send your request to:
http://api.bootswatch.com
Response
This returns a themes array, and each theme has the following properties:
name “Amelia”
description “Sweet and cheery.”
preview “http://bootswatch.com/amelia/
developers, inquire within
SKUDA & UHURU App Cloud have teamed up.
Uhuru Software is launching a Cloud Foundry based Platform as a Service, and currently are open for private beta testing. SKUDA has been testing on their setup for some time, and continue to. Somehow the two of us became friends (long story, but basically started when one day they thought we were looking at them sideways, we got into a fist fight... and next thing you know we're going to baseball games together and carpooling each others' kids - you know how it goes.)
We present you with the following questions:
Are you interested in web devolopment and coding?
Are you creative?
Are you able to improvise or work around things?
Are you comfortable with taking calculated risks?
Do you have even the remotest sense if humour?
Do you know what the square root of 65536 is?
if your answer to any of the questions is "no", you may proceed to close this window; this post is not for you. Or stay, it's just a forewarning.
If you're still here, you sir/madam are awesome, you know that? Awesome.
Experiments, Coding and Dev in Cloud Computing. Gist.
That's it. Uhuru has the paas, we have a pass. Test it to its fullest, bombard it with pioneering new applications or remixed old ones. sometimes a combination of both.
we are looking for developers. you will have access to your own virtual machine and - while uhuru cloud is in beta - basically unlimited access to the powerful resources and infrastructure. it is really that simple.
'so', you ask, 'what is the catch?'
We knew you were going to ask that. Well, if anything, the "catch" is that you will not be paid. We'll let you in on a little secret. Don't tell Uhuru we said this, but they are indirectly taunting us developers - challenging us... particularly us Linux, Git and Koding types. Aha. They called us wussies.
This is not a competition, but if you really catch on and do some good work; see the value and put passion and dedication into this project (and document your research publicly on your blog or in the forums as you go along - this is a community thing, documentation is crucial) you may receive a year of free hosting in the cloud*. But you gotta do good kid. Got it? Good. Now go to uhurucloud and sign up. It's dead simple and takes about a minute. Use our special promo code ra004 when signing up.
Give a shout-out when you're on the other side.
— skopp
July Report pt.1
In terms of blogs, there is a sort of critical point that approaches, where if one fails to capitalize on the moment right then, and fails to post, it renders the blog “dormant”. Very soon after that, “dead”. I think we’ve been very naughty in that regard. But we ain’t dead ya heard? No, sir, this here’s an update on what we’ve been upto… First off, it must be stated that it is a great feat to actually find some people who ‘get it’. That applies to any concept worth considering, not a particular concept necessarily. There are not many people that are willing to enter the fray, take a chance. But odds are they don't have the passion to vye for creative prowess. At SKUDA, we've had about a dozen of such people pass through in, what, four months? At the same time, we have truly gifted individuals in their respective games. We found each other, we get it. The last few months in a summarized format: We are becoming a force to be reckoned with in South Africa. Personally, I have one problem. It's your fault, internet. There is so much cool stuff out there that one doesn't know what to use. Then you'll choose a platform, a CMS, a framework, etc. Commence prototyping. Find something more appealling. End of the world. - To be continued...
At Witsvale, we are using Heroku to quickly deploy and iterate. Previously, we were contented with just witsvale.heroku.com. But while preparing to go live, we had to migrate www.witsvale.com, along with our Gmail email.
While the entire process wasn’t very difficult, there were a couple of...
So, I received an email from the bank. Granted, not something extraordinary. It's not like receiving an email from Mark Shuttleworth or Chuck Norris or something like that. Not like finding a random bag full of $100 bills. Not at all... on the contrary it's a very regular experience for most email users with bank accounts, yours truly included. Only thing is: I don't have an account with this bank.
Yes, it's a phishing scam. Normally Gmail picks them up like a bloodhound at an abattoir, but it seemed to miss this one. Marked it "important" on top of it.
Now, I thought I'd do a small write-up on these kinds of emails because I'm sure there are victims. If I didn't know what I do, maybe I could have fallen victim to one. There are two images with this post. Let's analyze:
Look at the first. It appears to be an email from ABSA. I try to put myself in the seat of, say, my dad. What if he received this mail? Let's assume he did, and that he has ABSA account. Knowing good ol' dad, he would see the bold text about IP !(!(($)!)@$ TRIED TO HACK YOU! CLICK HERE!!!1. And you know what, he would click.
Upon clicking, dad would find himself in the seedy underbelly of the webz. The dark, evil side of the intertubez. A bad place. And also, he would have to login to his "account", which would give away his details to the admins of the redir. link.
If you use Gmail, you may notice that the mail is not marked "important", because I immediately unmarked it.
If you use Gmail, you may probably also notice that the "from" address as well as the "via" address look shady and don't correspond to the name of the sender (If the sender was Jack Black, you would/should expect the email address to be [email protected], for example)
It gets much more complicated than this, but as a general rule of thumb, the email address should be one you know is legit (like your friend Bobby whose email is [email protected] - and you know this for certain, or Gary whose address is [email protected] and again, you know that it's his), or
it should match a pattern. This is a safer approach, and one I would recommend for mails from new/unknown persons, and if you don't know a thing about phishing:
If you are literate in email use, I'm happy for you. The below is not meant for you, so go away. This is for people who are not geniuses like you and I:
Do not display images
NEVER, EVER, EVER CLICK LINKS IN AN EMAIL
Have a look if you can at the email address, and think about whether it looks legit. I can almost guarantee an email from "Citigroup" will not be "[email protected]". Because that's not an "i" in my example... it's a lowercase "L". Oldest trick in the book.
If you understand the thinking behind the technique used to fool people in point (3), then you are on the right track. If not, ask me and I will explain.
I went a step further, just out of interest, and viewed the plain text of the email body. It's mostly html, IP addresses, SMTP and other routing protocol data - but if you know how those work you'll see straightaway what's wrong with the picture. Basically, it's a simple phishing attack mail. I've seen ones more difficult to sniff out, but at the end of the day what I'm getting at is this:
Be careful with received emails and how you handle them. Especially where banking data, submitting deep personal information and/or private and secret data are concerned.
Surf safe,
-skopp
"Nothing destroys a good idea faster than a mandatory consensus. The lowest common denominator is never a high standard." This quote comes from Forbes contributing writer Jessica Hagy who suggests that nothing kills a good idea like a committee.
Approximately 95% of all marketing campaigns — social media or not — could be solved by asking, “What are we trying to persuade the audience to do?” Take the answer, and then tell the audience that. And stop debating about fancy concepts that solve themselves if you just tell the audience what they need to hear in the first place.
No Bull$#*@: Social Media Straight Talk With Jason Falls | Fast Company (via deplorableword)
Are you serious?!
Hmm... maybe I should make some Facebook socks or something. You know you'd wear it. You like it.
Ever wanted to be informed about the most recent, cutting-edge commits of your favorite project at Github? Here’s how I do it, with the help of ifttt and Github’s RSS feeds:
Navigate to the project of your choice (in my case, the Silex Micro-Framework - which is pretty awesome, btw), and...
hello world?
I'm a sucker for design. That's a terribly vague term, but hey, that's not my fault. In any case, I do mean it in such a vague sense, because design is everywhere. Just look around you right now. Just about everything - from the dimensions of the keys on your keyboard, to the fibrous overlaying structure of your clothing, to the thickness, length and composition of the lead in your clutch pencil was the result of someone's design.
That creative essence behind design inspiration (O.o) is what is the most intriguing and mysterious factor. Why do we (some of us, at least) build; create; design? That's a rhetorical question because if I had to attempt to answer it I'll most probably unintentionally start a flame war on the internets. And they have wrath, the internets.
Inevitably designing has itself a root. The idea. Yep... those. You can't unthink an idea, you think up ideas constantly and without pause, and the vast majority of them never come to fruition.
This blog, and this post in particular is the implementation of an idea. I realized, you see, that ideas - the ones we feel are worth it - must be recorded, mapped, drawn out, written. Something. Depends on the context. The main thing is that once the seed of that idea is planted, it now has the potential to anchor its roots deep and extend out. Branch off. Like linux.
Welcome to 'the skuda files'. This is my plant, cross-pollinated with the genomes of other like-minded individuals and this is the root. The toughest part about choosing to generate a product from an idea is deeming its value and its worth in the long run. Time-wise and cost-wise. Like Winston from George Orwell's classic 1984, I'm writing regardless of the outcome. Writing to nobody; to a future generation that may never gain access to this. To myself. To perhaps at least one person out there (in that case, hi there, person!).
Yeah... I joke about stuff. Because it's funny. Not in a humorous sense so much as an ironic one. We start out as kids - adventurous, inquisitive, thoughtful and then become accustomed to making money. Most of us, unfortunately, grow up to become the products of the money they strive to make. Money makes them, not vice versa, in other words. But I digress.
The idea behind skuda came about a long, long time ago. It was only around late 2011 that I started developing a way to convert an abstract, intangible concept into a self replicating, contagiously fresh product. A design, that is. Something this world has both seen and never seen before. And I'm not alone. I could be, but choose specifically not to. Because there are others like me, and I call this the wolf mentality. This pack of wolves, this krew is called skopp kustom design alliance [skuda]. Welcome to our blog, thank you for reading, and watch this space evolve like a kaleidoscopic crystal.
-skopp
