JWC.blog » News

New Hosting!

JWC — Wed, 31 Mar 2010 16:10:02 +0000

I’ve switched to RAM Host. If you see this message, then DNS information has propagated.

I will leave my existing hosting up for a few days before I replace it with a redirection message (for anyone who still tried to use my old domain to go to my website). The old hosting will go away in July. My stay with FodyHost has been pleasurable and I would recommend it to anyone who wants unlimited space and bandwidth in a shared hosting environment for a great price.

There shouldn’t be any loss of mail but if you have sent me something recently and don’t think it went through, feel free to send it to me again.

PGP Key Changed

JWC — Fri, 26 Feb 2010 15:24:13 +0000

For some reason, I’ve been using 1024-bit DSA keys to sign my mail. It generally suggested that keys of at least 2048-bits be used for good security, so I have revoked the three keys I have been using (one for each email address) in favor of a single 3072-bit DSA/ElGamal key, which I will use from now on to sign (and encrypt if possible) all of my email.

The key ID is B1CFED68 and the subkey is 7C692AD9. The key fingerprint is 475D 276D 25C4 43C9 9DD3 CB95 8213 A610 B1CF ED68. You can find the public key on the MIT PGP Key Server (pgp.mit.edu) or you can get it here on my website.

*adjusts tinfoil hat*

icsy – I Can’t Sleep Yet!

JWC — Tue, 22 Dec 2009 22:25:56 +0000

Throughout this past semester, I was continually impressed by the benefits of powernapping. However, unfortunately, I’m one of those people who shut off their alarms and go back to sleep all the time. So, my 20-minute powernaps became full nights’ rests. Normally, I wouldn’t mind that, but it made things very difficult when I had a major assignment due the next day.

So, I present icsy:

http://jwcxz.com/projects/icsy

icsy (I Can’t Sleep Yet) helps to prevent you from falling back asleep after waking you up by asking you some simple math questions to get your mind going again. You can customize all sorts of features including the alarm time, snooze time, number of questions, and audio file or alarm command.

It’s very easy to use. Just invoke icsy -h for instructions.

New Site Design

JWC — Fri, 30 Oct 2009 22:21:03 +0000

… but you may have already figured that out.

A Day in the Life of an MIT Student 2009

JWC — Fri, 25 Sep 2009 14:52:41 +0000

MIT’s yearbook club, Technique, sponsors a fun little event every year called ADITL — “A Day in the Life” (MIT does everything in acronyms and numbers, remember?). Basically, the group invites students to bring their cameras around from 12am Thursday, September 24 to following midnight. The goal: take pictures of the things you typically do during the day. I snapped a few photos; some were a little better than others. I wasn’t nearly as diligent as I planned to be and I missed the entire night, so the end result wasn’t great. Next year, I’ll try much harder to do a good job.

Take a look here:

http://jwcxz.com/pictures/aditl09

Dotman – A Dotfile Config Manager

JWC — Wed, 26 Aug 2009 06:03:38 +0000

Some time ago, I started to get annoyed at the bothersome task of copying configuration files between my desktop, laptop, and remote environments. First of all, copying the configs typically involved a lot of repetitive scp’s. The second annoyance is a little worse: some of my dotfiles need a few special settings that are localized to one environment (e.g. just to my server), but I can’t source some “local” config from the main one.

Of course, the answer was to come up with some ridiculous solution and today, I bring you:

dotman (aur package)

What on earth is it? It’s a way of managing configuration files across multiple environments. You can upload your configs to a remote repository and then download them from each of your environments. Furthermore, when you grab them from the remote area, you can do a diff against your existing file to keep your localized changes.

Right now, dotman only supports transfer via SFTP (through Paramiko), but it’s possible to add more protocols later. The code is still a bit messy and needs some rewriting to properly handle exceptions, but as it stands, you can do quite a bit. Take a look at the instructions on the above page to see how things work.

I’ve seen several different solutions to this kind of problem: some people use rsync and others use revision control systems. I considered trying these out, but my “if you want something done right, do it yourself” mentality took hold and wouldn’t let go. So, some may consider dotman to be totally superfluous (and I might agree), but maybe others will get some use out if it.

Frankly, I wanted better diffing capabilities. I really wanted something like Gentoo’s powerful etc-update, but for now, vimdiff will have to do.

Examples:

comp1 $ dotman commit bashrc
-> ~/.bashrc gets uploaded to the remote repo

comp2 $ dotman grab bashrc
-> the remote bashrc gets pulled and vimdiff opens up, comparing your old config with the new one from the server (a copy of the old version gets stored to a backup directory)

Honestly, it’s that simple.

Vacation Pics from Greece and Croatia

JWC — Tue, 23 Jun 2009 22:28:05 +0000

Sorry they’re a little late, but here they are. I had to put them on another server for space reasons, but I’ll sort it out later.

http://jwcxz.com/pictures/grhr09

New Computer in 3… 2…

JWC — Wed, 10 Jun 2009 09:51:49 +0000

Well, the parts for my new computer are now ordered, so now I begin the excrutiating wait… Almost all of the components are from the list in my last post, except for the graphics card, which is an EVGA 01G-P3-1181-AR, a slightly nicer card than what I was originally considering (NewEgg also deactivated the 1285 anyways). The total price (including a DVD burner) was about $1683, plus another $32 or so for shipping. I’m now clearing off my computer desk so that I’ll have a nice big area to work on.

Anyways, I also just got back from a cruise to Croatia and Greece. With over 1100 pictures taken between my mom and myself, I had a lot to sort through. I also took them on very high quality (2592×1944), so the album takes up over 2 gigs. I’ll upload a few of the best ones when I get a chance.

CPW Search Engine Up!

JWC — Wed, 01 Apr 2009 18:20:13 +0000

The CPW search engine I wrote is now up and running on the MIT Admissions CPW website. You can take a look here:

http://mitcpw.mit.edu/

I’ll fix the character encoding issue soon, hopefully… I’m also planning a mobile version.

Filedump – A Fast File Lister

JWC — Sat, 28 Feb 2009 02:10:34 +0000

Just a quick PHP program that I wrote a while ago. I currently use it on the server in my closet.

You can get it here: http://jwcxz.com/projects/filedump/

Screenshot: