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Just Shelley

Finding Truth

According to Dictionary.com, triangulation is:

The location of an unknown point, as in navigation, by the formation of a triangle having the unknown point and two known points as the vertices.

When I studied history in college I had a professor tell me that the only way to discover the truth behind an event is to read three completely different interpretations of the same event. Somewhere in the middle of all these interpretations, you’ll find the truth.

Unfortunately, it’s all too easy to only listen to one viewpoint, one interpretation.  Listening to those who are like-minded and speak with one voice is less disruptive than seeking the truth.

Categories
Just Shelley

Testing tool

We have sewer problems where we’re at because Lake Saint Louis force main dumps into our O’Fallon gravity main directly in front of our neighbors.

The line is overwhelmed, and gasses build up.

I don’t feel a high degree of confidence when I see that the ‘tool’ they’re using to collect gases for testing is an empty plastic water bottle on a length of fish wire.

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Just Shelley

The elephant in the room

This is my birthday gift from Roomie. Yes, it is as big as it looks. Over five feet tall.

The choice of an elephant is because of my long interest in elephants and the Ringling Brothers court case…not as the Republican symbol. He didn’t give it to me to use as a punching bag.

The Elephant in the Room, or TER, as we have named it, is very soft, very plush, and infinitely squeezable.

In the next four years, whenever I get stressed, I can grab TER for a good squeeze. Stuffed animals don’t just work for kids.

And it looks fantastic on the couch.

Giant stuffed elephant sprawled across a sofa

Categories
Technology Writing

Learning Node, 2nd Edition is now live

Learning Node 2nd cover

Learning Node, 2nd Edition is now in production and should be hitting the streets within a few weeks. We had a bit of excitement when Node 6.0 was rolled out, just as we entered production. However, this edition of the book was specifically designed to accommodate Node’s rather energetic release schedule, and the book survived with only minimal changes.

In this edition, I focused heavily on the Node core API, rather than third-party modules. I figured the book audience either consists of front-end developers working with JavaScript in the browser, or server-side developers who have worked with other tools. In either case, the audience wants to know how to work with Node…not this module or that. Node, itself.

My one trip into the fanciful was the chapter on Node in other environments. In this chapter, I had a chance to introduce the reader to Microsoft’s new ChakraCore for Node, as well as using Node with Arduino and Raspberry Pi, and with the Internet of Things (IoT). I figured by Chapter 12, we all deserved a special treat.

The book’s Table of Contents:

Preface
1. The Node Environment
2. Node Building Blocks: the Global Objects, Events, and Node’s Asynchronous Nature
3. Basics of Node Modules and Npm
4. Interactive Node with REPL and More on the Console
5. Node and the Web
6. Node and the Local System
7. Networking, Sockets, and Security
8. Child Processes
9. Node and ES6
10. Full-stack Node Development
11. Node in Development and Production
12. Node in New Environments

A more detailed TOC is available at O’Reilly.

I had a good crew at O’Reilly on the book, and an exceptionally good tech reviewer in Ethan Brown.

Categories
Just Shelley

DoS Attacks on Servers

Linode, the company that provides the server I use for my sites has been under constant DoS (Denial-of-Service) attacks for days. Right at this moment, I can access my site and the Linode manager, but the London servers are supposedly all down. Tomorrow, the Dallas servers may get hit, again.

We haven’t heard why there’s such a persistent attack against Linode. The company maintains status updates, but isn’t providing any details.

I’m not leaving Linode. That would be like giving assholes a win. However, access to my sites may be erratic for a bit.

In other news…we didn’t get flooded because of the Missouri rains, though we did lose access to our plumbing capability for a few days. Our back yard was a wet and soggy mess, and our personal river and waterfall, River des Powers, was flowing freely. We were very lucky compared to many surrounding areas, where homes were flooded and freeways and roads shut down. House Member’s co-workers had commutes that hit 3 hours, one-way, last night.

Right now plumbing works, ground is dry, floods are receding, and I can write to my site again. Not a bad way to end 2015.

Happy New Year!