Category: Just Shelley

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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

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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.

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Just Shelley

DoS Attacks on Servers

flooded back yard

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!

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Just Shelley Weather

Breather

Thankfully, the cold front dipped and we didn’t get all the expected rain last night.

Because we had a breather, the load in the sewer system has gone down enough so we can use our plumbing again.
Working toilet…hot shower. Seems so mundane, but no pretty jewel or cool electronic gadget is as nice as a working toilet and a hot shower.

I’m just sorry so many people have lost homes and lives because of this freak, climate-changed enhanced weather.

The weather cast states we’ll be getting inundated tonight, but we’re ready this time. Thankfully, I believe the more severe weather may be over.

Categories
Just Shelley

New Incarnation

flowers

I always make major site changes during the Christmas holiday. Traffic to my sites is at its lowest, and it just seems a good end-of-year task.

I wasn’t quite expecting that the Linode server where my site lives would crash right in the middle of the upgrade, but life isn’t exciting without the little challenges.

I decided to switch from Drupal to WordPress about the time when I decided I no longer had time to pursue PHP and CMS software tweaking, since my tech interests are focused on JavaScript, Node, Internet-of-Things (IoT), mobile, and DIY (microcomputers and microcontrollers). WordPress requires less time when all you want is a site where you can publish your writings.