blog import on Chris W Jones

Dustbuster Club

Tue, 29 Nov 2022 18:42:02 +0000

I’m slightly embarrassed to run a Mastodon instance for fans of the podcasts The Greatest Generation and The Greatest Trek. They’re both podcasts reviewing all trek everywhere. To check if we’re up or down visit our status page: Dustbuster Club Status Page

Tailscale on Truenas

Tue, 22 Mar 2022 14:27:02 +0000

TrueNAS SCALE really make it hard to install Tailscale but now that I’ve figured it out, I’ll share it with everyone.

Limiting Firefox memory usage in Ubuntu

Tue, 02 Mar 2021 15:52:41 +0000

systemd-run --user --scope -p MemoryLimit=2G firefox Update /usr/share/applications/firefox.desktop so that each Exec line starts with that. Found here

Setting memory and CPU limits on Docker in Ubuntu

Tue, 02 Mar 2021 15:42:08 +0000

I’ve been hunting down a problem this morning that keeps causing my laptop to totally lock up. I suspected it was related to Docker because it happened every time I hit a particular endpoint on a local webserver running in Docker. When I was running Docker on a MBP, I could easily limit the total resources Docker used through a program that lived in the taskbar. I found it more challenging on Ubuntu but after some poking around, I found an question on StackOverflow by user Leltir that gave me the answer.

Personal Infrastructure Part 2

Fri, 26 Feb 2021 16:20:37 +0000

This is a continuation from Part 1 I ran all of my services in nomad for about a year. It worked pretty well but the biggest hassle was running a CSI plugin using my Free TrueNAS instance for storage for the services. I had this issue where occasionally the CSI volume would think it had more claims than allowed. After dealing with that for several months and a chat with a homelab mentor, I decided to stop using a container orchestration service and treat all of these services like pets and not cattle.

Personal Infrastructure

Fri, 19 Feb 2021 14:21:59 +0000

I run a hobbyist’s infrastructure out of my basement. I have a Raspberry Pi 3 (amy), a Raspberry Pi 2 (hermes), an old gaming rig (theprofessor), and a DigitalOcean droplet (zoidberg). Each of them has a purpose and they are each precious to me. Managing them has been a pain lately so I’ve been working on reducing the pain. For starters, I’ve moved a lot of the boring configuration management over to Ansible.

Please Excuse the Mess

Mon, 13 Jul 2020 13:41:48 +0000

I’m working on migrating this blog from Ghost to WriteFreely so that I can participate fully in the IndieWeb. I also found Ghost to be kind of a pain to deal with so hopefully WriteFreely will be easier.

Setting up a personal packagist, part 2

Wed, 11 Sep 2019 14:55:50 +0000

This post continue from part 1 of this series. In this post, we’ll create a docker container for our satis server to run in that can be used to deploy it into a Docker Swarm or Kubernetes cluster. Storing the dist archives So now that we’ve got satis building locally (or on a server somewhere), lets put it into a container and deploy it. There are a few ways that we could do this.

Setting up a personal packagist, part 1

Wed, 11 Sep 2019 00:29:31 +0000

Intro While I was reading the composer docs looking for a way to speed up our setup, I discovered Satis. It allows you to generate a private package repository. Here’s how I got it setup. I work on a Symfony project for work. One of the pain points in developing it was any time we needed to add or update a dependency. Like most PHP projects, we use Composer for managing our dependencies.

Timing docker build

Wed, 04 Sep 2019 13:41:02 +0000

The other morning, I was looking over a recent Jenkins build at work and realized that I had no idea why it took 5 minutes to build the container. When using Assetic [https://symfony.com/doc/2.8/frontend/assetic/asset_management.html] to build our assets, I can add a –profile flag and get line-by-line timings for each asset generated. I wanted that for docker build. After a little research, I discovered the answer in a StackOverflow post [https://stackoverflow.com/a/51760937/1695439]. The ts program which is part of the moreutils package accepts data from a pipe and echos a timestamp plus the original text.

Welcome

Sat, 31 Aug 2019 17:43:18 +0000

Hello visitor! I want to be the first to welcome you to my new site. You might see a few pages break over the next few days while I get everything sorted out.

Java Thread Synchronization

Fri, 16 Sep 2016 20:28:20 +0000

During week 4 of my class in Operating Systems, I learned about thread synchronization. Since this whole class is based in Java, we’ve been implementing all of the OS ideas in Java. I’ve taken a Java class before where we dealt with threads but it was quite a while ago. We used things like Thread.new() and Thread.sleep(). I’ve now learned that both of those are quite outdated ways to deal with threads.

Type Systems

Sun, 15 May 2016 21:55:43 +0000

My own prediction is that TDD is the deciding factor. You don’t need static type checking if you have 100% unit test coverage. And, as we have repeatedly seen, unit test coverage close to 100% can, and is, being achieved. What’s more, the benefits of that achievement are enormous. Therefore, I predict, that as TDD becomes ever more accepted as a necessary professional discipline, dynamic languages will become the preferred languages.

Ruby 2.3

Mon, 04 Jan 2016 12:59:09 +0000

Over the Christmas break, Ruby dropped a new version. I installed it as soon as I heard and I’ve been exploring it since. There are a few things in it that I think will be super useful so I thought I’d write a bit about them. Lonely Operator This is a neat operator that Ruby stole from other languages. It looks kind of strange: &.. It allows you to collapse a bunch of nil checks into a single statement.

Rust

Mon, 04 Jan 2016 12:58:45 +0000

I was listening to a new (for me) podcast [http://bikeshed.fm/45] about development. The people hosting it are famous rails [https://github.com/rails/rails] developers but they also talk about other topics. One of the developers has a side project where he is creating an ORM for this new language Rust [https://www.rust-lang.org/]. An ORM is a layer between the database and a language that abstracts away a lot of the details of the database. It usually makes it a lot easier to deal with a database.

NaNoWriMo

Fri, 13 Nov 2015 11:29:55 +0000

It’s that time of year again: National Novel Writing Month. The month where everyone strives to write a 50,000 word novel. I follow a bunch of author’s blogs and they all write about this event every year Charles Stross [http://www.antipope.org/charlie/blog-static/2015/10/how-to-stay-in-the-zone-for-na.html] , John Scalzi [http://whatever.scalzi.com/2014/11/01/a-quick-note-on-nanowrimo/] , and even Wesley Crusher [http://wilwheaton.net/2008/11/in-which-wil-at/]. Last year, I read all about it and decided to try it out. November arrived and my fingers did nothing. Out of my 50,000 word goal, I wrote exactly 0.

Financial Independence

Wed, 09 Sep 2015 09:57:04 +0000

Over the past year or so, I have become much more interested in personal finance. Last summer, I started using a program called YouNeedABudget [http://www.youneedabudget.com] to track all of my spending. Doing that, I’ve managed to stop accumulating debt. I also have a debt spreadsheet that I use which allows me to snowball [http://www.daveramsey.com/blog/get-out-of-debt-with-the-debt-snowball-plan/] the payments to my various debts. As you can see, my minimum payments are around $500 and I’m adding $200 extra towards the debts.

Ben Franklin Update

Sat, 05 Sep 2015 02:06:31 +0000

For those who missed it, I decided to try following Benjamin Franklin’s schedule [http://blog.christopherjones.us/2015/09/01/ben-franklin-schedule/]. I think I picked a poor week to try this schedule change. Monday and Tuesday were successful. I felt super productive. I woke up at 5am both days. I had time to workout, check email, and eat breakfast before I started getting ready for work. Then came Wednesday. I had to be at an exercise at 7am on the dot so I didn’t have much time to get relax before getting ready.

Ben Franklin Schedule

Tue, 01 Sep 2015 09:27:04 +0000

I’m always looking for how to be more productive. This week, I was reading through my news feeds on feedly [https://feedly.com/] and came across an article from J. Money on Budgets Are Sexy about living Benjamin Franklin’s schedule [http://www.budgetsaresexy.com/2015/07/working-benjamin-franklin-schedule/]. My ears perked up. It’s a pretty straight-forward schedule. I decided give it a test run this week. Here’s what it looks like from Ben Franklin himself . I don’t know how he managed on so little sleep each night.

Gardening

Sun, 30 Aug 2015 18:43:25 +0000

I started reading a lot this year about gardening. I grew up with everyone I know gardening. Both of my grandfathers gardened and so did my dad. Everyone was doing it. I feel like maybe I should do it too. I started out reading a great book on the topic called The Backyard Homestead [smile.amazon.com/The-Backyard-Homestead-Produce-quarter/dp/1603421386]. I initially found this book at a book warehouse and talked myself out of it because at the time we were living in an apartment and didn’t really have the room to garden.

New Languages

Thu, 20 Aug 2015 01:14:48 +0000

I’m starting yet another class this week. This time, the topic will be other programming languages. Up until this point in my college career with UMUC, we have only used Java. While Java is quite powerful and can run pretty much everywhere, it is certainly not user friendly. I certainly wouldn’t use it for any trivial project. Or really any project where I can avoid it. I was hoping that we would learn contemporary languages like Go, Scala, or Clojure.

Authentication

Wed, 05 Aug 2015 17:01:26 +0000

I’ve been thinking a lot about authentication for my library website, Bibliophilium. It started out with do I need any? And moved to, how should I manage it? To how far do I want to take this? In Rails development, there is a golden standard library for authentication. It’s called Omniauth [https://github.com/intridea/omniauth]. Everyone seems to use it. It integrates with other services like Facebook and Twitter allowing signin from them through OAuth.

Nodes

Thu, 23 Jul 2015 22:59:09 +0000

In my data structures class, we’ve been talking about things like Linked Lists and Search Trees. One thing that I’ve noticed in common with most of these structures is that they’re made up of nodes. A node is just a simple way to store data. In a linked list, a node will also store a reference to the next node. In a tree structure, it will store references to its parent node, as well as child nodes one to the left and one to the right.

Data structures

Wed, 17 Jun 2015 15:47:21 +0000

I’m blogging at you this week from Louisville, KY where I’m in town for the wedding of my oldest and closest friend. I also started my next class for my Computer Science degree. It’s a Data Structures and Algorithms class. This type of class has been talked up all over the Internet as the most important class in a computer science degree. I’ll update you all my thoughts on the class as it goes.

My name is Chris and I'm a programaholic

Fri, 05 Jun 2015 02:06:05 +0000

I found a great group of people this week at Unallocated Space [unallocatedspace.org]! I went to their weekly web dev night. I had a great time learning how to build a Drupal module. I can’t wait to return next week.

Programming again

Fri, 29 May 2015 01:17:04 +0000

With the holiday weekend last weekend, I was finally able to program some on Bibliophilium which as you may recall is the library managing site that I’m working on. I spent most of the weekend getting logins working and getting the hosting to work. I feel so behind because I don’t work with heroku [heroku.com] on a regular basis. There is quite literally nothing to look at on the staging site [http://bibliophilium-staging.

Emergency Backup Text Editor

Thu, 14 May 2015 22:51:41 +0000

UPDATE (5/18/2015): Here are my config files [https://github.com/magikid/linuxconfigfiles] I’ve talked before [http://blog.christopherjones.us/2015/04/08/tools/] about how my favorite programming editor is Sublime Text. Just because I have a favorite though doesn’t mean that I always get to use it. Today’s post is about my second favorite text editor. Vim is my backup text editor. I like it because it’s installed everywhere its commands are very powerful it’s crazy customizable and the plugins To the first point, vim is always installed when I first log into a new terminal.

Thoughtbot

Tue, 05 May 2015 20:24:06 +0000

This weeks article is going to be about a blog that I consider to be a mentor. That blog is Giant Robots Smashing Into Other Giant Robots [https://robots.thoughtbot.com]. It is written by different people at the company thoughtbot [https://thoughtbot.com/]. I really like this blog. Out of all of the resources that I have on the internet for programming, I turn to it first. They develop mainly in Ruby on Rails which is what I mainly use too.

Elevator Saga

Thu, 30 Apr 2015 11:33:29 +0000

At work, I hang out in a chat room with other programmers. We mainly tell bad jokes all day but I was tipped off to a really fun programming exercise game. It’s called Elevator Saga [http://play.elevatorsaga.com/]. The point of the game is to program a set of elevators to efficiently go from floor to floor, picking up and dropping off passengers. And if you’re wondering how exactly you program an elevator, the designers have created an API [http://play.

Sources of Info

Wed, 15 Apr 2015 23:31:09 +0000

I’ve learned a lot about programming over the years. I started learning programming with HTML which is the language of the web. Through the years, I have found a bunch of great resources for learning. This post is dedicated to my current sources of information. My favorite blog that I read these days is called Giant Robots Smashing into Other Giant Robots [https://robots.thoughtbot.com/]. It’s written by a company of programmers. They work Monday thru Thursday and help others on Friday.

Tools

Wed, 08 Apr 2015 23:45:04 +0000

This week I’m doing the obligatory post about the tools that I use to program. Let’s start out with the tools I use: Sublime Text Linux Virtual Machine Git rvm With those, I can conquer anything thrown my way. I’m a recent convert to Sublime Text [https://www.sublimetext.com/]. Before that, I mainly used Notepad++. I love it’s speed mainly. Using Notepad++ with a lot of files in a project causes it to move deathly slow.

Using Active Model Serializers

Wed, 01 Apr 2015 23:00:00 +0000

Boy, this one is late. I blame moving. Hilary and I finally got the keys to our new place and have started moving in. Last time I wrote about programming, I discussed APIs. In this post, I want to continue in the same theme and discuss implementing an API in a Rails application. Rails has a great, simple way to output standard JSON instead of an HTML document. class FlashcardsController < ApplicationController def index render json: Deck.

On Pause This Week

Thu, 26 Mar 2015 01:10:30 +0000

I was planning on writing another post about creating an API but I’m exhausted. This weekend Hilary and I moved our worldly possesions into some U-Haul U-Boxes [http://www.uhaul.com/UBox/]. We finished moving out of our apartment today and as of 2pm, we’re officially homeless for a week until our new townhome is available. With all this flurry of activity, I just don’t have it in me to write a blog post about how to create an API for a website using the Grape gem.

Creating an API

Wed, 18 Mar 2015 23:25:10 +0000

Part 1 in my series on creating an API in Rails. Here’s part 2 [/52in52/api/2015/04/01/using-grape-api/]. This week, I have been working hard to add an API to a website that I wrote. I’m going to explain what an API is and why I want one for this website. When you visit a website, your browser uses a protocol called HTTP. HTTP is made up of verbs that describe interactions with the server.

Busy Life

Fri, 13 Mar 2015 01:01:25 +0000

Life Is getting busy for me. In about two weeks my wife, Hilary, and I will be moving. In addition to that, I have an astronomy class that just finished and a discrete math class that starts on Monday. I also have a busy schedule when I’m at work. This isn’t the first time that I have found the pace of life picking up. I have found that when I get stressed out about having a lot on my plate, the best thing I can do is control what I can and try to not let the rest bother me.

Project Committal

Thu, 05 Mar 2015 01:13:41 +0000

I have had a lot of problems with starting projects and not following through. It took me about a year to work through the Ruby koans official site [http://rubykoans.com/]|my code [https://github.com/magikid/my-ruby-koans]. And they were simple programming exercises designed to introduce you to the language. I say no more. This is the year that I stop starting without finishing, at least where programming is involved. I have recently started a new project that I intend to be a sort-of showcase for my website building skills.

A Blogging Habit

Thu, 26 Feb 2015 23:50:30 +0000

I was listening to Developer Tea [http://www.developertea.com/] yesterday and they were discussing the merits of having a personal blog and marketing yourself as a developer. I set this blog up last fall as a spot for me to journal. I think rather than using it as a journal, I will try to discuss mainly programming related topics from now on. I will be discussing projects that I’m working on and new techniques that I’m learning.

Feline Diabetes

Wed, 05 Nov 2014 01:36:41 +0000

One of our cats, Leon, stopped eating this weekend. He has been eating noticibly less for the past month or two and has gone from 15lbs to 9lbs. I took him to the vet on Monday. After blood work and x-rays, he has feline diabetes. I didn’t realize that cats could get diabetes but I guess anything with a pancreas can. That means a significant change in his (and our) life with cats.

16 Book Blurb

Fri, 25 Jul 2014 00:36:00 +0000

Day 16: Imagine that someone has decided to write a book about your life, just up to this point. What would the cover blurb say? Be honest here. Is it kind of boring? Are you happy with it? Now imagine what you’d like that blurb to say at the end of your life. What changes need to made for that to happen? This prompt seems to think that up until this point in my life, I have done nothing interesting or noteworthy.

15 Cabinet of Invisible Counselors

Wed, 23 Jul 2014 01:03:32 +0000

Day 15: Come up with your own Cabinet of Invisible Counselors. There are innumerable great men from history who we can learn from today. When thinking about your life or pondering some question or problem, yes, go to actual mentors and friends, but also take in the advice of men of yore. Write out who you would have on your list and what you admire about them. Having trouble coming up with a list?

14 Book Review

Sun, 08 Jun 2014 00:48:00 +0000

Day 14: Write a review of some form of entertainment you recently took in. Whether book or movie or TV show or Broadway play, write out what you liked and didn’t like about it. Was the acting/writing good? Could you follow the story? Is there anything you can take from it about life, or was it purely entertainment? This is often one of the most enjoyable entries to write, as it’s especially fun (and quite nostalgic) to go back and read these in the future.

13 Mind Dump

Sat, 31 May 2014 00:43:00 +0000

Day 13: Perform a mind dump of everything you’re worried about. From the leaky dishwasher to your family member’s poor health — get it all out. Dwight D. Eisenhower did it, and it significantly helped him manage his stress. Just as your body needs to… cleanse itself of waste, so does your mind every once in a while. Getting all your stressors on paper may alleviate some of that pressure. Use David Allen’s GTD trigger [http://wiki.

12 Stream of thought

Tue, 20 May 2014 01:36:00 +0000

Day 12: Give stream-of-consciousness writing a try. This is where you basically just write out whatever comes into your head at the moment it comes into your head. It can feel bizarre, and it’s certainly not structured, but it can lead to some valuable insights into what’s going on in your mind. I’ll give you a 10-second example from right now, while looking out my window: “Boy, I have a nice-looking grill outside and the weather is beautiful…just what we need after all this cold and snow.

11 Memento Mori

Mon, 05 May 2014 21:25:00 +0000

Day 11: Memento mori. “Remember that you will die.” Admittedly, this isn’t the most pleasant topic. There is, however, great benefit in meditating on the reality that at some point, you will in fact die. It motivates you to live the life right now that you want to be living. Meditate on this, and write out your thoughts. Does death scare you? Does it motivate you? It’s okay to be honest.

10 Hero's Journey

Mon, 28 Apr 2014 19:44:00 +0000

Day 10: Take a look at the hero’s journey [http://www.artofmanliness.com/2013/07/11/heros-journey/], and identify where you are in that journey. Doing so can help you better understand where you are in life, and help you figure out where to go next. You can take it in the context of your entire life, or you can take it in the context of a certain phase of your life. Either way, you can be sure that you’re part of a greater journey, and knowing what comes next can help guide you along.

9 My Day

Tue, 15 Apr 2014 13:46:00 +0000

Day 9: On this day, simply write about your day. This may seem especially boring, but write out the events of your day. What time you woke up, what you had for breakfast, what your commute was like, what you did during at work, how you spent your evening. If you’re journaling in the mornings, write about the previous day. The beauty of this exercise is that you may discover something that you hadn’t realized.

8 Career

Sun, 30 Mar 2014 19:30:32 +0000

Day 8: Take some time today to reflect on your career. Jot down a timeline of it, including all the ups and downs. What was your best experience? And the worst? What would you like your future to look like, in terms of your career? If you’re a young man and haven’t started in yet, focus on that future part. What do you want your work to look like? ‘‘‘Timeline:’’’ 14 April 2009 - Enlist in USAF 14 June 2009 - Graduate BMT 01 July 2009 - Start DLI in Russian Basic Class 04 July 2010 - Finish Russian course in top 10 of class with 3.

7 Weekly Review

Sat, 22 Mar 2014 21:03:32 +0000

Day 7: You’ve made it one week! Reflect on what this newfound practice has been like. Getting through the first seven consecutive days is truly the hardest part. Have you enjoyed it? Has it been difficult? Has it been what you expected? Part of this doesn’t apply to me since I’m not journaling daily but rather weekly. I have enjoyed journaling weekly. I especially like this prompt format and in the future, I may reuse some of these prompts if I can’t think of anything to write about.

6 Quote Thoughts

Tue, 11 Mar 2014 01:03:32 +0000

Day 6: Pick a quote from our 80-ish quotes on manhood and reflect on why it stands out to you. Does it reflect a man that you aren’t yet, but hope to be? Does one of them remind you of a great man in your life who you’ve tried to model? If you can’t seem to reflect on a single quote, just take the time to write out a few of them that you like.

5 Unsent Letter

Sun, 02 Mar 2014 13:42:00 +0000

Write a letter to a loved one Dear Grandmother and Granddad, I was never old enough to talk to you and ask you questions while you were around and lucid. I have so many but I also have things that I want to tell you. Granddad, I joined the Air Force. I have so many questions about your time in the service. I read through your biography. It was so interesting.

4 Via Negativa

Sun, 16 Feb 2014 01:48:00 +0000

Day 4: Via negativia; today, pick a habit that you’d like to eliminate from your life. Bad habits are like armpits, we all have ‘em and they all stink. Whether cutting soda out of your life, or putting a stop to your porn addiction; either way, as with yesterday, think about the steps you’ll take in order to put the kibosh on that negative habit. And again, also think about how you’ll keep yourself accountable to that goal.

3 Positive Habit

Sat, 15 Feb 2014 05:00:00 +0000

Day 3: Decide on one positive habit you’d like to implement in your life. Whether seemingly mundane (like flossing) or perhaps life-altering (exercising every day), think of something you’d like to add to your life that will be beneficial. Then, think about the steps you’ll take to get there, and how you’ll keep yourself accountable I’ve been putting off this entry for two weeks now because I couldn’t think of a habit that I wanted to implement.