"I" before "E" except Gleitzman: Howdoi – Instant Coding Answers via the Command Line

gleitzman:

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`

…

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

Source: uhurucloud.com

developers, inquire within

SKUDA & UHURU App Cloud have teamed up.

uhuru

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:

    1. Are you interested in web devolopment and coding?
    2. Are you creative?
    3. Are you able to improvise or work around things?
    4. Are you comfortable with taking calculated risks?
    5. Do you have even the remotest sense if humour?
    6. 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…

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 blackjack@gmail.com, 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 gun@smith-mail.com - and you know this for certain, or Gary whose address is hotlover5558@gmail.com 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:
  1. Do not display images
  2. NEVER, EVER, EVER CLICK LINKS IN AN EMAIL
  3. 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 “ACCOUNTS@ClTYGROUP.COM”. Because that’s not an “i” in my example… it’s a lowercase “L”. Oldest trick in the book.
  4. 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