my blog

Starting My MBA at University of the People Journey

Close friends know that I am quite skeptical of education systems in general. And seeing how much higher education in USA costs - it drives motivation even further down.

Last year I found out about University of the People - a tuition-free university which offers undergraduate and graduate programs in areas of Health Science, Computer Science and Business Administration.

Dokku, PHP apps, and Crontab tasks

I decided to try Dokku for hosting PHP apps to simplify the process of upgrading code. I mostly followed guide http://www.broculos.net/2015/12/dokku-how-to-deploy-vanilla-php.html with a few exceptions (using the apache2 handler, adding persistent volumes for storing uploads, etc.)

Working around broken nested NPM dependencies in old project

Recently I had to re-deploy an old Node.js project, which still runs node.js v0.10.x (it is pointless to upgrade it, a whole new project will replace it soon).

What I found is that quite a few nested dependencies ended up not working with Node.js v0.10 (it was a long chain of dependencies, each linking to a "too new" version of their dependencies due to not an optimal semver)

Integrating wordpress into Drupal 7 site

So I had one plugin for Wordpress which I really wanted to use on one of my Drupal website. Naive approach was:

Installing AMDGPU drivers on Dell M7710 with AMD W5170m and running OpenCL without AMDGPU-PRO

I lost password for one of encrypted folders recently, but I remembered approximate "charset" of it and just wanted to try to bruteforce it. I have a W5170m GPU in my laptop, but since it is GCN 1.0 card - I had troubles adding OpenCL support necessary for any tool to bruteforce hashes on GPU. Below are steps to get it up and running.

Proof-of-Work security

I received email with question about my project https://hashcash.io/ . I decided to share my answer in hope this will help clarify usage of Proof-of-Work in general for security purposes, what it can and can't do.

New Project I Am Working On

Back in 2005 I was creating small websites in an attempt to capture traffic from Google search engine, and redirect visitors to various affiliate programs. This involved generating many small static websites on specific topics and uploading these to managed hosting. It worked relatively well until the product advertised by me was discontinued. At that point I had to go back and find every single URL to the old advertised product and switch those to a new one.

New features in Slic3r Dev

Always feeling like I am missing out on cool stuff, I am using Slic3r cloned straight from development GitHub repository - https://github.com/alexrj/Slic3r

Today I found couple new notable features added: 3D path preview and Infill/perimeter overlap setting.

My New February Resolution

I came up with funny resolution for this year for myself, but since it happened in February, so it is New February Resolution.

For next 365 days I want to have at least one smallest contribution back to open source community via GitHub https://github.com/hippich - Be it opening issue, or closing PR request, or long awaited small documentation update. Ultimately, I want my dashboard become all shades of green.

New hobby

My 2014 Christmas started early with purchase of Lulzbot TAZ 4 3D printer. Already enjoying making some useful and not so much things.

So far i spent hours with Slic3r and Cura (I find Cura giving better prints out of the box), printed dozen of Tarot Gimbal bracket for IRIS+ drone and sold on eBay, learned basics of CAD in FreeCAD, OpenSCAD and Blender. Some of my original works:

Easy to make adapter allowing to use 3xAA batteries where D batteries are required: