Google Summer of Code: What do I do next?

Mar. 1st, 2014 10:39 pm
terriko: (Default)
Python's in as a mentoring organization again this year, and I'm running the show again this year. Exciting and exhausting!

In an attempt to cut down on the student questions that go directly to me, I made a flow chart of "what to do next" :

gsoc

(there's also a more accessible version posted at the bottom of our ideas page)

I am amused to tell you all that it's already cut down significantly on the amount of "what do I do next?" emails I've gotten as an org admin compared to this time last year. I'm not sure if it's because it's more eye-catching or better placed or what makes it more effective, since those instructions could be found in the section for students before. We'll see its magical powers hold once the student application period opens, though!
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The naming of things

Feb. 9th, 2014 09:52 am
terriko: (Default)
My former hackerspace, in fundraising for the new space, offered up a reward tier that let you name one of the rooms, which was a pretty fun perk. "My" room is going to be #16 on this map, the larger of the two electronics labs:

680_Haines_NW-Floorplans_numbered_mods_marked

Being the sort of person I am, I named it the "Pink Fluffy Unicorn Dancing on Rainbows Laboratory" thanks to this earwormy video. (Original song here, punk version here.)



They can call it PFUDOR labs for short or something. I actually proposed it as a joke when the campaign first was getting set up, but it got so many laughs that I decided it was actually kind of fun to have a name that really didn't take itself too seriously.

A few days after I made the official declaration, I got an email from an adult male friend there, bemoaning my choice of names in a gentle, joking, but also a little bit sincere way.

He is a friend and I don't want to mock his words in public, but I saw the email and thought THIS IS HOW I KNOW I HAVE CHOSEN THE RIGHT NAME. If this even a little hurts the manhood of even someone who knows me and my sense of humour, then you know that the anti-girly sentiment often prevalent in hacklabs is going to be rankled by this for as long as the space lasts. So now not only do I get to earworm my friends, but I run the risk of affronting people who haven't quite dealt with their own minor misogyny? And maybe give the hacklab an excuse to fill a space with rainbows, with all the connotations thereof? That actually kind of sounds like a bigger social win than I was intending, but maybe, just maybe, it'll combine with the already excellent people at Quelab to help keep the space as friendly and fun as it can be.

So next up I'm going to be buying a friend's pony patterns, a bunch of stuff from adafruit, some fabric, and I'll be making a hilarious e-textile pony with glowing rainbow neopixels to go in the space. Because I am not very subtle. ;)
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The Science of Household Tips: Does vinegar actually set dye in jeans?

Oct. 24th, 2013 12:07 am
terriko: (Default)
When I bought my latest pair of jeans, the nice lady who helped me find them advised me to wash them with a cup of vinegar the first time, to better set the dye. I didn't think much of it, until I wore the jeans before washing them and ended up with mildly blue thighs. So clearly pre-washing would have been a good idea, but.. does vinegar actually set dye?

Googling this mostly turned up a bunch of people parroting the same tip. Which would be reassuring if I didn't know that the internet is a sucker for feasible-sounding tips regardless of they make sense or work. (Witness: Pinterest vs Pinstrosity)

My research turned up the following claims, from the ever-reputable source of "people on the internet"

1. Vinegar totally helps set dye in jeans
2. Vinegar totally helps set dye... but not in cotton, so you're wasting your time with jeans.
3. For jeans, you should really use salt, not vinegar
4. Actually, you shouldn't wash jeans at all
5. It doesn't matter, but for the love of all that is blue, wash your jeans in cold water
6. You need to wash your jeans inside-out
7. Mine totally leaked dye so I gave them away and bought new ones!

But 0% of these came with sources that gave me any indication if these were really legit or just old wives tales. I don't need scientific journal papers, but you'd think there'd at least be a science fair project or tests from some sort of cross between consumer reports and good housekeeping.

So where do you go for figuring out if there's actually any proof behind household tips like this?
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I'm joining Intel's Open Source Technology Center!

Oct. 17th, 2013 05:23 pm
terriko: (Default)
I'm pleased to announce that I will be joining Intel's Open Source Technology Center (OTC), starting October 21st.

This is a big transition for me: not only have I physically moved to the Portland area from Albuquerque, but I'm also moving from academia to industry. However, I'm not moving away from either security or research: my official job title is "Security Researcher - Software Security Engineer."

There are lots of crazy smart people at Intel, especially at OTC, and I'm really excited (and a little scared!) about joining their ranks. This is exactly the job I wanted: I'll be doing security in an open source context (not only behind closed doors!), working with interesting people on interesting projects, and I'll be positioned such that my work can have an impact on the state of computer security in a global sense. It sounds like I'll be working primarily on web and Android security, which is challenging, fascinating, intimidating, and highly important. Wish me luck!
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Book review code

Oct. 17th, 2013 03:32 pm
terriko: (Default)
One of the things that bugs me when I'm doing book reviews is that I prefer it when reviews have a picture of the cover and link to the book of some sort, but I didn't love the output from Amazon's referal link generator, which would have been the easiest solution. I've been doing it manually, but that's a lot of cut and pasting and I kind of abhor doing tasks that are easy to automate.

Thankfully, I'm a coder and a user of greasemonkey, so I have all the skills I need to automate it. Seriously, being able to tweak web pages to suit my own needs is the greatest thing.

In the spirit of sharing, here's the script I'm using to generate the code I wanted for my reviews using the book page on LibraryThing:

// ==UserScript==
// @name        Book review header generator
// @namespace   tko-bookreview
// @description Takes any librarything book page and gives me a nice link to the book with cover and author details
// @include     http://www.librarything.com/work/*
// @version     1
// @grant       none
// ==/UserScript==

// Get all the data we'd like to display at the top of a review
var coverimage = document.getElementById('mainCover').outerHTML;
var title = document.getElementsByTagName('h1')[0].innerHTML;
var author = document.getElementsByTagName('h2')[0].innerHTML;
var librarythinglink = document.URL; 


// Trim down the title and author info
title = title.replace(/ *<span .*<\/span>/, '');

author = author.replace(/href="/, 'href="http://www.librarything.com');
author = author.replace(/<hr>/, '');

// Generate the code for this book
var reviewheader = '<a href="' + librarythinglink + '">' + 
   coverimage + '<br />' +
   '<b>' + title + '</b></a> ' +
   '<em>' + author + '</em>';

// Add code around this for embedding it into the page
var textbox = '<h4>Review Code</h4>' +
	'<textarea name="embedHTML" onFocus="this.select();" rows="5" ' + 
	'style="width: 250px;" wrap="virtual">' + reviewheader + '</textarea>';


// Find a good spot and add it to the page
var insert = document.getElementsByClassName('gap')[0];
insert.outerHTML =  textbox + insert.outerHTML;


Please feel free to consider this open sourced and free for any type of use: alter it to suit your needs as you will!

Edit: Github link, for those so inclined.
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