MLK Weekend
So it turns out that I really made the most the 3 day weekend. I participated in the Global Synchronous Hackerspace Hackathon. More info on Hackerspaces can be found here, more on Hackathons here, and finally FreesideATL info here. I intended on working on adding possibly openid or oauth to the FreesideATL members web application to make it a snap to login (plus i hate remember user/pass combos). But I had a bit of an issue booting my ArchLinux netbook post kernel update. Apparently there had been a framebuffer configuration change to bring X server resolution into the kernel space from user space... I'm not really sure what the deal is, and frankly i don't care how the text looks during the boot process. After some digging (using lynx since X wasn't working +5 hacker points) I settled on including nomodesetting on my kernel boot line. I really needed to look that up cause I had not the experience nor necessity to ever need to know what kernel mode settings were. So sue me.
I hung out with the awesome crew from Makers Local 256 @ Freeside for a lil bit during the Synchronous Hackerspace Hackathon. The pics from the Makers Local 256 visit are here. The visit was very productive, and we would like to thank them for stopping by.
I made about a dozen commits to my blogging project, mostly in regards to entry composition. I replaced the tinyMCE WYSIWYG editor with a markdown editor, since markdown is all the rage nowadays. I took the opportunity to refactor the database a bit to handle any future transitions to different markup schemes as well. Its getting to the point where more work needs to be directed to the site's stylesheets, but since I suck at doing such things, I've been procrastinating pretty hard on that task. Looks like this week I'll have to devote some time to it.
An interesting issue that I've finally been able to put to rest is in
regards to a configuration file that needs to be tracked, but kept
getting changed during testing. I tried weird branching schemes,
stashing, etc etc etc. I dug deep into the git manuals and found an
interesting command option which has solved my issue. Essentially,
this was a file that had usernames, passwords, and database settings.
Its a tracked file, naturally, as it is part of the code base. But I
needed to change it and keep it changed locally, without popping up
constantly when I'm checking the repository status. SIDE NOTE: I've
found that false positives in the status ouput seems to annoy me
more than other developers. As a result my .gitignore tends to be
much more complex than i've seen in other developers projects.
The fix is to change the file in question, and then run:
git update-index --assume-unchanged <file>
Engineered. Now the change stays local, and doesn't ruin my clean
git status output. Git FTW. Just gotta remember that whenever I
change that file I have to add it to the index manually if I want the update pushed, but its a real low traffic file.
Back to the real world, my wife and I observed Martin Luther King Day by watching the Boondocks "Return of the King" episode, Ken Burns Baseball pt. 6, covering Jackie Robinson, and The Hurt Locker. The last one has nothing to do with MLK, but its a decent enough film. And my wife and I built a bunk bed. Nice.
Happy MLK Day!