Verbally Flimzy

Ramblings, Observations and Misconceptions

One thing I miss about unit tests: Unit tests as Documentation

Posted on August 10, 2016

I wrote this post in October of 2015 as I was adjusting to life without unit tests at a new job. I recently stumbled upon it in my Drafts, and edited it down to a single point for publication. In October of last year I took a new job at a company with a large group of programmers, and an old (15+ years) code base.

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Filed under: Programming unit tests

Getting Anki 2.0 to work with Debian stretch

Posted on August 3, 2016

Recent updates to Debian testing (aka stretch) have rendered Anki broken, with the following error message at startup: $ anki Traceback (most recent call last): File "/usr/bin/anki", line 7, in <module> import aqt File "/usr/share/anki/aqt/__init__.py", line 12, in <module> from aqt.qt import * File "/usr/share/anki/aqt/qt.py", line 22, in <module> from PyQt4.

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Filed under: Anki debian language learning Linux

Configuring CouchDB for HTTPS only

Posted on November 18, 2015

Getting CouchDB to work via HTTPS is fairly well documented. Disabling HTTP turned out to be the harder part to figure out. Enabling HTTPS The official documentation (here is actually incomplete (or more likely, simply outdated). But it’s still a pretty straight forward process. Edit your local.ini to include the following:

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Filed under: couchdb database https Linux nosql security ssl

How to install CouchDB 1.6.1 on Debian 8.2 (jessie)

Posted on November 18, 2015

First, I must give credit where it is due. These instructions are based on Matteo Mattei’s earlier article Install CouchDB 1.6.x on Debian 7 (Wheezy), but with some important changes. The commands below assume you have sudo properly configured on your system, and that you are running as a standard user.

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Filed under: compile couchdb database debian install Linux nosql Programming

Ted Cruz is Not an Honorable Christian

Posted on September 5, 2015

Of course I have my opinions about Ted Cruz and his politics. I also have my opinions about Kim Davis and gay marriage. But this article isn’t about my opinions on these things. This article is rather about a single statement made by Ted Cruz, and the volumes it speaks against the public image he tries to portray, as an honorable, values-loving, devout follower of Christ.

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Filed under: Faith politics

Where Anki falls short

Posted on August 24, 2015

As a language learner, one of my daily tools is Anki flash card software. I primarily use the desktop version for entering data, and I primarily use the free Android app, AnkiDroid to study. Although the two pieces of software work together, they are written by different people, and rightly should be considered two distinct software packages.

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Docker: Up and Running -- A book review

Posted on June 19, 2015

I was recently tasked with developing a new web service application at work. This gave me a reason to investigate Docker as a possible deployment platform, so I’ve been reading about Docker. I just finished reading my second book on the topic, the not-yet-released (but it is available for Kindle) Docker: Up and Running by Karl Matthias and Sean P.

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Filed under: book review docker Linux Programming Reviews