TheBacklog.net

Releasing on the iOS and Android stores

Sometimes I wonder why I do this?

It is Friday, 14h37. I just submitted an app for Apple to review. I worked past 2am last night to get things done. Things were not done then and they are not done now. But done enough. I am very tired. My neck hurts. I still need to bake a cake with my daughter for her birthday party tomorrow. Why am I doing this?

Building for the distributed web

Context

Reflections on running a workshop

I recently facilitated a workshop on community networks and the peer 2 peer (P2P) web. A workshop is a unique opportunity to engage people on a topic. In contrast with a broadcast model for disseminating information, it allows people to share their own expertise from their perspective. It is also an opportunity for people to get to know each other and form connections.

Modern web applications without a build system

I recently built this app. In short, it is a markdown blog that writes data to a local IPFS node when using this browser.

Twenty books in 2020

Prompted by a goodreads book challenge, I decided to read 20 books in 2020. Most of the books are sci-fi, some books formed part of a summer school course I did and some books I felt like I should read.

Dear Amazon, please take my money

Since it felt like I sent the message below into the void, I figured I might as well post it online.

Archiving an old etherpad server

I’ve had to backup/archive data on an etherpad server more than once, so it’s probably worth documenting and sharing.

All Possible Universes

Have you ever misplaced a photo and you just can’t find it? Well, I have, but instead of wallowing in despair, I decided to do something about it.

Smart light (disco doughnut)

Smart light

Elements of online learning experiences

Working for P2PU I’ve spent a lot of time developing, or advising on the creation of online learning experiences. Even though we’re (P2PU) focussing on getting people together in real life these days, I felt these notes from 2014 deserve better than rotting in a Google doc. It is a little brain dumpy and dusty, but I left it that way for the aesthetic.

Sunset from Pão de Açúcar

Watch on Vimeo.

I don't think I'll ever write good sci-fi, so I gave bad sci-fi a try

It was late friday night and unlike other 23 year olds Greg wasn’t out having a fun night. In fact, he was at home sitting behind his desk like almost every waking moment of the past 5 days. Pizza delivery boxes were scattered at the one side of his desk and a few empty Club Mate bottles were lying around. More importantly though, there were still one half full bottle and things were starting to tie together on his computer screen.

Timelapse of a harbour in Cartagena

Watch on vimeo.

Is the internet still relevant?

I’m concerned about the general state of the internet. Some examples:

Writing Django apps for humans

The last two years a big part of my work have been to write Django apps for online learning. I’ve learned a lot and feel that it was successful. But there is one thing I didn’t get right and that is writing applications that are easy for non software developers to configure run and customize. I’m not talking about deploying the application or setting up and configuring the database, I’m talking about simple tasks like updating copy and changing settings.

Sending email using SMTP and TLS from the command line

Here is a script you can use to send email from a linux command line if you need to use TLS (Transport Layer Security).

Brushing up on JavaScript

I’m working on an application that is mostly client side and I need to brush up on my JavaScript skills a bit. Here are some notes on the experience.

Thoughts on informal learning

I’ve learned many things through the web and alternative sources. Working at P2PU for the past 2 years gave me some perspective on how I learned informally. Here are some thoughts on informal learning:

Torres del Paine timelapses

Torres del Paine from Dirk Uys on Vimeo.

Some midnight thoughts on education and technology

I was lying awake last night thinking about the role that technology has to play in education and the question that came up was this - is there anything that technology can truly change in the open online education world that would make things better? I’m not talking about improving on things that is already being done, I’m talking about really making new things possible. Is there maybe a technology that we can imagine that will change things completely?

Learning by playing and tinkering

I joined the session from Learning Creative Learning (LCL) today about playing and learning. During the breakout we were prompted to relate an experience about tinkering with physical objects and tinkering with technology.

Thinking about a course creation experience

What could creating an online courses be like?

Learn to Code: lesson 3 - loops

Visualization using D3

Two visualization I created for P2PU from data for Play with your music. They are used here.

Learn to Code: lesson 2 - variables

Ok, so I got excited and couldn’t wait a week until the next lesson. And I know all of you got extremely exited while building your own cities and you want to do more!

Learn to Code

Sunset at the edge of Chiloé

A moment in paradise

There is something special about this place, even on a cloudy day!

Some old ideas

Got these in an old google doc. Approximate date is around 2009/2010. In the spirit of believing that ideas don’t belong to anyone, I’m sharing them! Here follows what I found:

Time goes by so slowly

This weekend I went camping at Cajon del Maipo and took the opportunity to make a timelapse video! Here are the results:

PiBox 2

My Raspberry Pi needed a new home (the old one) and I didn’t feel like killing the planet more. I made a simple case from an old cereal box that doesn’t require any glue! It is a very simple case and only requires some old cardboard and a carpet knife.

hack4good 2013

A list of project ideas for #hack4good 2013

This year I will learn stuff!!

So, the year is 2013 and it will be remembered as the year I started dabbling with physical bits of tech! Things like this, this and this!

Octasphere

A while back I played a bit with webgl and decided that I want to draw a sphere.UV spheres have their problems, so I considered doing a icosphere. But to draw an icosphere you have to start with and icosahedron and then subdivide. Generating the initial coordinates for the icosahedron felt like too much work for the lazy me.

Visualizing Lernanta’s inter-dependancies

This project happened during a flight from Berlin to Durban on the 1st of October. The data comes from a small project that I’ve done earlier, but the visualization using HTML5 canvas happened in transit!

pi in a box

Yes, of course I’m talking about the raspberry pi! When I received my pi the first thing that I decided to do with it was to put it back in a box. But not its original box, a new and improved box that would allow me to use it!

Notifications at P2PU

Over at P2PU we recently revised how we do notifications. A mayor part of the update is allowing people to reply directly to a notification by email.

A P2PU API story

We’ve had some thoughts, talk and implementation for a P2PU API. It seems like everyone agrees that it’s a good idea and something that we need, but we are lacking concrete use cases. Maybe because we don’t have the complete API yet – the classic chicken and egg problem.

Learning Lernanta

I recently took a dive into the source code of a project called Lernanta. Lernanta is the Django based software platform that is used by Peer 2 Peer University to facilitate peer learning on the web! You can see it in action at p2pu.org

backing up your delicious bookmarks

As some may have heard, delicious is being acquired by AVOS. You can transfer your bookmarks, but I decided to make a backup of my bookmarks, just in case.

High resolution dependency graph

I generated a high resolution Gentoo Linux package dependency graph.

A nice picture of (dependency) hell

“Dependency hell” refers the difficulty that arise when installing a software package that requires a lot of other software packages to be installed. The required software packages (or dependencies) may themselves require other software packages to be installed.

Otter Hiking trail

I did the Otter hiking trail in Nature’s Valley during December 2011. It is one of South Africa’s best hiking trails, covering 42km of unspoiled coast. Getting a reservation is not easy, but more than worth it!

Working towards software quality

Software quality remains to be an illusive topic. It’s hard to define, measure or enforce.

Deep indentation

Having many levels of indentation can seriously hamper readability (and thus the understandability) of code. These indentation levels are normally a result of nested conditional statements and try-catch blocks.

Method stubs and Unused Code

A common thing we all do is creating stub methods on a class and implementing methods we do not immediately use. Both can lead to errors and incorrect results in parts of the code that use method stubs or (previously) unused code.

Code Smells

From Wikipedia: “In computer programming, code smell is any symptom in the source code of a program that possibly indicates a deeper problem.”

We all need to get things done and most of the time we need to do them in a hurry. Unfortunately the result is that our code are not always a clean as it should be. Fortunately we are not alone in this world and other people experience the same problems that we do. Code Smells are one of those things that can help us to identify when we are doing things that may hurt ourselves in the future. We may not always be able to fix them, but whenever you encounter a Code Smell, see if you can either justify it or fix it. Code Smells are not the problem themselves, but they indicate that other problems exist in the code. Solving them is important, but it is even more important to understand why they are bad. Code Smell for the week: Huge methods/functions Whenever a method becomes too big it gets hard to follow the logic of the method. Such a method should be broken down into smaller methods that groups together related functionality. If the refactored methods then contains unrelated functionality, consider moving them to separate classes. When doing the refactoring of big methods, it is common to encounter problems like the constant use of a shared variable throughout the method. This is in its own a Code Smell and may be mentioned at a later stage. When is a method TOO big? The size of a method is not the only determining factor. Whenever your method performs more than one definable thing, it’s probably too big. Another telling factor is the levels of indentation within the method. If you start having more than 4 levels of indentation in one method, you have good reason to believe that the method is too big. In methods that are too big, it can become very hard to follow the indentation levels. Some things to consider: Don’t overdo it. Functions that are too small can hamper the readability of the code. Don’t expose functions to the global name space unless needed. Please discuss Code Smells amongst each other. It is often more important to know why code smells are bad rather than knowing how to fix them. Knowing why they are bad will most likely result in us producing less Code Smells.

From the attic

Most programmers have a stash of old software projects somewhere. I decided to go and dig up those projects I have and commit them on github where they can be found.

A visual haXe example

This example will show you how to create a simple maize-style background in haXe like the picture below:

Installing NekoVM and haXe on Gentoo

Installing NekoVM and haXe on gentoo is done best by using the ebuilds provided by Daniel Turing.

Over to KDE4.2

After some initial struggles (gentoo-user mailing list) I have managed to update to KDE4.2.

Amatola

I did the Amatola hiking trail at the end of 2009! To make a long story short, it’s an excruciating route where uphill means uphill, downhill means downhill and aggressive bees are aggressive!

Open source flash workflow

I needed to do a project in flash and I needed to find a way to do so on my favourite OS – gentoo linux.

Putting haXe to wood

After using haXe for a personal project and finding it quite useful I decided to do a little write-up on what I did.

Isla falta

Every man (and woman) should have an island. Or at least that is what I think!