Book Review: Head First JavaScript Programming

Head First JavaScript Programming

By: Eric T. Freeman, Elisabeth Robson

Publisher: O'Reilly Media

Print: March, 2014

 

 The fun way to learn how to program

Pros : Helpful examples, Fun Style, Easy to understand

An excellent gateway for learning to program. The introduction clearly spells out who this book is designed for, why the concepts are presenting the way they are and how the reader can best use the book for learning JavaScript. On top of that, this book is just fun.

For the more experienced, you can select the chapters where you need to sharpen your skills and be adequately challenged.

You can browse through this blog and lots of others for tips and tricks related to JavaScript, all little bits and pieces thrown about on the web.  Sure, there are good pointers in of all of that, but do you get to really know how to effectively program in JavaScript? Now there is this book to get you the rest of the way there!

Productivity: OneNote vs Evernote

Sure, I've been using a DayTimer since the mid-90's to keep my appointments, tasks and projects straight.  Most things I just kept in my head (that's not working as well as it used to). Since I've got all these tech-toys (Blackberry, Kindle, laptop), it's time to start using them to get organized and more productive.

What got this started was a roll out of Microsoft OneNote at work.  So, everyone in the office now has it and some teams have already been using it for tracking projects.   First impressions so far:

Pros

• Integrates with Sharepoint and other Office apps we have at work
• Installs on most devices for free
• Free web version of OneNote with a Microsoft OneDrive account
• Has built-in OCD and screen capture

Cons

• Free web version isn't going to link up with the version we're using at work
• No app for the Blackberry
• Nothing for Linux (Ubuntu!)

So, looking at trying to find something that would be more accessible on all my devices, at work and home, took a look at Evernote.  There are apps for Linux available (Everpad, NixNote aka Nevernote) and they have an app for the Blackberry.  Multiple subscription levels that include free personal use and scales up for business use.

Both have third-party apps that used with them to scan, capture web pages and utilize project management tools.

For now, I'm going to use OneNote just for specific work projects and Evernote for everything else.  Also going to use Zendone.com to integrate Evernote with my Google Calendar (OneNote can hook in with Outlook, but we don't use Outlook at work).

More to follow as I try things out.

Thirty years of Personal Computers

My first introduction to computers was in 1978 at Eastern Illinois University. Although it was not my major (Medical Technology), I took a summer class in Basic programming, which was offered through the Mathematics department. The Computer Science department didn't exist yet. Programs where typed in on a keypunch machine, the stack of punch cards handed over to someone at the computer room and then wait until the next day to retrieve your output printed on paper.

Fast forward to 1984 when, after working in the forensic pathology lab for a couple of years, I was able to purchase my very own personal computer.  It was an used Tandy TRS 80. I was quickly frustrated by the limited 4K of RAM (yep, that's 4,000 bytes of memory) and excruciatingly slow cassette tape method of loading and saving programs.  So, just a couple of months later I purchased a bright and shiny Apple IIc with monochrome monitor (green screen), a whopping 128K of RAM and two (count them, two!) 5.25 inch floppy drives.  It was, at the time, amazing!

The rest, as they say, is history.  I could write a long list of computers I've owned since then, but maybe that will be another post someday.

It wouldn't be a decent blog post if I didn't link to something, so for old times sake, go take a look at the Jargon File - where you'll find all sorts of interesting history and terminology.  And happy 38th birthday to Apple, which was founded in April, 1976.

Using an Edimax USB WiFi with Linux Mint 13 Maya

Just for fun, I setup an old PC (HP box with Pentium 4 3.2 Ghz, 2 GB RAM and 160 GB HD) and installed Linux Mint.  The motherboard has the built in Ethernet port, but I wanted to use WiFi. So I plugged in the Edimax USB that I had laying around.  Mint recognized it, but it didn't work quite right (would not maintain a connection but for a few minutes).

Did a bit of searching and found several comments about this issue.  Some where helpful, some not. Finally found this post that briefly outlined the steps to update the driver - and now it's working much better!

Ubuntu: Linux for human beings

Catchy phrase, eh?  Up to three installations of Ubuntu now (2 laptops, 1 server) and enjoying every minute.

 

Found this over at LinuxCounter.net - guess it's a bragging rights kind of thing.

Of course, could always learn new a thing or two about Ubuntu and Linux in general.

Check out this blog:

Cool UBUNTU Tips & Tricks brought to you by OzzyFrank

Malware, Local File Insertion and PHP

Getting back into some web development once again.  I've been playing around with some simple CMS applications for blogging, etc.  On one new site, I installed Pixie, which seems to be a nice solution (plus I just like trying out things that are of British origin).

On the new micro server, I installed tinyCMS to try it out.  Getting it setup and working properly can be a topic of another post, but I was doing a little research on the security of the application.  Seems it does have some documented vulnerabilities, along with WordPress and the TinyMCE editor.

In the course of looking at this, I came across this post that suggested some things to help make the PHP more secure. Specifically by disabling these functions in the php.ini:   

disable_functions = create_function,gzinflate,eval,base64_decode

Good reading and never hurts to a least try to keep the sites a little more secure. 

Dell Inspiron 1420, Ubuntu and Wireless 1395 WLAN mini-card

I had previously posted about my adventures with installing Ubuntu on this old Dell laptop.  Even though I could get the wireless to connect with the open source drivers included with Ubuntu 12.04, I have always had difficulty getting the connection to persist, especially after a reboot.

First I thought it was the network manager, made changes and eventually went back to the original.  I put up with it for awhile but again went searching for a better answer.

There is a proprietary driver for the Dell Wireless 1395 WLAN mini-card (which is actually a Broadcom BCM 4312 under the hood) provided by the manufacturer here.

Also, more information about detecting and installing alternate drivers provided in the Ubuntu documentation is worth reading:  Identifying Your Broadcom BCM43xx Chipset (PCI)

The easy answer that I discovered was:

• Go to System Settings and select Additional Drivers
• Give it a few minutes to detect your hardware
• Activate the STA wireless driver

Important to note: you need to be plugged in with your Ethernet port to access the Internet. Changing the wireless drivers will disconnect your WiFi and of course will be unable to download anything.  That might be overstating the obvious, but hey, just wanted to mention it.

Logwatch and fail2ban

Things are running along pretty smoothly on the Ubuntu server over on Amazon AWS. Doing some research on server admin and security, saw a post on installing Logwatch to more easily scan the logs daily.   Of course, no surprise to see lots of attempts at compromising the server.

Decided to do something about it and found this article (geared more to Debian Wheezy, but still applies to Ubuntu): Install and Config Fail2Ban

I particularly liked the information about apache-badbots and apache-myadmin, both of which would help block a lot of the traffic seen in the logs.

Also saw lots of entries in the logs with w00tw00t.at.blackhats.romanian.anti-sec:)
So looked up a post on this blog that discusses using fail2ban specifically to block it.

Fun stuff!

LibreOffice on Ubuntu 12.04 - More about hsqldb.jdbcDriver

I have another old laptop that has Ubuntu 12.04 LTS (dual boot with Windows 7) and wanted to see if I could recreate the issue with LibreOffice Base.

This time I did not uninstall the default LibreOffice 3 that came with the distribution.   Rather I followed the instructions mentioned in the previous post and added the PPA followed by an update.  I didn't realize that Base was not included in the default install I had, so did have to install it.

Was not surprised to find that Base could not open up the sample database just as before.  So, that ruled out that doing the uninstall first on the other laptop caused the problem. 

As before, running this command fixed the issue:

sudo apt-get install libhsqldb-java

Upgrading to LibreOffice 4.1 on Ubuntu - Missing hsqldb.jdbcDriver

I've been really enjoying Ubuntu on this old Dell laptop for awhile now.  One thing I ran across was not being able to open MS Publisher documents with the default LibreOffice 3 that was installed.  Doing a little research, that functionality was added to LibreOffice 4, so I decided to upgrade.

Best I could tell, the proper way to proceed was to use the Software Center to uninstall version 3.  Then I found this article on installing LibreOffice 4.1 from the PPA.  After installing with sudo apt-get install libreoffice, I tried out LibreOffice Base.

I created a new database and tried to open it.  Uh-oh, I got this error:
The connection to the data source "SampleDatabase" could not be established.
and
The driver class 'org.hsqldb.jdbcDriver' could not be loaded.

Now what to do?  I went back into the Software Center and looked at LibreOffice Base and there were several optional add-ons for a variety of database drivers.  Select every one available and updated.   Nope, still not working.

Somehow installing from the PPA is not linking correctly so the hsqldb.jdbcDriver can be found.  Doing some more research I found another reference to exactly just that topic on the LibreOffice forum:  Upgraded to LO 4.1.0.4 now get 'connection to data source' error

Reading through that showed me how to install that specific driver with this:
sudo apt-get install libhsqldb-java

(Side note: I did not need to remove the old symbolic link and create a new one as mentioned in the post by dtmonterrey).

Bingo!  LibreOffice Base now opens my new database and I can connect to create and edit tables.

Happy New Year - 2014!

That's about it for today.

Top 5 Things to Do After Installing Ubuntu

Ubuntu on Dell Inspiron 1420

Earlier I posted that I had installed Ubuntu on an old computer, but didn't really go into any detail about the hardware.  It's a 5 year old Dell Inspiron 1420 that was running with the original Windows Vista (service pack 2 installed).

This poor old laptop had a couple rounds of spyware/malware and was pretty buggy to the point no one wanted to even try to use any more.  Almost to the point of recycling it (or donating to a worthy cause), but thought why not install one of the new Linux distributions on it for fun.  Turns out it gave the old Dell a brand new lease on life!

With that said, I'd had some problems with the wireless drivers related to the hardware on this model, the Dell Wireless 1395 WLAN Mini-Card.  I had read previously about issues with proprietary drivers, etc.  Ubuntu connected via wireless without a hitch but I always had to manually reconnect the wireless after a reboot.  Researching showed several others having the same problem with 12.04 and recommended a different connection manager - wicd - but that caused more problems on the Dell because wireless broke all together.

Long story short, I put the default network-manager back and decided that the issue wasn't with Ubuntu but rather the drivers.   Still want to link to an article about an alternative for later:

Broadcom Wireless on Ubuntu

more Ubuntu changes

After setting up a nice screensaver in Raspbian on the Raspberry Pi, I realized that my laptop with Ubuntu 12.04 only had the default blank screen available.  Not to be outdone by the RasPi, I found some information about why Ubuntu's screensaver is the way it is and what to do about it:

How to Add Screensavers to Ubuntu 12.04

more Raspberry Pi

Here's something very interesting - combining my two newest hobbies Ubuntu Linux and RaspPi - A Raspberry Pi Build Cluster for Ubuntu

Never mind that I can't actually watch the YouTube video with Raspbian :-P

Still, if it could be done, I think having a modified Ubuntu that could run on the Raspberry Pi would be cool!

Setting things up on Raspberry Pi

Just for fun, I thought I'd buy one of these little Raspbian kits and get back into using Linux (and maybe learn some Python and Perl and the way). In fact, I'm posting this today from the RaspPi! Cool stuff but not as easy out-of-the-box like Ubuntu 12.04.

So, blogging some steps that I took to customize and optimize Raspbian:

1) Installed Iceweasel (version of Firefox) and moved cache and profile to RAM disk (surf the web much faster!) - Firefox Ramdisk
2) Added some new shortcuts to the desktop (I'm using the default LXDE desktop GUI) using LXShortCut  and added/modified the program menu with LXPanel

3) Oops, I deleted the log-out button from the panel! Never did find a graphical way to put the button back, but did find out how to restore.  Rename the directory ~/.config/lxpanel (to something like ~/.config/lxpanel_bad) and reboot.  LXDE will create a new panel from the default configuration.  Note the dot in .config (it's normally a hidden directory).

Next up is to clone my SD card so I have a copy of Raspbian just the way I have it setup now in case I screw things up again!

Customizing Ubuntu

Just for future reference, I'm going to try and list all the different software packages I've added to Ubuntu now I've got it installed on this old laptop.

I must say, installing and customizing things on Ubuntu is much easier than the last time I tried using a flavor of Linux (Redhat back around 2006 or so).

Here's the list so far:

• Oracle Java(TM) Development Kit (JDK) 7
• Eclipse, using the Ubuntu Software Center, got an older version (Indigo), but that's ok with me
• Wikipedia Lens
• OpenSSH server
• Gimp
• Lightweight Java Game Library (lwjgl) by following this link
• Boot-Up Manager (BUM)
• ClassicMenu Indicator
• Kompozer
• XChat-GNOME
• FileZilla (I know it's got FTP built in, but I like FileZilla anyway)

That's it for now, but I'm sure to find some more toys to download and install.

Do you Ubuntu?

Just installed Ubuntu 12.04 on an old laptop.  Pretty cool so far.  Always liked working with Linux and now they are so easy to install and configure, even with WiFi, webcams, USB, etc.

It was quite an "upgrade" from the cranky old Windows Vista that was running on this computer. 

The reports of my death are highly exaggerated

EM man wanted in shooting death of Darrell Little

Good thing *I* don't live in Moline, IL

MegaMediaMashUpGoogleLand

Fun things to report - new Mac mini to replace the much loved iMac G4 Sunflower, upgrading the iPad to iOS 7 (eh...), rolling along with the Java programming course.

Discover completely by accident (how else do you find something in the YouTube universe?): SourceFed Nerd

Some random rambling about geek tech (but what else would you want to watch?) and some actually funny stuff.