Author: dale

My tech career started as an audio visual technician, setting up sound reinforcement and projection equipment at a convention facility, before I moved to electronics maintenance and repair at a community college. After obtaining a university degree in engineering, I designed integrated circuits for the first generation of 900 MHZ analog cellphones, the first generation of CA-code-phase tracking GPS receivers and digital pro-audio. I then progressed through a variety of leadership roles in product management, marketing, engineering product development and manufacturing, in fields such as industrial GPS-based positioning and navigation, pipeline integrity inspection and industrial process control.
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New Year’s Day 2014 Bicycle Ride

I’ve gone for a bike ride on New Year’s Day for about 5 years now, and this year was no different – except this time I’ve got video to show, my first YouTube video!

Video in 720p format was captured by a Contour Roam2, a really nice HD-quality video Action Camera. Editing and rendering was done using Microsoft’s free Movie Maker 2012, a very satisfactory experience. The transitions and most of the titles were added automatically using a Smart Theme, and the Add music button conveniently linked to free content (legally free!). The edited project was rendered and uploaded to YouTube using the Movie Maker YouTube plugin. After uploading, YouTube suggested video stabilization – which I agreed to.

FWIW, Contour has an interesting back story. They unfortunately closed doors August 2013, and remind me a lot of IVL Technologies, a similar sized tech company I had the pleasure of working  for 1993 to 1997. BloombergBusinessWeek had an interesting post mortem article on Contour , with a few tips for all tech entrepreneurs.

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Column Types in Yii Migrations

I can never remember the abstract column types Yii supports, and never seem to get the right search string for google, but I’ll remember my own blog post.

Yii Database Abstract Column Types

Physical types are given in brackets using MySQL syntax.

  • pk: auto-incremental primary key type (“int(11) NOT NULL AUTO_INCREMENT PRIMARY KEY”).
  • string: string type (“varchar(255)”).
  • text: a long string type (“text”).
  • integer: integer type (“int(11)”).
  • boolean: boolean type (“tinyint(1)”).
  • float: float number type (“float”).
  • decimal: decimal number type (“decimal”).
  • datetime: datetime type (“datetime”).
  • timestamp: timestamp type (“timestamp”).
  • time: time type (“time”).
  • date: date type (“date”).
  • binary: binary data type (“blob”).

If the abstract type contains two or more parts separated by spaces (e.g. “string NOT NULL”), then only the first part will be converted, and the rest of the parts will be appended to the conversion result. For example, ‘string NOT NULL’ is converted to ‘varchar(255) NOT NULL’.

I have shamelessly plagiarized this list from the Yii manual. Also see the Yii manual’s excellent article on migrations, and queirozf.com has a nice list of tips.

 

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Calgary Tech Groups

A colleague asked about tech groups in the Calgary Canada region.

The local ‘nix groups are CUUG (Calgary Unix Users Group, www.cuug.ab.ca) and Calgary LUG (Linux Users Group, http://clug.ca/). CUUG tends to focus more on server-side topics such as networking and security, whereas CLUG (at least from meeting topics and mailing list conversation) tends to focus more on distros, desktop apps and device interconnectivity.

CAMUG (Calgary Agile Method’s Users Group, www.calgaryagile.com). They cover a broad spectrum of software topics in their meetings and workshops, with a small-a-agile hook (e.g. developing software in an agile way using Git and GitHub, developing software in an agile way using Ruby…). CAMUG can draw 50-100 people for a popular topic, and their session last night on Appsec with Jim Bird was great!

The ASQ (American Society of Quality). The Calgary chapter (http://www.asqcalgary.org/ee/) seems mostly interested in manufacturing quality systems (i.e. enterprise stuff) and meets at night monthly in the NE. The topics have been hit and miss for my interests, but they’ve had excellent topics/speakers when I’ve attended.

The SQDG (Software Quality Discussion Group, http://www.sqdg.ca/) meets monthly downtown during lunch, and focuses on software testing practices. They’ve had some good topics, but I haven’t been to a session in over a year now. Again, the topics are hit and miss for my interests but the ones I’ve attended have been excellent with good networking opportunities.

Calgary Protospace (http://protospace.ca/) seem most interested in low-level hardware and firmware hacking, but the system drive failed in a NAS array a few years ago and all the family photos were temporarily unavailable (my wife said I lost them). A unix networking specialist I met through protospace helped me reconstruct the array and save my marriage.

Mobile Mondays (https://twitter.com/momoyyc) host a mobile-related hackathon the first Monday night of every month.

Startup Calgary (http://startupcalgary.ca/) is a government/industry coalition I like to follow not only for their own events, but also because they aggregate what everyone else is doing into a nice regular email they send me.

Calgary democamp (http://democampcalgary.com/) organize DemoCamps periodically for tech entrepreneurs to demo shiny new apps that will change the world <wink>. I’ve only been to one, but it was a packed house and very interesting set of presentations.

There are also a number of Calgary-area tech MeetUp groups, such as the Calgary WordPress MeetUp Group, the Calgary PHP AND NOT PHP Meetup Group, Pixels and Pints, PyYYC (Python) and more. Do some poking around for your interests, and contribute to the success of a community.

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Removing Ports No Longer Required

I replaced Postfix with ssmtp recently, and wanted to check my FreeBSD server for any installed ports that are no longer needed. Thanks to Chris on the FreeBSD mail list, I have added some new portmaster flags to my tookit.

First, you may want verify your ports index by rebuilding it:

# cd /usr/ports
# make index

Next, list the ports installed, grouped by:

  • Root ports (No dependencies, not depended on)
  • Trunk ports (No dependencies, are depended on)
  • Branch ports (Have dependencies, are depended on)
  • Leaf ports (Have dependencies, not depended on)
# portmaster -l

Finally, delete the leaf ports that you know you don’t need on their own:

# portmaster -e portname

Thanks, Chris.