https://ninly.github.io/posts/Recent content in Posts on ninly's bogHugo -- gohugo.ioen-usFri, 13 Feb 2015 00:00:00 +0000https://ninly.github.io/posts/the-notebook-as-database/Fri, 13 Feb 2015 00:00:00 +0000https://ninly.github.io/posts/the-notebook-as-database/A couple of months ago I stumbled by happy accident onto the topic of keeping a commonplace book, or commonplacing. While this did call up vague memories of reading about commonplace books in my earlier life as a Humanities student, I had fully appreciated neither its power as a tool for memory and worldview-organization nor (and more to the point here) its kinship with a host of techniques used today for organizing large bodies of data.https://ninly.github.io/posts/more-virtualenv-sans-magic/Tue, 09 Dec 2014 12:00:00 -0500https://ninly.github.io/posts/more-virtualenv-sans-magic/Several months back I was figuring out how to use pip and virtualenv, and generally having a pretty good time with my python development experience. However, I kept running into interesting code examples and projects that required matplotlib and the numpy/scipy stack. Since I’ve also been trying to get familiar with mathematical modeling, analysis and visualization techniques, these are indispensable dependencies. I could (and had) play with them “raw”, but ran into problems when I tried to enjoy the control and isolation afforded by virtualenv.https://ninly.github.io/posts/labview-break/Tue, 01 Jul 2014 07:10:00 -0400https://ninly.github.io/posts/labview-break/As of a month or so ago I was still going strong with the Eudyptula Challenge tasks: building development kernels, hacking on dynamically loadable modules, exploring intricacies of git, and generally learning my way around the internal structures that make Linux tick. I had just begun to really dig into the whole idea of concurrency and the mechanisms (locking and so forth) and race condition caveats the kernel and its documentation have to offer.https://ninly.github.io/posts/eudyptula-challenge/Fri, 28 Mar 2014 22:10:00 -0400https://ninly.github.io/posts/eudyptula-challenge/It wasn’t so long ago that I was pounding away on my Matasano Challenge code, and thinking about how I might write about the progress I was making. It was abstract, though – progress to be sure, but a lot of the kind of thing you seem to learn when looking back at code you keyed several months prior. Painful in some ways, enlightening study in others. I had already been distracted once, hence the several months.https://ninly.github.io/posts/matasano-crypto-challenge-13/Fri, 31 Jan 2014 18:30:00 -0500https://ninly.github.io/posts/matasano-crypto-challenge-13/I started up this blog as a place to muse on current tech projects and share what I’m doing and learning. Then I went and got re-mired in my Matasano code, which I can’t share. Last spring, on a tip from Steve, I spent a bunch of time working on the then-brand-new Matasano Crypto Challenges, which you should go read about if you’re not already familiar. It was perfect for me in a lot of ways.https://ninly.github.io/posts/setting-up-pelican/Fri, 17 Jan 2014 03:30:00 -0500https://ninly.github.io/posts/setting-up-pelican/So here it is, a blog, live and loaded with some content! Like magic. I will not go into much detail here about the setup of this site or how I got here, but a few resources did help me quite a bit along the way. Among them (and I’ve probably missed a one or two): Pelican itself, of course Duncan Lock, whose post got me down the road a good long way – but who still owes us a Part 2!https://ninly.github.io/posts/pip-and-virtualenv-sans-magic/Sat, 04 Jan 2014 12:00:00 -0500https://ninly.github.io/posts/pip-and-virtualenv-sans-magic/I’m trying to bridge the gap between understanding the syntax of Python (among another language or three) and how to develop in them. To wit, I was setting up some of the standard tools for package management on my Arch Linux system, and having a little trouble understanding why I was getting permissions errors while following several of the pip/virtualenv tutorials out there. Jamie Matthews’s post at dabapps did a lot to clear up a lot of whatever was throwing me off.https://ninly.github.io/posts/call-o-muse/Wed, 01 Jan 2014 10:20:00 -0500https://ninly.github.io/posts/call-o-muse/I didn’t actually write this post on New Year’s Day, nor does this blog have much to do with the new year, but it’s a convenient and timely starting point. So, print("Hello world!") I think I’m like a lot of people who use static-blog engines (pelican, jekyll, etc.), in that I’m no longer very thrilled with available hosted services. Intermittently, I’ve wanted a place to record thoughts and progress specifically related to my efforts to learn technological skills, particularly coding and electronics.