John Borwick's blog

Continuing my series of things I take for granted, over the course of my life I have used UNIX-derived operating systems: AIX, SunOS, Solaris, OpenBSD, FreeBSD, Linux, and now OS X (which is based on FreeBSD).  I first learned how to use UNIX via the command line, dialing in to systems and telneting to others.  (As an aside: at the same time, I also got to learn VAX a little.  Yay.)  Because I first used UNIX-like systems via the command line, the command line is very comfortable to me.  I know it isn’t comfortable to most people, and there are … Continue Reading

This article continues my series on describing what I already take for granted on my computer.  At work, running Windows XP, I use two programs to keep my passwords and files secure:

1. Password Safe, an open-source program for storing passwords that was originally written by Bruce Schneier.  I chose this program because Bruce Schneier is awesome.  (On my Mac at home I use Apple’s “Keychain Access” instead.)
2. TrueCrypt, an open-source disk encryption program for storing files securely.

Passwords
I keep Password Safe running all the time.  You can double-click Password … Continue Reading

One of my goals for 2010 is to blog about things I take for granted when I use the computer.  If you’ve used MS Word styles before, this article may be old hat to you.  However, if you haven’t used MS Word styles, I hope to introduce you to a whole new way to format your documents–so you will never have to use the “Font” menu again.

MS Word 2007 made it a little easier to find styles: there’s a “Styles” menu in the ribbon under the “Home” tab.  … Continue Reading

I’m trying to start going through my LaterLoop queue, which I’ve apparently had for over a year now. Thus, I finally saw this video, “Hug a Developer”:

A couple of weeks ago I learned about Amazon’s Subscribe and Save Program.  You order items in bulk through Amazon, and tell them that you want them every one, two, three, or six months.  In turn they give you a 15% discount and free shipping.  Also you don’t have to worry about buying these items at the store.

We just signed up for it; here’s what we’ve ordered:

• Paper Towels (30 rolls each 6 months)
• Laundry detergent (6 bottles each 6 months)
• Dishwasher powder (8 boxes each 6 months)
• Clif Bar variety pack (24 bars each 3 months)
• Cinnamon Harvest … Continue Reading
  

I am not a very “handy” person–I don’t tend to fix things around the house.

A couple of months ago a carpenter built some bookshelves for us, and along the way he gave us a couple of shims to help straighten out our china cabinet.  This is when I learned that shims are awesome.

Shims, in case you don’t know, are tiny flat wooden doorstops.   They are little pieces of wood that you can put in odd places to fix things.  They are like the duct tape of wood.

So far we have used shims for three sorts of things:

1. Leveling out furniture … Continue Reading
   

How awesome is it that the Facebook application “Send Good Karma” lets you

• lets you “accrue karma points” and spend these points
• send “Enlightenment” to someone
• send “Wisdom” to someone (is this a back-hand way of saying “you need wisdom!”)

That said I have a bunch of karma points, and own “wisdom” as well as “infinite wisdom”!!  Send me karma!

I have been learning how to write Django code for Google App Engine.  (Django is a Python framework, which Google chose to incorporate into Google App Engine.  Django is cool.)

Google has a few Django customizations, which they package in “google-app-engine-django“.  For example, the base class that your Django models use is supposed to change to BaseModel, a django helper front-end to “db.Model”, a Google Bigtable database model.

Today I wanted to implement search for one of my Django models.  Google has an article about setting up search using SearchableQuery, and some discussion posts about how to use ext.search … Continue Reading

I’m trying to figure out how to make Django 0.96 work with Google App Engine.  Here are the resources I’ve found so far:

• Django’s 0.96 documentation (since the latest Django version is 1.0, and Google App Engine supports 0.96)
• Running Django on Google App Engine, which I wish I hadn’t seen until after I’d read
• Using the Google App Engine Helper for Django.

I’ve found a few issues so far, that weren’t explicitly mentioned in these notes…

• All models should use BaseModel from the django helper (this is stated)
• All Python module names are relative to the root directory (e.g. myapp.views) rather than … Continue Reading
  

I’m now running WordPress 2.5.