New Perl News Site

I was browsing Reddit, as I do most days, and I found a posting titled, "New Perl News Site Lauches". Click the link to read their site announcement.

Being a lover and developer of Perl I decided to check it out. The site is quite new and only has a few posts up, but here is looking forward to a plethora of content on a favorite topic.

The new site can be found here.

ssh key validation

Well, the vacation wasn't as long as I feared. It looks like its back, albeit not full force, but I do feel like writing code again. I guess I just needed to take a break.

At work I support an e-commerce system for a major, world-wide bank. When clients are renewing their keys (SSH, PGP, SSL), they must meet certain criteria in order to be accepted and put into the clients setup(s).

One of the more recent criteria changes is the requirement that all keys be of length 2048 or greater. That's easy to verify with SSL and PGP keys, but what about SSH? The group that is verifying the keys does not have access to a system where openssl is installed and thus, is at a loss for SSH key validation. That is where my development bug kicked in again. I quickly whipped up a Perl script that validates the length of the ssh keys and tells them if they are acceptable or not.

After talking with my boss about how to get it to the group that does the official verifications, it was decided that he would try to get funding for a project (internally) to put it up on our intranet so the group can readily access and us it. Quite exciting for me really as I have not had any of my code hosted like that internally at this company and I am loving the idea.

I am just glad that I could so quickly produce a tool for my group to use for the verifications in the mean time. Happy Holidays, everyone!

Have you seen my development bug?

I know, it sounds like a strange title for a blog post, but believe it or not its a bit true. I seem to have misplaced and/or lost my development bug. The yearning and wanting to just sit down and code seems to have departed my psyche, leaving me with not much of an inkling at all to write code, let alone think about writing it.

Its really strange because only a year ago I remember sitting her all gungho, writing bits of code and having a blast, yet now, I just don't want to. I have seen plenty of people lose the geek bugs for whatever it was they were good at and even changed careers completely. I could never understand HOW that could happen, but I guess you never do until it happens to you.

I am sure its not forever. I tend to spend a lot of time in front of the computer, sometimes verging on an inordinate amount at times, especially when work calls and I am also working on a coding project. Please don't get the idea that I have lost all my geekiness, its not so. It is just the bug that made me want to code that has taken a vacation.

Also, don't think that this means you cannot ping me with geeky questions, as that is also not true. I am still quite open to helping people out. Yes, this even means if its coding related. Just because the coding bug has left the body for a short time doesn't mean I am incapable. I am more than happy to still help those in need of assistance.

I will still be posting here, and the posts will still be geeky, but it may be a short time before you see anything with code in it. Maybe it I will surprise now and then, but who knows. I do ask that you don't desert me just because I am taking a sabbatical from coding.

To give you a gift, here is an pretty good beginner tutorial on Perl. Not too bad really. Enjoy!

Let's go find some Private keys

I love it when people use a technology without thinking first. I deal with security software like PGP all day at my job and its ins and outs have become pretty routine for me. One of the first things you do after installing PGP is to create your public/private key pair. Once that is done, you can export your public key and share it with whomever you need to.

Your public key is just that, "PUBLIC". Which means it is fine to share it with the world. But your other key in the pair is your "PRIVATE" key. This keys should NEVER leave your system. It is typically protected with a password and is for your eyes only.

What I love is how many people don't think of this or even read up on the best practices before putting their keys out there.

If you do a search on the internet for the following: "BEGIN PGP PRIVATE KEY BLOCK filetype:asc" (without the double quotes around it), you will find a plethora of completely unsuspecting people and organizations that have no idea that their private key is out there for the world to download and abuse.

My suggestion to all of you is to create a new key pair and then export your public key, WITHOUT your private key. Because you shared it already, it is now compromised and you cannot ensure the nobody brute force hacked your password.

So long use.perl.org

In an unexpected post this morning, it looks like use.perl.org is shutting down. I am not sure how many of you reference or read use.perl, but I was an avid peruser of the site. There were always interesting posts to read up there.

You will be missed use.perl, but hopefully you will return once pudge has a job and can find suitable hosting, the site will return. Until then it will be missed.

Refocusing after having time to think

The past year and a half has been a bit tumultuous to say the least. I say that because its very true. During the events of the last couple of weeks I have had a fair amount of time to think about some things and I have to say that clarity is an interesting thing.

I am not going to recap the events of last year as they can be read about in past posts. The past is the past and there is no use dwelling on things that cannot be changed, as continued venting will not be productive.

During my stint of recent thinking sessions, it occurred to me that its been quite a while since I have done any serious coding. Sure I have done a bit of scripting and one offs, but that doesn't exactly keep one's skills up where they should be.

Once I became re-employed last October at the company that I resigned from in 2007 (to be a developer), I stopped doing most coding and development in order to concentrate on my new job. When I left I was an SME (Subject Matter Expert) on the platform that I was heading the Implementations team on. My return to the company last year has me now supporting that same platform. In the time since I left they have done some reworking and changes to the platform and I needed to concentrate on picking up the little intricacies so that I can efficiently do my job to my fullest capacity. I am quite happy in this job and love what I am doing so I really needed to apply my time wisely and get back up to speed. I am sure you can understand that.

Don't get me wrong though. While I am not a developer for my day job, I still have a love for coding as a whole and love learning new languages and techniques. Becoming a better, more skilled coder is still a part of me and I want to get back to doing it.

See, while I was job hunting last year for almost 7 1/2 months, I realized that being a full time developer with my couple of languages just was not enough. Employers these days want a developer that is extremely efficient in several popular languages, which is something I did/do not have. I knew Perl quite well, at a high Intermediate/very low Advanced level, had a brief realization of PHP (which is to say I trouble shot a couple of minor things) and an advanced knowledge of Bash/Ksh scripting in a Unix environment.

Because of the above fact I resolved that being a full time developer just wasn't in my cards. Instead I am going to continue being a developer, but on the side where I can work my own hours and at my own pace. I don't really consider it settling as I absolutely love what I do for my day job. I love it and the company so much that I plan on retiring from this company.

I have become addicted to this beautiful site called Reddit. I have a need to go through the newly posted articles in the topics I subscribe to, on a daily basis. I have found almost as much through it as I have through StumbleUpon (Another addiction of mine).

In reading Reddit yesterday I found a newly posted article called, "How To Become A JavaScript Badass". I had made a list of the languages that I am highly interested in learning and JavaScript is up there on the list (with jQuery and Ajax), so this article truly peaked my interest.

The article started strong, going quickly into the tips the author had on how to go about becoming the JavaScript Badass the author mentioned in the title. But as I kept reading it was as if the author veered slightly off the JavaScript specific path and ventured down a path of tips that are meant to guide one into bettering themselves as a developer in general. It was almost as if it was a mantra. That article left me empowered and driven and I cannot thank the author enough.

After reading it (three times now) I have started to get myself together and more on a straight path toward learning the languages I want to and becoming an even better developer than I was before. Its like a much needed pep talk and I really recommend that developers read it. Granted its not the be all, end all, but its truly inspiring in my opinion.

Privacy or no privacy.... its your choice believe it or not.

Today Facebook has released its newest feature, Facebook Places. This is quite similar to FourSquare, if you have ever used that service. The idea is that when you are out and about, you "check in" at the location where you are. There are locations for millions of places and if you can't find it, you add it and check in. You can earn badges for checking in so many times and for many other things. Its just another way to be social on the net.

Facebook's newest feature is quite like that except it is integrated into the whole of Facebook itself. In other words, when you check in, your friends will all know. As with anything that Facebook does though, the privacy 'activists' that are out there are already screaming about this add-on because, as stated in the Facebook blog posting on the topic, "Your friends will be able to share your check-ins with the applications they use to help create new social experiences with location."

Now, for all of you who are privacy concerned out there, here is what the above article states if you don't like your friends sharing your location information: "If you don't want to share your check-ins with your friends' applications, just uncheck the new box in your Privacy Settings under 'Applications and Websites.'"

Yes, Facebook has had just a few issues with privacy concerns in the past and some of them, especially in the beginning, were completely justified. But they implemented it so that each user is responsible for the information that gets shared. You can control this under your Privacy Settings in your Facebook account. The rule of thumb that everyone should remember though is, "If you don't want it known, don't put it out there!". Remember, putting it on the Internet once means it lives forever.

I remember an article from a couple months ago stating that if you went to a link in your front page called "Phonebook", that it would list all of the phone numbers for all of your friends that it could find them for. This was raised as a "huge privacy issue" by the activists and articles were written. I am not defending Facebook, but those numbers were pulled from the profile "Info" page for each of your friends. If they provided it, then it was displayed. Facebook was simply using readily availble info to show you your friends phone info. I heard it worked on all users, but didn't investigate that far. I notice now though that the link is gone from Facebook. This again goes to "Don't share it if you don't want it known".

People have to be wary of what they share on the net. Unfortunately, too many people aren't. I am quite skeptical and generally thoroughly investigate what I am entering and why and how it will be used before giving it. You have too. There are too many unscrupulous people out there.

Ok, off my soap box for now. Go forth and be "social", but be careful with your information. Its yours and is your sole responsibility if it gets out because YOU provided it.

Using Python to Leech Files From an FTP Server

My friend Chris from MotomaSTYLE just helped me with a bit of Python scripting that I was working on. I have been really hitting the books on Python and have been LOVING it! Chris is really making the process a bit less painful when I hit a road block and I really appreciate that.

Here is a link to the article that he posted, including the code that was produced in the end.

Thanks Chris! You ROCK!

My Geek Code

As you can see from the right side of my profile, I have a Perl Geek Code defined.  Well, I stumbled across the Geek Code itself and generated my code.  Here it is:

-----BEGIN GEEK CODE BLOCK-----
Version: 3.1
GCS/IT d-- s+:+ a C++++$ U++++$ P+++$ L+++$ !E--- W++$ N !o-- K- w--- !O !M- !V-- PS+? PE? Y PGP+$ t+ !5-- X R++* tv++ b++ DI+ D+ G e h---- r+++ y+++
------END GEEK CODE BLOCK------

Project Update - The Re-Learning speed bumps

It amazes me how you can stop doing something for a while ( like the web design side of the house ) and you can really forget how things work.  I have been working on getting a navigation menu working for the project at work and it took me a good couple of days to figure nut how to get CSS horizontal drop dad written wasn't.  own menus working.  I was scratching my head till I decided to take a step back, do some reading and then examine what I had done thus far.

I had to start by taking an example menu and get its code working.  Then, modified it for the options I needed and voila, working menu.  Then, I had to plug it in to the site, where it needed to be and make sure that it was where the other menu was.  That was a bit easier.

Once the menu was working, I compared it to my original code and I then saw the structure and quickly figured out what I was missing and why the code I had written wasn't working at all.  I just sat there, shaking my head in wonder at what I had forgotten and what I was slowly remembering.

So, onward I push.  The next step is to get the search page for the client database, designed, and setup so that I can then code the validation for the entered data and the processing to pull data from the database.  I think the only part at this point that I need to figure out is, if I pull information from the database and there are more than one clients returned, how can I have a list presented and then display the page for the chosen client.  This is all a new realm to me, so I am venturing into it with an open mind and a willingness to learn.