Welcome to another edition on how to automate the hell out of your workflow. Preface One thing I have been addicted to since I learned it was source control. I don’t understand how some developers work without it… and I really don’t understand how any syadmins live without it. I have actually found it more useful as a sysadmin as a programmer, but only because at my day job I have used it in most of our major configs. Putting our 400+ file bind setup in subversion and using hooks to test and deploy our changes was not only a massive time saver but tail saver as well. ...

Backstory My git-fu sucks. I have to use an awesome git tool called SourceTree to do the git wizardry that I do. It’s totally free and for the Mac so if you want to just jump into git and have expert features clicks away go download this. I bought it back when it cost money but now you can have it for free. I’ll wait… Anyways, I’ve been rolling around in the lap of GIT/SourceTree luxury these past months; clicking away and using features I only wished SVN could ever touch. However when jumping around between machines and VMs it would be faster to just use the command line. Now a days I’m now on the development team of a well sized open source project and having to fumble around git & github while testing submissions and making patches to help other people test is just NOT COOL. I think it all came to a head when the main project maintainer started flaunting some of his git-fu when submitting and fixing patches… well honestly since I just love cramming as much into my head as possible I thought I would hone my git foo. ...

Since the beginning of the year I have been mildly obsessed with reversing and malware. Studying ASM and low level debugging is put an awesome edge on my understanding of computer science, programming, and hacking in general. A week or so ago I started reading the Malware Analyst’s Cookbook and DVD: Tools and Techniques for Fighting Malicious Code where they recommend you build up a honeypot to collect malware. Of course I can’t a simple suggestions and set up a normal honeypot; Being a SysAdmin at heart I have to automate the hell out of everything. ...

Pelican 3.0 is almost out the door now. It’s been great working on a “real” project with other developers for what is, in retrospect, the first time ever. Some programmers I know would rather fork a project and trudge off into the snow with the code base, then fork off their own leg and write their way back before working on someone else’s code; I think at some point I caught that same fever from someone close to me. I think the phrase tossed around was; “The only thing that is worse than someone else’s code is working with someone else’s code.” The crazy part is, after actually working with other people on a project I wish I had done it earlier. ...

I’ve been stalling a lot on writing this post. I guess I wanted everything to be perfect by the time I actually wrote about it however my willpower to finish these test cases is weak. The site has now changed, yet again. I decided not to wait 5 years between refreshes this time. The biggest change people should notice is at first glance you shouldn’t notice change. When you click around it should be easy to realize that the site isn’t WordPress based anymore though. I’ve switched over to Pelican. The project still feels very young and small, but it’s done in python and the developers are very active and open to submissions so I jumped in. ...

Things like this happen sometimes [4:27 PM] <SnowLprd> tBunnyMan: Nice work on #389. I can see how that will come in handy. :^) [4:27 PM] <tBunnyMan> Thanks! [4:28 PM] <tBunnyMan> I really just wanted a 404 and 50x error that matched my theme... but making it more extensible helps everyone [4:28 PM] <tBunnyMan> I just need to finish this test case for it when work stops being annoying [4:29 PM] <SnowLprd> Nice of you to generalize it for everyone, despite only needing it yourself for 404/50x errors. [4:29 PM] <SnowLprd> And the test will also be most welcome! \o/ [4:32 PM] <tBunnyMan> Pelican is fairly awesome IMO, I hope I can help tweak it into epic levels. [4:34 PM] <SnowLprd> With contributions like yours, those levels will be here in short order. :D [4:34 PM] <tBunnyMan> haha. I'm not that good ;p Thanks for the kind words [4:35 PM] <tBunnyMan> Catch you around. It's time to travel [4:35 PM] <SnowLprd> Every little bit counts! [4:35 PM] <SnowLprd> Sounds good. Cheers! [4:36 PM] <tBunnyMan> It does. It's why I love contributing little things to big projects. All I really was trying to do is add a very quick and simple feature I needed. This was the response I got for it! The thing is, you would be shocked how infrequently I see something like this… It’s this type of additude and behavior amongst developers that makes people WANT to work with eachother and help really grow a product. ...