Paul Carleton

Running a Single Page App in Docker - Part 2

Introduction In my [last post][last-post], I left off with 2 docker containers: one running the Go server back-end and one running the Nginx front-end serving the JavaScript for the site. In this post, I will describe how I got the whole app running using Docker Compose [https://docs.docker.

Running a Single Page App in Docker - Part 1

Setting the Stage Recently, I've [posted][container-post] about what the high level of what a container does, how [sessions][sessions-post], how a [JWT][jwt-post] works, and how [Google Sign-in works][google-post]. I've been exploring these topics through a simple personal finance application that I am working on. In this post,

JWT's From Third Party Authentication Providers

JWT’s in Google Sign-in Last time [I wrote about Google Sign-In][last-post], I discussed the details of why you would want google-sign-in vs. using OAuth to grant you access to a person’s account. I also discussed robot-accounts vs. using individual access tokens. However, I did not go deep

Understanding Authentication and Sessions

Motivation In [my post about using Google Sign-In][signin-post], I walked through some pieces of authenticating using Google as an identity provider. In the example I used [Flask-Login][flask-login] to manage sessions. Since then, I tried implementing something similar in Go and went down a little bit of a rabbit

Containers - How do they work?

Motivation I hear the word "container" in the software context a lot but I do not really know it means. To quote Tim Urban [http://waitbutwhy.com/2015/06/how-tesla-will-change-your-life.html] ([again][first-post]), I get the "ugh it’s that icky term again nah go away" feeling. I also definitely

Google Sign In and Google Sheets: Step by Step in Python

Motivation As part of my CashCoach [https://github.com/pcarleton/cashcoach] project, I want to share and update spending reports with a user using Google Sheets. It turns out there a lot of different options for interacting with the Google API's likely because people want to interact with them in

Morse Code to Emoji: A Brief history of character encodings

Introduction I found myself wondering what Unicode symbols looked like at the bit level. In the ASCII world, a single byte is a single character, so the encoding is relatively straightforward. However, in the UTF-8 encoding, a single character can span multiple bytes, so how does the program know when

Buckle Typings - Part 2: Walking the AST

In my [last post][1], I layed out the plan to make a converter from TypeScript .d.ts type declarations to OCaml external modules useable in BuckleScript. When I left off, I had made a call to the TypeScript compiler and received a SourceFileObject. In this post, I'll dig into

Buckle Typings - Creating modules useable in BuckleScript from TypeScript typings

In my [last post][1], I put together a simple (and incomplete) wrapper around PixiJS in order to use it in BuckleScript. This is a common task when using untyped code in a typed system; you have to specify the types. TypeScript has to do this as well. These type

Buckle Pixi - Using PixiJS with BuckleScript

Introduction In my [last post][1], I talked about what BuckleScript is and how to get started. I found that when writing posts, my weakest posts come after I have been spending a lot of time on a topic and then go back and try to fit a post around

Getting started with BuckleScript

I recently started playing around with BuckleScript [https://bloomberg.github.io/BuckleScript/]. In this post I'll try to answer the following questions: * What is BuckleScript? * Why would I want to use it? * How do I install it? * How do I use it in practice? What is BuckleScript? From the website

Doorbell Hacking Part 2: Buying Components

In [Doorbell Hacking Part 1][1], my friend and I gained an understanding of how my doorbell system works. We also came up with a plan to hook it up to my RaspberryPi given a few extra components. In this post, I'll look at shopping for the electronic components I

Switching to Ubuntu from Debian

From Debian to Ubuntu I recently decided to switch from Debian to Ubuntu on my Macbook air (see [my previous post][1] about installing Debian). There were two situations that prompted this: 1) I was trying to work with ROS and finding that installing with Ubuntu would be easier and

Debugging a Doorbell

The Problem I live in an apartment with a front lobby and a buzzer that lets people in. Having a button to push to remotely unlock a door is pretty neat, but you know what's neater? Being able to do it from your phone. That's what I set out to

SSH ProxyCommand with Netcat

SSH ProxyCommand with Netcat I found myself looking at articles regarding SSH ProxyCommand's this week. For work, I needed to SSH to one machine, change user, and then SSH to another machine. There are a number [http://sshmenu.sourceforge.net/articles/transparent-mulithop.html] of useful [http://www.cyberciti.biz/faq/

Using strace

In my [last post][1], I discussed what a file descriptor is and ran some commands to interact with the file descriptors associated with a shell process. In this post, I'll look at how to use the strace tool to inspect the file activity of a process. History When using

What's a file descriptor?

Getting out of the Comfort Zone When I [started this blog][1], I decided I wanted to do deep dives on topics in order to provide value. I have realized that by asking questions about things I use everyday can lead to all sorts of new knowledge if I stretch

How does cron work?

TL;DR The cron utility is a daemon that wakes up every minute to check if needs to run a job. The Story of Cron I found myself wondering recently how cron works (cron is a utility for scheduling tasks on Linux. For a good intro on how to use

Solving a File Format Mystery

TL;DR The file command line utility is really useful if you're not sure what format a file is. For example: $ file IMGP0175.JPG IMGP0175.JPG: MPEG sequence, v2, program multiplex A Mystery Photo Format I recently received an email from my grandpa. He found an old DVD with pictures

What is __init__.py? and what should I put in it?

What is __init__.py? A Google search leads to stackoverflow [http://stackoverflow.com/questions/448271/what-is-init-py-for] which links to the python documentation [https://docs.python.org/3/tutorial/modules.html#packages]. The gist is that __init__.py is used to indicate that a directory is a python package. (A quick

What's In A .deb

I recently installed Debian on my MacBookAir (see my [last post][mba-linux-post] for details). As a part of that exercise, I touched some .deb files which got me wondering, what's in a .deb file? The .deb File Format Wikipedia [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deb_(file_format)] tells us: > Debian

Installing Linux on a MacBook Air

Background After successfully repairing my 2011 MacBook Air (see my [last post][lastpost]), I had a decision to make: update to the latest OS X meant for beefier hardware, or install a lighter weight Linux operating system. Having seen a co-worker's older MacBook Air bite the dust on the latest

Fixing a MacBook Air After a Spill

TL;DR I spilled on my laptop, and decided to fix it. I found a step-by-step guide [https://www.ifixit.com/Guide/MacBook+Air+13-Inch+Mid+2011+Upper+Case+Replacement/9427] , the tools required [https://www.ifixit.com/Store/Tools/Pro-Tech-Toolkit/IF145-307-1], and the replacement part [http://www.powerbookmedic.com/

Starting Out

In order to decide what kind of blog I wanted to make, I turned to some of my favorite blogs: 1. Wait But Why [http://waitbutwhy.com/] 2. colah.github.io [http://colah.github.io] 3. What If? [https://what-if.xkcd.com/] They all share a common theme. The author