2 weeks ago I completed a new feature on EMC Code's github page. We have a bunch of different projects that need to fit in different buckets but can sometimes span more than one bucket. Or projects in two different buckets use a common technology. To make it easier for our users to find things relevant to them, I created a tagging functionality. 

The HTML

First create a div that will have nothing in it. I've assigned this with a class if "hiddenUL". This is where we will use jQuery to append the list items with specific tags.

Next, create an unordered list of items that will need a common class. In this case, the class is "item_box" because every item is in the shape of a box. Next, we give each list item a set of classes. Don't pay too much attention to everything *inside* the list item. All of that is there for the styling of it. These classes, however, are going to be our means of tagging. Make sure spelling and capitalization are all correct. It's also important to note that we can have multiple sets of unordered lists. 

Lastly, create some buttons. You will need a button for every type of keyword or class you defined in the previous step. Also, create a 'clear tag' button that will be used to clear the tags.

I just got finished writing a Rails application that requires a 'cron'-like job to run every 30 seconds. This job will scrape a website for data every 30 seconds and update the database and notify me via SMS about any changes. I was able to get this all working on Heroku after a while with the assistance of some Procfiles. but I wanted to try this on Cloud Foundry as well.

The problem existed because of lots of out-of-date documentation on the part of Cloud Foundry. The most confusing part was not understanding this requires 2 containers/applications. One for the app, and another for running the clockwork task. In Heroku, this requires 2 Dynos as well because 1 is for 'web' and the other is for 'clock', however, this is all masked behind Heroku's magic.

So how do you create a worker process? I was going back and forth creating rake tasks, then tried putting logic into my controller, and having everything ultimately fail. After some trial and error, I found out the best & easiest way is to put all the logic into the Modal. Once the logic is in your modal, you can easily call it by doing Modal.method.

Second, add the clockwork gem to your Gemfile, then create the file "lib/clock.rb". Follow the gist below to configure your clock.rb file. Specify the Modal.method that you wish to call.

Great! now we just need to build our manifest.yml file for Cloud Foundry. The important thing to remember is that we are essentially going to spin up 2 applications. The first container will be the web front-end of our rails app, and the second container is just the clockwork reoccurring job. If your reoccurring process will need to make changes to the database (which it most certainly will) make sure you append the correct services. In this case, both of my containers will be using the same database.

I'm venturing into a new world of hybrid mobile development to test the waters and I have a new project I'm currently starting. I can't divulge the specifics yet, but the very first part is to get Google Maps working. I had a harder time doing this than I thought.

At first I tried using the recently released phonegap-googlemaps-plugin and got it semi-successfully working. I had it working in both iOS and Android but then came to find out that you can't use the Places API to find POIs on the map. That won't work so I reverted to using the old Javascript API to show in 'browser' mode instead of the native SDK. I came across  Implement Google Maps API on PhoneGap Using the Device API and struggled for 2 days on trying to figure out exactly why it wasn't working. It was a combination of type, outdatedness, failure to copy/paste, and missing CSS variables. I'm going to recreate it to make "spoonfed" useful.

You can see this entire project at https://github.com/kacole2/jsmap1 or look at this Gist for the entire code: Phonegap Cordova Geolocation with Google Maps Javascript API v3

Last week I published a blog post detailing my shift into code and development. One very important thing I purposely left out was “What am I going to do with it?”. 

For the past 7ish years, I’ve been dealing with infrastructure and operations. Things got complacent so I wanted to learn some new skills on the other side of IT, programming and software development. To be clear, I don’t plan on becoming a full-time developer because that would essentially mean starting my career over from scratch. Instead, I want to do what I call “Full Stack IT”. I can configure networks, build virtual farms, deal with storage, do that thing called “cloud”, script, and hack code with varying front-end & back-end languages. My code is “good enough” to get the job done. :)

If you’re thinking I plan on creating my own software startup and selling it to Google for $200 million… well, maybe one day.

Next week I’m beginning a new role with EMC as a Developer Advocate. I’m very excited to be joining a new team with the likes of Clint Kitson, Jonas Rosland, and Brian Gracely. Our team is tasked with a few different goals in mind. 

I'm sure everyone has probably noticed a steady decrease in the amount of blog posts I put out. If you pay attention to twitter, you might have seen a shift in my focus.

VMware has been good, but there comes a time when you need to pump the brakes. I've reached a point where I don't care about the intricate details of all the vSphere products and trying to be an expert in them. If there is one thing that VCE has taught me, it's that converged and hyper-converged infrastructure is removing the need to be in expert in the core product set. There will come a time when you realize knowing storage pathing policies or trying to understand the DRS algorithm is pointless. And with EVO:Rail coming to market (and once it becomes fully baked) you won't need to know how to administer the environment what-so-ever, negating the need for many of those VCP skills. Argue with me all you want, but the goal is abstraction from vSphere for many product sets.

I turned my focus to IaaS offerings with vCloud Director then vCloud Automation Center and UCS Director to bring everything up to a higher order of control. This is what I talk about in my every day job. But I still look at IaaS like, "there has got to be more".

I started learning Ruby back in September of 2013 and have since released a few different Rails applications including JumpSquares.net, MonsterRemote, and Simple World Cup Stats. I've also started diving into more languages recently and I'll get to that later. So what led me to this point?

I'm sure many people have seen this but for those of you who didn't make it to VMworld (me included), there are 23 (as of right now) VMworld videos available on YouTube. Thanks to Eric Sloof for getting these uploaded.

Check out the VMworld 2014 Keynotes & Sessions Playlist.

It all starts with a text message from my wife...

Of course, all of the DS iOS apps fail to connect to the device. This has happened before. I figured I'll just open up the browser when I get to my Mac and restart the services. Then I get this screen.

My first thought was WTF? Took a screencap and put it out on twitter thinking Synology installed some encryption service on my device through some automatic update. Then the swarms of "oh no..." tweets come replying back. Apparently, I must have been hiding under a rock. And I was. For the past two weeks I've been heads down doing some front-end web development training. I literally saw nothing over the prior week about SynoLocker.

Don't know what SynoLocker is? It's a form of malware/ransomware based on a different strain of the Cryptolocker ransomware. Once you are infected, all of your files are overwritten with an encryption algorithm that can only be decrypted with a key held by the person that created the strain. Essentially, your files are gone unless you pay the person a certain amount for the decryption key. SynoLocker ransomware scans the internet for port 5000 and 5001 and will return a Synology ACK. This means you have to have the management port of 5000 & 5001 exposed on the internet. Once discovered, the ransomware plants itself through an exploit and begins encrypting your files. The files targeted are <100mb because the larger the file, the longer the encryption process takes. Their target were smaller files such as documents and photos.

The folks over at VMTurbo are giving away 3 pairs of tickets to VMworld Europe. 1 winners will be drawn every Friday starting 8/22. VMworld Europe will be held in Barcelona, so enter for your chance to win!