Whoa, a blog post! Haven’t written one of those in a while. I’ll make another one to go over what’s happened since my last post, but right now, let’s focus on something very specific: package managers, and the build systems that support them. It’s Ubuntu vs Fedora, RPM vs DEB, apt vs dnf (or yum), Launchpad vs Copr.
Continue reading A Tale of Two Build Systems: Launchpad and CoprMaking a Racket with OpenFaaS
Cloud computing is growing, and with it a whole bunch of new frameworks and terms, such as “serverless” and “Function as a Service.” While a lot of these frameworks are supplied by big companies like Amazon and Google, there are projects such as OpenFaaS which allow you to run a Function as a Service platform on your own machine(s). What’s more, OpenFaaS also allows for easily extending the platform to support other languages. Because OpenFaaS revolves around functions, it made perfect sense to add support for the first functional programming language, Lisp, by using the wonderful Racket environment. And now you too can make your own serverless Racket function! Let’s try it out.
Learning Go for Fun and Profit
Okay, maybe no actual profit other than knowledge. But lots of fun!
One Year in FOSS
About a year ago, I became involved in the GalliumOS project. I had recently changed my major from film studies to computer science, the joke being “I switched to a different kind of script writing.” A bit after that, I was approached by my professor with a job offer to be a systems administrator for the department. All of these things thrust me into the world of computer science and all that it encompasses. Continue reading One Year in FOSS
Demystifying Email: Why It’s Only As Hard As You Make It
Most of us know that one can set up a private email server. It’s, uh, been in the news. Aside from all that, if you ask most people “Okay, how do I set one up?” They’ll say something along the lines of “Don’t. It’s too complicated.” I’m here to tell you that it’s really not. It’s only as complicated as you make it. And here’s why. Continue reading Demystifying Email: Why It’s Only As Hard As You Make It
Hooking up a VT420 Terminal to a Raspberry Pi
A few months ago, I asked a friend to help me on a project to supply users with a public SSH “terminal” that would take the form of a wall mounted laptop with a light Linux install and a script to prompt users for SSH credentials. Well, fast forward a few months to when I discovered the magic of physical serial terminals, and the fact they can still be used with modern machines. I also had a Raspberry Pi lying around that was not being used, so I put two and two together and set off on constructing a public SSH terminal using the Pi. Continue reading Hooking up a VT420 Terminal to a Raspberry Pi
Thoughts on the LG G5
Having previously owned an LG G3 until it unceremoniously internally combusted (An overheating issue caused an internal component to disconnect and put the device into a boot loop.), I was rather intent on getting a replacement somewhat similar to my previous phone. Continue reading Thoughts on the LG G5
Welcome!
Hey there, you found my website. Nice! I’ll try to keep this as a more “professional” site to compliment my “professional” Twitter. So, that means talking about a lot of computers, and longer form thoughts on said computer topics that can’t fit on Twitter. I’ll also talk about my work experience as a sysadmin in Clark University’s CS department, though not to the point of being a security risk, of course. 🙂
For now, I’ll be cleaning things up here, making things look nice, so this site is subject to change in appearance.
-David Muckle