Home on Alex Laird

amazon-orders for Python

Wed, 31 Jan 2024 00:00:00 +0000

amazon-orders is an unofficial library that provides a Python API (and CLI) for Amazon order history.

This package works by parsing data from Amazon’s consumer-facing website. A periodic build validates functionality to ensure its stability, but as Amazon provides no official API to use, this package may break at any time. Pin the minor version with a wildcard (ex. ==4.0.*, not ==4.0.7)—or reinstall with the --upgrade (as shown below) often—to ensure you always get the latest stable release.

java-ngrok - a Java wrapper for ngrok

Fri, 27 Aug 2021 00:00:00 +0000

java-ngrok is a Java wrapper for ngrok that manages its own binary, making ngrok available via a convenient Java API.

ngrok is a reverse proxy that opens secure tunnels from public URLs to localhost. It’s perfect for rapid development (test webhooks, demo local websites, enable SSH access), establishing ingress to external networks and devices, building production APIs (traffic policies, OAuth, load balancing), and more. And it’s made even more powerful with native Java integration through the java-ngrok client.

hookee - command line webhooks, on demand

Sat, 12 Sep 2020 00:00:00 +0000

hookee is a utility that provides command line webhooks, on demand! Dump useful request data to the console, process requests and responses, customize response data, and configure hookee and its routes further in any number of ways through custom plugins.

Installation

hookee is available on PyPI and can be installed using pip:

pip install hookee

or conda:

conda install -c conda-forge hookee

That’s it! hookee is now available as a Python package and is available from the command line.

pyngrok - a Python wrapper for ngrok

Mon, 21 Jan 2019 00:00:00 +0000

pyngrok is a Python wrapper for ngrok that manages its own binary, making ngrok available via a convenient Python API and the command line.

Twilio-Powered Air Quality Texting Service

Thu, 15 Nov 2018 00:00:00 +0000

With wildfire season upon us, use this handy texting tool to find out what the air quality is in your area. Simply text your zip code to (415) 212-4229 for air quality updates. You can also add “map” to the text to be sent an image of your region.

This service isn’t just useful for individuals with limited access to smartphones or the Internet. It also alleviates the load put on air quality sites like AirNow, which are often overloaded and unavailable during wildfire season due to the spike in traffic. Texting this number instead is a great way to get the same information without bogging down those sites, helping them to stay up for others who need to access them.

Alex and Jess Are Raising Our Future

Wed, 26 Jul 2017 00:00:00 +0000

“Talk is cheap.” That’s what we say. And, to a degree, it’s true. But bear this in mind: all action is precipitated by talk. People will often try to silence your voice expressly for that reason — because they know it will lead to action.

In the age where hating on millenials is trendy, dismissing the value of social media is equally in vogue — there’s a correlation there, but that’s another post for another time. But like any form of communication, it has its pros and cons, and you get out of it what you put into it.

Django Dropzone Uploader

Fri, 21 Nov 2014 00:00:00 +0000

Ever been on a trip and, upon return, needed a quick and easy way for all your friends to send you their pictures and videos without burning CDs, sending massive emails, or using third-party services? Or, maybe a better question, ever wondered how to construct a basic Django application with Amazon’s web services, for instance S3?

Look no further. Below is the basic code for a drag-and-drop Django web application that allows users to upload files directly to an Amazon S3 bucket.

DD-WRT NAT Loopback Issue

Tue, 23 Apr 2013 00:00:00 +0000

NAT loopback is what your router performs when you try to access your external IP address from within your LAN. For instance, say your router forwards port 80 to a web server on your LAN. From an outside network, you could simply visit your external IP address from a browser to access the web server. Internally, if NAT loopback is disabled or blocked, you would not be able to access this the same way.

DD-WRT Guest Wireless

Sat, 23 Mar 2013 00:00:00 +0000

If you’ve done any amount of work with routers, you know that it doesn’t take long to start craving consistency. And more advanced functionality that the cheap home interfaces simply don’t grant you. This is the point where you usually break down and start research things like Tomato, OpenWrt, and DD-WRT, just to name a few of the more popular alternatives.

These alternate firmwares don’t just provide a consistent administrative experience across all compatible models and brands, they also turn a cheap home router into a flexible and competitive enterprise router.

Geocentral Location; Addresses to Coordinates

Sat, 04 Aug 2012 00:00:00 +0000

Recently, I needed to plot numerous addresses on a map and, ultimately, find the geocentral location of all addresses. The geocentral location is the weighted center of all the addresses, which can be useful in helping determine numerous things, including the average distance between all addresses and some other location.

The geocentral location is attained through relatively simple vector math. Let’s say, for instance, you have a set of points on a graph. Adding each point together would give you the weighted center of all the points, which can help you determine quite a bit about how that population of points interacts with you or each other.

A Correction for the WSJ: So, Who Did Invent the Internet?

Sun, 29 Jul 2012 00:00:00 +0000

Gordon Crovitz wrote an opinion piece for the Wall Street Journal titled Who Really Invented the Internet? Fortunately, it’s only an opinion piece, because there was little more than opinion, littered with plenty of misinformation, in the writing. You can read the article here.

Now, it’s not like I look to the WSJ for the latest technology information (or, in this case, technology history). Far from it. And generally when a here’s-the-truth-you-never-knew article starts with political propaganda, it’s pretty safe to assume that whatever comes next is going to be absurd. The article’s introduction could essentially be summarized as, “Obama said something that was true, but I’ll be damned if I can’t find a way to make it sound false!”

The Napster Revolution

Sat, 14 Jul 2012 00:00:00 +0000

I’ve recently been reading through Steve Jobs’ biography, a phenomenal work by Walter Isaacson. A point that Isaacson keeps coming back to throughout the book is that Steve Jobs revolutionized six different industries: animated movies (through Pixar), personal computing, tablet computing, phones, digital publishing, and music.

I don’t disagree with Isaacson. Jobs did revolutionize the way that digital media (including music, movies, books, and more) is marketed and sold today. But before you can have the corner on the market, there needs to be demand. And the revolution that realized the screaming demand for easily accessible digital media around the globe started in a college dorm room during the summer of 1999.

Reagan.com Email is a Misguided Effort

Tue, 24 Apr 2012 00:00:00 +0000

I heard a commercial with the booming and illustrious voice of Rush Limbaugh. After I recovered from banging my head against my desk, I reflected on what was said in the commercial.

Rush pointed to the popular free email providers (Yahoo, Google, and others) to remind you that they scan your email. To remind you that they sell your email address, and other information about you, to the highest bidder. To remind you that the use of these free email addresses may increase your risk of spam mail. In contrast, purchasing an email address from Reagan.com provides you with private and secure email, and your information will never be sold.

Using VirtualBox to Host a VPS

Thu, 01 Mar 2012 00:00:00 +0000

Oracle’s VM VirtualBox is a virtualization program that allows you to run another operating system from within your native operating system. Though it is most commonly used to run fully functional operating systems such as Linux or OS X from within Windows 7 (or vice versa), it can also be used to host a Virtual Private Server (VPS).

This post does nothing to compare benchmarks between more efficient (and recommended) VPS environments such as VMware or Linux-VServer, and I would not recommend using VirtualBox as a VPS in a production environment. However, it is useful in many situations, and I’ll let you be the judge of when this should or should not be done. It is certainly acceptable for personal and developmental purposes. And hosting a VPS through something like VirtualBox that is extremely simply to setup and use allows you to easily experiment with configurations and operating systems, or even jump between multiple VPSs on the same computer.

Secure PHP Login

Wed, 29 Feb 2012 00:00:00 +0000

When perusing the internet for discussions on PHP sessions and cookies in regards to credential validation and user logins, I’ve never been satisfied with the approaches I find. Many of the tutorials are just plain lousy or incomplete. And the others seem to imply that you should only use sessions or cookies and never mix-and-match, a confusion that would probably trip up many PHP novices. So I’ve decided to post a tutorial explaining the complete PHP login format I use for my sites and web applications. Before we start, I should let you know that you can grab all the source in this tutorial from GitHub.

Investment vs. Loan Payoff

Fri, 04 Nov 2011 00:00:00 +0000

A few weeks back, I was contemplating various ways Jess and I could possibly payoff school debt sooner rather than later. I had a spreadsheet detailing my current Loan Payment Plan, but I was more than willing to knock months off the bottom of that plan, if at all possible. So I mulled over several schemes for paying them off sooner: embezzlement, bank robbery, pirated movie sales. The usual. But none of these options gave me complete confidence that they were bullet proof.

Paying Off Your Loans

Sun, 31 Jul 2011 00:00:00 +0000

Author’s Note

To prevent uneasiness, I should disclose that the attached sample spreadsheet (link provided at the bottom of the post) contains fictional data as an example/starting point for you to understand how the spreadsheet works so you can more easily use it yourself. These are not my (nor anyone elses) loans or account numbers. Do not worry :)!

Everybody has debt. And, I assume, we all want to pay it off. But how quickly should we pay it off? Did you know that on a $100,000 home mortgage at 12.0% interest, increasing your monthly payment by only $100 (from $1,100 to $1,200) will save you nearly $50,000 of interest paid over the course of the loan? Now do I have your attention?

Ernie's Adventure

Sun, 17 Jul 2011 00:00:00 +0000

What … Is This?

If you’re like my brother and me, you love old-timey computer games almost more than the latest and greatest shoot-em-up. For as long as I can remember, my brother and I have loved playing classic puzzle games like King’s Quest, Commander Keen (yah, I realize that’s not really a puzzle game), and, later, games like the Myst games.

As such, after years of my brother and I writing our own useful programs, Andrew had a brilliant idea. “Hey, why don’t we write an old-school adventure game with lousy DOS graphics? You know, in the fashion of King’s Quest and the like?”

The End of an Era for NASA

Sat, 09 Jul 2011 00:00:00 +0000

STS-135: The Final (Shuttle) Launch

This morning marked the beginning of the end of an era. I say the beginning of the end because the era does not conclusively close until next week, when the Space Shuttle Atlantis returns safely the Earth.

The beginning of the end happened at 11:29 A.M. EST as Atlantis’ rocket engines propelled the 4.5 million pound vehicle off the pad and, in eight and a half minutes, out of the Earth’s atmosphere, into space, and up to a speed of 17,320 mph. (For the astute reader, you’ll note that this means it must be traveling at over 4.81 miles per second as it left the Earth’s atmosphere.)

North American P-51 Mustang

Tue, 14 Jun 2011 00:00:00 +0000

One-hundred-seventeen days. Almost four months. What could you build in one-hundred-seventeen days? Perhaps I should rephrase that: what could you build in one-hundred-seventeen days on a government contract? Certainly not an entire aircraft, from the ground up, from scratch-paper to rolling it out of the hanger?

But it has been done. The North American P-51 Mustang was ordered just one-hundred-seventeen days before the first prototype was rolled out. That’s an incredible achievement right there. Before the aircraft even got off the ground, putting all of its air superiority aside, the entire plane was designed and put together in less than four months. It was flying less than two months after that.

McDonnel Douglas F/A-18 Hornet

Sun, 12 Jun 2011 00:00:00 +0000

The Fighter/Attack series is one most people are familiar with, and probably the most well-know set of aircraft the Unites States Navy and Air Force produce. Unfortunately, the understood distinctions between each aircraft are not that well known. Most commonly, all fighter aircraft are referred to as an F-16. If you don’t believe me, just look up a few YouTube videos; you’ll be able to see variances in the details of the aircraft, but most of the videos are will call the aircraft an F-16 … it’s sad, really.

Boeing AH-64 Apache

Sun, 05 Jun 2011 00:00:00 +0000

Has there ever been a moment in your life in which you’ve seen something and your thought has been, “This is it … I’m about to die.” Perhaps you’ve been out hiking and you’ve seen some form of wildlife. Maybe it’s been when you stood on the edge of a massive cliff (I felt this way when I went to the Grand Canyon). If you’re like Jess, it’s probably been when you’ve seen a spider.

Lockheed C-130 Hercules

Fri, 03 Jun 2011 00:00:00 +0000

My brother and I have always had an obsession with airplanes, spacecraft, and NASA that borders on the unhealthy. Our obsessive endeavors have taken us annually to the Quad City Air Show, where we have drooled at our magnificent dreams hovering just before our eyes.

This year’s edition of the Quad City Air Show is just around the corner—June 18-19. And as a tribute to those momentous dates, I have decided to release a special on each of the aircraft that will (cross your fingers) be present or performing at the Quad City Air Show this year. Today’s installment is the Lockheed C-130 Hercules, an enormous transport aircraft built for the United States Air Force during the Korean War.

The Question Project

Thu, 05 May 2011 00:00:00 +0000

Music, as defined by Webster, is “the science or art of ordering tones or sounds in succession, in combination, and in temporal relationships to produce a composition having unity and continuity.” This has come to be the generally accepted definition of music. However, Webster also defines music as, “An agreeable sound.” Sound, by its second definition, is “the sensation perceived by the sense of hearing.” To hear is to “Perceive or apprehend by ear,” or to “Gain knowledge by hearing.” Hearing is defined as, “The process, function, or power of perceiving sound.” The definition seems a bit circular when you look at it, but essentially music is what your ear perceives as a pleasant sound.

Java: OS X Dock Icon and Name

Mon, 07 Feb 2011 00:00:00 +0000

For as long as I’ve been developing in Java, its lack of native support for OS X has always bothered me. This is more than likely an issue with Apple’s proprietary interface rather than Java, but, for the sake of being loyal to my Master, we’ll pretend the fault is on Java.

I don’t want the default Java icon–I want my applications icon to appear in the dock! And why does setTitle not actually change the name of my program in the menu bar? It still remains the name of the Java package that the main () method is contained within. I don’t want people to know the package layout of my software.

Booting Linux from a USB Drive on Apple Hardware

Fri, 04 Sep 2009 00:00:00 +0000

After hours of frustration and failure, I finally set up a USB bootable Linux distribution that worked on both a BIOS-based PC or EFI-based Apple system. Ten minutes later, I repeated the process with a second distribution.

I’ve been perusing this fine internet of hours all day, reviewing and attempting to complete step-by-step tutorials that were supposed to allow me to do this. Unfortunately, none of them would actually work on my MacBook Pro, as they promised they would. After finally acquiring a resolution, I decided to post my own step-by-step set of instructions that also claimed to work for a BIOS system or an EFI system. Hopefully it actually works for you as it did for me :).

Hotel California

Thu, 04 Dec 2008 00:00:00 +0000

Joe Kmetz and I were on our way to Krista’s house over Turkey Break and I had designated Joe as the DJ for the trip. At some point during the drive we ended up listening to “Hotel California,” probably the best song the Eagles ever wrote and performed. This spawned a discussion as to the meaning of the song. Unfortunately, neither of us knew for sure, but I promised Joe I would investigate the song as soon as I had time.

The Question of Music, Meaning, and Life Project

Wed, 19 Nov 2008 00:00:00 +0000

After viewing a few John Cage videos on YouTube (like this one, this one, and possibly this one), I thought to myself, “What the heck … I could write this crap.” And so, using his song 4’33” as my deepest inspiration, I proceeded to do just that. In fact, I made an entire album, with philosophical song explanations and artwork to go along with it.

Cotton Balls and Cramps

Fri, 07 Nov 2008 00:00:00 +0000

I was never really good at Chemistry. Better at it than at Biology, but still not exceptional. Granted, I earned an A when I took Chemistry in college, but this was from Kirkwood, which doesn’t have the highest academic prestige, so the A was easily achieved without completely understanding the material. The same goes for Biology. That being said, I may not have the fullest understanding of acids and bases and things breaking down. (In fact, if the previous sentence really makes no sense, that’s probably why. I was just trying to throw the words out to sound intelligent.)

Browser Reviews: A Brief History

Thu, 25 Sep 2008 00:00:00 +0000

After Al Gore invented the internet for us, we realized we needed a way to walk around the thousands upon thousands (and now billions upon billions) of sites that were out there. Meet the browser. To the best of my knowledge, Al Gore has never claimed part in inventing the browser, but I wouldn’t put it past him.

Just for fun, and before we start to really rip apart the benchmarks of Google Chrome, let’s look at some old, failed browsers so we can scoff at them (by order of appearance).

I Beg to Differ - A Response for Apple

Wed, 18 Oct 2006 00:00:00 +0000

2009 Update

Some of you insist on believing (or so it seems) that this post was written yesterday. It wasn’t. It was written three years ago, though it still gets more hits than most other pages on my site. Understand that some of my opinions have changed, some of the facts have changed, and my writing style has improved immensely since I wrote this. There’s no need to post harsh comments or email me to inform me of how I wrong I am. I am well aware of the recent changes and improvements in technology.