Web Developer in Boulder CO The Blog

The Road To Artificial General Intelligence (AGI)

Published by Nicholas Dunbar on October 12th, 2017

When people start talking about the risks of AI they usually jump right to phase 3, Artifical Super Intelligence (ASI) or they might prefer to talk about conscious AI. That seems a ways off and mostly like science fiction. This tendency often causes th...

technology philosophy

Flashcards for Sam's Teach Your Self Java in 24 Hours

Published by Nicholas Dunbar on July 10th, 2017

A while back I was refreshing my self on my Java skills for a new job and I decided to make this flashcard deck for studying Sam's Teach Yourself Java in 24 Hours 6th Edition. I used an awesome free application called Anki Droid and Anki to make the fl...

java

The most common shortcuts for code editing | OSX

Published by Nicholas Dunbar on April 1st, 2016

Most Common Text Editor Hot Keys For Programmers Here are a list of hot keys that work the most universally as possible for text editing. There are so many hot keys and yet so little time. Which hot keys should you learn? If you work in the command l...

programming command-line macos

How to open multiple Iterm windows on startup

Published by Nicholas Dunbar on February 10th, 2016

Find your self having to run a server or turn on some sort of process every time you open up your development environment? The script bellow will help you set up your own custom default tabs in iterm running what ever scripts you want when the window i...

programming command-line

How the simple brains of termites can do complex tasks and why this is important to the future of humanity.

Published by Nicholas Dunbar on April 30th, 2015

How the simple brains of ants and termites avoid information overload and why this is important to how we organized our self in politics and in business. Human beings exist in a vast and complex network we call the economy or human society. Our li...

technology philosophy

Backing up and restoring S3 from a versioned bucket

Published by Nicholas Dunbar on March 29th, 2015

Here is a set of scripts used to manage backups. You can back up a bucket to another and then restore the source bucket to a certain snap shot in time as well as a few other things. Example: //to run back up (see script at the bottom) prompt> bkupToBu...

programming php command-line aws

Make your XAMPP site on your Mac accessible to Windows on VMware

Published by Nicholas Dunbar on March 26th, 2015

How to run a site on a Mac host machine and then access it from Windows? You may find your self here because you want to test IE browsers on the Mac. I have provided information on how to vet this issue along with the VM issue. How to test IE on a ...

programming macos

Remove all versions from S3 bucket using AWS tools

Published by Nicholas Dunbar on March 26th, 2015

This will help you answer any of the following questions: Delete all deletion markers for every object in a bucket. Delete all objects and versions for every object in a bucket. Delete a bucket that has had versioning turned on. This article will wal...

programming linux command-line aws

How to properly remove Skeuomorphism from design

Published by Nicholas Dunbar on March 9th, 2015

Skeuomorphism is the design concept of making items represented to resemble their real-world counterparts. As our devices increasingly make use of reprogrammable displays, references to the old physical interfaces becomes increasingly less applicable. ...

design

Running different ANT tasks depending on the operating system

Published by Nicholas Dunbar on February 2nd, 2015

How to run a different series of tasks inside of a single target tag based on the operating system so that your build script will work on all operating systems. There are three ways to do it: 1.) The first way is to have a different task for each ope...

programming ant

Load a class with Zend_Loader_Autoloader by name | without namespaces or prefixes

Published by Nicholas Dunbar on December 29th, 2014

The web is filled with examples of using Zend Autoloading using the fancy namespace and prefix features of the Zend_Loader_Autoloader, but what if all you want to do is auto load a class based on its name corresponding to a file name? //For example wh...

programming php

Installing xdebug in XAMPP 5.5.19 on Mac OSX

Published by Nicholas Dunbar on December 29th, 2014

This was tested on OSX Lion. Please let me know if it works on Mountain Lion or later. Here is what we will be doing in a nut shell. You will need to download the correct source code for your version of xdebug and then you will need to use the correct...

programming php command-line

Replace a token with a variable using ANT

Published by Nicholas Dunbar on November 15th, 2014

You may be looking for the following: How do you replace a string in a file using a property in ANT? How do you replace a string using a variable in ANT? There are a few ways to do this. First question is what do you mean by a variable? Do you mean ...

programming ant

Parsing unevenly spaced columns from text in PHP

Published by Nicholas Dunbar on August 23rd, 2014

If you want to parse unevenly or jaggedly spaced columns out of a text file in PHP, below are two functions that will help you do it. Let's say that you have the following text output: col1 col2 col3 ==== ==== ==== ...

programming php contracting

Will a true artificial intelligence have a soul?

Published by Nicholas Dunbar on June 4th, 2014

Since the movie "Transcendence" came out in 2014 there has been a lot of talk about the implication of loading consciousness on computers. As the movie illustrates, this can be a pretty controversial subject. When it comes to talking about the soul,...

technology philosophy

Don't insert when maximum is reached

Published by Nicholas Dunbar on May 9th, 2014

How to control if a record is inserted based on a condition? Don't insert a record if certain conditions are not met. There is a way of using pure MySQL to stop inserting records when a certain number of them has been reached. Let us say that you have...

programming mysql php

MySQL CONCAT limitation

Published by Nicholas Dunbar on April 12th, 2014

So you're trying to concat two large strings and it keeps resulting in a truncated or empty string? The problem may be that CONCAT can only result in a string of length 1024 bytes long. Worse is there is no setting in MySQL that allows you to increat...

programming mysql contracting

Loading a different JavaScript library based on the browser.

Published by Nicholas Dunbar on February 27th, 2014

This article could be used for any libraries, but we are going to talk about a specific case study using jQuery as an example. First you should know that this is frowned upon in the development community and you should use modernizer.js to do feature d...

programming javascript

Title case function in PHP based on grammatical rules for capitalizing the words in a title

Published by Nicholas Dunbar on February 10th, 2014

Creating a Title Case Function with PHP Based on Grammatical Rules. The common way that programmers implement title case is the most simple way, they capitalize the first letter of every word. But what about titles like the title above where the "on" a...

programming php contracting

Javascript private and public members | Dynamic name spacing

Published by Nicholas Dunbar on February 10th, 2014

The following is how to scope an object (called an object literal) with private and public members: myApp is the class id is private next and reset are public functions //create class var myApp = {}; (function(context) { //private member v...

programming javascript contracting

Installing xdebug in XAMPP 1.8.3 on Linux

Published by Nicholas Dunbar on February 10th, 2014

If you have installed XAMPP 1.8.3-0 for Linux and you want to install x-debug here is how to do it using PECL. 1.) Check to make sure /bin is in your path echo $PATH; if :/bin: is in the path then bin is in your path. This makes sure that when you c...

programming linux php command-line

Overload an array in PHP | Overload a multidimentional array in PHP | On set array call a function in PHP

Published by Nicholas Dunbar on February 9th, 2014

If you wanted to overload an array so that you can put your own logic inside of the get and set actions for an array using the syntax $array['property'] try starting with the class bellow and build off it. Example: //create array $obj = new CustomArra...

programming php contracting

Don't overwrite permissions with tar file

Published by Nicholas Dunbar on February 9th, 2014

When you use tar to back-up a directory and then you want to restore that directory you may want to keep existing permissions intact. If you made changes to the permissions since the archive was created and you want to restore the original files while ...

linux command-line contracting

GB vs. GIB | 1024 vs. 1000

Published by Nicholas Dunbar on February 9th, 2014

Looking for answers to these questions? Why are there two types of GB? Why is a KB 1024 and not 1000 bytes? Did you know there are two types of Gigabytes (GB)? What if I told you that they are not the same amount of bytes? That manufacturers list th...

programming contracting

Get size of database in bytes and rows

Published by Nicholas Dunbar on February 9th, 2014

How to get the size of the database in MySQL? Replace database_name with the database name from which you want the size in bytes and rows: SELECT t.table_schema,SUM(t.table_rows) AS row_count,SUM(t.data_length) AS data_volume FROM information_schema.t...

programming mysql contracting

Script that installs an RSA key on the local machine and a remote machine

Published by Nicholas Dunbar on February 9th, 2014

Run this interactive bash script, if you want to set up an RSA key on your local machine and then have the script automatically install the key on a remote machine. The script is tested to work on Linux, Unix, AIX with bash. Here is an example of how ...

programming linux contracting

Convert decimal to base 36 alpha numeric in Bash | Linux

Published by Nicholas Dunbar on February 9th, 2014

Here is a custom bash shell script function you can use to convert a decimal to a base 36 number in all capital alpha numeric. Example: your_digit=65; decimal_to_base36 $your_digit; Output: 1T function decimal_to_base36(){ BASE36=($(echo {0..9}...

programming linux bash contracting

Compare the contents of a remote directory with a local directory

Published by Nicholas Dunbar on February 8th, 2014

Here is a little PHP script I wrote, that you can run from the command line. I wrote it to allow you to see what files are in a remote folder that are not in a local folder. user@localhost the_directory> php compare.php the_host_address.com:/the/remot...

linux php

MySQL Generate a list of numbers

Published by Nicholas Dunbar on February 8th, 2014

This will generate a column named SeqValue that will range from 0-255 so a total of 256 values. SELECT (TWO_1.SeqValue + TWO_2.SeqValue + TWO_4.SeqValue + TWO_8.SeqValue + TWO_16.SeqValue + TWO_32.SeqValue + TWO_64.SeqValue + TWO_128.SeqValue) SeqV...

mysql sql

Ipoint interface | ActionScript 3.0 AS3

Published by Nicholas Dunbar on February 4th, 2014

It amazes me that ActionScript (AS3) does not have interfaces listed for all its classes. Often you want to create a class that inherits from something like MovieClip and MovieClip inherits all the way down a long list of classes. So you are left with ...

programming as3 denverapps

Expected to find it in c:\program files\adobe\flex builder 3\lib\tools.jar

Published by Nicholas Dunbar on February 4th, 2014

##ANT Error with Flex Builder 3 and Windows XP command line## ##Unable to locate tools.jar. Expected to find it in C:\Program Files\Adobe\Flex Builder 3\lib\tools.jar## Ahhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh! Right? But never fear, I eventually found the solution and that...

programming denverapps

Comment guerrilla activism

Published by Nicholas Dunbar on February 4th, 2014

Published originally on flash-actionscript-guru.com in 2008. This article is quite dated and is now standard practice for what is today called "activist trolling." Internet Guerrilla Activism: Using Internet Reviews and Comments to Hit Them Where It...

business technology denverapps

Jump to end of file with vi or vim | Jump to last line

Published by Nicholas Dunbar on January 3rd, 2014

Insert Mode is when you have a block cursor and can edit the text Command Mode is when you have a : at the bottom where you can enter commands. If you are in insert mode or command mode hit: escape key then shift+g keys If you are not in insert mode...

unix linux command-line vi

Add an existing user to an existing group in Linux

Published by Nicholas Dunbar on January 3rd, 2014

If you want to a add a user to an existing group this is how you do it. [local_username@localhost /]$ useradd -a -G somegroup usernameThen log out and log back in for the new group settings to take effect.Managing permissions for a group is an importan...

unix linux command-line

Using Table Names With Spaces in PHP and mySQL

Published by Nicholas Dunbar on January 2nd, 2014

The key to writing SQL queries using table names that contain spaces is to make sure you use the correct quotes.This is wrong:SELECT * FROM tablename ORDER BY ''field name'' ASCThis is correct:SELECT * FROM tablename ORDER BY `field name` ASCThese (`) ...

programming mysql php

Unix style options and flags with command line PHP

Published by Nicholas Dunbar on December 24th, 2013

Looking for a more intelligent way to parse in options from the command line into your PHP script other than $argv? For example, you may want to be able to place options in any order like the following: php somescript.php -pv -o value or php somescr...

programming php

Is technology destroying high art?

Published by Nicholas Dunbar on December 14th, 2013

Is your vision of the future one in which we are all mindless drones who don't know how to make anything?I'd like to try and ease your mind. "The world of A.D. 2014 will have few routine jobs that cannot be done better by some machine than by any human...

technology

Parse a date by a specific date format in PHP

Published by Nicholas Dunbar on November 22nd, 2013

In the name of code readability and functionality, if you want to parse a date of a certain format you should do it in a way so that other programmers that look at your code can tell what you were doing. Here is a way as of PHP >= 5.3.0 to parse a st...

programming php

Exclude images from a Linux find

Published by Nicholas Dunbar on November 19th, 2013

If you want to find all files in a sub directory and you don't want images to show up in the list here is a way to do it: [local_username@localhost /]$ find /some/dir/ -type f $ -name '*.png' -o -name '*.jpg' -o -name '*.jpeg' -o -name '*.gif' $ -pr...

linux command-line contracting

Remove files present in one directory but not the other

Published by Nicholas Dunbar on November 1st, 2013

This will remove all the files and folders that are in /dir1 but not in /dir2[local_username@localhost /]$ diff -rq /dir1 /dir2 | grep -E "^Only in /dir1*" | sed -n 's/://p' | awk '{print $3"/"$4}' | xargs -I {} rm -r {}Explanation:diff - command that ...

linux command-line contracting

On create a new file, why are the execute permissions not set to my umask

Published by Nicholas Dunbar on October 22nd, 2013

Why newly created files do not have the execute permissions set by default, even though I set default permissions to have execute with the command umask? Example (reason why below): Lets say you have run the following command: [local_username@localh...

linux command-line

Installing SSH and SCP in ANT 1.8.2 OSX

Published by Nicholas Dunbar on September 3rd, 2013

Download jsch-0.1.50.jar at http://sourceforge.net/projects/jsch/files/jsch/0.1.50/jsch-0.1.50.zip/download Download ant-jsch-1.8.2.jar at http://mvnrepository.com/artifact/org.apache.ant/ant-jsch/1.8.2 jsch-0.1.50.jar - contains the supporting clas...

command-line macos

List all users on a server

Published by Nicholas Dunbar on August 22nd, 2013

User information is stored in the /etc/passwd file [username@localhost /]$ awk -F":" '{ print $1 }' /etc/passwd If you want to print out the user name and UID: [username@localhost /]$ awk -F":" '{ print $1 "\t\t"$3 }' /etc/passwd | column -t Here is ...

linux command-line bash

Pad a string with a character | Fill in empty space with repeating character in bash

Published by Nicholas Dunbar on June 25th, 2013

If you want to pad a string so that the string is always the same length, but if a string that is smaller than the required length is used the excess space is filled with a defined character so that the string maintains the correct spacing. For exampl...

programming linux bash

Change Apache/XAMPP user that runs PHP | Fix PHP exec permission issues

Published by Nicholas Dunbar on June 11th, 2013

When you install XAMPP the user name is set to 'nobody' by default in the Apache configuration (httpd.conf). If you are are suffering from permissions issues in PHP then the problem might by the ownership of the files by Linux and the user under which ...

programming linux php

Back up pear configuration | restore pear configuration | transfer pear configuration

Published by Nicholas Dunbar on May 20th, 2013

Here is how to back up your pear configuration to a script so that it can later be transferred to another installation of pear or so that you can restore a previous configuration. user@localhost the_directory> pear config-show | grep -viE "^([=]+|.{0,...

programming linux command-line

Get all versions of PHP installed on the system

Published by Nicholas Dunbar on May 15th, 2013

This will list (all) the PHP(s) on the system and then grep the version number(s). whereis php | tr ' ' '\n' | grep -E "^/.*?php$" | xargs -I {} echo {} -v | sh |& grep -v "is a"

programming linux

Strange error in PHP | number zero (0) evaluates to true against a string in PHP

Published by Nicholas Dunbar on March 27th, 2013

Reproducing the error (see solution below): Take a look at this weird error below: $int_zero="reset";$str_zero="0";$int_zero=intval($str_zero);if ($int_zero == "reset"){ echo "equals reset\n"; } else { echo "equals something else\n"; } echo $int_zero...

programming php

Design your code to be grep'ed or searched

Published by Nicholas Dunbar on March 14th, 2013

Seriously. So that future developers who work with your code can reverse engineer your code. 1.) Store code in flat text files When you are looking for a variable you want to refactor you should not have to find it in some code stored in a database...

programming

Make new files take on the same group as the directory | Ubuntu | Linux

Published by Nicholas Dunbar on March 12th, 2013

If you want all files created in a directory to carry a certain default group owner, change the files immediate folder to use the permission bit "s" user@localhost the_directory> chmod g+s your_dir_name This will make it so, if you cd your_dir_name a...

linux command-line ubuntu

Copy MySQL schema from remote host to local host

Published by Nicholas Dunbar on March 12th, 2013

The secret is to use a program called mysqldump which comes with your installation of mysqld. user@localhost the_directory>mysqldump --no-data -u root remote_db_name -h address_of_remote_machine.com > temp-db-schema.mysql user@localhost the_directory...

linux mysql command-line

Copy all files a user owns off of remote server

Published by Nicholas Dunbar on March 12th, 2013

This is for copying files from a Linux machine to a local Linux machine. user@localhost the_directory> ssh user_name@remote_domain.com 'cd /dir/you/want/to/copy/; find `pwd` -user user_name' | xargs -I{} scp user_name@remote_domain.com:{} `pwd` This...

linux command-line bash

Filter files by ownership | Use ls -l to show only files with a certain user ownership

Published by Nicholas Dunbar on March 11th, 2013

Well one way is not to use the "ls" command, use "find" with "-maxdepth 1" so that it performs like ls instead: user@server the_directory> find -maxdepth 1 -user the_user_name -ls 2>/dev/null user@server the_directory> find -maxdepth 1 -group the_gro...

linux command-line

Change ownership of files owned by only one user

Published by Nicholas Dunbar on March 11th, 2013

To find all the files owned by a specific user and then change their group and user ownership to something else use the example in green and follow the directions on what to replace in the green example: Replace enter_user_name_here with the specific ...

linux command-line

Sort ls -l output

Published by Nicholas Dunbar on March 11th, 2013

To sort the command "ls -l" output by each column in Linux use the following commands: user@server the_directory> ls -l | sort -k3 Let's break this down: ls - lists the files in the current directory -l - tells the "ls" command to list all the info...

linux

Increment date by one day | < PHP 5.2

Published by Nicholas Dunbar on March 6th, 2013

If you want to increment a date by one day you need to do it using the PHP DateTime function so that you can account for leap years. date_default_timezone_set('UTC'); $time_stamp = strtotime('0000-00-00 00:00:00'); $date = new DateTime(); $date->setTi...

programming php

Generate a list of dates between two dates in PHP

Published by Nicholas Dunbar on March 6th, 2013

If you want to create a list of dates between two different Unix time stamps, here is how to do it: //2001-09-09T01:46:4 $starting_unix_timestamp = 1000000000; //now $ending_unix_timestamp = time(); date_default_timezone_set('America/Denver'); $star...

programming php

Shell script that makes it so you don't need a password to login to a Linux server.

Published by Nicholas Dunbar on March 6th, 2013

Tested for Red Hat Linux 6.0 Bash Shell sh-4.1 This script only works if the username on your the box where you install the script is the same as the username on the remote box to which you which to connect. If you want to use a different user on each...

linux bash

FTP won't transfer, common, but weird errors | Get ftp download limit

Published by Nicholas Dunbar on March 6th, 2013

Common, but weird problems that can prevent you from downloading something: 1.) permission issue 2.) you are transferring a binary file as a text file Here's where you can see the transfer mode: TYPE I is binary 3.) speed issues if the server adapte...

unix linux

Install PHP CLI with MySqli extension/module on Linux

Published by Nicholas Dunbar on March 6th, 2013

So you want to use PHP from the command line or you have PHP from the command line but you don't have mysqli installed. run the following shell script: #!/bin/bash echo "Are you logged in as root?"; select yn in "Yes" "No"; do case $yn in ...

linux mysql

Installing PECL command on a Linux box

Published by Nicholas Dunbar on March 5th, 2013

PECL is a command that comes with PEAR. PECL allows you to load PHP extensions which are programmed in C. to install it use the package manager that comes with your brand of Linux: apt-get install php5-pear or yum install php-pear or... rpm php-pear

programming linux

See what is running on your mysql | See running queries and processes | find stuck process

Published by Nicholas Dunbar on February 19th, 2013

Run the following query against your database: show full processlist;To which you will get something like the following: +--------+--------+-----------+--------+---------+------+----------------------+-------------------------------------------------...

mysql

Set up Squirrel to connect to a MySQL database.

Published by Nicholas Dunbar on February 13th, 2013

We are assuming you have already installed Squirrel In order to set up Squirrel Database Client to connect to a MySQL database you must: 1.) go to http://dev.mysql.com/downloads/connector/j/#downloads 2.) select your platform, if you are running it on...

programming mysql

Convert string to list of ASCII codes in bash

Published by Nicholas Dunbar on February 10th, 2013

If you want to take a string and get the ascii code for each character in the string using a bash script then use the following function: function string2ascii_codes { str=$1; list=($(echo $str|sed 's/$.$/\1 /g')); ascii_result=''; ...

programming linux bash

Installing Sabrent Networking Video an Audio Display Adapter (USB-DAH) on Mac

Published by Nicholas Dunbar on February 8th, 2013

How to attach a second monitor to your Macbook If you can't connect a second monitor to your Macbook because the monitor uses a VGA or DVI connector then the "Sabrent Networking Video and Audio Display Adapter" (also known as item number USB-DAH) is t...

macos

Interpret PHP as you type | PHP prompt

Published by Nicholas Dunbar on January 18th, 2013

How to Code PHP from the prompt. How to run PHP in interactive mode. Open a command line prompt and type the following: C:\> php -a Interactive shell php > echo 5+8; 13 ctrl-D to exit If it can't find PHP, you need to check and see if it is inst...

php command-line

Things to see between Boulder, CO and Longmont, CO.

Published by Nicholas Dunbar on January 8th, 2013

If you find yourself driving between Boulder and Longmont, Colorado, whether it be your daily commute, because you are on a business trip or you are just plain board, you should browse this article to get a better sense of what is available in this see...

boulder colorado

Contracting

Published by Nicholas Dunbar on January 1st, 2013

Need someone competent to build an app? Please contact me :) nick@sketchnpass.com See my resume and my demo reel at www.designcortex.com

Boulder apps - tech blog

Published by Nicholas Dunbar on December 31st, 2012

Hello, My name is Nicholas Dunbar. I am a web app designer and developer who lives in Boulder, Colorado. This is where I collect my thoughts on programming, design and entrepreneurship. My code and solutions are copied and pasted into hundreds of appl...

programming

Cubic bezier using beziersegment | ActionScript 3 AS3

Published by Nicholas Dunbar on December 27th, 2012

Fast Cubic Bezier in AS3 Because we use the machine code to do the calculations instead of doing them our self in interpreted AS3 this runs very fast. When you look up Cubic Bezier on the web you find a ton of math and a bunch of libraries for Act...

programming as3 denverapps done

Truncating a number | Setting the precision of a float | ActionScript 3. AS3

Published by Nicholas Dunbar on December 27th, 2012

Truncating a Number or Floating Point in ActionScript 3.0 The Efficient Way I have seen a few solutions for truncating a Number. Many of these solutions used to truncate a float or Number in ActionScript 3.0 (AS3) are just plain over complicated and ...

programming as3 denverapps done