Blog

• The Problem with Regex Search and Replace in Java 2021 July 15
  • java
  • programming
  • regex

  I had an issue where I needed to support search and replace of certain quoted strings in various scripts which take the form of $(VARNAME). There’s a minor issue with Java where if the replaced by string contains certain characters where it will quit with an unhelpful message like “IndexNotFound: Match group 5 not found” or something similar. This is how to resolve that error, and the importance of escaping things.

• Adding Search to My Static Blog Using AWS Lambda and SQLite 2021 July 09
  • amazon-web-services
  • aws-lambda
  • cloudformation
  • full-text-search
  • jekyll
  • python
  • sqlite
  • tutorial

  I always wanted to have search on my site, but it’s statically hosted, so I can’t have any dynamic content on it. I recently resolved that by creating a little tiny lambda function on AWS that queries a SQLite database hosted on S3. Here I’ll walk you through how I created the back-end for it, and in some later posts I’ll include details on calculating the cost.

• Visiting the NYC Fire Fighter Museum 2021 July 06
  • reviews
  • travel
  

  I was in New York City for 4th of July this year. I actually discovered a pretty cool museum when I saw this firefighting boat docked near Little Island, which had great views of New Jersey. I searched for Fire Boat tours, but there was none to be found. However I did find a firefighter museum which was really cool. So I went because it was raining a little bit outside and just a little bit dreary out.

• A Blender Muddled Julep Inspired Strawberry Cocktail 2021 June 05
  • cocktails
  • cooking
  • drinks
  • rum
  • whiskey

  So I had some inspiration with some fresh strawberries and some homegrown mint, so I decided to try to make a blender muddled cocktail. Blender muddling is a technique described in “Liquid Intelligence” by Dave Arnold. It’s designed to maximize flavor extraction while minimizing oxidation. I think this is really simple and flavorful cocktail. This recipe I have described will serve 3 people.

• Using a Bash Script to Generate Random Fake Data To Insert Into DynamoDB 2021 March 30
  • amazon-web-services
  • bash
  • cloudformation
  • database
  • dynamodb
  • programming
  • tutorial

  I’ve been studying for my developer associate certification on Amazon Web Services. I’ve been practicing with the various streaming solutions like SQS and Kinesis lately. I’ve wanted to branch into using DynamoDB and capturing changes. To do that I needed to generate a lot of take data.

• I Cooked a Leg of Lamb on my Smoker. 2021 March 26
  • cooking
  • meat
  • smoking
  

  I made a glazed leg of lamb on the smoker. These are the pictures of how I served it, and the procedure of how I cooked it.

• Converting a JavaScript array of strings to numbers, and the problem with `Array.map` 2021 March 15
  • javascript
  • programming
  • rant

  JavaScript has a very weird type system with how strings can sometimes be converted to numbers. It’s a very cool feature but can cause a lot of pain because adding 1 doesn’t always do what you think it should due to type-juggling. So you might think there’s an easy and relatively foot-gun free to convert an array of strings to numbers. You would be wrong, well maybe not at least if you don’t use the functional language stuff in JavaScript or just do an in-place update or your array, but that’s besides the point.

• A Brief and Painless Introduction To Bash 2021 January 27
  • awk
  • bash
  • curl
  • grep
  • grep
  • presentation
  • shell
  • tutorial
  • xargs

  A pretty decent introduction to Bash for pipelines and interactive use.

• Adding `pylint` to your Github Actions flow 2021 January 21
  • continuous-integration
  • github
  • github-actions
  • log-analysis
  • python
  • tutorial
  

  Recently, I’ve been doing more CICD work, so I wanted to practice adding some of that to my personal projects. I’ve also taken a liking to pylint, so I decided to have Github Actions automatically check my code quality on push for my log-analysis repository. This is how I added that linting to my workflow.

• Finding Jekyll Posts to Update With Cover Images 2021 January 10
  • bash
  • grep
  • jekyll
  • notes
  • refactor-code
  • shell
  • snippet
  • tutorial

  I recently updated my site to make use of cover images on the post listing. I wanted to make sure that I got all of the posts that need to be updated. I used grep to find posts which had an image in them, but no cover attribute in their front-matter.

• PyGame FFT Audio Visualizations 2021 January 07
  • audio
  • game-development
  • math
  • python
  • signal-processing
  • tutorial
  • visualization
  

  This tutorial is to write a very simple audio visualizer using PyGame, PyAudio, and Numpy. The visualization uses the frequency domain of some input sound, and display a bar graph of the frequency domain as the audio plays. The audio source is the computer line-in or microphone.

• Ginger Cumin Rubbed Rib Roast 2020 December 31
  • cooking
  • meat
  • recipe
  

  I scored a rib roast from a local butcher shop whose owners were retiring. It was a beautiful 6lb chunk with an amazing fat cap on it. This is how I cooked it, and what I made with the leftovers.

• Interactive Breadth First Search in a Grid 2020 December 20
  • app
  • breadth-first
  • data-visualization
  • demos
  • graph-search
  • graphs
  • interactive
  • programming
  

  Breadth first search(BFS) is a very powerful and useful algorithm for exploring graph like structures. A BFS searches it’s nearest neighbors first before moving on. It’s main use is to find a path using the fewest hops. Here we use it to explore a grid that can be modified by a user. In this grid, we have verticies (the grid boxes), and edges (the box north, south, east and west).

• Yetris Review - A Fantastic Terminal Tetris 2020 December 08
  • games
  • notes
  • reviews
  • tetris

  Yetris is a very cool tetris clone for the terminal. It features colors and a neat interface with lots of levels. I really enjoy playing it, but I always forget the name of the program, so I’m making a post so I don’t forget what’s it called.

• Advent of Code Input Getter 2020 December 03
  • advent-of-code
  • automation
  • bash
  • linux
  • tutorial

  I wrote a bash function to get my daily Advent of Code input. It assumes that you are in a directory ending in the pattern year/day, where year is the year you’re doing the problems. Here’s the code