Code and Coda

Updating Ruby on Apple M1 MacBook

2022-01-31T22:49:00+00:00

After a 12 months-long hiatus I started blogging again. Expired TLS certificate and the process of transitioning to LetsEncrypt were the inspiration and motivated me to share the knowledge with the world.

I also need to mention that I had to update Ruby on my Apple M1-powered MacBook as I was getting tons of errors when trying to re-build the blog. Note that I had the latest macOS Monterey which comes with pre-installed Ruby 2.7.0, but it wouldn’t work for me. I needed to update the version that I previously installed via Homebrew.

After some trial and error, I stumbled upon “The Definitive Guide To Installing Ruby Gems on a Mac” by Moncef Belyamani. The guide was excellent and I specifically followed all steps in section Install Ruby with Homebrew.

The following version was installed side-by-side with the one Apple provides:

ruby -v                                                 
ruby 3.0.3p157 (2021-11-24 revision 3fb7d2cadc) [x86_64-darwin21]

Jekyll was still giving me trouble, this time due to missing webrick - apparently Ruby 3.0 lacks that packages: Jekyll serve fails on Ruby 3.0 (webrick missing) #752.

I quickly resolved it by adding webrick…

bundle add webrick

… and re-built and tested my blog:

bundle exec jekyll build --verbose
bundle exec jekyll serve --trace --watch --incremental

Migrating Jekyll Blog’s SSL certificate to LetsEncrypt

2022-01-31T21:51:00+00:00

I recently got a notice from my domain provider that my SSL certificate for www.rubaniuk.com will expire in 1 month and that I need to renew it. I opened this blog and noticed that the certificate has expired already, I decided to dig deeper and found out that GitHub Pages aren’t receiving new cert from my Certificate Authority!

This wasn’t great user experience and that got me thinking: what if I switched to free LetsEncrypt Certificate Authority? Let’s do just that!

First, let’s delete existing CNAME file with domain in it:

git rm CNAME 
git commit -m "Deleting custom domain"  
git push

Second, let’s configure Certification Authority Authorization record (CAA record) - you can do it in settings for your domain at your domain registrar’s website. For my custom domain the settings were as follows:

Type        Host                Value                       TTL
CAA Record  www.rubaniuk.com    0 issue "letsencrypt.org"   Automatic

Third step - let’s re-create CNAME file with the custom domain as the only line in it:

echo www.rubaniuk.com > CNAME 
git add CNAME 
git commit -m "Re-enable custom domain after configuring CAA record/letsencrypt"
git push

The TLS certificate was issued nearly instantly and I was able to check “Enforce HTTPS”.

LetsEncrypt updates TLS certificates every 90 days. The cert was had an expiration date of “Saturday, April 30, 2022 at 9:03:18 PM Pacific Daylight Time” at the moment of writing this post.

The certificate should auto-renew in 90 days and I will post an update if I see any issues.

Migrating WordPress blog to Jekyll

2021-01-25T06:53:00+00:00

It was time for me to embrace GitHub Pages and migrate my blog from WordPress to Jekyll.

Why? WP is a great publishing platform, but I wanted something that requires minimal maintenance, doesn’t ask me to renew web hosting and allows me to publish from command line. Jekyll checked all the boxes and I mostly followed Bob Gale’s excellent migration guide.

It wasn’t as smooth as I anticipated. Even though all blog _posts, _drafts and wp-content were exported, I ran into issue where simply copying exported markdown files (.md) from _posts folder didn’t work and I had to comment out id, guid and permalink (see below). After these changes posts showed mostly fine.

# id: 433
title: Failed to connect to a Windows service
date: 2016-06-04T11:39:27-07:00
author: andrei
layout: post
# guid: http://www.rubaniuk.com/?p=433
# permalink: /?p=433
...

I did write “mostly” because book reviews used WP book review plugin and I still need to do extra formatting in order to properly display these posts.

Also, in multiple posts iframe wasn’t exported at all so I had to do copy it manually from original posts.

After testing locally, I went ahead and linked my domain to GitHub Pages and configured custom domain rubaniuk.com in the GitHub Pages settings for rubaniuk.github.io repo.

It took about 30 minutes for DNS settings to change. Note that TLS version wasn’t available immediately and after waiting 2-3 hours for TLS certitifcate to be available, I enforced HTTPS in the GitHub Pages settings.

It’s pretty liberating to be able to run an incremental Jekyll build and simply refresh your browser to see the changes:

bundle exec jekyll serve --trace --watch --incremental

I still need to figure out custom themes and format book reviews.

Overall, I have no regrets and recommend Jekyll as a lightweight alternative to WP.

Book Review: Becoming a Better Programmer

2016-08-31T16:32:46+00:00

Book Review: Learning to Program

2016-08-30T16:45:26+00:00

Book Review Rating Guide

2016-08-30T16:19:52+00:00

Here are the definitions for star ratings for my book reviews:

*** An original work, masterpiece, must-read book.

**** Very good book with a lot of interesting insight, useful & enriching experience. This is the book you just can’t put down.

*** Satisfactory experience, several good ideas and not too many cliches, worth reading if you have a lot of free time.

** Either poorly written book or an obvious copy-paste full of common knowledge for the area.

Very poorly written book, complete waste of time. Something that I normally wouldn’t review as just skimming through the book reveals that.

Failed to connect to a Windows service

2016-06-04T18:39:27+00:00

Recently I was testing real-world performance of TP-LINK Archer T9E AC1900 wireless adapter. The experiment was quite unsuccessful and I didn’t experience any reasonable improvement. Quite the opposite: speeds did not improve but the connection was mush less stable.

After uninstalling TP-Link driver/utility package I’ve noticed that it left my Windows 10 installation quite messed up:

Really TP-Link? I was not able to use my old USB Wireless Adapter and the list of wireless networks simply wouldn’t show up. Quick Internet search helped solve the problem, resetting Winsock Catalog fixed it:

netsh winsock reset

In addition, I suspected that Windows system files might be corrupted so I decided to check:

C:\WINDOWS\system32\sfc /scannow

Beginning system scan. This process will take some time.

Beginning verification phase of system scan.
Verification 100% complete.

Windows Resource Protection found corrupt files and successfully repaired
them. Details are included in the CBS.Log windir\Logs\CBS\CBS.log. For
example C:\Windows\Logs\CBS\CBS.log. Note that logging is currently not
supported in offline servicing scenarios.

All fixed, back to more productive activities.

A Case for Mechanical Keyboards

2015-07-29T05:44:07+00:00

Lead-In

After many years of using various ergonomic keyboards both at work as well as home I finally had had enough. It was time to go back to good old mechanical switches. Having some free time and enough courage I researched and finally bought old-school mechanical keyboard.

The first step was to order a Cherry MX Switch Tester from WASD Keyboards.

6 Cherry MX Switches

The tester comes with 6 switches of which 4 are smooth (clear, red, black and brown) and 2 are actually clicky (blue, green). I didn’t like any of the smooth switches as they were all reminding me of a regular keyboard except a little more precise as each key has an individual switch (duh!).

I ended up liking Cherry MX Green best as it is more clicky and resitant than Cherry MX Blue. When you compare these two the difference is very clear: the green ones just feel more precise and even sturdy.

The Keyboard I chose

As Cherry MX Green was the best choice, I wanted to purchase magnificent CODE keyboard that has the best design – clean and simple, that simply allows you to focus on work & typing. It was out of stock! What was surprising is how rare the MX Green keyboards are! Only the CODE had a decent layout (i.e. not extra buttons/knobs and other pseudo-professional bells-n-whistles), but it was not available which was a huge disappointment.

The next best option was Cherry MX Blue-based Das Keyboard Model S ordered on Amazon during their Prime Day. So far so good: satisfying typing experience, the keyboard is a heavy, sits nicely on the desk and reminds me of heavy IBM keyboards from childhood. Overall build is good, it looks like a high-quality product except for the stupid functional keys that fortunately are mixed shared with functional keys.

Mechanical keyboards may not be for everyone, but software engineers should definitely give them a try for few weeks and see if they like them.

Algorithms, Part I on Coursera

2015-03-25T05:45:13+00:00

About a week ago I finished Algorithms, Part I course on Coursera. Few thoughts after completing this course:

good course by Robert Sedgewick and Kevin Wayne that is focused primarily on algorithms and their analysis
great refresher especially for those who worked in the industry for a while
course uses Java as programming language, but having very little Java experience wasn’t a problem, being proficient in C++ and especially C# helped a lot
the course focuses mostly on application of existing algorithms but does not focus on the algorithm design which is its biggest drawback
Dr. Java IDE that comes with the course is terrible. Instead, I used Eclipse and version of Java that the default course setup installs on your machine (see previous post on how to configure Eclipse for this course)
the course does not provide a verified certificate which is a bummer especially after all the hard work
all of the programming tasks were fun and challenging
lecture and slides are helpful but you obviously need to do your own learning in addition to that

In order to be successful in this class, you need to:

make sure you keep delivering exercises and programming assignments before the due date or at least hard deadline. For me it was a big challenge in the beginning due to packed schedule but I had supportive environment and overall experience was smooth.
do not study if you’re tired after work – instead, get a good night of sleep and study when your brain is fresh – sounds like a no-brainer but it’s not so obvious until you experience double load – both at work and in the class
do not use Dr Java – it’s almost impossible to debug your code fast, especially complex data types. Install Eclipse. Enough said.
try to have fun and enjoy every moment of it!

Overall, I recommend this class.

Configuring Eclipse IDE for Algorithms, Part I (Coursera)

2015-02-15T02:45:49+00:00

Coursera is offering great algorithmic courses Algorithms, Part I and Part II by Robert Sedgewick. The only problem with them is Dr. Java IDE they recommend. It is free, usable but completely impractical when it comes to debugging. I’ve configured Eclipse IDE and my productivity increased significantly, especially when it comes to debugging.

Here is how to configure Eclipse on Windows machine for Algorithms, Part I/part II:

Uninstall any instances of Java from your machine

Follow step 0 from http://algs4.cs.princeton.edu/windows/ to install algs4.exe

only follow step 0, skip the rest as we will use Eclipse instead of Dr. Java

Download stdlib.jar and algs4.jar to permanent folder

Download Eclipse IDE for Java Developers

At the time of this blog post I had Eclipse Luna SR1 4.4.1 on my machine

Follow instructions in eclipse.pdf to configure Eclipse. <li style="text-align: left;"> The instructions are long and little tedious but well worth it </li> <li style="text-align: left;"> Here’s how you create a User Library in Eclipse: go to Window > Preferences > Java > Build Path > User Libraries, create New library and add algs4.jar and stdlib.jar from step 3 (I called it Coursera): </li>
- Whenever you create a new Java project you need to add newly created user library : right click on project, Build Path > Add Libraries
- Here’s what your Java project in Eclipse will look like after adding this library:

Eclipse worked well for me and as I mentioned previously increased my productivity which made studying fun again.

Good luck and let me know if you have questions!