So I had some free time last weekend and coded an item store for Team Fortress 2. I collect items and sell them for varying prices, usually one scrap metal each. If you’re interested, check out the store! The store is built on a few components, all written in Python. There is a script to…
Author: Chris
Database versioning and handling branching
It’s no secret to developers of database-driven applications that trying to version a database schema (and seed data) is a royal pain. Propagating changes from your development environment to a live environment is not something that most version control systems are well-equipped to do. This is further complicated by distributed VCSes, like Git — how…
VPS.NET experiences
I’ve been using VPS.NET as my hosting provider for two years now (since October 2009). Here’s my experience, the good and the bad. The building block of the VPS offering is a node: a discrete unit of CPU time, RAM, storage, and bandwidth. These nodes can be deployed as separate servers, or combined together to…
Bitcoin for Humans series
Anyone who’s been around me recently knows that I love Bitcoin. It’s a really neat idea, but it’s also a very complicated thing. Most people that I talk to don’t really understand how it works and why it was designed the way it was, and therefore have some incorrect ideas and criticisms of Bitcoin. So…
Mutable strings in Mono
Update 2010-12-17: Those of you who saw this post appear and then vanish were not seeing things. The Mono community identified the contents of this blog post as a serious security vulnerability in Moonlight that, through violation of the type system, allows the CoreCLR security layer to be bypassed. Attackers could potentially run arbitrary code…
OpenVP has landed
Well, if you’ve been waiting for some kind of stable release of OpenVP for Banshee, you will love this. OpenVP is part of the Banshee Community Extensions 1.7.4 release! Go get it, and be sure to file any bugs you come across.
New email address, new mail system
I’ve already sent out a message to those I contact frequently, but for the rest of you, my email address has changed from cdhowie@gmail.com to me@chrishowie.com. I have decided to migrate away from Gmail for a variety of reasons. I figured I’d use my domain so that I have flexibility in my provider choice. For…
Why I hate IM contact groups
Or at least as they are currently implemented. (Rambling rant alert!) Almost every IM client on the planet has the concept of a group. You create a group, give it a name, and populate it with your contacts. At first glance, this is useful. Having used IM clients since the latter years of AIM’s domination,…
PGP key transition
I am migrating to a new OpenPGP key. If this concerns you, or if you are interested, please read my key transition statement and take appropriate action. Please verify that the transition is signed by both my old and new keys.
git-svn in the workplace
At work, we use Subversion for source control. This is quite the popular VCS, but I’ve grown accustomed to (and much prefer) Git. Don’t get me wrong, SVN has its advantages, but since using Git my workflow has changed quite radically, and it’s difficult to revert to the rather inflexible and tedious SVN workflow. Anyway,…