Josh

I'm a computer nerd who is happily married and has one child. I dig Python, Linux, Django, vim, and a lot of other techie stuff.

Posts

February 06, 03:20 PM

Command Line Progress Bar With Python

September 22, 03:36 AM

Arduino-Powered Webcam Mount

September 21, 03:19 AM

Server Downtime

August 30, 07:24 PM

Firefox 6.0 Is My Default Browser Again

August 13, 04:45 PM

Lots Of Happenings

April 01, 02:41 PM

Free Professional Web Development

March 08, 06:37 PM

Follow-Up to Weighted Sorting in Python

March 08, 04:37 PM

Simple Weighted Sort in Python

January 04, 02:35 AM

PIR Motion Sensor + LCD Screen + Arduino Uno

December 27, 09:24 AM

Django-Tracking 0.3.5

November 23, 03:23 AM

VirtualBox Slowing Down Mah Linux (gasp!)

November 11, 07:10 AM

Django-Articles 2.1.1 Released

October 05, 06:55 PM

Vim Tip: Global Delete

August 02, 08:35 PM

Quick And Easy Execution Speed Testing

July 09, 06:38 PM

Whoa! Another Reason To Love Vim

Posts

May 12, 09:20 AM

via TYWKIWDBI by Minnesotastan on 5/8/10

* In 1974 with 36.1% of oil from foreign sources, President Richard Nixon said, “At the end of this decade, in the year 1980, the United States will not be dependent on any other country for the energy we need.”

* In 1975 with 36.1% of oil from foreign sources, President Gerald Ford said, “We must reduce oil imports by one million barrels per day by the end of this year and by two million barrels per day by the end of 1977.”

* In 1979 with 40.5% of oil from foreign sources, President Jimmy Carter said, “Beginning this moment, this nation will never use more foreign oil than we did in 1977 – never.”

* In 1981 with 43.6% of oil from foreign sources, President Ronald Reagan said, “While conservation is worthy in itself, the best answer is to try to make us independent of outside sources to the greatest extent possible for our energy.”

* In 1992 with 47.2% of oil from foreign sources, President George Bush said, “When our administration developed our national energy strategy, three principles guided our policy: reducing our dependence on foreign oil…”

* In 1995 with 49.8% of oil from foreign sources, President Bill Clinton said, “The nation’s growing reliance on imports of oil…threatens the nation’s security…[we] will continue efforts to…enhance domestic energy production.”

* In 2006 with 65.5% of oil from foreign sources, President George W. Bush said, “Breakthroughs…will help us reach another great goal: to replace more than 75 percent of our oil imports from the Middle East by 2025.”

* In 2009 with 66.2% of oil from foreign sources, President Barack Obama said, “It will be the policy of my administration to reverse our dependence on foreign oil while building a new energy economy that will create millions of jobs.”
From a presentation by Mike Milken posted at The Money Game, via The Christian Science Monitor, via Oregon Expat.

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May 12, 09:15 AM

 
 
I was whitewater kayaking when I look over at a guy putting on a copious amount of sun screen. I asked him what he was doing and he replied “I.T. guys with a tan get no respect at work.” IMMD

 

Submitted by: judson

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May 12, 09:15 AM

"I was also going to give a graduation speech in Arizona this weekend. But with my accent, I was afraid they would try to deport me"

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March 08, 11:00 AM

I'm really enjoying some of the comments on this thread:

Some of my favorites so far:

I use a variation on tarpitting that has worked very well for me. It cut the attempts down from 60,000/day to 20 or 30 per day.
I just add a small delay between the initial connection attempt and when I send the username/password prompt. The delay (in seconds) is the number of attempts in the last 30 minutes, squared. This makes all but the most determined attacker give up and go away very quickly.
I have been using this with both FTP and SSH for the last year, and it works great.

Use fail2ban and key-auth

In addition to using reactive tools like fail2ban and denyhost, also block most of the world proactively:
git clone git://github.com/bugi/iptables-by-country.git  

fail2ban firewalls off the port for a time you specify
DenyHosts blocks the ip in /etc/hosts.deny
I find fail2ban to be much more effective since I can use it for more than just SSH (on my system: ftp, imap, pop3, ssh, smtp). Some of the newer botnets will attempt to crack the password using another service and then try the resulting password on ssh so it's important to have more complete coverage.

iptables -N autoban
iptables -I INPUT -p TCP --dport 22 -j autoban
iptables -A autoban -p tcp --dport 22 -m state --state NEW -m recent --set --name SSH
iptables -A autoban -p tcp --dport 22 -m state --state NEW -m recent --update --seconds 60 --hitcount 4 --rttl --name SSH -j DROP

Any site that connects more than 4 times in 60 seconds gets all packets subsequently dropped.  You could change DROP to TARPIT (if your kernel supports it).

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March 04, 10:38 AM

I actually received a useful forward yesterday.  Here it is:

For all the folks with cell phones. (This should be printed and kept in your car, purse, and wallet. Good information to have with you.)

There are a few things that can be done in times of grave emergencies.  Your mobile phone can actually be a life saver or an emergency tool for survival. Check out the things that you can do with it:

Emergency

The Emergency Number worldwide for Mobile is 112. If you find Yourself out of the coverage area of your mobile network and there is an Emergency, dial 112 and the mobile will search any existing network to Establish the emergency number for you, and interestingly, this number 112 can be dialed even if the keypad is locked. Try it out.

Have you locked your keys in the car?

Does your car have remote keyless entry? This may come in handy someday. Good reason to own a cell phone: If you lock your keys In the car and the spare keys are at home, call someone at home on their cell phone from your cell phone. Hold your cell phone about a foot From your car door and have the person at your home press the unlock button, holding it near the mobile phone on their end. Your car will unlock. Saves someone from having to drive your keys to you. Distance is no object. You could be hundreds of miles away, and if you can reach someone who has the other 'remote' for your car, you can unlock the doors (or the trunk).

Editor's Note: It works fine! We tried it out and it unlocked  our car over a cell phone!'

Hidden Battery Power

Imagine your cell battery is very low. To activate, press the keys* 3370#. Your cell phone will restart with this reserve and the instrument will show a 50% increase in battery. This reserve will get charged when you charge your cell phone next time.

How to disable a STOLEN mobile phone?

To check your Mobile phone's serial number, key in the following Digits on your phone: *#06#. A 15-digit code will appear on the screen. This number is unique to your handset. Write it down and keep it somewhere safe.

If your phone gets stolen, you can phone your service provider and give them this code. They will then be able to block your handset so even if the thief changes the SIM card , your phone will be totally useless. You probably won' t get your phone back, but at least you know that whoever stole it can't use/sell it either. If everybody does this, there would be no point in people stealing mobile phones.

Free Directory Service for Cells

Cell phone companies are charging us $1.00 to $1.75 or more for 411 information calls when they don't have to. Most of us do not carry a telephone directory in our vehicle, which makes this situation even more of a problem. When you need to use the 411 information option, simply dial: (800)FREE411 , or (800) 373-3411 without incurring any charge at all. Program this into your cell phone now.

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February 23, 11:58 AM

Thought this was awesome.

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February 23, 08:06 AM

our fire alarm at work has been going for more than a half hour, and still no fire truck. Or sirens.

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February 20, 10:35 PM

video.flv Watch on Posterous

Kudos to whomever yanked this kid's chain and convinced him that what he's telling everyone in this video is the truth.  I loved the video so much that I decided to back it up just in case the kid realizes how ridiculous his claims are and deletes the video from YouTube.

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February 17, 01:19 PM

Ben brought a 5-pound gummy bear into work today. Here's proof.

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February 17, 11:53 AM

Don't you wish you had such a manly mustache?

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February 17, 12:23 AM

Oh man, this was great.

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February 16, 11:44 PM

I just read an article about agave nectar, and I found it quite
interesting. I wonder if my wife has read up on this product... She
usually does her research when it comes to "healthy" foods.

http://www.thatsfit.com/2010/02/15/debunking-the-agave-myth/

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Profile

Senior Software Developer at mediaFORGE
Information Technology and Services | Greater Salt Lake City Area, US

Summary

My passion for technology and programming began at a very early age, and time has only made the passion burn brighter. I love learning about new things and trying to apply concepts I learn anywhere I can. I thrive on open source technologies, the most prominent of which would be Linux, Python, and Vim. I have been using Linux as my primary operating system for over 10 years now.

I love to automate tasks and look for new opportunities to do so more efficiently and effectively every day. In recent years, I've started trying to automate things in the physical world as well with tools like an Arduino.
Specialties: Languages: Python, Javascript, Java, PHP, Ruby Frameworks: Django, Node.js, Ruby on Rails, jQuery Version Control: Git, Mercurial, Subversion Servers: Linux, MySQL, Nginx, Apache Other: XHTML, CSS, AJAX, usability

Experience

  • Mar 2012 - Present
    Senior Software Developer / mediaFORGE
    Optimize ads delivery platform
  • Nov 1998 - Present
    Freelance Web Developer / Self-Employed
    - Create, maintain, and enhance websites, primarily powered by Python and Django, but some being Ruby on Rails, PHP, or Java - Use Satchmo to create e-commerce sites - Create reusable applications and components to help save time on future projects, including blogs, discounting tools, affiliate networking applications, and payment processing middleware - Configure and maintain Linux-based servers - Optimize sites for speed and efficiency - Design and normalize database tables - Designed and maintained the website for Bad Aibling American School - Produced an interactive yearbook using Flash, which was distributed to students and faculty on CD
  • Oct 2009 - Present
    Senior Software Engineer / ScienceLogic
    - Build, debug, test, and maintain a large codebase of mixed technologies, including Python and PHP - Maintain a patching system for distributed appliances - Simplify DRBD node maintenance with bash scripts - Experiment with FIPS-140 capabilities - Discover and monitor devices that are not directly attached to a network, including components of a Cisco UCS or guests on a VMWare ESX server - Receive and process SNMP traps to generate system alerts and events - Tweak the Net-SNMP Python bindings - Automatically notify the user when events occur based on user-defined policies - Created a web UI to the build scripts, which allows simultaneous builds to be executed in parallel and distribution of stdout to multiple clients in real-time - Used Node.js to power a real-time process lifetime graph
  • Sept 2006 - Present
    Senior Web Developer / Danemco, LLC
    - Pioneered changes that helped increase productivity by approximately 200% - Converted the whole company to Django from a home-grown PHP framework - Wrote the basic reusable applications that power most of the client websites - Developed dozens of websites for individuals and small companies - Conceptualized and developed a scalable tool for rapid website deployment - Created a customized administration interface to ease the website administration process for clients who were not so technologically-inclined - Maintained company services and machines
  • Jan 2006 - Present
    Applications Developer / Brigham Young University - Idaho
    - Worked in small teams to develop and deploy specialized university-wide applications - Enhanced existing applications based on customer requests and feedback - Used NetBeans to create a responsive UI for the campus police to track citations and parking permits - Helped create a utility for the campus gym to track inventory and equipment usage - Enhanced the student web portal using ASP, grabbing information from various databases, including Oracle, MSSQL, and DB AS400
  • Nov 2003 - Present
    Religious Volunteer / The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints
    - Shared religious concepts with the people of Romania - Led small groups of individuals in their activities - Responsible for 4 people who reported directly to me - Worked closely with the church leadership in Romania to ensure the smooth operation of all branches - Redesigned and enhanced organization database using MySQL and PHP, reducing its size to about 1.5% of its original size, and increasing speed and usability by several orders of magnitude - Managed the organization computers and servers - Configured Linux-based, iptables-powered gateway and router to secure organization computers - Performed data persistence and recovery tasks

Education

  • 2002 - 2009
    Brigham Young University - Idaho
    Computer Information Technology in Networking, Systems Administration, System Security, Computer Programming, Accounting
    Activities: Whitney Unix/Linux Society
  • 1999 - 2002
    Bad Aibling American School
    High School in Life
    Activities: FBLA, NHS

Additional Information

Websites:
Honors:
Technology Student of the Year, 2002 (for my school district)
Interests:
Python, Haskell, distributed processing, web development, high performance backend development, network security, arduino, new gadgets

Posts

April 22, 11:13 AM

Date: Apr 22, 2012
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April 18, 03:40 AM

Date: Apr 18, 2012
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April 17, 11:51 AM

Date: Apr 17, 2012
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April 16, 12:59 PM

Date: Apr 16, 2012
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January 26, 12:59 AM

Date: Jan 25, 2012
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January 16, 12:07 PM

Date: Jan 16, 2012
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January 11, 04:25 PM

Date: Jan 11, 2012
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January 10, 12:15 AM

Date: Jan 9, 2012
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November 20, 05:08 PM

Date: Nov 21, 2011
Number of Photos in Album: 36

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November 20, 05:06 PM

Date: Nov 20, 2011
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November 15, 04:57 PM

Date: Nov 15, 2011
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November 18, 08:22 PM

Date: Nov 13, 2011
Number of Photos in Album: 2

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November 18, 08:22 PM

Date: Nov 3, 2011
Number of Photos in Album: 34

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October 31, 06:23 PM

Date: Oct 31, 2011
Number of Photos in Album: 8

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October 31, 06:24 PM

Jane was being unusually smiley this morning, and I even managed to snap a few pictures of her beautiful little grin.

Date: Oct 26, 2011
Number of Photos in Album: 19

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October 24, 09:33 AM

Date: Oct 23, 2011
Number of Photos in Album: 1

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October 22, 11:25 PM

Some pictures that we took of the kids in their costumes for the ward trunk or treat party.

Date: Oct 23, 2011
Number of Photos in Album: 43

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October 20, 10:00 PM

Date: Oct 20, 2011
Number of Photos in Album: 47

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September 21, 11:19 PM

Some photos of my Arduino-powered webcam mount. I also have a face-tracking program that move the mount so the webcam is always centered on a face (when possible).

Date: Sep 22, 2011
Number of Photos in Album: 3

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September 01, 03:23 AM

Date: Sep 1, 2011
Number of Photos in Album: 1

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September 15, 08:09 PM

Claire Michella & Jane Elizabeth VanderLinden were born on August 9th 2011 at 9:25 AM and 9:27 AM, respectively. Claire weighed 5 lb 3 oz, and Jane weighed 4 lb 14 oz. Both were 19 inches long. Mindy and the girls were absolutely fantastic!

Date: Aug 10, 2011
Number of Photos in Album: 152

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July 25, 02:29 PM

Date: Jul 24, 2011
Number of Photos in Album: 1

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July 20, 10:29 AM

Date: Jul 20, 2011
Number of Photos in Album: 1

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July 20, 03:05 PM

Date: Jul 20, 2011
Number of Photos in Album: 1

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July 15, 09:28 PM

Date: Jul 15, 2011
Number of Photos in Album: 1

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July 14, 02:48 PM

Date: Jul 14, 2011
Number of Photos in Album: 1

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July 14, 02:44 PM

Date: Jul 14, 2011
Number of Photos in Album: 1

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July 13, 09:19 PM

Date: Jul 13, 2011
Number of Photos in Album: 1

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July 12, 10:38 PM

Date: Jul 12, 2011
Number of Photos in Album: 1

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July 18, 11:42 AM

Some pictures from my birthday trip to Alaska to hang out with my dad and brother.

Date: Sep 5, 2010
Number of Photos in Album: 235

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Posts

January 02, 11:35 PM

Mindy was attacked by the gate that we use to keep Logan out of the kitchen and bedrooms.

Date: Jan 2, 2011
Number of Photos in Album: 7

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October 02, 10:25 AM

Date: Oct 2, 2010
Number of Photos in Album: 156

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September 24, 11:30 PM

Date: Sep 24, 2010
Number of Photos in Album: 7

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September 18, 03:33 PM

Date: Sep 18, 2010
Number of Photos in Album: 78

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August 10, 08:25 PM

Date: Aug 10, 2010
Number of Photos in Album: 188

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March 14, 09:57 PM

Date: Jun 11, 2010
Number of Photos in Album: 42

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June 11, 10:02 PM

Date: Jun 11, 2010
Number of Photos in Album: 16

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June 07, 11:15 AM

Date: Jun 7, 2010
Number of Photos in Album: 28

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June 07, 09:34 AM

Date: Jun 7, 2010
Number of Photos in Album: 42

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February 06, 04:11 PM

These are some pictures from "The Blizzard of 2010"

Location: Ashburn, VA
Date: Feb 5, 2010
Number of Photos in Album: 147

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January 06, 08:42 PM

Date: Dec 19, 2009
Number of Photos in Album: 64

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January 06, 08:40 PM

Date: Dec 15, 2009
Number of Photos in Album: 16

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June 11, 10:06 PM

Date: Dec 14, 2009
Number of Photos in Album: 89

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June 01, 08:23 PM

Date: Dec 14, 2009
Number of Photos in Album: 11

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November 13, 10:10 PM

Just some pictures of Logan through 3 months.

Date: Sep 12, 2009
Number of Photos in Album: 60

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September 12, 03:55 PM

Date: Sep 6, 2009
Number of Photos in Album: 41

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September 08, 10:05 PM

Date: Aug 30, 2009
Number of Photos in Album: 72

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September 08, 01:47 PM

Date: Aug 22, 2009
Number of Photos in Album: 99

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September 08, 01:46 PM

Pictures of the second week after Logan was born.

Date: Aug 16, 2009
Number of Photos in Album: 33

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September 08, 01:46 PM

Pictures from the first week we had Logan with us.

Date: Aug 11, 2009
Number of Photos in Album: 42

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September 08, 01:43 PM

Logan Chase VanderLinden was born at 5:51 AM on August 8, 2009. He weighed 6 pounds, 13 ounces and was 20 inches long. He's the perfect baby!

Location: Madison Memorial Hospital, Rexburg, ID
Date: Aug 8, 2009
Number of Photos in Album: 68

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