John Kary

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Who is to blame when the magic runs out?

March 1, 2017

Amazon S3 experienced an outage yesterday, making some SaaS products appear broken while others downright unusable.

When they breakdown, the technologies that empowered us so effortlessly now limit us. We become demoted from value-add to net negative. And it’s all beyond our control because we don’t understand the magic behind that technology’s curtain. We look to project failure onto someone else–onto the real reason we can’t do more.

But when it’s broken, who is to blame?

How I almost died in Costa Rica

February 6, 2017

The sun is plunging into the ocean. This might be the most beautiful sunset I’ve ever seen. Because an hour ago that was me, awash in the ocean, in danger of going under.

I almost died today.

I’m fortunate to tell this story instead of being its subject. What happened?

My favorite albums of 2016

December 31, 2016

I’m a little old school. In an age of purchasing tracks I still prefer listening to albums start to finish. Appreciating how tracks are arranged one after another and how they transition from one to the next is very important.

Music and coffee are my lifeblood. Coffee is difficult to share, so please accept my favorite albums released in 2016, including statistics on all music fed into my ears.

Metallica, Hardwired… To Self-Destruct - Album Review

December 25, 2016

Look. “Hardwired… To Self-Destruct” is to Metallica as “The Force Awakens” is to Star Wars. “New” can never top “old.” The best “new” can only ever co-exist with the “old” by simply not fucking up its reputation. With me so far?

Attending and speaking at DrupalCon, May 2016

May 16, 2016

Last week I spoke at DrupalCon 2016 in New Orleans. While I anticipated a fun conference with great talks, I came away more impressed with the Drupal community as a whole. Their tireless effort to include anyone and everyone was refreshing in a way I can only describe as “human.” There’s no question that the future of the Drupal ecosystem is bright, mainly thanks to the amazing people surrounding it.

The Cosmos series reinvented, Cosmos: A Spacetime Odyssey

March 23, 2014

Carl Sagan’s original series The Cosmos is inspiring a reinvented series with the same mission: amaze people with the truths of science.

Introducing SpeedTrap: Finding slow tests in your PHPUnit test suite

February 10, 2014

As your test suite grows, you can expect it to run longer. But if you’re not careful, some slower tests can creep in and disproportionately increase your suite’s total execution time.

Introducing SpeedTrap: a lightweight PHPUnit listener that reports on slow-running tests right in your console.

Stop building broken password inputs (and how to work around the offenders)

January 13, 2014

I have run into some sites (usually within a security-focused domain like banking or health care) that use misleading or downright bad security practices during their user registration process. Overall these practices decrease the user experience, and at worst encourage their users to succumb to poor security practices.

Why might these sites choose to do this? What are the side effects? And how can savvy developers work around them?

Review: Tom Bihn - Buzz Sling Bag

January 5, 2014

I am fairly picky when it comes to bags. As one piece of equipment I use daily, it must feel like an extension of myself. I won’t put up with a sub-par bag with lots of bulk and extra features I won’t use.

When I first heard about the Buzz bag by Tom Bihn it sounded great, even if it cost more than any bad I had ever owned, so I ordered it. After a solid 18 months of use I can detail the great, good and my wish list for its next version.

Useful Commands For Efficient Symfony2 Development

December 2, 2013

These commands allow me, and hopefully you, to work faster and more efficiently with the Symfony2 framework.

Deserializing XML with JMSSerializerBundle in Symfony2

July 22, 2013

Serializing existing objects with the Symfony2 JMS Serializer Bundle is pretty easy, but deserializing a third-party XML response is a bit more work.

Now Powered By Jekyll

December 16, 2012

A few of my previous posts have been fortunate enough to become front-page worthy on Hacker News and /r/programming. But the rush of traffic toppled my WordPress blog. So I toppled WordPress and replaced it with Jekyll.

git add -p: The most powerful git feature you're not using yet

October 30, 2012

The Pragmatic Programmer advocates you should know your editor inside and out. So why don’t you know your version control system just as well? Discover git add “patch mode” and learn how to make more concisely crafted commits leading to a cleaner git history and more friends.

Developers: We are no longer Apple's target market

July 25, 2012

Over the last few years, especially since the release of Lion in July 2011, there is an air of neglect floating amongst the development community that use Apple hardware running OS X as their primary workstation. Many developers feel Apple is not focused on their best interests as developers and are frustrated with new Apple products.

When Apple released their Q3 Financial Report yesterday, I was finally able to put statistics to backup the feeling of neglect.

I Am Replaceable: Leaving my job at KU

July 23, 2012

I’m not good at quitting things. But I knew someday I would have to quit a job for reasons beyond, “I’m moving to go to school” or “I graduated and am taking a job in my new profession” or some other natural progression from one life stage to another.

But Friday, July 20, 2012 was my last official day as an employee of Information Technology at the University of Kansas.

Color temperature and why I don't yet own an iPad

March 16, 2012

Like some of you, I have not yet caved and bought an iPad. Or any other tablet device, for that matter. But given that “the new” third-generation iPad was officially made available at 8:00AM this morning, that might change soon.

But even with its revolutionary display panel, I’m still reluctant to buy for one small, but very significant feature that’s still lacking: color temperature control.

git 1.7.8 changes for the everyday developer

December 13, 2011

git 1.7.8 was released a little over a week ago. Most changes will probably not affect your every day use of git, but a few new features should be useful.

I didn't know it couldn't be done, so I did it

October 31, 2011

Steve Jobs visited Xerox in 1979 to see the Xerox Star: a computer promoting a revolutionary graphical user interface.

Jobs loved what he saw. Xerox had developed one of the first GUI’s, one that would ultimately lay the foundation for the concept of “windows” (small W) and the “desktop” we know in modern operating systems.

When he tasked Bill Atkinson, Atkinson created something even more revolutionary…

Getting into The Zone: Music

October 25, 2011

I want to talk about how Music affects my ability to be in The Zone: that “deeply creative space where inspiration is built”, as Rands puts it. That mental place where you’re so focused that nothing else matters except the bug you’re hunting, the feature you’re cranking out or the blog post you’re writing.

By the end of this article I hope you have a better sense of how you choose what to listen to, and that I introduce you to some new artists to increase your productivity when working.

git 1.7.7 changes affecting the everyday developer

October 14, 2011

git 1.7.7 was released within the last few weeks. You can view the 1.7.7 release notes for a full list of changes.

Most changes will probably not affect your every day use of git, but two new additions should prove very useful for many developers.

Thoughts on Carl Sagan's "Pale Blue Dot"

January 7, 2011

Carl Sagan’s book “Pale Blue Dot” is a truly inspirational book. It has given me a new outlook on the fragility of life on Earth, and cultured new thoughts on what interplanetary travel might mean for the future of the human species.

Here, I detail some of my thoughts on the ideas expressed in the book.

JavaScript Effects: Knowing "when" is more important than "how"

November 18, 2010

You have undoubtedly seen many tutorial sites showing off how to implement the newest whiz-bang features of modern JavaScript libraries. While most of these sites do an adequate job of showing users “how to” implement features, they almost always neglect teaching when to use these techniques, and more importantly, when to forgo them.

Who Cares? Crowdsourcing Your News Intake

September 10, 2010

Looking at some generic news aggregate site, it seems there’s a lot of important things going on in the news. Some radical pastor wants to burn Korans. Huge fires are engulfing a San Francisco neighborhood. “Evil” zombies are now back. In 3D.

Does any of that really affect you? No, really… does it?

NO! And if you think it does, it doesn’t. Want proof?

MediaTemple "WordPress Redirect Exploit" exposes weakness in GridServer security

July 21, 2010

Instances of WordPress installed on certain clusters of MediaTemple’s GridServer were recently hit with an exploit that appended an external JavaScript to each post’s content field, ultimately redirecting to redirecting to a TinyURL address, resolving to the domain qooglesearch.com.

MediaTemple asserts in a July 16, 2010 blog entry, “We do not believe that this is an infrastructure issue, but we are still investigating the root cause(s).”

I believe I have evidence to the contrary.

I May Be Doing it Wrong, But I Have My Sanity

March 16, 2010

Marco Tabini recently wrote on the php|architect blog that “programmers are doing it wrong.” He argues that many programmers have become hung up on writing mythical perfect code that abides by all modern best practices instead of doing what we are hired to do: solve problems quickly and efficiently. But if you spend time writing it well the first time, you too can save your sanity.

Nominating Lawrence, Kansas for Google's fiber network experiment

February 11, 2010

Google announced yesterday on their blog that they are venturing into installing fiber-to-the-curb for residential users, essentially as an alternative ISP. Their goals include not only delivering faster Internet to more people, but also giving developers and users a wealth of bandwidth at their disposal and see what they can do with it.

Google asked for nominations of cities that might be a good fit for the project, so I wrote a recommendation letter for where I live in Lawrence, Kansas.

Ditch Outlook/Entourage for managing your Exchange calendar using DavMail and iCal

February 6, 2010

Using a little app called DavMail, you use any CalDEV-enabled calendar app to manager your Exchange calendar, including Apple’s iCal. From their site, “DavMail is a POP/IMAP/SMTP/Caldav/LDAP exchange gateway allowing users to use any mail/calendar client (e.g. Thunderbird with Lightning or Apple iCal) with an Exchange server, even from the internet or behind a firewall through Outlook Web Access.” So assuming your company has OWA setup, keep reading.

Keeping your users' trust in web applications

December 8, 2009

Trust is priceless. Breaking the trust bond in a relationship, whether friendly, emotional or vendor-to-end-user, is a serious breach of social contract. As web app developers and content creators, we must instill trust in our users with the goal of making them feel comfortable using our applications and ultimately giving up some of their personal info.

How to upgrade a Symfony project from 1.2 to 1.3/1.4

December 1, 2009

Today, the Symfony crew has released Symfony 1.3 and 1.4. I recently deployed a pretty basic 1.2 app, and decided to try upgrading it to 1.3, and then on to 1.4, just to see if these “easy upgrade” claims were as advertised.

I will be following the 1.2 to 1.3/1.4 Upgrade Instructions below, so you should read over them before we get started.

Fixing Evernote Error "The file Evernote.sql could not be opened."

November 22, 2009

I’ve been having a battery/power issue with my MacBook Pro recently where it will turn off if the battery power has much less than 0:10 minutes left. You know, after the “You are running on Reserve Power” message comes up, but before it fully drains and (normally) puts itself to sleep using SafeSleep. So what do these power issues have to do with Evernote? A lot if your notes database becomes corrupted.