necessary steps

Posted on 2012-05-09 by Ben Atkin

I’m a believer in the concept of necessary steps.

I can’t waste less time online unless I show some restraint.

I can’t have more privacy online if I don’t self-filter.

Tools can help. Things that break up the habit can help. But in order for them to work, I have to make a good, old-fashioned change.

If I’m not ready to, I should ask why. Perhaps there’s something online that’s really important to me, and I don’t want to restrain myself. Or maybe I need to fix an issue I have that’s keeping me from wanting to do something more productive.

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The Single Function Module

Posted on 2012-01-28 by Ben Atkin

A function, all by itself:

module.exports = function(string) {
  return string.replace(/&(?!\w+;|#\d+;|#x[\da-f]+;)/gi, '&amp;').replace(/</g, '&lt;').replace(/>/g, '&gt;').replace(/"/g, '&quot;').replace(/'/g, '&#x27;').replace(/\//g,'&#x2F;');
};

This is the escapeHTML() function from Backbone.js, which is hidden behind a closure. Thankfully it’s now in the latest version of Underscore.js, which is depended upon by Backbone. If an old version of underscore was being used and escapeHTML() was the one missing utility function that a developer needed, putting it in a module by itself would be one way of supplying it.

Side note: Backbone and Underscore escape the exact six characters specified in Rule #1 of the Open Source Web Application Security Project (OWASP)’s XSS (Cross Site Scripting) Prevention Cheat Sheet.

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br-jquery: a jquery package for the browserify javascript packager for node.js

Posted on 2012-01-22 by Ben Atkin

I published a node.js package to npm called br-jquery, which contains jQuery and provides an alternate path to downloading jQuery and putting it in a repository when starting a jQuery project. It is a lot like jquery-browserify, but it contains a newer version of jQuery (1.7.1) and has the minified version as well. Additionally it has a build script which fetches jQuery and a full example.

Browserify creates bundles from node.js-style CommonJS modules. It stubs out some core functionality so node.js modules with minimal dependencies can be used in the browser. Here is some JavaScript taken from the example, that creates a bundle:

var js = require('browserify')({
  require: {jquery: 'br-jquery'},
  entry: 'hello.js'
}).bundle()

The require property is used to , and the entry property is used to include a module that will be run when the bundle is loaded. The entry module starts by requiring jQuery:

var $ = require('jquery');
$(function() {
  // manipulate the DOM here...
});

I really like the browserify way of doing things. Instead of adapting browser code to run on the server, it adapts server code to run on the browser!

Repositorybr-jquery
Ownerbenatkin
Last Commit2012-03-24
Watchers10
Repositorynode-browserify
Ownersubstack
Last Commit2012-05-17
Watchers861
Repositoryjquery
Ownerjquery
Last Commit2012-05-17
Watchers14063
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One Goal For 2012

Posted on 2011-12-29 by Ben Atkin

This isn’t my only goal for 2012, but it’s the only goal from my only set of goals for 2012 which contains only one goal.

My goal is to, each night before I go to bed, prepare for the next morning. This means having a default choice of what to wear, knowing what I need to pack and where I’m first going to go, and a draft of a schedule and to-do list for the day.

My inspiration for this comes from a few different sources:

This matters most to me because I feel that my best self can figure out all of the other stuff, but if I don’t start my mornings off right, I’m unlikely to be my best self.

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rbenv and virtualenv performance tip: load on demand

Posted on 2011-12-02 by Ben Atkin

I found that new terminal sessions were taking a while to load, so I started commenting things out in my bash profile (How to be a Programmer: A Short, Comprehensive, and Personal Summary calls it a Binary Search). I found that it was snappy when I commented out my calls to virtualenvwrapper and rbenv.

Of course, with these calls I lost the ability to use them, and I lost the defaults. To fix this I chose a faster way to load the defaults and made functions for loading the full functionality of these. Here is the relevant part of ~/.bash_profile.

# Python
export VIRTUAL_ENV_DISABLE_PROMPT=1
# my virtualenv is called "batv", replace this with what you passed to mkvirtualenv
source $HOME/.virtualenvs/batv/bin/activate
loadvirtualenv() {
  # the next two lines might not be necessary for you; I only have them on OS X and not Linux
  export PYTHONPATH=/Library/Python/2.7/site-packages/virtualenv-1.6.4-py2.7.egg
  export PYTHONPATH=/Library/Python/2.7/site-packages/virtualenvwrapper-2.10.1-py2.7.egg:$PYTHONPATH
  source /usr/local/bin/virtualenvwrapper.sh
  workon batv
}

# Ruby
export PATH="$HOME/.rbenv/shims/:$HOME/.rbenv/bin:$PATH"
loadrbenv() {
  eval "$(rbenv init -)"
}

To use my default virtualenv or to use rbenv without the rbenv shell command, I don’t have to run either of these functions. If I want to do advanced stuff with virtualenvwrapper, I type loadvirtualenv and hit enter, and then I can use all of virualenvwrapper in that terminal session. If I want to set a rbenv environment for my current shell, I type loadrbenv.

Before I made these changes, the contents each of these functions were run each time I created a terminal. Now they’re run only on demand and opening a new terminal tab is much snappier!

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