Because of our work with the Linux kernel and with Android, we have started using Git more extensively at work, and my colleagues often have questions about how to get things done with Git. While the every-day command lists are helpful, most of the time, people would benefit more from getting a fundamental understanding [...]
After my last post on implementing Chord, I thought it might be insightful and educational to examine how others are building research distributed systems. I have asked a number of colleagues who have built successful research systems to answer a few questions about their implementations. Here, successful roughly means that the system has [...]
Most companies keep resources associated with on-going but as-yet-unreleased projects hidden from public view. Working at a big company has made me realize that many tools for organizing various bits of data, that I took almost for granted as a grad student, are not available inside the firewall. Here are just a few:
delicious, for [...]
Many corporate firewalls prevent git from using its efficient binary protocol by blocking outbound network connections. Sometimes, you are lucky and are trying to clone a repository that is hosted on a site like github which exports their repositories over HTTP, which would enable you to get through the firewall using the http_proxy environment [...]
A friend of mine who is switching jobs has asked how to delete all personal information from the company computer before returning it. Simply deleting files can prevent the casual observer from finding your data, but file deletion typically does not (to make an analogy to paper) shred the file but merely throws away [...]
I have been a big fan of the Mercurial version control system since migrating the Chord project from CVS almost two years ago. Mercurial offers a comfortable command-line experience, good performance and a module based architecture for expansion. Since graduating, I have had to interface with Subversion and Perforce servers at work and [...]
Sometimes, simple shell scripts can save a lot of time. Recently, I noticed myself waiting for various unit tests to complete by surfing the web: a surefire way to be distracted for more than the time it takes for the tests to complete (or fail). Enter the following script, which I call notify:
#!/bin/sh “$@” status=$? xmessage [...]
If you are in a small business that needs the occasional picture—for record-keeping, documenting events, or including in promotional material—having a digital camera on hand is definitely useful. A friend recently wrote:
We want something that isn’t too complex, but takes decent shots for print and web. Possibly with a good zoom [...]
