

Resolutions for programmers - lispython
http://matt.might.net/articles/programmers-resolutions

======
pserwylo
My resolution is to actually contribute to some open source projects this
year.

For upwards of five years, I've been attending linux.conf.au and the Open
Source Developers Conference in Australia. Each time, I have a great time;
discuss interesting things with interesting people; come home and check out a
bunch of interesting repositories; and then... do nothing.

But not this year! Aha!

I left linux.conf.au four days ago. Since then, I've:

\- written up one bug report [0]

\- joined the discussion on another bug report [1]

\- patched a piece of software on github for the second bug report [2]

\- realised that somebody else has done essentially the same patch in
essentially the same way :( [2]

\- created a web scraper [3] for my local council to scrape ~30,000 planning
applications for [4] and asked for it to be included

\- added 12 sets of traffic lights to OpenStreetMap near a friends house [5]

This feels great. I think I can safely say that this year is going to be
different to the others. I'm quite aware that many of these are extremely
minor, but they I hope that they get me over the line and get me contributing
more regularly. I may be able to make a bit of a difference this time.

Now... if I can just get around to going to the local hackerspace that for the
last five years I've promised myself I'll attend...

[0] <https://tickets.openaustraliafoundation.org.au/browse/PA-444>

[1] <https://tickets.openaustraliafoundation.org.au/browse/OA-503>

[2] <https://github.com/mischat/shareNice/pull/18>

[3]
[https://scraperwiki.com/scrapers/shire_of_yarra_ranges_plann...](https://scraperwiki.com/scrapers/shire_of_yarra_ranges_planning_applications/)

[4] <http://www.planningalerts.org.au/>

[5] <http://www.openstreetmap.org/user/pserwylo/edits>

------
kranner
Why wait until month 8 to start backing up your data?

Here's what I do if anyone will find it useful:

1\. I have backup scripts in my crontab that look like this:

for project in dir1 dir2 dir3;

do /usr/bin/rsync -aq --delete /Users/kranner/$project
someuser@somehost.rsync.net:backups/daily/;

done

I use rsync.net as my remote backup provider. The daily script runs four times
a day (redundancy is good because my notebook may be asleep or without an
internet connection sometimes); there is also a manual and a weekly script.
The daily/weekly/manual division is inspired by the Linode backup scheme.

2\. Occasionally I will hook up an external drive and do a full bootable
backup. For this I use SuperDuper for OS X.

~~~
mattmight
You're right: If I were to redo the list, I'd probably move backup to #1 just
for pragmatism.

I had my first catastrophic hard drive failure in July, and I was glad I
hadn't waited until August to start backing up.

~~~
derekp7
I've had that same resolution, to do regular backups, but couldn't settle on a
good method. I have a problem with the regular full/differential/incremental
on monthly/weekly/daily schedule, as there was too much file duplication
(therefore I couldn't maximize my backup history). I too settled on using the
rsync with hard links method (homebrew scripts similar to rsnapshot, etc), but
felt like I was still wasting too much space because this didn't support
compression (plus you had to ssh in as root on the target host to store your
files).

Long story short, in order to get something I was comfortable with I
eventually wrote my own backup tool that accomplished something similar
(incremental backups forever, but full snapshots of the system on each
backup), but has compression and uses SQLite for its database backend. I'm
working on finalizing it as an open source project up on Github if anyone is
interested in it (need to finish the documentation, and add status report
functionality yet, along with some misc. cleanup). But so far it seems to be
working for me.

Edit: I forgot to mention the project name. It is on github.com/derekp7/snebu
and I just set up a domain today pointing to it, <http://www.snebu.com>. Like
I said, a work in progress (the download links on the web page are auto-
generated by Github, and will always pull the current version from the git
repository). In the next few days I'm going to load test it a bit more, once I
get the unit tests written (and dogfood it a bit more) I'll tag a 1.0 release
and update the page.

~~~
pserwylo
Sounds pretty cool. Starred already. I hope it works out nicely, I'm happy
using a mish-mash of unison and git (depending on particular needs) for my own
stuff, but I'm using rsync for my fiance's entire PHD folder (including large
amounts of data, word docs, downloaded papers, etc) and I'd make good use of a
tool like this.

------
_Mark
Surely I wasn't the only one looking at this for something like : 1,920×1,080

~~~
rjempson
It did occur to me that he might be talking about pixels. I can put up with
someone telling me to exercise, try a new programming language, break the
mold. But I couldn't tolerate someone telling me what resolution to run :-0

------
atas
#1: I have to make up some time on that

#2: I am working on my diet. Yes, staying healthy is crucial for programmers.
Because of the nature of the work you have to be mindful about that.

#3: Good suggestions

#4: I should be doing that. I am trying to "learn" about new languages, but
you can't really learn unless you practice and this can only be achieved
gradually.

#5: Yes

#6: Working on that. Similar to #4.

#7: I once had a project of reviewing the security of a web application,
learned a lot, and appreciated the importance of being security-aware. It was
really cool being paid to work full-time on practically gaining new and useful
knowledge for a few months.

#8: I am kind of lazy for that. But, currently, I am mostly experimenting.

#9: Yes

#10: Started doing that before programming

#11: Yes

#12: Have been doing that. But what is 'complete'?

------
JanneVee
I decided that this year is going to be less reddit/hacker news and more code.
As you can see I it is going badly.

~~~
Ingon
That is unfortunate. But on the bright side of things I can help you
(hopefully) ;) Please follow my advice - remove you network cable right
now.... On the wifi router also!!!

