Super-fast Secure WordPress Install on DigitalOcean with NGINX, PHP7, and Ubuntu 16.04 LTS Updated: 2018-01-01 I’ve recently begun migrating websites from my old web host to DigitalOcean. Today, I’m documenting the steps I use to stand up a new server instance. Some of these technologies are still close to the bleeding edge, so if you’re really worried about stability, you may want to stick with some of the […]
DIY LED Bubble Tube: Part 6–First Test! Okay, so I haven’t had a chance to 3D print the base for the tube that will hold all the components together, but I couldn’t wait to preview what the finished bubble tube was going to look like. So without further ado, take a look at this video: I have to say, I am totally […]
DIY LED Bubble Tube: Part 5–Motor Control I figured out how to control the speed of the air pump with the Photon. This will be just a short update on the programming part of this project. (Follow these links for: Part 1, Part 2, Part 3, and Part 4.) What DIDN’T Work… Okay, so I fully admit that I’m a total newbie […]
DIY LED Bubble Tube: Part 3–Designing the Base So as you can imagine, a tube full of water that is four inches wide and six feet tall is not very stable. I needed a way to: Provide more stability to the bubble tube when it is standing upright House the NeoPixels and the air pump and all their tubing and wiring Make it […]
DIY LED Bubble Tube: Part 2–Programming In this post, I’m going to describe the coding involved in creating my DIY bubble tube. In case you missed it, Part 1 of this tutorial describes this project in more detail and gives a provisional shopping list of parts you’d need to buy to do it yourself. I may amend the shopping list later, […]
DIY LED Bubble Tube: Part 1 Imagine the most annoying alarm you’ve ever heard clanging in your head all the time. Last week I had the good fortune to attend the 2016 Autism Conference hosted by the Matthew Reardon Center in Savannah, Georgia. It was there that I learned that many people with autism spectrum characteristics (ASC) experience continuous sensory overload. […]
Your Very Own Shiny Server Shiny Server is a cool tool for deploying data visualizations based on statistical analysis with the R programming language to the web. I just wrote a guest post on Quality and Innovation (Nicole’s blog) on how to install your very own Shiny Server. Check it out!
Finally! Free SSL Certs!!! Let’s Encrypt! OMFG! From the why-the-hell-did-this-take-so-long department, I bring you an exciting announcement: you may never, ever have to pay for a trusted SSL certificate for your website again! E-ver! I’d like to introduce you to Let’s Encrypt. From their website: Let’s Encrypt is a free, automated, and open certificate authority (CA), run for the public’s benefit. Let’s Encrypt […]
Installing Laravel 5.1 at Digital Ocean with PHP 7 PHP 7 is here!!! …well, almost. As of the writing of this post, we’ve reached the 7th Release Candidate (!) phase, so it shouldn’t be too much longer until a stable release is made official. With reports of between 25% and 70% speed improvements, all of us PHP devs should be very excited about this. […]
Should You Use EAV? The Entity-Attribute-Value (EAV) pattern can be used to flexibly add or remove properties to an object and its corresponding data model. There is some debate about if and when it is appropriate to use EAV. I’ll provide my opinions here, and also a tutorial on how to implement EAV into a Laravel 5.1 application using Cartalyst’s […]
