Tony is a Geek

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Whilst building my ACE! app - I needed to be able to upload images for the events / presentations / speakers and attendees. I thought, hey, that's simple, we've been doing this on normal web-servers for decades, I'll just write a server-side php page (a couple of lines of code) that saves the posted files to a folder and then I'll know the URL to reference them.  Sorted! I should have it all finished before the kettle has finished boiling for my cup of tea. Then I pondered for a bit.  How does this now work in the PaaS world (Clouds like IBM Bluemix, Google AppEngine, Amazon, that Microsoft one, etc...).  Ah, not such a simple solution now.  But a challenge.  Whilst drinking my cup of tea, I then set about making this work on IBM Bluemix. Here's a Slides.com presentation of how I made this work for me:

I just (re)discovered that I made these gauges for the hot-rod two years ago: I'm glad I stashed the Arduino C code on a git repository, as I am now in a position with the hot-rod to be able to connect the sensors up to the code and get accurate readings now.  I've also got to figure out how to house the gauges and the Teensy v3 behind the dashboard.  Minor details, I'm sure... Checkout progress of the hot-rod at TheAlbatrossHotRod website.

Whilst having an end of year tidy up in the 'man cave', I found a couple of boxes with some " old " PC based computers contained within.  I had a couple of Gateway2000 Handbook 486 devices and a Fujitsu B-2154 touchscreen laptop.  I can recall, why I got them in the first place.  They are all small laptop/netbook sized, don't weigh very much and could be re-purposed for other things.  Well, that's probably what I thought when I first got them....did some stuff with them and then put them on a box for " coming back to them later on ". Well, " later on " just happened to be during the week between xmas and new year......

After getting an ear-bashing from my missus for having our personal music collection exposed to the world, I decided to finally get around to setting up an OpenVPN server onto a Raspberry Pi. Read all about it here: http://tonyisageek.blogspot.com/p/installing-and-setting-up-openvpn-on.html I now have hearing back in one ear and a secure mechanism for listening to my music collection from external places, like the shed, garage, hotels... all those places where the missus is out of earshot :-D

A new FireFox OS phone.... " Firefox OS unlocks the power of the Web as the platform and enables more devices and experiences to be connected to each other. We’re excited to work with partners like KDDI to create the Web of Things (WoT), which connects all types of devices using Web technology and enables many new innovative and custom experiences to be created across these connected devices, and this is just the first step. " It's "naked" and I imagine will be rather expensive too, but you never know, the OS might start making traction in 2015.

If you were "lucky" enough to have your Nexus 7 device auto-upgrade itself to Lollipop (v5.0) and are now pulling your hair out at just how slow and buggy it is, then fear not.... All you have to do is go to this link and download the previous version (v4.4.4) and flash that to your tablet...    https://developers.google.com/android/nexus/images I say, "all you have to do is".  It's not quite as scary as it sounds, but I am assuming that it is the same as a factory reset, so you'll have to re-install all those apps you forgot you had installed.  I'd also connect to some online cloud backup service (or my Raspberry Pi :-) ) and backup all those files, pdfs, ebooks, music files and photos that you've also forgotten about, as they'll probably get fried by the reinstall. Fortunately for me, my 2 Nexus tablets and MotoG phone haven't had the option to upgrade yet, but, my wife (who has one of the first 2012 devices and hasn't let it...

Just incase you've been living in a cave for the past year, I'll let you read about Bluemix HERE. So, now that you've not bothered to follow that link, I'll give you a cut&paste snippet here: What is IBM Bluemix? IBM's Open Cloud Architecture implementation based on the Cloud Foundry project IBM Bluemix™ is the newest cloud offering from IBM. Bluemix is a platform as a service (PaaS) offering based on the Cloud Foundry open source project that promises to deliver enterprise-level features and services that are easy to integrate into cloud applications. CLICK HERE to read an intro article on how to get up and running with Bluemix & Cloudant....