Let’s Encrypt With Let’s Encrypt

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Let's Encrypt Logo

But Why? A few years back, there was a big push for HTTPS Everywhere, big enough for Google to modify their page ranking for it. over the past few months we’ve been running tests taking into account whether sites use secure, encrypted connections as a signal in our search ranking algorithms. We've seen positive results, so we're starting to use HTTPS as a ranking signal. Considering that a big reason for me to have this blog is so I can own my search results, I decided to take some time to get that sweet green lock everyone seemed to like so much. Not only would I LOCK in my Google search superiority over the other Rami Massouds, but I would also not have to worry as much about logging into a WordPress admin over plain text!! Locking It [Read more...]

Make Emacs & $PATH Play Nice In OS X

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magit

After setting up signing my Git commits with GPG, I realized I accidentally broke Magit!. Which is one of my favorite Emacs packages, and the best way to interact with Git. The break was caused by a seemingly common issue for Emacs users in OS X: the PATH variable as Emacs understood it was not the PATH that terminal used. Now that my Git config was telling Git to call out to the GNUPG binary to sign the commit, and it couldn’t find it. This is not exactly a new issue for me. When I started writing Ruby professionally, getting Emacs to play nicely with the right binaries in OS X, so I could use Rspec within a buffer was a challenge. A challenge that always seemed to be for another day, until I broke Magit!. Funny how killing your [Read more...]

Gem Writing: Private Gem Dependencies

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rubies

When you are working in a Ruby shop that doesn’t completely subscribe to the Majestic Monolith™ mindset, you’ll probably end up with some domain logic that needs to be shared across your apps/services. In Ruby Land, that means encapsulating that logic into a gem, so all of your applications can have consistent logic. When doing this in a work context, the gems in question are probably private, and hosted somewhere other than RubyGems. Normally this is fine, there are plenty of hosting solutions for private gems. The problems start when you need a private gem as a dependency of another private gem. In a Gemfile, you have the ability to define whatever alternate sources you want for a gem with: gem 'my-gem', source: [Read more...]

Keybase, GitHub, & Being You

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GitHub Verified Badge

A few months ago, GitHub announced they would start displaying a cool "Verified" badge when you sign your commits and tags are signed with GPG. Git itself has supported signing your work for a while, but I think this new visibility into being a good "Git Citizen" will encourage more people to start using that feature. But Like...Why? According to the Git docs Git is cryptographically secure, but it’s not foolproof. If you’re taking work from others on the internet and want to verify that commits are actually from a trusted source, Git has a few ways to sign and verify work using GPG. Signing my work hasn't really come up, I haven't had to make sure I was actually the one who committed to my own lame side project. If you're even [Read more...]

The Blank Canvas Problem

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blank-canvas

Is there anything worse than starting a new project? Other than starting a new blog post, I would say no. I have a notebook filled with random app ideas, along with a bunch of parked domains just waiting to be brought to life. To date, exactly ZERO of those have been built, which is a damn shame. Definitely seems to be a common issue, but why does it happen? Don’t Shave That Yak   Yak shaving is what you are doing when you're doing some stupid, fiddly little task that bears no obvious relationship to what you're supposed to be working on, but yet a chain of twelve causal relations links what you're doing to the original meta-task. Carlin J. Vieri  via Scott Hanselman We all do it right? You have an idea hashed out on paper, [Read more...]