HN user

zeke

55 karma

Programmer and Systems Support

I have 25 years of experience with Unix and Linux, system support, programming and scripting in Perl, JavaScript, file transfers, lots of troubleshooting. Also some Python.

Fun side project: qquiz.com, a maps based geography teaching game, JavaScript, Go, nginx.

US citizen in the US. Fluent in German.

zeke.selby@gmail.com

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My kids played Minecraft, and one installed Lua to automate parts. Occasionally he would show me what he was working on and I could offer suggestions.

We also set up a Linux computer as a Minecraft server and I was available to help with questions. It is a beginner level admin job with a purpose they can see.

If she has an idea for a web page or service, help refine it to something possible and implement.

VIM Master 11 months ago

You can use <shift>v then move to your start line and type y or d. This way you see the text marked before yanking or deleting. <control>v is similar. And gv will reselect the marked area.

GCP Outage 1 year ago

mapbox maps seemed to be down for a few minutes about an hour ago. I wonder if it is related.

For reducing the number of points I've often used mapshaper.org.

For deciding if a user is in Texas you could create a simple polygon completely inside Texas and one in Oklahoma. 99% would fall in the simple polygon and the rest go to the detailed polygons. Or create bounds near the complex river borders and use the detailed polygons there.

On the other hand I just use simple, non-optimized functions for qquiz.com.

In 2001 in the small town of Hartsville SC, one of the youngest code breakers gave his last two public talks. He had been hired by Turing because he was one of the few studying both math and German at the start of the war.

Besides being very interesting it felt odd to hear all this in such an out of the way place. Well after the war he collaborated on some books with a professor teaching at the college there.

To not load openstreetmap's servers, you could pull the tiles to your server and host them. Then only grab a tile from OSM when you are missing one.

This would also let you set the grayscale on the tiles using imagemagick convert.

Neat project and thanks for the write up.

One big advantage of low inventories is you do not have to fix or trash lots of parts if they were made out of spec. In the case of chips the odds are they are all good. It is just the cost of ownership but not the cost of refitting.

Paternoster Lift 5 years ago

There were several in Stuttgart. One at a Uni building, which I've heard is now defunct. Two are in the Stuttgart Rathaus. They may still be in service.

I was showing my son that the floor will fold up so it won't cut your foot off, but I did not see the switch attached. The floor edge folded up, the switch stopped the Paternoster and sounded the alarm. I apologized to people there that there was no real problem and waited a few minutes for them to turn it back on. My son told on me when we got home.

The maps are coming from mapbox. I set up a map style without labels.

For the cell image, I cut the image into map tile layers by scripting imagemagick. These tiles are served from my server.

For the overlaid areas I use geojson data, which I create and update with a geojson editor I am working on. For actual maps I have https://qquiz.com/makegeo/e.html . An example of non-map images, https://qquiz.com/boat1/e.html . The editor lacks instructions still, but is pretty easy to use.

We need a program that logs sessions and tells us where we could have saved keystrokes.

I think something like the script command to record my session along with a list of rules to look for, so when I backspace 8 times to delete a word it suggests C-w. Or when I arrow to the end of line it suggests C-e.

I've been thinking about this for the past six months. If anyone has suggestions, let me know.

Stuttgart's Rathaus has two. Uni Stuttgart had one that I know of, but last I heard it had been stopped.

I always make a point to go to the Rathaus and ride them when I visit.

The floors fold up where the lift's floor meets the building's floor to prevent crushing your foot. It also has a switch which immediately stops the paternoster and sounds an alarm. I had not realized that and stopped the system while showing it to my son.

The other advantage is the ability to function in low-light conditions where everyone loses their color vision. Color blind people do not lose the visual cues in twilight. Colorblindness is much more prevalent in norther Europe, which has very long twilight, than it is than Africa and India.

The geography game shown here a few weeks ago reminded me of wanting to make this. It presents the countries you miss more often until all are correct, then it changes continents. I think I got the stress level pretty good.

Location: Greenville, SC

Remote: Yes

Willing to relocate: No, but would be glad to spend up to one week per month on site, preferably NYC.

Technologies: Unix, Linux, Perl, systems support, file transfers, Mojolicious, JavaScript

Résumé/CV: https://www.qquiz.com/David_Selby_resume.pdf

Email: david.jn.selby@gmail.com

18 years experience supporting and integrating business systems. Strong Unix, Perl and troubleshooting. Web experience creating qquiz.com. Fluent German.

Paternoster 11 years ago

Actually they have two in the Rathaus, a modern one in the front and an older one towards the back. One of the university buildings has one too.

  Location: South Carolina, USA  
  Remote: Yes  
  Willing to relocate: No. Could travel some.  
  Technologies: Unix, Linux, Perl, System Support, JavaScript  
  Résumé/CV: http://www.qquiz.com/david_selby_resume.txt  
  Email: zeke.selby at gmail.com