It’s Twin Cities Code Camp #22! At the risk of dating myself too much, I have been attending the TCCC since they first started up in Fall 2006. Through the years, the technologies and the venues have changed, as have many of the faces in attendance. What hasn’t changed is the ethos of the event, an informal conference made by developers for developers. It’s always cool to see so many speakers talking about things that they really love.
Like a slowly growing iceberg on the horizon, a giant piece of new data privacy regulation is going into effect in the EU on May 25, 2018. Called the General Data Protection Regulation (or GDPR for short), this new framework sets guidelines on how the personal data of EU citizens is to be handled, stored, transferred, and managed. It applies to any entity doing business with EU citizens, including ones not based in the EU.
I’m about a month into my desktop Linux lifestyle. It’s been pretty smooth overall, with only a couple minor hiccups to work through. I even switched distributions in that span, which turned out mostly to be a non-event. Most days, the computer just gets out of the way and lets me work, which is as it should be. Here are some highlights:
Swapping Mint for Ubuntu LTS Mint was more or less working fine for me, but the video stack was a bit flaky.
A key strength of the Linux ecosystem is choice. Compared to Windows or MacOS, there’s a dizzying array of customization and optimization choices you can make when selecting and configuring your Linux environment. Of course, the fact that you have to make these choices is one of the reasons desktop Linux has never taken off in a big way. To an outsider, there are simply too many choices with too little to distinguish between them.
Windows 10 on my work desktop has blown up on me one too many times this week. I need a break.
The story that led me here is long and boring, but basically I’ve completely re-imaged my Dell Precision 3620 tower machine twice this week with the latest Windows 10 Enterprise N build (Fall 2017 Creators Edition), only to wind up a couple days later with a useless start menu that doesn’t respond to clicks and broken “modern” apps that I really didn’t want to begin with.
Around these parts, the Twin Cities of Minneapolis and St. Paul, MN USA, winter inspires some deep feelings. To the optimist, it’s a magical time of beauty and wonder filled with unique, fun activities. The pessimist, in the other hand, may consider these months a dark, cold ordeal to be endured only through epic struggle. Depending on one’s mood, a Minnesotan may spend time on both sides of this argument, always reserving the right to complain.
At work the other day, I needed to dump an entire catalog of Microsoft SQL Server Integration Services (SSIS) projects and packages to text. I don’t do a whole lot with this tool on a daily basis, but our shop does, and the stock development tools are a little lacking for large scale find and replace work. One of many things I like about having my assets in text is having a whole slew of tools that can read and work with files.
Back in the early 2000’s, I operated my first blog, 52carwashes.com. It was pretty much just a personal journal site with current interests, a few political posts, some music news, and a few photos. It was basically the kind of content you see from any average Facebook user these days.
Blogs being a relatively new thing, there weren’t many providers that offered hosting or all in one web applications that made this easy.