Tools for Software Engineers

Radio: Preparing WAV files for cloud-based radio

The team at USC Radio Labs [http://www.uscradiogroup.org/labs] has been working to solve a pretty exciting problem: converting 60k+ audio files from WAV format to something more internet-ready. For context, in the 1990s, many radio stations started moving towards automating their music programming. The benefits were clear:

For Developers

Ways to scrape data

There are many situations where you may need to scrape data. Data scraping development is really an art form (of its own) and the complexity of a project can range from a giant aggregator —written to capture, parse and store data— to something really small like a single function connected

For Developers

GIF encoder / decoder

This article from Dennis Felsing [https://hookrace.net/blog/time.gif/] captured my attention i seconds. "Can you really embed a GIF with code? Can you do it in a way that connects to a central server?" If yes, then tracking pixels here we come! Can this be used to

For Developers

How to create a temporary email address

I'm working on an app that aims to use Amazon Cognito for user registration and one of the things I need to test is e-mail signup. Instead of adding and deleting my personal e-mail every 5 minutes to test, I first pick a temporary e-mail service. * https://www.mailinator.com/

For Managers

Where to find free fonts

Let's be real, Google Fonts is amazing but they're not the end-all be-all. When you're looking for more, try these services below. Free * Google Fonts [https://fonts.google.com/] is an industry workhorse. If you're looking for web-ready fonts, this is probably your best resource. * Adobe Typekit [https://typekit.com/

Tools for Software Engineers

My Favorite Visual Studio Code Plugins

I started using Textmate [http://macromates.com/] in 2004 because it was Rails friendly. Lately I've been using Visual Studio Code [https://code.visualstudio.com/Download] because it's Typescript and Angular friendly. Below are a few of my favorite 3rd party add-ons. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Themes You can find themes within the

For Developers

Shell variables vs. Environment variables

I've been doing a lot of work within the AWS Command Line [http://docs.aws.amazon.com/cli/latest/reference/iam/index.html] and it's been forcing me to make the best use of environment and shell variables. Below are really simple examples of how to store both types. Environment

For Developers

Awesome OS X Command Lines

Thank you @herrbischoff [https://twitter.com/herrbischoff] for creating this A curated list of shell commands and tools specific to OS X [https://github.com/herrbischoff/awesome-osx-command-line] and functions [https://github.com/herrbischoff/awesome-osx-command-line/blob/master/functions.md#set-current-directorys-finder-view-to-column-view] . Here area a couple of my favorite commands: Safari Enable Develop

Ruby

Creating GIF previews out of MOV files

Here's how to convert MOV files into animated GIF's for quick preview and e-mail friendly sharing.

For Developers

R: Installing R on a Mac using Homebrew

How to install R on a Mac using Homebrew.

For Developers

Using Jenkins to Trigger Rake Tasks

This tutorial [https://www.chrisjmendez.com/2017/01/08/installing-jenkins-using-virtualbox-and-vagrant/] will show you how to install Jenkins on Linux Debian using VirtualBox and Vagrant. After you've installed Jenkins server, make sure you have both ruby and rake installed by typing: Step 0 - Install Ruby and Rake which ruby which

For Developers

Installing Jenkins using VirtualBox and Vagrant

Many development teams use Jenkins to automate and schedule tasks, tests, and more. I often schedule end-to-end tests to ensure a service is working as expected. There are many ways to install Jenkins [http://jenkins-ci.org/], but this blog entry will focus on VirtualBox [https://www.virtualbox.org/] and Vagrant

Javascript

Anatomy of an Angular 2 App

Angular 2 is out and I'm currently working on a single web app hosted on Firebase. This will be a simple landing page website and if you come from Ruby on Rails [http://guides.rubyonrails.org/command_line.html] or Express JS [https://expressjs.com/en/starter/generator.html], you're

For Developers

Heroku: Managing Multiple Accounts

I feel like this is the first thing Heroku should tell you about after installing Toolbelt [https://devcenter.heroku.com/articles/heroku-cli]. For the longest time, I thought the only way to switch between different accounts was by logging out and logging back in. Here's how you can work with

For Developers

Rails: Grab a Tweet and save it to JSON or YAML

I'm currently working on a sentiment analysis problem that requires me to collect big data from Twitter and process it for later. As a first step, I thought it would be helpful to simply grab a single Tweet and study its structure. Here is a very simple way to get

For Developers

Heroku: Working with Git and Github

Heroku uses Git for version control and collaborative coding. Below are a few helpful commands plus a better process for app development. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Review remote Review where you are hosting remote repos git remote git remote -v Publish to Heroku Publish to Heroku's master branch. git push heroku master Revert

Swift

Tools for App Makers

In order to build websites, apps or API's, every developer ultimately ends up curating a suite of tools that can help them build products better, cheaper and faster. Below are a few tools that I use all the time. API Development * Postman [https://www.getpostman.com/] - Google Chrome plug-in

For Developers

How to tell git to ignore a specific file

I'm currently building a boilerplate Rails 5 project [https://github.com/chrisjmendez/boilerplate-rails-5-app] that will allow me to fork and build mid-sized apps quickly and consistently. I'm currently using dotenv-rails with a generic .env file. The catch is that every time I modify .env for my local project, I do

For Developers

Github Basics using Command Line

My web designer often needs helps working with Git. Here's what I usually tell him. Set-up Git Create a new git repository git init Establish git username and password git config user.name 'your user name' git config user.email 'your e-mail' Review the changes you've made. git status Add

For Developers

Installing Elixir and Phoenix on a Mac

If you're a Rubyist and you're interested in building large-scale applications, Elixir is a very good alternative. It feels like Ruby but is structured like Erlang. I'm currently researching Elixer for an upcoming project so here are my notes on how to install it for Mac. Step 1 - Homebrew

For Developers

Git: Creating a Branch during Agile Sprints

Here's a tip for new developers learning how to use Git for short sprints. The first step is to create a branch. Step 1 - List Branches List all of your existing branches. git branch Step 2 - Create a New Branch Add a new feature by branching code. git

For Developers

My Favorite TextMate Commands

I've tried Sublime Text [https://sublimetext.com/], Atom [https://atom.io/] and Microsoft's Visual Studio Code [https://code.visualstudio.com/download] but I still love TextMate 2 [https://macromates.com/download]. Considering that all of these editors pretty much offer the same (Syntax Highlighting, Support for Multiple Languages, and Auto

DevOps

Testing web app performance with Apache Benchmark

There's a great tool for benchmarking your Wordpress, NodeJS, Rails app that's already built into Mac OSX. It's Apache Benchmark [https://httpd.apache.org/docs/2.4/programs/ab.html] and it's super easy to use. Creating a Test Getting started couldn't be easier. All you need to do is

For Developers

Find the biggest files taking up space on your Mac

OK, so this happens to me all the time. I start installing a new app and suddenly I run out of space. Normally, I'll just Empty my Trash Bin or delete a few files but oftentimes, I need to find files that are large in size that I'd like to

For Developers

Themes for Terminal

Here are a few themes I like for Mac Terminal. If you're not a fan of Terminal itself, I also suggest looking into iTerm2 [https://www.iterm2.com/]. My Favorite Themes * Peppermint [https://noahfrederick.com/log/lion-terminal-theme-peppermint] * Piperita [https://www.jacobtomlinson.co.uk/2013/10/17/mac-os-x-terminal-theme-piperita/] * Monokai [https://github.