<metaname="twitter:description"content="My name is John. I’m a Embedded Developer. Over the years I’ve dabbled in a lot of side projects. I have a deep interest in making IoT and…">
<metaname="twitter:image"content="http://blog.thebestjohn.com/images/default.jpg"><linkrel="icon"href="/images/icon.png"><linkrel="alternate"href="/atom.xml"type="application/atom+xml"title="TheBestJohn"></head><bodyitemscopeitemtype="https://schema.org/WebPage"><navclass="menu"id="menu"><divclass="menu-inner"><divclass="menu__left-area"><divclass="menu__item"><aclass="menu__item__link menu__item__link--brand"href="/"title="Home"rel="home"><imgclass="menu__item__link--brand__image"src="/images/icon.png"alt="TheBestJohn"><spanclass="menu__item__link--brand__label">TheBestJohn</span></a></div></div><divclass="menu__right-area"><divclass="menu__item"><aclass="menu__item__link"href="http://blog.thebestjohn.com/">Home</a></div><divclass="menu__item"><aclass="menu__item__link"href="http://blog.thebestjohn.com/about">About</a></div><divclass="menu__item"><aclass="menu__item__link"href="http://blog.thebestjohn.com/archives">Archives</a></div></div></div></nav><divclass="page-background"></div><divclass="content-container"><divclass="content-outer"><divclass="content-inner"itemscopeitemtype="https://schema.org/Blog"><articleclass="article"id="article"itemscopeitemtype="https://schema.org/BlogPosting"><h1class="article__title"itemprop="headline">About Me</h1><divclass="article__meta"><timeclass="article__meta__time"datetime="2018-04-26T13:54:48.000Z"itemprop="datePublished">2018-04-26 13:54:48</time></div><hr><divclass="article__contents"><p>My name is John. I’m a Embedded Developer. Over the years I’ve dabbled in a lot of side projects. I have a deep interest in making IoT and smart home systems, setting up offline backups of information/Digital archiving, and alternative network technologies.</p>
<metaname="twitter:image"content="http://blog.thebestjohn.com/images/default.jpg"><linkrel="icon"href="/images/icon.png"><linkrel="alternate"href="/atom.xml"type="application/atom+xml"title="TheBestJohn"></head><bodyitemscopeitemtype="https://schema.org/WebPage"><navclass="menu"id="menu"><divclass="menu-inner"><divclass="menu__left-area"><divclass="menu__item"><aclass="menu__item__link menu__item__link--brand"href="/"title="Home"rel="home"><imgclass="menu__item__link--brand__image"src="/images/icon.png"alt="TheBestJohn"><spanclass="menu__item__link--brand__label">TheBestJohn</span></a></div></div><divclass="menu__right-area"><divclass="menu__item"><aclass="menu__item__link"href="http://blog.thebestjohn.com/">Home</a></div><divclass="menu__item"><aclass="menu__item__link"href="http://blog.thebestjohn.com/about">About</a></div><divclass="menu__item"><aclass="menu__item__link"href="http://blog.thebestjohn.com/archives">Archives</a></div></div></div></nav><divclass="page-background"></div><divclass="content-container"><divclass="content-outer"><divclass="content-inner"itemscopeitemtype="https://schema.org/Blog"><articleclass="article"id="article"itemscopeitemtype="https://schema.org/BlogPosting"><h1class="article__title"itemprop="headline">About Me</h1><divclass="article__meta"><timeclass="article__meta__time"datetime="2018-04-26T13:54:48.000Z"itemprop="datePublished">2018-04-26</time></div><hr><divclass="article__contents"><p>My name is John. I’m a Embedded Developer. Over the years I’ve dabbled in a lot of side projects. I have a deep interest in making IoT and smart home systems, setting up offline backups of information/Digital archiving, and alternative network technologies.</p>
<p>Contained within is my attempt to chronicle my efforts, share idea and projects, and at the end of the day, teach. I’ve always thought at some point I would like to teach. Lately I realized that there is no barrier to teaching other than what we impose on ourselves. I have a platform, It’s the internet. Please join me and feel free to ask some questions. I’d love to try to answer them, or at least point you in the right direction.</p>
<p>–John</p>
</div><divclass="article__author"itemscopeitemprop="author"itemtype="https://schema.org/Person"><imgclass="article__author__image"src="/images/avatar.jpg"alt="TheBestJohn"><aclass="article__author__link"title="About TheBestJohn"rel="author">TheBestJohn</a><pclass="article__author__desc">Just a place to make stuff</p><divclass="article__author__socials"><aclass="article__author__socials__item"href="/atom.xml"title="rss"target="_blank"><iclass="fa fa-rss"></i></a></div><metaitemprop="name"content="TheBestJohn"></div><divclass="sharer"id="sharer"><divclass="sharer-inner"><divclass="sharer__right"><buttonclass="sharer__item"id="sharer-facebook"><iclass="fa fa-facebook-official"></i></button><buttonclass="sharer__item"id="sharer-twitter"><iclass="fa fa-twitter"></i></button><buttonclass="sharer__item"id="sharer-pinterest"><iclass="fa fa-pinterest"></i></button><buttonclass="sharer__item"id="sharer-pocket"><iclass="fa fa-get-pocket"></i></button></div></div></div><!-- Disqus Code--><divid="disqus_thread"></div><script>(function(){
<metaname="twitter:title"content="Static Site what?!">
<metaname="twitter:description"content="Recently I’ve become disillusioned with most CMS options. They’re a pain to keep updated, plugins are constantly being abandoned, and…">
<metaname="twitter:image"content="http://blog.thebestjohn.com/images/default.jpg"><metaproperty="article:author"content="TheBestJohn"><metaproperty="twitter:label1"content="Published at"><metaproperty="twitter:data1"content="2018-04-27 17:40:00"><metaproperty="twitter:label2"content="Written by"><metaproperty="twitter:data2"content="TheBestJohn"><linkrel="icon"href="/images/icon.png"><linkrel="alternate"href="/atom.xml"type="application/atom+xml"title="TheBestJohn"></head><bodyitemscopeitemtype="https://schema.org/WebPage"><navclass="menu"id="menu"><divclass="menu-inner"><divclass="menu__left-area"><divclass="menu__item"><aclass="menu__item__link menu__item__link--brand"href="/"title="Home"rel="home"><imgclass="menu__item__link--brand__image"src="/images/icon.png"alt="TheBestJohn"><spanclass="menu__item__link--brand__label">TheBestJohn</span></a></div></div><divclass="menu__right-area"><divclass="menu__item"><aclass="menu__item__link"href="http://blog.thebestjohn.com/">Home</a></div><divclass="menu__item"><aclass="menu__item__link"href="http://blog.thebestjohn.com/about">About</a></div><divclass="menu__item"><aclass="menu__item__link"href="http://blog.thebestjohn.com/archives">Archives</a></div></div></div></nav><divclass="page-background"></div><divclass="content-container"><divclass="content-outer"><divclass="content-inner"itemscopeitemtype="https://schema.org/Blog"><articleclass="article"id="article"itemscopeitemtype="https://schema.org/BlogPosting"><h1class="article__title"itemprop="headline">Static Site what?!</h1><divclass="article__meta"><timeclass="article__meta__time"datetime="2018-04-27T17:40:00.000Z"itemprop="datePublished">2018-04-27 17:40:00</time><divclass="article__meta__categories"><aclass="article__meta__categories__item"href="/categories/Web-Dev/">Web Dev</a></div></div><hr><divclass="article__contents"><p>Recently I’ve become disillusioned with most CMS options. They’re a pain to keep updated, plugins are constantly being abandoned, and they’re so prevalent in sites that they make a very attractive target for exploitation. In fact the first time I lost control of my server it was because of a bug in a themes use of timthumb.php. Basically, the attacker sent it an “image” file from a hosting website that had a php eval script hidden in it’s data. When accessed normally it showed an image but if they accessed the cached file that timthumb made, then the server treated it as a php file. From there they were able to install a remote shell, and own my server.</p>
<metaname="twitter:image"content="http://blog.thebestjohn.com/images/default.jpg"><metaproperty="article:author"content="TheBestJohn"><metaproperty="twitter:label1"content="Published at"><metaproperty="twitter:data1"content="2018-04-27 17:40:00"><metaproperty="twitter:label2"content="Written by"><metaproperty="twitter:data2"content="TheBestJohn"><linkrel="icon"href="/images/icon.png"><linkrel="alternate"href="/atom.xml"type="application/atom+xml"title="TheBestJohn"></head><bodyitemscopeitemtype="https://schema.org/WebPage"><navclass="menu"id="menu"><divclass="menu-inner"><divclass="menu__left-area"><divclass="menu__item"><aclass="menu__item__link menu__item__link--brand"href="/"title="Home"rel="home"><imgclass="menu__item__link--brand__image"src="/images/icon.png"alt="TheBestJohn"><spanclass="menu__item__link--brand__label">TheBestJohn</span></a></div></div><divclass="menu__right-area"><divclass="menu__item"><aclass="menu__item__link"href="http://blog.thebestjohn.com/">Home</a></div><divclass="menu__item"><aclass="menu__item__link"href="http://blog.thebestjohn.com/about">About</a></div><divclass="menu__item"><aclass="menu__item__link"href="http://blog.thebestjohn.com/archives">Archives</a></div></div></div></nav><divclass="page-background"></div><divclass="content-container"><divclass="content-outer"><divclass="content-inner"itemscopeitemtype="https://schema.org/Blog"><articleclass="article"id="article"itemscopeitemtype="https://schema.org/BlogPosting"><h1class="article__title"itemprop="headline">Static Site what?!</h1><divclass="article__meta"><timeclass="article__meta__time"datetime="2018-04-27T17:40:00.000Z"itemprop="datePublished">2018-04-27</time><divclass="article__meta__categories"><aclass="article__meta__categories__item"href="/categories/Web-Dev/">Web Dev</a></div></div><hr><divclass="article__contents"><p>Recently I’ve become disillusioned with most CMS options. They’re a pain to keep updated, plugins are constantly being abandoned, and they’re so prevalent in sites that they make a very attractive target for exploitation. In fact the first time I lost control of my server it was because of a bug in a themes use of timthumb.php. Basically, the attacker sent it an “image” file from a hosting website that had a php eval script hidden in it’s data. When accessed normally it showed an image but if they accessed the cached file that timthumb made, then the server treated it as a php file. From there they were able to install a remote shell, and own my server.</p>
<h3id="Static-site-generators"><ahref="#Static-site-generators"class="headerlink"title="Static site generators"></a>Static site generators</h3><p>While the timthumb exploit was a pain in the ass, it was very interesting to me and made me seriously consider how I secure my systems. To that end I started reading into static site generators. Static site generators take your posts, usually formatted in some sort of markup, put them through a templating engine that outputs <code>.html</code> files, which you can then serve via the usual methods.</p>
<h3id="Why-tho"><ahref="#Why-tho"class="headerlink"title="Why tho?"></a>Why tho?</h3><p>The idea is that <em>most</em> sites don’t actually need to use dynamic code. Their content is, for the most, part static. Users aren’t interacting with the content (other than the comments sections and forms but we’ll talk about that later). They are, instead, just reading it. The only person who seems to be interacting with it is the person that owns the site. Even then, the owner isn’t actively interacting. They are writing a post, or updating a page. After that, everything stays the same.</p>
<p>All this is a “face-value” reason to move over to a static site. I have an even deeper reason for wanting to use a static site, portability. Static sites allow you to use a generic format for your posts. I write all my posts in markdown, a very common and widely used format. With this I can move from generator to generator without much change. If I were to make my blog in something like Wordpress, my post information would be locked into a <em>very</em> specific database format. If I, for some reason or another, decided I no longer wanted to use wordpress it would be a lot of work modifying all my posts to be compatible with the new platform.</p>
<metaproperty="og:description"content="If there is one thing that grinds my gears it’s table based design and the “web development” companies that continue to use it. Web…">
<metaname="twitter:title"content="Table based design: Why I loathe it, and you should too!">
<metaname="twitter:description"content="If there is one thing that grinds my gears it’s table based design and the “web development” companies that continue to use it. Web…">
<metaname="twitter:image"content="http://blog.thebestjohn.com/images/default.jpg"><metaproperty="article:author"content="TheBestJohn"><metaproperty="twitter:label1"content="Published at"><metaproperty="twitter:data1"content="2012-08-09 00:00:00"><metaproperty="twitter:label2"content="Written by"><metaproperty="twitter:data2"content="TheBestJohn"><linkrel="icon"href="/images/icon.png"><linkrel="alternate"href="/atom.xml"type="application/atom+xml"title="TheBestJohn"></head><bodyitemscopeitemtype="https://schema.org/WebPage"><navclass="menu"id="menu"><divclass="menu-inner"><divclass="menu__left-area"><divclass="menu__item"><aclass="menu__item__link menu__item__link--brand"href="/"title="Home"rel="home"><imgclass="menu__item__link--brand__image"src="/images/icon.png"alt="TheBestJohn"><spanclass="menu__item__link--brand__label">TheBestJohn</span></a></div></div><divclass="menu__right-area"><divclass="menu__item"><aclass="menu__item__link"href="http://blog.thebestjohn.com/">Home</a></div><divclass="menu__item"><aclass="menu__item__link"href="http://blog.thebestjohn.com/about">About</a></div><divclass="menu__item"><aclass="menu__item__link"href="http://blog.thebestjohn.com/archives">Archives</a></div></div></div></nav><divclass="page-background"></div><divclass="content-container"><divclass="content-outer"><divclass="content-inner"itemscopeitemtype="https://schema.org/Blog"><articleclass="article"id="article"itemscopeitemtype="https://schema.org/BlogPosting"><h1class="article__title"itemprop="headline">Table based design: Why I loathe it, and you should too!</h1><divclass="article__meta"><timeclass="article__meta__time"datetime="2012-08-09T00:00:00.000Z"itemprop="datePublished">2012-08-09 00:00:00</time><divclass="article__meta__categories"><aclass="article__meta__categories__item"href="/categories/Web-Dev/">Web Dev</a></div></div><hr><divclass="article__contents"><p>If there is one thing that grinds my gears it’s table based design and the “web development” companies that continue to use it.</p>
<metaname="twitter:image"content="http://blog.thebestjohn.com/images/default.jpg"><metaproperty="article:author"content="TheBestJohn"><metaproperty="twitter:label1"content="Published at"><metaproperty="twitter:data1"content="2012-08-09 00:00:00"><metaproperty="twitter:label2"content="Written by"><metaproperty="twitter:data2"content="TheBestJohn"><linkrel="icon"href="/images/icon.png"><linkrel="alternate"href="/atom.xml"type="application/atom+xml"title="TheBestJohn"></head><bodyitemscopeitemtype="https://schema.org/WebPage"><navclass="menu"id="menu"><divclass="menu-inner"><divclass="menu__left-area"><divclass="menu__item"><aclass="menu__item__link menu__item__link--brand"href="/"title="Home"rel="home"><imgclass="menu__item__link--brand__image"src="/images/icon.png"alt="TheBestJohn"><spanclass="menu__item__link--brand__label">TheBestJohn</span></a></div></div><divclass="menu__right-area"><divclass="menu__item"><aclass="menu__item__link"href="http://blog.thebestjohn.com/">Home</a></div><divclass="menu__item"><aclass="menu__item__link"href="http://blog.thebestjohn.com/about">About</a></div><divclass="menu__item"><aclass="menu__item__link"href="http://blog.thebestjohn.com/archives">Archives</a></div></div></div></nav><divclass="page-background"></div><divclass="content-container"><divclass="content-outer"><divclass="content-inner"itemscopeitemtype="https://schema.org/Blog"><articleclass="article"id="article"itemscopeitemtype="https://schema.org/BlogPosting"><h1class="article__title"itemprop="headline">Table based design: Why I loathe it, and you should too!</h1><divclass="article__meta"><timeclass="article__meta__time"datetime="2012-08-09T00:00:00.000Z"itemprop="datePublished">2012-08-09</time><divclass="article__meta__categories"><aclass="article__meta__categories__item"href="/categories/Web-Dev/">Web Dev</a></div></div><hr><divclass="article__contents"><p>If there is one thing that grinds my gears it’s table based design and the “web development” companies that continue to use it.</p>
<p>Web development is one heck of an industry. It changes, transforms, and adapts. I feel that in order for you to call yourself a web developer, or your company a web development company you need to develop with the web.</p>
<p>Development as defined by dictionary.com is: the act or process of developing; growth; progress: child development; economic development.</p>
<p>Growth, progress! Our job as web developers is to promote growth and progress of the web. We must adapt as the web adapts. When a “web development” agency provides it’s clients with old, outdated, un-accessible, table-based, web development they are not only stifling the growth of the internet they are literally taking money out of business’ pockets.</p>
...
...
@@ -24,5 +24,5 @@
s.src='//thebestjohn.disqus.com/embed.js';
s.setAttribute('data-timestamp',+newDate());
(d.head||d.body).appendChild(s);
})();</script><noscript>Enable JavaScript to see comments.</noscript><!-- Meta Tags for Structured Data--><metaitemprop="dateModified"content="2018-04-30T00:08:30.075Z"><metaitemprop="articleBody"content="If there is one thing that grinds my gears it’s table based design and the “web development” companies that continue to use it.
})();</script><noscript>Enable JavaScript to see comments.</noscript><!-- Meta Tags for Structured Data--><metaitemprop="dateModified"content="2018-04-30T00:58:48.015Z"><metaitemprop="articleBody"content="If there is one thing that grinds my gears it’s table based design and the “web development” companies that continue to use it.
<metaproperty="og:description"content="Well today’s the day! On the eve of Canada day I have made a giant step towards a good version of the plasma speaker! After letting the…">
<metaname="twitter:description"content="Well today’s the day! On the eve of Canada day I have made a giant step towards a good version of the plasma speaker! After letting the…">
<p>Well today’s the day! On the eve of Canada day I have made a giant step towards a good version of the plasma speaker! After letting the magic smoke out of countless ICs and Diodes I have finally put together a working model of the plasma speaker. The first thing I did to guide me on my path was to find a TL494 IC in a dip format. I figured that it was going to be another month until I could make this post as I would have had to special order a TL494 chip online which would cost me shipping and a whole crap more money than the chip was worth. When out of the blue two days ago my father asked me what chip I needed for the Plasma speaker. Having studied the schematic for hours I could quote almost every component off by heart at this point, so I told him “TL494″ he looked at me, let out a little chuckle and a smirk, and pointed over to the other side of the kitchen. I walked over and saw several power tools and construction materials (we’re in the middle of a kitchen reno) and an old pc power supply. I picked it up and said “is this it?”. “Yes” he answered “I pulled it out of the pc that that my work threw out. The power supply was the only thing that was bad in it.”. So earlier on today (yesterday?) I open her up and lo and behold there is a TL494 DIP IC staring me in the face (Nestled right beside a LM339N I might add) as well as several other things I may need in the future of this speaker (toroids, heatsinks, etc…).</p>
<p>After about 20 minutes of trying to get this chip out with a solder sucker and solder braid, I finally succeed. I pop it into my breadboard (which had the starting of my time fountain, but who cares PLASMA SPEAKER!) and begin wiring up the schematic. Everything looks wired up properly and I have a speaker in place of the flyback transformer (another steal from the discarded television that I got the flyback from). I attach a 9V battery and…. nothing happens…. shit ok well time to pull out the big guns… the 12V motorcycle battery. I attach the battery and…. it kinda works… except the speaker is just puffed out all the way…. it’s not making any noise at all! What should be happening is the speaker should be oscillating at some high frequency but it’s not, it’s just sitting there all puffed out…. At around this time my father gets home from work. I have a question for him. The TL494 chip has a black dot on it (which usually denotes where pin 1 is) as well as a notch in it (Another common way to denote pin 1) on the opposite side. Theres your problem. the chip is in backwards! I reverse the chip and TA-DA a squealing speaker!</p>
...
...
@@ -22,5 +22,5 @@
s.src='//thebestjohn.disqus.com/embed.js';
s.setAttribute('data-timestamp',+newDate());
(d.head||d.body).appendChild(s);
})();</script><noscript>Enable JavaScript to see comments.</noscript><!-- Meta Tags for Structured Data--><metaitemprop="dateModified"content="2018-04-30T00:08:30.075Z"><metaitemprop="articleBody"content="
})();</script><noscript>Enable JavaScript to see comments.</noscript><!-- Meta Tags for Structured Data--><metaitemprop="dateModified"content="2018-04-30T00:58:48.015Z"><metaitemprop="articleBody"content="
