Year: 2015

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Gerrit is a web-based code review tool built on top of the git version control system

Gerrit is intended to provide a light weight framework for reviewing every commit before it is accepted into the code base. Changes are uploaded to Gerrit but don’t actually become a part of the project until they’ve been reviewed and accepted. In many ways this is simply tooling to support the standard open source process of submitting patches which are then reviewed by the project members before being applied to the code base. However Gerrit goes a step further making it simple for all committers on a project to ensure that changes are checked over before they’re actually applied. Because of this Gerrit is equally useful where all users are trusted committers such as may be the case with closed-source commercial development. Either way it’s still desirable to have code reviewed to improve the quality and maintainability of the code. After all, if only one person has seen the code it may be a little difficult to maintain when that person leaves.

via Gerrit Code Review – A Quick Introduction.

This is like something that may be worth doing to help make sure at least one other person is looking over code before it gets committed. Deploying code that only one of us has ever seen is a bit of a problem around here especially when it fails.

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My Twitter Digest for 04/16/2015

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My Twitter Digest for 04/15/2015

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A look at the improved password features of PHP 5.5+

It’s of the utmost importance that PHP programmers safeguard account passwords by using the latest and most secure methods. To that end, PHP 5.5 added a new password-hashing library created by Anthony Ferrara (@ircmaxell). The library makes several functions available that you can use to handle one-way password encryption with current best-practice methods. Other features anticipate future security needs so that as computers and hackers get more advanced, you can stay a step ahead of the bad guys. This article gives you an in-depth introduction to the library’s functions and how to make the best use of them.

via PHP renewed: Password security in modern PHP.

This article takes a look at the improved password handling features of PHP 5.5+. Recommended read for anyone working with PHP apps.

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How to give a presentation with an iPad and Apple TV

If you work in an office setting, sooner or later you’re going to have to give a presentation. We’ve all been there, watching someone stare into a blinding projector light while fumbling with cables and trying to get the signal to come through.
The good news for Apple users is that with a couple Apple products and a little know-how, they can do away with the cables and clutter and quickly get on with the presentation. Using the AirPlay service, you can stream content to a second or third generation Apple TV.
Here’s how you can give a presentation with just an iPad and an Apple TV.

via How to give a presentation with an iPad and Apple TV – TechRepublic.

I believe a number of law schools have tried this sort of thing with varying degrees of success. See the Teknoids archives at http://elide.us/9n and http://elide.us/9o. There was even a CALIcon12 session that covered some of this, http://cca.li/vR. All of this seems a bit old, so it may be time to grab an Apple TV and do a refresh to see if it works any better now.

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Scrollback, an open source alternative to Slack

Nurture your community with meaningful conversations.
Create rooms based on your interest or follow existing ones.
Share ideas, discuss realtime and redefine your online community experience with Scrollback.

via Scrollback, where communities hang out.

While relatively new and still adding features, Scrollback is the closest thing I’ve seen to to open source Slack. Once running it’s eady for folks to join and start participating right away. This is a project worth keeping an eye on. The code is on GitHub at   https://github.com/scrollback/scrollback.

Written mostly in Javascript it requires Node.js, Postgres, and Redis to run.