mebinum

[mebinum]

Fixing “AWS was not able to validate the provided access credentials” on Mac

Writing this to help someone else who might ever come across this error "AWS was not able to validate the provided access credentials" while trying to use Ansible or boto to try and connect to AWS.

I initially thought there was something wrong with my credentials and I spent the better part of a day trying different aws key/secret combinations to no avail. Turns our it had nothing to do with that and everything to do with my system's clock settings.

The clue to fixing this came from Stackoverflow

To fix I went to System Preferences >> Date & Time >> Set date and time automatically.

For some reason there was nothing in my dropdown, after changing the option in the dropdown to my timezone - Apple Asia - Ansible and boto seem to be working again.

Hurray!!!

hope this helps someone.

[mebinum]

Call me the resurrected, for yesterday my name was not of the living. They have called me the one that had been forgotten. Tomorrow my name will be the Flourisher. By as for today I am the living for he has breathed life into me and I am whole. He has touched my soot laden heart and I am like water that is frozen, made of snow

[mebinum]

"Resentment is like drinking poison then hoping it will kill your enemies" One of the many lessons I've learnt from reading about #madiba. Even though you've been wrong by someone, holding on to that grudge does nothing but make you bitter. Its effect on your personality and life is akin to water slowly turning to vinegar, it looks the same but smells and tastes awful. As we reflect on #mandeladay what would have been his 96th birthday, take a second to practice forgiveness, yourself and others. If #madiba could forgive his jailers for locking him up for 27 years, I don't think we have an excuse. Thanks for reading

[mebinum]

When life (local Asian supermarket) gives you 2kg of apples for 99cents, make #apple and #oats #crumble of course #vegan #vegandessert

[mebinum]

Saturday #morning, means its time for my new favourite #brunch of #bakedeggs.

[mebinum]

Quick Tip: Fixing Docker Client Error on Mac OS X

I was getting this really annoying error below when trying to install and run docker via Homebrew and boot2docker on my Mac OS X 10.9 after following the instruction available via docker documentation

Git commit (client): fb99f99 2014/05/19 17:42:19 Get http:///var/run/docker.sock/v1.11/version: dial unix /var/run/ docker.sock: no such file or directory

Turns out it happens because the Docker client can't communicate to the socket on the VM. To fix this you'll need to make the connection known to the Docker client. You need to add this to your bash profile file export DOCKER_HOST=tcp://localhost:4243 so that it's persisted for your terminal session.

Open up terminal and enter

$ echo -n "#Docker Host configuration\nexport DOCKER_HOST=tcp://localhost:4243" >> ~/.bash_profile $ source ~/.bash_profile

Test to make sure it's working run

$ docker version

The error should be gone and the output should be

Client version: 0.11.1 Client API version: 1.11 Go version (client): go1.2.1 Git commit (client): fb99f99 Server version: 0.11.1 Server API version: 1.11 Git commit (server): fb99f99 Go version (server): go1.2.1 Last stable version: 0.11.1

Hope this helps someone else, if you have any questions use the comments below or ping on twitter @mikeebinum

[mebinum]

Even if you fail so what?jump in and dare greatly." It is not the critic who counts; not the man who points out how the strong man stumbles, or where the doer of deeds could have done them better. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood; who strives valiantly; who errs, who comes short again and again, because there is no effort without error and shortcoming; but who does actually strive to do the deeds; who knows great enthusiasms, the great devotions; who spends himself in a worthy cause; who at the best knows in the end the triumph of high achievement, and who at the worst, if he fails, at least fails while daring greatly, so that his place shall never be with those cold and timid souls who neither know victory nor defeat. " Theodore Roosevelt #humpday #inspiration

[mebinum]

Updating your PHP app to use the new Heroku BuildPack

Heroku recently announced that they have updated the buildpack for PHP apps.

All PHP apps on Heroku amongst other things will use the HipHopVM from Facebook which are now required to use Composer, which is basically the equivalent of NPM (Node Packet Manager) for PHP applications.

I have several one page sites and applications that use Heroku as a quick staging environment to test changes and show clients. After Heroku annouced the changes, I discovered that all my websites no longer worked after committing a change to my Heroku branch.

On inspection of the Heroku logs I found that my application was starting but shutting down immediately after.The error was something along the lines

Starting process with command `sh boot.sh` cannot open

The build logs showed this message

WARNING: No composer.json found. Using index.php to declare PHP applications is considered legacy functionality and may lead to unexpected behavior. See https://devcenter.heroku.com/categories/php

Turns out the at you can't declare Heroku php apps with just index.php any more, to fix this browse to your app's folder in terminal and create a new composer.json file.

> echo '{}' > composer.json

Commit this file to your repository and deploy it to your Heroku appliction.

Updating flat HTML websites or page single page apps

If you were previously using Heroku to host a flat HTML website, all you had to do was add an empty index.php file into your repository, add a Procfile with web: sh boot.sh and Heroku would just serve your index.html file.

This doesn't work any more after the updates as Heroku has started using a different buildpack with composer, more information about how that works in the Heroku documentation.

To get your application working again you have to change the Procfile to

web: vendor/bin/heroku-php-apache2

If you are serving just flat HTML you'll also need to change the configuration for Apache to prioritize your index.html over index.php. Create a custom conf file in your apps root directory via terminal by typing

> echo 'DirectoryIndex index.html index.php index.htm' > apache_app.conf

You'll also have to change the Procfile to

web: vendor/bin/heroku-php-apache2 -C apache_app.conf

Hope this helps someone else as it was a bit confusing for me initially. If you got any questions ask in the comments or follow me on Twitter @mikeebinum

[mebinum]

On the 14th of April 2014, in the dead of the night. Terrorist attacked a high school in Chibok in the North East of Nigeria. They have been missing ever since. This is a call out to the world, to raise awareness to the plight of the families and put pressure on government to help #bringbackourgirls

[mebinum]

Never open a book with the weather. Avoid prologues. Never use a verb other than “said” to carry dialogue. Never use an adverb to modify the verb “said.” Keep your exclamation points under control! Never use the words “suddenly” or “all hell broke loose.” Use regional dialect, patois, sparingly. Avoid detailed descriptions of characters. Same for places and things. Leave out the parts readers tend to skip.

Elmore Leonard’s 10 Rules of Writing, synthesized by Open Culture – a fine addition to our ongoing collection of writing advice and these timeless tips from history’s greatest writers. (via explore-blog)

[mebinum]

Regular Expressions Interpolation in Pattern Matching

With introduction of string interpolation in Scala 2.10 we finally got a feature, that many modern languages already have. What made me extremely exited though, is the fact, how good this feature was integrated into the language and how customizable it is. In this post I would like to show you some examples of it. I will not concentrate on explaining how exactly it works, but instead I will show you one very cool application of it, which I found recently. It combines string interpolation with regular expressions. What is especially interesting is the way you can use it in the pattern matching expressions.

It is something that I wanted to be able to make for a long time and actually found one way to implement with type Dynamic. That solution was a little bit crazy and looked like something that you normally will never use in real projects. Now I’m happy to show you solution that is actually looks nice (at least for regular expressions). I also want to notice that things I would like to share with you are shamelessly stolen from (were inspired by) this video introduction to Scala 2.10 features by Adriaan Moors and this answer at StackOverflow by sschaef. I want to thank authors for giving me inspiration and educating me :)

Read More

[mebinum]

In the past few months I’ve been helping some people who are new to Python to get to know the language. I found that there are some pitfalls that almost everyone meet when they’re new to the language, so I decided to share my advice with you. Each part of this series will focus on a different...

[mebinum]

Sent from Dad: 7 tips to navigate through life from Bruce Lee

My Dad frequently send emails with motivational advice or just interesting articles. This one really resonated with me, and I wanted to share.

Think because I am going through a challenging point in my life and the tips here remind me to keep my eyes on the long term because present pain is only temporary.  I have not seen him about 3 years and he is visiting this week so it's very well timed. Anyways enjoy;

Though he is probably most famous as an action movie star and creator of the Jeet Kune Do martial arts style, Lee also had an incredible outlook on life.

Many of his quotes and overall philosophy on how to live life are still inspiring people today.

In this article we will take a look at some of the advice Lee had to give.

1. Get up and do it.

“Knowing is not enough; we must apply.

Willing is not enough; we must do.”

This is solid advice. Possessing the knowledge of something is a good starting point, but in order to actually achieve anything in this world you must apply that knowledge to your actions.

Even if you want to do something it isn’t enough to simply wish it was so.

Life is about having the courage to actually do the things you conjure in your head.

There are those who dream and then there are those who make dreams reality.

When you commit to taking action in your life you can do great things.

The first step to greatness may be just putting one foot in front of the other.

2. Thoughts are important.

“As you think, so shall you become.”

A person’s thoughts determine so much about them. What you go around thinking about others, the world around you and especially about yourself helps to mold your perception of the world.

The way you perceive things affects you in such a way so as to guide your actions.

As such a confident individual who believes in his abilities and has thoughts in his head that affirm his capability is more likely to succeed in life.

Do not mistake confidence with over-confidence: though: a man who also thinks clearly enough to understand his own faults and wish to better them over time is truly wise.

3. Blind anger will get you nowhere.

“A quick temper will make a fool of you soon enough.”

Being quick to anger is not a good trait to possess.

When you let your temper control who you are, you become a reckless person who doesn’t think straight and winds up making many mistakes.

It is true when they say that cooler heads prevail.

When you look at something from a calm standpoint and try to think in terms of logic and what is best for you, the results you get will be better.

Even when there are those who seek to anger you out of spite or hatred you should not let them play you for a fool.

Being in control of your emotions will allow you to come out the better man or woman.

4. Live for yourself.

“I’m not in this world to live up to your expectations and you’re not in this world to live up to mine.”

In life you should strive to live by your own standards.There are so many people in the world that worry about what others think of them and the legacy they will leave behind.

Whether it is something simple like wishing to please one’s parents, or if it is to impress a certain social group, what purpose does that really serve?

If you live your life just to impress others or try to meet their expectations of what you should be then you are ignoring your own individuality.

Humans are individual creatures.We possess unique abilities, thoughts and feelings.Life should be explored thoroughly in the pursuit of happiness for the self.

Often times personal happiness includes the happiness of those close to you, but ultimately you should be your biggest critic and judge, not others.

5. Time is finite.

“If you love life, don’t waste time, for time is what life is made up of.”

Time moves forward at the same pace for all. It will slow down for no man, and no man can truly know how much time he has. Because of this time is a very precious thing, just like life itself.

Life is an incredible experience full of emotions, perceptions and wonders of all kinds.

Live in the moment and don’t take things for granted.

Everything that you do should be enjoyed, because you never know when your time is up.

When you waste time doing nothing or pleasing others when you really want to do other things, you are cheating yourself out of precious time.  Make sure that your time is being spent wisely towards your own ends.

6. Be flexible in life.

“Notice that the stiffest tree is most easily cracked, while the bamboo or willow survives by bending in the wind.”

When you hold fast to certain plans or old ways, you can be doing yourself a disservice.The world is ever changing and presents many new challenges that you will have to face in a lifetime.

When these challenges present themselves, sometimes being rigid and sticking to your old ways will not allow you to come through unscathed.

If you can be flexible like the bamboo bending in the wind, you will not crack from all of the pressure.Your mind needs to be able to adapt in life.When new problems arise be ready to meet them.

This is a great quote to think about for business strategy as well, because as has been shown in recent years, rigid business models are the most susceptible to sudden failure. Flexibility is formidable.

7. Simplify your life.

“It’s not the daily increase but the daily decrease. Hack away at the non-essential.”

In life it can be easy to get wrapped up in so many different things.

When you take a step back and truly look at your life, you might be surprised to find that there are many unessential elements that could be cut out so as to save time for that which is truly important to you.

By streamlining your life in ways you can increase your quality of life.

This is an incredible thing and should be undertaken by everyone.

When you can live your life with a conviction to focus on the things that matter to you, you can get so much accomplished.

Let us cut the frivolous out of our life!

Let us Pray: Father, give us the grace and wisdom to organise our life according to priorities. Amen!

[mebinum]

“The leaders always had good consciences, for conscience in them coalesced with will, and those who looked on their face were as much smitten with wonder at their freedom from inner restraint as with awe at the energy of their outward performances.”

[mebinum]

Melbourne Transport - A Labour of Love

I need not go into the many issues commuters face daily with the Melbourne public transport as they are well documented .

As a public transport user in Melbourne, one of my major pain points is not being able to find out how to get to a destination.

I believe it's a problem we have all experienced at one point in time, you need to get to a place in a suburb that you haven't been to or maybe never heard of and the only transport option at your disposal is the "fabulous" transportation system we have in Melbourne. To find out how to get there, you jump on PTV's journey planning website, put in the details for your trip into a very unintuitive interface and you get pretty good directions, only problem is the website is built for a computer and you have a mobile phone, and some of the direction information comes back in PDF format!! If you have an iPhone you are in luck you get to use the PTV iPhone app.

Which if the reviews from the app store and write ups about the app are anything to go by means you are still fresh out of luck.

Building a Journey Planning App for Melbourne

It's all well and good to complain about it all but as Shirly Chisholm once said

"You don't make progress by standing on the sidelines, whimpering and complaining. You make progress by implementing ideas."

That philosophy is something that the team - Lyn Nagara, Brendan Graetz and I at Hive believe in.

Our mantra at Hive is to "make commuting awesome", so with that in mind we set out on a journey to do just that and our first step was to create Melbourne Transport.

Our idea is to create an all in one app that would provide you with

Journey Planning

Updates on transport delays via Social media feeds

Train/Tram/Bus Timetables

Above all it had to be

Simple

Intuitive

Multi platform

Last week we took the first step to creating a better transport experience by releasing the public beta of Melbourne Transport onto the Google play store.

A small step on our quest to making commuting awesome. A big thank you to all the folks who have supported us on this journey especially Jason from the Sensis API crew, Darcy from York Butter Factory for giving us a space to work out of, Adam Faulkner and Chris Saunders from Blackberry AU and all the cool startup peeps along the way.

We have gotten a great deal of positive response and suggestions so far and we very eager to hear from everyone on ways we can improve the app. You can contact us on Facebook, Twitter, or mail us hello -at- melbournetransport.co, if you would like to be notified when we release to the iOS store please sign up for our newsletter at on our website

[mebinum]

David Brooks puts it succinctly in the New York Times –

“The daily activity most injurious to happiness is commuting.”

A number of studies on happiness have been conducted recently, and consistently they are finding that commuting is the most...