Interesting Bits for October 13th, 2011

Trying out a new idea: Shlepping up juicy bits from the hundreds and hundreds of RSS-sourced items I read every day.

• iFixit's iPhone 4S Teardown: I love to see the innards of these things and I love iFixit's style.
• Weaksauce iCloud security explanation: That's all we get?
• Instacast, Podcast lovin' for the iPhone: Wonder if this would be useful.
• Dennis Ritchie died. Proud to own one of his books and to know C.
• Excellent list of iOS 5 tips and tricks: iOS 5 is great!
• JIRA 4.4.2 is broken and Greenhopper 5.8 depends on it: Won't be upgrading to that this week.

We'll see if I keep this up.

Soccer Stuff

Wenger claiming Sagna's absence is ok whilst Fabianski whines about first-team play don't help my confidence in my gunners right now..

Quote of the Day

The reduction to the essential has never lead to any catastrophes.

Deiter Rams

Jenkins and GitHub: Multiple Private Projects

I’m working with GitHub private repositories for the first time. I’m also working with using Jenkins with GitHub for the first time. As such, I’m learning a few things.

The first major hurdle I ran into was setting up checkout of multiple repositories.

Deploy Keys

Deploy keys are one-off keys that you add to a single repository that allow it to be checked out. For public repositories this isn’t necessary (although it does still exist) because anyone can access your repository read-only.

For private repositories you must use deploy keys unless you want full read-write access exposed to Jenkins.

The wrinkle is: How do you use a key for each checkout?

How To Do It

GitHub provides some help with their Multiple SSH Keys document. The only thing we need is a gentle push to make this work with Jenkins’ Git Plugin.

When you generate your keys, name them according to the project they will be used with.

ssh-keygen -t rsa -f ~/.ssh/id_rsa.projectA -C "Key for Project A"

After generating your key, add the public key into GitHub’s deploy keys.

In your Jenkins user’s $HOME, add a .ssh/config file, just like the GitHub instructions above. Then define a Host entry for each repository:

Host github-projectA
    Hostname github.com
    User git
    IdentityFile ~/.ssh/id_rsa.projectA

For each of your projects, copy that block but change projectA to projectB in both the Host and IdentityFile lines. The Host line is defining a special hostname (which really points to github.com via the Hostname line). This differentiation tells ssh to use a different key.

The final step is to modify the repository that we’ll be checking out:

git@github-projectA:iinteractive/prg-labor.git

The github-projectA ties us back to our Host setting above.

Fin!

With these instructions you should be able to safely add one-off deploy keys to enable your Jenkin’s server to checkout all your projects. Go forth and integrate. Continuously!

Update Corrected -C option to ssh-keygen

The Setup: Dungeons and Dragons

A while back I put together a post in the style of The Setup. I wanted to do another of these, but this time talking about Dungeons and Dragons.

First, The Campaign

I’m a new DnD player, having started this year. I was drawn in by the Penny Arcade DnD Podcasts. I happened to have few friends that were willing to tolerate me creating a running a campaign.

I am a Dungeon Master.

The Basics

Being a rookie I elected to begin with the setting and adventures in the back of the Dungeon Master’s Guide. Of all the source books this one is probably my favorite, as it’s reasonably organized and has everything I need in it.

I also have the Dungeon Master’s Guide 2 and all the Player’s Handbooks. I have access to most any book as a PDF, but I don’t use them for much, mostly inspiration.

Campaign Planning

I have a subscription to Dungeons and Dragons Insider that I use almost exclusively for character management. In the beginning I let my players create their characters on my account, but most of them have since gotten their own accounts and taken over. The character builder itself is tolerable, but not everything it could be.

The star of my planning phase is easily Power2ool. When combined with the Compendium I can plan all the monsters and loot that I will need for my encounter. I make extensive use of the auto-leveling feature to adjust monsters to match the difficulty I need for my players. This is the type of tool that we all wish Wizards of the Coast would provide, yet it’s done for free by a volunteer.

Game Setup

I use a Chessex Battle Map and occasionally official dungeon tiles when setting up my maps. I use Expo Wet-Erase markers to draw things. I erase it with a rag and a spray bottle of water we use for ironing.

I print loot cards on cardstock with a color laser printer using Power2ool. The thick cardstock makes the item feel better than plain paper and helps the card to hold up longer as some items will be around for months.

Actual Gameplay

Using the aforementioned map the players and monsters are represented by [wooden discs]. The players discs are decorated in permanent marker so that they are easily distinguishable and monster’s discs are denoted with letters A to Z. When I started I printed monster pictures and placed them into universal game stands. This got to be harder as there are only so many good illustrations out there, and I’m no artist.

Each disc has a magnet affixed to the bottom so that it’s useable with Alea Tools magnets. We use these for tracking various effects. The red bloodied magnets are the most helpful.

Things are more conventional from here on out. I picked up a bunch of cheap paper pads and pencils from an office supply store so that each player has plenty. We don’t use anything fancy for in-game tracking or die rolling. Initiative and hit-points are tracked on paper.

Dream Setup

4th Edition Dungeon’s and Dragons seems to be very messy and confused from a documentation perspective. Even the official tools don’t do a very good job of tracking changes and rules. The combat is slow, the characters are overpowered in many ways and the tools are weak. That being said, I’m not of a mind to complain much because the beauty of Dungeons and Dragons is that we can fix any problems we have. House rules are a long-standing and important tradition.

True Colors

In my 31 years I’ve learned something about people. We are all liars. I know, that’s a bit dramatic, but we are dramatic creatures. I’m sure you can cite exceptions amongst family, friends or yourselves, but on the whole we are optimists. Things will be better next year: more money, better jobs, faster cars, less weight, etc. We lie to ourselves and those around us because we really, really want things to get better.

Being Honest

I’ve heard a saying that we are only honest twice in our lives: When we’re coming into the world and when we’re going out. In our infancy we don’t know how to be anything but real. When we’re headed out we don’t have time for anything fake.

Companies

Corporations are people, right? Besides being treated so legally, I think they have a common attribute in their honesty. Companies are only really honest with you twice: When you are being hired and when you are being let go.

“But Cory” you say, “companies are always blowing sunshine up your ass when they hire you!” I agree. But I didn’t say what they were being honest about yet.

You!

Don’t think you are getting off easy. You have a role in this too. You aren’t being entirely honest either.

For Trill

When you are interviewing and when a company is interviewing you, you are both being honest about what you want things to be. You are looking to grow, make more money, get better perks and make more of a difference. The company is looking to grow, change and absorb your talents. Here’s the catch though: You might suck and so might the company!

But that’s ok! This is a beautiful new time. We can change together.

On the other hand, the gloves come off when you depart. Companies show their true character when letting people go. Was there a severance package? Did they talk to you about the things you did wrong and work with you? Did you even do anything wrong?

When you turned in notice, did you still work hard? Did you try and set up a solid transition? Did you offer a low rate for continued help? Did you steal office supplies?

Keep It 100

Sure, sometimes there are unique circumstances. Maybe you made a big mistake and lost the company money or your boss tried to get to know you in the biblical sense after the Christmas party. But most of the time it’s just run-of-the-mill shit. You have this opportunity to leave each other in a good place. Be honest.

Confession

I’ve changed jobs twice this year. The first time I wasn’t honest. I didn’t air my grievances before deciding it wasn’t going to help. Maybe it wouldn’t have, but I could’ve spoken my mind and at least walked away knowing I was honest.

The second time I was honest. I had no beef, I just got a great offer. The folks I worked with tried really hard to meet me, and they came at the situation honestly. As a result I still do some side work for them that makes me a little change and keeps them humming along for an easy transition.

Honestly, honesty is hard. But it’s worth the effort.