Alex Girard Feed

Youri au clavier, premieres touches

2009-02-14T00:00:00+01:00

Comme un premier site web dans les années 90, une première vidéo-conférence au début des années 2000, voici les premières lettres numériques de Youri à 6 mois en 2009:


	xw
	!?K N BNNNNNNNNN
	TTyoituryeYTRRGH?

Deploy a Merb Slice with Rake and Capistrano

2009-02-11T00:00:00+01:00

Deploy a Merb Slice with Rake and Capistrano

On the Slice side, you just need to install the code locally to retrieve the assets, and push the code on your Git repository to retrieve it on your production server.


sudo rake install
git push

On the Merb App side, you’ll need to tell it to update the Slice gemon the server first.
For this, I’ve made a special task in config/deploy.rb:


namespace :gems do

  desc "Update and install media_rocket gem"
  task :media_rocket do
    run "cd #{gems_path}/media_rocket/; git pull"
    sudo "echo" # Allows to run next command as root
    run "cd #{gems_path}/media_rocket/ && sudo rake install"
  end

end

Then you’ll need to copy the assets from your Slice to your current application, add the changes to Git and deploy it:


rake slices:media_rocket:copy_assets
git commit -a -m "add last asset from media_rocket"
git push
cap gems:media_rocket
cap deploy

10 invites to Spotify.com

2009-02-03T00:00:00+01:00

10 invites to Spotify.com

For those interested, please leave a comment to get an invite on Spotify.com.

It’s nothing particular, just a simple iTunes, with a monthly subscription for those who wants to pay, an old music-business concept that some guys have finally put in place.

Thanks to years of music industry battle, we’ve got this old technology quietly moving in, and it worries me a bit that it’ll stll be controlled more by business-spirit than creating a sharing community. On their blog, they’ve already announced they plan to block some tracks depending on the geographic region, nice way to crash.

Test it, it’s simple, you might like it, but it’s nothing compared to something like last.fm.
If only there was a subscription (and a better music player) on last.fm, they’d win them all.

Merb et rangement de vos classes en sous-répertoire

2009-02-03T00:00:00+01:00

Merb et rangement de vos classes en sous-répertoire

Petit travail d’un soir: organiser les classes de notre application Merb dans des sous-répertoire.

Problématique

Par défaut, Merb construit ce type d’arborescence:


app
|__ controllers
	|__ ...
	|__ rockets.rb
|__ models
	|__ ...
	|__ rocket.rb

Et pour pas vous embêtez, vous entassez naturellement vos classes jusqu’à trop plein.
Maintenant, vous voulez ranger vos contrôleurs et modèles de manière plus hiérarchiques:


app
|__ controllers
	|__ ...
	|__ resource
		|__ ...
		|__ rockets.rb
|__ models
	|__ ...
	|__ resource
		|__ ...
		|__ rocket.rb

Solution

Pour faire ceci, il vous faut d’abord modifier le fichier config/router.rb, par exemple pour appeler le contrôleur de la ressource rocket:


Merb::Router.prepare do |r|
  
  r.resources :resource_rockets, :controller => "resource/rockets"

end

Vous devez déclarer le module du contrôleur dans app/controllers/resource/rockets.rb:


module Resource
  class Rockets < Application
	...
  end
end

Pour cette manipulation, il n’y a aucune modifications à apporter au modèle, il vous suffit de le mettre dans son sous-répertoire et il devrait être reconnu.

Ruby and Windows, stupid trick to delete a file

2009-01-27T00:00:00+01:00

Sometimes, you’ve to be strong enough to delete a “permission denied” file under windows with ruby:

It doesn’t take too long, but that’s the kind of stupid trick you can avoid if you choose another platform to make your code.

Politimap, les zones chaudes de l'Assemblée Nationale

2009-01-07T00:00:00+01:00

Après quelques surprises lors du passage de Jérémie Zimmermann à Utopia Toulouse pour présenter le travail de La Quadrature du Net, et après m’être rapidement perdu dans une tentative de lecture des texte des sessions de l’Assemblée Nationale, je me suis dit qu’il serait plus marrant de visualiser l’activité de ces sessions sous forme de heatmap.

Sachant que tous les textes, et le fiches de chaque député sont librement accessible sur le site de l’Assemblée, il ne me manquait plus que quelques lignes pour analyser le nombre de prise de parole dans chaque séance. Ainsi, durant la première séance du 8 décembre 2008, évoquant la communication audiovisuelle et le nouveau service public de la télévision, voici le nombre de prise de parole:

58, Noël Mamère – Place: 596
45, Patrick Bloche – Place: 453
34, Marcel Rogemont – Place: 479
30, Patrick Roy – Place: 550
24, Benoist Apparu – Place: 138
23, Patrice Martin-Lalande – Place: 125
23, Jean-François Copé – Place: 99
22, Patrick Braouezec – Place: 585
21, Frédéric Lefebvre – Place: 358
20, Michel Herbillon – Place: 259
15, Christian Kert – Place: 343
12, Sandrine Mazetier – Place: 429
7, Yves Censi – Place: 79
6, Jean Dionis du Séjour – Place: 397
5, Dino Cinieri – Place: 196
4, Richard Dell'Agnola – Place: 357
4, Richard Mallié – Place: 76
3, Bruno Le Roux – Place: 421
2, Françoise de Panafieu – Place: 177
2, Marietta Karamanli – Place: 559

Avec ces données, il ne me manquait plus qu’a situé chacun des sièges. Heureusement, le plan de l’hémicycle est aussi disponible en ligne, et en ajoutant un peu d’interaction grâce à Shoes, j’ai rapidement créé un fichier de coordonnées de tous les sièges. (En passant, j’aimerai maintenant avoir plus d’information sur l’histoire de l’Assemblée, il manque des numéros de sièges, la curiosité me poussera sûrement à répondre à ces manques prochainement.)

Voici l’application qui m’a servie à situer chaque siège:

Et enfin, avec l’aide du code de clickmaps, idéalement disponible en ruby, j’ai put le modifier un petit peu pour analyser cette séance:

Ce n’est qu’un début, avec du code encore tout poussiéreux, et des idées d’analyses qui peuvent être assez marrante, ou plus sérieusement poussées pour permettre une autre vision de la scène politique encore assez obscure à l’Assemblée.

Vous pouvez télécharger et suivre le développement de cet outils sur github.com/alx/politimap/

Git Community Book en Français!

2008-12-28T00:00:00+01:00

Une nouvelle traduction en cours de correction est maintenant disponible pour tous ceux voulant en connaître plus sur Git: le Git Community Book est disponible sur GitHub, et après en avoir appris énormément durant la traduction de la centaine de pages de cette ouvrage en cours de réalisation, je vous ai généré la version française actuelle:

Vous y trouverez le PDF et aussi pleins d’erreurs à corriger. Je vous invite à m’envoyer un mail à alx.girard@gmail.com avec vos corrections, suggestions, et commentaires; ou à participer au projet en le forkant sur github et en travaillant dans la branche french avant de m’envoyer vos pull-request.

Using Git submodules to publish jekyll blog on many hosts

2008-12-27T00:00:00+01:00

Since GitHub has released the Pages features, it has become a bit of a chore to manage publications on various websites. For example, if you use Jekyll on an external site and on Github Pages, you’ll need to change the links inside the rss feeds to take care the 2 domains.

To manage the publication of my 2 websites, which get the same content generated by Jekyll, I’ve choose to only use git submodules and a rake task to publish new content. It might not be the best solution, I recognize it’s a bit messy, but I least I just have to use this command to publish all content now: rake publish

The rake task and the organisation of the project is available on GitHub: Hub – A central place for publications

Inside, you’ll just find git submodules in use on my publication ring: site-content linking to my content, alexgirard.com and alx.github.com linking to 2 branches of my GitHub Page project (one branch for GitHub, one branch for alexgirard.com).

Inside the rakefile, you’ll find the different processes in use to publish on each website. It uses the git gem from Scott Chacon and was a good exercice after translating the Git Book in french for a week.

You can easily imagine how to modify it, to simulate the new page generator for each of your project, or host the last version of the newly versions of various open book: Merb Book, Git Community Book …

A Mashup a day keeps the boredom away

2008-12-26T00:00:00+01:00

Bakc on Twitter after a few months, and on reblog ideas after a few years, I wanted to experiment a small mashup to follow 25C3 conference using flickr for the pictures and twitter for the news.

It was not long to find a Sinatra project using the Flickr API: flickr-downloader from foca ad re-adapt it to fecth vairous information from Flickr and send them to the TwitPic API.

The result:

It’s downloadable and clonable on github: Flickr Twit

It’s just and experiment for the weekend, but it surely can be useful in recent world events that have primarely happened on twitter: London-Mumbaï terrorist attacks, big concert at X-Y site, weddings for a day… or to follow a group of flickr artists inside a twitter feed.

Thanks to Noah to have made TwitPic what it has become.

25C3 - My remote lecture program

2008-12-21T00:00:00+01:00

25C3 – My remote lecture program

21 Dec 2008 – Toulouse

2 years ago, I was visiting Christine in Berlin for Christmas, and it was a surprise to discover than the CCC was doing its 23rd conference at the same time, it has always been a hacker group orbiting in my sphere of ideas (Blinkenlights, …). Since then, I’ve followed most of their events (and other hacker conferences too: "HOPE"http://www.thelasthope.org/, What The Hack, DEFCON, …) online and in real life (CCC Summer Camp 2007), it’s still the main gate to catch a lot of technical and sociological essays on the net.

The next 25C3 is starting on the 27th of December, and as usual to prepare my remote assistance, here is a list of lectures that would be nice to follow:

Day 1 (2008-12-27)

Opening Session

The starting speech, it might not be the most intersting, but it’s well propared and generally resume nicely the theme of the conference: Nothing to Hide – view session

Solar-powering your Geek Gear

Green technologies already in used and that will surely become versatile in next years, probably some important information to catch inside to keep in touch with this technology. – view session

Security Failures in Smart Card Payment Systems

Another vector of attack on pin-cards, like most of credit cards in Europe now that simple signature are being replaced in most countries. Keep in touc with this skill to know the limits of the pin code security. – view session

About Cyborgs and Gargoyles …

Wearable computing, getting some idea to implement solutions like Arduino LilyPad in some projects (Barceloneta.fr, orlandooo-things, …). – view session

Building an international movement: hackerspaces.org

Hacker Spaces are spreading all over the world, it could be seen starting in 2007, and 2008 have just made them grow on an international scale with some collaboration between them. Group meeting to inspire new spaces on smaller scale and decentralized nodes. – view session

Terrorist All-Stars

Not planned in the description of the lecture, but really in touch with french news. From my favorite speaker of last year, Anne Roth, who gave a lecture nammed Wha is terrorism? explaining her situation since her friend is in german jail after being cought as a terrorist.
It’ll surely be the lecture I’ll look for the most on the first day. – view session

Just Estonia and Georgia?

Cyber-warfare in cluster conflicts, interesting information to follow next small conflict that’ll depend on the capicity of countries to stay in touch with IT part of the conflict they’re in. – view session

Hacking the iPhone

A lecture by the iphone-dev team, it could have been the hackers with the biggest impact on mainstream technology this years, and with their history, they’ll probably have some more information to share about the iPhone platform. – view session

Beyond Asimov – Laws for Robots

Society talk about future technologies and robots, to follow. – view session

Collapsing the European security architecture

Where is Europe going about technological and security issues? To keep in touch with actual EU legislation about these issues. – view session

Messing Around with Garage Doors

Some fun stuff with remote key and cloning tehcnologies. – view session

Day 2 (2008-12-28)

Embracing Post-Privacy

I always like this privacy talks because they’re the best place to grasp the real privacy issue we’ve now with all-facebook-flickr-youtube internet, and to get some inspiring direction about where to go and kind-of protect ourselves. – view session

Hacking the Atmosphere

A hacker in the sky trying to enhance hi way to fly, inspirationnal for the development of UAV projects. – view session

Anatomy of smartphone hardware

Centered on OpenMoko Freerunner, a way to follow how the new mobile platforms are made from an hardware point of view. – view session

The Trust Situation

Another society talk on privacy, trust, and surveillance, I’ll be looking to know why people doesn’t seem to get the idea that it’s important ot protect some information, and break their trust network without realising it. – view session

Scalable Swarm Robotics

P2P robotic project, just for fun. – view session

Rapid Prototype Your Life

I’m looking for this lecture on the second day. By Bre Pettis, a Make: Magazine editor, speaking about the ways to quickly manufacture prototype useful for you only. The movement has started a few years ago, and now that pinting and cutting technologies becomes easily available, it’s just matter of creative spirit to build your own stuffs. – view session

Banking Malware 101

A view of current botnet threat, to keep in touch. – view session

The Infinite Library

Porn pushing another time the limit of internet, to create a new way to store and access gigantic libraries now that there’re so much information available. – view session

Console Hacking 2008: Wii Fail

A year after the breah showed on the Wii at 24c3, most information of technics that have been deployed since then. – view session

Tricks: makes you smile

Fun stuff, small tricks to play with web apps. – view session

Blinkenlights Stereoscope

Detils from the last blinkenlights installation in Toronto. State-of-the-art technological installation, get the ideas and mix them in your head for future projects. – view session

Day 3 (2008-12-29)

Running your own GSM network

What’s the state of the open-source GSM world? Since the protocol is over-closed, and some tools appears to get nearer to it (like the OpenMoko), it’ll be nice to have a point of view of the possibilities. – view session

Privacy in the social semantic web

Mashup ideas about how to use XMPP to build your self-made social network. – view session

Hacking into Botnets

The most obscure network technology from last years, I’m always interested in getting some information about it. – view session

Objects as Software: The Coming Revolution

The most important talk from this 3rd day, about Reprap from Zach Hoeken. It’ll surely contain a lot of known information, but with recent explosion of Open-Source Hardware, it’ll be its starting point to ppublish ideas in 2009. – view session

Wikileaks

Wikileaks has been the most interesting source of information these last years, with more inside information than on Cryptome – view session

Day 4 (2008-12-30)

Why technology sucks

Politics and technology, the bad mix and why we’ll see the young fighting the the older generation, that’ve be been without internet, for a long time. – view session

La Quadrature du Net – Campaigning on Telecoms Package

After the meeting in Utopia Toulouse, it’ll be interesting to follow the reaction in a room full of mostly-european hackers. – view session

Crafting and Hacking: Separated at Birth

Hackers love to make things and not only on computers. Following the new community growing and bringing other-than-computer hacks to the world. – view session

Mining social contacts with active RFID

Following the RFID, fun stuff. – view session