DEV Community: Erika Wiedemann

Why I migrated from a personal blog to Dev.to

Erika Wiedemann — Sun, 18 Nov 2018 23:56:40 +0000

I recently migrated a couple of well-written blogs from my personal "side-project" blog onto dev.to. My previous solution wasn't the wrong choice, but it became a massive pain point that actively stopped me from writing. If you're thinking of creating your own side blog, here's a brief reflection on what made my blog hurt to use, and how I think sticking to Dev.to will make it better.

Motivations

As an EIT still very early in their career, I emphasised building as much as I could from scratch. This was/is an attempt to keep learning everything, especially post-graduation. I wanted to:

1) Learn Jeykll templating
2) Abide the "sharing is caring" philosophy
3) Publish a tutorial-style post least once every four months

Design

My blog was a single static page, hosted free on GitHub pages. I used a free Jeykll template I found online to reduce the time I spent on looks - I wanted to jump into writing the content. Relatively low maintenance, anything pushed to master would be live within 1-2 minutes. No tests, no fancy branching strategies.

The Pain Points

Drafts: GitHub pages require your repo to be public. This is fine, but I hated having my rough work - scratch notes of incomplete or wrong ideas - easily accessible in a second branch. Ideas come up faster than I can finish them, and storing the drafts in a different place like Google Drive defeats the purpose of Git version control. This meant I never wrote anything unless I could finish it in one sitting. In turn, this meant I never met my goal of posting at least every once in awhile. Finally, this meant I never bothered to start because I missed the previous goal too.

Comments: I was discouraged from posting because I knew I wouldn't get any feedback or start any conversations. Sometimes that's nice but it ultimately felt like I was contributing to a void.

Analytics: Especially without comments, I had no way to view or measure activity of the blog itself or specific posts. I could have set up Google Analytics for free, but I was more interested in generating content than doing a deep-dive into SEO or learning how to analyse and drive traffic to my low-frequency site in my spare time.

Trying to Learn it all: While admirable, trying to learn as much as I can in a single project isn't sustainable. Like spreading myself too thin, it's easy to get discouraged when everything on a hobby project is brand new. I'm lucky that I'm constantly learning new tech at my work on a daily basis, but I've learnt for my personal projects I really need to focus on a single thing.

Dev.to to the rescue

Since migrating 4 blog posts to dev.to, I'm already seeing a surge of activity I never had before, including comments. Finally, some positive feedback! Dev.to has done an incredible job of creating an active, diverse, and knowledgeable community with regular readers. With any luck, we can have some back-and-forth.

More importantly, using Dev.to to manage my writing is my way of changing each of my projects' focus into "one thing at at time." Here, I'll focus on research and good writing. My next project will probably be focused on Haskell. Instead of trying to create something useful for myself or the world, this time around I'll stick to just the language and simple problems like a CRUD app with deployment tech I already know, or even just simple math problems.

C Pointer Review

Erika Wiedemann — Tue, 13 Nov 2018 03:48:15 +0000

This post was originally written February 24, 2017 during an embedded systems course. I'm migrating all my personal blog posts onto dev.to.

I was recently bogged down with an embedded systems project that took much longer than it should have. Part of the problem was using pointers again, so long after learning them the first time. All answers on StackOverflow were obvious once I saw them again, but what I really needed to be more effective was raw review and practice outside of project pressure.

A lot of language tutorials have detailed descriptions for each component of whatever they're doing, along with small code snippets to help "connect-the-dots." They're meant to teach. This post ends in a few sentences with a commented & ready-to run file reviewing basic C pointer assignment and access, arrays, structs, and function pointers. The comments will walk you through the code, while the output is experimental "proof" that it works.

I hope you find it helpful - happy reviewing!

gist.github.com - A Review of C Pointers

On Plaintext Login Details

Erika Wiedemann — Tue, 13 Nov 2018 03:47:04 +0000

This post was originally written January 17, 2017. I'm migrating all posts from my personal blog onto dev.to

Recently, I registered for a new online community for ladies in technology. Part of the whole "get-out-there" goal. I went through the standard process of signing up with my email, using LastPass to generate a new password and save the entry in my vault, so on and so forth. I was pretty alarmed when I received an email half a minute later with all my login details... including the password in plaintext!

"Congratulations on entering the tech community!

The login information for your account is: 
Email: email@email
Password: password

..."

What are your thoughts on this? I asked around - it seems like this used to be standard practice. It's old, but still fine to use.

I explored the community a bit more and it was clear that the website doesn't handle any personal information about its users. There's no profile or chat section. The website is mostly links to local events and job postings. It's clear this isn't a high-security venture and strong password protection may not be necessary. That said, I truly think all services should take every step they can to help users protect and increase their online security. What if I wasn't using a password generator, and my unique password was actually already in use on another platform? Oops.

As an alternative, look at how Slack handles new users. When registering for a new channel, you receive a little email like so:

"Your Slack Account Information

Hi Erika, 

Welcome to Slack! You've joined the team teamName. In case it's handy,
here's a copy of your account details:

Team Name: teamName
Team Domain: http://teamURL
Sign-in Email Address: email@email

..."

This serves the same purpose with all the info you need without the password. I like how it doesn't assume my email inbox is absolutely secure while still providing useful information I can archive.

I reached out to the new community's help desk and was really happy with the response. The company they hired said it's standard to include the password, but the community agreed that it should be removed for the extra security and so it will be phased out.

What do you think of emailing users their account information on sign-up? Still required? Should passwords be included?

Canadian Digital Security and Privacy Resources

Erika Wiedemann — Tue, 13 Nov 2018 03:44:49 +0000

This post was originally written January 24, 2017 during an technology ethics class. It's been modified slightly as I migrate my personal blog onto dev.to

I'm not sure how my fellow Canadians feel on the current digital scene, but I'm always amazed how over saturated I feel with American politics. I pay particular attention to American digital surveillance and privacy concerns even though I'm harboured away in my northern corner. I especially paid attention to those raised during the most recent American election cycle - Hilary v Trump, and their ideas on encryption, backdoor access, surveillance, Snowden's revelations... etc. I suspect I know significantly more about American issues than Canadian.

I want to keep better track, and I would like to start having my feeds be dominated by Canadian news. I've tried to find good resources on my own, but it's hard to find something reliable and ongoing. So now, I'm crowd sourcing. I'd like to ask you for help.

What I've done so far

I've asked professors, colleagues, and fellow students for resources. I've just written letters to my local MLA, BC Premier, and the Right Honourable Prime Minister of Canada asking about which digital issues concern them, and for resources I can use to keep informed. Now I've made this blog post to maintain as a repository for all.

Do you have any suggestions or links to resources - specific journalists, publications, or websites - keeping track of Canadian Digital Security and Privacy Concerns?

This includes surveillance, encryption, information sharing, legal precedents, bills waiting to be approved, anything related to the digital technology rights and freedoms of Canadians.

Any medium is good with me - active twitter users, bloggers, and/or larger businesses. It can be subscription-based, or free. It can even be printed.

Please send them to me either via Twitter [@oneearedmusic ] or as a comment here.

THE LIST

I'm going to keep the following list updated with any and all resources I receive. I'm not going to decide how good they are, but I encourage you to vet your own newsfeed and I'll do the same.

I hope this post becomes a repository to help anyone keep informed about the current state of Canadian Digital Security and Privacy.

Link	Category	What
https://www.trudeaumetre.ca/	General Politics	Trudeau Meter: Keeps track of Justin Trudeau's election promises.
http://news.gc.ca/web/index-en.do	General Canadian Affairs	Latest news from Government of Canada
http://www.michaelgeist.ca/tech-law-topics/	Tech Law Topics	Michael Geist: Journalist

... to be continued, with your help.

ACCESS DENIED: Reset MySQL root user password

Erika Wiedemann — Tue, 13 Nov 2018 02:47:54 +0000

This post was originally written September 10, 2016 during a stressful time in my life - I couldn't access MySQL root. I'm migrating all my personal blog posts onto dev.to.

This is an aggregation of various StackOverflow posts, user tutorials, and official docs that helped me figure out how to reset my local MySQL root password.

Thanks to an early engineering assignment, my initial database setup got really screwed up. Being the middle of a semester, I didn't have the time to fix it. Now, a couple of updates later, I had to face the beast and get it working. For future reference for myself and for anyone else stuck, this is a brief post on the steps I took that worked for my system. All the tutorials I found during my fix-it session were either incomplete or not quite right.

Stats

OS: Ubuntu 16.04.1 LTS

MySQL: 5.7.15

Sit-rep

You've installed, and re-installed, and tried to repair an old MySQL installation. Entering

mysql -u root -p

followed by your password, returns an

Access denied for user 'root'@'localhost'

error, even though you're sure it's the right login. You've also already tried the official documentation on How to reset the root password, which failed. Maybe you even tried to repackage the deb file with

sudo dpkg-reconfigure mysql-server-5.7

which failed. Have no fear - where there's a terminal, there's a way.

Step 1

Shut down Mysql. Try

sudo service mysql stop

sudo /etc/init.d/mysql stop

or looking up the PID and killing it. Make sure it's stopped via:

service mysql status

Step 2

Start MySQL in safe mode without a password:

mysqld_safe --skip-grant-tables &

Caution: this is insecure! I had no data in any of my tables, which meant I wasn't worried about malicious reads. The 'skip' option enables anyone to connect without a password with full privileges. If you have any concerns about your tables, you should also diable any remote access with:

--skip-networking

Step 3

In a new terminal, connect to MySQL server with the mysql client. No password is neccessary. Execute the following steps:

use mysql;

UPDATE user SET authentication_string=PASSWORD("securepassword") where User='root';

UPDATE user SET plugin="mysql_native_password";

FLUSH PRIVILEGES;

quit;

Brief explanation: The second line is where you set your password. One difference between MySQL 5.6 or older, and the latest 5.7+ is the column name switch from PASSWORD to AUTHENTICATION_STRING. Older tutorials use the former.

If you miss the third 'set plugin' statement, you'll successfully update your password but still won't be able to connect to your server. My system, for example, had the plugin value set to 'auth socket.' Even with the right login details, my server threw errors about my missing socket, and I needed to shut down, restart in safe mode, and switch both values again.

Finally, the 'flush privileges' command reloads the server's in-memory copy of the grant tables. Modifying the user table with UPDATE doesn't load the changes into the tables immediately, unlike the higher-level GRANT or SET commands.

Step 4

Stop your safe mysqld, and start the mysql server normally. You should be able to connect with your new password via

mysql -u root -p

Enjoy your new database access!

Links

MySQL Reference Manual: How to reset the root password

Stack Overflow: MySQL User DB does not have password columns

Stack Overflow: How to stop mysqld

Stack Overflow: MySQL Fails on: mysql "ERROR 1524 (HY000)"

Stop Using Flush Privileges

You're done!

What does it mean to be a Software Engineer?

Erika Wiedemann — Tue, 28 Mar 2017 22:06:32 +0000

Over the past 4 months or so I've been trying to define what exactly are some of the differences in expectations for tech folks from three backgrounds: self-taught, those with a formal education in Computer Science, and those trained in Software Engineering. I would really like your opinions on what you expect from yourself and what you expect from others.

My intent is to try and get a clear idea over the next 6 months and write about it, and each year following I'd like to do an update. In a way, it'll be tracking their evolution.

I'm going to be intentionally vague here because I don't want to lead the conversation but it's my position that the tech industry is a bit of a 'wild west' right now. It's not really clear who can do what, and resumes and interviews can be extremely difficult for figuring out what a candidate can actually do. I'm also coming from a Canadian perspective, where the term 'Software Engineer' is protected so someone can't willy nilly just title themselves an Engineer on their projects.

Looking to web development, I believe that a self-taught developer could certainly teach themselves everything about solid and robust system designs and learn the mathematical foundations that students need to take in formal education. Similarly, someone from computer science could mold their degree to be strictly theoretical (i.e., for masters and doctorate programs later on), or train for more direct application like an engineer must. Finally, someone from software engineering could go on to purely "engineer" software, or perhaps they could go into more of a managerial position, or just stick to pure development. The point is that anyone can learn what they need and be excellent at it. So how can you possibly have any sort of expectations?

I am in no way intending to imply a hierarchy. Instead, I'm trying to build a venn diagram of where these trainings are the same and where they're different. Your thoughts would be greatly appreciated, and may be quoted in future blog posts either here on Dev.to or my personal blog site.

Credit to Luis Llerena for the cover image. Image found on Unsplash here.

Nevertheless, Erika Coded

Erika Wiedemann — Tue, 07 Mar 2017 03:34:17 +0000

I stumbled into coding because...

I was originally in university for Mechanical Engineering. On the day we were filling out our program declarations, at the last second I switched into Software Engineering. I had no prior experience and had a terrible time with the C course but thoroughly enjoyed the problems I got to solve.

What stopped you before?

There weren't any classes available in middle or high school. First exposure to code was in first year university.

Any other obstacles?

I'm hard of hearing, but let me tell ya - nothing can stop a determined developer in this industry. There's so much to learn, and so much to do, and with the popularity of slack and email there's so many ways to communicate outside of telephones.

I'm currently hacking on...

a) Professional: Finishing up my final semester which means assignments. Lots of assignments and no free time :( .

b) Personal Work:

A clustercooking application - API, web interface, and native android app
Basic Algorithms / data structures review + blog posts
FB Messenger analysis tool

I'm excited about...

Free time! Once the summer hits, I'll be graduated and working full time, which means I can reclaim my weekends to work on my own ideas.

My advice for other women who code is...

Follow the rabbit hole! Have you heard or thought of something interesting? Chase it down and see what you learn. It's a chance to burst out of your comfort zone, and tackle concepts you don't know. There's so many books and tutorials and ways to play with your ideas.

Hi, I'm Erika

Erika Wiedemann — Thu, 29 Dec 2016 05:12:08 +0000

I have been coding for 5 years. I live in Victoria & Vancouver and work for SKIO Music.

You can find me on Twitter as @OneEaredMusic, on GitHub as eburdon, or at my website at erikaburdon.ca

I mostly program professionally in Java, Python, JavaScript. My personal projects are currently in Go and Scala. I'm trying to learn more about MVPs, Code Smells, and Functional Programming at the moment.

Nice to meet you. Please speak loudly.