DEV Community: Ryder Damen

Fixing Broken Mirrors - Raspberry Pi

Ryder Damen — Wed, 06 Oct 2021 18:42:28 +0000

While installing some packages on my Raspberry Pi, I encountered an outage with one of the package mirrors in Canada.

It's a problem I haven't faced before, so I figured I'd share how to get around it.

The Problem

When running the following command:

sudo apt-get update && sudo apt-get install -y git

I got the following error:

Err:1 http://mirrors.switch.ca/raspbian/raspbian buster/main armhf liberror-perl
  404  Not Found [IP: 209.115.181.106 80]
E: Failed to fetch http://mirrors.switch.ca/raspbian/raspbian/pool/main/libe/liberror-perl/liberror-perl_0.17027-2_all.deb  404  Not Found [IP: 209.115.181.106 80]
E: Unable to fetch some archives, maybe run apt-get update or try with --fix-missing?

After some poking around on the server, it turns out that none of the files in the liberror-perl directory existed. I sent the team that manages the mirror an email and noticed that they had just completed a server migration.

In the meantime, I'm going to point myself to a different mirror so I can get things installed and working.

How To Fix It

First, head to the RaspbianMirrors Website, which lists all mirrors by geographic location.

Pick something close to you that's not the one that's inoperable. I chose the Free Mirror project since it's also in Canada.

(http|https)://raspbian.freemirror.org/raspbian/

Grab the URL, and head over to your /etc/apt/sources.list on your Raspberry Pi.

sudo nano /etc/apt/sources.list

Place the following line at the top of the file, making sure to adjust the URL to the one you grabbed from the Mirrors website.

deb https://raspbian.freemirror.org/raspbian/ buster main contrib non-free rpi

Save the file, and run your update and install commands again.

sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get install git

Success! The Pi will now install things from the new mirror while the old one gets sorted out. Happy hacking!

Building the xmas lights from Stranger Things

Ryder Damen — Mon, 13 Jul 2020 17:45:12 +0000

After re-watching season one of Netflix's Stranger Things, I thought it would be neat if I built the xmas lights from the show.

I originally tried to solder individual addressable LEDs so I could stick them in old xmas light bulbs, but very quickly abandoned that idea after spending an hour soldering a total of 3 LEDs.

Eventually I connected an LED strip to an ESP 8266 micro-controller and programmed it to curl an endpoint; any text displayed on the endpoint is processed and the corresponding LED assigned to the letters (A-Z) will flash one at a time.

On the server side, I used a simple flask application combined with redis, allowing users to submit messages with a form. Every time the micro-controller curls the server, a message is popped off the queue and displayed. This ensured all messages sent to me were received, even if I left the controller unplugged.

I posted the project online and received over 8 million views, and tens of thousands of messages (the queue is still not empty almost a month later).

If you're interested in building something simple, I highly recommend it - it's an easy project to get started with and I'm more than happy to share my code.

I also made a quick video on the project if you're interested!

Will you die? An important question before giving tech talks

Ryder Damen — Wed, 13 Nov 2019 16:15:16 +0000

The night before I can't sleep. Five minutes before my hands are shaking.

Public speaking - no matter how many times I do it - still freaks me out. Especially when speaking on a topic where there are others in the room who know significantly more about it than me (which is all the time).

Five minutes before the talk I ask myself the question:

Will you die?

It's my way of reminding myself that even if the worst happens during the talk - I'll survive. Even if I forget everything I'm supposed to say, and the powerpoint slides have been replaced with pictures of hairless cats - I'll still survive. I may make a fool of myself, but the chances are good that I won't.

It's a phrase I picked up from a friend in improv a long time ago, and it's helped me overcome the nerves behind public speaking (and a lot more) ever since.

Resources for LGBTQ+ People in Tech

Ryder Damen — Tue, 12 Nov 2019 19:04:48 +0000

A little while ago I created a readme with resources for LGBTQ+ people in technology.

If anyone knows of any that aren't on the list, I'd love a pull request or an email!

Why I Recommend Improv Courses to Software Engineers

Ryder Damen — Mon, 04 Nov 2019 20:01:16 +0000

Improv and Software Engineering aren't two things that are often talked about in the same sentence, but I whole-heartedly recommend improv courses to my colleagues in software engineering - here's why.

Developing Your Career

Career-wise, taking an improv course is a fantastic way to develop a skill that is often not practiced in software engineering - good communication. Far too often I've spent weeks glued to my computer, focusing on deadlines, only to find that when going out with friends I'm not able to articulate myself verbally as well as I normally could. Language, like a muscle, needs to be practiced or it atrophies. Since I don't often get the chance to communicate at work outside of daily stand-ups, an improv class allows me to stretch my creative, and communicative muscles.

In addition, improv forces you to put yourself out there and feel uncomfortable - a feeling I've spent my entire life chasing. This feeling is an indicator that you're developing a new skill, or trying something outside of your comfort zone and thus growing as a person. A class allows you the opportunity to refine your public speaking skills, and perhaps discover talents you may not have known you've had.

Improving Your Well-Being

The benefits of participating in improv don't just stop at your career, they can extend to your health and well-being. Participating in a class forces you to take your eyes off a screen and be present in the moment. You're often immersed in games or scenes that command your full attention. Your mind won't be thinking about work, relationships, or anything bothering you - since it won't have the chance. It's a way to disconnect from the rest of the world and be present in the moment - something we don't practice often enough in our world of constant Slack messages, emails, and alerts.

Obviously taking an improv course isn't going to be attainable for everyone in software engineering, but I challenge my colleagues - when's the last time you stepped out of your comfort zone and tried something new?

Deleting With Empathy

Ryder Damen — Thu, 24 Oct 2019 23:16:54 +0000

When creating a project — besides having a working minimum viable product (MVP) — one of my main objectives is to allow others (and my future self) the ability to easily set up a development environment.

The idealized version of that looks something like this:

git clone git@github.com:ryderdamen/the_repository.git
cd the_repository
make install
make run

The one-command install requires a bit of extra work on my part, but it makes getting up and running a breeze for developers down the line. I like to use makefiles to get things set up — but anything really will do.

One of the things I like to do once a month is something I call “deleting with empathy”. Every month or so, I completely delete my local development environment for a shared repository.

The idea behind it is that if I’ve set it up properly, this action should be inconsequential; I should only require a few extra keystrokes to be back where I was ten minutes prior.

Even if I’ve built a one-command install script, it can so often drift from the actual processes required to get a repository up and running. Deleting with empathy allows me to periodically review if it’s functional, and change anything that needs to be fixed.

What are your thoughts? Do you often find your setup documentation drifts? Do you have one-command installation scripts?