We got rid of our Better Homes and Gardens cookbook, so I'm transcribing one of its recipes here so we can remember it. This makes pretty good hummus, great with pita bread or pita chips.

Ingredients:

• 1 15-ounce can garbanzo beans (chickpeas), rinsed and drained
• 1 clove garlic, minced
• 1/4 cup tahini
• 1/4 cup lemon juice
• 1/4 cup olive oil
• 1/2 tsp salt
• 1/4 tsp paprika

Steps:

1. In a blender or food processor, combine garbanzo beans, garlic, tahini, lemon juice, olive oil, salt, and paprika. Cover and blend until smooth, scraping the sides as necessary.
2. If desired, add one or more stir-ins of your choice (e.g. sliced green onions, roasted red peppers, etc.).

Makes about 1-3/4 cups.

The dependency resolver in Python's pip command was recently updated in version 20.3. This fundamental change has a number of improvements, but I discovered today a serious drawback of this new machinery. Using the previous resolver, pip allowed you do the following to discover what versions of a package were available:

pip install markdown==

This command provided output like the following:

ERROR: Could not find a version that satisfies the requirement markdown==
(from versions: 1.7, 2.0, 2.0.1, 2.0.2, 2.0.3, 2.1.0, 2.1.1, 2.2.0, 2.2.1,
2.3, 2.3.1, 2.4, 2.4.1, 2.5, 2.5.1, 2.5.2, 2.6, 2.6.1, 2.6.2, 2.6.3, 2.6.4,
2.6.5, 2.6.6, 2.6.7, 2.6.8, 2.6.9, 2.6.10, 2.6.11, 3.0, 3.0.1, 3.1, 3.1.1,
3.2, 3.2.1, 3.2.2, 3.3, 3.3.1, 3.3.2, 3.3.3)
ERROR: No matching distribution found for markdown==

This trick was often useful to discover what new versions (if any) of required packages are available. Sadly, the new machinery no longer produces output like the above. Instead, all you get is this entirely unhelpful message:

ERROR: Could not find a version that satisfies the requirement markdown==
ERROR: No matching distribution found for markdown==

An open bug in the pip project is tracking this issue, but most of the developer responses so far have been of the "we don't have the funding to fix this" variety. There are a number of recommended solutions in the ticket, none of which seem as simple as the previous trick. Hopefully this is something that can be prioritized and fixed soon.

During the deploy process of my new web platform, I ran into a really puzzling situation. I had my application deployed per DreamHost's documentation, but I kept getting the standard domain landing page ("borngeek.com is almost here!"). This deploy was set up exactly like several other sites I had working successfully, but this one just wasn't working.

I ended up having to reach out to DreamHost support (which is fantastic, by the way), and one of their technicians helped me figure out the issue. Prior to deploying this new Django-powered platform, I was running with WordPress. While running in that environment, I had enabled HTTPS support through the Let's Encrypt service, something DreamHost offers for free. The HTTPS service was configured with a path that no longer applied, seeing as my new folder structure is different from the old WordPress setup.

There are two ways the pathing issue can be fixed at DreamHost:

1. You can reach out to the support team to have them ensure that the HTTPS service is pointing at the right location.
2. You can remove the HTTPS certificate from the domain, and request a new one. The path will be updated as a byproduct of this change.

Hopefully this tip will help someone else out there, as I spent several frustrating hours debugging this issue.

I don't watch the news, and I generally despise politics. However, I routinely make time each week to watch Shields and Brooks on the PBS NewsHour. Mark Shields and David Brooks both seem like people I would enjoy knowing in real life. They are intelligent, thoughtful, and they clearly respect each other. It is so refreshing to hear two people disagree about things in a calm, respective manner.

It's sad news, then, that Mark is stepping down after 33 years. I'll really miss his insights and his funny one-liners. Here's a short video that the NewsHour put together to honor his work over the years.

One of my primary concerns in writing my own web publishing platform was how to manage spam. In the WordPress world I used both Akismet, as well as another third-party plugin, to keep things under control. In looking around at various options, I stumbled upon a terrific article at Ned Batchelder's blog on how he manages spam.

His technique can prevent both playback bots, as well as form-filling bots, from submitting garbage data. The process is fairly basic:

1. A timestamp field is inserted as a part of the commenting form.
2. A spinner field is included, its value being a hash of four key data elements:
   • The timestamp
   • The client's IP address
   • The entry ID of the post being commented on
   • A secret
3. Field names on the form are all randomized, with the exception of the spinner. The randomization process uses the spinner value, the real field name, and a secret.
4. Honeypots are scattered throughout the form, and made invisible to humans through CSS.

Once the form data is submitted, valdation occurs to detect whether a bot was present:

1. The spinner gets read to figure out which form fields match which data.
2. The timestamp is checked and rejected if it's in too far into the past, in the future, or not present.
3. The spinner value is checked to ensure it hasn't been tampered with.
4. Honeypots are checked to see if data is provided in any of them.
5. The rest of the data is validated as usual.

Ned's article goes further into the details than I have above, so I highly recommend reading it if you're interested in this kind of thing. Time will tell as to whether this technique will be successful at keeping bad comments out, but I'm optimistic that it will.

Today is the day I dump WordPress for a custom-built, Django-powered platform. The site look and feel has changed, so click through from your RSS reader (if you're reading from one) to see the new look. In addition, comments are now enabled on all posts. I'm using an interesting spam mitigation technique that will hopefully keep things clean. Time will tell how well it works.

I made a few design decisions with this redesign and with the platform itself:

1. Site search is now simply powered by Google. They do search better than most anyone around, so why reinvent the wheel?
2. Posts and pages are Markdown-aware by default. Comments accept Markdown too!
3. I'm using off-the-shelf components from Bootstrap, as well as icons from FontAwesome.
4. Things should, generally, be responsive and pleasing on mobile.

Working with Django is, generally, a real pleasure. I was able to stand up this platform in just under three weeks time:

If you spot any issues, please let me know; bug reports are a big help. I'm sure there are broken images here and there, especially on some of my older posts. Additional details on this new platform are coming soon, including a pointer to a great article on spam mitigation. I'm hopeful that I will get back into a more frequent writing cadence now that I have a better platform to use.

The longer I spend with WordPress, the more I loathe it. This site has been steadily chugging along since 2004 (16 years as of this writing!) with the Powered by WordPress brand stamped on each page. In that amount of time, WordPress has become an unwieldy behemoth of a platform. It's honestly feeling more and more like Microsoft FrontPage to me (remember FrontPage?). Everyone should apparently design websites in the WYSIWYG editing style. As hopefully everyone knows, however, that never seems to end well.

Apart from having to update the core software every few weeks to plug the latest security holes, I find the plugin support to be hit or miss. All the higher quality plugins tend to be paid pieces of software, some even requiring monthly subscription fees. Free plugins generally fall into two camps:

1. They're outdated and unsupported
2. They're poorly designed/documented

Lots of the functionality I'm interested in — image galleries, Markdown support, spam mitigation, bulk post management, the list goes on — isn't available natively. If it is, the implementation is generally half-baked. Keeping this site running has become a chore as WordPress has gotten larger.

Thankfully, this is where being a professional web developer pays off.

I'm in the process of designing a brand new, custom platform to power this site. It will be powered by Django, and will have every feature I care about baked in. I've been hacking on it solidly for the past two weeks, and I estimate another week or so before it's able to launch. Along with it will come a small visual refresh. I'm excited about these changes, and I look forward to sharing them soon.

Another great philosophical video from Essential Craftsman. If you know someone of an impressionable age, be sure to share it with them.

I love trains, and I love mechanical automation. This really great video is an intersection between the two, and explains the process used to replace rail on an active railroad. Fascinating stuff!

During these COVID-19 lockdown times of ours, I've been thinking about the interesting research opportunities this strange occurrence must be affording scientists around the globe. For example, in the days following the 9/11 terrorist attacks on New York, weather scientists had a unique chance to study the skies without the influence of aircraft contrails. Certainly those kinds of studies can be done now, since air travel has been greatly reduced. I wonder what other branches of science this shutdown is helping. Are air-pollution studies easier to conduct? Can certain types of infrastructure examinations be completed more easily, without the burden of traffic and congestion? How is electricity use being affected? It's an interesting line of thought to ponder.

This line of thinking, however, goes in a darker direction as well. How many more cases of depression will result from these upcoming months of isolation? Will suicides increase? What about divorce rates? How will children in school be impacted in terms of what they learn? What about their social development?

My daughter, who is younger than 2 years of age, is reaching a critical point in her development as a child. Her isolation from both family members and other children will certainly have a negative impact, at least in the short term. What kind of long term effects will it have? I guess only time will tell.

I was recently (and randomly) recommended the following video on YouTube, in which marbles race in a Formula One format on surprisingly well constructed tracks. This is the first "race" of the 2020 "season," complete with podiums at the end of each race, "yellow-marble" track cautions (at least one occurs in race 2), and a season-long point system for each team.

I cannot stress how ridiculous this all is, but it's oddly satisfying to watch. Also note that the first 60 seconds of each video can be skipped (the video below starts at the 1:00 mark for your convenience).

I use Python virtual environments a bunch at work, and this morning I finally put together a small helper script, saved as a Gist at GitHub, that makes enabling and disabling virtual environments a lot easier. I'm not sure why I didn't do this a lot earlier. Simply type work to enable the virtual environment, and work off to disable it. This script should be in your PATH, if it's not already obvious.

Here's the script itself:

@echo off

if exist "%cd%\venv" (
    if "%1" == "off" (
        echo Deactivating virtual environment
        call "%cd%\venv\Scripts\deactivate.bat"
        echo.
    ) else (
        echo Activating virtual environment
        call "%cd%\venv\Scripts\activate.bat"
    )
) else (
    echo No venv folder found in %cd%.
)

In the past few weeks, I've received a couple of calls each day from CVS Pharmacy. I'm not sure what has changed on their end to cause these calls to start, but it has gotten annoying enough that I did some searching on how to disable them. Here's how to do it:

1. Call 1-800-SHOP-CVS (1-800-746-7287)
2. Say "More choices" (you may have to say this twice to get to the right menu; I did)
3. Say "Calls"
4. The system will confirm your phone number
5. Say "Stop"
6. Say "Correct"

I watch far more YouTube these days than I do actual television. A series I just started is How to Build a House from the Essential Craftsman channel. In this series (that is still being released, as of this writing), they walk through the entire process of the house building process. From doing due diligence on the lot itself, to getting the building permit; from preparing the concrete forms to actually selecting the type of concrete (who knew there were different types?). I'm only about 15 or so episodes in, but it's been really eye opening in terms of the amount of work that actually goes into building a house.

Each episode teaches you something new, which has been a lot of fun. I recommend this series if you're a fan of This Old House or if you have an interest in how things are made. Here's the first video:

One of the best things about picking up woodworking as a hobby has been the learning process. Every project has taught me a number of new things, whether it's a new tool, technique, or construction method. My latest project was a kitchen bench which I designed myself using Sketchup Make 2017. One of the lessons this project taught me was not to over-complicate a design.

The following images show two designs for the leg assembly for the bench. The first design is what I built; the second is a simplified variant.

The first design made attaching the bench top more difficult than it should have been at the ends. It also complicated the finishing process, and resulted in the purchase of additional material (4/4 poplar, in this case, rather than the 8/4 I used elsewhere in the frame). I only discovered this after building the first design, of course, but that's all part of the learning process. My intention with design 1 was to improve the look and feel of the ends of the frame, but the irony is that this portion is nearly invisible with the top in place.

As I design future projects, I now know to take issues like these into account.

I stumbled on this video over the Christmas break, and I've watched it several times now. Lots of good advice in this video on being more productive, and how working both smarter and harder, is a key to success.

While cleaning out my office this afternoon (some early spring cleaning), I found this blast from the past: an official hint sheet for the Castle of the Winds game for Windows 3.1. What a terrific game that was!

I remember ordering the full game directly from Epic MegaGames (yes, that Epic), and receiving both the 3.5-inch floppy and this sheet. I'm including some pictures of the sheet here for posterity, as I haven't seen it mentioned anywhere around the internet. Now it has been!

One of the things we had to do after having our daughter was to child-proof a number of things around our house. Ensuring that bookcases (and similar furniture) didn't tip over was of primary concern, so I looked for various options. After trying some strap-style tie-downs (which didn't work worth a darn), I found the Hangman Anti-Tip Kit, which is marketed partially towards anchoring furniture in earthquake-prone areas. This device is simple to install, and is as solid as a rock. Highly recommended for those in a similar situation.

Our garage has been lit by two 60-watt incandescent bulbs for as long as I've lived in this house (over a decade now). Until recently, that never really bothered me. Now that I'm into woodworking, however, and now that it gets dark early in the evening, the lack of light really started to strike a nerve. In thinking about potential solutions, I initially thought I'd install some LED strip lights in the ceiling, but doing this meant I would (a) have to mount the lights to the ceiling and (b) adjust the wiring for the existing sockets to accommodate for these new lights.

I found a much better solution in these deformable lights, which I picked up on Amazon. There are a million variations of these, from a million different Chinese companies, but these were some of the cheaper ones I found. The lights simply screw into the existing socket, and you can then point the three paddles in the direction you desire. I haven't used them a ton yet, but wow, the difference in illumination is night and day. I highly recommend them. Here's a picture of our garage taken tonight, with no flash:

About a decade ago (!), I posted some thoughts on several episodes of the original Star Trek series, as well as the original movies. Since that time, I've tried a time or two to try and watch Star Trek: The Next Generation, but I could never get past the first few episodes of the first season. Over the past few months, however, my wife and I have been giving it a good college try, and I'm glad that we've stuck it out.

Since I'm going through these episodes for the first time, I thought it might be interesting to share my thoughts as I proceed. I don't know how often I'll post my thoughts as I go, but I'll give it a shot over the coming weeks. I will certainly try to comment on any stand-out episodes we encounter.

Season 1 There's not much to redeem this season, so I'll keep my thoughts on this brief. Both Q-centric episodes were good, and I particularly liked Conspiracy and Heart of Glory. Data has a good backstory episode, and the Dixon Hill holo-deck episode was fun. Everything else was pretty much garbage.

Season 2 Starting off with a real stinker (The Child), I wasn't too optimistic about this season. It, too, is fairly uneven, with lots of forgettable episodes (the clip show being the worst imaginable). However, a few great ones stood out:

• Loud as a Whisper was a solid episode about a deaf ambassador, played by a deaf actor.
• A Matter of Honor was great television, wall to wall.
• The Measure of a Man raised interesting moral questions about what it means to be human.
• Time Squared was a fun time-travel episode with a neat ending.
• Q Who was easily the best of the season. It introduces the Borg, was well acted, and had a terrific ending. Perhaps the best episode I've seen so far.

Season 3 We're only a few episodes in to this season as of this writing, but this has already been a solid season. It feels like a completely different show from this point. The sets are higher quality, the story lines are much more serious, and the acting is top notch.

• The Ensigns of Command was a fun Data-centric episode.
• The Survivors was super solid; it felt like an X-Files episode. Everything on a planet has been destroyed except a man, his wife, and the patch of ground around their home. Excellent episode.
• Who Watches the Watchers was pure science fiction candy. Felt like something the one of the science fiction greats would have written.
• The Bonding was a super deep episode about the loss of family members. Michael Dorn (as Worf) was excellent in this episode, and the cinematography was of note.

All in all, I'm enjoying this run through this old television show.