AngularJS is not Angular
By Piotr Hankiewicz
October 3, 2017
Why I’m doing this?
I often see that people use AngularJS and Angular names interchangeably. It’s an obvious mistake for someone familiar with the front-end programming.
If you don’t believe me (why would you?) just go to the Angular team repository or Wikipedia (Angular and AngularJS).
AngularJS (1.X)
AngularJS is a popular open-source JavaScript framework created by Miško Hevery released in 2010 that was subsequently taken over by Google. It’s not the same thing as Angular. The latest stable version of the framework is 1.6.6.
Angular (2+)
Angular is an open-source TypeScript-based framework created by Google from scratch. It’s been totally rewritten and not compatible with AngularJS. The latest stable version of the framework is 4.4.4. They started from version 2 to avoid even more confusion.
Summary
I feel I have made the world better. Go now and correct everyone (it’s such fun)!
angular
Disaster Recovery — Miami to Dallas in one hit
By Ian Neilsen
October 3, 2017
Hurricane Irma came a knocking but didn’t blow Miami away.
Hurricanes are never fun, and neither is knowing that your business servers may be in the direct path of a major outage due to a natural disaster.
Recently we helped a client prepare a disaster recovery environment, 4 days out pending Hurricane Irma approaching Miami—where it happens their entire server ecosystem sat. In recent months we had been discussing a long-term disaster recovery plan for this client’s infrastructure, but the final details hadn’t been worked out yet, and no work begun on it, when the news of the impending storm started to arrive.
Although the Miami datacenter they are using is highly regarded and well-rated, the client had the foresight to think about an emergency project to replicate their entire server ecosystem out of Miami to somewhere a little safer.
Fire suits on, battle helmets ready, GO! Two team members jumped in and did an initial review of the ecosystem: six Linux servers, one Microsoft SQL Server database with about 50 GB of data, and several little minions. All of this hosted on a KVM virtualization platform. OK, easy, right? Export the VM disks and stand up in a new datacentre on a …
devops disaster-recovery virtualization replication
Using PostgreSQL cidr and inet types, operators, and functions
By Phineas Jensen
September 28, 2017
A common problem in database design is how to properly store IP addresses: They are essentially positive 32 or 128 bit integers, but they’re more commonly written as blocks of 8 or 16 bit integers written in decimal and separated by periods (in IPv4) or written in hexadecimal and separated by colons (in IPv6). That may lead many people to store IP addresses as strings, which comes with a host of downsides.
For example, it’s difficult to do subnet comparisons and validation requires complex logic or regular expressions, especially when considering the variety of ways IPv6 addresses can be stored with upper- or lower-case hexadecimal letters, :0000: or :0: for a group of zeros, or :: as several groups of zeros (but only once in an address).
Storing them as integers or a fixed number of bytes forces parsing and a uniform representation, but is otherwise no better.
To solve these problems in PostgreSQL, try using the inet and cidr types, which are designed for storing host and network addresses, respectively, in either IPv4 or IPv6 or both.
In many cases, these types could end up simply being used as glorified integers: they display nicely as IP addresses should be, and support …
database networking postgres
Working on production systems
By Greg Sabino Mullane
September 27, 2017
As consultants, the engineers at End Point are often called upon to do work on production systems—in other words, one or more servers that are vital to our client’s business. These range from doing years of planning to perform a major upgrade for a long-standing client, down to jumping into a brand-new client for an emergency fix. Either way, the work can be challenging, rewarding, and a little bit nerve-wracking.
Regardless of how you end up there, following some basic good practices may reduce the chance of problems coming up, keep you calm during the chaos, and make the process easier for both you and the client.
Preparation
Unless this is a true emergency, doing major work on a production system (e.g. upgrading a database server) should involve a good amount or preparation. By the time the big night arrives (yes, it is always late at night!) you should have gone through this list:
- Do lots and lots of testing. Use systems as close as possible to production, and run through the process until it becomes second nature.
- Know the impact on the business, and the downtime window anticipated by the rest of the company. …
postgres
Liquid Galaxy Goes to Chile for IMPAC4
By Bryan Berry
September 26, 2017
Marine Protected Areas: Bringing the people and ocean together
Earlier this month, The Marine Conservation Institute and the Waitt Foundation brought a Liquid Galaxy to Chile to showcase interactive and panoramic ocean content at the Fourth International Marine Protected Areas Congress in La Serena. This conference was a convergence of marine biologists, ocean agencies, and environmentalists from around the globe to discuss the state of and future development initiatives of Marine Protected Areas worldwide.
The Marine Conservation Institute is working on a mapping project called MPAtlas that visually catalogs the development of Marine Protected Areas across the globe as well as the Global Ocean Refuge System which pushes for elevated standards for Marine Protected Areas and advocates for a 30% protected marine ecosystem by 2030.
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| mpatlas.org |
We built new content to showcase the GLORES areas in Google Earth as well as data visualizations of the global system of Marine Protected Areas. In addition, we collected any past oceanographic related content we’ve developed for the Liquid Galaxy platform. This included underwater panoramic media from the Catlin Seaview Survey, …
conference visionport event
Web Security Services Roundup
By Phineas Jensen
September 19, 2017
Security is often a very difficult thing to get right, especially when it’s not easy to find reliable or up-to-date information or the process of testing can be confusing and complicated. We have a lot of history and experience working on the security of websites and servers, and we’ve found many tools and websites to be very helpful. Here is a collection of those.
Server-side security
There are a number of tools available that can scan your website to check for common vulnerabilities and the quality of SSL/TLS configuration, as well as give great tips on how to improve security for your website.
- Qualys SSL Labs Server Test takes a simple domain name, performs a series of tests from a variety of clients, and returns a simple letter grade (from A+ down to F) indicating the quality of your SSL/TLS configuration, as well as a detailed summary for a host of configuration options. It covers certificates key and algorithms; TLS and SSL configurations; cipher suites; handshakes on a wide variety of platforms including Android, iOS, Chrome, Firefox, Internet Explorer and Edge, Safari, and others; common protocols and vulnerabilities; and other details.
- HTTP Security Report does a similar …
browsers hosting security tls sysadmin
Client Case Study: Vervante—Publishing, Production and Fulfillment Services
By Greg Hanson
August 28, 2017
A real-life scenario
The following is a real-life example of services we have provided for one of our clients.
Vervante Corporation provides a print on demand and order fulfillment service for thousands of customers, in their case, “Authors”. Vervante needed a way for these authors to keep track of their products. Essentially they needed an Inventory management system. So we designed a complete system from the ground up that allows Vervante’s authors many custom functions that simply are not offered in a pre-built package anywhere.
This is also a good time to mention that you should always view your web presence, in fact your business itself, as a process, not a one time “setup”. Your products will change, your customers will change, the web will change, everything will change. If you want your business to be successful, you will change.
Some Specifics
While it is beyond the scope of this case study to describe all of the programs that were developed for Vervante, it will be valuable for the reader to sample just a few of the areas to understand how diverse a single business can be. Here are a few of the functions we have built from scratch, over several years to continue to …
case-study clients ecommerce interchange
Custom eCommerce Development
By Greg Hanson
August 28, 2017
“Custom eCommerce” means different things to different people and organizations. For some eCommerce shopping cart sites that pump out literally hundreds of websites a year, it may mean you get to choose from a dizzying array of “templates” that can set your website apart from others.
For others, it may be a slightly more involved arrangement where you can “create categories” to group display of your products on your website … after you have entered your products into a prearranged database schema.
There are many levels of “custom” out there. Generally speaking, the closer you get to true “custom”, the more accurate the term “development” becomes.
It is very important for your business that you decide what fits your needs, and that you match your needs to a platform or company that can provide appropriate services. As you can imagine, this will depend entirely on your business.
Example scenarios
For example, a small one- or two-person business that does fulfillment of online orders may be well suited for a pre-built approach, where you pay a monthly fee to simply log into an admin, add your products, and some content, and the company does the rest. It handles all of the …
ecommerce