Status update, July 2020

Published on August 01, 2020

Time for a new monthly update.

After some tribulations, I decided on a local VPS provider for the Mentorados project. I used dokku to create a space where the rails application could be easily deployed. I ended up diving into their codebase and making a few contributions:

• viewdocs: Add tests to the frontmatter support feature
• dokku: Delete dokkurc recursively during uninstall
• dokku: Install sudo when installing from source
• dokku: Ensure web installer creates files with correct permissions
• dokku: Rewrite upgrade instructions
• dokku: documenting behavior of VHOST and HOSTNAME

I have a few more dokku related contributions in the works / pending review:

• viewdocs: Enable path based routing
• dokku: Stop using VHOST when listing app domains and urls
• dokku: Remove web installer

I edited and published two episodes of the podcast Conversas em Código (portuguese):

• Aventuras no TypeScript (portuguese)
• Enferrujados (portuguese)

I looked for free software self hosted alternatives to simplecast.fm. Handling analytics seems to be the biggest challenge. They work by tracking the audio file HTTP requests. There’s a set of guidelines by the Interactive Advertising Bureau. This might be relevant if we ever decide to take on sponsors.

I didn’t migrate anything yet, but I did end up doing a couple of minor contributions related to this:

• open-podcast-analytics: Fix markdown typo
• adistancia.ansol.org: Add podcast publishing platforms (portuguese)

I went through my pending pull requests to try to push them forward. I rewrote a rails PR from 2016:

• rails: Add config.action_dispatch.cookies_default_options

I’m not sure how or if I’ll get that merged.

Back in may, I started working on cleaning up my web server. I took inventory of what’s hosted there. Now, I started working on automating the nginx configurations and static website builds:

• https://github.com/hugopeixoto/static-websites

One of the websites I’m hosting is vasteroids. I noticed that the build was taking too long, so I decided to update its dependencies. This caused a dependency vulnerability warning coming from debug, which I traced to A-Frame using an outdated fork. I updated the fork, let’s see if it gets traction:

• aframe: Security vulnerability in ‘debug’ dependency

Back in 2016, I submitted a fix to git-crypt. I got some feedback this week, and I’m testing the new solution by the author.

I spent some time working with D3 to find and organize some information regarding contact tracing applications. I’m also contributing to the My data done right project, but there’s still not much to see.

I migrated all of the Make or Break websites to my webserver. We have an API in elixir, so we were using a Digital Ocean droplet to host everything. Since we don’t need the backend until we start accepting registrations for the next edition, I saved some money by destroying the droplet and using my own webserver to host the static websites.

I’ve been working on the Cyberscore codebase, trying to optimize some background processes. I’ve reduced the running time from 10 minutes to 30 seconds, but ensuring that nothing’s broken is taking its time.

I had to do some admin work for Life on Mars. I’ve resumed the use of plain text accounting to keep track of things.