Technology – Chad Dotson

It's been awhile

By chad January 5, 2020Doing Things Better, Programming, Software Engineering

It has been quite a while since I last wrote about anything. It has been hard finding a topic that motivated me enough to write about. Python 2 EoL Python 2 has had a long run, longer than it should have. On January 1, 2020, Python 2 reached EoL after…

Installing PyAudio on macOS

By chad March 16, 2019ProgrammingNo Comments

Installing pyaudio on macOS is almost straightforward, except that you need portaudio installed. The easiest way to remedy this is to use homebrew. If you have your homebrew installing in the recomended location it is as simple as the following: brew install portaudio pipenv install pyaudio However if you have…

Working with bytes in Python 3

By chad January 14, 2019Programming, Software EngineeringNo Comments

Background Sometimes you find yourself needing to work at the byte-level in an application you are working on. I feel that in Python there are not enough examples of how to do this. There is also a lot of potential to over-complicate the solution. This Example I plan to cover…

Python CSV Module Oddity

By chad September 9, 2018Programming, Software EngineeringNo Comments

A Python Oddity I was using Python to encode a CSV file using a custom dialect recently when I noticed something odd. I noticed that the csv writer class takes an optional argument that enables you to change the line terminator. That's ok, however, the csv reader class does not…

Thoughts On Team Communication

By chad July 4, 2017Doing Things Better, Software EngineeringNo Comments

Awhile back I had some thoughts on communication. If you've ever played World of Tanks Blitz you'd know that basically its a team of tanks against another team of tanks. With the pick up, fast paced nature communication is minimal at best (sometimes limited to a single "<<<<<<<<<" or ">>>>>>>>>"…

iPhone 5 / Verizon 4G – No Bars / 3g No Service Fix

By chad June 10, 2017Technology, Tips18 Comments

Problem: You've got a iPhone 5 that reports that it has 4g LTE service but 0 bars and, if you turn off LTE, it reports No Service under 3g. Solution: The fix, turn off all roaming . Settings > Cellular > Cellular Data Options > Roaming - Turn off…

SSLError with Python 3.6.x on macOS Sierra

By chad January 22, 2017Programming, Tips18 Comments

SSLError Have you ran into trouble with SSLErrors after upgrading to Python 3.6 on macOS Sierra? For me, my first encounter was downloading the bokeh sample data (included here). Python 3.6.0 (v3.6.0:41df79263a11, Dec 22 2016, 17:23:13) [GCC 4.2.1 (Apple Inc. build 5666) (dot 3)] on darwin Type "help", "copyright", "credits"…

Pip Installs From Github

By chad January 10, 2017Programming, TipsNo Comments

Pip installs From github Installing a package from github is fairly simple. The following are examples of installing packages from github. # Install repo package from the url, master branch pip3 install git+https://github.com/username/repo.git @ Install repo from the specified branch pip3 install git+https://github.com/username/repo.git@branch # Install repo from the specified commit.…

Raspberry Pi 3 Mini Cluster

By chad June 11, 2016Raspberry Pi, TechnologyNo Comments

I recently constructed a mini cluster consisting of 3 Raspberry Pi 3s. I am planning on using these machines for various little projects. I've installed some services on one of the nodes. Currently that node hosts Redis and RabbitMQ instances. I'm sure that I'll have other services to install in…

Odd Behavior in Python 2.7

By chad April 20, 2016ProgrammingNo Comments

I was tinkering around with replacing the print statement with the print function in a Python 2 script when I ran across this peculiar oddity. >>> from __future__ import print_function as print File "<stdin>", line 1 from __future__ import print_function as print ^ SyntaxError: invalid syntax >>> from __future__ import…