This one’s for my fav three musketeers, Angela, Callie & Val. Been ~20 years, think much has changed?
I’ve inherited a mini PHP application to take registrations and store them - like Google Forms (Q: “Hey Chris! Why don’t you just use Google Forms?” A: Privacy laws) but run on a Waterloo Engineering faculty server.
Then I realized that I know pretty much nothing about the Nexus system! Well, I know a bit. But there’s no real source of information on what all you can do with your WatIAM account in terms of the engineering computers available. At least, I couldn’t find anything. So here it is: A Practical Introduction to What You Can Do with your Nexus Account at the University of Waterloo.
- Storage Space: ecfile
Yournexus account comes with a whole 2 gigs of file space just for you that you can just toss stuff into. You can access it by just logging onto a Engineering computer-lab computer (it’s maps to the N:\ drive when you log in), over SFTP if you’re a normal computer person who just wants to get things done (and the cool kids will know that that also means you can connect directly over SSH if you’re a l33t h4x0r who lives on the command-line), or through the Nexus web application if you just want to upload your resume, dammit.
That’s rad, I’ve stored a bunch of HTML files (“uhhh, here’s a link to my resume!”) and other static stuff (tossed up my old high school portfolio and random projects I was working on).
So that’s awesome, especially for transferring files or putting things online that you don’t want to stick on imgur or someone’s IT policy won’t let you stick things on Dropbox.- Easiest way is the Nexus webapp - just go to http://mywaterloo.ca (or http://nexusmail.uwaterloo.ca) and click on the File Manager on the left side. Ooooh, files!
- Connecting via SFTP is easy, just get yo’self an FTP program (FileZilla is my homie) and use the following credentials:
server: sftp.eng.uwaterloo.ca
username: <your WatIAM username>
password: <this should be obvious by now> - Connecting via SSH is way hardcore, you are obviously +t3h_pwn3r3r+. From the command line, just go one ‘o these: ssh <your WatIAM username>@sftp.eng.uwaterloo.ca and then enter your password when prompted. BOOM. You’re now in, Neo.
- PHP Applications
I found out you can run PHP scripts right from your webspace, which is super-useful. Here’s the output of phpinfo(), let’s see what we can learn from it:- Server name is schooner.uwaterloo.ca. Teehee.
- The server’s running Apache. Full string is Apache/1.3.41 (Unix) DAV/1.0.3 mod_perl/1.30 mod_ruby/1.2.4 Ruby/1.8.2(2004-12-25) mod_ssl/2.8.31 OpenSSL/0.9.8i PHP/5.2.8 with Suhosin-Patc
- You have no control over what’s turned on or installed - this is probably a good idea, although it makes me sad. The php.ini file is at /usr/local/etc/php.ini, but there was nothing there and I couldn’t make one:
ecserv15[16] touch php.ini
touch: php.ini: Permission denied
Similarly, /usr/local/etc/php gets parsed for more .ini files (and one is reportedly parsed at extensions.ini), but I can’t touch anything in there. OK, whatever, again this is probably a good idea. - All of the usual fun modules are available (GD, hash, JSON, XML, MySQL, SQLite3, PDF and more) so it’s in no way a gimped PHP installation.
- Random scripts through CGI
The IST website mentions the ability to run arbitrary scripts (basically anything that the server itself - a typical FreeBSD machine - can run). The prospect of being able to run random Python, Perl, whatever scripts is awesome, but they use CGIWrap to do it and there are a few steps you have to take before you can get there.- Make a “cgi-bin” directory under public_html by FTP or SSH or whatever your fancy is. Make sure it has read permissions for users that aren’t you, I set mine (and every file under it) to 755.
- Put whatever scripts you want in there, make sure they have the proper shebang at the top so we know what interpreter to use! (For Python:
#!/usr/local/bin/python. For Perl:#!/usr/local bin/perl.) - Make sure your scripts are also executable, set that bad boy to 755.
- Navigate yourself to
the back of the line, with your feet, and stand there with your shirta URL like this to access your script: http://www.eng.uwaterloo.ca/cgi-bin/cgiwrap/<your WatIAM username>/<the script file>
Did that work? Probably not! If it gave you a 500 error, you’re on the right track - this script output is so damn raw, it doesn’t even write the HTTP response headers for you. You can debug http://www.eng.uwaterloo.ca/cgi-bin/cgiwrapd/<your WatIAM username>/<the script file> (notice the d in “cgiwrapd” - for debugging!) and it’ll show you the output. Scroll all the way down, and your script should be there just fine - what you have to do is write a proper HTTP response yourself. I made the world’s lamest web server as a test file at http://www.eng.uwaterloo.ca/~cnvandev/cgi-bin/test.py, and you can see the final output at http://www.eng.uwaterloo.ca/cgi-bin/cgiwrap/cnvandev/test.py. Boom indeed, sir.
Ideally? Get a server or an HTTP library to write the responses for you. Other then that, you’re good.
Remember that time a Canadian rock band made a song about socialism and nobody gave a fuck?
Oh you Americans.
Remember that time every Disney movie ever was about helping your friends and if people are in a rough spot, they’re down on their luck and just need a break?
No, but I remember that welfare queen Snow White squatting in community housing and living off the avails of the hardworking middle class.
I bet Doc wanted a tax break too
Right and that Aladdin guy he was poor and useless and just wanted handouts and had no dreams and never amounted to anything and no rich princess ever wanted to associate with him.
Remember that time a Canadian rock band made a song about socialism and nobody gave a fuck?
Oh you Americans.
Remember that time every Disney movie ever was about helping your friends and if people are in a rough spot, they’re down on their luck and just need a break?
UGH I HATE THIS CARD
my roommate’s stalker/creeper was the worst, so I can’t not hate this card
but but but but what if you just like butts :( what if there’s the nicest butt guys what if
(Source: nerdbotmk2)
how every engineering student acts when they get their covvies
That’s what I did!
(Source: brienneof-tarth)
- We never had “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” (which was almost an interim solution to people’s concerns over homosexuality in the military - sort of a sweep-it-under-the-rug solution). We banned homosexuals from being in the military since 1976, which was kind of shitty, and we decided that if we found a gay servicemen we’d investigate and release them from duty. Took us 25 or so years but we realized that was a dick move, and so it was repealed starting in 2003, and nationally in 2005 - we’ve had openly gay servicemen and same-sex unions ever since (in fact the first same-sex marriage Nova Scotia’s Canadian Forces Base Greenwood and was described as “low-key but touching,” which is goddamned adorable.)
- We had an economic stimulus package that more or less did nothing, according to the Fraser Institute, although the government is going with the fact that most of the spending was “more long-term.” More importantly, though, we didn’t have a bunch of our banks collapse following the recession. Our banks are more regulated than the US ones so we didn’t need to bail out companies as the economy tripped itself up. We were hit with harder times, but we were fairly insulated from the more immediate, severe effects of the recession - in fact, you could argue that a lot of our recession was due to the US (a pretty major trading partner) being in a recession.
- Health Care? We’ve had that nation-wide since 1962, it first started in Saskatchewan in the mid-’40s. Wait times might suck sometimes, but we don’t turn away poor people and leave ‘em to die, and the government will actually threaten to shut down clinics for taking private payments (British Colombia did it in 2006).
- We were not part of the “Coalition of the Willing” and never had full troops in Iraq that needed to be pulled out - although we occasionally loaned some to help out the US. In total we had 50 or 60 members of the military participate in the conflict, including four ships that patrolled the Persian Gulf as part of a task force. We actually have a decent list of war resisters from the US, and there are MPs trying to pass laws to give them safe harbour, although we will deport them if the US forces us to and it’s a pretty big issue. We’ve concentrated most of our efforts for rebuilding the country, and sending people (like Bob Rae) to help with that.
- Similarly, we pulled our troops out of Afghanistan last summer when we decided the job was done, despite US forces being at their peak. We still have 950 personnel there now as part of a NATO training mission to train the Afghani army.
People always give me shit about loving Thunderbird, and fuck them. I always prefer desktop apps over web apps, and I think store-and-sync solutions are the way to go rather than crafting entirely new UIs in requires-a-connection HTML. What can I do with Thunderbird that I can’t do using Gmail? Pay attention to five (yes, I have five) different email accounts that I’ll use - I use one as my primary account, but I have others that will occasionally get messages that I want to receive. I have three personal emails (old Hotmail, newer Gmail that Google automatically changed all of my services over to and I still receive offline GChat messages on, and a more professional-looking university account.) I also have the email account of a website I’m the webmaster for, and whatever work email I’m using right now (I switch jobs a lot, as anyone at Waterloo will tell you). It’s also becoming fairly popular to have an email for a project that you’ll do - let’s say you have a decently-popular library on Github, and two “fuckyeah<pluralnoun>” Tumblrs, and a novelty Twitter account you’re running. Plus you’re in a band that’s totally gonna make it; these are all emails that you’d probably love to make, but the overhead of creating another email account is annoying and you don’t want twelve other accounts to check - this is where Thunderbird really shines. I wish they had the same talent for pushing super-useful filter types as Gmail, or the same creativity in interfaces as other applications, but there are killer functions I can’t get anywhere else. Automatic Dropboxing or Ubuntu-One-ing of attachments over a certain size? Yes. Easy signup of custom email domains for your mom? Cool. This is some decent innovation in the space and it’s good shit when you’re on it, man.
So here’s some more shit I’d love to see.
Firstly, I’d love to see a backup function. You can already do it by Dropboxing the mailbox folders, but I think there’s more explicit and more easy ways it could be set up, and it should be set up through the application so it feels like it’s part of the same package. One of the big things I like about Thunderbird is that I own my email - I have a copy of all of it that I can access at any time, regardless of my connectivity to some external server. This is actually a huge selling point to me - it’s like having MP3s. Yeah it’s all data on a hard drive, but it’s just an audio stream with some compression, which means I can do whatever I want with it in a way that I can’t with streaming music services, as great as they are. I don’t feel like I’m free to do what I want with my Rdio music, and to a very visceral extent it’s been demonstrated to me that it belongs to someone else and I’m using it under their terms. For a few days I couldn’t listen to GOOD Music’s Cruel Summer - this is a #1 album, guys - for reasons unknown. Wasn’t told why (although it was most likely some kind of dispute with a label), didn’t know when it started and when it finished, but the shit I had access to changed on me. This is like Amazon deleting my eBooks, this is like Netflix randomly pulling A Serbian Movie, this is shit that’s out of my hands. Every act demonstrates to me that I’m not in control of my entertainment, which means I own it as much as I own books in a library.
When I use Thunderbird, I own my emails in a very visceral way. Provided my computer hasn’t crashed and I have it all saved on IMAP (see aforementioned “roll my own webmail” system), I can search through conversations I had decades ago on my first email address.
Other things I would love to be able to do on Thunderbird:
- Something more interesting than threaded email. Love the conversation view add-on, get somebody else to design an email experience that’s beautiful and actually makes me more productive. You know what would actually be awesome? Wave integration between Thunderbird users. Do it seamlessly and do it in the background so nobody notices until they hear that they can do all this awesome shit with what they thought were static messages.
- Roll my own webmail. I’d pay a few bucks a month for a Thunderbird-run webmail client as long as it didn’t suck. Let me access my email from anywhere.
- Thunderbird mobile. The email app is great in most mobile ecosystems, but I think Thunderbird could innovate. Let me sync my accounts and passwords, use add-ons, etc.
- Hook into SMS, store my SMS messages, either with the app or through some kind of external service. “Desktop SMS” using this app, send and receive text messages while I’m at work without all of my shit vibrating all over the place.
- I love the chat service for something like Facebook Chat because with the new messaging/chat duality that’s happening with Facebook it doesn’t quit fit both email and simple chatting. I’m not feeling Thunderbird for something as thin as MSN or google chat, but it’s actually super-convenient for “longer-form” messaging that integrates into email or similar messaging services like Facebook Chat and GChat (who sends my offline messages to my email). If it could download all of my previous messages for a specific account (not sure if that’s even possible with the Facbook messaging API) so I could see history for all contacts and search through it all…bliss. It also removes another information silo - I now have control over my Facebook messages in a way that I didn’t used to, and can search through them, read them offline, etc.
- A better way to coordinate where and when I get notified of my messages. Tried setting up a desktop SMS service and I’ll get the SMS on my phone, and an email and a GChat message…both of which notify my desktop and phone. That’s five notifications (minimum - thank god my tablet isn’t here) where I need one.
- Sync for Thunderbird! This one should actually be I have a home computer and a work computer (and potentially a phone, if Thunderbird happens), I hate setting up accounts I don’t remember the passwords to, and the password manager is honestly the only way I’ll find passwords for mail accounts that I haven’t set up in >4 months.
I’d also love a contacts app that synchronizes everything to everything and can combine my contacts together and keep them there. From an idea I had earlier:
- A contacts organizer that rolls a little black book. Backed by some service, but also available for download and import to let my phone/email client/whatever use it. Something that separates active contacts from the people you know and just want to find out about. Something to hide “personal information” from everything else/anyone else, so you can keep notes on people to remember things about them (“so-and-so’s girlfriend, we’re all a little iffy on the relationship but who knows maybe she’s actually not a huge bitch when they’re alone together”), but hide potentially sensitive things from them unlike the “Notes” field in most Contacts solutions.
- Add the ability to copy information they’ve provided (websites, other accounts, emails, birthdays, etc.) through other services to your main service. Android has a great implementation of that, mobile phones can do it really well, why can’t desktop apps? And turn that on as a synching feature. Maintain control over “primary” information. Default to what you’ve set, but keep an eye open for changes they’ve made since you made a change, have the option to permanently ignore things… keep a good record and avoid spam/jokes/whatever, but keep an eye out for actual useful data about people.
The Evernote OS X app is awesome except for the part where the search bar is three inches wide (plus padding!) and the “New Note” button gets shoved off to the side. This isn’t some weirdly-small setup, this is using 2/3 of the screen on a brand new Macbook Pro.
