In this guide I will show Python code that will use HTTP GET requests on the Cisco APIC / ACI system and pull data. This will let you get information from the APIC, and display it in a better way. There are many things missing from the GUI (mostly on the reporting front) that you can create with some basic Python scripting.

There are two formatting types to get data in and out of the APIC: JSON and XML. I will show both of them in this guide so you can decide which one works better in your environment. From a programmers perspective, I like JSON because it is basically a Dict in Python (which is nice for processing). With XML you need to convert it into a usable format using the xmltodict library.

I am going to run through a quick procedure to make the downloadable Cisco CUCM ISO images bootable. When you download them they are non-bootable for some reason. Use this at your own risk, and you must have a support contract to use any Cisco products. I am not liable for anything you do or mess up!

Cisco is nice enough to include the boot options and ISOLINUX files and configuration necessary to boot it. They just don’t add the boot sector to the ISO file.

I have quite a few wordpress sites under management, and updating the plugins and themes can get quite tedious. This script will update all of them automatically (you will need SSH and CRON access for this) to whatever time-frame you set it to. The trick is to use “wp-cli” which is a command line toolset for WordPress that lets you do just about anything (you can even reset admin passwords so be careful who has access to this stuff).

If you are creating things with ReactJS, it’s sometimes nice to use it in WordPress. I will describe how to use it in a page, but this should also work for just a post.

You can do this pretty easily with a couple plugins:

“Scripts N Styles” - this plugin will allow you to add JavaScript to your Page.

“Per Page Add to Head” - this will allow you to add the necessary JavaScript libraries to the head portion of the WordPress page. This is how React is actually loaded.

Does your application have users? I hope so! Keep them around and active.

The best way to get users engaged, and keep them coming back is to use email marketing. You can create a sign-up workflow, move users to different workflows based on what they are doing in your app, and re-engage users that haven’t logged in for X months/weeks. Its very easy, so here is some code that connects to the MailChimp API and lets you add users to Lists. Lists are what trigger the emails for each email address.

I have been chasing down an odd issue with a Meteor/React app I am building. The error showing up in the browser console is:

You are currently using minified code outside of NODE_ENV === ‘production’. This means that you are running a slower development build of Redux. You can use loose-envify (https://github.com/zertosh/loose-envify) for browserify or DefinePlugin for webpack (http://stackoverflow.com/questions/30030031) to ensure you have the correct code for your production build.

I have been struggling with this question: Where should I live?

Close to work? Close to Friends? Close to things to do, close to hikes, close to biking trails?

All of these go into a decision, if you have children a huge part of that is schools and a younger neighborhood. I don’t have to worry about that.

A bunch of those questions are personal issues that you need to decide on how much time is spent on each.

I have been on an email cleanse lately, so going back and deleting old emails that there is no reason to keep. Over the years I have been quite good at labeling anything that is keep-worthy, but a few can slip through the cracks. Here is a simple search you can run inside your gmail box that shows all the emails you can look through and delete.

Search for this to find anything that doesn’t have a label,  isn’t in trash, your inbox nor drafts. The new Gmail search should return 100 results, so look through and see any you may have missed to label.

If your not familiar with tor, check out https://www.torproject.org/ to get more information. Its a secure proxy system that basically anonymizes your ip address.

You can install the Tor client and connect or a super easy way is to run your own proxy and just have traffic flow through it. Don’t have to start up anything, its always running if you want to use it.

The Beaglebone black is a perfect device to run a Tor proxy on your home network. Once its setup, you can leave it plugged in via ethernet, a USB power supply and its always available. It makes a decent Ubuntu Linux server for development purposes too (although it compiles a little slow).  For a temporary website or learning a programming language its a great deal. We will also have a shortcut on your desktop that you can click on to make chrome go into incognito mode, and connect to our proxy with just one click.

I am a super Geek, so having my own ESXi server is a necessity. I have been using Vmware stuff since the company was created back in the day.

I had Dell T310 from my old business so its a perfect Vmware server. Has 4 hard disk slots, upgraded it to 16GB RAM, and two Ethernet ports. I have a small Belkin home wifi router which only has 4 gigabit ports, and I wanted to plug one more device in. What to do? Well my server has an extra gig port, its not doing anything, so why not connect that up an Ubuntu virtual machine and bridge between the two interfaces (can most likely do this in ESX, but whats the fun in that)?