It took several attempts, but I eventually found out why I could not access the value of a "parsed" variable within Twilio Studio while using the HTTP Widget. Someone else may encounter this error, so here's how I resolved it. The following 3 attempts are screenshots from the log viewer […]
Coding and Techy Stuff
This "Coding and Techy Stuff" category is here because peripatetically I make a living as a software engineer. This is where I put anything related to coding and technology, and sometimes just unrelated information such as you might find posted on ycombinator's always-intellectually-curious Hacker News.
Compile and Install FreeSWITCH 1.8.2 onto Ubuntu 18.4.2 LTS
This closely follows the excellent and very concise instructions at another site: "FreeSWITCH 1.8.2 on Ubuntu 18.4 LTS". I found a few unexpected twists and turns before it was working, so I've put this information together to help others who encounter these or similar issues. Dependencies […]
Iota is a smart, clever actor in the open source community
In a blog post too obviously spreading fear, uncertainty, and doubt regarding Iota, writer Nick Johnson declares, among other things: "Iota is a bad actor in the open source community." Here is his justification: Next, and in my mind most damningly, Sergey Ivancheglo, Iota’s cofounder, […]
Why voiceprint will be around for a long time to come
I've been researching voiceprints, Kaldi, and speech-recognition in general, and stumbled upon this gem. It's clear that voiceprint is going to be around for a long time to come, because it sits in a sort of "Goldilocks zone" of the ease-of-use vs. secure spectrum in several ways. Look at […]
"I want an agency that makes sure no important thing remains undone because it doesn’t fit somebody's mission"
Secretary of Defense Neil McElroy said: "I want an agency that makes sure no important thing remains undone because it doesn’t fit somebody's mission." And so IARPA was created. IARPA / DARPA was involved in creating Babel and Kaldi, among other things of course. Now I'm learning Kaldi. […]
Beautiful photos show how water can look when it's blasted with sound
Linden Gledhill, a pharmaceutical biochemist, builds custom gear that can record the beautiful, weird, and sometimes bizarre intersection of science, art, and nature. His latest photographs of cymatics, or standing waves in water, are breathtaking. Source: Trippy photos show how beautiful water […]
A simple Asterisk and Nexmo setup for a softphone with a remote virtual number
If you're new to Asterisk, you can spend many hours and even days figuring out how things work before you get something working. And then as soon as you have it working, you'll get slammed by hackers trying to break in. I recently spent those hours and days getting asterisk working. So I have […]
Getting Fail2ban and VoipBL working with Asterisk on Ubuntu 18.04
The information on installing and configuring Asterisk, fail2ban, and VoipBL is all over the map. It is hilariously not easy to find what actually works. Way more confusing typos and important pieces left out on numerous sites, like there is some sort of conspiracy to make it difficult to install […]
A fix for apt install asterisk on Ubuntu 18.04
After using "apt install asterisk" on Ubuntu 18.04.2, I noticed when running "service asterisk status" that there was a problem with the radius radcli configuration. It looked like this: radcli: rc_read_config: rc_read_config: can't open /etc/radiusclient-ng/radiusclient.conf: No […]
Setting Up CMU Sphinx (PocketSphinx) on Ubuntu
The instructions in a blog post for Ubuntu 14.04 (linked below) worked for me on Ubuntu 18, with one extra step after you complete the following: I tried to run it after these steps and got this error: cannot open shared object file: No such file or directory on pocketsphinx So I ran the following […]
Elm RealWorld frontend with .NET Core backend Step by Step
It was ironic, really, that I pretty much did exactly what the intro to the RealWorld project described as a frustrating path in its "this is what we're fixing" introductory post at Medium. Without going into detail, let's just say I spent the past few months doing a lot of stumbling while […]
Error TS6053 File '...node_modules/keycode/keycode.d.ts' not found.
What to do when you see the following in Visual Studio? "Error TS6053 File '...node_modules/keycode/keycode.d.ts' not found." I have learned that whenever I see this error, to simply restart Visual Studio and recompile. The error goes away. If anyone knows of an easier way to resolve this, […]
Error TS6053 File '(path...) /node_modules/keycode/keycode.d.ts' not found
Have you gotten this error? Is it sometimes accompanied by the even more rare Failed to load view '...' because it's not a React element If so, restart Visual Studio. These errors seem to go away when you do that. Wasn't able to find this information by Googling, so here it is for you. Hm, that 2nd […]
A very simple "Using C# HttpClient from Sync and Async code"
Simplicity is so nice. I just spent two hours zooming all over the web looking for a very simple HTTPClient code sample. Of dozens that I saw, all of them were overcomplicated. I knew it was just a matter of a few lines of code, and couldn't believe the poor quality and needless complexity I was […]
How to Install the Falcon Agent on Ubuntu Linux (full instructions)
After wrestling for a while trying to get CrowdStrike's falcon sensor app running properly in Ubuntu, we found that the online documentation is incomplete. A round trip to their support team got us this PDF (Falcon Sensor for Linux Deployment Guide Documentation Support _ Falcon), which gave us the […]
An adventure begins
Enter new UNIX password: Retype new UNIX password: passwd: password updated successfully Changing the user information for clearhat Enter the new value, or press ENTER for the default Full Name []: Clearhat Room Number []: Work Phone []: Home Phone []: (816)xxx-xxxx Other []: @@clearhat.org Is the […]
Merging an existing React project with an empty Visual Studio .NET Core backend
I'm new to React so I was pleased to finally discover that this task is very easy. After going through all the tutorials on how things work, and diligently searching down a decent React project template, I finally had an existing open source React dashboard that I wanted to integrate into an […]
Installing ASP.NET Core 2.1 on Ubuntu 18.04 Linux with Apache
An article on github.io gave all the instructions I needed to get the components above working, and it's a great tutorial. However, I needed to tweak a few commands to get them working, so I'm creating this post here and perhaps will save someone else an afternoon's research if they can find this […]
No longer a superfan of Google
Right about the time that Google eliminated their "don't be evil" motto a few years ago, I finally began to lose hope in them, after years of unbounded enthusiasm. It was kind of a final straw thing. From then til now, my previous superfan enthusiasm with all their amazing technology -- […]
A little anarchy in your pocket
I might, could, possibly know someone involved in working on the backend of this MineCraft Pocket Edition server together in their spare time. Or I might not. Either way, if you're into Minecraft, and you found yourself here reading this sentence, you may enjoy taking a tour of this Nukkit server. […]