Making Sense of Numbers

May 03, 2012 by Eric Richardson

Eric Richardson

After several partial-deployment tests, we launched StreamMachine at KPCC on Tuesday evening, putting online listeners in the hands of a Node.JS app that I barely figured out how to start writing back in January.

There have been a few hiccups—I don't think people with Roku boxes are very happy at the moment—but on the whole it's been a very successful launch.

While audio streaming provides a number of interesting challenges—how do you handle deployment of new app versions when your connections are of indefinite length, for instance—I'm really interested to play with ways of visualizing listener behavior and interactions. — Continue Reading...

Authenticating a Google Service Account

April 26, 2012 by Eric Richardson

I spent a few hours at work today trying to make sense of Google's new OAuth2 service accounts, implementing code to generate the JSON Web Token it wants and then query Google's auth server to get the OAuth token. Google intends the accounts to be used by backend services, which makes a lot more sense than shoe-horning them into access via some user's account as is normally the case.

Only after I had all that and I tried to make an API request did I realize that Google doesn't support service accounts in Analytics yet, so all of that work was in vain. To try to keep it from going to waste, I figured I would post it here. Looking to authenticate a Google service account for a Ruby app? Hopefully this will save you a little time. — Continue Reading...

Scratching your own itch...

April 25, 2012 by Eric Richardson

Eric Richardson

It feels nice to be able to build something that scratches your own itch, even if it may be one that no one else has. This morning I commuted to work while listening to some "nearly live" radio via a small iPhone app that I put together to work with StreamMachine, my experiment in next-gen streaming audio server.

While we didn't get picked to receive the grant I wrote about a few weeks ago, I've been saying for several months now that I really wanted an app to let me grab a commute's worth of audio just before I walked out the door and onto the subway. — Continue Reading...

Extra terabytes

April 18, 2012 by Eric Richardson

Eric Richardson

Six years ago today I added up all the hard drives in my apartment and got ~1,210 gigabytes. The largest single drive was 250 gigabytes.

Today I have a two terabyte drive that I use for backups, and 750 gigabytes inside my laptop. Another terabyte drive (the one pictured) is sitting on the desk, but not being used for anything in particular.

I still marvel at how cheap storage has gotten, and how quick it has gotten there.

A Return to Reading

April 15, 2012 by Eric Richardson

Eric Richardson

When the new iPad came out a few weeks ago, I hopped in the car and took a drive over to the Apple store at The Grove to pick one up. I had been intrigued but not seriously tempted by the first two models, but this time the new screen and a growing fascination with mobile devices made it something I couldn't resist.

My first few weeks have produced an interesting result, though: they've made me a reader again. — Continue Reading...