Practice Begins With Play

This afternoon I was invited to speak at the June Table Talks hosted by Table XI. Today’s theme was developer education. My topic: Practice Begins With Play. Developers who want to achieve mastery have many practice resources to choose from, including open source hardware like Raspbery Pi, BeagleBone Black, and Parallella.

Kali Linux for Pentesting

Braintree hosted a Hax ‘n Snax event this afternoon. Devs from around Chicago gathered together to hack on code, socialize, trade ideas, and hone skills. Thanks Braintree for putting on a great event.

My Hax ‘n Snax time was spent interacting with other devs and experimenting with a Linux distro that I just discovered, Kali Linux.

What is Kali Linux?

Kali is a fairly new Linux distro designed for digital forensics and penetration testing. If you’re looking for a general purpose Linux distro, Ubuntu would be a better choice. Kali is the successor of BackTrack. The developers of Kali and BackTrack, Offensive Software, state that “Kali is a more mature, secure, and enterprise-ready version of BackTrack Linux.” You can download it at Kali.org.

BeagleBone Black, Up & Running

BeagleBone Black, like the Raspberry Pi, is a small, inexpensive computer that runs Linux. It’s smaller than a deck of cards and you can buy one for about forty-five dollars ($45.00). The device is made by CircuitCo in Richardson, TX, USA.

It Just Works

BeagleBone Black runs Linux right out of the box. Steps required:

• Plug in the micro-HDMI cable for the monitor. See the “Gotchas” section about micro-HDMI below.
• Plug in the keyboard & mouse via the USB port. You might need a USB hub because the board only has one USB port.
• Add power via the mini-USB port or the 5v power connection.

After a few minutes of boot time, we have a fully-functioning Linux computer with a GUI, Firefox browser, and other tools.

Upgrading Ruby With RVM

Ruby Version Manager (RVM) is one of my favorite tools in the Ruby ecosystem. Reason: RVM lets me experiment with Ruby and Rails at will. I don’t know about you, but my best experiments are full of risk so they eventually blow things up. When that happens, I can always recover the broken areas without wasting time on a full system restore.

Some devs choose to use another tool, RBenv, that serves a purpose similar to RVM. I began working with RVM before the other tools existed, and since it has always worked well for me, I have no reason to switch.

Ruby 2.0.0-p195

The latest patch of Ruby 2.0.0, p195, was released two days ago. Time to take it for a spin. RVM lets devs upgrade Ruby and manage gemsets seamlessly. Here’s how the process went.

RubyMotion Sketchnotes

Alexis Finch (@agentfin) captured Sketchnotes for a RubyMotion presentation that I gave for Groupon’s Geekfest.

Sketchnotes are typography and drawing and notes all mixed together.