SETI and "Kosmo of the Cosmos"

I am a member of the setiQuest project. If you don't know of this project, go to setiQuest.org and sign up! You can put your brilliance to work and help with the search for signals from extraterrestrials!

I really like that they just added "Kosmo of the Cosmos" as their mascot. It's about time! This cartoon fits right in with the SETI vision: "One day all people will call themselves Earthlings..."

My only complaint is that it is hard to find on the home page. You have to go to setiquest.org and click on the "Open Source Algorithms and Software" tab to view it. Come on SETI! Put in on the main page for all to see. I hope you update it regularly.

I've been reading Kozmo for several years now at GoComics. You should too.

Educating Myself

The previous article shows the top programming job trends. Some of these trends I need to hop onto. I need to educate myself!

I am going to start by teaching myself Ruby-on-Rails. I've purchased an excellent book called "Ruby on Rails 3 Tutorial" to help me learn Ruby-on-Rails. I'll outline in future articles what I am learning while I am learning it.

I am on page 30 so far. It is very easy to read.

To prepare myself for this leaning I've gotten a free Amazon Web Service server account. It is a 64-bit Linux server, totally mine, free for 1 year. It comes with Ruby and Rails already installed. And I have root access! If you want to learn and don't have a super-duper server I would suggest visiting aws.amazon.com and getting one. But don't get one of these free servers till you are ready! The "free" part ends in one year. But actually, after 1 year the cost is really minimal, you are charged by usage, not by a monthly fee. So if you are still using it only for development after a year, the monthly out-of-pocket should be minimal.

So now I am off on a learning quest! I'll be posting more soon.

Top Programming Job Trends

HTML5, Android, iPhone, Mobile App, jquery Job Trends

Html5 jobs - Android jobs - iPhone jobs - Mobile App jobs - Jquery jobs

I am looking to the future! According to Indeed.com, HTML5 is the hottest trend. I think I am going to start a full on self education in HTML5, Android and JQuery.
Does anyone have any advice? What kind of salary or hourly rate could I get if I was an expert in these areas?

SSH and DNS problem solved

Today I came across a weird one (aren't they all?).

On a computer running OpenSUSE 11.3 Linux OS.

I could "ping github.com"

But! "ssh github.com" would not work! "ssh: Could not resolve hostname" was the error. Why would ping work and not ssh?

Through some fiddling around I determined that ssh only queries the first entry in the DNS file /etc/resolv.conf!!! The first entry in my /etc/resolv.conf was a local DNS for internal purposes.

I solved the problem by moving the first entry to the end of the list in /etc/resolv.conf. Now ssh can find the address of github.com.