It’s been pretty cool so far. If you don’t know what Sync is, check it out & download it here.

Thanks to Transmission & Dropbox, I already had a pretty good system for automating remote torrents (I would drop a torrent file in a Dropbox folder synced between my local and remote machine, Transmission would watch the folder, pick up the torrent, and then clean up the .torrent file after it added the torrent).

Now with Sync, I can automate the return trip, without worrying about Dropbox size limits.

The first step is to set up a sync folder between my local machine and the remote machine. I found this process a bit unintuitive, at first. When you create a sync folder, you get a “secret” which you can share with others to also connect to the same folder. This is straightforward, but I was stumped when I was trying to add the folder to another machine; I realized later that I had to add the secret and specify a folder path for Sync to know where it was putting filed

After that, I needed a way to get files from my downloads folder to the Sync folder. At first, I thought, “Hey, why don’t I just sync the downloads folder?” I decided against this when I learned that deleting a file in a sync folder deletes it everywhere else, and that wouldn’t work if I wanted files to stay around on my remote machine so they could seed. Fortunately, Transmission supports running a shell script after a file finishes downloading. It took a while to figure out how to get my script to work (I’m barely a novice when it comes to shell scripting), but I now have a script that does the job:

(Credit to @soemarko & other contributors for figuring out how to embed GitHub gists on a Tumblr post!)

So, with that script in place, I can now get files in my BitTorrent Sync folder, and synced back to my laptop on campus. Excited to start using it more regularly!

(EDIT: Ayush reminded me you can use read-only secrets to avoid the “copy to other directory” workaround. Thanks, Ayush!)

So, another thing I got to try this week is meteor.js, a JavaScript framework that lets you do a lot of cool things more simply than before.

A big part of Meteor is about helping make web applications more reactive; that is, instead of loading the website page by page, data flows across the wire to clients and JavaScript on the client takes that data and updates the page accordingly.

Here are some examples of Meteor in action! It’s pretty cool, and it’ll be my go-to framework if I ever want to code JavaScript on both client and server.

Hi peeps!

Today, I got to go to a Code for America Philly meetup! I had no idea what to expect, but I was pretty happy with it. A very casual environment, with people working on different coding projects. A friend of mine, Abhiroop, actually helped put it together (and got it on campus) through his organization, nvigor.

I got to sit down with him as well as another coder, Rich, and we did a bit of hacking on the beginnings of a mobile HTML5 app that’s supposed to help show people using the Philly PHLASH bus service some of the different sights around each stop on the line (if I remember it correctly). Sounds like a cool idea, and I’m hoping I can attend a future meetup to see how it’s going, and perhaps keep hacking on it!

humansofnewyork:

“I’m a professional matchmaker.”

“So what’s the most important thing in a good relationship?”

“It’s important to stay present, and to always remain curious about how your partner may have changed. That way you avoid holding your partner to old standards and judgments.”

Everything I could have asked for in a cheesesteak-ified bowl of Mac & Cheese. Steak, onions, breadcrumbs and even a touch of ketchup! (at Mac Mart)

BBQ in a bowl from #macmart #philly. Will be going back for seconds :) (at Mac Mart)

I tried to keep these as specific as possible, so that I won’t let them fall by the wayside from being too vague.

1. Renew my commitment to exercise with at least 30 minutes of cardio, 5 days a week. Bonus goal: fit strength training in 2-3 days a week.
2. Keep up my efforts to be good with money by continuing to work towards my established savings goals for school and my apartment with Callie next fall. Bonus goal: stay within my budget for spending each month.
3. Enter “academic jail” for my winter term at Drexel. This involves a dramatic cutback on the amount of time I spend on non-productive things like Facebook so I have more time for school work. I’ll be keeping the hour of 11pm-midnight for dicking around.

While there’s definitely more that I want to improve on this year that could be made into a resolution, I feel that it would crowd out the effort I need to put into these three.

Bring on 2013!

Yuksek - I Could Never Be A Dancer

:: kindly brought back to my attention by my good friend Zack Hanni, aka Somaaa.