Why I am howardjp
A few weeks ago, someone asked on Facebook why my username is howardjp. Off to the left on this blog, you will see links to my accounts on Facebook, LinkedIn, GitHub, and Twitter. All of them use the username “howardjp.” Also, my Google account is “howardjp.” And this is on my Mac:
howardjp@thermopylae:~$ whoami
howardjp
howardjp@thermopylae:~$
And here is my personal server:
howardjp@byzantine:~$ whoami
howardjp
howardjp@byzantine:~$
When I can select my username, I will pick howardjp. The reason is that when I was 16, I received an account on the Miami University network and in 1996, they were an OpenVMS-intensive campus (both Alpha and VAX, Linux was making some inroads, however). So usernames were limited to eight characters and the standard was the first six letters of your last name, your first initial, and your second initial. I was howardjp. And ever since, if I can pick my username, it will be howardjp.
Source Code for LX, a Link Shortener
Last August, I began work on a link shortening service as a me-too kind of project. In my case, I wanted to provide custom domains, so that, for instance, The Washington Post could be wp.ly. However, I had been displeased in the user interface I had created and had not taken it live.
On Monday, the jig was up when both Google and Facebook pushed their own link shorteners into the arena. Additionally, bit.ly announced bit.ly Pro which will provide the custom domain I had been interested in. Rather than being steamrolled by these behemoths, I will instead open source my code under a BSD License. It is now available at GitHub.
From the readme:
lx is a URL-shortening application created in CakePHP. The Git repository is a top-skimming of the /app directory from CakePHP v1.2.4. Also included in /sql is a database template for PostgreSQL. It is important to note, this code does not work and will need significant revision before being functional. However, here is a partial list of partially implemented features:
- URL addition
- URL deletion
- URL redirection
- URL favoriting (through the “stars” concept)
- User accounts
- User verification
- URL renaming (title, not target)
- Some jQuery-based AJAX
Please use this as the basis for your own work. If you wish to contribute changes back, please do.
