Adventures & experiences in contemporary technology
Recently, I shared my thoughts on learning new computing languages by oneself using books, online research and personal practice. As successful as that can be, there remains a place for getting some actual instruction as well. Maybe that is why so many turn to YouTube, where there is a multitude of video channels offering such possibilities without cost. What I have also discovered is that this is complemented by a host of other providers whose services attract a fee, and there will be a few of those mentioned later in this post. Paying for online courses does mean that you can get the benefit of curation and an added assurance of quality in what appears to be a growing market.
The variation in quality can dog the YouTube approach, and it also can be tricky to find something good, even if the platform does suggest new videos based on what you have been watching. Much of what is found there does take the form of webinars from the likes of the Why R? Foundation, Posit or the NHSR Community. These can be useful, and there are shorter videos from such providers as the Association of Computing Machinery or SAS Users. These do help more if you already have some knowledge about the topic area being discussed, so they may not make the best starting points for someone who is starting from scratch.
Of course, working your way through a good book will help, and it is something that I have been known to do, but supplementing this with one or more video courses really adds to the experience and I have done a few of these on LinkedIn. That part of the professional platform came from the acquisition of Lynda.com and the topic areas range from soft skills like time management through to computing skills courses with R, SAS and Python seeing coverage among the data science portfolio. Even O’Reilly has ventured into the area in an expansion from the book publishing activities for which so many of us know the organisation.
The available online instructor community does not stop at the above since there are others like Degreed, Baeldung, Udacity, Programiz, Udemy, Business Science and Datanovia. Some of these tend towards online education provision that feels more like an online university course and those are numerous as well as you will find through Data Science Central or KDNuggets. Both of these earn income from advertising to pay for featured blog posts and newsletters, while the former also organises regular webinars and was my first port of call when I became curious about the world of data science during the autumn of 2017.
My point of approach into the world of online training has been as a freelance information professional needing to keep up to date with a rapidly changing field. The mix of content that is both free of charge and that which attracts a fee is one that can work. Both kinds do complement each other while possessing their unique advantages and disadvantages. The need to continually expand skills and knowledge never goes away, so it is well worth spending some time working what you are after, since you need to be sure that any training always adds to your own knowledge and skill level.
There are times when blogs cease to exist and the only place to find the content is on the Wayback Machine. Even then, it is in danger of being lost completely. One such example is the subject of this post.
Though this website makes use of the facilities of Cloudflare for various functions that include the blocking of image hotlinking, the same outcome can be achieved using .htaccess files on Apache web servers. It may work on Nginx to a point too but there are other configuration files that ought to be updated instead of using a .htaccess when some frown upon the approach. In any case, the lines that need adding to .htaccess are listed below though the web address needs to include your own domain in place of the dummy example provided:
RewriteEngine on
RewriteCond %{HTTP_REFERER} !^$
RewriteCond %{HTTP_REFERER} !^http://(www\.)?yourdomain.com(/)?.*$ [NC]
RewriteRule .*\.(gif|jpe?g|png|bmp)$ [F,NC]
The first line turns on the mod_rewrite engine and you may have that done anyway. Of course, the module needs enabling in your Apache configuration for this to work and you have to be allowed to perform the required action as well. This means changing the Apache configuration files. The next pair of lines look at the HTTP referer strings and the third one only allows images to be served from your own web domain and not others. To add more, you need to copy the third line and change the web address accordingly. Any new lines need to precede the last line that defines the file extensions that are to be blocked to other web addresses.
RewriteEngine on
RewriteCond %{HTTP_REFERER} !^$
RewriteCond %{HTTP_REFERER} !^http://(www\.)?yourdomain.com(/)?.*$ [NC]
RewriteRule \.(gif|jpe?g|png|bmp)$ /images/image.gif [L,NC]
Another variant of the previous code involves changing the last line to display a default image showing others what is happening. That may not reduce the bandwidth usage as much as complete blocking but it may be useful for telling others what is happening.
During the latter part of last year, the magazine Linux Format suffered a staff clear-out and I was left wondering why. It was as if a load of folk left at once and, even if I have seen that sort of thing happening at my current place of work, I was asking if something went wrong at Future Publishing.
What had passed me by was that the then staff of Linux Format were working on starting up their own magazine. They then went about crowdfunding the thing on Indiegogo and it only was the appearance of Linux Voice on a shelf in the Macclesfield branch of WHSmith’s that alerted me to what was happening in previous months.
It does sound risky to have an entire bunch of folk from one publisher’s magazine go off on their own and do their own variant of it, especially in these digital days when magazine publishing is not as secure as it once was. The mention of someone being held by no-compete covenant that reminded me of the mindset of where I work for a living. Quite what their old employers must make of it would make interesting reading because mine might be tempted to see me in court if I did something similar, assuming that was a possibility; I too would be bound by a covenant for six months after leaving.
As for the magazine itself, the content is good like it needs to be. There may be the occasional misspelling but articles on OwnCloud and Arch Linux installation would draw my attention along with reviews of Mageia 4 and FreeBSD 10. A lot of the old names from Linux Format appear too so there’s an air of continuity there. The design of the new upstart is less flashy than its longer standing predecessor and it will be interesting to see how they coexist.
It will take time for any new ideas to come to fruition and I wish the new magazine well. Its intentions are good in that half if profits are to go to open source software projects and articles are to be made available to all under a Creative Commons licence. First though, it needs to stay financially viable and the coming months could be interesting. The collective experience of who is behind the magazine should help though and that might stop it becoming like Walking World Ireland and Cycling World, other magazines whose appearance in newsagents is occasional. Having support from an enthusiastic community is a bonus too and there may come a time when I have to decide between Linux Voice and Linux Format as is the case with Linux Magazine and Linux User & Developer. For what is supposed to be a niche operating system, users of Linux are not badly served when it comes to magazines.