Exporting DynamoDB data to CSV

Posted by & filed under Amazon Web Services, node.js, Open-source. 1,755 views

Another itch I needed to scratch. I needed the basic ability to export data from (an Amazon Web Services noSQL store:) DynamoDB to CSV. I first built a solution for my specific issue (which included some transformations) and then decided it’d be worth building something more generic for people. While you can do this using AWS Pipeline, EMR and S3, I found it immensely complicated for such a simple task.

You can find my solution, DynamoDBtoCSV on github

AWS DynamoDBtoCSV

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typically, to use you’d run:

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AWS Cloudwatch to Graphite (cloudwatch2graphite)

Posted by & filed under Amazon Web Services, Linux, Mac OS X, node.js, Open-source. 1,377 views

Like many, we gather a lot of our system information (business and technology) into Graphite. One thing we were missing was some of the AWS services metrics that you’d typically use Cloudwatch for. So I wrote a little utility in node.js that does exactly that. You’d typically run this in a cron and throw the output into Graphite every 10 minutes or whatever.

You’ll find the application here: https://github.com/edasque/cloudwatch2graphite

Here is the documentation as it stands:
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Some great Twitter Bootstrap 2.x resources [Updated]

Posted by & filed under Web Development. 1,123 views

New and of interest: Twitter Bootstrap 2.2.0/

Previously, previously:

Getting an Oauth2 token for GitHub, command line

Posted by & filed under Open-source, Web Development. 915 views

If you’re looking to use the GitHub API outside a web application, you’ll need to generate an OAuth 2 token. GitHub provides a good way to add a non web app to your account. It’s done with a curl, command-line:

            curl https://api.github.com/authorizations \
            --user "myuser" \
            --data '{"scopes":["user"],"note":"GitHub Stars to Bookmarks"}'

which will ask you for your password and return a json document which will contain your token.

Your scopes selection might be different from mine, refer to this document to chose them.

You can check that this process went well by hitting: https://api.github.com/user/watched?access_token=YOUR_TOKEN_HERE . You’ll see the application authorizations on https://github.com/settings/applications.

I am using this in my githubfav2pinboard application.

Using NFC tags with Galaxy Nexus to change settings based on location

Posted by & filed under Android, Electronics, Personal. 9,202 views

NFC tag on office entrance
This could be the geekiest thing I’ve ever done.

While I have used Tasker on Android to change settings based on location, it doesn’t quite have the granularity that I am looking for and relies on precise GPS location to work really well (which hurts battery life).
NFC tag on nightstand
The newest flagship Android phone, the Galaxy Nexus (on Verizon or GSM for T-mobile & AT&T) and a few other Android phones (such as the Nexus S on Sprint & AT&T) support the NFC standard.

By placing NFC tags in my house (nightstand , house entrance, car, office), I was able to set up my phone to switch its bluetooth, wireless, ringer and other settings based on location.

For example:

  1. When I enter the office, after touching the entrance NFC tag, the phone’s wifi is turned on and the ringer is set to vibrate
  2. When I leave the office, the same action will disable wifi and set the ringer to a loud ring.
  3. When I enter my car, Bluetooth is turned on and my musica app will start playing tunes
  4. As I leave my car and swipe it again, bluetooth is turned off
  5. When I enter my home, wifi will turn on
  6. When I put my phone on my nightstand, the ringer will be set to silent


To do this, all I needed was a NFC compatible phone, NFC stickers (pre-formatted for a bug in Android 4.02 prevents formatting from working) and a $1.99 android application to set the actions taken when swiping a specific tag.

Geeky, right? I warned you