Manage Your Context Switches to be More Productive

You’re in the middle of patching a bug, and a colleague taps you on the shoulder asking for your opinion on something. We’ve all been in this position. Whether or not you’re a programmer, this situation happens all the time — a phone call…

Andrew Kouri

Feb 3, 2017

Swift 3 Extension to UIImage to quickly retrieve image from a URL

I spent too long looking for a quick, non-deprecated solution to this simple problem this morning. Here’s what I came up with. Maybe it will save you a few minutes of searching. This is valid for Swift 3.

Andrew Kouri

Oct 2, 2016

Turn off iMessage link previews in iOS 10+

There is currently no way to turn off link previews in iOS 10. This “feature” is a half-baked attempt to add slack-like features, where GIFs, YouTube links, pictures, etc show up in-line in your iMessage conversation thread. I really wish Apple would have…

Andrew Kouri

Sep 29, 2015

Debugging MongoDB’s 2dsphere geoIndex

When I first learned about MongoDB’s geospatial capabilities similar to PostGIS, I was beyond excited because it meant I would not have to write helper functions to find data along geohash borders. Currently my data is indexed by geohash, which has great ordering…

Andrew Kouri

May 20, 2015

Swift 1.2 and Facebook’s New Login SDK

I’ve had the pleasure of working with Apple’s new Swift over the last few months, and recently ran into some problems integrating Facebook’s API with an iOS 8 app I’m building.

Andrew Kouri

Nov 12, 2013

Project: Automated Lawn Room

I recently finished creating a 3D-printed, Raspberry-Pi-powered, Twilio-backed lock for one of the oldest rooms in Charlottesville. The goal? To allow my friends anytime access to my space on the Lawn while simultaneously staying secure.

Andrew Kouri

Jul 23, 2013

Cloudification of Things

Cloudbursting, the ability to rent additional servers in the cloud on demand, has been an extremely successful concept in enterprise computing recently. When a researcher has the need to perform complex computations, rather than investing in a supercomputer, she can rent a cluster of…

Andrew Kouri

Apr 16, 2013

Interview with Virginia.edu hackers, R00TTH3B0X

I’m surprised to be writing this, but I think the hacking incident this week with the Virginia.edu homepage is terrifically ironic. Before chatting with the two hackers, who go by the handles “x86” and “n3tcat,” I thought that the episode could be…

Andrew Kouri

Apr 7, 2013

Pull the Plug on Plug Pulling

Most citizens accept reasonable societal conventions such as separate gender restrooms, wearing clothes in public or driving on the right side of the road. But people who unquestioningly comply with irrational conventions like not wearing white after Labor Day or turning their…

Andrew Kouri

Mar 29, 2012

The Oxford Comma

If you ever choose to write for The Cavalier Daily as an opinion columnist, your editor will stress the importance of beginning your column with a pointy hook to engage readers’ interest, and likely beg you to break your habit of using the Oxford comma. If that hook was not dull enough to lose your…