A Script to update Node.js to the latest version

As you may be aware, io.js and Node.js have merged into one project once again. While this is good news for the community, it also means that those of us using a bash script to update io.js to the latest version (like myself) need to find another method to stay up to date.

I found nvm, but I found it really didn't work with my current setup on my server. I took a look at the iojs-update script I found online that I've been using, and I found that it wasn't too tough to reconfigure for Node.js. Now that it's working, I thought that I'd post here so that you can use it too. I'm using it with Ubuntu 15.04, but it should work with any Debian based system.

I've forgotton the original author's name, but if you post in the comments, I'll credit you appropriately in this post.

Here's a link to the gist: https://gist.github.com/sbrl/48e6423f2e97462149ef

If you just want to download and run it, here's a command to download it to your ~/bin folder and execute it:

cd ~/bin && curl -OL https://gist.github.com/sbrl/48e6423f2e97462149ef/raw/9bf780f8685634dbaae6e0a229d2ad551f3323ed/node-update && chmod +x node-update && sudo ./node-update

If someone knows of an up to date ppa, I'll gladly use that instead.

I hope this helps someone out!

A Distributed solution to /r/dailyprogrammer Challenge #223

A little while ago, I wrote my first distributed computing program to solve the second optional challenge to /r/dailyprogrammer's #223rd problem. I wrote it in Javascript, because I know really know how to utilise the tcp/ip networking stack in any other language yet :(

Anyway, if you want to check out my source code, I have put it up on GitHub. Below I will explain how you can get started with the pair for scripts I wrote, and how they work

Getting Started

Getting started is easy. Just clone the repository & cd into the new directory:

git clone https://github.com/sbrl/dailyprogrammer-223.git
cd dailyprogrammer-223

Then install the dependency:

npm install

Then you can start a server like so:

node server.js 4321 # starts a new server on port 4321

Or you can start a client like this:

node client.js starbeamrainbowlabs.com:9999

Note that I have used some ES6 features (check out my ES6: Features series), so if you are using Node.js and not io.js, you will need to tack on the --harmony flag in order to get them to work.

It works by mapping the search space (aaaaa to zzzzz) to a set of numbers, starting at 0. I used an ES6 generator to keep track of where we have got up to, wrapped in a function that handles reallocating work units that haven't been completed within a certain time limit. Each work unit consist of 16 words by default (though it can be changed), with the time limit set to 5 times the number of words in the block.

Next time, I will write the client so that it is compatible with a conventional browser - this should make it much easier for people to contribute their CPU time!