Reality Distortion Field

Basic HTTP access authentication in Workflow app

Leave a comment

I’m a newbie to Workflow, the super powerful automation app for iOS that was recently acquired by Apple. I’ve known for a while that there’s some useful things I could do with it, but I haven’t had the time to sit down and play around with it.

Today I did, and my workflow required getting the contents of a URL that uses Basic HTTP Access Authentication. Since it took me a little while to figure out how to do it and didn’t find much help online, I decided to write a post and help the next poor soul to run into this.

 

Basic HTTP Authentication as seen on Safari.

The way Basic Access Authentication works is that the client (usually a web browser but in my case the Workflow app) sends the user name and password as part of the HTTP headers.

The nice little explanation on HttpWatch also has a handy little demo. You go this URL and use “httpwatch” as user name and anything you want as password. It displays an image containing the info you entered.

I created a workflow that hard codes the user name, asks you to enter a password, and then gets the image and shows it. It should be easy enough to use a starting point for your own workflow. You can download it here:

 

Austin nights

Chris Rock

Leave a comment

Shlomit took me last week to see Chris Rock at the Bass Concert Hall. I expected the show to be very good, but it exceeded my expectations.

 

I find it interesting to see how the topics of his jokes have changed as he (unlike me) has aged. Lots of stuff about raising kids, divorce. He spent a good twenty minutes on jokes about… mortgages! Less than what’s considered average nowadays about politics, a good thing.

You will see zero photos about the show because they had the most extreme no-phone policy I’ve ever seen, forcing everyone at the entrance of the theater to put phones and smart watches in an opaque pouch that you can only open with a magnet, no unlike the security tags on clothing at stores.

Uncategorized

Miguel Bosé

Leave a comment

It’s been a while since I’ve been to a concert. But I couldn’t pass this one up. It was last night at the Majestic Theater in San Antonio.

Great concert by one of the great singers. 

​

​

Update: Eva brought her grown up camera. Better photos below:

Keep Austin Weird

2017 Cap10K results

Leave a comment

I ran my fifth Capitol 10K this morning. Right after I crossed the finish line someone asked me: “How did you do?”. “I don’t know, haven’t checked” I replied. “But how did you feel?”…

“I felt like crap”

Which is not a bad thing, in my opinion. If I didn’t feel like crap, wouldn’t that mean that I didn’t push myself hard enough?

My results:

That’s right! I’m a year older but 6 seconds faster.

Thank you to my family, my coach, and to all my sponsors for their support.

 

 

Life of Marcos, Mundo Dilbert

Moving to India

6 Comments

A couple of months ago, I was made a very interesting offer: Move to Bangalore, India, in order to be the Technical Lead of a new R&D team being formed at the office over there.

It wasn’t an easy decision, but after lots of deliberation with my family, I decided to accept.

This will be a three-year stint that could be extended, starting in the fall. We’re very excited and looking forward to eating lots of Indian food.

Further information on exact date, farewell party, and so on will follow.

Keep Austin Weird

SXSW 2017: The I’m a loser edition

Leave a comment

This year I only went a single Sunday morning to check out Capital Factory’s AR/VR Megalounge. And get me some swag.

They had a good amount of mostly unfinished games for the HTC Vive. Best of all: no lines. Bonus: free food and drinks.

I was pulled into a demo by Groove Jones in which you play a Tron-like disc game in a Tron-like environment against your opponent. I won several matches in a row. Unfortunately, my old body didn’t handle the intense activity well and I ended up with a torn hamstring.

Marcos and Jaime battle it out in Virtual Reality.

Regardless of my injury, they found us graceful enough to get me on their Twitter:

Since I was already downtown, I decided to walk around a little bit to see the sights and get some free toys. This in spite of my leg pain.

As I strolled down Sixth Street, I saw a large crowd of barely clothed good looking people walk towards me. I had to double check: it wasn’t Halloween nor Mardi Gras. What could it be?

This is SXSW, so of course it was an advertisement for something. However, just to make sure, I decided to stick around and pay close attention to all details in order to make sure.

It became obvious that I wasn’t going to get a free t-shirt from this crowd (maybe a free trash bag), but luckily Panasonic gutted out Parkside and turned it into a giant booze and t-shirt dispensing advertisement.

Mission accomplished.

 

Websites for Dummies