My editorial workflow for blog posts (8 mins read).
Taking you through the journey I go on when writing blog posts, from ideation to publishing the post.
by 
Jamie Tanna
.
#www.jvt.me
#workflow
#ci
#gitlab
#git
#automation
#command-line
#shell
#gitlab-ci
#review-apps.
Viewing Git history of a file in git log while ignoring file renames (5 mins read).
How to track changes to files in Git without pesky file renames getting in the way, using git log --follow.
Test-Driven Chef Cookbook Development Using ChefSpec (and a sprinkling of InSpec) (39 mins read).
Using the example of deploying and running a Java JAR file as a way to show the lifecycle of a fully test-driven Chef cookbook.
by Jamie Tanna
.
#howto
#blogumentation
#chef
#test-kitchen
#chefspec
#tdd
#testing
#guide.
Pretty Printing JSON Web Tokens (JWTs) on the Command Line using Ruby (3 mins read).
How to easily introspect and pretty print a signed JWT (JWS) or an encrypted JWT (JWE) on the command line using Ruby's standard library, or using the ruby-jwt external library.
by Jamie Tanna
.
#blogumentation
#ruby
#command-line
#jwt
#json
#pretty-print.
Using chef-shell to interactively debug attributes and recipes (5 mins read).
How to use chef-shell to see attribute config and recipes, with and without a Chef Server.
by Jamie Tanna
.
#chef
#chef-shell
#blogumentation
#test-kitchen
#chef-server
#chefdk.
OggCamp 2018 (21 mins read).
A look at my time at OggCamp 2018, the talks I presented and attended.
by Jamie Tanna
.
#events
#oggcamp
#chef
#public-speaking
#openapi
#swagger
#free-software
#open-source
#collaborative-culture.
Context is key: thinking about your audience (5 mins read).
How to have inclusive conversations by providing the right context for those who may not have the same level of understanding.
by Jamie Tanna
.
#thoughts
#communication
#capital-one
#context.
Creating a versionable, self-contained (fat-/uber-) JAR for Cucumber tests (11 mins read).
Why you'd want a fat JAR and how you'd achieve it.
by Jamie Tanna
.
#blogumentation
#java
#cucumber
#testing
#jar
#artifact
#artefact
#maven
#uber-jar.
My Path from School to University to Work (25 mins read).
A look back at my journey up to now, the choices I've made, and what advice I have for others who are embarking on their own journeys into tech.
by Jamie Tanna
.
#musings
#blogumentation
#capital-one
#career
#university
#nottingham
#school
#a-level
#gcse.
Being More Explicit on Content Licensing (3 mins read).
Why I'm re-licensing the code snippets and post content on my site is, and how I'm making it more obvious.
by Jamie Tanna
.
#thoughts
#site
#licensing.
Some exciting job and knowledge-sharing news (4 mins read).
Moving into Quality Engineering, publishing Chef training courses, conference speaking about Chef at OggCamp and the complex mess that is this very static website at DevOpsDays London.
by Jamie Tanna
.
#news
#capital-one
#events
#chef
#testing
#conference
#job
#tdd
#oggcamp
#devopsdays.
Notes from the AWS + Chef Dev Day Roadshow in London (13 mins read).
Notes from the AWS Dev Day Roadshow in London, where we got to play around with Chef, Chef Automate and InSpec using AWS OpsWorks.
by Jamie Tanna
.
#aws
#chef
#events
#chef-server
#opsworks
#cloud-formation
#cloud-custodian
#deployment
#containers
#chef-automate
#inspec.
Pretty Printing JSON on the Command Line with Ruby (1 mins read).
Using Ruby's JSON module to pretty print JSON objects from the command line.
Merging multiple repositories into a monorepo, while preserving history, using git subtree (3 mins read).
How to merge multiple repositories, with their history, into a single repository, using the git subtree add command.
by Jamie Tanna
.
#blogumentation
#git
#monorepo
#git-subtree
#command-line.
Sharing Multiple SSH Sessions over the Same Network Socket (3 mins read).
Reusing network sockets for speed and reduction of authentication handshakes with OpenSSH.
by Jamie Tanna
.
#blogumentation
#ssh
#openssh
#command-line.
Better Git Diff Outputs with Git Submodules (2 mins read).
How to get nicer diffs when working with submodules.
Beware: deleteing a file in Chef doesn't actually delete it (3 mins read).
Why you should explicitly add backup false when deleteing a file through Chef, to avoid leaving potentially sensitive files still on the box.
by Jamie Tanna
.
#blogumentation
#chef.
Morsels of Goodness: What's Cooking in Chef 14? (5 mins read).
A look at the new features coming in the new Chef 14 release, as well as what to watch out for when upgrading.
by Jamie Tanna
.
#chef-14
#chef
#foodcritic
#cookstyle
#rubocop
#ruby
#test-kitchen.
Finally Returning to Full Time Work After 123 Days (2 mins read).
Receiving the final sign off after four months off for my ruptured appendix.
by Jamie Tanna
.
#thoughts
#appendix
#health.
Serving Branches on a Subdomain using Caddy and GitLab Review Apps (2 mins read).
How to dynamically serve a branch on a subdomain for GitLab Review Apps using Caddy Labels.
by Jamie Tanna
.
#guide
#gitlab
#review-apps
#caddy
#howto
#deploy.
Deploying to Netlify using GitLab CI (3 mins read).
How adding two lines to my .gitlab-ci.yml migrated my existing site from GitLab Pages to Netlify.
by Jamie Tanna
.
#netlify
#gitlab-ci
#automation
#continuous-deployment
#ci
#deploy
#howto.
Executing an Interactive Python Shell (REPL) for a Script (1 mins read).
Using python -i to get an interactive REPL after running a Python source file.
by Jamie Tanna
.
#command-line
#python
#blogumentation
#tools
#howto.
Bundling Common Rake Tasks into a Gem (8 mins read).
An example of how to create a helper gem for common Rake task, using the real-world example of Chef cookbooks.
by Jamie Tanna
.
#blogumentation
#chef
#chefdk
#gem
#ruby
#rake
#foodcritic
#rubocop
#rspec
#knife-cookbook-doc
#gitlab-ci.
Running docker login as another user in Chef (2 mins read).
Hitting the error permission denied while trying to connect to the Docker daemon socket when trying to run docker login as a non-root user in Chef.
My First Week Back to Working (Remotely) After Three Months (6 mins read).
How I've found the first week back to work after almost three months, and the productivity gains of working reduced hours.
Chef 13 Upgrade: knife-cookbook-doc Rubocop Updates (1 mins read).
Disabling the Missing space after # and Do not use block comments errors for your knife-cookbook-doc formatted comments.
by Jamie Tanna
.
#blogumentation
#chef-13-upgrade
#chef
#knife-cookbook-doc
#chef-13
#documentation
#chef-13-upgrade-rubocop.
Chef 13 Upgrade: knife-cookbook-doc gem upgrade (1 mins read).
Fixing odd Logger entries in autogenerated knife-cookbook-doc README.mds for Chef 13.
by Jamie Tanna
.
#blogumentation
#chef-13-upgrade
#chef
#knife-cookbook-doc
#chef-13
#documentation.
Chef 13 Upgrade: Deprecation of Namespace Collisions in Custom Resources (1 mins read).
Preparing for breaking changes in Chef 14 by renaming property_name to new_resource.property_name in Custom Resources.
by Jamie Tanna
.
#blogumentation
#chef-13-upgrade
#chef-13-upgrade-deprecation
#chef
#chef-13
#chef-14.
Verify a Ruby Class Method is Called with Arguments in Rspec, Without Doubles or Mocks (1 mins read).
Rspec code to verify that a Ruby Class Method is called from another method, without needing to mock anything.
Testing Chef's ruby_blocks with ChefSpec (3 mins read).
Testing implementation of a ruby_block in ChefSpec, to ensure that the code executes as expected.
Chef 13 Upgrade: Lessons Learnt and Documented for Posterity (1 mins read).
Notes on the main problems encountered when upgrading from Chef 12 to Chef 13, both with ChefSpec and Rubocop.
by Jamie Tanna
.
#blogumentation
#chef-13-upgrade
#chef-13-upgrade-rubocop
#chef-13-upgrade-chefspec
#chef
#rubocop
#chefspec
#chef-13
#chefspec-7
#rubocop-0-49.
Chef 13 Upgrade: Rubocop Changes for lazy Parameters (1 mins read).
How to resolve the Parenthesize the param lazy Rubocop error when upgrading your cookbook to Chef 13.
by Jamie Tanna
.
#blogumentation
#chef-13-upgrade
#chef-13-upgrade-rubocop
#chef
#rubocop
#chef-13
#rubocop-0-49.
Chef 13 Upgrade: Rubocop Changes for Testing render_file with ChefSpec and a with_content Block (1 mins read).
How to resolve the Parenthesize the param render_file Rubocop error when upgrading your cookbook to Chef 13.
by Jamie Tanna
.
#blogumentation
#chef-13-upgrade
#chef-13-upgrade-chefspec
#chef
#chefspec.
Chef 13 Upgrade: Rubocop Changes for Word Array Literals (%w) (1 mins read).
A one-liner shell command to fix Rubocop errors %w-literals should be delimited by [ and ].
by Jamie Tanna
.
#blogumentation
#chef-13-upgrade
#chef-13-upgrade-rubocop
#chef
#rubocop
#chef-13
#rubocop-0-49.
Chef 13 Upgrade: Testing ruby_blocks with ChefSpec (1 mins read).
Replace your block.old_run_action with block.block.call to trigger ruby_blocks within ChefSpec 7 and Chef 13.
by Jamie Tanna
.
#blogumentation
#chef-13-upgrade
#chef-13-upgrade-chefspec
#chef
#chefspec
#chef-13
#chefspec-7.
Emoji Support in Dunst (2 mins read).
How to see Emoji when using the Dunst notification system.
by Jamie Tanna
.
#arch-linux
#dunst
#dotfiles
#blogumentation
#emoji.
SSLError When Running Berkshelf Behind a Proxy (2 mins read).
Getting around the pesky OpenSSL::SSL::SSLError SSLv2/v3 read server hello A error when running Berkshelf behind a proxy.
by Jamie Tanna
.
#chef
#blogumentation
#proxy
#command-line
#shell
#chefdk
#berkshelf.
2017 in Review (68 mins read).
A look back over the awesome (and not so awesome) things that happened in 2017, and a look forward to what 2018 holds.
by Jamie Tanna
.
#year-in-review
#retrospective
#appendix
#gitlab
#github
#health
#monzo
#capital-one
#spectat-designs
#hackathon
#meetups
#community
#holiday
#www.jvt.me.
Hackference 2017 (8 mins read).
My summary of the Hackference 2017 conference and hackathon.
by Jamie Tanna
.
#events
#conference
#hackathon
#hackference.
2017's Music In Review (1 mins read).
What music was I listening to in 2017?
by Jamie Tanna
.
#music.
Running service resources in Kitchen-Docker (3 mins read).
How to get up and running with service resources when running Test Kitchen with the Docker driver, in this example for use with GitLab CI.
by Jamie Tanna
.
#blogumentation
#chef
#kitchen
#docker
#howto.
Trusting Self-Signed Certificates from the Chef Development Kit (2 mins read).
How to get the ChefDK (and associated tools) to trust internal / self-signed certificates, in an easy oneliner.
by Jamie Tanna
.
#blogumentation
#chef
#chefdk
#certificates
#berkshelf.
Getting around Permission Denied when running ChefSpec (3 mins read).
How to handle getting an EACCES when trying to run ChefSpec on a recipe.
GitLab Review Apps with Capistrano and Nginx (4 mins read).
Spinning up a version of your application on every push, so others don't have to manually get the code up and running locally.
by Jamie Tanna
.
#guide
#gitlab
#review-apps
#capistrano
#blogumentation.
Testing include_recipes with Chef and ChefSpec (2 mins read).
How to best test include_recipes within your Chef recipes, as well as how to ensure that you aren't running any dependent recipes in your tests.
Blogumentation - Writing Blog Posts as a Method of Documentation (4 mins read).
Why I'm starting to use blog posts as a form of documentation, and why I think they're so well suited.
Converting YAML to JSON and vice versa (Part 1 - Ruby) (2 mins read).
Coerce YAML to JSON and vice versa, from the comfort of your Gem-studded command line.
by Jamie Tanna
.
#blogumentation
#ruby
#command-line
#yaml
#json.
Clean up your Git branches (3 mins read).
Remove any merged local or branches from your local Git repository.
by Jamie Tanna
.
#blogumentation
#git.
Pretty Printing JSON on the Command Line with Python (2 mins read).
Using Python's JSON module to pretty print JSON objects from the command line.
by Jamie Tanna
.
#blogumentation
#python
#json
#pretty-print.
Viewing your diff while writing your commits with git commit --verbose (3 mins read).
Making it easier to write commit messages by having the diff in your editor.
by Jamie Tanna
.
#blogumentation
#git
#commit
#shell
#workflow.