Finally Returning to Full Time Work After 123 Days
Receiving the final sign off after four months off for my ruptured appendix.
Some of the blog posts I've made over time can be found below. Alternatively, see my posts as in terms of categories or by tags.
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Serving Branches on a Subdomain using Caddy and GitLab Review Apps
How to dynamically serve a branch on a subdomain for GitLab Review Apps using Caddy Labels.
Deploying to Netlify using GitLab CI
How adding two lines to my .gitlab-ci.yml migrated my existing site from GitLab Pages to Netlify.
Executing an Interactive Python Shell (REPL) for a Script
Using python -i to get an interactive REPL after running a Python source file.
Bundling Common Rake Tasks into a Gem
An example of how to create a helper gem for common Rake task, using the real-world example of Chef cookbooks.
Running `docker login` as another user in Chef
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
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
Disabling the Missing space after # and Do not use block comments errors for your knife-cookbook-doc formatted comments.
Testing Chef's `ruby_block`s with ChefSpec
Testing implementation of a ruby_block in ChefSpec, to ensure that the code executes as expected
Verify a Ruby Class Method is Called with Arguments in Rspec, Without Doubles or Mocks
Rspec code to verify that a Ruby Class Method is called from another method, without needing to mock anything.
Chef 13 Upgrade: `knife-cookbook-doc` gem upgrade
Fixing odd Logger entries in autogenerated knife-cookbook-doc README.mds for Chef 13
Chef 13 Upgrade: Deprecation of Namespace Collisions in Custom Resources
Preparing for breaking changes in Chef 14 by renaming property_name to new_resource.property_name in Custom Resources.
Chef 13 Upgrade: Rubocop Changes for Word Array Literals (`%w`)
A one-liner shell command to fix Rubocop errors %w-literals should be delimited by [ and ].
Chef 13 Upgrade: Lessons Learnt and Documented for Posterity
Notes on the main problems encountered when upgrading from Chef 12 to Chef 13, both with ChefSpec and Rubocop.
Chef 13 Upgrade: Testing `ruby_block`s with ChefSpec
Replace your block.old_run_action with block.block.call to trigger ruby_blocks within ChefSpec 7 and Chef 13.
Chef 13 Upgrade: Rubocop Changes for Testing `render_file` with ChefSpec and a `with_content` Block
How to resolve the Parenthesize the param render_file Rubocop error when upgrading your cookbook to Chef 13.
Chef 13 Upgrade: Rubocop Changes for `lazy` Parameters
How to resolve the Parenthesize the param lazy Rubocop error when upgrading your cookbook to Chef 13.
Emoji Support in Dunst
How to see Emoji when using the Dunst notification system.
`SSLError` When Running Berkshelf Behind a Proxy
Getting around the pesky OpenSSL::SSL::SSLError SSLv2/v3 read server hello A error when running Berkshelf behind a proxy
2017 in Review
A look back over the awesome (and not so awesome) things that happened in 2017, and a look forward to what 2018 holds.
Hackference 2017
My summary of the Hackference 2017 conference and hackathon.
Running `service` resources in Kitchen-Docker
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.
Trusting Self-Signed Certificates from the Chef Development Kit
How to get the ChefDK (and associated tools) to trust internal / self-signed certificates, in an easy oneliner.
Getting around `Permission Denied` when running ChefSpec
How to handle getting an EACCES when trying to run ChefSpec on a recipe.
GitLab Review Apps with Capistrano and Nginx
Spinning up a version of your application on every push, so others don’t have to manually get the code up and running locally.
Testing `include_recipe`s with Chef and ChefSpec
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
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)
Coerce YAML to JSON and vice versa, from the comfort of your Gem-studded command line.
Clean up your Git branches
Remove any merged local or branches from your local Git repository
Pretty Printing JSON on the Command Line with Python
Using Python’s JSON module to pretty print JSON objects from the command line.
Viewing your diff while writing your commits with git commit --verbose
Making it easier to write commit messages by having the diff in your editor.
Building Chef Cookbooks with GitLab (Part 1)
An introduction to how to build a cookbook using GitLab’s Continuous Integration platform in conjunction with kitchen-docker.
Extracting SSL/TLS Certificate Chains Using OpenSSL
A quick one-liner to get you the full certificate chain in .pem format.
glances, a `top` and `htop` replacement
I share the tool I have been using for system utilisation and monitoring, glances.
Saving Repetition with Git Commit Templates
Speed up your commit message writing by providing a template for when you run git commit.
Cleaning Up Your LaTeX Build Output with `latexrun`
A tool to help reduce the amount of unnecessary output when building LaTeX files.
Why You Should Use GitLab.com
A discussion about the reasons that I would greatly recommend the GitLab.com platform for all your Git hosting, opposed to its competitors.
Resurrecting dinosaurs, what could possibly go wrong?
How containerised apps (AppImage, Snappy and Flatpak) could eat our users
Preparing a Technical Workshop - A Checklist
What you need to remember to ask the organisers and what to consider in order to ensure your workshop goes smoothly.
CloudABI - Easily develop sandboxed apps for UNIX
An Application Binary Interface to make it possible to create capabilities-based, hardened, software.
FOSDEM 2017
A few words ahead of the storm of articles.
Open S-awesome
A month of giving back, and a very honest post-mortem of what I learned.
Continuous Delivery with Capistrano and GitLab Continuous Integration
How to get up and running with using GitLab CI and the Capistrano deploy tool
Hacktoberfest 2016
A few words about my excitement for the start of Hacktoberfest, and some ideas on how to get started yourself.
The Sony Hack
A discussion about Sony Pictures Entertainment being hacked in the months before the release of the action comedy, The Interview, and its depiction of Kim Jong Un.
The Hour of Code: What's the Worst that Could Happen?
Why you should invest just a single hour in learning how code can be useful to you.
Game of Drones
Discussing how drones will be shaping the future of the delivery business.
Smart is the New Black: Lightbulbs to Reflect a Modern Age
The future of lighting - using smart, long-lived lightbulbs that can be configured to only turn on when there’s someone in the house.
Intelligent Parenting
Bringing the Internet of Things to the home, and to help monitor your children.