Github Actions is a “BYOBE” (Bring Your Own Bloody Everything) offering that provides basic CI with surprisingly convoluted configuration to Github. The product as a whole is an exercise in frustration, one of the worst parts is the lack of reusability and the complexity required to achieve it. Github’s concept of reusable workflows on Github Actions is clearly a cobbled together afterthought. ...
The YAML Spec defined a simple way to reuse values in YAML documents by means of Anchors and Aliases. ...
As of 2022, I’ve been using zsh as my primary shell for 14 years. Over that time I’ve experimented with and accumulated a lot of configuration, scripts, hacks, plugins and themes. I’ve settled on a configuration that I’m mostly happy with, over this series I’m going to share my current setup. ...
Contributing to Open Source is important to the quality and maintainability of the software and engineering communities we rely on every day - so why is it that so many developers/engineers never participate? ...
We create more value by having conversations in public instead of behind closed doors. ...
Near the end of each year I note down a summary of the best apps I’ve enjoyed using throughout the year, here’s 2022. ...
We’re (still) not deploying enough It’s 2022 and not deploying frequently enough is still one of the most common causes of software failure. ...
Over the past month I’ve been playing with OpenAI’s DALL·E 2, below are some of the interesting images I’ve generated. “DALL·E 2 is a new AI system that can create realistic images and art from a description in natural language.” “A renaissance oil painting of two developers arguing over which javascript framework is the worst” “A Ralph Steadman painting of 7 cats sitting on a fence, and one raven” ...
Beginner Harmonica Practice Exercises Way back in around 2008 I wrote up a doc with a list of beginner harp exercises and practice riffs, at the time it was uploaded to a few forums and a shared Google doc - both have since disappeared. To this day I still get regular emails asking for a copy of it so I thought I’d copy it to a post here. Note: I haven’t updated these since around 2011. ...
Firefox Addons - 2022 Edition My list of must-have Firefox addons - 2022 edition Updated: 2022-11-07 Privacy and Security Firstly - you should have Firefox’s Enhanced Tracking Protection enabled. Don’t Track Me Google LocalCDN UTM Tracking Token Stripper Note: You can accomplish some of what this does by setting up the removeparam uBlock origin rules I’ve listed below. Multi-Account Containers Useful for setting sites such as Amazon, eBay, Twitter, LinkedIn, Banking etc… each to always open in their own isolated container. The official addon for whatever Password Manager you use. Firefox Translations uBlock Origin Probably the single most important addon. ...