I’m a developer with a passion for cloud platforms, web development and automation!
I use this blog to write about my interests. They’re usually tech-related, but there’s also the odd music and gaming piece too.
2020-10-19 // 6 min read // #site
For the last week or so, I’ve been working on a few improvements to this site!
I don’t usually write about this stuff, but I thought it might be interesting to briefly mention a few of the things I’ve done.
I could do it, I didn't stop to think whether it should be done
2020-10-16 // 7 min read // #automation #buildkite #ios-shortcuts
For a while now, I’ve been automatically sending out my newsletter as a part of the deployment process for my website. It’s a great convenience that means I can focus on writing and publishing new content, instead of worrying about generating and delivering actual emails.
In my current setup, I’m able to preview newsletters from my inbox before they’re delivered to my readers. If I think one is good to go, I can hit the big red button to send it out!
While pressing this “big red button” only takes a half-dozen clicks in a web UI, I’d love if it was just that little bit easier on my end. So that’s what I set about improving today!
Leaking sensitive data from the comfort of your phone
2020-10-02 // 3 min read // #privacy
Metadata, or “data about data”, is a useful thing to have.
On the web, it’s great to have access to extra information about a webpage that browsers don’t show through <meta> tags and response headers. When we’re working with filesystems, we might care about when files were created and their access permissions just as much as we might care about their contents.
But at the same time, metadata can also be a cause for concern.
2020-09-25 // 4 min read // #hugo
Update:
I’ve brought this disappearing post back from the abyss, enjoy!
That’s right, there’s self-destructing blog posts now
I’ve been toying with the idea of writing expiring blog posts for a while now, ever since discovering the expiryDate variable in Hugo.
Being able to have temporary posts that get cleaned up after a period of time seems like an interesting challenge and a nice convenience. For example, if I want to blog a short-term update that gets taken down once it’s no longer relevant.
While this is easy in a dynamic site (currentDate > expiryDate), it’s something that static sites struggle with. If a site’s content changes over time, a static site must be updated with each change. I know I’m certainly not going to remember to redeploy my site weeks after publishing a temporary post!
With scheduled builds and a little extra configuration though, I’ve managed to automate my troubles away!
Trying a few final approaches to get one last speed boost
2020-09-12 // 11 min read // #rust
“Well here we are again, it’s always such a pleasure”
Over the past few weeks, I’ve been building a solver for the puzzle game Golf Peaks and improving its performance over the course of a few blog posts. Given I’ve still got a few final ideas I’d like to try, how about one last writeup?
