All posts

All my posts, in reverse chronological order.

• A Journey from Chaos to Version Control: A Developer's Tale   Horror Development
  

  A true story from my first programming job. When I started that job in 2003 we did not have version control (VCS) for our PHP source code. I was told we did not need it, and that was that. Or was it?

• Alien Artefacts    Development
  

  The purpose of this blog post is to introduce the concept of alien artefacts, a subcategory of legacy code that is highly resistant to change despite being well-designed and performing a critical function. It provides insights into the challenges engineers face when dealing with such code and offers practical advice on how to effectively maintain it.

• Levelling up Pull Requests   Development
  

  I share how I tackled the challenge of reducing cycle time for getting pull requests approved within my team, using the first habit from "7 Habits of Highly Effective People": Be Proactive.

• Can I Crack the Code?   Music Guitar
  

  I've played guitar for 25 years, but I'm unable to play fast. Can Troy Grady's Cracking The Code change that?

• Personal Retrospectives   Reviews
  

  Introducing a Guide to Personal Retrospectives—a post on our company blog I co-wrote with my colleague Cian.

• The Scout Mindset   Reviews
  

  I review the book by Julia Galef—about the motivation to see things as they are, not as you wish they were.

• Shell Quickstart   Tutorial Shell
  

  In 2013 I worked at NET-A-PORTER, where we ran a year-long graduate program. Participants did three-month rotations with four teams, getting experience with different parts of our business. I volunteered to run a workshop introducing them to shell programming, and later adapted the material into this blog post.

• How I record Guitar   Music
  

  In my musical journey I try to record myself occasionally to track my progress, and be able to critically listen to myself so I can fix my mistakes. This is brief note on how I normally do that.

• On broken horses & master branches   Soapbox
  

  I explain why I chose to rename the master branch in my Git repos to trunk.

• Musical Goals   Music
  

  I review how I did on my musical goals for 2019, and try to outline some new goals for 2020, before rounding off with sharing a snapshot of my current practice routine.

• Dark Mode   Hacks
  

  I experiment with adding an automatic Dark Mode to this site, if your browser requests it.

• Driving Technical Change (Review)   Reviews
  

  I review the book Driving Technical Change by Terrence Ryan.

• Speeding up tests on CircleCI for a Python Django project   Python CircleCI
  

  I outline how we reduced the time to run a Django application's CI test suite from about 13 minutes to under 4 minutes.

• Digital Minimalism   Lifestyle Reviews
  

  I introduce Cal Newport's book, and how it's helping me take control of where I spend my limited currency in today's attention economy.

• Learning Guitar Update   Music
  

  I try to keep myself honest–and on target!–by posting an update on my guitar learning journey.

• Bose QuietComfort 35 Review   Reviews
  

  I review the noise-cancelling headphones I've been using for about 3 years.

• Musical Goals January Update   Music
  

  The first of (hopefully) monthly posts with updates on my musical goals for 2019. I cover achievements in January, and new goals for February.

• My Musical Goals for 2019   Music
  

  I list my musical goals for 2019, and touch briefly on achievements in 2018.

• Extracting Minecraft Music with Python   Minecraft Python
  

  I create a Python script to extract music files from Minecraft's assets.

• My hiring experience as a submarine sonar operator in the Norwegian Navy   Talks Hiring
  

  This is a transcript of a lightning talk I gave at a company "all hands" get-together. I tell the story of my "hiring experience" as a sonar operator on a submarine in the Norwegian Navy. To tie it into work, I included a little hiring-related lesson at the end.

• Linking Org mode blog posts into the index page   Emacs Org
  

  I wanted it to be easy to create a new entry on the index page. I call on Emacs Lisp to help.

• Making Team Decisions   Practices
  

  I summarise a useful technique for making team decisions I learnt about at The London Lead Developer conference a couple months ago.

• Creating an RSS feed with Org mode   Org Emacs
  

  A post to announce that this site now has an RSS feed generated from the front page's content, and explain how I create it.

• No More Superloopy
  

  Why this site is moving from the superloopy.io domain to brautaset.org.

• How to Support my FOSS Work!
  

  I present four ways you can support me if you have (or continue to) benefit from my work on Free and Open Source Software (FOSS).

• Printing Music (Through My Stereo!)   Hacks
  

  I explain how I set up MPlayer as a printer driver so I could add a distributed print queue for music. (AKA a JukeBox.)

• Open Letter to NCC about Parking in Berwick   Soapbox
  

  I complain about the unacceptable parking situation for commuters to Berwick-upon-Tweed and present a few suggestions for improvement that might help.

• Updating DNS with output of another CloudFormation stack (6/6)   CloudFormation
  

  I show the changes to my Sceptre config & CloudFormation template required to point DNS to the two CloudFront distributions I've created.

• Publishing this blog to an S3 bucket (5/6)
  

  I show briefly the changes I need to make to publish this blog to S3 rather than to GitHub.

• Creating S3 website with SSL using CloudFormation (4/6)   CloudFormation
  

  I show how to create an S3 bucket set up to serve a static website, and expose it over HTTPS via CloudFront, using the same SSL certificate we created in the previous post—all via CloudFormation.

• Adding SSL to S3 Redirect Bucket with CloudFormation (3/6)   CloudFormation
  

  I show how to create an S3 bucket for redirecting web requests, put it behind a CloudFront distribution, and configured this with an SSL certificate—all via CloudFormation.

• Managing AWS Route 53 with CloudFormation (2/6)   CloudFormation
  

  In which I delegate DNS from Gandi to AWS Route 53, and learn how to configure Route 53 with CloudFormation & Sceptre.

• Adding SSL to this Blog (1/6)
  

  I outline the steps I plan to take to add SSL to this blog, leveraging AWS Certificate Manager, CloudFront, S3 and Route 53. (And potentially CloudFormation.)

• Blogging with Org mode—update   Emacs
  

  A short experience report about blogging with Org mode.

• Potter Coding Dojo in Clojure   Clojure
  

  Detailing my trials and tribulations with the "Potter" coding dojo problem, with code examples in Clojure.

• N Queens in Clojure   Clojure
  

  Using Clojure to put \(N\) Queens on an \(N \times N\) chess board without them being able to threaten each other.

• Electoral Reform Now!   Soapbox
  

  I try to show how unjust the First Past the Post system used to elect MPs in UK General Elections is.

• Blogging with Org Mode   Emacs
  

  I describe how—and why—I changed from blogging using Markdown & Jekyll to using Org mode.

• Open Letter to Anne Marie MP   Soapbox
  

  I ask how the Conservatives can say they are "working for everyone" whilst giving extra tax breaks and benefits to the 15% of top earners, and at the same time cutting benefits for the poor.

• Hydra Theme Switcher For Emacs   Emacs
  

  I learnt how to quickly switch between all installed themes in Emacs using Hydra.

• How I Blog (This Week)   Emacs
  

  I share my Emacs & Org-mode setup for blogging with Jekyll.

• Berwick Academy STEM Talk   Talks
  

  I went to Berwick Academy and talked to prospective computer science students there about my education and career. This is a transcript of my talk, organised by STEMNET.

• FizzBuzz   Hacks
  

  Breakdown of my Tweetable FizzBuzz created using sed and xargs.

• Change Terminal background colour on OS X via ssh   Hacks
  

  I show how to change Terminal.app colours automatically when logging into certain remote machines via SSH

• Setting up Leafnode NNTP server on OS X   Emacs
  

  I set up the Leafnode NNTP server on OS X, for use with Emacs and the Gnus newsreader.

• Overcoming RSI   Soapbox
  

  Early 2005 I encountered a bad bout of RSI. Prompted by a comment on the Lobsters forum, I thought I'd share my experience.

• ModSecurity and Puppet Spelunking   Puppet
  

  In which I investigate how to configure SecAuditLogParts for ModSecurity with Puppet, and find I have to contribute a patch to make it possible.

• Not so philosophically different after all?   Clojure
  
• A Lesson in Benchmarking   Development
  
• Nuisance Calls   Soapbox
  
• Tinker Bell (2008)   Reviews
  
• 2015 Resolutions
  
• Passwordless registration and login   Soapbox
  
• Good Ideas   Soapbox
  
• Optimising HTTP Cache Hit Rate   Development
  
• Smartphone Addiction
  
• Resolutions Progress
  
• ToddlerCalm   Reviews
  
• Losing weight by eating right
  
• Spray Example   Scala
  
• Delighting your users with SBJson 4   SBJson Talks
  
• Learning Clojure by Solving Euler Problems   Clojure
  
• Resolutions
  
• Consolidating and de-duplicating iPhoto libraries   Hacks
  
• Spray Routing Error Handling   Scala
  
• Scala, Slick & PostgreSQL Unit Tests   Scala
  
• Re-designing for readers
  
• Using ScalaTest with Akka   Scala Akka
  
• Injecting Akka's TestProbe in place of child actors   Scala Akka
  
• Dairy-free bread and "butter" pudding
  
• Backing Up Photos Online   Hacks
  
• What now for SBJson?   SBJson
  
• Real custom rank keys   Hacks
  
• Little Brother   Reviews
  
• Creating a resizable grid of CALayers   ObjectiveC
  
• Saw 25% faster!
  
• Objective-C syntax sugar wish list   ObjectiveC
  
• Objective-C Feature Request   ObjectiveC
  
• Avenue Que?   Reviews
  
• Introducing Statistics for Objective-C   ObjectiveC
  
• Embedding Cocoa Frameworks   ObjectiveC
  
• Goodbye GPL, hello BSD?   Soapbox
  
• MiniMax and AlphaBeta Search   Tutorial
  
• No Smoking
  
• The Orient Express
  
• Piping to sh -   Tutorial
  
• Renaming lots of files   Tutorial
  
• A Can of Worms
  
• Well done is
  
• Quiet Please
  
• CityLink is teh suck!   Soapbox
  
• Rice instruction craziness
  
• Abandon all hope   Soapbox
  
• Bad Typesetting   Soapbox
  
• Playing at the Edge of AI   Reviews
  
• Generating Bar Charts with SQL   Hacks
  
• A lesson in testing   Testing
  
• Internet on the South Pole
  
• Hippies
  
• Rise of the Machine   Hacks
  
• In-sewer Ants
  
• Regular Expressions   Hacks
  
• Connected!
  
• Moving in
  
• Moving-in Party
  
• What I want for my Birthday
  
• Perpetual mid-season
  
• Target Reached!
  
• Money Transfer   Soapbox
  
• New Headphones   Reviews
  
• Blade Trinity   Reviews
  
• Untraditional Refactoring Technique   Hacks
  
• Connectivity Galore
  
• Attacks on London
  
• Test Driven Development   Reviews
  
• Can I have some Water please?
  
• Extreme Programming Explained   Reviews
  
• A fisherman puts down his oars
  
• Chip And Pin   Soapbox
  
• Co-operative Banking Trouble   Soapbox
  
• Heinlein's list of skills
  
• Blade 2   Reviews
  
• First Dim Sum