Functional Programming (Over?) Simplified
Introduction Since changing track from being a macOS application developer to being an Elixir developer a few people have asked me about functional programm...
Categories
elixir
Ecto and Binary IDs Generated By PostgreSQL
Version Info: Elixir 1.7 / OTP 21, Ecto 3.0 and Postgres 10 I want to use UUIDs as the primary keys in an Elixir system I am developing but struggled to fin...
Five Great Things About Elixir
Introduction My career as a developer has evolved through various languages and platforms during the last 20-something years and for the last decade I’ve mai...
Grokking Elixir
Introduction Late last September I started being interested in Elixir. As the website says, “Elixir is a dynamic, functional language designed for building s...
health
Choosing A New Bike
After realising that my weight and fitness were in a bad way again I turned my attention to researching bicycles. I have had a varied history of bike owners...
My Bicycle History
The Roses This isn’t a bike model but rather my first memory of cycling. I was probably five or six and it was a hot summer day and so I was just wearing sh...
Weight and Health
In four months I turn 48. I am 5’8” (173 cm) and weight 15st 10lb (100kg). I am unfit and have a very sedentary lifestyle because I work from home as a softw...
The Depressed Developer
I’ve moved the conclusion from the end to the top. If you only have one minute, read this bit and ignore the rest. Whatever work you do, but particularly if...
linux
NixOS, Phoenix and Sass
Elixir’s web application framework, Phoenix, is moving away from needing a dependency on Node to make projects easier to maintain and thing in general just a...
My Linux Life
Introduction After I wrote about my love of StarLabs’s 11” laptop, the StarLite, someone asked me about the software I run on it, how I work with people who...
The StarLite Laptop
I do pretty much all of my development work on my desktop computer but I still need a laptop for those times I just want to work from the sofa or for when I ...
Unchaining Data
Introduction Plain text files are very portable. There is no tie-in to any particular editor or application or even operating system. The problem is that mo...
The Month of Linux on my Desktop
Introduction One month ago I wrote about trying Linux for work. A fair amount has happened since then so I thought I’d post a quick update. The Hardware I...
The Year of Linux on my Desktop?
Introduction Last week I decided to scratch an itch and tried using Linux for the first time in about 15 years. I wanted to see if would be possible to do m...
miscellaneous
The NASberry Pi
A What Now? I wanted to try creating my own NAS using a Raspberry Pi and NVMe drives. This post goes over what I have did to get it up and running. (The ar...
From Digital To Physical Media
This morning the YouTube algorithm suggested a video called “Wait, what happened to HMV?” to me. It covered the decline and then revival of the company and e...
15 Years of Twitter
Today marks 15 years since I signed up for Twitter according to a notification they pushed to me. It seemed like the perfect time to delete my account, part...
My Twitter Wind-Down
Last Friday Twitter disabled the API keys of the major Twitter clients, including Tweetbot, my client of choice, with no notice, and no communication with th...
My Git Notes
This blog post is a personal reference in that I wanted to document the Git commands I use the most now that I use the command line more and more. I am publi...
Mastodon
If you use Twitter and are seeing this blog post then there is a good chance you know that Mastodon is an alternative social network which is similar to Twit...
Keep Moving
“We all change. When you think about it we’re all different people all through our lives. And that’s okay, that’s good, you’ve got to keeping moving so lon...
From Evernote to Notes
Introduction I have been using Evernote for several years and I pay for a Premium plan because I need to use more than two devices and some of my attachments...
Traveling Light
I’m off to China for a week-long business trip soon and, because I didn’t want to take my MacBook Pro with me (amongst other things, for privacy and security...
Working With Multiple GitHub (and Alternatives) Accounts
Introduction I have multiple GitHub accounts courtesy of having several clients and a couple of my own businesses. Accessing and managing them can be a bit o...
Perspective Is Terribly Important
Over the last 24 hours or so a news story (see the links to some of the coverage at the end of this post for examples) has been developing regarding ‘tagging...
python
Python Resources
Introduction Whenever I start learning a new programming language I like to find good book and blog authors, good conference videos (and ideally find confere...
Pip and Virtual Environments
Introduction The contents of this post are based on a blog post written by Jamie Matthews which is called, ‘A non-magical introduction to Pip and Virtualenv ...
Visual Studio Code for Python Development
Introduction This blog post gives a brief overview about how I’ve settled on using Visual Studio Code for Python development and describes the basic configur...
New To Python
I recently started teaching myself Python and decided that documenting some of my experiences and discoveries would be a good way to revitalise my blog. Thi...