Post-deployment triggers for PaaS providers
Not all hosting providers offer a mechanism to trigger follow up actions after a deployment. Here are a few examples using GitHub Actions to achieve it.
Simple Electron automatic updates
If you’re using
electron-builder
to publish your applications, then electron-auto-update provides you with a user-friendly simple auto update mechanism with one method call.Managing GPG with Keybase
Use Keybase to setup and manage GPG, and start signing your git commits
Working remotely with SSH and VNC
A week long trip out in Spain with the need for CPU power back home
Tmux - the essentials
With only a handful of commands, tmux can still be your new best friend on the terminal
Quick and simple Github Gist oEmbed support
Get those code snippets embedded easily
Install and manage WordPress with Composer
Automated and repeatable WordPress deploys with Composer
Introduction to Ansible
The new, cool provisioning kid on the block
Poor mans VPN with sshuttle
Get around those evil firewalls and secure your net connection
Switch to a retro shell, Fish shell
Leave behind the millions of plugins, and slowness, and just use Fish
Identity theft and no one seeming to care but me
Maybe don’t waste your time reporting it in future…
Setting up a Puppet Master and Agents on EC2
One server to rule them all
Install EC2 command line tools with OS X
Be a ninja with EC2 using the CLI
Getting started with Amazon EC2
It’s not as difficult as it may first seem
Install and manage WordPress with Git
Keeping the core separate, but easy to update
Introduction to Puppet
Puppet can change your life
Testing Javascript websites with Behat
Using the Behat WebDriver driver to easily test websites with Javascript
Using Behat with Mink
Writing custom definitions
Setup rbenv on Mac OS X
Some quick setup instructions on getting rbenv installed on Lion
Getting started with Behat
A quick introduction on setting up Behat and writing your first test
Setting up Github Pages
Getting started with a Jekyll powered site and migrating from WordPress
Simple local web development with Apache and Dnsmasq
When you sit down and start work on a new project, what hoops do you have to jump through before you get your app running in your browser?
Install APF on Ubuntu 11.04
I just setup a new Linode to host my new twitter app, lists dj and wanted to lock it down to basically Apache and SSH.
Setup UFW on Ubuntu 11.04
Not much more than a few hours have passed since I posted my APF setup howto, but I’ve found something even simpler.
PHP development on Mac OS X 10.6 Snow Leopard
Having a reliable and easy to use developer environment on my Mac is essential for my work, and the odd project I work on.
Merging MKV files together
mkvmerge -o merged_file.mkv file1.mkv + file2.mkv
Mod rewrite rules in htaccess files
Rewrite rules in an htaccess file don’t need to leading slash, otherwise they won’t work.
Authentication with CodeIgniter 2.0
I’ve started using CodeIgniter again recently, and have noticed that my how-to on implementing basic authentication could do with an upgrade for version 2.
A simple chat room with WebSockets
Sorry, I promised a blog post, but instead you get a link to bitbucket with the source of a basic chat app written using WebSockets.
Setting up SSH host shortnames
Here’s an example setup to create SSH host shortnames. On you local computer, add the following to ~/.
SSH and public key authentication
Fed up with having to type your password in each time you log into a server over SSH?
Using Capistrano to deploy Mercurial changes
We have a few production servers at work, and we have a central bitbucket repository to store our core code.
Using o2 PAYG mobile broadband
Our internet connection via our landline has been dead since Tuesday afternoon, so I’ve needed an alternative connection in the meantime to give me my twitter fix!
Redirecting Apache traffic to a maintenance page
Here’s a simple solution to redirect users to a maintenance page in Apache. This rewrite rule can stay in your config (<VirtualHost> or .
Install Mercurial on CentOS 4
We’ve finally moved to Mercurial at work (well, we didn’t exactly move from anywhere, but that’s another story…).
Apache, PHP and MongoDB on Mac OS X 10.6 Snow Leopard
MongoDB (from “humongous”) is a scalable, high-performance, open source, schema-free, document-oriented database. There’s a lot of buzz brewing about it, so I wanted to give it a try with PHP on my development Mac.
Remove startup scripts on Ubuntu
sudo update-rc.d -f script_name remove
Convert git repository to mercurial
Ensure that the mercurial convert extension is enabled: nano ~/.hgrc Inside that file add: [extensions] hgext.
Enable PHP error logging
In php.ini: display_errors = Off log_errors = On error_log = /var/log/php-errors.log Make the log file, and writable by www-data:
PHP and nginx on Ubuntu: the easy way
I’ve now changed my slice from running lighttpd to nginx. Here’s the simplest way, in around 6 commands, to get PHP up and running via FastCGI.
Authentication with CodeIgniter
Here’s how I do some basic authentication for a controller in CodeIgniter. It basically consists of creating a new class that extends the default Controller class.
A simple PHP delicious REST example with pecl_http
<?php $username = 'your_username'; $password = 'your_password'; $url = "https://$username:$password@api.del.icio.us/v1/posts/recent"; $request = new HttpRequest($url, HTTP_METH_GET); $response = $request->send(); print $response->getBody(); ?
Install pecl_http for PHP
You will probably want to ensure that curl supports https before getting underway: curl -V Check that the output contains https:
Install PHP5, lighttpd and Imagick on Mac OS X Leopard
It’s a little tricky getting a nice clean install of PHP5 for OS X 10.5. The packages that I always used to depend on over at Entropy don’t seem to work anymore.
lighttpd and PHP on CentOS 5
Here’s a quick run down on getting lighttpd and php running on CentOS 5. yum install lighttpd lighttpd-fastcgi php mkdir /var/run/lighttpd touch /var/run/lighttpd/php-fastcgi.
Mac OS X/HFS+ case-insensitive? Why?
I just found out that HFS+, the preferred file system for Mac OS X, is case-insensitive when it comes to files and directories.
Merge video files with mencoder
To merge video files together with mencoder is simple: mencoder -oac copy -ovc copy file1.avi file2.
Killing a program using a batch file in Windows
Having got my keyboard shortcut working to launch my batch file, next was to actually make it quit the emulator program when invoked.
Using shortcut keys in Windows
You won’t find me writing about Windows too much on here I promise. I’ve been forced to use Windows XP on my arcade machine due to the lack of a decent Sega Mega Drive (Genesis for anyone in the US) emulator on Linux.
vim: find, comment, save and quit
For the last month, I’ve been teaching myself vim. So here’s an explanation for anyone interested in the commands I have been using:
Me TV - EyeTV for Ubuntu?
My search for an open source, Ubuntu alternative for EyeTV on OS X is nearly over.
DVB and Mplayer
As a follow up to yesterday’s post, here is a quick run through of how to use Mplayer to view DVB channels.
Watching Freeview (DVB-T) TV with VLC Player on Ubuntu
Watching TV on my desktop. What do I want to be able to do? Watch all Freeview (DVB-T) channels.
Line breaks in OpenOffice.org
A really frustrating issue I had when writing my project report, was that of dealing with source code formatting.
mod_rewrite and Mac OS X Personal Web Sharing
It was very frustrating installing a fresh Wordpress on my Mac and finding that the permalinks didn’t work.
Graphviz - for drawing directed graphs
This semester at University, I’m taking ‘Compiler Design & Techniques’ as a module. The second coursework involves drawing Finite State Machines diagrams that represent regular expressions.
Switch to Static IP on Ubuntu Server
I just bought a new Linksys router for my home network and wanted to set-up my Ubuntu Web Server with a static IP address so that I could port-forward a few things.
Unix Disk Usage
A very handy command to see the total size of a directory on a Unix-based computer.
Mac "Hot Corners" for Ubuntu
I’ve had a bit more time recently to play around with Ubuntu and am finding the ‘Ubuntu versions’ of apps that I’ve grown to love on Mac OS X.
Festive Mac Screen Saver
Here’s a great Mac screen saver to get you in the Christmas spirit–LotsaSnow. It generates unique snow flakes that then gently fall down from the top of your screen.
Change your Terminal prompt - Lost style
Fancy a change from the default prompt you get in your Terminal? Want to mimic the Terminal prompt used in Lost?
Getting Ubuntu Dapper to dance with ATI X800 GTO
I’ve made a brand new spare PC that I’m hoping my parents can use in their spare room/study.
Building Apache 2.2 from source for Ubuntu Dapper
Two reasons you might want to do this. You want to host a Rails application using Mongrel via Apache and mod_proxy_balancer.
Subversion 1.4.0 from source via Apache 2.2 on Ubuntu Dapper
This howto assumes you’ve already followed my Building Apache 2.2 from source article. Now we’re going to install Subversion 1.
Ubuntu Dapper Web Server How-to
It’s finally here, my updated how-to on how to get Ubuntu Dapper up and running as a home web server.
Set-up Typo 4 on Ubuntu Dapper
It was very annoying to find out that the brand spanking new installer for Typo wasn’t going to install over rubygems.
Cocoa-Java and Jar Frameworks
Note: Didn’t have time to really write this article up - maybe some time I will - but I’m posting it here just in case it comes in handy for someone.
Using Tomcat Ant tasks
I’m now really loving Ant for compiling my Java projects together. It really has solved the problem of figuring out what to update, or going through countless commands to compile each package etc.
Access Control for Subversion with Apache2 and Authz
My group project at University now consists of three smaller projects that provide an overall RSS service.
Tomcat on Mac OS X Tiger
Download the ‘Core’ .tar.gz version of Tomcat (as of this writing 5.5.15) from http://tomcat.apache.org/download-55.cgi. Extract and move the folder:
Mac friendly Java apps in a few lines
Mac menu-bar? Set this before you initiate your JFrame in your main class: System.setProperty("apple.laf.useScreenMenuBar", "true"); Other systems will just ignore this and the menu-bar will appear as normal for that system.
Subversion over Apache 2 on Ubuntu
If your one of my regular readers (ha!), then you’ll know I’m starting a Group Project for University.
Using IRC and other IM apps at University
At University, they’ve blocked ports for all IM applications, including IRC. This sucks, because IRC can actually be really helpful for asking for advice on things such as C++ or C.
Ubuntu 5.10 web server howto
I reinstalled my home server today (well, I actually started yesterday, but today I finished from scratch again) and wrote down what I did.
Java foreach loop
Coming from a PHP background, it’s always annoyed me that I can’t use something as simple as a foreach() loop in my C++/Java applications.
Setting up XDMCP for Mac
I just finished setting up a spare PC I had with Ubuntu on it. Thing is, it’s damn noisy so I want it stuffed up in the loft out of the way.
Sorting a Vector using Collections.sort()
Collections.sort() allows you to sort a Collections framework that is inherited from the List class. The Vector class is, so that’s great!