Despite cron being an age old *nix technology, it alway seems like scheduling tasks is an annoying thing. Note: Cron is the standard *nix technology for running tasks on a recurring basis like "every monday at 5 am execute this program". We are now doing things like running tasks within containers a...

Disclaimer: I'm a software engineer by profession with a history of large scale project management and a focus on dependency management. I'm also a food nerd so I take the holiday meal seriously; perhaps too damn seriously. Apologies ??? But seriously, just one of these tips may make your holiday me...

I know, I know – it is 2019 and we're not supposed to be SSH'ing into boxes – but, really, you're going to do it anyway. And if you are going to ssh into boxes then, for heaven's sake, let's get rid of that stupidity that is your SSH terminal disconnecting whenever there is a simple blip in connecti...

For my current side project, cmn, I'm using a version control model of issue branches as described here back in June (about when I started this). Basically the model is: The master branch is always pristine and always deployable. The develop branch takes changes from issue branches and is then merge...

My git workflow is pretty simple. Here are the tasks and (where I do them): Create an issue that logs what I'm working on (github website) Use the issue's id number to make a branch (command line) Work on the branch (editor) Add / Commit / Push to the Branch (command line) Create a Pull Request (git...

Now that I've come up to speed on Python, I have an application in production that uses both Python and Ruby. What it does isn't really important but getting it live posed an interesting deployment challenge due to the need to have both Python and Ruby concurrently. My initial attempt to make this w...

So yesterday someone said this to me: You know the problem with your blog – you write so much and its not searchable. Poppycock. Balderdash. Fizzle Sticks. Ok. Maybe. Yes there's not search box at the top of my blog but anything on the Internet that has a distinct domain name is actually easily sear...

As I've written in the past, I am an unabashed fan of pair programming. Pair programming is one of the few techniques that I can credibly point to that really, really, really improves software quality. And since I'm a remote developer, I really, really need good pairing tools. The unfortunate realit...

Note: If you're not a Rails user, on OSX, then just nope the heck out of reading this post. This is some serious nerdery here. One of the single most frustrating things about the Rails ecosystem is when you can't get a bundle install operation to finish. The bundle install, of course, is the process...

Docker is a container technology that allows you to package up a series of different technologies under (generally) a *nix style operating system. As things deployed with Docker are generally deployed under a *nix style operating system, it isn't uncommon to want to open a shell into your Docker env...

This blog post takes addresses a common problem for technical workers - you have been offered a full time freelance gig and you don't know whether or not to take it based on its value versus your current compensation. Note: Traditionally I have done a crap ass job at making these kind of assessments...

Like a lot of software developers, I can be pretty forgetful at times. If you're in the industry, you know how it goes: You start working on a project and it is February You look up and … it is May and You don't remember all that much of your life between A good friend of mine refers to this as fall...

A close friend recently said to me: I'm Copying You Since You're So Effective with respect to how much I tend to get done and I thought I'd elaborate on this a bit since I suspect that why I'm effective isn't always apparent. These aren't really in any order other than the order that I chose to fini...

Like so many other things this falls into the category of "I'll do it 100 more times before I die and I can never remember it so may as well blog it". A migration adds a column to a table in a database managed by Rails. In this case I had a table which needed to manage multiple types of data all fro...

I've written in the past about watching your SQL queries stream by in the Rails console and how seeing, well, stupidity / things that look wrong can help guide you to things you need to find. Here's an example I witnessed recently: habit = Habit.find(2) habit.total_this_month Metric Load (2.5ms) SEL...

So I recently moved to running my Ruby code thru RuboCop prior to each submission courtesy of the magic that is Lefthook. I don't always fix everything that RuboCop detects but I tend to read thru the reports. I'm using the "Boy Scout" approach to campsites, i.e. leave your campsite (code base) bett...

One of the worst aspects of doing Rails development, although this is not limited to Rails in any way, is getting data to use for development work once your site starts getting users. Yes I know that you should always have full test coverage and that local data shouldn't be necessary – but it absolu...

One of the tricky bits about Ansible is that new features in the "language" always require the latest version of Ansible itself. And, while logical, this can easily bite you. Here's an example: TASK [deploy_hate-language-modeling_systemd_start : just force systemd to re-execute itself (2.8 and above...

A colleague just IM'd me and asked if I have a Hello World for redis and my thought was "No but I can damn well blog one together quick as all get out" so … Note: If the word Redis means nothing to you then may I direct you to the quick start? The thing to understand about Redis is that you can use ...

Github has a maximum size of 50 mb per file under management. And that normally works just fine – until the age of machine learning. Machine learning models are big, staggeringly big. I'm currently working on a project where the underlying model is like 830 + mb. Now when you have large files, git h...

As I documented recently, I've become quite the fan of Streamlit for taking Machine Learning applications written in Python and making them easily available on the web. Streamlit is a very cool toolkit for taking a Python Machine Learning app and adding a simple UI to it and then hosting it via a bu...

In any SQL based database, a like query is generally an SQL injection attack waiting to happen because the underlying sql statement looks like this: SELECT id FROM posts WHERE name LIKE '%foo%' Note: A 30 year old thank you goes out to InfoWorld and Joe Celko who beat into his reader's brains the co...

This falls into the category of "I'm old and can't remember this so must, must, must write it down" because I keep losing this html page. If you need to change the text on a submit button for a Rails form implemented with simple_form then use: <%= f.button :submit, 'Submit This Form', class: 'btn bt...

I am a Ruby on Rails guy and I censored hate deploying Ruby stuff. I've been deploying Rails stuff now since 2007 and, quite honestly, it sucked in 2007 and it sucks today. The only way I've ever found Rails deployment to not suck is by using Heroku which is absolutely magical and wonderful – but ex...

Once upon a time, I was speaking with a company founder and they mentioned that they had a VP of Engineering to whom they have given a 1/3 stake in the company. I immediately commented that was too much and then said "I'll write this down in a blog post" – and then I never did. Last night, oddly, I ...

I know this is simple but I am JavaScript / CSS challenged so I'm writing it down because I've had continuous problems with it in the past and I know that this solution works for Bootstrap 4. Let's say that you have a div that you want hidden and only displayed by a button when you click it. Here's ...

The Eagle's Nest AirBnB Cabin on the Ohio River; One of my favorite places… Last night I was on a coding tear, that moment when the solution is just crystal clear. That situation where something you've struggled with for days / weeks / months and then it all comest together. The result of this was a...

So my new gig has moved to doing daily agile standup meetings and while I've done these before, I don't think I've ever seen them done quite so consistently well. And the credit for this goes to my boss, Dave Sifry, who is our lead facilitator. We are a team of 8 people and, so far, we have brought ...

Ever since 2008 when my pairing partner at the time, Jared, pushed me to basically live in the Rails console, I've been heavily, heavily dependent on the console as an essential developer tool. I just watched something that pointed out to me just why it is so damn important. Here's what I observed: ...

I know this is dirt simple but I'm writing it down because it is one of those simple things that I just forget constantly. In each of these cases, the output is to the str variable. Using a With Block to Auto Close the File As a rubyist, I keep reading this as str is local to the with "block". Of co...