Category: Software

One of my favourite command line utilities is autojump. It's a small command line utility that allows you to change directory without having to remember exactly where that directory is. For example, to start working on OpenWhisk, I simply type: j openw And the current directory is changed to /Users/rob/Projects/openwhisk/incuator-openwhisk for me. This is much easier than typing cd ~/Pro{tab}op{tab}in{return}! Biasing towards a particular directory When you have a directory that's a common one that… continue reading.

Posted on 19 December 2018 in Software

I'm more of a spaces person than a tabs person when it comes to source code and in Vim, I like to see the tab characters, so I have this setting: set listchars=tab:\⇥\ ,trail:·,extends:>,precedes:<,nbsp:+ This places a handy ⇥ character so that I can see the tabs: I'm currently working on a codebase where the coding style is to use tabs, so I need to change my settings. One option is to use EditorConfig, for… continue reading.

Posted on 25 July 2018 in Software

I'm running a UniFi network here with wireless access points, the Security Gateway and a PoE switch. It seems to be a robust system and is almost certainly overkill, but reliability is high on my lists after bad experiences with a NetGear WiFi router. The UniFi system software is called the Controller and runs on a various operating systems. As I have a Mac mini here, I decided to run it on there. Weirdly, however… continue reading.

Posted on 20 December 2017 in Software

To test a website that you're developing on your local computer on a mobile device such as a phone or tablet use ngrok. This is the way to do it: Start up ngrok: $ ngrok http my-dev-site.local:80 This will start up ngrok and give you a "Forwarding" URL such as http://24f55bf5.ngrok.io. In this case, it will direct all traffic to that URL to http://my-dev-site.local. If you run your website on a different port, such as… continue reading.

Posted on 9 March 2017 in Software

As a mostly keyboard user, I take advantage of the keyboard shortcuts in Sublime Text. However, the sidebar is quite a lot of effort to manage, especially as I mostly leave it closed. Firstly, you need cmd+k,cmd+b to open it. Then you type ctrl+k,ctrl+0 to focus it as opening it doesn't automatically set focus. Then you can navigate to the file you want and open it via pressing return. Finally, you type cmd+k,cmd+b to close… continue reading.

Posted on 14 September 2016 in Software

I was delighted to spend an hour chatting with Matt Setter on episode 14 of Free the Geek. In this podcast, we talked about Slim 3 and development in general. Matthew gives me a great introduction (thanks!) and then we delve into the chat. We talk about the importance of semantic versioning as I think this is key to stability in a project. It's not very glamorous to work on code where you have to… continue reading.

Posted on 30 March 2016 in Software

As it becomes more painful to use a pointing device for long periods of time, I find myself using vim more and so I'm paying more attention to customisation so that the things I'm used to from Sublime Text are available to me. One thing I'm used to is that when I run the build command on a Markdown file, I expect Marked for Mac to open and render the file that I'm writing. Vim… continue reading.

Posted on 12 February 2016 in Software