Latest Posts

Please enjoy my three latest posts

• CSS
• Stopping your wireless from turning off on your Raspberry PI
• Loading a specific file into Dotenv

Ruby Ramblings

For several years now Ruby has been my backend language of choice, here are articles that relate to my favourite programming language.

JavaScript Jollies

Like anyone who has spent time working on the internet I have cause to get my hands dirty with JavaScript regularly. Hopefully you will enjoy what I have to share on the matter.

Writing Woes

Something I am always trying to get better at is writing. In this section I share the tips and tricks I have learned over the years of writing on the internet and for publications.

Raving Reviews

My first taste of writing was reviewing Metal bands, and I never really stopped. Here I normally review tech and tech books.

Marketo Musings

I use the Marketo API quite frequently, normally with Ruby, here are my tips and thoughts on it.

Personal Ponderings

Since this is my personal blog it is hardly surprising that sometimes I write about personal topics.

Server Basics

I wanted to write up a selection of articles covering really basic server stuff, most posts assume little or no prior knowledge. I hope you find them useful.

Everything Else

Here is everything that I haven't put into its own category yet. As I get more oranised this list should shrink!

1. CSS – Jan 28, 2016
2. Stopping your wireless from turning off on your Raspberry PI – Jan 27, 2016
3. Steps for replacing an SSL certificate – Dec 30, 2015
4. See what disk space is left on your Linux web server – Dec 30, 2015
5. The SSH Command – Dec 16, 2015
6. Grep flags that I like – Dec 9, 2015
7. Viewing what is running on the server – Nov 24, 2015
8. How does Capistrano work? – Nov 24, 2015
9. Debriefing Development Teams – Nov 19, 2015
10. Art & Math & Science, Oh My! – Nov 13, 2015
11. Setting up Moat and DFP – Nov 12, 2015
12. Omnifocus Custom Columns – Nov 11, 2015
13. Safari Extensions I am using – Nov 3, 2015
14. What I have learned about roadmaps – Oct 28, 2015
15. Speeding up accessing Safari’s URL bar on El Capitan – Oct 10, 2015
16. Meteor @dev was not detected – Oct 10, 2015
17. I am starting a fortnightly email list – Sep 8, 2015
18. The steps I take before a large backup on the Mac – Aug 29, 2015
19. Setting up the Windows 200 Wired keyboard on the Mac – Aug 23, 2015
20. Udemy Fail – Aug 21, 2015
21. Breathing new life into an older Mac – Aug 17, 2015
22. Finding new people on Chatter – Jul 27, 2015
23. Mastering Your Tools – Jun 16, 2015
24. Mac Productivity Workshop – Jun 16, 2015
25. A simple guide to how computers work for idiot redditors – Jun 11, 2015
26. Mac Apps I use to say productive – Jun 3, 2015
27. Some of my favourite mac shortcuts – Jun 3, 2015
28. Up the tracking speed on your mouse – Jun 1, 2015
29. Hiding the dock for fun and profit – Jun 1, 2015
30. Custom Routing of Github emails – May 24, 2015
31. iTerm2 Tricks – May 21, 2015
32. You can’t use the webcam on OS X without having a Photo Booth Library?!?! – May 14, 2015
33. iPhone photos not freeing up space when deleted – May 7, 2015
34. Speeding up the internet on OSx Yosemite – May 1, 2015
35. Come play Codewars with me – May 1, 2015
36. Good Habits for Student Developers – Documentation – Apr 19, 2015
37. Katrina Owen – Here be Dragons – Apr 11, 2015
38. Robert Wint – Using Content to Improve the Customer Journey – Apr 9, 2015
39. Patrick Jubb – Re-building the Marketing Department to be Fit for the Future – Apr 9, 2015
40. Martin Trickey – Do we Tell Stories Differently Now? – Apr 9, 2015
41. Mark Elkins – From Passion to Purchase – Apr 9, 2015
42. Kerensa Samanidis – Breaking in to the online video market – Apr 9, 2015
43. Chief Digital Officer Summit London - Day 1 Morning – Apr 9, 2015
44. Ana Serrano – Digital Transformation & Continuous Innovation – Apr 9, 2015
45. Amanda Neylon – The Importance of Focusing on Social Strategy – Apr 9, 2015
46. Getting Money out of Uganda – Apr 3, 2015
47. Good habits for student developers – Time Keeping – Mar 31, 2015
48. What to do when refactoring a large codebase without tests – Mar 25, 2015
49. What I would look for in a junior developer – Mar 16, 2015
50. How the technical direction of a project can be influenced – Mar 15, 2015
51. Sed fun on OSx – Mar 14, 2015
52. Squash br inside contenteditable – Mar 9, 2015
53. Good Habits for Student Developers - Backups – Mar 7, 2015
54. Facebook's Anonymous Login – Mar 5, 2015
55. A beginners guide to ARIA – Feb 28, 2015
56. Please don't actually use Retweet and Favourite for polls on Twitter – Feb 15, 2015
57. Hearthstone APIs – Feb 15, 2015
58. My thoughts on the latest TechHubTuesday Demo Night – Feb 12, 2015
59. Divs still have their place – Feb 4, 2015
60. My highlights from On the Shortness of Life by Seneca – Jan 23, 2015
61. The correct way to markup an image and caption in HTML – Jan 20, 2015
62. View Markdown Files in your Terminal – Jan 20, 2015
63. Some stumbling blocks I hit following my first Swift tutorial – Jan 19, 2015
64. Quick Semantic Wins – Jan 18, 2015
65. Accessibility and SEO are tightly linked – Jan 18, 2015
66. How I am using Omnifocus – Jan 17, 2015
67. What the header element can be used for – Jan 11, 2015
68. Gender Neutral Swear Words – Jan 5, 2015
69. Every developer makes mistakes all the time – Jan 3, 2015
70. Backblaze is part of a great backup solution – Jan 2, 2015
71. Kill off any process on a particular port - An explaination – Oct 26, 2014
72. Space Invaders – Oct 13, 2014
73. WhiteHat Aviator Phoning Home? – Oct 3, 2014
74. Backing up an s3 bucket to another s3 bucket – Sep 22, 2014
75. Force a CSV download from a WordPress Plugin – Sep 16, 2014
76. Nav Elements, not just ul wrappers – Sep 14, 2014
77. Marketing is More Important than Your Code – Aug 24, 2014
78. The ways I have made Sites Pay for Themselves – Aug 24, 2014
79. How Much Does Your Website Cost You? – Aug 24, 2014
80. Running VimR From the Command Line – Aug 17, 2014
81. VimR - A first look – Aug 16, 2014
82. Turning off the PiFace Control and Display – Aug 11, 2014
83. Derek Johnson talking about Modern Web Design – Aug 7, 2014
84. How many people should be on my email list before I send the first email? – Aug 6, 2014
85. Review: HTML5 Game Development Hotshot – Aug 6, 2014
86. Kali Linux 32 bit mini ISO getting stuck on samba – Aug 3, 2014
87. Raspberry Pi B+ Webinar – Aug 3, 2014
88. Advertising in China – Jul 28, 2014
89. Why thinking small helps create software that lasts. – Jul 17, 2014
90. Removing "Protected:" and "Private:" from WordPress posts – Jul 6, 2014
91. Copy and Rename multiple files in Linux – Jul 3, 2014
92. The worst thing you can do for your productivity – Jun 30, 2014
93. Not able to cd or ls into drive mounted by s3fs – Jun 27, 2014
94. Quitting Postgres psql – Jun 11, 2014
95. The safest way to track goal URLs in Google Analytics – Jun 10, 2014
96. Setting to change to get notified of all interactions on Twitter – Jun 8, 2014
97. Setting I changed to up my Chromebook's internet speed – May 24, 2014
98. My Chromecast Setup – May 6, 2014
99. Making Tech for the sake of Tech isn't always right, but it is necessary – May 5, 2014
100. Font Faces for Dyslexic Folk – Apr 27, 2014
101. Packt have a really great sale on – Dec 21, 2013
102. Some HipChat Tips and Tricks – Dec 14, 2013
103. CodeIgniter - when to use get_instance() – Dec 13, 2013
104. Resources for getting up to speed with Redis – Dec 6, 2013
105. How to install the latest version of Redis on Ubuntu – Dec 5, 2013
106. Newbie Programming Resources – Nov 28, 2013
107. Open a file in Github from your command line – Nov 13, 2013
108. Values returned to ActiveMerchant by SagePayGateway during 3d secure – Nov 8, 2013
109. Some Interview Tips for Junior Developers – Oct 29, 2013
110. You should serve up assets without a protocol – Oct 25, 2013
111. Things to remember to do before any video conference / online call – Oct 22, 2013
112. Looking for Bootstrap's popover-inner? – Oct 7, 2013
113. GitGutter – A Sublime Text plugin for seeing changes in git – Oct 3, 2013
114. Indenting Text using Vim – Oct 3, 2013
115. Copy and Paste in Vim – Oct 3, 2013
116. Interview with Trevor Orsztynowicz about Caliper – Sep 7, 2013
117. Show off your Localhost with LocalTunnel – Sep 5, 2013
118. Linking Google Adwords and Analytics accounts – Aug 29, 2013
119. Right clicking inside Linux on your Chromebook – Aug 26, 2013
120. Getting Debian to recognise your UK Chromebook – Aug 26, 2013
121. Automation is a lot like your windscreen wipers – Aug 23, 2013
122. Cheap Belfast PHP/WordPress Hosting – Aug 9, 2013
123. If someone does something really sucky, hit them in the Twitter – Jul 16, 2013
124. Nobody Will Train You But You - A talk by Zach Briggs – Jul 2, 2013
125. Getting rid of annoying text selection at the bottom of Sublime Text documents – Jun 26, 2013
126. Some useful Github shortcuts – Jun 25, 2013
127. Deploying a particular branch to Engine Yard from the command line – Jun 25, 2013
128. Bad example of how to do unsubscribe pages. – Jun 9, 2013
129. Stacking the founder chips in your favour. – May 25, 2013
130. Internet Explorer Version 999.1 – May 22, 2013
131. MySQLslap - A quickstart guide – May 21, 2013
132. Web Developer Equipment – May 7, 2013
133. Working out which merge to keep in Git – May 2, 2013
134. Stack Exchange is winning the internet and this is not a good thing – Apr 16, 2013
135. Sublime Text reading SASS files as HAML – Apr 11, 2013
136. Safari on Windows doesn't like outline inside of :after – Apr 4, 2013
137. Slightly funny application names in ChromeOS in developer mode – Apr 1, 2013
138. Turn Off the built in apache on OSx – Apr 1, 2013
139. Firefox honours !important in CSS animations, no one else seems to – Mar 24, 2013
140. Speculation on why Google stopped blocking sites – Mar 24, 2013
141. Good Surge Protecting Power Blocks – Mar 22, 2013
142. Open all your browsers at once in OSx – Mar 18, 2013
143. How I got my links out of Google Reader – Mar 14, 2013
144. Different ways to undo in Git – Mar 8, 2013
145. Some Notes on SSL Certificates – Mar 8, 2013
146. Big Wet Fish Get Marketing – Mar 4, 2013
147. Some command line tips for the web developer – Feb 21, 2013
148. OSx Screenshot Cleaner – Feb 13, 2013
149. How to turn on invisible characters in Sublime Text 2 – Feb 13, 2013
150. Update your Git install – Feb 7, 2013
151. Installing PEAR for PHP on OSx – Feb 5, 2013
152. Google Translate tracking in Analytics – Feb 4, 2013
153. Quick Tip for Reddit and Imgur and multiple sub-sections – Jan 29, 2013
154. A checklist of things you will need to learn to make Firefox OS applications – Jan 29, 2013
155. Using Mozilla's Mortar and App stub for bootstrapping Firefox OS apps – Jan 28, 2013
156. Getting Firefox OS on your Android phone. – Jan 28, 2013
157. If you store WordPress code on Github think about your wp-config.php – Jan 25, 2013
158. Added some non-js social share buttons – Jan 22, 2013
159. The easiest way to test out Firefox OS – Jan 22, 2013
160. Using Stack Exchange to be better at what you do. – Jan 22, 2013
161. A pragmatic approach to dealing with interruptions whilst you are developing – Jan 20, 2013
162. The W3C Technical Architecture Group elections end today – Jan 8, 2013
163. Replacing Social Media Share Buttons with non-JavaScript counterparts – Jan 7, 2013
164. Quick email tip if you need to clear out your inbox – Jan 5, 2013
165. Editing remote files locally in OSx – Jan 3, 2013
166. Finding email to delete if you are over quota in mail.app on OSx – Jan 3, 2013
167. Git branches seem to be case insensitive – Dec 17, 2012
168. Barry Adams SEO Talk About the Future of SEO at DigiExNI – Dec 13, 2012
169. Shopify Workshop – Nov 16, 2012
170. Nobody Puts Baby In The Corner - Except Me. – Nov 5, 2012
171. New Evernote – Oct 30, 2012
172. Changing the font-style of placeholder text CSS – Oct 25, 2012
173. Every time you write non-standard or invalid code – Oct 23, 2012
174. Setting up Redmine from a blank Ubuntu install – Sep 20, 2012
175. Working with Ubunutu? Save yourself a headache and run sudo apt-get install build-essential – Sep 20, 2012
176. Commit Driven Development – Aug 15, 2012
177. Finding out what version of Apache and PHP a webserver is running when you have little access – Aug 15, 2012
178. Infographic on website monetising – Aug 6, 2012
179. Entering your email at the inbox is a bad idea – Aug 6, 2012
180. Setting up Apache on OSx Mountain Lion – Aug 4, 2012
181. Things about learning to drive I wish I knew when I was learning to program – Jul 24, 2012
182. The trigger that gets hit when you get a positive Twitter ratio. – Jul 24, 2012
183. Tidy up your PayPal buttons – Jul 12, 2012
184. CakePHP and htaccess caching funtimes – Jul 10, 2012
185. Facebook - The optimal size for posting an image to a page wall – Jul 10, 2012
186. Styling Scroll Bars – Jun 28, 2012
187. Google should minify their 404 page – Jun 22, 2012
188. An interview with Umut Muhaddisoglu from Uptime Robot – Jun 20, 2012
189. How to search PayPal transactions by email address or name – Jun 18, 2012
190. Adding plugins to Sublime Text 2 – May 22, 2012
191. How I use MindNode to help craft blog posts – May 6, 2012
192. What would you like to see more of on the web - a follow up with Zoe Bogner – May 5, 2012
193. HTML5 Rocks Hangout 1 – Apr 28, 2012
194. A case for going agile – Apr 20, 2012
195. Interview with Stephen Kinkaid from Big Wet Fish – Apr 19, 2012
196. Copying a CakePHP Project from Linux to Windows – Apr 18, 2012
197. I just made an affiliate program. – Apr 14, 2012
198. PHP - Turn UK Date into US Date – Apr 14, 2012
199. Interview with Derek Johnson – Apr 12, 2012
200. Things to check for in your htaccess file – Apr 8, 2012
201. Chrome's Lord of the Rings Easter Egg – Mar 30, 2012
202. Useful WordPress Links – Mar 30, 2012
203. Printing on the web – Mar 22, 2012
204. Tech Tweets - Thursday 15th March 2012 – Mar 15, 2012
205. Validation in CakePHP 1.3 – Mar 13, 2012
206. Permissions issue with Iomega Home Media Network Drive – Feb 22, 2012
207. Useful CSS Links – Feb 6, 2012
208. Useful PHP Links – Feb 6, 2012
209. Deleting Magento Session Files – Feb 5, 2012
210. Reducing Google Contacts storage on Android devices – Feb 4, 2012
211. CakePHP 2.0 Read Recursive – Jan 30, 2012
212. CSS Vendor Prefixes - A potential use case – Jan 26, 2012
213. Canonical and Base URLs – Jan 25, 2012
214. Having FTP in your IDE is part of a broken model – Jan 12, 2012
215. Useful Web Developer Bookmarklets – Jan 11, 2012
216. Updating PHP5.2 to PHP5.3 using apt-get – Jan 6, 2012
217. Too many posts about the same thing on your Twitter timeline? – Jan 6, 2012
218. The Importance of First Contact – Dec 15, 2011
219. Interview with Patrick McKenzie and Keith Perhac about their podcast – Dec 9, 2011
220. Get rid of var $name in CakePHP – Dec 7, 2011
221. Keeping on top of my to-do list. – Dec 6, 2011
222. Things I will be reading this week: 05-12-2011 – Dec 5, 2011
223. BuildConf is still being awesome even after the event. – Dec 2, 2011
224. Kalzumeus Podcast – Dec 2, 2011
225. Open Proposal: Companies - get your employees to answer questions on Stack Exchange – Nov 30, 2011
226. A recipe for creating a great workshop – Nov 12, 2011
227. Things I will be reading this week: 06-11-2011 – Nov 6, 2011
228. Interview with Shiela Dixon – Nov 6, 2011
229. Things I will be reading this week: 31-10-2011 – Oct 31, 2011
230. My thoughts on The Increasing Importance of APIs in Web Development – Oct 24, 2011
231. Things I will be reading this week: 24-10-2011 – Oct 23, 2011
232. Parameterise everything. – Oct 18, 2011
233. Managing a Facebook development project. – Oct 15, 2011
234. Uptime Robot gets an API – Oct 14, 2011
235. Testing if your domain is accessible from China – Oct 14, 2011
236. Checking if a password field is present in Selenium. – Oct 13, 2011
237. Issue with table content held in a div not printing over several pages – Oct 12, 2011
238. An open letter to EUKHost – Oct 8, 2011
239. Techzing hits 150 – Oct 3, 2011
240. Inspiration. – Oct 3, 2011
241. Trying to get a designer into a meeting... – Oct 3, 2011
242. Less Than Vs Less Than or Equal To - which is more efficient? – Sep 24, 2011
243. Magento Auto Install – Sep 20, 2011
244. Netbeans Private Key Authorisation Problem – Sep 15, 2011
245. MySQLTuner - An excellent free MySQL tool – Sep 12, 2011
246. How I think I am going to start using the big 3 social networks – Sep 10, 2011
247. Google+ Invites – Sep 4, 2011
248. Claiming ownership of your content. – Sep 3, 2011
249. [notice] cannot use a full URL in a 401 ErrorDocument directive --- ignoring! – Aug 27, 2011
250. What I would change about the Computer Science degree course – Aug 16, 2011
251. The W3C have released Web Application Privacy Best Practices - What do we do with it? – Aug 8, 2011
252. My Feelings On Adobe Edge – Aug 2, 2011
253. The Big Three Social Codes – Jul 29, 2011
254. Disqus showing bullets. – Jul 29, 2011
255. Changing upload permissions in vsftpd – Jul 27, 2011
256. Getting Netbeans Working with OS X Lion – Jul 24, 2011
257. Settings up Netbeans to develop Android applications – Jul 11, 2011
258. The Obligatory Dropbox Post – Jun 16, 2011
259. Soon I will be in the market for a new laptop. – Jun 15, 2011
260. The importance of using the ellipsis character. – Jun 15, 2011
261. Using Git to create an archive of changed files. – May 20, 2011
262. Enabling telnet in Windows 7 – Apr 26, 2011
263. Interview: What is your take on the rise of e-learning sites over a more traditional text-book or course based approach – Apr 26, 2011
264. IE7 td colspan width 'issue' – Apr 21, 2011
265. Uninstalling Lotus Notes Traveler from your Android Device – Apr 21, 2011
266. Netbeans 7.0 released – Apr 20, 2011
267. HTML5 Canvas Tutorial – Apr 20, 2011
268. Git command to show files changed in a commit – Apr 4, 2011
269. Securing Facebook – Apr 1, 2011
270. The importance of supporting OWASP – Mar 21, 2011
271. Edit an option of a select menu using jQuery – Mar 21, 2011
272. Interview: What would you like to see more of on the web – Mar 14, 2011
273. Netbeans Redmine Integration Version 0.1 released. – Mar 8, 2011
274. Netbeans and Redmine Integration. – Mar 8, 2011
275. Explaining Version Control (Git) in Simple Terms – Mar 1, 2011
276. Getting my Dublin Core on – Feb 28, 2011
277. Yum not installing 7zip. – Feb 28, 2011
278. Location of bookmarks.nsf on the mac. – Feb 28, 2011
279. Speed up Lotus Notes on a Mac – Feb 28, 2011
280. Two excellent talks on Git – Jan 13, 2011
281. Show hidden files on the Mac OSx – Jan 6, 2011
282. Howto: Email A Support Request – Nov 29, 2010
283. Getting the most out of StackExchange – Oct 15, 2010
284. Quick way to switch between folders in the terminal – Oct 13, 2010
285. Importing a backup file from another MS SQL machine. – Oct 12, 2010
286. Possible issue when using parseInt function. – Sep 24, 2010
287. PHP Security - General PHP setup Gotchas – Sep 23, 2010
288. Finding your SQL Server Version – Sep 17, 2010
289. MySQL snippet - Selecting from table a items that aren't in table b. – Sep 17, 2010
290. PHP - Quick Is Not Set Replace – Sep 1, 2010
291. Internet Explorer Cannot Open The Internet Site - Operation Aborted – Aug 30, 2010
292. Allowing your own From header with sSMTP – Aug 26, 2010
293. What you actually do when you untar something. – Aug 26, 2010
294. Find out which version of Ubuntu I am on. – Aug 26, 2010
295. Help with your Social Media Strategy – Aug 3, 2010
296. Useful Git Links – Jun 22, 2010
297. Using Open Source - Some Legal Considerations – Jun 18, 2010
298. Robin Christopherson - Accessibility in Web Design – May 26, 2010
299. Eoghan McCabe and Des Traynor - Sexy or Meaningful – May 24, 2010
300. Skipfish - No such file or directory. – May 21, 2010
301. Owen DeLong - Content Providers must lead the way to IPv6 – May 21, 2010
302. Martha Rotter - Too Much Information [University Session] – May 20, 2010
303. Gotta love the google font API – May 19, 2010
304. Renier Lemmens - The future of Mobile Apps – May 19, 2010
305. Simon Wardley - What is the cloud? – May 18, 2010
306. Raffi Krikorian - How to use Geolocation in your web app – May 17, 2010
307. Replace ereg with preg_match – May 6, 2010
308. Useful Security Pages – May 5, 2010
309. Clean up your variables – Apr 27, 2010
310. Uptime Robot Monitors From Multiple Locations – Apr 16, 2010
311. My Security Adventure Begins – Apr 16, 2010
312. PHP_DEBUG a very handy little constant – Apr 14, 2010
313. Uptime Robot – Apr 10, 2010
314. Tweetminer is now Pluggio – Apr 10, 2010
315. Editing Git Repository Descriptions – Mar 15, 2010
316. Switching between full screen modes in PuTTY – Feb 26, 2010
317. InFrame - Dynamic iFrame creation with jQuery – Nov 27, 2009
318. Exploring Built In Functions – Nov 19, 2009
319. Bloody Windows... – Nov 14, 2009
320. Google Tells Us What A Browser Is – Oct 6, 2009
321. Tweet Miner, why I use it – Sep 23, 2009
322. HTML5 Video – Sep 23, 2009
323. Mapping the inside of buildings. – Sep 22, 2009
324. Refresh Belfast - The State of Typography on the Web – Sep 17, 2009
325. Wordpress Cheat Sheet – Sep 13, 2009
326. Webmasters - Clean out your links! – Sep 12, 2009
327. Acronym and Abbreviation Tags – Sep 11, 2009
328. Internet Explorer 8 Checkbox Issues – Sep 8, 2009
329. Microformat Cheat Sheets – Sep 7, 2009
330. Damn this guy can wireframe! – Sep 5, 2009
331. Awesome Firefox Multitouch – Aug 23, 2009
332. New Google Search – Aug 18, 2009
333. A/B Testing with Wordpress – Aug 10, 2009
334. Looking Critically at Your Design – Aug 10, 2009
335. Really cool dropdown menu – Jul 30, 2009
336. PHP Whitespace/Comment Removal – Jul 23, 2009
337. CSS Techniques Run Down – Jul 22, 2009
338. HTML5 - Anyone Played With It Yet? – Jul 10, 2009
339. About Pages - Are they totally necessary? – Jul 3, 2009
340. Out of the box design – Jun 29, 2009