Introduction I’ve just made use of a Docker multi-stage build when Dockerising my WordPress blog, and I thought it would be useful to examine the benefits. Multi-stage builds are a nice way of being able to do build fragments in order to selectively copy pieces into the output build. Here’s a cut-down example: There are […]

Yes, the title is largely click-bait, but with good reason. I am presently using Code Fresh as my Docker registry, but I’m not really a fan of their service. I have therefore been spending a great deal of search-engine time on finding a replacement for my (unfunded) tech projects, to little avail. Free is of […]

I’ve been following various online tutorials in order to pair my Linux laptop (running Mint) with my Raspberry Pi 3 running Raspbian, using BlueTooth. I wanted to add a couple of extra instructions to the Internet’s wealth of knowledge, as I’ve had some hurdles that I’ve not spotted mentioned elsewhere. My first problem was that […]

I’ve been meaning to get an SSL certificate for the blog for some time, and prompted by how cheap they now are, I have finally set it up. All HTTP links should still be valid, but will redirect to their HTTPS equivalent. The switch is mainly to protect my credentials when I am logging on […]

I’ve been working as a software engineer for some 14 years, and having taken nine months out to work on a side-project full-time, I am now looking to start PHP/web freelancing. I have an intro page for what I offer; this partner article is a rambling rendition of the how. My purpose here is to […]

I recently got in touch with On Your Bike, a cycle shop with stores in Birmingham and London, to alert them to a number of security issues in their website. I’d raised the matter with a very friendly chap at the shop, and he advised me to send an email to the manager. This I […]

Introduction Last year I tried running Fedora on a MacBook Pro (Intel i5 processor) to see how much pain was involved in switching to Linux completely. I was also interested to see whether using virtual machines for day-to-day tasks was feasible, via Oracle’s VirtualBox. In the end I didn’t make the switch: an idle guest […]

There is a rule of street fundraising that surely has parallels in the physical sciences. You find a charity mugger, pop them in an excessively luminous T-shirt to match their personality, and stand them in a sea of shoppers on a Saturday high-street. Powered by some alien intuition lurking in the moving throng, the “chugger” […]

Just recently, I came across a list of my NY resolutions from a year or two ago, and it was fun to see how many I’d accomplished (around half, not bad). So, this year I’ll make a couple of techie predictions, and add on some geek resolutions too. Here’s what I’d like to see in […]

I’ve been writing a PHP course for beginners over for the past couple of weeks, and think it is now good enough to share. It’s a work in progress, but what I have at present is useful already, and I plan to add to it. I’d previously looked around the existing resources on the web, […]

Today I tried to install texlive on Snow Leopard via Macports, in order to make use of pdflatex with pandoc. However I received this error: Python interpreter is too old This would exit Macports with an error, suggesting that a bug should be raised. It appeared to be looking for Python 2.6 specifically, which is […]

Back in November last year I replaced my aging Juicy Bike with an Ave XH-3, and after some 1,600 miles of bedding in, I’m now reviewing it. I’ve added some hi-res pictures for potential buyers, or anyone wanting a closer look. Having now e-commuted daily for the last two and a half years, I write […]