Posts
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Amazon Web Services — a practical guide
Link ⇒ https://github.com/open-guides/og-aws
We’re currently migrating to AWS at my day job from our on-premise data center and this guide does an excellent job at explaining the core concepts of AWS.
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macOS QuickLook for Markdown files
Link ⇒ https://github.com/toland/qlmarkdown
macOS QuickLook for Markdown files. Run “brew cask install qlmarkdown”
— James Hall (@MrRio) October 8, 2016
Via @philtoland.
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Understanding /proc
Link ⇒ https://fredrb.github.io/2016/10/01/Understanding-proc/
Interesting read on what’s actually happening when a Linux process runs. Via @fredrb.
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A Declining Trajectory
Link ⇒ http://mattgemmell.com/a-declining-trajectory/
“Visual glitches. Bugs in functionality. Odd behaviour. Battery drain. The occasional but too-frequent hardware failure. Stuff we used to associate with that other company, expressing our derision at every opportunity.”
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Running Browsersync with a Simple WordPress Theme
I’m working on another simple WordPress theme and Browsersync provides a great way to automatically refresh your browser whenever a change is made. Usually you would include a sync tool in the build tool of your choice (Gulp, Grunt, etc.) but this also works by itself. Open your Terminal, install Browsersync (
npm install -g browser-sync),cdinto your theme directory, and paste this line in for it to “watch” your theme folder. -
grep SSH Login Attempts
I recently needed to review all SSH login attempts on a server running Ubuntu Server and used this one-liner to accomplish it. Piping
grepintolessjust lets you stay on the keyboard instead of scrolling with the mouse. -
Daryl - A New Jekyll Theme
Daryl is a super simple Jekyll theme that recently hit its 1.0.0 release.
It’s purpose is to be highly-readable, performant, and simple. A 404 page is included, feed.xml is used for RSS, and it includes an Archive/Post-list page template.
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tail over SSH
taildisplays a log and updates it in realtime. This command tail’s the log over SSH so that you can keep a log displayed in one window while doing more terminal work in another tab/window. -
youtube-dl
youtube-dl (available for UNIX/Windows) is probably my most-often used Python script. Copy/paste a YouTube URL (or any other supported website URL) and youtube-dl downloads the video locally. Incredibly handy especially when you hate buffering and would rather download something to watch it later (including whole playlists!).
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nmap
This command scans to see if port 22 is open within a network range and saves the output to nmapscan.txt.
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scp
This command copies a file from your machine over SSH to a remote machine. Quotation marks are included to escape the folder name that has a space in it. Add -rp if you need to copy a directory:
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Dotfiles
My code-related goal for this weekend was to get my dotfiles symlink’d and uploaded to GitHub for version control. This article was excellent at helping me get it setup.
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Uninstall KACE Agent on Ubuntu
I had an issue come up at work and needed to remove the Dell KACE agent from one of our Ubuntu machines. I did some searching but couldn’t find the script via Google or ITNinja. I figured out the path, tested, and here it is:
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Interesting Reads #1
Quick thoughts on working remotely:
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My rMBP is mostly used in RDP mode - not using Apple’s hardware nearly at all for system administration due to a mostly Windows domain environment. Therefore, move to shell/RDP session for all sysadmin work for consistency . Maybe even move work-specific docs off the Mac and onto a server?
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Running BrowserSync with Jekyll
BrowserSync is a tool for injecting changes when working on your local site project and then refreshing your site on save. Perfect for designers/devs who need one tool for one job.
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Linux Server Fundamentals - Part 1
I’ve been in the IT field for a long time now and last year moved into a new role. Moving into this role has given me more access to a varied server environment with a mix of Windows and Linux servers. My past jobs were much more Windows Server focused. I’ve been enjoying learning the Linux side of server administration and the goal of this series of posts will be documenting what I’m learning.
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Larnell Lewis - One Note Samba (Live)
Here is Larnell Lewis showing off some really technical and tasty samba jazz stylings. I last saw him playing for Snarky Puppy and it’s no wonder he got on the “We Like It Here” gig! Good gravy!
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Moved to Jekyll
I recently converted this blog to Jekyll from WordPress and am now using GitHub Pages for hosting. I didn’t move over specifically because of problems with WordPress, but because of the following:
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Why Apple is Amazing
Tim Cook - photo via The Verge WWDC Live Blog
“Apple engineers platforms, services, and devices together. We do this to create a seamless experience for our users that is unparalleled.”
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How to Setup CodeKit using Sass and Compass for WordPress
I’m a recent convert to writing my CSS using Sass and Compass through CodeKit. It took me a little while to figure out how to get started with CodeKit and building WordPress themes specifically, so I thought I’d share how I got it all configured. Setting up CodeKit for use with static files is very simple, but since we’re building with WordPress there are a few things to look out for.
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On a Search
Lately my posts have had a theme of “Focus”. This has been a theme of mine this past year and I’m at a place again where I need to focus on what I’m aiming for even more.
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Focus
I’ve noticed in the past year that I have a bad habit of bookmarking everything I come across when it comes to new web development technologies. In my day-to-day development I stick to mostly the front-end languages and markup but I’ll bookmark just about anything – from backend web app development, to videos of the new tech hotness that I’ll probably never need, to tutorials on an obscure language I’ve never heard of but that I “just might need some day”.
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New Job at jlsCreative
This past February I saw an ad on Craigslist for a WordPress Developer position. I got in contact with the post author, he checked out my portfolio, and we met up for lunch. We hit it off: I really liked his business ideas, goals, and design-sense, and he asked me to come onboard to build WordPress sites. I am now officially a Web Developer with jlsCreative!
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Write Code Wallpaper v2
I received a request for a higher resolution version of my simple “Write Code” wallpaper that I made awhile back. So here it is – feel free to download and use if you find it useful. No attribution needed and more custom sizes are available.
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A New Site
The first domain I bought was my previous site: andrewcodes.com. It started life as a static, HTML-and-CSS-only, one page, fixed-width site. And at that time, that first launch was glorious. It was very gratifying being able to release something to the Internet that I created. That first site started the ball rolling of my love of web design and creating for the web.
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Thinking About My Web Design Routine
What is your daily routine as a Web Designer? Do you have that routine written down? Is it the best routine that it could be?
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Railtie Studio
My wife and I recently started a new project: Railtie Studio.
I had previously built sites for clients under my own name, but decided to make it official (and legit) by getting our business license. I also felt like having an official company name would make our business more appealing to other businesses and clients instead of just my name. So, Railtie Studio was born. We’re a custom web design studio that loves to build sites on the WordPress platform.
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Run Pace
Run Pace is my newly finished, super simple pace calculator site. Enter the data from your run (miles ran and the time you ran it in) and it will compute your average speed. I needed a site like this because I enter my average speed into the My Fitness Pal app which determines the calories I burned. However, I wanted a site that was visually minimalistic (in the same vein as my other side project, Minimal Tasks) and was really easy to use. There are a lot of pace calculator sites out there but I wanted one that was a lot more simple. Hopefully other people will find it useful as well!
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Podcasts for Front-End Developers and Designers
My daily commute to my job is forty-five minutes each way and on days that I don’t listen to music, I listen to podcasts. It’s nice to put that empty time to use by learning something new. Here are my favorite three podcasts that I listen to:
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A Realignment
I’ve started to follow Matt Mullenweg’s blog (yes, the WordPress founder) and he does a great job of blogging things he cares about in his personal life as well as his professional life. The tone of the blog is very positive, interesting, and entertaining even for people that aren’t WordPress fans like myself. You get a great sense of the man behindthe site that I think some blogs are missing. I saw a link that he posted that went into depth about the idea of “owning our digital homes”. To go along with the idea of a “digital home”, I’m realigning my own blog. I want this blog to be useful to people and interesting, but also to serve as an archive and a record of my own data . This blog holds my data and it will retain my data for as long as I keep it running. I won’t be posting personal things that should be on something like Facebook, but I will be posting more links I find interesting like Martin Wolf does on his blog and that other people do as well.
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Anatomy of a WordPress Theme
Great refresher on the “Anatomy of a WordPress theme”. Joost de Valk wrote a detailed breakdown of what each section does and included images as well.
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Complete HTML and PHP Form Walk-Through
I recently coded a landing/splash page for a client of mine that has a form the user fills out and then submits via email to the client. I have coded forms before, but had never learned how the actual submission of data happens via PHP on the server-side. I wanted to share how my simple form works and the code behind it.
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Done with Themes
I found the perfect solution for my theme-ing issues. No more using someone else’s code when I can write it myself and use my own, simpler design. I’m now using the Toolbox theme which is semantic, HTML5 code and then a very minimal amount of CSS leaving plenty of room for styling but still giving you a baseline to get started. Perfection.
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GitHub for Windows
Really, really excited about this news: GitHub for Windows is finally here. I’m anxious to get started learning Git and the GitHub way. I’ll be posting soon on how it’s going.
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New Theme
I rolled out a nice upgrade to the site today by moving to the Yoko theme. Yoko is fully responsive and very minimal which is just what I wanted. Gone is the glossy Web 2.0 nav bar and other stylistic errors and replaced with a nice light texture, the Droid sans font (which I’m not completely sold on yet) and a simple nav bar. Yes, I’m still working on the logo.
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Checking In
Not too much activity here on the ol’ blog, but I’ve been plenty busy. I’ve been working on the launch of a web app for a mortgage firm writing up the front-end code and assisting with some design aspects as well. Very, very challenging but I’m loving the work.
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CSS Reset vs. Normalize
I was listening to the Shop Talk show to the other day and they had Paul Irish as a guest. If you don’t know who Paul is, he’s the one who created the HTML5 Boilerplate, CSS3Please, and various other tool-type sites that are awesome and super useful.
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Newsletters
If you’re like me, your Google Reader is filled with tons of subscriptions to various Web Dev, Design, and Web Technology-related news. While those subscriptions are valuable, sometimes it’s helpful to just get a summary of all the noteworthy news you might have missed during the week.
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Moving Day
I’ve been thinking a lot lately about setting up my landing page. A “landing” or “personal-brand” page explains in a summary of who you are and what you do. I had thought about just setting up an “About” page link on my blog, but ended up moving my blog to blog.andrewcodes.com and my landing page to the top domain andrewcodes.com.
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Minimal Tasks Re-design
Moving to WordPress has giving me more time to work on a new re-design of Minimal Tasks which is definitely needed. I’m also cleaning up the code as well to make the actual size of the site as small as possible. Many thanks to Harold at Overcommitted for helping me out with my lack of design skills.
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WordPress
I have finally made the jump to WordPress. And so far, I couldn’t be happier.
No longer will I have to create a blog post in HTML, then copy that post into it’s own page while making sure I link back to the main page and the CSS correctly. No longer will I have to deal with revisions upon revisions of my custom themes. No longer will I have to think about, “Okay, I saved my images here, but I’m in this post, so the file path to that image should be …”.
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Environment Part 3
Lately I’ve been doing the majority of my coding at work. I like to code during my lunch break and this is a pretty nice setup to do it on. Dropbox acts as my version control system and I can have my files pretty much wherever I go.
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Minimal Tasks and a Real Web Host
It took me awhile, but I now have a project entry on my Projects page! Minimal Tasks is a project I’ve been working on for the past few months. It’s a super-simple, no login required, task entry site. It uses the
localStorageattribute currently in-use using HTML5. So your tasks are all stored in the browser – no need for a server-side database and no need for logins as well. -
Re-design Euphoria
A disclaimer: this post has been in my drafts since about version 3 of this site. I’ve added them up (including the designs that never made it) and I’ve created about 27 variations of this site. Yes, 27.
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Music
I’ve finally settled on a new way of listening to music at work, which is where I do the majority of my listening. Instead of listening through iTunes with my iPod, I now listen to Pandora primarily and once I find a new band I like, I open Spotify, add all their past albums and continue listening to them through there. I tried using Spotify as my primary listening software but I like the shuffle/radio-ness of Pandora.
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The Future
I cannot wait to get onto a real web host. StatiCloud is obviously nice since it’s free, easy to setup, free, and great for static sites (and free). But since starting this blog, I have a greater understanding of how crucial a CMS is.
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Faster
Everyone wants a faster loading website. One tip that I came across the other day is to move your scripts that you would normally include in the
headtag down to just above the closingbodytag. Since your website starts loading from the top of your code to the bottom, the extra scripts at the bottom will load last enabling your main, viewable content to be loaded faster. -
Environment Part 2
I code primarily on a Dell Latitude D620 running Windows 7. It has 3GB of RAM, a Core 2 Duo CPU running at 1.66GHz (which also runs extremely hot), and a 250GB hard drive. I like to have it sitting in it’s dock with another monitor attached, but usually I just use it by itself.
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Environment Part 1
Nine minutes have gone by since my last post and I’m ready to post another entry - so far this is going well.
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Hello and Welcome
It seems to me like the very first post should always be some kind of greeting.
Hi, how are you? I hope you are doing well.
