Migrate Octopress / Jekyll Posts to Ulysses
I wanted to move my published writing stashed in my Octopress/Jekyll site into my current writing workflow environment, Ulysses. Dragging and dropping the files from the _posts folder was not an option, because: The file names were messy There is no title in the file, it’s in the Markdown metadata I wanted to keep the publication date on the imported files So, I wrote a horrible script to do it.
Notification City
It is best for your technology stack to tell you what went wrong as soon as it goes wrong to get the right level of attention in the correct timespan. I run a massive technology stack at work, filled up with multiple servers, plenty of web applications, loads of C++ programs and massive numbers of scheduled and recurring tasks, and I do it with an insanely tiny team and no DevOps folks.
Coding Style Standards in 2017
I’ve been writing software for well over 30 years, I’ve spent well over my 10,000 hours and gotten rather good at it. And I still write to a very rigorous coding style standard. You’re kidding right? Its 2017, code style guides are so passé. Nope. I’m deadly serious. Get off my lawn Some of us remember when coding styles were de rigeur. When you climbed off your commuter dinosaur and joined a coding team, the first document they gave you was the coding style guideline.
MathJax in Markdown
Adding mathematical formulae to HTML pages is easy these days using MathJax. But I create all my documents in Markdown format on my Mac. This post shows how to add mathematical formulae to your Markdown documents on the Mac and have them preview and export to PDF correctly. MathJax in Markdown Adding mathematical formulae to a markdown document simply requires you to use the MathJax delimiters to start and end each formula as follows:
On the New MacBook Pros
Much has been written, tweeted and complained about the new MacBook Pros released by Apple last week. Complaints about the 16GB limit, all-in switch to Thunderbolt 3 (USB-C), the removal of the SD-card and MagSafe, the new keyboard, the aged CPUs, the slow GPU, dongles, that they are not “Pro” level machines, and more. More and more influential folks are writing that Apple has forgotten the Mac, that the Mac is doomed or dead.
The Gentleman James V
Last evening a package arrived from Amazon. A package that neither I nor my wife had ordered. A mysterious, enigmatic package. From the outside, there was no indication of its content or providence. We discussed where it could have come from. What could it be. Should we open it. Maybe Amazon sent the package to the wrong person. Yet the delivery address was certainly mine. Finally, I opened it. It contained a bubble wrapped box, a bunch of packing bubbles and three slips of paper.
The Annual Dependency Library Upgrade Process
At work, we write a lot of code. In order to remain productive, we reuse the same proven dependent libraries and tools over and over again. Which is fine. Until we start seeing end-of-life notices, vulnerabilities, deprecations, performance improvements and bug-fixes passing us by. At some point we need to update our dependencies for performance and security. But its not that easy. Take some of the libraries we use: Google’s Protocol Buffers are amazing.
Minimal Project Management - 6 Months Later
Just short of six months ago, I wrote about how I was transitioning to Minimal Project Management as my team was growing at work. So, how did it go? Did it work? Any Problems? In short, after a few false-starts getting our heads around the intent of the Statement of Work document, it went — and continues to go — very well. Projects we used to start and never finish are now completing and shipping.
Attractive Multi-Line SQL Statements in C++
I often need to embed SQL statements in C++ code. Unfortunately, many of mine are long and complex. Even the simple ones are wide. This leads to the following ugly code: std::string s8("SELECT id FROM lst_quotes WHERE route_id = $1 AND lst_request_id = $2 AND quote_id = $3;"); … which means I need a massively wide screen to view it (and it violates my 80-column rule), its not formatted legibly and even with wrap, its hard to understand — and this is a simple example.
Apple Watch - After 1 Year
The Apple Watch turns 1 year old next week. If you follow the popular press, you’d think the device was rubbish and a complete failure. I vehemently disagree. It may be a limited version one, but it is a flawlessly engineered timepiece that is conducive to small, yet significant, life hacks. I wear, and continue to wear my Apple Watch every day. I have done so since the day it arrived, the result of a late night wake-up alarm, a few taps on the Apple Store app and a return to sleep on opening night.