The trouble with troubleshooting

Sigh. That didn't work either. Why can't someone else have already solved this? Maybe it's a bug? I'll upgrade and hope that works.

Friday, July 28, 2023

Reverting unhappiness

There are benefits to being happy with what you do beyond the mere feeling. To become happier we need to know the low points and take back some control over the causes of misery.

Wednesday, July 27, 2022

The scheduling session

Multitasking and interruptions? All bad! Unless you do it yourself. Then it's all right!

Sunday, May 08, 2022

Falsify yourself

You've solved it! Until someone asks a simple question and you're stunned. Why didn't I think of that? Because you're hardwired not to see holes in your own solutions. Let's fix that

Thursday, March 10, 2022

How to enjoy a good meltdown

It's down! Production is down! You're working at an intense pace yet you have a serene calm feeling. You are prepared for this. It's showtime!

Tuesday, December 21, 2021

Want to be great? Know a lot

Remember that time where you knew of a solution that no-one else did? And it worked exceptionally well too. I bet you felt like a great programmer. Let's make that happen again!

Tuesday, October 26, 2021

I don't understand this (yet)

You gently face-palm and let out a groan. Your bug is so obvious now. How did you miss it before? Thank goodness you didn't blame Bob publicly.

Friday, August 27, 2021

Getting unstuck

You sigh. Maybe the compilation didn't work? You recompile and run it again. Nope. Still the same problem. You stare out the window.

Friday, June 18, 2021

The test-plan

"The tests are timing out again" someone yells. "Alright I'll bump them" you instinctively respond. Then you pause and feel uneasy. Is there another way?

Monday, April 26, 2021

Literate atomic commits

We need to talk about your commit-messages

Monday, January 25, 2021

How to own a code

Knowing the architecture of an application is like passively knowing a foreign language. When you speak it - it's awkward. Here's how you go from passively to actively owning a code-base.

Friday, November 06, 2020

Have a feedback loop

"I believe we can quickly rise to the top if we never repeat the same mistake twice". I decided to test that. 4½ years later and many of my mistakes recorded where's what happened.

Friday, September 25, 2020

How to read a code

"Oh that's Steves code. He quit two years ago. We don't touch it. It just works and no-one knows how. Just let it be."

Tuesday, August 11, 2020

Overview mode

Sound familiar? You're 95% done some touching up then commit and run. And from nowhere that last little detail puts you back to square one.

Friday, June 05, 2020

Sider 1.0 - an ode to yak shaving

Why my greatest open source hit so far: sider almost never existed

Wednesday, May 13, 2020

Getting better at it

Want to get better at programming? Me too!

Tuesday, August 13, 2019

Blogger custom template (this site)

Want to completly gut a blogger template so you can go bare metal html using blogger? Here's how.

Monday, January 16, 2017

DIY adjustable standing desk

Remix of the 22$ IKEA standing desk hack with adjustable height of the keyboard stand that can be dismounted back into a coffee table when needed

Tuesday, June 28, 2016

Feeder and feedee: project onboarding

Tools to onboarding a new person onto a project with more gained and less time wasted

Sunday, May 01, 2016

Nose dive into front-end development

What is what and who is who in the land of front end development

Sunday, April 03, 2016

How to not get into management

Do you still love programming and want to continue to program forever-ever?

Sunday, February 21, 2016

Analytics server side - now in developer speak!

Demystifying google analytics enough for you to be able to post data to it server side

Sunday, December 20, 2015

Why typescript was reverted @ work

Here's why typescript was reverted to javascript at work so you can gauge what you're looking at if you are thinking about switching to typescript (or on the brink of reverting back)

Thursday, November 12, 2015

Building a culture of curiosity

Trying to build a community? Here's how you do it in 3 easy steps (and one hard)

Sunday, May 24, 2015

I meditate (and why you should care)

Why meditation is good for your code and why it carries a big fringe bonus for you too

Wednesday, April 15, 2015

Chromium too many open files - tabs come a-crashin'

Fix chromium tabs crashing on linux and learn a thing or two about a processes open files and how to fiddle with them.

Monday, February 23, 2015

The rant ratio

How much rants would a woodchuck chuck? Rants are in small scale ok - but where does it turn sour?

Sunday, January 18, 2015

The walk-o-doro: +1ing your creativity

The walkodoro! The pomodoro technique in reverse to level up your creative thinking

Monday, December 08, 2014

Do only punks chunk?

Lessons learnt taking the course learning how to learn on coursera and how you can apply advices given there to learning code better

Wednesday, October 29, 2014

Open sourcing my blogger template

I'm open sourcing the template for this blog: Presenting responsiraptor - a responsive blogger template theme based on bootstrap

Thursday, October 16, 2014

Fix for broken chromium open in folder

Small tech post on how to fix broken file associations in chromium on (arch) linux. Example with Gnome and gvfs-open.

Saturday, September 27, 2014

I'm running Arch Linux and so should you

Why switch to Arch Linux? Long time Ubuntu user having taken the plunge and never looked back

Saturday, August 16, 2014

From octopress to blogger

Why this blog has moved from octopress to blogger - and the fact that its back!

Thursday, July 10, 2014

Get it right

How to be a faster programmer? Get it right the first time! An obvious advice - but maybe something can be learnt from it?

Wednesday, December 18, 2013

Jar as a Service on Windows

Tech post on how to get a jar running as a service on windows using Jetty as the setup example

Wednesday, November 27, 2013

Surviving Vistitor Spikes

Does your webapp survive several hundred percent more visitors than what you’re used to? Practical tips on handling this (and having fun with it)

Saturday, November 16, 2013

Java is verbose? Hurray!

Why javas verbosity is also a good thing

Wednesday, October 30, 2013

Estimates: The 95% Done Syndrome

Failing an estimated deadline: how to save yourself and still helping your customers

Sunday, October 20, 2013

Power Editors (Vim Revisited)

Follow up on trying out vim. Why you need to learn at least one power editor (and it might be vim)

Saturday, October 05, 2013

Estimates: the +100h joke

Some digits are not tangible in an estimate. You need to split those until you get a feel for how long it is

Friday, September 27, 2013

Is Learning Vim Worth It

My attempt at gauging whether vim is worth learning (without spending the time everyone says it takes to). See if you should go for it or not

Wednesday, September 11, 2013

Get yourself a fast project

On the opportunity cost of using new frameworks and languages

Monday, August 26, 2013

Jetty Multiple Instances

Running multiple instances of jetty from the same installation

Thursday, August 01, 2013

Fast programmers

Why some programmers are 10x faster and what you can learn from it

Monday, July 15, 2013

Bug repellants

Stop typing at random. Start solving bugs - the right way!! Which is really the only way - ask a bunch of questions verify and repeat

Saturday, June 15, 2013

Rotating backups with rsync

A perl script that does rotational backups via ssh and rsync to a backup site. No compression no incremental backups - full snapshots with low data redundancy thanks to hard links

Saturday, June 01, 2013

Phone meetings

Bear Grylls style survival tips for agile teams lost in the corporate jungle

Friday, May 10, 2013

Ctrl Click Sum Gdocs Spreadsheet

I got tired of waiting for google to implement summation of non adjacent cells in docs. Here’s a workaround for it in greasemonkey / tampermonkey

Tuesday, April 30, 2013

The next big language

Everyones favourite prediction - what the next big language will be. Meta-style

Wednesday, April 24, 2013

If It Weren't for the ... Customers

Code reuse increases business profits and customer satisfaction. Everyone wins right? Not so fast there is a cost to code reuse. But sharing ideas is a win win

Sunday, March 24, 2013

Boredom the Hidden Asset

Are you easily bored? Congratulations! Why you may want to skip on those sugary distractions and let it be your compass for truly inspiring things

Saturday, March 16, 2013

Custom syntax in pygments

How to create a custom syntax highlighter for octopress using pygments

Saturday, March 02, 2013

Stages of a code review

Code reviews are great! Your team will evolve with it - but not without initial bumps. Where’s what to expect when code reviews are brought into a team

Sunday, February 24, 2013

Fantom the language

Introduction to the jvm language Fantom (formerly known as Fan)

Monday, February 18, 2013

Setup

Credits for the looks and software generating this blog

Friday, February 08, 2013

Hello world

Who am I and the lofty goals this blog

Tuesday, February 05, 2013