Published in The Startup·PinnedMember-onlyBuilding My First App — JiffyCVMy first ever app — JiffyCV — is now live! Here’s the story about how it came to be, the approach I took to make it and what I learned along the way. You find out more about the app on our website https://jiffycv.com or find it in the app…Software Development19 min readSoftware Development19 min read
Mar 11Enhance your shitposting with FFMPEGI was watching one my favourite movies — An American Werewolf in London the other day and realised that the scene where the doctor visits the Slaughtered Lamb and asks about the Pentagram on the wall would make a good joke about team’s attitudes to legacy code by…Ffmpeg3 min readFfmpeg3 min read
Feb 25Member-onlyAuthenticating via Microsoft Azure AD in Cypress (and Puppeteer)Recently I found myself having to automate a Single Sign On (SSO) implementation that used Microsoft Azure AD as the indentity provider and encountered some issues which I thought were worth sharing. It’s worth noting that what I’m about to describe is an anti-pattern in Cypress, they recommend not automating…Automation Testing3 min readAutomation Testing3 min read
Feb 19midi-to-lsdj development updateI’ve just released v1.5.0 of midi-to-lsdj my little library for converting MIDI files into the commands needed to reproduce the song in Little Sound DJ (LSDJ) on the Gameboy. What’s new MIDI file parsing has moved from midi-file to @tonejs/midi Moved to using tonalJS for working with notes Support for tempo changes…Music9 min readMusic9 min read
Feb 5What I’ve learned after taking a four-month sabbatical from workIn October 2022 I started a sabbatical from work. My employer at the time (I’ve since left that job and start a new one next week) had a policy that allowed those with three years of service (I had six) to take up to three months off unpaid, I had…Life7 min readLife7 min read
Jan 29My experince learning Kotlin with Jetbrains AcademyI’m starting a new job soon at a company that uses Kotlin, a language I’d never used before so I decided while I had some downtime between jobs to learn the basics so I wouldn’t start and be completely out of my comfort zone. I had used Scala previously and…Learning5 min readLearning5 min read
Jan 22Building a shared understanding of your application with Sketch.systemsOver the last couple of months I’ve been getting into statecharts. It started while playing around with porting Reciprocal.dev (RIP) to work on top of tldraw as that uses them and since then, I’ve experimented with Stately’s excellent Xstate-based editor and then I found Sketch.systems. Sketch.systems takes statechart visualisation a…Software Development6 min readSoftware Development6 min read
Jan 16My trip to Reykjavik, IcelandAfter my trip to Denmark, Sweden and Norway in November 2022 I still had some credit with British Airways left to use by September 2023. Due to exchange rates I actually ended up with a fair amount to spend, so the girlfriend and I decided to go back to Iceland. …5 min read5 min read
Jan 2My Plans for 2023Looking back on my plans for 2022 I achieved four out of eight of the things I set out to do: Move to self-hosted tech stack: I found a NAS that I liked and have for the most part managed to migrate off iCloud and a bunch of SaaS products…6 min read6 min read
Dec 30, 2022My 2022This year was a little more exciting than 2021! I’ve been promoted, taken a sabbatical and moved to a different company. I gave up my entreprenerial dream Looking back at my 2021 wrap-up I was excited at how I’d develop Reciprocal.dev further after a successful MVP but unfortunately in January my day job project had a…6 min read6 min read