All Posts

All of my thoughts on programming, product development, and more, collected into a timeline of sorts.

Steamdeck: Day #1

So it's finally happened. I've invested in a Steamdeck. After months of (internal) debating between this & a Switch 2, the sale finally pushed me off the fence. Here's some first thoughts I've had around the 'Deck, and what happens next.

You can't trust anyone - but don't panic!

(DHH) Google will eventually kill every single service you care about, if they can't find a way to directly monetize it with ads at a scale of billions. They're institutionally incapable of being in the product or service business, because neither products nor services butter Google's bread. Advertisement does.

GraphQL WhereInputs

To address a common GraphQL issue, I tend to build a series of "WhereInput" types into the GraphQL project, which are small reusable inputs throughout the schema, to create a uniform way to filter entries or select a relational entry when creating/updating entries.

The custom domain problem for SaaS on PaaS

Custom domains is an interesting problem for most SaaS business, especially those running on large PaaS/IaaS providers such as AWS or GCP. The problem is, PaaS doesn't help when you want to run custom domains for your SaaS.

Physical Infosec Breach

(The Verge) Links on Trump's invasion of Congress, as well as a highlight on physical data security.

Blog as you learn

(Ash Furrow) It's easier to write about a topic when it's fresh in your mind.

Apple introduces the M1

(The Verge) A collection of links around Apple's new Silicon chip, detailing power & performance

Facebook SDK strikes again!

(The Verge) A number of popular apps and services including Spotify, Pinterest, and Tinder were inaccessible today on iOS devices due to a now-resolved issue involving Facebook log-ins.

WhatsApp went down for nearly an hour

(The Verge) WhatsApp went down for its 2 billion users earlier today, but service has now been restored. The issues started at around 4PM ET and prevented WhatsApp users from sending or receiving messages on the service for nearly an hour. The WhatsApp application would still open, but a connecting loop was displayed while the service experienced issues.

Razer introduces Project Linda

(The Verge) This year at CES 2018, the company is showing off Project Linda, a companion piece of hardware for the recently released Razer Phone that extends the smartphone into a full laptop.

AWS Cloudwatch Logs

In a world dominated by containers & microservices over servers & monoliths, it's important to get your application logs sorted. Here's a brief overview of iterations of application log stacks in production-level applications at Car Throttle.

Emoji Shorts

Sometimes, when you work with emojis 😎😍🤖🌎✊ they can be a real pain in the ass. One physical symbol can equal up to four Unicode characters, so when counting strings & encoding emojis into a valid format for your favourite legacy database, these fun little icons can physically make you 😡

Deploying with Docker & AWS

Since I installed Docker on my personal Ubuntu server, I've been diving into the deep end of images & containers. It's a completely different way of developing applications & platforms, and now it's time to bring the Docker way of thinking to my work. Enter AWS, EC2 Container Service and all of the goodies 😝

Versioned Programmable Interface

After reading this excellent article about now Netflix handles scaling & versioning, and also from experience, it's safe to say that writing a versioned API is a pain.

So, those Node modules...

If you follow the nodejs community, you may have recently heard about widespread issues the community encountered when a developer pulled his widely-used dependencies from the registry. Whilst this article is focused on how to decrease the time each staging deployment takes, it also happens to be why the Car Throttle stack was unaffected.

Telegram Hero

So, if you've ever used Telegram, you'll know how great it is to chat securely between people. And if you're a developer and you've checked out Telegram Bots, you'll know there is an API to allow you to programmatically communicate with people.

KentProjects

KentProjects was a final year project undertaken by myself & my friends over the course of our fourth year at the University Of Kent.

Wöbu

"What about you" - reactionary news app

Running a Hackathon

Organising and running an event in a week!

Advice with Chris

So I was looking for a way to teach myself NodeJS and MongoDB, so I decided to write an API for an “advice engine”, somewhere to store quotes and display them on a lovely website.

We heard

We stopped making Overheard.