typicalrunt.me

Note: This article assumes a working knowledge of rbenv.

Here is a quick tip on how to install the pg ruby gem on OSX if you only have Postgres.app installed.

R-E-S-P-E-C-T, find out what it means to me. - Aretha Franklin I’m feeling a bit crabby this morning, perhaps because I had to deal with a take-home exercise that passed for an interview.

There are many ways to navigate a website these days, especially on mobile where you can swipe, pinch, and touch.

One best practice that I rarely see used by companies is a version file that denotes what is currently in Production.

I recently stumbed across an gotcha with Ansible that I wasn’t aware of.

While creating Ansible scripts to automate the configuration of servers, I frequently stumble across an issue where I need to setup a user’s profile on the server that has a custom path.

Today I want to highlight a bit issue with the tech industry, and that is the gathering of requirements from customers.

…at least, not in the traditional, hands-on-keyboard sense.

I am working with a client right now on their Web application.

One of the things that I dislike seeing in an application’s database architecture is the use of booleans.

I finished speaking on the phone with a recruiter and, yet again, I had to spell out exactly what I look for in a job.

Note: Contrary to what you are about to read, I am still against metaprogramming on the whole, as it adds an unnecessary amount of magic that may confuse other developers.

I have been looking into Elixir and I am enjoying the language (mainly from both a readability standpoint, I haven’t done enough to form an opinion about its performance benefits).

I was using BitBucket the other day for a new client, but I wasn’t able to use my standard BitBucket account (business reasons).

In honour of our friends down South celebrating their independence, let’s look at installing a local version of ruby onto a POSIX machine without requiring wrappers like rvm or rbenv.

A new framework crossed my radar on HackerNews today called Lotus.

Tracking down Ansible bugs becomes difficult when you are playing with issues between local and remote systems.

Everyday I pray to Lord Turing that I never see another Production database password in version control again.

When first starting out writing tasks within a role, write the entire task as you normally would. do not include any variables or things that may change. by doing this, you keep to the simplest form of Ansible provisioning possible.

Something I’ve encountered while searching for answers to Ansible around the Internet is how to deal with configuration values that are character-delimited.

You’re a software developer or an Operations person that is working with a Java application.

When copying files, using templates, or creating just about anything on a target machine via Ansible, make sure that you are as explicit as possible.

I’m in the process of automating the provision step for a client’s project in Ansible, from a Vagrant environment through to the Production environment.

Well, that title is a mouthful.

Not enough people give careful thought about ensuring uniqueness across systems when they design a solution.

I’m currently building my new product, Storigible, and where I get stuck is the marketing component of the website.

I attended BSides Vancouver last week (great job everyone!)

I’m writing up a new gem called Tinfoil that tests whether web servers support secure headers.

I just completed a set of interviews with a company for a technical lead position 1.

I’d like to play a little game with myself and enumerate each common interview question that I’ve received over the past few years.

The phrase “Don’t call us, we’ll call you” is an old saying that stems from the theatre industry in regard to auditioners facing rejection.

I am in the process of consolidating a number of websites that I use into a smaller set of servers.

I mentor Computer Science students at my alma mater and one of them recently asked me if I could provide some tips about interviewing.

This year I decided to collect and bundle all of the questions I am asked on a regular basis, whether it is through mentoring or conversations with other developers.

After reading Tips for how to decouple your HTML, CSS, and JavaScript, I was struck by how stupid I’ve been marking up my HTML for CSS and JS events.

One of the things that I dislike about Rails is how some actions feel untestable.

I’ve been asked a few times where the name ’typicalrunt’ comes from, so I thought I’d write the meaning down and also explain why I don’t use my real name.

As a fellow programmer, I would like to wish every other programmer out there a Happy Programmers’ Day.

I was working away happily this week on my Ansible scripts, testing them with Vagrant VMs when all of a sudden Vagrant wouldn’t create new VMs for me.

Here I was learning the ins and outs of Ansible so that I can provision my Vagrant installation with a modicum of scripting, when lo and behold it decides to abruptly fail on me.

I was reading the MyBatis docs as a refresher and in the Dynamic SQL section I noticed that they are still struggling with the WHERE clause if all elements are conditional.

When people have looked at my code, specifically my test code, one of the most common things they ask is why I test my getters and setters.

Font Awesome is truly a work of art.

I came across a fantastic article on Hacker News called Crushing the Imposter Syndrome and I think everyone should read it.

I was reading a brilliant article titled “Post-Scarcity Economics” by Tom Streithorst and it resonated with me about our failing economy in Canada that I needed to write an article on it.

In yesterday’s post I explained some weird activity in my RAID backup server.

It turns out that the heating and cooling of the unit over the past 5 years caused the HDDs to slip out of their connectors.

Knock-on Effect: A secondary, often unintended effect.

One of the things that really irks me almost daily is the incessant use of SSO 1 services such as Facebook, Twitter, and Google by external services.