Mike Street

Notes - page 10

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  • 17th October 2022

    Notes: #17

    Has it really been 5 months since I last wrote a Notes?! I've had my head down on creating and re-creating side projects that I've not really given a moments thought about writing a blog post.

    • I'm still riding the Cargo bike - so far done nearly 1400 miles on it
    • My wife has borrowed a bike from her mum, so we've been heading out on rides as a family which is lovely
    • I've switch analytics on a couple of my sites away from the very buggy and locked down "Cloudflare Analytics" to microanalytics.io - in fact, you can see the analytics for this very site
    • Ale House Rock as got some sexy new graphs on brewery pages (I've been able to do that since the re-build - see below)

    Behind the Source - the Podcast

    Avid readers will remember the series of interviews I did under the "Behind the Source" name back in 2020. These featured people of the web talking about their jobs and how they got there.

    2022 has seen the name evolve into a podcast. Rather than talk about people, Series 2 (aka the podcast) talks about tools, projects and processes. Each episode features an expert talking about their passion.

    At time of writing, 3 episodes have been released - I'm just trying to work out how to get the word out!

    Ale House Rocks

    AHR has gone under yet another rebuild. It is now completely self-contained and uncoupled from the Google Spreadsheet that was powering it.

    Previously, I was using IFTTT to add a row to a Google Sheet when a post was added to Instagram, The site would then build against this sheet and upload the image to Cloudinary.

    The new system has all the files committed to the repository. There is a hook I can hit with the URL of a new post (be it on Instagram or Untappd). This creates and commits all the required files to re-build the site with the new addition.

    The advantage of this is I now have all the beer and brewery data in the repo itself, so can leverage 11ty data files to get all sorts of beer-related stats

    There is a small reliance on both Cloudflare and Netlify, but I want to reduce this to just Netlify at some point. All the code can be found on Gitlab.

    Blog posts to be written

    Following on from the last notes, here is a list of topics that are in my mind to be blogged about:

    • ddev - getting started, pitfalls & rolling it out to a team
    • deploying a Docker image via Gitlab CI
    • Setting up Meli and deploying through Gitlab Ci
    • PHP Deployer - setting up
    • Deploying using PHP Deployer and Gitlab CI
    • Making any page a JSON endpoint using Cloudflare Workers with the HTMLRewriter
    • Resizing images with Netlify functions and sharp

  • 7th May 2022

    Notes: #16

    Every one of my notes seems to start with a "can't believe time has flown", so I'm going to skip that bit

    I need to get back on the blog writing train & hopefully this is the start. I've been spending a lot of my "side-project" time working on and exploring new processes for work. They are still personal development and "side project"-like, but I have had so many back-to-back interests I've not stopped to write about them.

    As a reminder (and to publically "shame" myself into writing posts), these are the topics I would like to cover

    • ddev - getting started, pitfalls & rolling it out to a team
    • deploying a Docker image via Gitlab CI
    • Using docusaurus
    • Building and deploying docusaurus
    • Setting up Meli and deploying through Gitlab Ci
    • PHP Deployer - setting up
    • Deploying using PHP Deployer and Gitlab CI

    As you can see, i've been playing a lot with Gitlab CI. It's such an additive technology - once you start doing one you want to do them ALL.

    Anyway, quick note to get those out of my head - hopefully you'll see some posts soon!

  • 9th February 2022

    Notes: #15

    I can't believe that we're already a third of the way through the second month of the year and this is my first post of 2022; and it's not even a real post.

    Work has been busy as well as personal life which has left hardly any time for blogging. My downtime has been spent playing Xbox (yes, I switched back) and working on bits for work which aren't work.

    So, before I forget about it all - here is a mind dump of my current state of life.

    Work

    I've started playing with ddev which is a wrapper on top of docker. Out the box it supports Typo3 (our primary CMS at work) and seems pretty tidy. A few config changes have had to happen, but I'm looking forward to getting our developers off the central development server we have

    Talking of Docker, this seems to be a major part of my life now. A couple of clients prefer it as a hosting platform, so I've spent the last year or so getting my head around it. Every time I think I'm getting it, I delve a little deeper and find out something I understood was wrong or something else exists. Just the other day I found you can do a docker run <image> <command> and it will spin up the docker image, run the command then shut down - perfect for an npm install.

    I'm also having to get my head around Debian and upgrading some servers to Bullseye - so we can benefit from PHP 7.4.

    I, along with a few other collegues, have started going back into the office. I'm only going in one day a week at the moment, but it's great to have real-world conversations. We also decided to drop everyone's working day by half an hour, along with giving everyone their birthdays off which was a nice way to start 2022.

    Non-work

    As mentioned, I got an Xbox at the start of the year and have been very much enjoying Forza Horizon 5.

    I managed to create and sort out a stats page for my end-of-year blog posts, which is great to see all that data in one place. I've already thought of a couple more data points I can add.

    I purchased a new (well, Apple refurbished) MacBook Air, after my 2016 MacBook Pro decided not to let me open it more than 45°. I went for a refurbished (and an Air) as it is just a personal laptop that gets used for blog writing and web surfing - it doesn't need to be all powerful. It has the M1 chip (and a fingerprint reader) which are already a huge improvement.

    I moved my site to Cloudflare pages, which means I can benefit from their analytics, which means I have dropped any sort of anayltics from my site (which is awesome). Builds are a bit slower than Netlify, but I don't need it live instantly - it can wait. I want to move alehouse.rocks but that currently relies on some Netlify functions to render - which would need to be moved to workers (which are actually tied in as they trigger the build).

    I finally got a cargo bike (again). So the kids have been carted around in that - too and from their childcare locations. It's great fun and can carry a lot of stuff, while leaving plenty of room for the kiddos.

  • 18th October 2021

    Notes: #14

    I was looking through my diary the other day and noted how little I hast posted over the last month or so compared to the rest of the year. I also remembered that I had gone through a blog writing marathon earlier in the year and scheduled posts for months to come - so it's not that I have recently stopped writing, I've just not written anything (except the odd post here or there) since about April.

    Over the last few weeks, however, there have been a couple of events I wanted to make a note of. Not for anyone, really, except myself.

    Commuter Bike Crash

    About a month ago I experienced a rather embarrassing crash on the way to work. I was still close enough to home to hobble back after, but the accident broke my bike frame. I was avoiding a dog walker and another cyclist and didn't see a pothole masked by grass. The pothole caused me to lose control of the bike, after which I went head first into a low wall - which threw me over the handlebars and over the wall.

    I was ok - bruised ego and legs. Fortunately there was a A&E nurse who saw the whole thing and gave me a quick check up before we headed in different directions.

    Because of this, I now have a new commuter bike. However, due to the reasons below, I've still not ridden it...

    Cargo Bike Recall

    After waiting for 9 months, I finally got my hands on my cargo bike. It's been so good making my way round the local roads with my nearly-3-year-old absolutely loving life in the front. It served as a second car, meaning I could go places while my wife drove somewhere else.

    Then 2 weeks ago, Riese & Müller issued an immediate ride stop and recall of the bike. I'm devastated and am currently in the throws of trying to find a replacement. I need to get it back to the shop too, but I can't ride at the moment...

    Acute Anterior Uveitis

    While on holiday a couple of weeks ago (yes, the same week the cargo bike got recalled) I was diagnosed with uveitis - an eye disease. It comes in my forms, but mine has manifested itself as blurred vision and light sensitivity. As I write this, I'm in an office with all the blinds closed and lights on - despite it being sunny outside - just so I can control the light.

    What it does mean is that I can't drive, I can't cycle, I can't read small writing on packaging. Fortunately, I can still work, look after my children and do most other day-to-day activities.

    It's been a pain - not being able to pop out in the car or cycle anywhere. Hopefully it will be better soon and I can start doing fun things again.

  • 22nd August 2021

    Notes: #13

    It's been over 4 months since my last Notes but it seems like only yesterday. I'll put that down to me having another child not long after my previous Notes post. Having another child really knocks all your motivation and time for side projects and blog posts. Fortunately, my posting schedule has kept this blog alive (although we have nearly caught up with the scheduled posts).

    Work has also been busy, if I'm not thinking about my children and where they need to be and what they need to be doing i'm thinking about work. We've recently pivoted from a TYPO3 monorepo of extensions to composer - which was a headache in itself. We also still need to support the sites which haven't been converted yet, so have split the monorepo up into Git submodules. I've put some notes as to how I did this so that, one day, I can make a blog post out of it.

    Just a quick notes this time to capture the state of work and life.

  • 11th April 2021

    Notes: #12

    Postings

    Been a few weeks since my last notes & I've been collating a few points (and trying to find the time to actually flesh out the notes..)

    My posting schedule is full steam ahead. For a little while I've had posts up until July! I figured that is far enough in the future for now and so I am peppering additional posts in between (a lot can happen to a site in a few months!)

    Since converting my site to 11ty, I've been finding opportunities for new 11ty sites everywhere. Just the other day I was talking to a friend about having a site with his YouTube videos on and within a few hours I had a prototype up and running by using an RSS feed.

    Working Code Podcast

    As mentioned in my last note, I've been listening to Working Code a coding podcast which doesn't cover one specific language, but the ideas and methodologies behind coding. Every episode seems to have a takeaway, even if it is from "Triumphs and Fails" at the beginning.

    A few weeks ago, in Episode 13, one of the hosts Ben shared a poem which really resonated with me. I'm not normally a poem guy (I couldn't recite one, that's for sure) but, I was listening to this particular episode the day after I published my post about Imposter Syndrome and something clicked.

    The poem is by Marianne Williamson (I've added new lines for readability, but the original is a passage):

    Our deepest fear is not that we are inadequate.
    Our deepest fear is that we are powerful beyond measure.
    It is our light, not our darkness that most frightens us.
    We ask ourselves, Who am I to be brilliant, gorgeous, talented, and fabulous?
    Actually, who are you not to be?
    You are a child of God. Your playing small does not serve the world.
    There is nothing enlightened about shrinking so that other people will not feel insecure around you.
    We are all meant to shine, as children do.
    We were born to make manifest the glory of God that is within us.
    It is not just in some of us; it is in everyone and as we let our own light shine, we unconsciously give others permission to do the same.
    As we are liberated from our own fear, our presence automatically liberates others.

    Another takeaway was from the episode I listened too today (Episode 15). The phrase "building as you climb". was mentioned and I really liked it as a methodology. To paraphrase; As you solve a problem, once you cross the ravine, you should build a bridge so the person that follows you doesn't need to build a bridge for themselves and can go further than you. It's a great ethos to carry and has reminded me why I write so much goddam documentation at work.

    This reminded me of my post about delegation in which I said

    you should train your team to be as good as you, and then push them to be better

  • 23rd March 2021

    Notes: #11

    Trying to get a bit better at these now!

    Ale House Rock

    Ale House Rock (my beer review site) is now 100% powered by 11ty. It uses an API I built to render all the beer reviews into static pages. From there, I've also been able to compile a list of breweries and draw some stats (like average rating and such). Certainly interesting to see and work with a different dataset with 11ty.

    It also redeploys automatically if there is a new beer (rather than just rebuilding regardless). This will help me keep my Netlify build minutes down. There'll be a blog post on that soon...

    Netlify & 11ty scheduled builds

    On that note, this very blog only rebuilds when necessary too. I often schedule blog posts for the future (weirdly, I've found this helps me write more) and that was one thing that was missing from a "traditional" CMS.

    Using Cloudflare workers and an extra JSON page on my site, I've been able to set a scheduled worker to only trigger a build when needed - again, saving Netlify build minutes (and saving the planet 😉)

    Docker

    For a project at work, I've been having to get into and understand Docker. There is still a lot I don't understand and I still struggle to see the benefits for it in production (when having to be hooked up to a single database instance). If anyone has used it with a traditional LAMP stack in production, I'd love to pick your brains

    Blog audit

    With the move to 11ty, I set myself a task of auditing all my blogs posts. That is over 170 posts to go through, convert to Markdown and tidy up the code examples. I'm also checking links and adding notes where content is outdated or wrong. I've made the decision to not remove incorrect or out-of-date posts as they serve as a reminder, a timeline of my progress which helps when Imposter Syndrome sets in.

    Podcast Wrap-up

    On that note, the On the Side vs Make Life Work crew have decided to take a hiatus on the podcast while we go and settle in new jobs (not me) and have a child (me). Was great fun talking about side-projects weekly.

  • 11th March 2021

    Notes: #10

    I've have finally pushed a new update to my website. Moving away from Craft CMS, this site is now powered by 11ty.

    I'm still a big fan of Craft, but I was putting off doing updates to my site as it involved setting up a local database. This is now a git clone, npm install, commit and git push. Pushing will auto deploy to Netlify, so there is no server access required - just Gitlab access.

    Other notes:

    • We're still recording our On The Side podcast takeover
    • My website now scores top marks on Lighthouse
    • Had a play around with Cloudflare pages. Looks like an awesome Netlify alternative and, once they are more production ready I will be looking to move my Netlify sites across (I have nothing against Netlify, just the less platforms I'm having to manage, the better)
    • As I wrote this I optimised this site further - it's great to have such granular control over the assets & content (I'm sure I'll get fed up with the git workflow when I want to just fix a typo...)

  • 23rd February 2021

    Notes: #9

    Long time no notes 🙄

    • I have pushed a beta to my Socket RSS reader out to the public. I've already had a bit of feedback which is a great little incentive to keep working on it
    • Over the last few weeks, me and a couple of friends have been recording a podcast. It's an OnTheSide takeover, so the conversation circles around side projects (I talk a lot about RSS...)
    • Turns out using a controversial podcast title gets a lot of attention. Who knew click baiting worked?!
    • Ale House Rock has been filling up nicely since Lockdown 3.0 started
    • I've been really enjoying the Working Code podcast. Lack of commuting has not left much space for podcasts, but this one has shot to the top of the "must listen" list (along with No Such Thing as a Fish)

  • 24th September 2020

    Notes #8

    With only 8 days between this and my previous notes, there isn't much to be writing about.

    Playstation

    In just over 2 months I managed to complete the Spiderman game on Playstation 4. Was a great little game and was excellent to be able to start & complete a game successfully. 100% in story mode with nearly all of the trophies (I'm not a perfectionist).

    I purchased Tony Hawk's Pro Skater 1 + 2 last night, but barely got a chance to play it as it requires a 20GB download. The first 10GB came down in about 40 minutes, which meant I could do the tutorial & free play, but the remaining 10GB are crawling down as I type.

    Recruitment

    We are currently hiring for a backend developer at Liquid Light and, despite the note saying no agencies, I have been inundated with LinkedIn requests, emails and phone-calls. I would be willing to use a recruiter, if I could find a good one that understands my wants and needs (one being not wanting to do phone conversations).

    6 Month Slump

    It's been 6 months since the UK went into lockdown because of COVID-19. What seemed as a "temporary lockdown" has turned into an endless working from home journey. Pubs and Bars have opened and closed but we haven't gone back to the office. Me, along with a lot of others, seem to be struggling through a 6 month slump. No motivation, no eagerness. I'm only writing this note because I've not no desire to play any Playstation since Tony Hawk's isn't ready (which is what I would normally be doing with my night "off"). It's hard, but we'll get through it. People have got through worse. Just stay home, be sensible and wear a bloody mask.