Posts tagged with “dev”
39 posts with this tag.
- Switching from Jekyll to VitePress2 Dec 25
This site has run on Jekyll since 2014 (or even before, I think; but some secrets are lost to time). Ten years is a good run for any technology choice, but I've finally made the switch to VitePress. The source is open, so you can check it out for yourself....
- 11ty and Vite for modern static websites24 Nov 25
I've been using 11ty for static site generation for a while now (not this site---that's Jekyll---but for other stuff) and it's great. But for a recent project I needed proper asset bundling, hot module replacement (HMR), and access to the npm ecosystem without building my own pipeline. Enter Vite....
- The great 2025 email yak-shave: O365 + mbsync + mu + neomutt + msmtp12 Sept 25
For years I was a happy user of mu4e in Emacs. But then a few years ago my employer turned off password-based IMAP auth and broke my (Office 365-based) work email, so I had to make alternative email arrangements....
- Running Claude Code within Zed23 July 25
After several months using Zed's built-in Agent panel I've switched to Claude Code. The main reason is cost. I'm still using the same models---still primarily Sonnet (and occasionally Opus) 4---but using them via the Agent panel incurs per-token billing via the Anthropic API. I was racking up a lot of costs (around 100USD/week) even with a bit of restraint, although still using it fairly heavily during all work days....
- Automated RPi Web Kiosk Setup in 202516 July 25
As part of a recent art installation I've needed to set up lots (well, dozens) of Raspberry 5s to run as fullscreen Chromium "kiosks" with a pre-set URL (network connected, but with no keyboard/mouse)....
- Agentic Elixir superpowers: Zed + Tidewave + AshAI6 June 25
For a few years now whenever I need to build any sort of networked interactive experience, I reach for Elixir (with Phoenix LiveView and Ash). It's an extremely productive combination, especially when you want to do more complex client/server information flows than the standard request/response UX. I've also (for the last year or two) ditched Emacs for Zed. Again, if you take the time to master these tools I think they're excellent....
- Format Markdown on save in Zed using Prettier20 Sept 24
One thing I've particularly enjoyed since switching to Zed is format-on-save, which is turned on by default in most programming modes. However, it's not turned on by default for Markdown files....
- Jekyll build speedups for Ruby 3.22 Feb 23
There's a bunch of buzz about Ruby's new YJIT in v3.2.0. I have to develop and maintain a bunch of Jekyll websites for work, some of which are getting into "non-trivial build time" territory (or maybe I'm really easily distracted, but a 30s build is enough for me to break my flow)....
- Handling Square Webhooks in Phoenix22 Jan 23
My brother's cafe donates a dollar to the local community centre for every coffee sold, and over the summer I built him a live "donation counter" which displays a small "thankyou" animation when anyone buys a coffee. It's a web app which they run on an iPad sitting on the coffee machine....
- rclone: exclude all git repos11 Jan 23
For a long time I've used rclone for remote backups and it's awesome. I have a script which syncs all the files I care about on my laptop to cloudstor (which, being on the Australian university network has the benefit that I get 1Gbps upload when I'm on the ANU network). My institution (the ANU)...
- So this is how it feels when the robots come for your job30 June 22
- So this is how it feels when the robots come for your job: what GitHub's Copilot 'AI assistant' means for coders30 June 22
I wrote a piece for the Conversation about GitHub's new Copilot AI programming assistant. You can head over there to read it if you like....
- Redacting craiyon prompts with imagemagick22 June 22
I've been messing around with craiyon (formerly DALL-E mini), because who hasn't been doing that recently....
- Pulling apart Zoom attendance csv dumps in tidy R23 May 22
My team ran some Zoom training last week and today I needed to figure out who actually attended across all the days, and for how long....
- Running an AI neural style transfer model under Singularity1 Feb 22
I've recently been given access to a beefy AI server (6x RTX3090s!) which is managed via SingularityCE, whose homepage boldly asks and then forgets to answer the question: "What is SingularityCE?"...
- Deploying a Phoenix app (with LiveView) on fly.io27 Oct 21
Things to note:...
- Cutting ruby CI pipeline times with pre-installed bundles21 Oct 21
I (and, increasingly many of my colleagues) are using Jekyll to create open (CC-licenced), hackable, acessible course websites & teaching content for our classes. We use a self-hosted GitLab server for all the websites sources, and then build/deploy them with GitLab CI. It works well, it means I don't have to fight with our LMS to do interesting things, and it means I can open my learning materials to everyone (not just those who are privileged e...
- openconnect setup for institutional VPN access18 Oct 21
My institution's IT policies have recently changed and port 22 is now blocked from off-campus. That's a real pain if you use ssh to push/pull from our on-prem GitLab servers (which I need to do all the time)....
- benswift.me analytics/tracking update8 Apr 21
I haven't had any sort of client-side analytics (e.g. Google Analytics) on benswift.me for a long time (since around 2012 I think---several iterations of the site ago). I use an ad-blocker myself, and the whole tracking & analytics thing just strikes me as a bit gross....
- Bulk-add students to MS Teams from a csv file1 Apr 21
My institution now uses MS Teams for lots of things, including organising classes & communicating with students. It's not perfect, but it's not terrible, and the pros & cons of Teams as a pedagogical platform are best left for another post....