The UNIX command line tools is something that just keeps giving. Within web development I often find myself wanting to quickly debug a URL, see whether it’s alive or what the response is. Often I do not want to download the whole content (a large file for example). Before I learned the following, I would use Chromes Developer Tools. That is until I learned how to do it more efficiently and quicker with good old curl:
Faster SSH workflow with multiplexing
I was reading The Art of Command Line (great stuff) and tried the SSH configuration tips. With the below config I noticed considerable speedup in various SSH and Git related workflows. My ~/.ssh/config now includes:
Speeding up bundle install with in-memory file system
On some of the servers I work with, due to cheap hard drives in software RAID configuration, I’ve found that bundle install can be extremely slow (take half an hour to complete). This obviously became unacceptable during deploys.
Effort – Personal To-do and Project manager
I open sourced a Rails app that I’ve been personally using for years for simple project management. The code is available on Github under the MIT license. From the README:
Installing Windows 8.1 on 2009 Mac mini
Today I was busy with refurbishing an old 2009 Mac mini, software wise. It’s such a nice device and it’s still running well, apart from the dead dvd rom. Until now, it was running Windows XP, which is no longer supported by MS, so it was time to upgrade. I bought a fresh copy of Windows 8.1 and did a native install, without Bootcamp. It took quite a few times to figure out which combination of disk formatting and architecture (x86/x64) this old Mac mini can handle.
klevo/percona docker container updated
The dockerfile repos my docker containers depend on have been discontinued at Docker Hub. I have updated klevo/percona to reflect this. The Dockerfile now imports the official Ubuntu base image. I have also done some other tiny improvements.
Sketch replaced Photoshop in my web-design workflow
I am really happy that I stumbled on some article (can’t find it now) comparing Sketch to Photoshop. This convinced me to give Sketch a try for a web-design part of a project I was working on. I downloaded the trial version, went through a few tutorials and I quickly saw the potential of greatly improving my workflow. Sketch is clearly a tool that was developed with web in mind from the start. It paid off, because once I started designing the website, it’s UI, logo and typography I was impressed at how much faster I was able to accomplish things compared to Photoshop.
Script to update PhpBB 3.0.x to 3.1.x
Recently I had to upgrade a dozen PhpBB boards to the latest version. Previously I would do this by hand, which would take days. This time though, while reading through the update notes, I noticed that it is possible to update the database through the console (I assume this was only introduced in 3.1). That was the necessary prerequisity to be able to automate everything. I ended up with the following script:
```bash #!/usr/bin/env bash echo “Upgrading PhpBB instal in ‘$1’ to 3.1 with files from ‘$2’…”
Bash: Underscore a String
I find it weird that I did not find a ready made script for this immediately through a google search. So this is what I arrived at after some digging:
Automate everything
To automate everything, even the smallest things (scripts), is a lesson I continuously learn while doing programming.