Grant Winney

Grant

I write when I've got something to share - a personal project, a solution to a difficult problem, or just an idea. We learn by doing and sharing. We've all got something to contribute.

Safely Build on a Ghost Theme

Safely Build on a Ghost Theme

This blog runs on the Ghost platform, and I was mildly surprised when I ran a ghost update the other day and suddenly my custom themes and scripts were just gone! Luckily I use DigitalOcean with backups enabled, and I had a backup from just a couple days before. I

What is an API?

What is an API?

An API is an Application Programming Interface, but what's that really mean? In a more practical sense, it's one programmer hiding the (possibly messy) details of their own code behind a nice veneer, in order to make it easier for another programmer to consume it in their own program.

Unit Testing in Visual Studio for Mac

Unit Testing in Visual Studio for Mac

Are you a Mac user and .NET fan? Did you know there's a native VS app now? Writing tests is important, so I decided to try out NUnit in @vs4mac.

5 Quick Hacks for Your Ghost Theme

5 Quick Hacks for Your Ghost Theme

These "hacks" for Ghost add some cool features to any blog, and should be usable with any theme.

Migrating a Blog from WordPress to Ghost

Migrating a Blog from WordPress to Ghost

About a week ago I decided to migrate my blog to the Ghost platform. I'd been thinking about it for awhile - even installed it once or twice to play around with it - but never fully committed. Truth is, I didn't really want to switch.

Evaluating a string of code in Erlang at runtime

Evaluating a string of code in Erlang at runtime

Did you know that Erlang has the ability to read in a string representing a line of code to execute at runtime? It can parse it out, evaluate it and return the value. Let's see how... Evaluating Simple Expressions At its most basic, we can just read any

What is charlieplexing? (a Raspberry Pi demo)

What is charlieplexing? (a Raspberry Pi demo)

On past projects, when I needed multiple LEDs, I just connected each to its own GPIO pin. I knew the current only worked in one direction, but I didn't think to take advantage of that fact. Charlieplexing is a method for arranging multiple LEDs so as to use the minimal number of pins possible.