
2020


13 addons to power up your GitHub game
GitHub is an amazing set of tools around Git, but it’s lacking in certain areas. Where it fails to impress, browser addons often pick up the slack. Here’s 13 addons (plus a few honorable mentions) that will take your GitHub experience to the next level!

How to find the iCal address for a public Google calendar
Every Google calendar URL has an iCal file you can use… here’s how to find it.

How to make a dark mode with CSS
Every time I learn some new piece of CSS I’m amazed at how flexible and powerful it is. Like how easy it is to tailor your site for your visitor’s “dark mode” preference!

Deploy your own RequestBin in under 5 minutes
If you need to consume a webhook from another service, or verify the payload being sent from your own REST API endpoint, RequestBin can help. It intercepts and displays the contents of any call made to it. Here’s how to deploy your own instance in just a few minutes.
2019

Why are websites requesting access to motion sensors... on my desktop?
I was checking the status of a FedEx order when Brave warned me that “this site has been blocked from accessing your motion sensors”. I’m struggling to understand why a website would need that access. Do I get a different experience if I drop my device? Tip my monitor over? Spin the mouse around?

Hands-on Ansible, using two DigitalOcean Ubuntu droplets
Today I’m wrapping my head around a build tool called Ansible, used for deploying machines in a scriptable, repeatable manner. Follow along as I step through an excellent tutorial from DigitalOcean, applying what I learn to a couple DO Ubuntu VMs… the $5/mo ones - nothing fancy needed!

Replacing Gmail (and its office suite) with Mailbox.org
Google provides some amazing tools, but at what cost to privacy? One of the biggest blockers in eliminating them has been finding a reliable and affordable replacement for email (and ideally, calendar, documents, tasks, etc too). Well I may have finally found it, in Mailbox.org.

Add and subtract time from a DateTime structure in Erlang
I was trying to add times in Erlang, but couldn’t find an existing function, so I wrote my own.

Only assignment, call, increment, decrement, await, and new object expressions can be used as a statement
This error might look a little cryptic at first glance, but it’s fairly descriptive in explaining what’s wrong. You’re likely to come across this one before your first cup of coffee.

Assign C# code to a variable and then run it
Did you know most languages have a way to pass around code to other functions, so you can call (invoke) it in other parts of your application? In C#, it’s called a delegate.

How can I find the state of NumLock, CapsLock or ScrollLock in WPF?
If you’re writing a WPF application and need to find the state of the Num Lock, Caps Lock, or Scroll Lock keys, you’re in luck - there’s a method for that.

What is the opposite of Any in LINQ?
One of the many nice functions in LINQ is a single word that iterates through a collection, returning true if at least one item in the collection matches the condition you specify. But what’s the opposite of the Any keyword in LINQ?

Enable logging for an AWS Lambda job
In a new AWS Lambda function, logging is initially disabled. Lets see how to enable it, for those times where additional detail is needed.

What's the GitHub Package Registry?
Most of us host something (and some of us everything) on GitHub, especially since they host private repos for free too now. I’ve been eager to try the GitHub Package Registry since they announced it last May. Well, I just got access to the beta, so let’s see what we can do!

What's a package manager?
If you’ve heard the term package manager, especially with GitHub announcing their own, you might be wondering what exactly it is. Well, it’s a way to find, reuse, and share code, among other things.

Using the GraphiQL IDE to access a GraphQL API
GraphQL is bundled with GraphiQL, which lets us run queries right in the browser! Let’s see how GitHub uses it and try kicking the tires.

What is GraphQL and how does it differ from REST?
GraphQL is an alternative for REST, not a replacement. Let’s take a brief look at how they differ.

Create a TOTP 2FA code for your app
I use 2FA on every site that supports it, but I’d never given much thought to how a 2FA code is generated. Let’s learn how!

What is minification vs obfuscation?
Mozilla announced they’ll no longer accept extensions with obfuscated code. It’s good news for users, maybe not so much for developers. Obfuscated code is (intentionally) nearly impossible to understand, and could easily be malicious. Let’s unpack and break down a few concepts.