This is an Elephant!
Why is AI so willing please?
Upgrading yarn from 1.x
I still have a lot of old projects using yarn 1.x and I need to record the instructions somewhere
CSP and Alpine.js
Putting my money where my mouth is, I configured a Content Security Policy (CSP) for my blog (amongst others) and in doing so I had to do some minor refactoring.
Protecting me from myself
Using GitHub Actions to prevent the repository from breaking the developer experience due to automated package updates.
Lambda function not picking up new configuration
An unusual situation we encountered with one of AWS Lambdas not picking up new configuration despite the fact we had deployed it multiple times; and the fix.
Some notes on setting up a CSP on a legacy site
Setting up a Content Security Policy (CSP) for a legacy site comes up with its own challenges, this article contains some tips that I have used.
Steps to setting up a Content Security Policy
As part of protecting your site and your users you should really consider applying a Content Security Policy (CSP) to your site. Here I detail on how I go about setting one up and the possible tools available to ease your pain.
Heroku wants paying, so time to move on...
Heroku have decided to discontinue their free dyno offering and so this blog needs to find a new home...
Simplifying your package management and security
Keeping your code up to date with the latest packages and security fixes can be a chore and something easily overlooked...
Speed up your Docker developer experience on MacOS
Docker (and not just Docker Desktop) on a MacOS can be awfully slow, especially for developers when the container is accessing files on the local drive via a volume mount....
Night-night OpenCover
All good things come to an end and I feel this is the time for OpenCover development to cease whilst the memories are good.
Scheduling AWS Lambdas, a 101
Creating an AWS Lambda and triggering on time
Debugging lambdas in VSCode
Solving a debugging issue with a lambda written using typescript
AWS Control Tower, making my life easier
I've spent the past few weeks refreshing myself on the latest and greatest in the AWS IAM space and applying what I can to my own personal AWS account that...
Upgrading to Ghost v4 on Heroku
If you've read any of my earlier posts you'll know that I have been running the administrative side of my blog (using Ghost) on Heroku. But in this age, things move quickly and Ghost has since updated to v4 but looking at their docs the supported upgrade path is all around the ghost-cli tooling...
Oh my zsh...
When I moved to using a Mac for development and working on projects involving React.js etc I knew I was going to have to reintroduce myself to the command line and so I started a search around what is the best terminal emulator and shell to use. During this search, I stumbled across oh-my-zsh...
Sharing "developer" secrets
Committing secrets to source control is a real problem for developers and I like many others have done it at least once.
Using Ghost as a headless CMS (part 2)
Finally I completed the task of hosting the Ghost CMS on Heroku (free) [that I ashamedly admit I started this task in January and then deferred], then using Netlify I build and host a Gatsby.js generated static site.
SSH tunneling from a Docker container
I describe an approach taken to use SSH from a docker container to allow access to resources secured behind a bastion server.
Setting up a bastion server on AWS
Quickly setup a bastion server on AWS and provide access to other users.
Using Ghost as a headless CMS
Investigations into using Gatsby to build a static site version of my Ghost CMS blog using the services of Netlify and Render.
Hosting Ghost For Free
Running a Ghost CMS on the cheap using Heroku.
What is this "waterfall" thing of which you speak?
I'm going to describe my personal views about managing large software developments. I have had various assignments during the past nine years, mostly concerned with the development of software...
Debugging NuGet Packages
Have you ever noticed that now we have embraced the micro-services architecture of doing things, instead of one big monolithic repository of code we have it all broken into smaller...
Adding a tags page to a Ghost blog
An odd thing about Ghost is though it allows you to tag your posts it doesn't provide an out-of-the-box way to access all the tags as a single view....
Not dead yet...
So it has been a while but I am glad to finally say I have released another version of OpenCover - 4.7.922....
A spike on `robust` JSON handling in .NET
When working with JSON formatted data in .NET I have always found it frustrating that I am losing something valuable if I want to use some form of contract to...
A weekend at Random Hacks of Kindness
Random Hacks of Kindness (or RHoK for short) is a hacking event that I've been involved with on and off over the past four or five years. Since we have...
Can you give something back?
Why does it seem, to me at least, that the vast body of developers will actively use software that has been contributed through open source efforts but will do nothing...
Aw shucks, thank you!
I just received this today and it really made my day and I thought I should share....
The importance of canary builds.
So now that Visual Studio 2017 is officially out I thought I would use the long Easter weekend to upgrade the OpenCover project to this new version and tackle any...
Keep your development workspace tidy
A big issue I find when working in today's modern development environment is the ever increasing number of git repositories we now have to maintain....
Adding search to your [ghost] blog - part 2
Okay this is the next step in adding search functionality to my blog....
Adding search to your [ghost] blog
Recently I wanted to find something in my own blog that I had written about and though I only have a small number of posts compared to some, it still...
It's astounding, time is fleeting, madness takes its toll, ...
Okay, starting a blog post using a title from the first lines of the lyrics to "The Time Warp" does seem a bit unusual but with what I intend to...
Configuring Cloudflare Page Rules
I moved to Cloudflare sometime ago so that I could take advantage of their tools such as free DNS, SSL, analytics, caching etc. to support my ghost based blog....
Only time will tell
Recently, I decided to review all my old articles that have been scattered across the internet over the past decade or two with the idea of either tidying them up...
Death by a thousand cuts
Every year I decide to spend some time refreshing OpenCover i.e. upgrading to the latest tools such as Visual Studio, upgrading all the packages that OpenCover depends on etc. etc....
Improving your source code quality
One reason I work on Open Source projects such as OpenCover is so that I can try things out, experiment if you wish, sometimes it's TDD techniques or a new...
A line in the sand
Just recently I read Rework again on my kindle as this book really resonated with me at the time and I thought it was about time I read it again;...
Free stuff for Open Source .NET development
For the past few years that I've been been working on OpenCover I've had the opportunity to use a number of tools during its development, a few of those are...
Moving blogging platform to Ghost
Welcome to my new blog. Like it? I hope you do as I know I prefer it to the the Blogger version I was originally using. Moving platforms had its...
Using GMock with Visual Studio CppUnitTestFramework
One of the things I have been a bit disappointed with myself during the development of OpenCover is the lack of unit testing around the C++ code that makes up...
Happy Birthday OpenCover
Today OpenCover is 4 (four) years old, where has the time gone? In that time it has had over 60,000...
Microservices... Where to Start?
Micro-services are becoming a "thing" now and are probably de-facto when someone begins a new project and are thinking about hosting in the cloud but where do you start when...
Excluding code from coverage...
This may (no guarantees) turn into a series of posts on how to refactor your code for testing using simple examples....
A simple TDD example
I recently posted a response to StackOverflow wrt TDD and Coverage and I thought it would be worth re-posting the response here. The example is simple but hopefully shows how writing...
The API Journey for AccountRight Live
My talk at ALT.NET on designing the MYOB API....
Customsing New Relic installation during Azure deployments
For about a year we've been running New Relic to monitor our WebRoles running on the Azure platform. Installing has been quite simple by following the instructions initially found on...
Book Review - Building Mobile Applications Using Kendo UI Mobile and ASP.NET Web API
I've written a book review on 'Building Mobile Applications Using Kendo UI Mobile and ASP.NET Web API' and posted it up on CodeProject. **Summary** I liked this book and I...
Getting code coverage from your .NET testing using OpenCover.
Application Tracing
So OpenCover is as feature complete as I care to take it at the moment, I may do this one feature involving Windows Store applications should I have a need for...
Creating a simple NodeJS app with Mongo
Okay, I woke up this morning (6am) with a need to create a simple reporting dashboard to display the coverage results from OpenCover when it dog-foods its own tests. Now...
MongoDB, Mongoid, MapReduce and Embedded Documents.
I am using Mongoid to store some data as documents in a MongoDB database and then run some MapReduce queries against the data. Now I have no trouble with mapping...
The "Pigs" and "Chickens" fable
I think anyone who is anyone who has heard of Agile and Scrum have heard of the Pigs and Chickens story and how it describes those who are committed to...
Mutation Testing; a use for re-JIT?
Mutation testing is described as modifying a program in small amounts and then executing the original 'passing' tests that exercise...
Unusual coverage in VB.NET
Recently a user posted on StackOverflow on why he was seeing unusual coverage results in VB.NET with MSTEST and Visual Studio. The the question already had answers that helped the questioner...
Adding OpenCover to TeamCity
Adding OpenCover to the latest version of TeamCity (6.5) couldn't be easier however if you need help follow these simple steps....
The problem with sequence coverage. (part 2)
Previously I mentioned why just relying on sequence coverage is not a good idea as it is possible to have 100% sequence coverage but not 100% code coverage. However I...
The problem with sequence coverage.
Sequence coverage is probably the simplest coverage metric, the information is packaged in PDB files and can be read using tools like Mono.Cecil, but just because a method has 100% sequence...
OpenCover Performance Impact (part 2)
I think I now have a handle on why I was getting the results I earlier reported i.e. OpenCover and PartCover were not some magical performance boosters that added Go...
OpenCover Performance Impact
So how does OpenCover's profiling impact your testing. The best way is to get some figures so that you can judge for yourself....
Questions about open source and liability in the workplace
Last weekend I attended DDDSydney and one of the most interesting sessions was a panel session about Microsoft and Opensource (Open Source & Microsoft Ecosystem); though as these things go,...
How do we get Users out of [open source] Welfare?
Okay an odd title but something I've been thinking about for some time and I suppose is the source of much frustration I have been having whilst maintaining...
OpenCover First Beta Release
Okay, the first post on a blog I created many, many months ago and still not got round to starting. Why the delay? Well, just been busy and not a lot to say; actually some would say...