I'm a software developer and consultant based in Plymouth, UK. This site is a collection of tutorials, thoughts and things I've learned in code, life and running my business.
Today, I help people and organisations who use Ruby on Rails. I enjoy learning and experimenting with tools and technologies, as well as the art of business. This means I'm often dabbling with new languages and frameworks, and posting what I learn. My now page describes what currently has my attention.
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Docker is a fantastic tool for isolating your app and its environment, and allows easy distribution and state-replication across multiple environments (dev, test, beta, prod, etc.). Using Docker can get rid of the “it works on my machine” problem, and help you to easily scale your app as it grows. Continue reading →
Whilst testing an app on the Jelly Bean emulator, I couldn’t get the emulator to mount the SD card. Calls to Environment.getExternalStorageState() would always return Environment.MEDIA_REMOVED. Continue reading →
If you want to pass data between Rails and Coffeescript in your apps, you’ll find that interpolation doesn’t work. For example: Continue reading →
Ruby on Rails is a great framework for building modern web applications. But as with any technology, things move on quickly. Without proper care and attention, the web apps and sites you build using Rails can start to degrade. This means slow pages, security vulnerabilities and your users seeing error screens. Continue reading →
As I migrate all of my Rails apps to Docker, I’ve learned to avoid making changes to the Gemfile whenever possible. Continue reading →
Given a slugged generic model for which you want to generate a URL at runtime, you can usually just call: Continue reading →
I was recently asked how an app’s theme can be toggled by the user in Android. This is a nice feature that is often seen in reading apps. Continue reading →
Recently, whilst building a small CMS system using TinyMCE and the tinymce-rails gem, I needed to inject some custom CSS so that the editor’s styles matched those of the site. Continue reading →
SVG is a vector image described in XML. This post shows how to to render SVG images inline with Rails. Continue reading →
In the previous tutorial, you learned how to use Volley’s built-in networking tools to quickly download a network resource and display the results. Volley removes lots of boiler-plate code, and lets you concentrate on the details of your app rather than dealing with low-level networking technologies. Continue reading →