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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Last week I was lucky enough to give a talk at the FutureSync 2019 conference in Plymouth. Entitled "The Business of Software", taking the time to prepare and practice the talk gave me a chance to reflect on running my business for coming up to 10 years. This post is a summary of some of the lessons I've learned on my journey so far. Continue reading →
As part of an ongoing Rails Upgrade for a large web application, I needed to update a feature spec that checked the URL of included assets. In earlier versions of Rails, these URLs could simply be checked by calling: Continue reading →
In this tutorial, you'll learn how to share containers (e.g. a database) across multiple projects using Docker Compose and Docker Networks. Continue reading →
When using Docker to run your Rails apps in development, you might come across a leftover server.pid file in your app's tmp/ folder. Learn how to overcome this problem, especially when scaling the number of your app's containers. Continue reading →
Welcome to this new series where I'll dive into the tools and services I use in my business. In this first post, we'll be looking at ConvertKit, which I use for email marketing automation. Continue reading →
Rails 5.1 introduced the encrypted secrets.yml.enc file, with Rails 5.2 tidying things up by consolidating secrets and credentials into the credentials.yml.enc file. Continue reading →
Photo by @spacex via Unsplash. Continue reading →
Guard is a great tool for quickly running your Rails app tests/specs as your develop the code. As you edit and change the files in your app, Guard can trigger tests specific to the files you are modifying. Continue reading →
Rails 5.1 introduced the front-end package manager Yarn into the standard tooling for new Rails projects. Yarn allows you to declare and manage your app’s frontend dependencies (such as CSS frameworks and Javascript libraries) in a way similar to how Bundler manages Rails dependencies (gems). Continue reading →
Updates 3 December 2018: Use ruby:2.5-alpine Docker images, and replace links with depends_on in docker-compose.yml. Continue reading →