Setup a blog using Gatsby.js that publishes on push using github actions to github pages

Create simple services for web clients using API Gateway, CloudFormation, and Lambda

2017-12-06

Setting up Docker Compose for Development

General project structure:

2014-09-15

Change the default port that rails uses

Just a quick tip to save you from writing "-p 1234" on the command line.

2014-09-07

Docker Tips and Tricks

Here are a few little things I use on a daily basis while working with docker.

2014-08-30

Preventing brute-force attacks on Wordpress's wp-login.php

Even if you use a non-standard username and strong password it can still be a burden on your server getting hit with the occasional brute-force attack to Wordpress's login page. Here you can use ModSecurity to limit the number requests and save resources.

2014-08-22

Analyzing historical apache log data using piwik

Sometimes tools like google analytics don't provide the insight you need and it can be helpful to go directly to the source: the log files.

2014-08-17

Installing Metasploit on OS X with rbenv

Setting up metasploit from scratch can be a bit convoluted, here are steps I took to get it set up on OS X.

2014-08-12

Facilitating Bidirectional Cross-Domain Communication with an Iframe

Using iframes in your app can be excruciating, especially when the iframe and the parent window are on two different domains. I'm going to go over the process of facilitating bi-directional communication between the iframe and it's parent window.

2014-04-19

Log to STDOUT and STDERR when Running NGINX in the Foreground

I'm wrapping NGINX in a small go script to capture the output of the log files and pass them to STDOUT and STDERR. This is somewhat of a follow-up on my original post about running NGINX in the foreground.

2014-04-14

Postgresql Array and Hstore Column Reference

I've had trouble finding a good reference for hstore and arrays in postgres that includes examples and use-cases so I decided to put together my own here. Hopefully others can get some use out of it. I've also included some examples of how to use with ActiveRecord.

2014-04-09

Stubbing Rails request with custom Rack env

There are plenty of tools that provide easy ways to do controller testing in rails, but sometimes in can be nice to test against a specifically built rack env when testing a controller or middleware. Here I dig through some Rails internals to figure out some different ways of doing this.

2014-04-04

Experiments with Docker

Docker is a wonderfully fun tool that makes building things like a PaaS almost trivial. I've documented a brief intro to some of Docker's common cli functions

2014-03-30

Custom error pages in Rails

I know this has been documented many times, but I felt this was necessary because I am still seeing many more descriptions of the "wrong" way to do this rather than the right way. Hopefully I can help tip the scales a bit on the subject.

2014-03-26

Running NGINX in the Foreground

If you're planning on using nginx as a frontend to one or more app processes, it can be helpful to setup and test things locally. An easy way to do this is to run nginx in the foreground so you can quickly iterate your config options to see what works.

2014-03-21

Specify a local path for a gem in your Gemfile

Sometimes it can be nice to develop against a local gem without modifying your Gemfile. Bundler provides a convenient mechanism for this, but it is limited in the scenarios that it will work under. Here I describe a simple approach to get a similar effect.

2014-01-06

Fundamentals of git

I'm going to document here some basics about git. I think a lot of very skilled developers who use git everyday haven't yet "grocked" the fundamentals of how it works.

2010-10-07