2 min read
Enterprise sales teams, please, I beg you, stop
I asked for a price on a few extra seats of software we already pay for. Two days and a pile of irrelevant questions later, I got one.
Writing
153 posts
Latest
4 min read
Last week was terrible. It didn't have to be
PHP2Shell scored a CVSS 9.2 and sent governments and ops teams into a panic. A week later, nobody has shown it working end to end, and the AI story behind it doesn't hold up.
Everything else
2 min read
/groundwork: a skill that makes any repo runnable from a fresh clone
Most repos only run on the machines of the few developers who set them up. /groundwork is an agent skill that finds the missing env files, databases and docs, then fixes them.
3 min read
Ring is deliberately nefarious when you E2E encrypt your video
I turned on Ring's End-to-End Encryption for a bit more privacy. Previews vanished, recordings broke and answering the door stopped working. Here's what happened.
4 min read
I created my own status page
Status pages are a single HTML page that somehow costs thousands. So I built an open source, config-as-code one on Cloudflare, almost entirely with agents.
2 min read
Is software ever done?
Most software changes aren't for the customer. They're for the profit line, or because the team had spare capacity.
2 min read
How I build products with AI
A repeatable setup for building products agentically: one stack, one AGENT.md, and deterministic checks the agent can't argue with.
3 min read
Lessons learned from using GitHub Actions
Four years of GitHub Actions with teams and on personal projects. Custom scripts, reusable workflows, pinning to SHAs, and protecting yourself in CI.
1 min read
Coffee roasters
A running list of the coffee roasters I've tried, rated out of 10.
2 min read
Claude migrated me off Authy
Authy removed its export feature, so Claude Code built a MITM proxy, pulled the encrypted database off my phone and moved 30 codes into 1Password.
3 min read
Technical Project Discovery Checklist
A personal checklist for conducting technical discovery on legacy systems before planning a migration.
4 min read
What's new with Repowarden
Three months in. The product has grown teeth: security patching, license flagging, weekly digests, audit-friendly evidence trails, and a CVE catalogue.
1 min read
One item purchased, Ten emails
A single online order now generates ten emails. A look at how retail email got this far out of hand.
1 min read
Anti-Book Book club
A book club where everyone reads a different book around a shared theme. How it works and why it beats the usual format.
1 min read
Supply Chain Irony
Enterprises run due diligence on every supplier, then let their developers npm install anything they like.
2 min read
Todoist Setup 2026
My Todoist setup after a decade and 50,000 completed tasks, and why I dropped the standard GTD project structure.
1 min read
Power Puttering
Bundling all the tiny jobs that never justify their own time into one scheduled power hour.
2 min read
Launch: Repowarden - AI-powered repository maintenance
Repowarden automates dependency updates, test generation, and custom code tasks as clean pull requests.
4 min read
Thoughts on LLMs and AI
The death of thinking, games of telephone and magical parrots.
2 min read
Just launched, PlanPacer - The easiest way to add payment plans to your app using Stripe
I made a thing! Here is how and why I built PlanPacer
1 min read
Book Notes - The Mezzanine
My brief thoughts on the Mezzanine by Nicholson Baker.
6 min read
Event Driven Architecture Rules of Thumb
A simple, slightly opinionated guide to event driven architectures
4 min read
ClickOps and IaC - which are Pets and Cattle?
We get it you use Terraform. Your infra can be fragile though. Just saying...
4 min read
Learning to Type Fast
My journey to stop typing like an ape and improve my typing speed.
4 min read
Allgood - Instant healthcheck webpage and API for JS/TS projects
Why and how I created allgood
4 min read
Vendor Lock-in is an Imaginary Problem
Anyone ever actually moved from AWS to Azure? No, me neither.
5 min read
DynamoDB Considered Harmful
Why you shouldn't use DynamoDB pretty much ever.
6 min read
An engineers guide to the Solutions Architecture role
How you can bridge the gap between business and technology
4 min read
Should I learn to code if AI will replace me?
Many fear that AI will replace software engineers, here are my thoughts.
1 min read
Components of a Great Architecture Diagram
The parts that make an architecture diagram actually useful: a key, an author, a version history, and clear flows.
1 min read
Set your time zone manually when in the Canary Islands
A pro tip based on a mistake I made
9 min read
AWS Summit 2024
My experience, notes and tips from AWS Summit London 2024.
2 min read
Markdown for Slides
If you hate powerpoint like I do, this is for you.
1 min read
Cool Links from Around the Web
An ever expanding list of links from around the world wide web.
1 min read
Common phrases that probably aren't true
If you hear these things, run.
3 min read
Tips for Battling Alert Fatigue
Sift the signal from the noise with these tips on how to prevent alert fatigue in your SaaS platform.
1 min read
What people mean when they say - we do TDD
TDD has lost all meaning. Here is why...
4 min read
11ty or Bust
The story of how I migrated my site from Gatsby to 11ty
2 min read
Lambda Warming is an Antipattern
Lambda warming is a common strategy to mitigate cold start times. But is it the right solution?
2 min read
How to buy a car
A checklist for buying a used car, from MOT history and common faults to what to check before you hand over the money.
4 min read
Business Version 2
Pivoting the business away from pure freelancing towards a broader set of products and services for teams.
1 min read
TIL - How to send an SQS message from a Lambda inside a VPC
How to send an SQS message from a Lambda inside a VPC, including the VPC endpoint and policy AWS makes you configure.
5 min read
Pull Request Environments in GitHub Actions (with SST, AWS and Cloudflare pages)
How to create a pull request environment in GitHub Actions using SST, AWS and Cloudflare pages
3 min read
How Part Time has helped me in life
Why working three days a week has been the best career move I have made, and why part time is the next remote work.
4 min read
Why are software companies so obsessed with doing anything but work?
Shipping LoginLlama with no dev environment and no process was the fastest I have ever built. Most companies do the opposite.
1 min read
Lifehacks
A running list of the heuristics and rules I have picked up over the years and actually use.
1 min read
Setup a Repo in Github
My default GitHub repository setup: conventional commit checks, branch protection, CI and a modular monolith structure.
2 min read
SQS, SNS, Eventbridge, DynamoDB - Chosing the right queue system in AWS
SQS, SNS, EventBridge, Amazon MQ or DynamoDB streams? How to pick the right AWS messaging service for the job.
2 min read
Raising £1000 for MSF
Running my first half marathon to raise £1,000 for Medecins Sans Frontieres, and how running became a habit.
2 min read
Whimsical Software
Software optimised purely for revenue has stopped being fun. A case for whimsy and building things that delight.
2 min read
Devblog - LoginLlama 001
Devblog 001: starting an API-as-a-service that detects suspicious logins, and where the existing tools fall short.
4 min read
Rules of Thumb for creating API's
Practical rules of thumb for designing REST APIs, sitting somewhere between rigid rules and abstract principles.
1 min read
Simple sites
A collection of small, minimalist tools, and why this class of software is worth protecting.
2 min read
You can't fix engineering culture with communication
'Communication' is the default diagnosis for every engineering culture problem, and it is almost always the wrong one.
1 min read
The Cobra Effect and Software
Measuring engineering inputs like test counts and code coverage incentivises exactly the behaviour you did not want.
5 min read
Five Things I Wish I learnt sooner
Five lessons from a decade of engineering and freelancing, starting with attaching metrics to your work.
1 min read
Favourite Subreddits
A collection of my favourite subreddits.
2 min read
Albums I listened to in 2022
Every album I listened to in 2022 with a rating out of ten, kept so I can rediscover them later.
7 min read
Onebag
Gear I use to live and travel lightly
3 min read
Ten Software Architecture Rules of Thumb
General rules to use when doing software architecture.
3 min read
Book notes - The Seven Deaths of Evelyn Hardcastle
Notes about the seven deaths of evelyn hardcastle.
2 min read
Five books
Paring my library down to five.
3 min read
Book notes - Project Hail Mary
A review of my favourite book of 2022.
4 min read
What it takes to become a lead developer
Demystifying the principles behind the title.
2 min read
No Calendar
It doesn't have to be all meetings and time blocks.
2 min read
Common objections to CI/CD and why they are wrong
There is no excuse at this stage.
3 min read
Get rid of your retrospective meetings
Eliminate and simplify. Specifically, your retrospective meetings.
2 min read
Creating my own personal Instagram
Reclaiming my data and building my corner of the internet.
1 min read
How to fix 'Public key authentication failed' for Azure DevOps
Fixing 'Public key authentication failed' when cloning an Azure DevOps repository over SSH on a Mac.
1 min read
Blog Roll
Websites I like reading
5 min read
Making the case for CI/CD
If you are struggling to implement CI/CD in your team, here is how to do it.
3 min read
Question your Rate limits
Rate limits are not a silver bullet for spam. Here is why, and how to address spam concerns.
6 min read
Site Upgrades - Gatsby V4 and Webmentions
Upgrading the site from Gatsby V2 to V4 and adding webmentions, after it stopped running locally altogether.
7 min read
The Culture of Estimations
Estimations are something we do daily. But they are estimations, not deadlines as many believe. Where did we go wrong?
10 min read
My journey with carpal tunnel
What worked and what didn't.
1 min read
Deeply Remove a Key from an Object
How to remove a specific key from an object, even in nested structures
4 min read
Creating legacy code is ok
As devs, we want to create things that outlive us. Here's why you shouldn't worry.
3 min read
Questions for Developers to ask at interviews
Interviews are for both parties. These are questions to ask to make sure the role is a great fit.
2 min read
Bookshelf
All the books I own
1 min read
There is always more
Slow down, there is always more to do.
5 min read
Advancing from a Mid-Level to Senior Developer
It can often seem like you're stuck in a rut where you can not progress further. Here is how to get out of the mid-level and onto the next stage of your career
2 min read
Quarterly planning for life
Why quarterly based planning is perfect for keeping you happy, healthy and productive.
3 min read
Should I split my monolith into microservices?
Microservices are the defacto standard for large scale systems. But is it always the right choice?
3 min read
How to make changes as a Junior Developer
Learn how to stick to development principles when the rest of your team doesn't.
5 min read
Be friendly and don't ignore Recruiters
Engineers often look down upon recruiters, here's why you shouldn't.
4 min read
Mistakes I made as a self-taught developer
Mistakes and pitfalls that I fell into when learning to become a software developer.
3 min read
Building Collaboration with Remote Teams
Time and distance doesn't need to prevent your team being collaborative
4 min read
Facing the Legacy Code Monster
Be the hero of your team and face the monster that is legacy systems.
4 min read
How to Ship Software Faster
Releasing new versions of software be a panic-inducing experience. Here's how to ship faster quickly and calmly
4 min read
Cache Auth0 M2M Tokens
How to cache Auth0 M2M Tokens to extend your free plan
3 min read
How You Work
Figuring out how you work best, is a superpower.
4 min read
Maybe don't hire
Your product is in huge demand! Quick hire more staff. Or, maybe don't - here is why.
5 min read
Software Beauty
Why you should strive for beauty in software, why it's forgotten and how to make software beautiful.
4 min read
Continuous Delivery to ECS with Terraform
You need to update your API, but Terraform holds the container definition. What do you do?
6 min read
Web Performance for Developers on a Deadline
Web performance is a vital part of your business to ensure customers keep returning. But, it can be difficult to get the time for it. Here's a guide on how to improve your website's performance on a deadline
5 min read
How to Run Sequelize Migrations in Azure Pipelines
How to use Azure Pipelines to migrate and seed your databases
3 min read
How to Improve Your Typing Speed
The keyboard is the primary interface between my brain and the computer. So increasing the bandwidth of this connection is super valuable. In this post, I dig into why I started practising typing daily and how you can start
3 min read
Super Fast React/Node App Testing with GitHub Actions
How I reduced our GitHub Actions jobs from 13 minutes to less than 3
4 min read
Solve Your Problems. Not Others.
Some thoughts on NIH, Boilerplate code and Solving core problems
2 min read
SpellcheckCI
How to use mdspell and GitHub Actions to spellcheck your markdown blog
3 min read
Setting up LightHouse CI for React in GitHub Actions
The definitive guide on how to setup LightHouse CI for your React app inside GitHub Actions or any other CI provider
5 min read
So, You've Messed Up
What to do when you've messed up at work... big time.
2 min read
Shutdown Routine
My shutdown routine to leave me clear, and ready for tomorrow
4 min read
Resumé Red Flags
10 red flags to avoid when writing your resumé
3 min read
My Advice on Become a Software Developer
A letter to my 17-year-old self on how to become a software developer.
1 min read
Cut to the Chase
Scheduling can be maddening, here's how to make commitments more reliably
3 min read
Redesigning my Site - Accessibility, Privacy and 100 PSI Scores
A story about how I redesigned my site for accessibility, privacy and performance - to reach a perfect 100 in the Google Page speed insights score.
1 min read
Downloading your Favorite YouTube Playlist Automatically
Simple Cron for downloading your favorite Youtube playlist
2 min read
Using RDS Snapshots
How to use RDS Snapshots and get access to your data
3 min read
Improving Koru's API Performance
How we analysed performance pain points and improved them
7 min read
Writing Useful Error Messages
Error messages are a critical part of your systems user experience. Here's how to craft error messages your users would be happy to see.
6 min read
Building Awesome Application Health Checks
Creating Application health checks seems simple, but is easy to get wrong. Here's how to create an awesome health check for your Application or API
10 min read
ATS Resiliency
Forwarding data on to a third party sounds easy but has a lot of potholes you can easily get stuck in.
6 min read
Rebuilding a Monolith
Why we chose to combine over 3 microservices into one central API
7 min read
Re-architecting our PDF Generation
How a seemingly simple problem was more challenging than expected
3 min read
Preserving Links whilst Migrating Domains with S3
How we successfully preserved links across our system whilst migrating domains
8 min read
Why Backwards Compatibility is Critical
In the 'move fast, and break things' world, backwards compatibility has been cast into the realms of insignificance, but here is why it's so important even now
5 min read
Sharpening the Saw
The work that makes the rest of the work faster: better notes, sharper tooling, and cutting cognitive overhead.
6 min read
Lightning Fast ZSH Performance
How I took my ZSH load times from 1.5 seconds to 0.19 seconds
5 min read
Personal Infrastructure
My personal infrastructure: the scripts, services and setup I use, and the two principles behind every change.
2 min read
How to use Private GitHub Packages on TravisCI
How to use private github packages in your TravisCI jobs
5 min read
How to Create a Pinned Gist Bot in 10 minutes with GitHub Actions
Build a pinned gist bot with GitHub Actions in about ten minutes, using RescueTime data as the example.
4 min read
Managing Application Secrets for Terraform across Teams
Sharing Terraform secrets across a team by storing an encrypted tar in git and decrypting it in CI.
1 min read
Monitoring Git Leaks in Travis
How to use gitleaks in TravisCI to monitor secrets
7 min read
Signal vs Noise - Staying Up to Date
How to stay current in technology by finding the 20% of content that gives you 80% of the value.
4 min read
Pentest Aftermath
What came back from an independent penetration test, what the findings actually meant, and how we fixed them.
8 min read
Resiliency
How I made an SMS and instant messaging backend resilient after it shipped, and the principles that transferred.
3 min read
Gatsby or Bust!
Moving my blog off Medium and my site off static HTML, and why I combined the two into a Gatsby site.
4 min read
A Guide to Leaving Your Job
A 30-day plan for handing in your notice well: documentation, handover, playbooks, and leaving cleanly.
6 min read
Lessons from Battling with Elasticsearch
How eventual consistency in Elasticsearch caused missing messages and channels, and what the bug taught us about architecture.
7 min read
Using Grafana for Monitoring you NodeJS Apps
Monitoring a Node.js application with Grafana: the metrics worth graphing and how to wire them up.
5 min read
Why does NTP Exist?
What NTP actually is, how distributed systems keep their clocks in sync with UTC, and why the protocol matters.
3 min read
Starting with Why as a Software Developer
Applying first principles thinking to engineering decisions, and why knowing the 'why' is what moves your career.
7 min read
Architecting the Next Generation of Communication
Architecting a platform-agnostic messaging system with websockets, SMS and email, built to a deadline.
5 min read
Resiliency By Design
Designing resiliency into an architecture: backing off, retries, timeouts, and accepting that dependencies will fail.
6 min read
How to Run a Successful Tech Meetup — even if you’re forgetful
What it takes to run a tech meetup, learnt from four months of organising LeicesterJS.
3 min read
I don’t know what to say…
Thoughts on the event-stream npm breach, package vetting, and the cost of pulling in a dependency for trivial code.
7 min read
10 Things I wish I knew before giving my First Tech Talk
Ten things I wish I had known before giving my first conference talk at a meetup.
3 min read
Networking at Tech Meetups
How to talk to people at tech meetups when you are introverted, including the questions that actually start conversations.
4 min read
Tracking Goals in Todoist
How to track short and long term goals in Todoist instead of buying yet another dedicated goals app.
4 min read
Lessons from Open Source
Lessons from maintaining an open source project: code ownership, letting go, and reviewing other people's contributions.
4 min read
The Art of Good Code Review
What code review is not (style, bug catching) and the principles that make a review genuinely useful.
7 min read
Principles of Performance
Principles for building fast websites that hold regardless of the stack you use, starting with network round trips.
6 min read
LinkedIn For Developers
How developers should actually use LinkedIn, and why recruiters are worth talking to rather than ignoring.
5 min read
Solve 90% of Google Pagespeed Insights Issues in 30 Minutes
Three straightforward changes that will lift your Google PageSpeed Insights score by at least 20 points.
5 min read
📱 Zen iPhone
Turning a phone from an endless scroll into a purposeful tool, treating the home screen like a tidy desk.
10 min read
Understanding PHP hatred
Why developers pile on PHP, from inconsistent method naming to its history, and what the criticism gets right.
4 min read
What Tracking My Expenses for a Year Taught Me About Personal Finance
What a year of tracking every expense in a Google Sheet taught me about personal finance.
6 min read
Beginners Database Design Primer
A beginner's primer on designing a relational database, from entities and keys to normalisation.
5 min read
How to Attend Your First Programming Meetup
What to expect at your first programming meetup, why they are worth going to, and how to start talking to people.
5 min read
Bulletproof Node — Security Best Practises
Security changes you can make to a Node application right now without a large refactor.
4 min read
How to Learn a Programming Language in Record Time
A faster way to pick up a second programming language by learning the 20% of it you will actually use.
5 min read
What programming language should I learn: or Why it doesn’t matter
Which programming language should you learn first? It matters far less than the noise suggests.