During development, when you make a change your build system should build every output that would be affected by your change and no more. Incorrect dependencies can lead to building too much (wasting time) or worse, building too little (wasting way more time). Unfortunately keeping your dependencies specified in your build configuration is time consuming …
Category Archives: Hacks
Infinite localhost tunnels
When I’m playing with web development I typically run a local web server. This is fine until I want to test on a mobile device or show it to someone else. There are a bunch of options out there off the shelf but they either cost money or don’t offer a stable URL. I don’t …
Generating Noise Textures
My current play-with-random-web-tech side-project is is a solitaire game. Well actually it’s a framework for implementing solitaire games because I’m a programmer and a side project is the right place to exercise my desires for needless abstraction. I want a nice felt-looking background texture and the way to do that is you add some noise …
Creepy Flashing Heads
Sharon picked up some cheap styrofoam heads from a store that had previously used them to display wigs for use in a decoration project of hers for this Halloween. I got her to pick up a couple more for me to use. After some discussion and ideas Aaron and I decided that it would be creepy …
Simply logging JavaScript calls.
When debugging complicated JavaScript one thing I find myself constantly doing is using console.log() to print out what functions are being called in what order. JavaScript is single-threaded and event driven so it’s often not entirely clear what functions will be called in what order. Traditionally I’ve done something like this: function foo(bar) { console.log(‘foo(‘+bar+’)’); …
Showing git status in my Zsh prompt
I like Zsh. It’s a powerful, efficient shell. It’s better than Bash by just about every metric (better performance, more features, better sh compatibility). I really have no idea why people keep using Bash. Anyway, I put together a little piece of zshrc to show my current status in right-hand prompt – a prompt that’s …
Scripting Google Voice in Python
In the interest of getting some of the fragments of code I’ve written off my hard disk and out where someone might find them useful I’ve decided to start dumping them into git repos with some very minimal documentation. Minimal enough that I actually kick them out there. The first is a simple Python library …