Writing

I write about systems, people, and what we learn when things go wrong.

❤️ All Tech Business Power Skills Personal TIL

2026

When AI beats procrastination

❤ Prompt Engineering for Humans

In the spotlight

Choose your losses

Never leave on a no

Update the AUR from GitHub Actions

❤ Delivery and Dopamine

Fix the inputs, not the outputs

❤ When Asking is Easy (and Answering Isn't)

Visibility is Velocity

Bulk unsubscribe in Gmail

Building listentotaxman-cli with OpenCode + Claude Sonnet 4.5

2025

Electron Node module version

Toolsmiths melt snowflakes

Parse Codex jsonl with jq

Building gh-saved-issues using ChatGPT Codex

Display mirroring with Hammerspoon

Automated npm secret rotation in GitHub Actions

JSON semantic diff

Say three things

Run a container on a schedule with ECS

❤ Pin your GitHub Actions

Output a JSON file with Jekyll

Running Scrumdog with Docker

❤ Quality > Speed > Scope

Using AWS credential_process and 1Password

❤ Slack channels are free

Excellent pull request reviews

Run go test -tags in VS Code

2024

Flatten nested foreach loops with Terraform

Bind a Hyper/Meh key with Keychron Launcher

Downloading webcomics with Dosage

Presentations on an ultrawide monitor

Kong Gateway quickstart

Designing OpenAPI schemas

Workspace layouts with Hammerspoon Grid

Could/Should/Will/Why

Create an AWS RDS database

Create an Azure AKS cluster

Does this live in the docs or on the knowledge base?

2023

Create an Amazon EKS cluster

How I work: Email

How I work: Sunsama

GitHub Actions notifications in Slack

❤ Accessing secrets from forks safely with GitHub Actions

Set created_at with GitHub Actions when a PR is merged

kubectl autocomplete with ZSH and aliases

Spider-shaped DevRel

Show all issues for an epic in Confluence

Search for inactive users on Jira

Providing both default and named exports in JavaScript

Debug Jekyll with VSCode

Automatically set MetalLB IP addresses with kind

Testing Node.js SDKs with nock

Who hasn't gone yet?

Disagree horizontally, align vertically

Take a screenshot of a video using ffmpeg

GitHub scheduled reminders

Where should my content live? Docs or blog?

Carving the turkey

Obsidian - daily note + random review

Check permissions in a GitHub Actions workflow

❤ The TAPE model for content

2022

Filter a Google Analytics report

Upgrade from Winston 2 to 3 using colors

Running gickup on a QNAP NAS

Transcribe audio locally on macOS

Secrets management in Kong is now GA!

Mock process.env using mocked-env

Using GITHUB_TOKEN as a default input value

Announcing general availability of Kong Gateway 3.0

API composition with StepZen and Kong

❤ How I work: Pocket

Managing multiple environments with Konnect and Runtime Groups

Make an S3 bucket public

jamf stuck on “Locating hardware information (macOS 11.6.5)”

Remove Docker containers by tag

Update a single item in a list with vuex

Using openvpn-client with Docker

❤ The GitHub wiki is an anti-pattern

2021

Log4j, Log4Shell and Kong

4 ways to leverage Kong's jq plugin

VSCode only showing one open tab

Convert a PDF to a stacked jpg

❤ Test experimental versions with GitHub Actions

❤ Dynamic matrix generation with GitHub Actions

❤ Getting started with problem matchers

❤ The ultimate guide to GitHub Actions authentication

Filter for dates before today with jq

Use a custom .zshrc with iTerm2

Deploying a Kong Gateway data plane with Pulumi

Minimal vim inspired .zshrc

Getting started with event hooks in Kong

Find AWS EC2 AMI owner ID

Get all keys in a list of objects with jq

Bundler ignoring BUNDLE_WITHOUT

BUNDLE_WITHOUT not working with development group

Kong-plement your ServiceHub with a dev portal

Upload an image with Puppeteer

Set a value in place with jq

Run node processes with systemd

Test OpenGraph image generation on Netlify locally

Migrating from Kong Gateway OSS to Konnect

Understanding .gitignore with git check-ignore

Building a Kong Gateway plugin with JavaScript

Using array.map with async/await

Dump context action

Show untracked files with git status

Auto-approve workflow action

array.filter with async/await

❤ A better git blame with --ignore-rev

AWS federated login

Pin GitHub issues

Publishing a Ruby gem to the GitHub Package Registry

Group by fields with jq

Markdown Meta action

❤ Generating OpenGraph images with Netlify on-demand builders

Return an image from Netlify Functions

Map object values .toLowerCase()

Concatenate strings in Nunjucks

GitHub Slug action

Use an Eleventy filter as an if statement

Add a Markdown filter to Eleventy

Create or Update PR action

Pause Laravel queue execution

Check if a row was created with Laravel updateOrCreate

Farewell, Nexmo/Vonage!

GitHub Push action

Add and Commit action

Git auto-commit action

Require Labels action

Merge Schedule action

Perform an action on team creation with Laravel Jetstream

Sum values with jq

Dedicated test databases with Laravel Sail

Ensure all nock mock interceptors are used

Faster GitHub Actions with Build and Tag Action

Ensure your GitHub Actions are pinned to a SHA

2020

Retag a Git tag

Download multiple videos with youtube-dl

CSS :target selector

Upgrade a Postgres DB

Gatsby category count

❤ Show GitHub Actions

Find value of key recursively with JavaScript

Restore a file without adding to the index using Git

Show all files deleted since a Git commit

Fetch all pages with Octokit pagination

git shortlog reviewed-by

macOS power management with Hammerspoon

Adding a script tag using Gatsby JS

Follow GitHub Link headers with Bash

Mock require with Jest

Semantic versioning for GitHub Actions

❤ Improve your GitHub Actions security

2019

GraphQL is powerful, but the experience isn't designed

Trigger wp_insert_post_data handler on every post in WordPress

Create a GitHub Action using actions-toolkit

Testing GitHub Actions with act

Create a GitHub Action with Docker

Play an audio file into a voice call with PHP

2018

Building a Turkey Timer with Laravel and Facebook Messenger

Call whisper with selective audio controls

Multitrack call transcription with split recording

Michael, as your manager

Michael, as your colleague

Custom content types in Hugo

Creating a new Hugo theme

Receive an inbound voice call with PHP

Receiving SMS delivery receipts with PHP

Receiving an SMS with PHP

Dual channel call transcription with Nexmo

PSR-15 middleware, Zend Expressive and versioning

Middleware, Slim and versioning

Nexmo at Midwest PHP 2018

How to ruin a career in 10 easy minutes

Real-time messaging with Nexmo and Laravel

Mount Synology HDD under Linux

Why good leaders make you feel safe

Why developer relations programmes fail

Text-to-speech calls with Laravel and Nexmo

Speech-to-text with IBM Watson and PHP

Working with the Google Calendar API in Node.js

Google OAuth with Node.js

My favourite tweets

So, you want to be a wizard?

Sending and receiving SMS Laravel notifications with Nexmo

2017

A talk about naming things

Text-to-speech voice calls with PHP

Sending SMS messages with PHP

Michael is joining the Developer Relations team!

Farewell, Digi.me!

Jira Cloud + ScriptRunner

2FA logins with Laravel and Nexmo

SlimPHP and Symfony dependency injection

Bootstrap a new Laravel project with user authentication (in 5 minutes)

ChatOps with Nexmo Verify

Autoloading controllers with Composer in SlimPHP

Using controllers with SlimPHP

Using layouts with Twig and SlimPHP

Adding Twig to your SlimPHP project

Creating a new SlimPHP application

Creating an Azure Blob Storage with azure-cli

Customising the AuthController in Laravel Spark

TP-Link TL-WN823N on Arch Linux

2016

Test Kitchen, Docker and CentOS 7

Selecting a team via the URL in Laravel Spark

Using Azure Resource Manager with Terraform

Error while loading shared libraries: libbz2.so.1.0: cannot open shared object file on CentOS 7

Presenting 21 talks in 2016

Git and Node.js on Azure Functions

Using vagrant-hostmanager with centos/7

Connecting to a hidden network on Arch Linux

YubiKey on Arch

Farewell, DataSift!

Building with FPM

ffmpeg: Create a video from time-lapse photos

Extract keys using jq

YouCompleteMe on Arch Linux

Personal mission statement

Use OpenStack img in VirtualBox

I'm writing a book!

gpg: connecting dirmngr failed: IPC connect call failed

Creating a new user in MariaDB

Writing a conference talk

gpg: can't connect to the agent: IPC connect call failed

2015

Arch Linux: netctl and vpnc (Cisco VPN)

❤ Todoist and me

Ansible without an inventory file

Viewing available Ansible facts

Setting the apt cache time using Ansible

Running gpg-agent on Ubuntu

Mounting msdos USB with permissions on OSX

Using GPG to securely send a message

Using INI config with python.logger

Fix: s3fs permission issue on remote folders

Rename a git branch

Build CentOS 5 generic RPM on CentOS 6

The class 'APCIterator' could not be found

Check if SSL certificate is SHA1 or SHA2

vim: Replace literal \n with new line

curl: (35) error:14094418:SSL routines:SSL3_READ_BYTES:tlsv1 alert unknown ca

curl: (58) unable to set private key file: 'server.key' type PEM

Vagrant: Require installed plugins

Use SCL packages without bash

Installing Ruby 1.9.3 on CentOS 6

Self-signed SSL client certificates

Special cron entries

Windows 8 temporary profile issue

Shared calendars on iOS (Google)

Jekyll: Failed to build gem native extension

git and diff-highlight

Introduction to vimrunner-python

2014

Convert .wav to .mp3 and set id3 tags

Golang: Get last character of a string

Dell XPS13/XPS15 white noise via audio

Extract substring of specific values with jq

Golang: How to go get private repos

Golang: Using Memcached

golang: Encode/Decode arbitrary JSON

golang: invalid operation: someVar == "" (mismatched types *string and string)

Working with Memcached via CLI

Using a custom startup script for xmonad

cowsay and Ansible

Writing an Ansible module using PHP

Setting up Ansible for hacking

Disabling comment formatting in Jira

Ansible: module is missing interpreter line

Installing Ansible from source on Ubuntu

Ansible: Installing Google Chrome on Ubuntu

ansible: ImportError: No module named ansible.playbook

alembic - TypeError: Boolean value of this clause is not defined

Python: Dynamically load all modules in a folder

PHP: return and the HEREDOC syntax

Using var_export to unit test existing code

alembic - Python migrations quick start

virtualenv and pip - a Python environment in 60 seconds

2013

A better git diff

Force flush headers using the HTTP module for Node.js

Start PolicyKit on Ubuntu

Explain, from your shell

Installing Vim 7.4 on Ubuntu

Useful git commands

A better git log

Administering multiple SSH shells simultaneously with cssh

Working with large files with sed

Cache a specific URL with Varnish

Out of my depth

Weekly breakdown - gxpr

z

Basic iptables rules

Building from source

Building for now

Uncaught exceptions

❤ Blogging for yourself

Debugging Node.js memory leaks

Sending messages to certain clients with Socket.io

Installing ZSH 5.0 on CentOS 5.7

Installing Vim 7.3 on CentOS 5.7

Keyboard stops working on Ubuntu - slow-keys

Installing Node.js 0.8 on CentOS 5.7

CrashPlan: network blocked

Windows 7 installation: Xbox 360 Wireless Gaming Receiver for Windows

2012

Using the PHP SDK with Google BigQuery

ZSH config from scratch

Getting Solarized working on Ubuntu

Solarized with iTerm2

Behat + Selenium2 / WebDriver with MinkExtension

Behat + Selenium2 / WebDriver

How to: Make an Amazon AWS instance disk bigger

❤ Never stop learning

The AWS Heisenbug

2011

Not enough random bytes available. [GPG Signing]

unetbootin - BOOTMGR is missing