Paul – PHP Developer

The GNU Make Book by John Graham-Cumming

By Paul September 24, 2025Book Reviews

This review was originally printed in the UKUUG newsletter, which is now defunct. Authors: John Graham-CummingPublisher: No Starch PressIBSN: 9781593276492Pages: 236Published: 2015 GNU Make is an important piece of infrastructure…

Have you tried using AI / LLM coding tools?

By Paul September 17, 2025AI, Business, Freelance Questions, Freelancing

Freelance question via Mastodon: have you tried using an LLM coding tool to see how good/bad the code it generates is? I have tried using AI / LLM coding tools…

Why AI won’t magically fix the NHS (or anything else)

By Paul September 10, 2025AI

Our health secretary seems to be convinced that AI will help fix the NHS, and the UK government is also talking about AI in public services as if it's some…

Why I make my resources available for free

By Paul September 3, 2025Business

I produce a variety of resources which I make available for free, such as my freelance questions + answers, blog posts and open source software. This is for a number…

Hugo and Simple.css

By Paul August 27, 2025CSS, Writing

I'm working on several writing projects at the moment which will be published online. A CMS like WordPress or Drupal would be overkill, as the content is static and there…

Forcing static binaries with glibc and Go on Linux

By Paul August 20, 2025Go

go build dynamically links against glibc on Linux by default, resulting in errors like this when you run the binary: ./db2xlsx: /lib64/libc.so.6: version `GLIBC_2.34' not found (required by ./db2xlsx) ./db2xlsx:…

Automating Nextcloud app updates

By Paul August 13, 2025System administration

Like all good system administrators, I am lazy. If something can be automated, I will do my best to ensure that it is. Things I already automate include: Installation of…

What I like and dislike about C

By Paul August 6, 2025C

Although I primarily write PHP, I do also use C. There are lots of things I like and dislike about the language. Size C is a very small language -…

New email notifications from NeoMutt

By Paul July 30, 2025Email, Linux

Although I use Thunderbird for work emails, due to its ability to manage HTML and accept meeting invitations, my personal email client of choice is NeoMutt. I wanted to be…

Electronic Dreams by Tom Lean

By Paul July 23, 2025Book Reviews

This review was originally printed in the 2016 edition of the UKUUG newsletter, which is now defunct. Authors: Tom LeanPublisher: Bloomsbury SigmaIBSN: 978-1472918338Pages: 288Price: £15.00Published: February 2016 Disclosure: I was…