Keeping an idle SSH connection alive
One of the servers which I login to on a regular basis has the annoying habit of dropping any SSH connections where there has been no activity for more than…
Terms of Business Agreements
One of the most important things about running your own business is deciding on the terms under which you will supply goods and services to clients. These are often contained…
Moving unstaged changes to another branch in Git
If you move around between different branches a lot in Git, you might find that you accidentally make some changes on the wrong branch and only realise this when it…
Age of Empires II slow frame rates
One of my favourite games is Age of Empires II, which was re-released on Steam a few years ago with an expansion pack and changes to make it work on…
Managing tax on self-employment income
One of the biggest changes when you become self-employed is the fact that your tax isn't deducted at source; instead you have to file a tax return each year and…
Automating WordPress updates with wp-cli
For some time it's been possible to automatically update the core of WordPress, ensuring that you get the latest security and bug fixes promptly. However, this functionality hasn't been extended…
Freelancing mistakes to avoid
Over the course of the past few years as a freelancer I've made, and learned from, a number of mistakes. I cover these in my Life as a coin-operated monkey…
Work/life balance lessons
Over the course of 2018 I made a number of tweaks to how I work in order to try and obtain a better work/life balance. Most of them have been…
Security support for PHP 5 ends this year
If you have an application or hosting solution which was set up several years ago, there's a reasonable chance that you are still running PHP 5. Security support for 5.6,…
Opening winmail.dat files from Outlook attachments
Occasionally I receive emails from people which have a single attachment named winmail.dat. After a bit of searching online, it turns out that Microsoft Outlook, depending on how it is…