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…
Git commits made directly to branch
Sometimes in Git I'll need to synchronise a long-lived feature branch with master to reduce the likelihood of merge conflicts at a later date. One of the problems with doing…
Advice from a computer science graduate
In the coming weeks there will be an influx of new students starting their computer science degrees. I was in that situation 15 years ago when I started at the…
Ubuntu security podcast
The Ubuntu security team have recently started the Ubuntu Security Podcast. Released every week and lasting around 10 minutes, the podcast features a round-up of the Ubuntu security news. It's…
Recruitment done differently
If you follow me on Twitter or have read my Why I don't work with recruiters post, you'll be aware that I have had a terrible experience with the recruitment…
Converting HTML input fields to uppercase
One task which I've found myself implementing several times is converting data entered by a user in a form field to a canonical format, e.g. uppercase. The jQuery for this…