Raspberry Pi essential components
I purchased my first Raspberry Pi six months ago, primarily so that I could play around with it in preparation for a job interview at the University of Manchester, where…
How to respond to patches
A couple of weeks ago I made a pull request to the documentation of the Symfony framework entitled: Remove reference to copying parameters.yml from Git cookbook (does pretty much what it…
Bootstrap 3.1.1
Hot on the heels of the new minor version release, Bootstrap has pushed out the first patch release for the 3.1.x series. Most of the changes are minor CSS fixes,…
Automatically populating PDF form fields
At a previous job I needed to automatically populate form fields in a PDF template and then 'flatten' the PDF so that users could make no further changes. After asking…
Combine multiple PDFs into one file in Linux
One thing which I find myself doing on a regular basis is combining multiple PDFs into a single file - e.g. scanned receipts with a digital expenses form. This is…
Reducing the number of requests
As well as reducing request sizes, one way to potentially boost the performance of your website is to reduce the number of requests required to load each page. Every HTTP…
All about Catalyst
Catalyst is a web development framework, similar to Symfony, Zend etc. but written in Perl. Josette's blog has a three part interview with Matt S. Trout, one of the Catalyst…
Mail Manager
One of the first projects I completed in my new job is called Mail Manager, which is used by university students as part of their coursework. The main issue was…
Tips on using Git
Git tips from the trenches is a great summary of useful Git tips which you may not have been aware of but will make your life easier.
FLOSS UK Spring 2014
As has been the case every year since 2007, this March I will be attending the FLOSS UK Spring conference. However, this year will be different, in that I will…