It’s 2022, almost 7yrs since the last update.

A lot has changed.

My linkedin profile is always the best place to find out my current role.

TL;DR: Now working at Poundland eCommerce

There are a few things I discovered this week worth noting:

• Docker empty volumes
• Starting React
• Profile refresh

Hitting 100 on Google Pagespeed feels like it’s impossible to hit right now. Despite a lot of effort to hit & maintain the current rating it’s really hard to push past 97%.

The main reason appears to be that Google down ranks speed when including external javascript libraries such as their own Google Analytics javascript include. It isn’t possible to store GA.js locally as that would negate the metrics anyway.

It would be possible to spoof the results by removing the javascript, getting a pagespeed score, then putting it back but that seems like a pointless exercise.

So, 97 appears to be the best I can hope for until I find around it.

Recently when I was trying to run brew update on my Mac I was hitting errors that claimed I had uncommitted changes to my local brew and yet I hadn’t made any changes. It didn’t matter what I did, the changes would not revert and the errors would not go away.

The site I write the code for, approvedfood.co.uk, on my own is consistently ranked Top 5 for performance in the UK! We beat eBay in July! IRUK 500: Web Performance Tracker for PageSpeed.

Fix node privilege issues when installed via brew. User will be constantly receive permission denied without this fix.

brew update
brew upgrade
brew cleanup
brew install node
brew link --overwrite node
sudo chown -R whoami /usr/local

Some notes from another round of performance optimisation of our server stack hosting our online platform that dramatically improved customer experience too.

My Macbook Pro was recently suffering from 100% CPU pretty much all of the time and it took quite a while to solve them problem and breathe life back into my workhorse.

I recently chose to take up the challenge of using github.io to host my long-standing blog.

As I write, I’ve hopefully move all of my old posts over to Jekyll Markdown format by the magic of some scripts, some regex search & replace and some sheer effort.

There’s a few missing edges but I’m hopeful that keeping the content in Markdown format will mean I don’t have to go through this pain again.

Some of the images didn’t make it through the process so I’ll be churning through those in the coming days.

Issues to solve:

• Missing images
• Random post dates & times
• Formatting/style issues lost in translation (Tables are going to be fun!)

I’ve been fortunate recently to take a break from video game development and really focus on what the next exciting stage of my career is going to be.  I was overseas for a week recently in a remote area of Spain and I was taken away from the ubiquitous 24/7/365 connectivity with the world that we find ourselves part of everyday whilst trying to devote ourselves to video games. Back home internet access has become as important is breathing: wifi hotspots, fast data over 3G, netbooks and the iPhone mean that you’re only ever seconds away from a rich world of content. Strip this away and you can really escape the noise and focus.