Dynamic User Pages
Blog Posts by Andrew B. Collier / @datawookie
Python Security Audit
Is my code secure? This is something that we should all be thinking (if not worrying) about. A thorough security audit would be the ideal, but what if you don’t have the skills or resources for that? Well, there are some tools that will at least get you part way there.
Read More →ChromeDriver in GitLab CI Pipeline
You might need to run a Selenium crawler in a GitLab CI pipeline. Here’s how to get that set up.
Read More →Gatsby Content from Medium
In a previous post we used WordPress as a CMS for a Gatsby site. We can do something similar with Medium.
Read More →Gatsby, Tailwind & Docker
Gatsby and Tailwind are a formidable combination for putting together a robust and attractive site. Throw Docker into the mix and you also have robust and reliable deployments. Here’s how to set that up for a minimal site.
Read More →Next.js, Tailwind & Docker
Want to use Tailwind CSS with your Next.js site? Here’s how to get that set up. Also how to wrap the whole project in a Docker image.
Read More →Web Scraping with Class Name Mangling
Class name mangling (or hashing) is becoming increasingly prevalent. There’s no need to let it slow you down though. This is how you can deal with it.
Read More →.NET and MySQL in Docker
WordPress Headless CMS
Not everbody is comfortable crafting web pages directly in JavaScript, HTML or even Markdown. Often content writers are more productive in an environment like WordPress. What if you want to develop your site using Gatsby but allow content writers to still carft their content in WordPress? No problem! You can use WordPress simply as a Content Management System (CMS), then pull the content through into your Gatsby site.
In this post we’ll look at how to set up a Headless WordPress CMS as a source of content for Gatsby.
Read More →Humble Head
Populating the <head> tag might not be the most scintillating component of building a web site, but it’s an important one to get right. Gatsby’s Head API provides a flexible mechanism for doing this and supersedes the functionality from React Helmet.
Minecraft Plugin: Discord for Voice & Text Chat
It’d be cool to be able to voice chat to other players on the Minecraft server. There are a few ways to implement this, one of which involves setting up and connecting a Discord server.
Read More →Minecraft Paper Server
The original Java Edition of the Minecraft Server that we installed previously inmplements all of the basic server functionality required for multiplayer Minecraft. But perhaps this is not enough. What if you want to customise the server by installing plugins? In that case you need to install a more sophisticated server forked off the original. The PaperMC Minecraft Server provides a lot of bells and whistles not present in the original.
Read More →Weekly Digest & Annual Review
A quick review of the year.
- I published 55 posts (including this one).
- I spent a lot of time working with GatsbyJS for one of my clients. At first I was quite out of my depth, but I slowly figured out more or less how it works. I documented some of my learning in a series of posts.
- My most popular post is still about Shared Memory & Docker. The runner up looks at how to Install GitLab Runner with Docker.
- I spent some time compiling data on kayak specifications in the hope of producing a definitive table. It’s a work in progress but it’s already getting quite a lot of interest.
Now onto a few interesting articles from this week, mostly announcements of new versions.
Read More →Chrome & ChromeDriver in Docker
When I containerised Selenium crawlers in the past I normally used a remote driver connection from the crawler to Selenium, running a separate Docker image with Selenium and accessing it via port 4444. This has proven to be a robust design. However, it does mean two containers rather than just one, leading to a higher maintenance burden and elevated resource requirements.
What about simply embedding Chrome and ChromeDriver directly into the crawler image? It requires a bit more work, but it’s worth it. The critical point is ensuring compatible versions of Chrome and ChromeDriver.
Read More →SSH Tunnel: Dynamic Port Forwarding
With a local or remote SSH tunnel the ports on both the local and remote machines must be specified at the time of creating the tunnel. But what if you need something more flexible? That’s where Dynamic Port Forwarding comes into play.
Read More →Weekly Digest
Interesting articles from the week that was:
Read More →SSH Tunnel: Remote Port Forwarding
Local and remote SSH tunnels serve the same fundamental purpose: they make it possible to securely send data across an unsecured network. The implementation details are subtly different though. A local SSH tunnel acts like a secure bridge from a local machine to a remote server. It’s ideal for accessing services on the remote server which aren’t publicly exposed. Conversely, a remote SSH tunnel reverses this direction, forwarding traffic from the remote server back to a local machine (or another machine).
The critical distinction between the two is the direction of the connection between the remote and local machines.
Read More →Middleware Redirects on Vercel
In the previous post we looked at how to set up a collection of static redirects via the vercel.json configuration file. Now we’re going to explore a more flexible and dynamic alternative using Edge Middleware.
Minecraft Client on Ubuntu
In the previous post we set up a Minecraft server on Ubuntu. Now we’re going to install the Minecraft client and connect to that server.
Read More →Minecraft Server on Ubuntu
I’m not a gamer, but I have an offspring who is deeply obsessed with Minecraft. I set up a Minecraft server for her so that she can play with her friends online in a safe environment.
Read More →