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Senior Web Engineer. Open web / music. Remote DJ. Tall Dutch guy. #3million

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svandragt

mixcloud.com/cloudseer

 

Hassle-free Python project setup

Today I managed to break pipenv again to a point where I cannot install any project requirements. Let's document the process to prevent this happening again in the future.

Python3.7 and pip are already installed on OpenSUSE Tumbleweed. If you're not so lucky, read the page on https://docs.python-guide.org/starting/install3/linux/ but stop at the bottom of the page, as I find the installation method used for pipenv there too brittle.

Instead we're going to install pipx which is best described as a per-command environment for python executables. This is great for packages like pipenv which can then run without conflicts. pipx also keeps the packages updated.

python3 -m pip install --user pipx
python3 -m pipx ensurepath

We can then use pipx to install pipenv:

pipx install pipenv

I prefer to keep the virtual environment within the project folder, by adding the following line to .bashrc or .zshrc:

export PIPENV_VENV_IN_PROJECT=1

With pipenv in place we can create a per-project virtual environment and activate it:

cd ~/dev/myproject
pipenv shell

We can install our packages into the environment now:

pipenv install pylint --dev
pipenv install black --dev --pre

The missing step in a lot of guides, is that you later might want to call your script from outwith your virtual environment, without explicitly activating it as you would do when working on the project itself. You can do that thusly:

$(pipenv --venv)/bin/python myscript.py

 

On Settled Status

So ehm... when a person requires the NHS emergency services post Brexit, how do the staff know that a person is an EU citizen that might requires an online settled status check (which in turn requires a passport, identity card or biometric residency card) and not a UK citizen which doesn't need to (and can't) be checked? If we exclude all measures that are discriminatory?

So either all UK citizens also take their passport with them going forward as well; or this is going to end in discrimination for people  including, but not limited to, those with an accent, "look foreign", UK citizens that've lived or studied abroad (affecting their speech), people speaking another language, or any other identifying marks or clothing.

As not all UK citizens have passports however,  the NHS cannot use the Home Office provided website  to rule out they're an EU citizen. That's just as well as the website doesn't work for UK nationals, it would only tell them they don't have settled status.

As a result this makes the process essentially voluntary for people who self identify as an EU citizen and want to be discriminated against.

Hey where are you from? London. You don't sound British? I was born in England but studied in Amsterdam.

The process isn't fit for purpose.

 

Trying an Ubuntu 18.04 setup with XFCE, plank, albert, Ubuntu fonts and unsplash.

 

We're in 2019 and browsers and web systems still lose form content due to session timeouts (despite a session extension popup). Seriously wasted an hour.

 

It turns out if you enable the otherwise amazing Gnome Tweaks " Keyboard & Mouse > Pointer Location" setting then all your keyboard shortcuts using CTRL require doubling up, took me a week to figure that one out! on the desktop.

 

If you had to build a website to last 50 years what tech would you use?

 

I've updated my upgrade script with the composer based installation method. https://vandragt.com/2019/updating-known

 

My Let's Encrypt Setup

Scheduled Task (renewal)

$ sudo crontab -e

# Lets encrypt twice daily
0 7,19 * * * certbot -q renew

 

Script that reads le.txt and requests certificates for each domain

$ nano le.sh && chmod +x le.sh

DOMAINS=$(paste -s -d, le.txt)
sudo letsencrypt certonly --webroot -w /var/www/html -d $DOMAINS
sudo service nginx reload

Note: Recently certbot changed from seperating each domain with -d to comma seperated.

List of Domains (one per line, add to the end)

$ nano le.txt

vandragt.com
www.vandragt.com

 

 

For people who don’t understand UK Brexit, imho It’s all just about benefitting from a once in a lifetime realignment of how a nation is structured. Which explains the blinkers in use by some people in power. It isn’t going to result in a fairer society.

 

PHPStorm font rendering on OpenSUSE

On Ubuntu LTS the font rendering on 2019.1 looked great by default, but on Tumbleweed I needed to tweak the settings a little to get the editor to look good. There is conflicting information out there for out of date versions of OpenSUSE and PHPStorm and it took a bit of research to figure out what works for me.

Under Help | Edit Custom VM Options... I added the following lines:

-Dswing.aatext=true
-Dawt.useSystemAAFontSettings=on

I also set antialiasing (within the main PHPStorm Settings | Appearance menu) to greyscale.

Finally, I added the Dreamweaver CC colour scheme to the editor by saving the xml file in ~/.PhpStorm2019.1/config/colors/.

Restart the application and select the color scheme from File | Settings | Editor | Color Scheme

Sources: sheelahb.com

 

 

I’ve switched all my personal experiments to Chassis this morning. I like the concept of plugins on a local dev setup. https://docs.chassis.io/en/latest/

 

Sometimes I do research for a browser tab and want to go back to the last used tab when I close the research topic. Other times I want to review all open tabs and cycle through them without switching back to the last used one every time. I'm ctrl-tabbing to make all tabs active but a separate keyboard shortcut would be great

 

WorkLog 2.2

WorkLog.py is a very simple script that allows you to keep track of what you are working on by writing a timestamped message to a CSV file.
It turns out it helps me stay on track during a long day of work.

Version 2.2 has some new quality of life improvements:

v2.2:

* ctrl-d or enter to quit.
* works on python2 default systems.
* f-strings,
* code more elegant.
* day based csv files.

https://gist.github.com/svandragt/080843c4ba632deaab6f3aea57ca9684

 

Fixing Virtualbox host network adapter cannot be created error

If when trying to start a vm, for example using vagrant, you get the error message that the host network adapter cannot be created:

There was an error while executing `VBoxManage`, a CLI used by Vagrant
for controlling VirtualBox. The command and stderr is shown below.

Command: ["hostonlyif", "create"]

Stderr: 0%...
Progress state: NS_ERROR_FAILURE
VBoxManage: error: Failed to create the host-only adapter
VBoxManage: error: VBoxNetAdpCtl: Error while adding new interface: failed to open /dev/vboxnetctl: No such file or directory
VBoxManage: error: Details: code NS_ERROR_FAILURE (0x80004005), component HostNetworkInterfaceWrap, interface IHostNetworkInterface
VBoxManage: error: Context: "RTEXITCODE handleCreate(HandlerArg*)" at line 94 of file VBoxManageHostonly.cpp

Make sure to first start the virtualbox GUI application. It does some extra checks, and sometimes highlights the permission problem:

In my case (OpenSuse 15.1 Leap), my user was not added to the vboxusers group. Via Yast > Users and Security .... and editing my user account it was a simple checkbox away. Remember to relog.

If that doesn't work, reloading the kernel extensions could help:

$ sudo dpkg-reconfigure virtualbox-dkms
$ sudo dpkg-reconfigure virtualbox
$ sudo modprobe vboxdrv
$ sudo modprobe vboxnetadp

 

What's up with keyboard shortcuts on macos? For many system shortcuts, there's an application shortcut that does something different.

 

I hope iPads will become more repairable for everyone in the future. This LCD issue ours developed can be repaired only by a full swap, for 75% of the cost of a brand new faster iPad! If the price is based on value of the product instead of its cost, then so should the repair price be.

 

I’ve wondered for years why and don’t supply an update service for applications to hook into to keep themselves updated. I guess it’s a lot more complex than building an updater.

 

So seems to have removed the Preferences > Sidebar > Additional Options > Show the Quick Switcher setting. Problem is I must have accidentally enabled this before it was removed and now I can't get rid of it?

 

ACF field groups with the same option position can be ordered by setting a key value. Key values starting with underscores are shown first. Field groups without keys are displayed inconsistently depending on the user role.

 

WordPress Canonical URLs for Category/PostName Permalinks

When the permalink format is set to %category%/%postname%/ then a post is available under category/postname links for all categories, as well as under all parent/child/postname links.

If you use Yoast SEO and have set a primary category, that  becomes the canonical URL that's used for SEO. If you don't then the postname for whatever category has a lower ID (was created first) becomes the canonical URL.