Welcome to the personal website and blog of software developer – Andy Heathershaw.
I’m a commercial Microsoft .NET developer and open-source PHP developer based in the West Midlands, England. I live with my husband and I’m daddy to a nine-year-old Labrador called Mickey and two growing boys.
Check out About Andy Heathershaw to read more about me, or browse my blog posts below.
Sunday, 15th May, 2022
Today, 14th May, I discovered that SMS messages sent from my Simply Remind Me app since 1st March were not being delivered by my SMS provider.
Because they were successfully accepted by the gateway, Simply Remind Me correctly deducted the credits from your account. But the messages failed to arrive at their intended handsets.
DevOps , Reflections Read more
Friday, 21st January, 2022
Updates for devices running the Linux operating system come in the form of packages. Using the Linux system’s package manager, you install new packages and upgrade them as new versions are released.
Now sure you can log onto each Linux device and run apt update && apt upgrade, or dnf update, depending on your distribution. But what if you have several – even hundreds – of devices to keep updated? And how do you know what new updates are available?
DevOps , Reflections Read more
Friday, 31st December, 2021
2021 started with much hope of vaccines to bring an end to the COVID-19 pandemic, alas it wasn’t enough.
A year – and three vaccines later – and there is no end yet in sight. Although hospitalisations are steady, despite the rising number of cases of the Omicron variant, so maybe there is a glimmer of hope for 2022.
As I reflect on the last year, I’ve made some achievements I’m proud of – both personal and professional.
DevOps , Reflections Read more
Earlier this week, I gave a sneak preview of version 3 of Simply Remind Me – my free e-mail and simple SMS reminders app.
The new version is now live and ready to welcome new and existing users.
DevOps , Reflections Read more
Sunday, 26th December, 2021
It’s been four years since the last update to Simply Remind Me – my free e-mail and SMS (text message) reminders app. Since the COVID-19 pandemic started in 2020, sign-ups have increased significantly. It’s therefore a perfect time for a refresh and an update.
This blog post shows you a preview of the new-look Simply Remind Me – version 3 – launching soon.
DevOps , Reflections Read more
Sunday, 20th June, 2021
It’s been almost 18 months – and a global pandemic – since the last update to Solid Tools for Developers, my suite of free online debugging tools for software developers and system administrators.
Today I’ve released a new update to Solid Tools which, unlike the previous update, is more evolutionary rather than revolutionary.
This post details all the changes; you can check them out for yourself now at soliddevtools.com.
DevOps , Reflections Read more
Friday, 9th April, 2021
Over the past few weeks I’ve migrated my website to a new content management system – ExpressionEngine.
I took the opportunity to upgrade my website’s front-end technologies to their latest releases – Bootstrap 5 and VueJS 3, for example.
This post documents some of the changes I came across migrating Bootstrap 4 to 5.
DevOps , Reflections Read more
Thursday, 12th November, 2020
Apple today released the biggest update to macOS in recent years.
It’s so big in fact, it no longer carries the OS X (version 10) moniker it has carried since the early 2000s. No sur; Big Sur carries an all-new version 11.
DevOps , Reflections Read more
Wednesday, 15th January, 2020
Announced around a year ago, Microsoft today released their brand-new version of Edge – the default web browser since the Windows 10 release.
The new Edge browser is based on Google’s Chromium project. Chromium is the “base” software that Google builds the Chrome browser on.
DevOps , Reflections Read more
Sunday, 12th January, 2020
It’s been over a year since the last update to Solid Tools for Developers – my suite of online tools for developers, system admins and network managers.
Yesterday I published my latest release to soliddevtools.com which gives the suite a fresh makeover and a few improvements to the tools.
DevOps , Reflections Read more